Heroes, David Hagberg [me reader .txt] 📗

at peace. The radio broadcasts and newspaper headlines said otherwise, but for the moment here, there was beauty.

It reminded Schey very much of Munich with its monuments and Greek-inspired buildings, which served all the more to make him feel like the alien intruder he was. Germany never seemed so far away, so unattainable to him as it did at this contemplative moment.

The contact window was from half past five until six every evening, once the indicator was placed at the letter drop. That was nothing more than a short chalk line, a check mark actually, of the kind an inspector might make, on the far southeastern piling of the Frederick Douglass Bridge from the Naval Annex.

Perfectly visible day or night from a car appoaching on Anacostia Drive.

He had made the mark Monday morning. When his contact hadn’t shown that evening, he had not been overly worried. The mark could have been missed. He was still thinking more about Catherine and the baby than anything else. It hurt so terribly.

He went back to the bridge on Tuesday morning, to make sure his mark was still there. It was. But again that evening his contact did not show. Nor had he shown this evening.

There had been a man and woman down by the Reflecting Pool. They joined Schey at the head of the stairs, and they too stopped to look east toward the Capitol.

He glanced at them. They had been deep in earnest discussion when he had shown up a half an hour ago. He hadn’t thought they were aware of his presence. But the woman looked at him and smiled.

“Do you have the correct time?” she asked. “In England?”

Her escort turned around. “If you hadn’t been so clumsy with my watch, I’d have the time for you,” he said to her.

Schey was startled. What the woman had said. It was the code.

Christ! A woman!

“I think it’s late,” he said, fumbling with the sleeve of his coat.

“Of course it’s late,” the man said.

“Just how late, can you even guess?” the woman asked.

Her lips were red and moist. She wore a version of a tricorn hat with a feather. Her escort, a husky older man, didn’t seem too happy.

“I have just a bit past twenty-three hundred,” Schey said.

“Greenwich time?”

“Yes, Zulu time,” Schey said, using the military term for GMT. And then he stared at her. She was his contact. Her escort, who seemed about ready to take a poke at someone, apparently was just a cover. But now what the hell was he supposed to do?

“Thank you, sir,” the woman said, and she turned, her arm still linked in the man’s. “Come along, Bernard,” she said.

They headed up toward Bacon Drive either to catch a bus or cab or to retrieve a car.

Schey let them get halfway around the circle; then he started after them. Almost immediately he spotted the matchbook in the snow. He stooped to pick it up, then held it up to the street lamp.

The message on the front cover was for the Sutherland Apartments: “Where the elite gather.” There was an address well out on Fifth Street. But there was no name. He had no idea who she was.

He looked up as they rounded the corner. He didn’t get more than a few steps before they climbed into a cab and were gone.

Schey stopped and watched the cab disappear up toward Constitution Avenue. He had made his rendezvous. He knew where his contact presumably lived. But that was it. He turned away in frustration. He’d go there, of course. Maybe she was more professional than he gave her credit for being. Maybe there’d be a setup there for him. Maybe she’d be watching for him. Maybe a dozen possibilities.

There were only a half-dozen people waiting for the bus, and forty-five minutes later he was climbing the back stairs to his under-the-eaves room in a three-story house just off E Street, near Christ Church. The house was slightly down at the heels, but it suited Schey’s needs just perfectly. The landlord had told him, when he showed up in reply to the ad, that they were God-fearing Christians who minded their own business and expected the same of the folks who lived under their roof.

Schey cleaned up, put on another coat, the one he had worn up from Oak Ridge, and left by eight o’clock. It took him just ten minutes to walk to the parking garage he’d rented for his car, and he headed back up Eighth Street toward Galludet College. He took Florida Avenue around the B&O Interchange, finally cutting back to Fifth on the other side of St. Vincent’s Home and School.

The Sutherland Apartments turned out to be half a dozen three-story brown-brick structures in two rows back off the street.

There were a lot of trees and a cobblestoned driveway on two sides that led to a long, narrow parking area in the rear. The apartment complex looked like a military barracks. It made Schey nervous.

He drove around back and parked behind the center pair of buildings, and shut the engine off. It was a ‘33 Hudson—huge, heavy, and very comfortable, but not very good on gasoline.

He hunched up his coat collar and lit a cigarette. If there was someone here watching for him, they’d have seen him come in.

Smoking a cigarette would make no difference.

She had dropped the matches so that he would know where to come. She’d be expecting him this evening. And she’d also understand that he would have no idea which apartment was hers.

If indeed she even lived here.

He looked up at the windows. Only a few of them were lit.

The blackouts were no longer enforced in Washington. It made him think immediately of Berlin. The newspapers and radio commentaries were filled with stories about the bombing of Berlin and Dresden and Koln—Cologne, they called that city. It was horrible, the news. But here, except for Pearl Harbor, there had been no suffering.

Ten minutes later he had finished his cigarette. He cranked down