Heroes, David Hagberg [me reader .txt] 📗

squads had been randomly driving around the streets of Wolgast. It was something happening in many cities, he had learned.

He tuned the radio, picked up the microphone, and flipped the transmit switch.

“Paris, this is Brussels. Paris, this is Brussels. Come in,” he radioed. The reference to those two cities remote from Bern and Wolgast served not only as code names but as an additional confusion for listening Germans.

Deland held one hand to the earphone on his right ear and he heard the faint acknowledgment to his transmission.

“Brussels, this is Paris. We have you. Go ahead.”

Deland had pulled a single sheet of notebook paper from his pocket on which he had written a series of numbers in rows and columns. He keyed the microphone and began reading in a clear, distinctly enunciated voice, but he spoke as rapidly as he could.

His transmissions were being recorded, so they’d miss nothing.

They had to keep these things short to avoid being pinpointed.

He was finished in less than ninety seconds, and Bern was back.

“Acknowledged. Copy?”

Deland had his notebook and pencil out. “Ready.”

The operator on the top floor of a four-story hotel in Bern read the series of numbers slowly and distinctly. The list was short.

When the operator was finished, he signed off.

“Acknowledged. Brussels out.”

He cut the power to the radio set, pulled the wire antenna down out of the trees, coiled it up, and stuffed it in the back of the case that contained the small, oddly shaped radio.

A cover went over the radio itself and a handle fit into the side, transforming the electronic machine into a mechanical machine—an advanced calculator of the type used by engineers and mathematicians. Some of the functions even worked. It was a marvelous machine.

The calculator went into a leather case, which Deland buckled, then slung over his shoulder by a long strap.

He checked the road again, then trudged back through the woods, down the far side of the hill to the woodcutter’s road that connected with the highway a few kilometers to the southeast. He retrieved his bicycle from where he had hidden it behind a pile of cut logs, then headed back into town.

Among other things, Deland had sent information to the OSS on the next V2 test firings, as well as Rudy Schlechter’s work on high speed pumps for corrosive fuels.

The code was a simple one-time address method based on the Berliner Zeitung. The first set of numbers in the message gave the date of the newspaper. Thereafter, pairs of numbers gave the line and word. The first row corresponded to the last page, the second row to the first page, the third row to the second to the last page and so on.

In addition to its simplicity, the beauty of the code was that its numbers roughly corresponded to the types of figures Deland dealt with in his study of trajectory mathematics. So if and when he was ever stopped and searched, and his notebooks and papers examined, the messages would appear to be nothing more than his work.

It took him almost fifteen minutes to reach the highway and another half-hour to make it back into town. It was just past one in the afternoon when he pulled up behind his rooming house on the north side of the town and leaned his bike up against the woodshed. He threaded a thin chain around the bike’s frame and through a heavy metal ring in the side of the building, and locked it.

Then he trudged up the back stairs, through the pantry and into the back hall between the kitchen and the landlady’s office. The old woman was seated behind her desk. When Deland passed, she rose.

“Herr Dorfman.”

Deland stopped and came back. The house seemed almost too hot after being outside. His nose was running. “Guten Morgen, Frau Gardner,” he said pleasantly. He took out a tissue and blew his nose.

The old woman looked at the watch pinned to the front of her dress. “Guten Nachmittag, Herr Dorfman. It is afternoon, not morning. You have again missed your lunch.”

“It is all right, Frau Gardner,” he said placatingly. Despite himself he had grown fond of the old woman over the past months. She looked after him as a mother might care for a recalcitrant son.

“Where have you been all morning?”

“Working.”

“Working?” she sniffed. “At the island?”

Deland smiled. “Why, Frau Gardner, I am surprised by such an indiscreet question.”

“I only ask because of the man who was here for you,” the old woman said. She was portly, and she always wore dark clothing with a crisply starched white apron. It made her seem severe. Almost as if she were a nun.

Deland’s heart skipped a beat. “A man? Did he leave a message?”

“He asked to wait in your room until you returned. I refused him, naturally. But he left no name or message.”

“Was he in uniform? S. S.? Wehrmacht?”

“Civilian clothes,” she said. “Quite sloppy, I might add.”

The relief began. “Tall? Graying, perhaps? Distinguished looking?”

The woman nodded begrudgingly.

“He’s a friend, Frau Gardner. A co-worker. Rudy Schlechter,” Deland said. But what the hell had Rudy been doing here? On a Saturday morning? Both of them would normally have been at work, but the test firing had been canceled and only the maintenance crew were out there in force today. He figured Rudy would be with his girl. He had talked enough about her.

“Will you be wanting some lunch, Herr Dorfman?” Frau Gardner asked.

Del and could smell the potato dumplings and what was probably a chicken stock. It made his mouth water. But he shook his head. “Nein, danke,” he said. “I am going out again.”

“As you wish,” the woman said, and Deland hurried upstairs to his room.

Schlechter had never been here before. But it really didn’t mean a thing, he told himself. The man had introduced him to Katrina. Perhaps now he wished to socialize even further. So far as Deland knew, Schlechter’s only friend was Maria Quelle. He ‘was not close to anyone on the island. Perhaps his coming here was