Armageddon (70 page)

Clint sprung from behind his desk, walked the long deep-carpeted corridor hastily, and pushed through the double mahogany doors that led into the plush reception room.

“General Stonebraker! What a wonderful surprise to have you in New York, sir.”

“Hello, Clint.”

He grabbed the general’s arm, led him down the sumptuous corridor to his office. “By golly, I can’t get over how fit you look. How’s Miss Martha Jane?”

“M.J. is fine. She sends you her warmest regards.”

He led Hiram Stonebraker into an office that reeked of prosperity. The general studied its oversimplified elegance that looked down on Madison Avenue from a height of thirty stories.

“You’re looking pretty prosperous yourself, Clint.”

“Not much like the old field shacks on the forward bases of the CBI?”

J. Kenneth Whitcomb III had been alerted to the arrival of General Stonebraker and burst into Clint’s office at that instant. Pudge Whitcomb was an incurable celebrity collector and the acidy old general would be a great name to drop at his club or a cocktail party.

(My good friend, General Hiram Stonebraker, you know ... the boy who engineered the Hump ... well, anyhow, he was just saying to me the other day ... Pudge, I like your new product.)

“General, meet Pudge Whitcomb, president of our firm and my new boss. Pudge, my old boss, General Stonebraker.”

“A pleasure and an honor to meet you, General. Clint told me you were dropping by. Anything we can do for you while you’re in New York? Theater tickets ... limo ...”

“I’m just fine, Mr. Whitcomb. I’ll be leaving for Washington directly after lunch with Clint.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I was hoping you’d drop by my office and we could exchange views.”

“About what?”

Pudge smiled that smile of his with his face going lopsided as though someone had hacked his mouth on a diagonal angle with a meat cleaver. He excused himself asking Clint to step into the hall.

“Lovable old codger,” Pudge wheezed.

“Like hell he is. He’s one of the meanest sons of bitches who ever crapped between a pair of GI shoes.”

“Well ... time slows them all up, I guess. He’s earned his right to be grumpy.”

“He was born that way. And he also happens to be one of the most brilliant men in our country.”

Pudge did a repeat of his slash-mouth smile, chortled an asthmatic laugh, and slapped Clint on the back. “See you in the
A.M.
Big, big think session on the Robson account.”

“Check.”

Clint returned to his office, pushed down the intercom button. “Miss Paisley, make luncheon reservations. ‘21’ okay, General?”

“Ate there once. Too goddamned noisy and they ought to be shot for their prices. While you’re at it I don’t want to sit in one of those restaurants where they line you up against the wall like sides of beef in a butcher window.”

“Check. Miss Paisley, try Charles à la Pomme Soufflée. Tell Maurice I want a table so the general and I can sit opposite each other. Yes ... opposite ... not side by side.”

“Well, Clint, what the hell does a production-control man like you do up to your ass in all this carpet and mahogany?”

Clint chuckled. “I head a specialty group. A team of experts in merchandising.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“Whitcomb Associates is the only complete service of its kind in the country. We take a product, build it, beef it, sell it; test market, direct mail campaigns, complete ad agency. The whole works.”

“I guess I follow you.”

They jammed into an elevator which plunged them down to the lobby at a terrifying speed and they became an infinitesimal part of that faceless mass of scurrying ants yelling, ‘Taxi, taxi.”

En route Clint continued his dissertation.

“In this country we build obsolescence into our products. Our national economy is based on waste. People buy because things look good and are packaged attractively. Take toilet paper, for example. We are starting to manufacture it in color. Our test market hops prove conclusively that pale green sells best in St. Louis while pink is big in Boston.”

A look of utter vexation exploded on Hiram Stonebraker’s face.

“We have editors to snag the public by verbal gymnastics; brown isn’t brown, it’s tawny brown. We subtly key in sexually stimulating music to back up radio commercials. We know that men like blue-colored after-shave lotion. Sanitary napkins will soon be packaged in boxes of various shapes with striped and polka-dot wrappings. So who cares how the motor runs as long as the upholstery has eye appeal and the exterior is junked up with enough chrome?”

“What project demands your talents these days, Clint?”

“Television. Big coming field. My team works on visual appeal. Our beer account will have the best-looking foam in the industry.”

They arrived and were seated. General Stonebraker could not believe that the man who sat opposite him was once considered a young genius at locating and solving industrial riddles.

“Clint,” he said sadly, “right after the war you went into a partnership with a real bright guy from Wichita. You formed an efficiency team to fix up sick companies. Clint, I seem to recall that you put a small steel mill back on its feet. What happened?”

Clinton Loveless looked as though he had been struck.

General Stonebraker was telling him now what he had told himself once or twice a month since he came to New York.

The general was intimating that if Whitcomb Associates were blown from the face of the earth, no one would really ever know they were gone.

“The efficiency team was a long time ago, sir. I guess we weren’t doing too badly, but you know how those things are. It would have taken a long time to really get into the black. Anyhow, Pudge Whitcomb tracked me down and made a pretty attractive offer. I guess Judy and I have always wanted New York.”

“Then you’re happy?”

“What makes you think otherwise?”

“Well ... it’s just that I’ve been wiping my ass on plain white toilet paper for almost sixty years and I can’t figure out any difference and I wonder if you really can.”

“It’s all in a day’s work, General. I didn’t invent the American way of doing things. I’m just a member of the crowd. Let’s order lunch.”

Everything was served in sauce far too rich for Hiram Stonebraker’s catholic taste, but he decided not to mention his further discomforts. He set his knife and fork down carefully, wiped his lips with his napkin.

“Clint. I’m entangled with a logistical problem of feeding and supplying raw material and fuel to sustain a population of over two million persons by air.”

“It’s that Berlin business,” Clint said. “I’ve been following it. I heard on the news last night that you were going to Germany.”

“I’ve been able to get all the CBI boys together. They’re en route to Wiesbaden right now.”

“General, somebody’s crazy. There’s no way to do it.” Clint took out a pencil and began to scribble on the tablecloth, a crude but acceptable New York custom. Hiram Stonebraker watched his pencil work with stunning rapidity and knew the spark was still in the man.

“You people,” Clint said, “have to be talking in terms of five million gallons of aviation fuel a month.”

“That’s right. We have had to stop four oil tankers at sea and rush them to Germany to finish out this month.”

“The Gooney Birds are only flying by instinct. They’re shot.”

“We’re going to bring over C-54’s.”

Clint was ahead of the general. “C-54’s were designed to carry troops over long distances. You say you will make them carry freight on short hauls. How are those engines going to stand up under so many take-offs and landings with heavy loads?”

“We don’t know yet, for sure.”

“What kind of facilities do you have to overhaul them?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“Where in the hell you going to find spare parts and trained people?”

“I can’t answer that either, Clint.”

“And what about landings. The C-54 has a fragile nose wheel. How the hell is it going to hold up under the poundings of heavy loads? You’ll burn up tires and brakes faster than they do at Indianapolis.”

The general saw Clint Loveless get caught up in his own enthusiasm for a moment.

“Spark plugs are going to cost you between fifty-five and sixty-one cents a copy. We’ve got to be talking about forty thousand a month. And what is this crap about flying coal? How do you fly coal?”

“That’s what I mean, Clint. These are problems worthy of you. I’ll make you my vice chief of staff or something. Mainly I have to have a production-control man who knows what the hell he’s doing.”

Clint buried his head in his hands and said, “No, no, no, no. I just got carried away for a minute. It’s out of the question.”

“We need you, Clint.”

“My two wives would never sit still for this ... Judy and Whitcomb Associates.”

“They can spare you for a few months.”

“General, Judy has been sparing me most of our married life. She worked as a hashslinger, salesgirl, and maid to put me through college. I graduated just in time to trot off to war. In ten years of married life we’ve had a fat fourteen months in which we weren’t worried about the next meal. Pudge Whitcomb has limited loyalties. They’re limited to Whitcomb Associates. I’m thirty-seven and I’ve found a happy home. I make seventeen thousand dollars a year and I have a two-thousand-dollar expense account.”

“That’s a lot of money, Clint. I’ve never had that much.”

“And I’m not going any place but up.”

“That all depends, Clint, on what you consider to be up.”

Chapter Eight

T
HE
F
OURTH OF
J
ULY
was celebrated in the American Sector and elsewhere in Western Berlin with exchanges of oratory and promises of mutual loyalty. There were modest picnics, small parades, and sports contests.

In Steglitz Borough, Oberburgermeister Hanna Kirchner was due to make an appearance with Brigadier Neal Hazzard on the Insulaner, a great hill built from rubble and converted by thrifty, tidy Berliners into a park. It was one of a half-dozen man-made rubble mountains and now the highest point in the city.

When Hanna did not arrive, Ulrich Falkenstein was conveniently present for the speech, but when neither appearance nor word came from Hanna by the end of the ceremonies, there was cause for concern.

It was not until late that night that she arrived at Ulrich Falkenstein’s apartment and he immediately called Neal Hazzard, Sean, and the British and French commandants.

The woman was obviously shaken as she told her story.

She lived in Prenzlauer Berg Borough in the Soviet Sector. The Russians knew she planned to participate in the American Independence Day Celebrations.

“Schatz and four of his SND came to my door and ordered me into a car. I was driven to the Magistrat Building and kept in a file room with guards both inside and out. An hour ago, General Trepovitch came and handed me these documents.”

There was a Russian order to Oberburgermeister Kirchner advising the Magistrat to stop paying occupation costs to the Western Allies.

A second order for the Postal Department of the Magistrat to stop all mail delivery to the Western Sector.

A third order stated that all municipal salaries would be paid in Soviet currency.

These papers were signed by Trepovitch in a new role, as “Military Governor of All Berlin.”

The next morning Sean and twelve of his people went into the Soviet Sector to their liaison offices in the City Hall and the Magistrat. Sean called together the Magistrat department heads.

“The Soviet Union yesterday attempted to claim sole authority in Berlin. We are increasing our liaison in all offices in the Russian Sector. If you are accosted in your office by Soviet officers you are within your province to demand the presence of an American, British, or French officer.”

The move did much to stop the harassment of the German officials during working hours, but a steady campaign of sheer terror was mounting against those who lived in the Russian Sector. Yet, the Germans were showing increased resistance as the West became more and more committed.

Having failed in the “workers’ Putsch” and now meeting stiffening resistance from German officials, the Russians turned their efforts to an attack of the hated B marks.

All along the sector borders search stations were set up. People were pulled off trains, off the streets, out of restaurants, and dragged into shacks and searched for B marks. The round-ups were particularly evident on payday in West Sector factories. Some fifty Berliners were given severe prison sentences for carrying “illegal” Western money.

Despite growing unemployment in the Western Sectors, the further reduction of power to a quarter of normal; despite the diminishing coal and food stores, the B marks were clobbering the Russian currency until it took ten to buy a B mark. The Russian money became known as “wall-paper marks.”

The Soviet Union had a vast coal store on the West Harbor and other depots and dumps along the canals, mainly in the British Sector. One day, shortly after the Fourth of July, the Russian guard was ejected and a British guard placed on all Soviet dumps.

With no formal contact between them, General Trepovitch, who advertised himself as sole ruler, tore over to British Headquarters to speak to T. E. Blatty.

The Englishman handed the Russian a receipt for the precise inventory of the dumps they had seized.

“We aren’t taking them, General Trepovitch. We are merely borrowing them until you lift the blockade.”

Anger over the blockade grew. Every night in the Western Sector there were a half-dozen meetings of the three political parties. These gatherings drew thousands of people ... solemn, orderly, and now able to protect themselves from agitators. Along with Falkenstein and the indomitable Hanna Kirchner a whole new crop of stubborn leaders emerged.

A counteroffensive was launched. The Berlin Assembly, on a bill by Falkenstein, voted to return the university to the Magistrat. Trepovitch ignored the mandate but both he and Rudi Wöhlman were puzzled by the growing anger and wondered where the next strike would come.... It did not take long to find out.