Armageddon (92 page)

His wife patted his hand. She handed him a small package. “This came after you turned in,” she said. It appeared to be another of those gifts from the people of Berlin. A note was attached. He mused, “This is from Chip Hansen.”

Dear Crusty,

We have convinced this former Berlin manufacturer of small parts for armaments to reorient his production to something more useful. The factory began yesterday in a small way. They wanted you to have Model #1, Serial #1.

Faithfully,

Chip

Stonebraker’s leathery face beamed as he took out a stainless-steel spinning reel. “Look at this, M.J. It’s even left-handed.” He opened the bale, turned the handle, played with the drag adjustment.

“Maybe Chip Hansen is trying to say that we’re just a couple of old Gooney Birds too. Why don’t you start looking through the fishing magazines and catalogues you’ve been sending for and hiding. I put some of them in your briefcase.”

He grunted, decided to carry the reel to his office, disguised.

At Taunusstrasse 11 the general went directly to the Control Center. Almost everyone was there and the suspense was rising.

The Easter Parade was now in daylight, having flown out the night. Weather was holding, no Russian harassment, no breakdowns.

Through the night they had been landing in Berlin in one-minute intervals. With seventeen hours left to go they had already set down four thousand tons.

Clinton Loveless was in his office, doodling on his desk. It was ironic, he thought, that the two letters should arrive on the same day. One was from J. Kenneth Whitcomb III on gold-embossed Whitcomb Associates stationery.

Clint:

I’ll get right to the play. The deal we discussed before you took leave to go on your great patriotic mission is still open. We need you, baby. Let me say that we’ve checked out what you’ve been doing and we’re proud you’re on our team. We Americans can score a touchdown in any league.

Clint, I’ve picked up the ball on a big one. We are developing the first no-deposit, no-return bottle in America. It will revolutionize the industry ...

The second letter came on rather austere stationery from a mining company in Utah. It was from the president, who was the son of the founder. He wrote that his father had hand-dug the first claim at the turn of the century.

It was a good company with good products and a good reputation. It employed three hundred people. The letter stated they were not able to adjust to modern methods. He had heard that Clinton Loveless once helped out small companies in trouble and allowed them to survive without being gobbled up.

“Will you help us?” the letter asked.

Judy read both letters. She took the one from Pudge Whitcomb, tore it into a hundred parts, put it in the fireplace with a final comment. “That jerk.”

Stonebraker poked his head into Clint’s office.

“Morning, sir.”

“Why aren’t you in the Control Center with the rest of the peasants!”

“Sit down, General, take a look at this,” he answered dreamily.

He spread out a set of drawings. Clint was playing with the idea of preloading cargo on pallets in the rounded shape of the airplane’s fuselage. The pallets would be lifted to the plane by conveyer belts, rolled down the floor of the craft on ball bearings. There wouldn’t be an inch of waste space.

Stonebraker realized Clint had an idea of great brilliance for that time when the jet transport was developed with its great capacity.

“Bring this crap into my office when we finish today. Looks interesting.”

Finishing up “today,” meant midnight No one was about to leave Taunusstrasse until the final figure of the Easter Parade was known.

The day wore on. No breakdowns in the rhythm of the Lift. The tonnage reached and passed five thousand ... six ... seven ... eight.

Ten o’clock that night Hiram Stonebraker was concentrating on a Penn Fishing Tackle Catalogue. He shoved it into his desk drawer as Woody Beaver came in and began stuttering.

“Speak up, Beaver!”

“Ten thousand tons, General. We’re landing them every sixty-three seconds!”

“Well, don’t get your bowels in an uproar. We still have two hours left.”

Phone calls came from British Headquarters in Luneberg. Air Vice Commodore Rodman was beside himself. A phone call came from Ulrich Falkenstein; a phone call came from Chip Hansen. Finally, a phone call came from the White House.

Everyone at Taunusstrasse was jammed into the Control Center as the direct lines from Gatow, Tegel, and Tempelhof kept edging the tonnage up.

Hiram Stonebraker remained in his office reading an article about the high hopes of a record albacore run off Catalina.

The clock moved up to 2400. Beaver got to the general’s office first. “Twelve thousand, nine hundred tons!”

Stonebraker grumbled contentedly. “Advise General Buff Morgan, our erstwhile USAFE commander of his great feat, and call the boys in for a celebration.”

The general arose, walked a few steps, winced, gasped ... and stumbled.

“Beaver ...” he called shakily, “pill from the top drawer ... water ...”

Beaver responded quickly. The general allowed himself to be helped to his couch. “Get outside ... keep everyone out ... don’t say ... anything ...”

Clint was next to reach the general’s office before Beaver could act. “General doesn’t want to ...”

“Outside, Beaver ... don’t let anyone in ... move dammit, I’ve seen this before.”

He half shoved Beaver through the door, locked it, went to the phone.

“Get away from that phone.”

“Not this time, General.”

“You’re lucky,” the flight surgeon said. “That bomb was about ready to explode. It’s a good thing Loveless called.”

“I’ll bust his ass.”

“No you won’t. You’ll thank him for having the sense to do what you should have done. He saved your life, General.”

“Well ... send the bastard in.”

“We’ve all had a big day. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

“I said I want him in here.”

The flight surgeon weighed the alternatives. The aggravation of refusal could cause him more damage than a short visit by his vice chief.

Clint pulled up a chair next to the bed. “We really clobbered them today, General.”

“You know what makes me so smart, Clint? I’m smart enough to have people like you working for me.”

“You must really be sick, General.”

“Clint, it isn’t even a year since we had lunch together in New York. This country of ours can do anything. You know why? Because enough men like you have a sense of values that tells them to help a little mining company in Utah. That pretty little wife of yours told me about it and she said ... how proud she was to be the wife of an American.”

“For Christ sake ... knock it off.”

“Twelve thousand, nine hundred tons ... I wish that Scott and some of the other boys could have lived ... so, they’ll phase out the operation, they’ll phase us out ... like old Gooney Birds ... and Buff Morgan will run around picking up medals in our behalf. When you’re in Utah ... get yourself down to Malibu so we can do a little fishing.”

Clint caught the flight surgeon’s eye. So did the general.

“I’m supposed to thank you for saving my life,” he said wearily. “Thanks.”

Chapter Forty-one

“B
ERLINERS!
T
HE BLOCKADE IS
over!”

At midnight of June 11, nearly one year after the Soviet blockade, the first convoy of trucks rolled onto the autobahn through the Soviet Zone and beyond the checkpoint at Helmstedt.

Denied a celebration for many years, the Western Sectors erupted into the wildest night the city had ever known. Great delirious crowds surged before the American and British headquarters. Before the Borough town halls they chanted by torchlight for their leaders.

Soldiers from the West were mobbed on the streets and kissed and loved by the women and embraced by crying, usually unemotional German men.

In the middle of the night the first trucks of the convoy reached Berlin and were drenched in flowers.

Across the Brandenburg Gate in the Soviet boroughs of Köpenick, Treptow, Lichtenberg, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg, Weizensee, Pankow and Mitte the streets were empty. It was gloom and quiet, an ominous forecast of the life to come.

Igor Karlovy received a knock on his door. A squad of NKVD men told him to pack a single bag, immediately.

Sean sat alone in the room in Reinickendorf. Down below he could hear the singing, the cheering, see the torchlights.

The end of the blockade had come to him as a bittersweet victory. He could no longer hold his secret in him. Ernestine arrived rumpled and breathless and bursting with joy but she saddened the moment she saw Sean.

The black mood had come over him again. She had been patient. In the beginning it seemed that they were going to pull through. They were much in love and struggled together to overcome. For a time she believed they had passed the crisis.

And then something happened that Sean kept buried in him. He would cling to her in desperation ... then drift away beyond her reach.

He had taken it badly when Blessing and his family returned to America to resume civilian life. His periods of detachment grew more often after that.

It became unbearable at times. She brought herself to the point of having it out. But the fear of losing him kept her quiet at the last instant and she was patient. While Berlin bathed in revelry, Sean drifted away once more.

Again that night he floated in the half world of nightmares. Ernestine lay awake seeing him fall down, down, down, beyond all help. His tortured dreams were punctured by the hilarity in the streets.

“Ja! Ja! Berlin
bleibt!”

“Wunderbar! Alles ist Wunderbar!”

“Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja!” they chanted. “Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja!”

Sean saw himself stand in a rage above Dante Arosa. German woman! How could you do it with a German woman! He groveled at Dante’s feet and the young officer kicked his ribs ... German woman! Arosa taunted ... I give you the choice to resign from the Army or join the SS!

Maurice Duquesne laughed hilariously. Naive American. You must roll in the sweat of your enemy!

Ja! Ja! Ja! Ja!

Ernestine tried to touch him as he sweated and knotted with the pain of his dream.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! beat a makeshift drum made of a dishpan.

Torches! Lines of snaking people in the streets ... lines in the dirge to the Schwabenwald Concentration Camp. Look at the concentration camp, you people! I am O’Sullivan! I am the law! Look, dirty Germans, look!

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Kathleen Mavourneen, the gray dawn is breaking ...

The sound of the hunter is heard from the hill ...”

Sorry Liam ... sorry Tim ... sorry Father ... hear that other voice ... that is Ernestine ... I must go to her. Ernestine! Where are you! I told them I was coming to you! I told them about your father! No ... I did not tell them.

“
Deutschland, Deutschland Ueber Alles.

Ueber Alles in der welt!

 Deutschland, Deutschland Ueber Alles ...”

“Forbidden!” Sean cried, coming out of his dream. “That song is forbidden!”

The voices faded down the street ... faded ... faded.

“Deutsche Frauen, Deutsche Treue,
Deutsche Wein und Deutsche sang!”

He staggered to the window, saw the torchlights turn the corner. Ernestine was a shadow on the bed.

“We can’t go on like this,” she said.

He slumped in the chair, waited for his breath to slow, his heart to quit the pounding.

From the hallway in the landing below there was riotous laughter by a woman being embraced by an overzealous drunk.

“What happened last New Year’s Eve, Sean?”

For a moment all that could be heard was the deep unevenness of his breathing. “Your father is a criminal Nazi. I have hidden the files.”

“Oh, my God.”

She appeared standing over him, knowing now the reason for his torment. And she knew the depth of his love. “I am as much to blame as you. I lived with him and closed my eyes and my ears.”

“Erna ... what are we going to do?”

She was numb as he had been numb for months. “Your life,” she whispered, “and the work of my uncle are too good to throw away on a Nazi. You will go to General Hansen and tell him.”

“No ... I can’t ...”

“You will do what you must do.”

“I won’t give you up! We did not make this ...”

“Germans,” she mumbled almost incoherently, “redeem the sins of your fathers.”

“Stop it!”

She laughed with bitter tears. “We make an exception of Colonel O’Sullivan’s German Schatzie. Oh God ... we were insane from the first minute.”

“Hear me, Erna ... we will overcome this.”

“And you will spend a lifetime hearing me cry in my sleep with my father in prison and my mother withering to death. What of my sister, who grieves beyond grief for that flyer who died, or my uncle, who struggles to restore us to our dignity.”

“To hell with them!”

“Oh my Sean, I love you so. I will not let you become an instrument of your own destruction. I will not let you disgrace your uniform ...”

“
Deutschland, Deutschland, Ueber Alles ...
Ueber Alles in der Welt ...”

“Ernestine! Ernestine!”

“I am a German woman.”

“Ernestine!”

“Germans are a superstitious people. We are guided by fates we cannot control.”

“Erna! I swear to you we’ll find the strength.”

“Liam! Tim! Those names you cry out in your dreams. Sean! Give me your brothers’ blessings.”

He sunk to his knees and buried his head in her belly.

“Oh God!” she cried in anguish, “we tried so hard!”

Chapter Forty-two

S
EAN WALKED SLOWLY TOWARD
General Hansen’s desk. He lay the file of Bruno Falkenstein on it. The general glanced at it, set it aside.