Heroes, David Hagberg [me reader .txt] 📗

his suggestion about downed Allied fliers. Goebbels wanted them shot. Hitler had agreed. But Doenitz had said, pointblank, that the disadvantages to such a program would far outweigh the advantages.

It was crazy in the bunker. Nothing seemed to make any sense.

The Fuhrer had spent more than an hour talking about the use of Indian soldiers. He thought they were a joke.

“They will not even kill a louse, how can we expect them to defend Germany?” The Fuhrer had laughed. He had strutted around the room. “Give them prayer wheels, and they would work their fingers to the bone.”

Schey had averted his eyes. Everyone else in the crowded conference room had applauded.

The Fuhrer stopped at the end of the long table and pounded his fist. “What our real problem is at the moment is concrete.”

“Sir?” Goebbels had asked.

“German concrete is simply not standing up to Allied bombs.

We must be able to do better than that!” Hitler screamed.

The room was deathly still.

“It is like our German people!” he raved. “If the German people are to be defeated in this struggle, it must have been too weak; it failed to prove its mettle before history and thus is destined only to destruction.”

The bombs came closer across Spandau, and Schey flipped his cigarette away. He didn’t know what to do any longer. Just lately he had been thinking a lot about his son, Robert, Junior. He wished with all his heart that he could look at his face just one more time. But he knew that would never happen. Robert had probably been taken to the hospital in Knoxville. He had been very sick.

After he got better, he would have been placed for adoption, the records sealed.

Another thought clamped around Schey’s heart. What if he had not gotten better? What if he had died in the hospital?

He turned away in a sudden sweat, his heart pounding, his stomach churning.

Marlene, in her nightgown, stood in the doorway. Her face was white. She was frightened of the bombing. It was getting closer.

“Dieter?” she called in a small voice.

“It’s all right,” he said, choking on the words. God in heaven, it was not all right. What had he done?

“Dieter … oh God, I’m frightened.”

Schey went across the yard to her, and she grabbed his hand.

“Let’s go back down,” she cried.

The bombs were definitely getting much closer now on their macabre way up toward the Reich Chancellery. Any day now the Fiihrer would order his bunker sealed. He would order his select few down in the hole, and the doors would close. The final defense of Germany would be conducted from a rat warren. They would be witnesses not only to the final destruction of Germany but also to the complete breakdown of their Fiihrer.

A bomb exploded less than a block to the north, the entire earth shaking underfoot.

“Dieter!” Marlene screamed, and she bodily yanked him down the stairs and into her apartment as three more bombs in rapid succession hit less than fifty yards away.

He felt wooden. Empty inside. He did not know if he would have the strength to remain in the bunker while his Fiihrer, the man to whom he had sworn an oath, the man he had loved above all else, even his own life, disintegrated, bringing his country and her innocent people down with him.

They were in the bedroom. Marlene slammed and locked the door, then threw herself in his arms. She was sobbing; tears streamed down her cheeks and her entire body shivered.

“I can’t stand it!” she cried, her voice muffled in his shoulder.

Schey put his arms around her thin shoulders and held her close. “It’s all right,” he said soothingly.

More bombs were falling outside, but farther away now. They would be safe this morning.

“They’re bombing this neighborhood now,” she babbled.

“They’re coming here. They’ll be invading next. The soldiers will be here. Russians. They don’t take prisoners. They rape the women and then slit their throats. Oh God …”

“It’s all right,” Schey said. But, of course, it wasn’t all right.

What she was saying rang of truth. He had seen the reports coming from the eastern front. In fact, it would be much worse than she feared.

They parted and he dried her tears with his fingertips. The bombs were very far away now. He cocked an ear. “See?” he said. “It’s safe now. They are away from here.”

She too listened to the distant thunder toward the Tiergarten, and gradually her shivering subsided, and she began to wilt, her strength fading as her adrenaline cleared.

“Dieter?” she said, looking up into his eyes.

He kissed her, and this time when she melted into his arms, he could almost believe that she was Catherine or-Eva, and he responded as he did each time he played the little delusion on himself.

The destruction downtown was awesome, worse than Schey had ever seen it after an air raid. Fires seemed to be burning out of control at every corner. Downed buildings made driving next to impossible. The Kurfurstendamm was completely blocked in half a dozen places, and Wilhelm Strasse was totally unapproachable except from the south, although the square around the

Brandenburg Gate was still open. Unter Den Linden was completely denuded of trees. It made him sick to see it.

His driver had not shown up. The man had either been killed in the raid or had deserted as so many others were doing just now.

Schey had driven up from Charlottenburg, picking his way as best he could through the mess, circling around, and at other times doubling back when the way seemed completely blocked.

There were a lot of Wenrmacht soldiers around this morning. As the front shrank from all directions the troops became concentrated in a smaller and smaller area.

Many of the officers had deserted. Schey had heard the reports.

Most of them had apparently headed west or southwest, toward American lines, where they were giving themselves up. Very few talked about heading east to the Russians, although he had heard that some of the scientists from up north had done