Heroes by David Hagberg (reading cloud ebooks TXT) 📗

over his shoulder as he hurried through the rat maze of rubble and downed buildings, back into Tiergarten.

For a long time he had been able to see the fire rising. But now he was too far away.

Gerhardt had called the Gestapo. They had been waiting!

Deland stopped on a wide avenue, across from a row of dark apartment buildings. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it was Augsburger Strasse. The big cathedral on K’Damm would be just to the northwest. Sometimes it was hard to be certain about the streets.

There was absolutely no traffic. Nothing moved in any direction for as far as he could see. Nor were there any lights to be seen. It was as if the city had finally been deserted.

Evidently the Gestapo had not expected Deland to come the back way. They had missed him, although when Gerhardt lit his candle, he had smiled, evidently confident that help was on its way.

Deland’s insides were quivering. He kept seeing Rudy’s face; his eyes were bulging, a blue cast coming to his skin, his thick tongue protruding. Deland knew that he would smell the terrible odors in that room for the rest of his life. He would feel the thin bones and cartilage of Gerhardt’s neck being crushed.

Three-quarters of a block to the north, a very large building had been knocked down into the street. Deland walked up to it and crossed the broad avenue within the protection of the maze of brick and huge sections of walls. The street seemed deserted, but he was very jumpy. He didn’t want to take chances.

There was absolutely no question now about his remaining in Berlin, or anywhere else in Germany, for that matter. He had come to that conclusion as he walked. In some respects he was glad it had come to this. He had been losing his nerve now for months. He did not think he could take much more of it. And there was no way the business with Marti Zimmer could be worked out to any degree of satisfaction.

He was not German. When the war was actually ended, life in Germany, and especially here in Berlin, was going to be very difficult. It would be a nightmare. He did not want to get caught in the final hours of the struggle.

It was going to be difficult getting out now. But they got fliers out. Dannsiger certainly could help get him to Switzerland.

It was well after two by the time he made it to within a block of his apartment building. He turned the corner and pulled up short. There were an Army troop truck and two civilian automobiles parked at an angle in front.

He ducked back against the building as someone shouted an order. A half dozen soldiers and three civilians emerged from his building. One of the soldiers carried something. He handed it to one of the civilians. For just that moment Deland was able to catch a glimpse of what it was the soldier had handed over. It was illuminated in the beam of the truck’s headlights. It was his calculator-radio in its leather case. He recognized it by its shape and by the long shoulder strap.

The soldiers scrambled into the truck, and the civilians climbed into their cars. Deland turned and hurried back the way he had come, crossing the street where the collapsed building had blocked it.

They had his radio. He was cut off from any communication with Bern.

He was going to have to warn Dannsiger and the others. The Gestapo had found his apartment. But how? Gerhardt had gone to them and told them about his old school chum. An American, here now in Berlin. And they had waited for him to show up at Gerhardt’s apartment. That he could understand. But how had they known about his place?

He passed again through Tiergarten, hurrying but still taking great care so that he would not be spotted. But the city remained as if deserted. The more he saw of it, the more he became nervous. It wasn’t natural. It had to be because of the assassination attempt on Hitler. The city was frightened. Everyone was staying indoors.

He heard the guns three blocks away, and he knew exactly what was happening. He also suddenly knew how the Gestapo had found out where he lived. They had followed him from the girls’ school. They had been following him, and probably the others, for several days now.

Gerhardt had told the Gestapo about his encounter. More importantly, he had told them exactly where he had seen Deland.

They had evidently posted surveillance people there.

Deland cut through the shell of a building where the black market shop was located, the sound of gunfire much louder now.

He crossed through the adjacent empty building, and finally from the basement through a-cellar door, and up a service entrance stairway which was only three buildings from the girls’ school.

Alicia had shown him this escape route against the day the sewer tunnel was blocked off.

The shooting was very close now, and very fierce. He could hear the bullets ricocheting off the pavement.

Someone screamed. A man shouted for a medic. An instant later an artillery shell went off with a shattering roar that broke windows in all the buildings on the block and nearly knocked Deland down the stairs.

He regained his balance and eased up far enough so that he could see over the lip of the stairwell.

The entire block had been cordoned off. There were dozens of SS troops, and on the far side of the school a tank. Its 88 mm cannon, smoking, was pointed at the school.

Soldiers were barricaded behind piles of rubble, and behind their trucks and the tank itself. They were laying down a heavy screen of small arms fire into the building.

From where Deland crouched he could not see much of the front of the school, but he could hear that someone inside was firing back.

Evidently they hadn’t had the chance to get out through the tunnel. Either that or