Heroes David Hagberg (best motivational books TXT) 📖

difference here, if you go out to tend the herd and I keep the house?”

At first Schey had reminded her that they were German and this was war. But after a while he let it go. She lived in a fantasy world. Or at least, in that one respect, she did. At the ranch, the war seemed very far away, in any event, except on the nightly news when Walter Winchell or Edward R. Murrow spoke about the latest battles with the Reich, and then Schey would descend into a deep depression.

There was a definite procedure he had been taught for making what was termed “blind contacts,” which were meetings with another agent in enemy country when the meeting had not been prearranged.

In each different language the code was, of course, different, but in each language the message which was placed in the local newspaper’s classifieds, read: Beriihrung, which was German for CONTACT. In English the ad would read something like: B.E.

requests ur honest reply, unloved N. G., the initials of each word spelling out the single German word.

Any combination of words that spelled that word would signal the contact. A phone number would be given, in most cases a public phone booth, and the contact would stand by at ten minutes before ten in the morning, three minutes before three in the afternoon, and eight minutes before eight in the evening, until the meeting was consummated.

Before the war, Canaris had come up with a lot of schemes such as that one, literally hundreds of codes for his agents to use in whatever circumstances they found themselves.

There was no reason to think now that the contact procedure wasn’t as valid as it had been when it had first been devised. And yet Schey was nervous about it.

They had told him at Park Zorgvliet that the longer he remained in the field, the more skittish he would become.

“At first your survival will be simply another military exercise.

You are in enemy country; you will feel like a soldier on a mission, and you may well act like a soldier on a mission.

“Later, however, once you have been in place months, or perhaps even years, you will begin to better understand the nature not only of your assignment but also the nature of the people you are living with.

“At that point you will discover that your instructions truly were only guides to your performance. The successful field man will adapt to whatever situation he may find himself in. Adapt with a firm feeling for the people he is living with … and spying on.”

Coming down from the mountains, the early morning air wonderfully cool, he thought about Katy and the baby. Katy had been

‘ *^y, so grateful to be married that at times Schey had felt embarrassed.

At first he told her he loved her and he had not meant it. She knew that, but she loved him desperately and she was willing to go along with whatever he said, as long as they could be together.

Later, when he had truly fallen in love with her and it frightened him because he worried about his assignment, she began to doubt their relationship.

Poor Katy. She had been out of sync the entire time. Now, thinking about her, it was hard for him not to go completely berserk, take a gun, and indiscriminately kill whomever he chanced upon.

Katy! Christ, he had finally loved her and she had been taken from him. She, along with Robert, Junior.

Schey would meet with his contact when the message came, but the rules had changed now by virtue of the importance of the information he was transmitting home. When the message came, he would devise his own method of contact.

He came within sight of the ranch and stopped. The out buildings were all dark, except for the one he and Eva lived in. A soft yellow light glowed in the single window facing north. She would be waiting up for him. Like Katy, she had become dependent upon him, and it bothered him, mostly because he did not know exactly how he felt about her.

They had been making love, as if they were married, for several months now. But just lately he was getting the strong impression that Eva was falling very much in love with him.

Two weeks ago it had caused him some irritation to realize it.

But now, standing several hundred yards off from the ranch, cold, nervous about what the future would bring, he found that he was looking forward to getting back to his home and crawling into bed with Eva. There was a certain comfort in that.

The horses whinnied softly as Schey came onto the property, skirted the corral, and stopped beside the barn. He looked up toward the ranch house set on a small rise. None of the windows showed any light. The Romeros were all asleep. So far as he could see, no one was on the front porch, either. Nor was anyone lurking in the yard. No one to see him return in the middle of the night, carrying his small suitcase. No one to ask questions or to report his strange behavior to the authorities.

Because of the installation up in the mountains and the several military bases down in Albuquerque, people in this part of New

Mexico were very jumpy. They had heard stories about conditions in Europe, and they all believed it was the Germans’ fault.

Everything in that part of the world was Germany’s fault.

Eva was sitting up in bed when he came in, the covers around her neck, the small table radio playing softly, the lamp by the window on. Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flared. They were signs that, Schey had come to know, indicated she was frightened.

He put his radio down. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded. “Did it … go well? Did you get through?”

He nodded.

She sucked her breath. “What’d they say? Did they tell you what they wanted?”

“Yes,” he said. He took off his coat and