Heroes, David Hagberg [me reader .txt] 📗

beneath his unbuttoned overcoat.

“Major Loetz, sir,” the senior Hamburg officer introduced himself. He was the new man up here, and Canaris strongly suspected he was reporting to Department VI of the RSHA.

They shook hands.

“We only just found out you were coming, Herr Admiral.”

“The tracks still have not been repaired through the city?”

“No, sir,” Loetz said. He turned and introduced the other officer. “Captain Hans Meitner.”

Canaris looked at him. “Chief of Communications Branch?”

They knew each other, but Loetz wasn’t aware of it.

“Yes, sir,” the captain, a thick-wasted older man, said. He was from the old school. Canaris liked him.

“Nothing further from our friend in Oak Ridge?”

“No, sir.”

. “Or from Lieutenant Voster?”

“No, sir. But if the boat has gotten away, and everything was as it should be, we were not due to hear from them until today in any event.” “What’s this?” Loetz asked impatiently.

They could not hide anything from the man, so between them, Canaris and Meitner had decided to handle the affair as a routine matter. Dangerous, but it was the only way.

“It’s nothing,” Canaris said. “Let’s go out to the communications center.” He marched across the tracks and climbed into one of the staff cars. Loetz and Meitner got in with him, while the soldiers piled into the other vehicles, and they headed away from the station.

Dear God, he was tired. Sick to death of the senseless destruction. It was horrible in Berlin, but this was even worse.

He felt a constriction in his chest as they passed block after block of knocked-down buildings, burned-out hulks of homes, piles of rubble that had once been thriving factories.

“I hadn’t realized the destruction was so complete,” he said half to himself. Reading the daily reports was one thing; seeing the damage first hand was something else.

“It will be a happy day when New York and Washington are reduced to this,” Loetz said.

Canaris looked sharply at him. “Good God. man, isn’t this enough?”

Loetz bridled. “I only meant, sir … that is, we can’t leave this unrevenged.”

“Can’t revenge take another form?”

“I … don’t know what to say, sir,” Loetz stammered, embarrassed. Captain Meitner was looking the other way, out the window.

“Do you actually think we’re going to win this war, Hen Major?” Canaris said. He knew that he was going too far, but he could not help himself. He was worried, at the moment, about Dieter Schey. Deeply worried about the information he was sending over. If Schey’s early transmissions had not been exaggerated and if their other intelligence units had been on the button, then the Americans would very soon have the new bomb.

Germany might have it, too. Oster and Dohnanyi had both agreed that such a possibility would be totally unthinkable. It would have to be blocked at all costs.

“I’d pull the trigger on Hitler myself before I allowed such a monster weapon into the Luftwaffe’s hands,” Oster had cried.

Canaris ran a hand across his eyes. “I’m sorry, Major Loetz. I’m just very tired.”

“I understand, Herr Admiral,” Loetz said coldly.

They passed the ruined outskirts of Hamburg to the north, toward Ahrensberg, where the highway turned down a narrow country lane that ended a few kilometers later at the house, as it was called, that housed the Abwehr’s Hamburg radio station. The two-story stucco house, with an odd-looking turret at the rear, was one of the few things in Hamburg that Schellenberg and the RSHA had not yet taken over. They had snatched many of the intelligence-gathering functions from the Abwehr, and even the cream of the Brandenburg Division, but for the moment at least, the Abwehr’s link with her agents around the world was still secure despite Loetz.

Inside, they went immediately upstairs to the radio rooms themselves, which occupied the entire second floor. Tiny tables equipped with radios and notepads were stuck everywhere, even in back closets. Power cables had been strung beneath the floorboards, but the connections to the antennae, which bristled in the trees outside, came through cable runs across the ceiling.

There was a lot of activity this afternoon. Messages came and went from the radio operators, via copy boys, to the message center behind a large window in one of the back bedrooms. From there, after decoding, the plain German texts were sent downstairs, where they were typed on message forms and sent to the addressees by various means, depending upon the urgency of the message.

A young lieutenant in the message center jumped up from his desk when he saw Canaris and the others coming up the stairs.

He rushed across the room to them and saluted. He was excited. “It came, Heir Kapitan. We have word from U293.”

He held out a yellow message form to Meitner, who passed it on to Canaris. It had not yet been sent downstairs for typing, but it had been decoded.

PACKAGE SECURED HAVE CLEARED 158-277 ETA 001-358 30.1.44

REGARDS VOSTER Double-o one, was Portugal; 358, somewhere along its coast.

It would take nearly a month for the submarine to make the crossing, if all went well, and another couple of days for the Lisbon messenger to meet Voster, pick up the film canisters Schey had radioed he was sending over, and then make it across the border into Spain.

Four weeks. Canaris hoped he could hold out that long. It was going to be difficult.

Loetz wasn’t the least bit interested in the message, assuming it was nothing more than routine traffic. Canaris often meddled in the day-to-day routine of his outstations. This was no different.

“You needn’t make copies,” Canaris said softly.

The young lieutenant was startled. “Sir?” he said. But Meitner nodded, and the lieutenant saluted and went back to his desk.

“We’ll have to log it, Herr Admiral,” Meitner said, taking him aside. Loetz had gone across the room to check on something.

“As a routine transmission from one of our coast watchers,” Canaris said.

Meitner managed a slight smile. “Of course, sir; it was nothing more.”

Loetz came back. He was rubbing his hands together. “And now, Herr Admiral, we are ready for your inspection.”

Canaris had pocketed the message, and