Heroes by David Hagberg (reading cloud ebooks TXT) 📗

“Is the afternoon staff conference finished, sir?” Schey asked respectfully. Goebbels was a very powerful and very perverse man. Being around him was like dancing near a high-tension wire, someone had once said.

“Of course, of course. Go right in.”

“Thank you, sir,” Schey said. He left the dayroom, and went to the rear section of the bunker where the offices, conference room, and the Fiihrer’s personal quarters were located.

There were a lot of officers waiting in the corridor or hunched over desks in the various offices. Several greeted Schey warmly.

Others ignored him.

Around the corner near the conference room, Keitel, Jodl, and Krebs came past him. They did not even notice his presence.

The Fuhrer momentarily was alone at the long conference table. He was looking down at a large map. He had a slight palsy which caused his head to wobble. His left arm hung slack at his side, and his right hand, raised to his lips, shook slightly. He looked terribly exhausted, Schey stood there at the corner for a moment, until Hitler, sensing his presence, looked up.

For a moment there was no recognition in the Fiihrer’s eyes, and Schey could do nothing but stare. But then Hitler’s face broke into a tired grin.

“Ah. The one man in all of Germany whom I can trust completely.” He came around the table, beckoning for Schey.

“I can rely on no one, you know,” he said. His voice sounded raspy. “They all betray me. And the whole business makes me sick.”

Schey did not know what to say. He was sick at heart. The air in the room was almost too thick to breathe.

“If anything happens to me, Germany will be left without a leader. I have no successor. Hess is mad; Goering has lost the sympathy of the people; Himmler would be rejected by the party.

No, there is only me.”

It was snowing furiously when David Deland tromped up Bascom Hill toward the University of Wisconsin’s administration building.

Nothing had been quite the same since he had come home. His father was ill, the weather unsettled, and the war seemed to be dragging on forever.

They had all expected the fighting in Europe to be ended by last Christmas. When the first of the year came and went, the predictions were for February, or mid-March at the latest. They were saying mid-April now. Just two and a half weeks away. He didn’t know if he believed it. No one did.

He shifted his briefcase to his left hand, pulled open the door, and stepped inside the big building, crossed the main hall, and took the stairs up two at a time to the university president’s office.

He supposed he still wasn’t used to his civilian status. No longer did he have to continually look over his shoulder, although he did; no longer did he have to be concerned about whom he talked to, though he tended to be somewhat reticent now; no longer did he have to live with the moment-to-moment fear, although he still awoke at nights in a sweat; no longer did he have to be concerned where his next meal came from or who his friends were.

It had taken him several months to come down from the tremendous stress. And still he had a long way to go.

For a few weeks after he had gotten out, he had remained in Bern with Dulles, doing his debriefings. Then they sent him back to the school in Virginia to teach the new recruits and some of the older hands what it was really like in the field.

But by Christmas he had been released from active duty, and then discharged, providing he would return to the University of

Wisconsin at Madison, to work at the Army Mathematics Research Center.

He had agreed wholeheartedly. But it was much different than he remembered it and far lonelier than he imagined it would be.

His friends, even his girlfriend from before the war, had no conception of what he had become. Some of them had gone so far as to tell him to shake it off, to forget about it. But he could not, of course.

E.B. Fred’s outer office was usually busy at this hour on a Monday morning. Today only his secretary sat behind her desk.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pett,” Deland said.

She usually made some joke with him, but this morning she barely looked up as she nodded. She keyed the intercom on her desk. “He is here,” she said.

“Send him in,” the speaker on the unit rasped, and she nodded toward the door.

“Is something wrong?” Deland asked.

“I don’t know, but they’re waiting for you in there. Have been since seven this morning.”

“They?” Deland mumbled. He crossed the room and entered the president’s office just as the rear door that led out into the corridor closed.

William Donovan, chief of the OSS, was seated behind Fred’s desk. He had come here just like this when he had recruited Deland. That seemed like it had happened half a century ago.

Deland’s heart skipped a beat. “This is a surprise, sir.”

“Come in and shut the door, David,” Donovan said..

Deland closed the door, then crossed the room and took a chair across from Donovan. The OSS chief had aged considerably even since Deland had seen him last, just before Christmas. He did not look very happy now, either.

“How is your father?”

“He’s holding his own. He’ll be back to his department in the fall. But you didn’t come here to ask about him.”

“No,” Donovan said. He was a soft-spoken man. He wore a dark suit and vest, his tie loose. Deland couldn’t remember seeing him looking so tired. So wan.

“My discharge is final …” Deland began, but Donovan held him off.

“Hear me out, and then you can decide whatever you want.

Fair enough?”

Deland nodded uncertainly. This entire business was frighteningly reminiscent of his recruitment. Donovan was a very persuasive man.

“We have a problem in Berlin. A very big problem that cannot wait until the end of the war. Especially not until the end.”

Deland took a deep breath, held it a moment to