Heroes by David Hagberg (reading cloud ebooks TXT) 📗

The Fuhrer had barricaded himself inside the Reichs Bunker in the Tiergarten. Fortress Germany, they were calling it.

Such news filtered even here. Men like Mathiesen Lunding, a former Danish military intelligence officer being held in the next cell, had ways of getting such information.

But would the war end before … Canaris glanced toward the tiny window in his cell. It was nearly morning. The sky had definitely gotten much lighter in the last few minutes.

Unconsciously, his mouth began to water. Breakfast, like supper, consisted only of coffee with two pieces of bread and jam. But it was better than nothing. It was food. As long as it kept coming, it was survival.

He turned back and put his ear against the wall. He could distinctly hear the muffled rapping of the chain against the other side of the partition. He listened for a few minutes, then nodded.

Yes, it was Sunday. April first. He had not yet lost complete trace of time, although some days were more fuzzy than others.

The Russians would be in Berlin within two weeks. The Americans would be here in less time than that. Lunding seemed so certain.

The tapping seemed to fade out, then resumed for a few moments, and. finally it was gone again.

Canaris tapped. “More news?”

He listened, but there was no reply. He was about to repeat his interrogative when someone was in the corridor at his door, and he painfully hauled himself up onto his narrow cot.

The door opened and the very large, rat-faced corporal who served the bunker came in bearing a tin bowl filled with steaming coffee and a small wooden tray that held two pieces of bread spread thinly with a watery blackberry jam.

Canaris licked his lips, barely able to contain himself. His stomach kept turning over.

The corporal grinned brutishly. He held up the tray. “Ah … out little sailor boy wants his breakfast?”

Canaris started to nod vigorously, but then he remembered himself, and he sat erect, his eyes on the corporal’s.

For a moment the callous young man was nonplussed, but then he grinned. “The sailor boy perhaps doesn’t want his breakfast?”

He looked at the bread. “Perhaps it is not fit for his aristocratic tastes?” The corporal laughed. “Is that it, then? Didn’t you ever get a meal like this in the Navy mess?”

Canaris wanted to cry. His mouth was filled with saliva, and bile rose up in his throat. God in heaven, he was so terribly weak and hungry.

The corporal laughed again. Carefully he lifted the slices of bread from the tray and deliberately dropped them, jam-side down, on the dirty concrete floor. With a short harsh laugh, he set the tiny bowl down, slopping some of the coffee on the floor.

“Five minutes,” he shouted, turning on his heel. He stomped out into the corridor.

Canaris willed himself to wait until the metal door was slammed and locked. Then he waited a little longer, until he was certain that the corporal was not watching, before he crawled off his bunk, scraped the bread from the floor, and willing himself by supreme effort to act human, slowly began to eat.

It was terrible, but it was food. It was life. He kept telling himself that.

Incredibly, the meal was finished. He sat looking at the empty coffee bowl and at the stains on the concrete floor, realizing that he could not remember having just eaten. It was not enough. His stomach was still empty. His teeth ached. Every muscle in his body was stiff and sore.

For a long time he sat where he was, but finally he willed himself to get up and clean himself at the tiny bucket of water in the corner.

Someone would come for him this morning, as they did every morning. Sometimes it was a taciturn lieutenant; sometimes it was the prosecutor himself. The questions continued. In a way he almost looked forward to the interrogation sessions. He was never physically abused like some of the others here. And it was sometimes interesting to exercise his mind.

He put on his reasonably clean white shirt and slowly managed to knot his tie. He was buttoning his suit coat when his door was opened. He turned as his interrogator, Stawitzky, came in.

“Giiten Morgen, Herr Admiral,” the little man said. His official title was Kriminalrat—criminal consul—for the RSHA.

He was considered to be one of the best Gestapo bloodhounds, but Canaris did not think much of him.

“What little misunderstandings shall we clear up this morning?” Canaris asked, careful to keep his voice calm and nonchalant.

“Oh, I think we shall explore again your relationship with the criminal Hans Oster. A fellow plotter,” Stawitzky said. The corporal returned, and the criminal consul motioned for him to release Canaris’ chains.

Canaris enjoyed this moment most of all. The corporal had to get down on his hands and knees in front of Canaris to undo the ankle shackles. Canaris always outwardly ignored the man, as if he were not there, although he was aware of every movement.

He knew it infuriated the young man who, after all, had been nothing more than a simple farmer’s son before he had been given a uniform. A farmer’s son on the Polish border.

“You were fast friends, from what I understand,” Stawitzky was saying.

“On the contrary. I had known from the very beginning that Oster was up to something. Up to his neck,” Canaris said.

“But, then, why hadn’t you reported this … behavior?”

Canaris smiled. “To whom, Heir Kriminalraf! It was an Abwehr matter.”

“But you went along with it.”

“Indeed. Merely to find out the true extent of Osier’s plans.”

“I see,” Stawitzky said thoughtfully. Canaris’ shackles were undone, and the criminal consul took his arm and led him out of the cell.

It felt good to be able to walk like this every morning, although it was depressing to see the rows of cells standing empty.

It seemed that every second or third day there would be one or two more empty cells. He did not want to dwell too long on what had happened to those officers.

“But there