Heroes by David Hagberg (reading cloud ebooks TXT) 📗

Marlene was saying. “I am truly sorry. I forget what happened to you.” She looked around at the empty cages and beyond the park toward the smoking ruins of the city.

“God, what a terrible, terrible waste.”

She was blonde and blue-eyed, but there her resemblance to Eva ended. There was a hard edge to her that was never present in Eva, despite Eva’s sometime bravado. Marlene wore too much makeup, and she sometimes swaggered when she walked, as if she were a model on a runway.

“What do you think it will be like afterwards?” he asked.

She turned back. “There will be no more bombing!”

“It will be Versailles all over again. Only this time much worse.”

She laughed. “You have been brainwashed. What do you know of the Versailles treaty? You read it in a history book, just like me. German history books.” {

“You won’t be treated very well,” he blurted. He did not know why he wanted her to bend.

She laughed again. ‘ ‘The slut of the OKW? The hero’s prize?” “I’m sorry, Marlene; I didn’t mean it.”

“Sure you did. How do you suppose we met? Why do you suppose I was so willing … at first?”

Schey felt as if he were being backed into a corner. “You don’t have to stick around. I’m not holding you.”

“Oh no, you don’t,” she snapped, suddenly alarmed. “You have your little bauble. I have mine.”

“I’ll give you my rations, if that’s what you’re worried about …”

She stepped back and slapped him in the face. The unexpected blow snapped his head back. His hand went to his cheek.

“You son-of-a-bitch! You Schweinhundl You think I want your ersatz coffee and cheap cigarettes?”

None of the other strollers in the park bothered to stop and watch. Berliners were numb to almost everything these days.

He didn’t know what to say.

“I want you, Standartenfiihrer Schey. I don’t want to be alone when the end comes. Misery loves company … you have heard the expression, no doubt? Well, it’s my misery, and you’re the company.” She shook her head. “You can continue to run off and play war games in the Reichs Bunker. But you will come back to me in my little Charlottenburg hovel. And when it’s over and it’s my turn to protect you, I will be there still.”

Like so many other civilians, she had no concept of what the end would be like, especially if the Russians got to Berlin first.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Oh no, you don’t, my hero colonel,” she said, taking his arm. “Your appointment is not until four o’clock. You made the mistake of telling me that first. We have two hours together.

Back at my place.”

She led him out of the Tiergarten, down toward Kurfiirstendamm, where he had left his car near the Auslandsorganisation—or what remained of the building.

The lingering odor of Marlene was still on him when his driver, Sergeant Wilbur Proknow, dropped him in front of the Kaiserhof Subway Station on Voss Strasse. Damage here seemed to be much greater than in other parts of the city. But the Fiihrer Bunker was just around the corner, and along with the Reich Chancellery, this made for the most tempting of all target areas.

He dismissed the driver, then paused a moment to sniff the air. Berlin smelled like a cross between garbage and plaster dust.

Always a haze hung over the city from the bombing. It was a part of coming home that he had not been prepared for.

The SS guards at the main entrance to the subway station saluted Schey as he passed, and then he went down the broad marble stairs to the lower level where he checked his Luger and signed in with an SS lieutenant.

“Just one moment, Herr Colonel, and your escort will be up,” the young officer said. His left arm had been lost from just above the elbow. The sleeve of his black tunic was pinned up. Schey had trouble keeping his eyes away from it.

Embarrassed, Schey turned away, slapping his gloved hand against his trouser leg.

“How is it up there, sir?” the lieutenant asked.

Schey turned back. “Lieutenant?”

“The weather, sir. What’s it like today?”

Schey shrugged. “Not bad. At least the bombing has stopped for a time. There are a lot of people out walking.”

“In the park?”

“Yes, but everywhere else, too.”

The young lieutenant smiled, but then a civilian in baggy trousers came up the stairs from the lower level.

“Colonel Schey,” the gray-haired man said tiredly. They shook hands.

Schey remembered him from debriefings a couple of months ago. He had been at a place called Kummersdorf East outside the city for the past few weeks. Schey had thought his debriefings, which had been going on for months now, had finally come to an end.

“I don’t know if there is anything else I can tell you, sir,” Schey said. The man was an atomic scientist, but Schey could only remember his first name. Bertrand.

“Neither do we, Colonel,” the scientist said.

Schey followed him down the stairs and along the tunnel into what once had been a maintenance area for subway cars. Desks and a few cots had been set up on the far side, away from the tracks, but in the middle of the cavernous hall some great machine had been set up. Wires ran in every direction from it. Huge blades for cooling jutted out. And above and below a central chamber were what appeared to be huge electromagnets. Ductwork ran off at odd angles. A dozen men were working on it.

The scientist was obviously proud of the contraption. “Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

“You were in the United States. You saw their efforts. Come, man, how does this compare?”

Schey gazed at what amounted to a toy by comparison, and he thought about K25, the gas diffusion plant outside Oak Ridge. It had been only one of four operations. The building was more than a mile long. He shook his head.

“It does not compare, sir.”

The scientists grinned, apparently misunderstanding. “I told them,” he said. But then he