Armageddon (61 page)

“What day, please?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Oh? Let me check his calendar ... Hello ... he has a district meeting in Spandau on Thursday and I believe he has said it was quite important.”

“How about you going with me?”

“Me?”

“We have a fine young pianist who will play a concert. I understand he is going to do a Beethoven sonata.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Please, fraulein. This is not an order.”

“Well ... very well, I’ll go.”

“Good. I’ll come by for you about six-thirty. My regards to your uncle.”

Sergeant William James lived up to his advance notices as a forthcoming giant among the virtuosos.

Sean and Ernestine met with what seemed to be dedicated determination to be polite to each other. The first moments were stilted and awkward. They hardly spoke all the way to Amerika Haus.

Then by some mystic communication, Sergeant James played the “Pathétique” and Sean and Ernestine were given an awareness of each other that said that a long dormant awakening was taking place.

On the way to the Press Club they had something to talk about and it helped them relax.

At the door, he offered her his arm and they walked down the reception line. Eyebrows were raised; they felt it.

Neal Hazzard studied Ernestine from head to toe in a second or so. He caught Sean with a glance that read: “Jesus, what a dish.”

“Fraulein Falkenstein, I’d like you to meet Colonel Hazzard, Mrs. Hazzard.”

“Lovely affair.”

“Any relation to Ulrich Falkenstein?”

“My uncle.”

They tried to avoid the voices trailing after them.

“Say, is that O’Sullivan with a German girl?”

“For her, he
should
make an exception.”

“That’s Falkenstein’s niece. She works in Judge Cohen’s section.”

“I’ll bet General Hansen told him to bring her. Show of friendship and all that.”

While the gossips had their say, Sean found the friendly, homely face of Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury deep in a mug of beer at the bar. He introduced Ernestine and they retreated to a quiet table in the garden and Sean excused himself to report his whereabouts to Headquarters.

In all the time they had been in Berlin, Sean had never been seen socially in the company of a German. His dates were either American girls or those working in the foreign missions.

Big Nellie sat with the girl and remembered a lot of things from way back. He was the one who had told Sean his brother was dead. And in Rombaden, Sean confided his unadulterated hatred of Germans.

Was it this particular girl because of her obvious intelligence and beauty who broke the barrier, or was it because she was the niece of Falkenstein? Was this the beginning of a softening process?

“I have enjoyed your column over the last year and a half,” Ernestine said.

“I didn’t realize I was read here in Berlin.”

“My uncle has an arrangement to receive a number of American and British papers. You have been a friend of the Berliners.”

“Because the Berliners have been our friends.”

“I understand you and the colonel are old comrades?”

“We go back a ways.”

There was an awkward second. Perhaps a question she wanted to ask; perhaps one he wanted to ask.

Sean returned and after a moment Big Nellie ambled away.

They talked for a long time about things that both of them liked: the kind of music they heard tonight; the kind of books she had read since living with her uncle. There was much in common.

When it was time for them to leave, Sean drove her home and both of them said it was a nice evening and perhaps ... sometime again.... And the moment he drove away he was annoyed with himself for enjoying it and wanting to see more of her.

Ernestine slipped quietly into the apartment. The light was on in the living room.

“How was the evening?” Ulrich asked.

“The concert was lovely. It was a pity you couldn’t attend.”

“And the colonel?”

“Quite civilized. In fact, he can be quite charming. As you know he can discuss many things on a wide range of subjects.”

“All O’Sullivan and I ever talked about was good Germans and bad Germans.”

“We avoided that.”

Ernestine brewed some tea and felt uncomfortable with her uncle’s obvious cynicism.

“Ernestine, darling,” he said, “Colonel O’Sullivan has had to set aside some deep feelings to be seen with you.”

“Under it all, he is just a human being. He was bound to become lonely. We all become lonely, Uncle.”

“And you? I have never seen you look as radiant as when you came in just now.”

“I am sure the invitation was mainly for you to make a public show of friendship.”

“And you will see him again?”

“Perhaps.”

“You are a young woman in the bloom of life. How long has it been since you had a date? Isn’t it strange that the first time you have gone out in months, it should be with an American?”

For a time, Ernestine made dates with German boys she had known and colleagues at work. She saw in them something of Dietrich Rascher, her father, her brother. She was frightened of all of them.

“Certainly O’Sullivan is civilized to stifle certain emotions, but eventually his hatred will burst through.”

Ernestine wanted to defend Sean. Her uncle had worked with him in Rombaden under severe circumstances. Uncle never got to know him as a warm and gentle person. That image of the iron-willed dedicated Prussian faded when he spoke. Why was she defending him in her own mind? She knew she wanted to see him again.

“It is strange how enemies are irresistibly drawn to each other. But love between enemies is not love. It is a desire to destroy each other,” Ulrich said.

“You are making a lot over nothing.”

“If it is nothing, then promise you won’t see him again.”

“I did enjoy the evening so much, Uncle.”

“I don’t want you hurt, Ernestine ... I don’t want you hurt. “

Chapter Thirty-four

I
GOR SHAVED.
I
N THE
mirror he could see the image of Lotte in the doorway behind him putting on her negligee. She was pouting.

“Are you going out?”

“Yes.”

“This makes four nights in a row. What is so important?”

“I am a colonel. Nikolai Trepovitch is a general. He ordered me to a meeting. I go.”

“Why must you always hold your meetings in the middle of the night?”

“So we can sleep late in the morning.”

“But I can’t sleep when you are gone.”

“You are a delightful fraud. When I return I always find you dead to the world.”

“That is because I take pills.”

He doused his face, rinsed his razor, and put on a lotion that he had obtained from an American at the Air Safety Center.

Lotte had her arms around him, squeezed him. He lifted her up and carried her into the bedroom, deposited her, and tugged on his boots.

“When will you give me a baby?” she asked.

What a liar! Oh, maybe she did want a child in the same way a little girl wants to play with a doll. She was clever enough to please him with the thought. They had been discreet, never showing up together at public functions. That was tolerable to the command. But anything like having a German mistress bear his child would mean immediate banishment.

A month earlier, Igor had gone through particular hell. The party, for some reason, decided it would be of propaganda value to dispatch his wife, Olga, to a convention of the League of German Women Communists and an inspection of Russian Berlin. Igor was compelled to stand like an adoring clod at the airport with a bouquet of flowers and embrace her with emotion at the ramp for the photographers. She was as drab as he remembered her.

For a week Igor escorted her on a well-documented tour of the Soviet Sector with the story sent out to the Communist world of this son and daughter separated by their dedication to the greater cause.

Olga visited a site in Treptower Park which would become a great memorial cemetery to the Russians who died storming Berlin. She visited an orphanage and had words for the future comrades. She attended a church service as visible proof of the Soviet Union’s democratic attitude toward religion.

Olga addressed the convention of German Women Communists with venom against the imperialists trying to enslave them and pleading for German motherhood to protect the peace by giving their sons and daughters to the forward march of world communism.

There was a final banquet at which Olga surprised her husband by presenting him with the Order of Lenin at the command of Comrade Stalin.

The agony ended with him rushing back to Lotte to calm the distraught girl an hour after his wife flew back to Leningrad.

“I do want your baby,” Lotte said again. “One day you must leave. All soldiers leave.”

Igor knew she was right. The shuffling of officers and party officials was a constant game aimed to prevent the formation of power cliques. In fact, it simply added to a ponderous and wasteful administration. Igor had remained clear of the recalls because he was an engineer with particular skills outside the political and military ring. Yet one day he, too, would leave.

He tucked Lotte in, patted her cheek, and told her to try to sleep. He had never lost that same feeling for this wonderful little imp as the first night he saw her.

As he was driven to Trepovitch’s house, Igor thought about the money he was putting away, a tidy sum he would leave for Lotte. Igor was in a position to do many favors in Berlin and, like most of the Russian staff, took advantage of it, always making certain not to go too far.

He hated himself for the notion, but he knew the money would be safer in a bank in the Western Sector. Daring to put the money in a Western bank was “speculation,” a crime that brought twenty-five years imprisonment, and sometimes death.

After he had returned from the Copenhagen Conference he had impressed Marshal Popov that the Americans and British had a number of engineering capabilities worth studying.

As long as there were areas of cooperation, Igor felt it was common sense to establish Russian missions any place they might benefit. He put people in with the Americans and British in heavy construction, road building, sanitation engineering, and the like. This brought him into contact with Western officers; he became known as the most agreeable of the Russians.

He looked for the proper American or Englishman through whom he could transfer his funds for Lotte, but each time he nearly made the decision he faltered.

The one officer he did trust was Sean O’Sullivan, but friendship with an American was a crime as serious as money speculation and Igor meticulously avoided Sean after his return to Berlin. Any meetings were by chance and the only amenities were exchanges of polite nods. Sean fully understood.

As an Air Force officer, Igor’s own particular pet project was the four-power Air Safety Center. The West was at least a decade ahead of the Soviet Union in matters of traffic control and safety. He was able to have the Americans establish a school to train Russian personnel, and he attended. He was considered the top man in his own command in this field.

Nikolai Trepovitch paddled around in bedroom slippers and a shaggy old robe after a warm greeting to Igor. Igor was concerned for his comrade. In the old days Trepovitch had been a fun-loving, robust fellow. He was now on a strict diet that permitted only mild drinking and no smoking.

“I don’t see how you can stand to sit there for hour after hour in those meetings at the Kommandatura,” Igor said.

“It’s terrible. If only I could return to a combat command. Life was good then. Between Colonel Hazzard and that Englishman, they’ve killed the inside of my stomach, but that’s no reason you shouldn’t have a drink.”

Igor poured a stiff one.

“Tovarich, there is a highly delicate matter you have to attend to in the next forty-eight hours.”

“Yes?”

“Some of the geniuses from Moscow are flying in. You must be prepared to give an opinion on whether or not the Americans and British can supply Berlin by air.”

“It would strain them, but they should be able to get in enough for their own garrisons.”

“No, no, Igor. I mean, supply their sectors of Berlin.”

“Berlin? All the Western Sectors? Food, coal, medicine ...”

Trepovitch nodded.

Igor set his drink down, stunned.

“It is a hard game we must play. They cannot be permitted to remain.”

Igor recovered his bearings. “I must have a great deal of intelligence information.”

Mid-February, 1948

Colonel Igor Karlovy went into Potsdam to a mansion hidden in the woods. The assembled were V. V. Azov, Russian Commandant Nikolai Trepovitch, Marshal Alexei Popov, an Air Force Intelligence colonel from Moscow, a colonel general attached to Stalin, a party member of the Politburo, and a top official of the NKVD. Last, the mysterious emissary, Captain Brusilov.

Igor had committed nothing to paper as he addressed this powerful group.

“Attempts at major air transport of supplies have usually fallen short.” He outlined the attempt to supply Leningrad by air, a situation he knew intimately. It was a primitive operation and a failure.

“In the spring of 1944, Imphal in the state of Manipur in the India-Burma area was supplied from the air by the American Troop Carrier Command to the extent of twenty thousand tons. It is estimated that a combined force of fifty thousand British and Indian troops were sustained for three months. Also, the Luftwaffe backed up the parachute landings on Crete with an air-supply operation. However, these two cases are of a military tactical nature for an immediate objective.

“In the large picture, the German attempt to air-supply Stalingrad ended in fiasco. All they needed, logistically speaking, was three hundred tons of material a day.

“History shows one great air-supply operation which succeeded was by the Americans, again in the India-China Theater. From the Assam Valley, the Bengal Valley, and the Calcutta area their transports flew over the Himalayan Mountains landing in some nine airfields in China in the Chengtu and Kunming areas. They called it jumping the Hump, or some such. This operation, which lasted from the end of 1942 to the end of 1945, achieved notable results with a major cargo of oil and petroleum.”