Heroes

by David Hagberg

  Gerhardt reached up for the blackout curtains. Deland leaped forward, slamming into the man’s chest, knocking him back away from the window, his fingers seeking and finding Gerhardt’s throat.

  The lit candle fell over as Gerhardt struggled against Deland’s powerful grasp. But he was a sick man, undernourished and very weak. His single leg thrashed; a horrible smell came from the rotting stump of his blown-off leg.

  “Oh God.” The cry choked in Deland’s throat, as he squeezed harder, his powerful grasp crushing Gerhardt’s windpipe. Tears streamed down from Deland’s eyes. This was a nightmare from which he knew he would never be free.

  Gerhardt had only wanted eggs. He had wanted food. Nothing more.

  Gerhardt’s struggles rapidly diminished, and in the end he lay still.

  A corner of the blackout curtains had caught fire from the candle, the flames growing at an alarming rate.

  Deland released his grip and fell back away from Gerhardt’s corpse. His stomach heaved, and he vomited, his entire body shaking as he was wracked with terrible chills.

  The flames continued to grow, licking the ceiling now, and Deland fell farther back toward the door.

  “Rudy,” he Said. “I’m sorry, Rudy …”

  For a second or two he contemplated tearing the curtains down and trying to put out the fire. But it was already too late. It would be better this way. The fire would cover the murder.

  - Sirens sounded from outside. Very close. Deland scrambled to his feet in the corridor as the downstairs door crashed open.

  Someone shouted orders, and there was the sound of boots pounding on the stairs.

  Deland spun around, the flames in Gerhardt’s room building into an inferno, choking smoke filling the corridor. He raced to the jagged hole at the back of the building.

  It had been a setup, after all! Gerhardt had recognized him! He had gone to the authorities! They had been waiting for him to show up!

  Any second the Gestapo troops would be here. There was no other way out. He stepped back, and then sprinted forward, leaping out through the shattered back wall, out into the darkness, down to the debris-choked alley three stories below.

  He landed very hard on the roof of the building, rolled once, and then barely knowing what he was doing because the breath had been knocked out of him, he scrambled around the corner of a shed, through a steel door, and down the stairs into the dark interior of the partially destroyed building.

  This one smelled of boiled cabbage and onions, and he could hear a baby crying.

  Careful to make as little noise as possible, although he must have made a terrible racket landing on the roof the way he had, Deland hurried down the stairs to the ground floor.

  Outside, there were a lot of sirens and sounds of shouting.

  Flames from the burning building were reflected on the corridor walls from the backdoor.

  Deland made his way to the front door, opened it, peered outside. The block was empty. He stepped outside and without a backward glance hurried down the street, back toward Tiergarten.

  His mind turned around the only question that mattered any longer.

  Stay or go? Or did he have the choice? ~

  Berlin seemed more forbidding than ever. The increasing overcast assured there would be no Allied air raids tonight, but it also plunged the city into almost complete darkness.

  Deland kept looking 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 a few of Dannsiger’s people had elected to remain behind to cover the others’ escape. It was a safe bet that no one still in the building would come out of this alive.

  The tank fired its huge gun again, and Deland ducked as the explosion shook every building in the block, dirt and plaster raining down into the stairwell.

  Marti was in there. Poor, confused Marti. She should have been the wife of a schoolteacher, or perhaps a college professor at a small university, living her life amid teas and weekend trips to the forests, not in this hell.

  The German 88 fired a third time, a piece of the cornice above Deland breaking free and crashing down on the head of the stairs, a large piece of the concrete just missing him. He scrambled the rest of the way down the stairs and through the cellar door.

  He could not remain here. It was all over for the underground.

  At least for the moment. Sooner or later the SS and the Gestapo would begin searching the buildings in this block, probably for several blocks on this side of the river.

  He could not stay. He could not find out from here what happened to Dannsiger and Marti and the others.

  He crossed through the basement, went up into the shell of the building, and cautiously emerged behind the black market corner.

  Several more 88 rounds were fired in rapid succession as Deland hurried away in the opposite direction, his head down, but all his senses alert for danger. It would be difficult getting out of the city, but once free it would not be impossible to make it south. In his mind he could see a picture of Germany. Berlin was in the northeast, while Bern was directly south of Basel, across the Swiss border, in the extreme southwest. He would have to avoid the bigger cities—Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart.

  But most of the military traffic he would have to fear traveled on the Autobahn system. He would not be on those roads in any event.

  He had his work card and identification. But he had no travel permits with him. They were all back at the school, being re-done for the new month—which meant he would not be able to take a train.

  He stopped and looked back the way he had come. It was possible that he could gain access to the basement by the river entrance. For a moment he considered it, but realized just how foolish that was. The Gestapo had had the building spotted for some time now. They certainly knew about the sewer outfall. And very soon they’d be inside anyway.

  He did have some money, a couple hundred marks. It wasn’t much really, but then he wasn’t going to be able to take a train, nor was he going to be eating in fancy restaurants, even if there were any.

  He continued walking south until he crossed the Berliner Strasse bridge over the Spree to the west, and then he turned south again toward Charlottenberg. A truck rumbled by, and a second later another truck ground its way up through the gears, and Deland shrank back. Suppliers and workmen were beginning to move about. The bakers would be at work now, with what little flour was available. The farmers would be straggling in for a pitifully meager market day. The morning railway people and trolley conductors would be showing up for work soon. Slowly the city was coming alive.

  It was amazing, Deland thought, that despite the way the war was going—the Allies had invaded France—and despite the bombing raids, despite the shortages, life essentially went on as normal.

  Or at least it had a semblance of normalcy, although there wasn’t enough food in the city and water and telephone service were often interrupted. The joke went that the only thing more unreliable than the electricity was a husband with four children who had two mistresses.

  He crossed Kurfurstendamm, and an hour and a half later he was within the park at the edge of the Grosser Wansee in Zehlendorf.

  There were many fashionable homes on the western shores of the lake, many of them belonging to high party officials. Security over there would be tight, so Deland stayed well away.

  To the south and east of the lake were lesser residential areas, as well as the park and the railway line. It would be so convenient to merely board a train. But without travel permits—and money—it was impossible.

  He stopped just at the edge of the park and peered out across the still well-tended lawns of the big houses. The railroad depot was not lit up, of course, but he could make out its bulk. The tracks ran out of the city to the southwest, across Dreilinden Strasse. Within a mile from the lake the city gradually gave way to farmlands, where there wouldn’t be so many prying eyes.

  How long would it take for a train coming out of the Grosser Wansee depot to accelerate to the point where it would be impossible to jump aboard? Within the city they would have to keep speeds low for fear the tracks would be blocked with bomb debris. They would not actually come to speed until they were well away from the danger.

  He looked back across the park. Within the city there were plenty of places for him to hide. Out in the country he would be exposed. It would be more difficult. He shook his head. Berlin was impossible for him now. At least his mission to help downed Allied airmen out of the city was impossible for him.

  Deland stepped out of the park, crossed the Wanseebad West, and went down to the lakeshore walkway. The air was much cooler near the water, and it smelled wonderful. Very soon the sun would be coming up, ruining his chances of escape for this night. Before it was light, he would have to be out of the city and aboard a train. Short of that, he would have to find a place to hide himself for the day.

  He looked back again as he walked, but from here he could no longer see the depot. There might not even be another train until daylight. In that case he’d have to keep going on foot. He’d end up having to hide himself in the woods or perhaps in a farm field.

  Around the west shore of the lake, Deland left the path and took the broad stairs back up to the main square, which branched to the north around a low marshy ground and to the southwest out toward the open countryside. A truck loaded with lumber rumbled along the southwest road, and Deland followed it, his stride long, his body leaning into the effort.

  There had been roadblocks at several spots back in Berlin proper. But out here there didn’t seem to be any military activity of any kind. It was peaceful. As he walked, he kept looking over his shoulder, as if he expected someone to be sneaking up on him. But besides the lumber truck, he saw no other traffic for a long time.

  Deland pulled his coat collar up against the cool air. The residential areas gradually gave way to scattered vacant lots, and finally over a hill was a thick stand of trees, beyond which were the open fields, the railroad tracks to the left disappearing into the woods.

  Deland went another half-mile before he crossed the highway, scrambled across the ditch beside the road, and climbed up into the woods. The railroad tracks ran through a clearing fifty yards from the highway, just below a sharp hummock. He leaned up against a tree above the track bed. From where he stood he could make out the tracks in both directions, as well as the highway half a mile back toward the city.

  Normally, he thought, the night sky toward the northeast would be ablaze with the lights from Berlin
. But this night the sky was dark. No lights shone from the city. It was as if Berlin were a gigantic ocean liner whose power had failed. She was adrift now in a very dark, very dangerous sea. All her passengers were doomed. It made him very sad.

  Half an hour later the eastern horizon did seem lighter. Only it wasn’t the city lights. It was the sun. Very soon it would be daylight. Deland could feel panic rising up inside of him.

  This was no place for him to spend the day. It was too exposed. Anyone could come along and spot him. Yet there was no train.

  He almost missed the single headlight coming up from the city. He had been staring down the tracks. But then the bobbing motion caught his eye, and he straightened up.

  One headlight stabbed through the predawn darkness, coming around a curve in the road and disappearing in the shallow valley below the hill for just a moment.

  At first Deland suspected it was a car or a truck with one of its headlights gone out. But as he watched, he could see that the headlight flashed back and forth too fast for that, its motion too erratic, and he understood it was a motorcycle.

  A courier, possibly. With a uniform. With a travel pass. A legitimate reason to be out on the highway, day or night.

  Deland shoved away from the tree and raced through the woods back to the highway, desperately searching, as he ran, for a downed tree limb. A branch. Something he could use as a club.

  But the woods had been scoured clean. Every scrap of firewood had been picked up.

  The motorcycle topped the rise about three hundred yards away as Deland hesitated beside the ditch. There wasn’t going to be a thing he could do about it. The motorcycle would pass and that would be the end of it.

  Deland’s eye finally lighted on a pile of loose rocks around the opening of a drainage culvert that ran beneath the road.

  He could hear the sharp roar of the motorcycle now as he ‘<&&

  scrambled down into the ditch, grabbed a fist-sized rock, then crouched low, ready to spring.

  The headlight flashed high on the trees and then the bike was passing.