Armageddon (80 page)

“Oh dear,” she said, “I wanted tonight to be perfect. My brother has just come in and can be quite unpleasant.”

Sean smiled. “I will be the epitome of restraint and charm,” he promised.

Gerd nodded to Ernestine and she to him. He excused himself from his table and made his way to their booth. Sean arose.

“Hello, Erna.”

“Gerd. Colonel O’Sullivan, my brother Gerd.”

Sean shook his hand and asked him to have a seat.

“Only for a moment,” Gerd protested. “My partners and our friends are having a small celebration.”

Gerd’s inference was plain to Ernestine. He was saying, see, Germans also can enjoy Humperdink’s and there are still decent German girls left who prefer the company of German men.

On the other hand, Gerd could not say he was unhappy that his sister was in the company of a known Ami officer. He felt strongly that Germany’s future lay in alliance with the Amis and what better way to cement an alliance?

Erna and Uncle Ulrich made him look good. In fact, he had ditched his old Nazi friends and joined the Democratic Party. It was good business.

“Mother and Father?” Erna asked.

“Both well. Father devotes full time to managing our Wilmersdorf Branch. And our sainted sister?”

“Hilde has made a full recovery, thank you.”

“She is in Wiesbaden, is she not?”

“Yes.”

Sean felt the stilted air between them, was sorry for Ernestine’s discomfort, and glad when Gerd turned the conversation to him.

“You have heard the news, Herr Oberst. Your people and the British landed nearly five thousand tons again today ... and in such weather. I never cease to marvel at it.”

“I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with the Airlift people. They are an extraordinary bunch.”

“I should say so. If you land much more coal, you’ll drive me out of business.”

Gerd was trying to be pleasant. It was a bad joke. He was reaping a fortune from the blockade by the manufacture and sale of an ersatz coal called Blockade Briquets composed of compressed sawdust, dried grass, and low-grade peat. It smoked and it stank, but it did burn after a fashion and was desperately sought to augment the home supply.

Gerd accepted a glass of champagne from Sean. Decent chap, he thought. Held it up to toast. “Prosit. May we never be enemies again.”

Sean did not answer.

“So here we are,” Gerd said, “former enemies sitting as friends in the Russian Sector.”

“In America we say that politics makes strange bedfellows.”

Gerd smarted from the insult. “Very strange bedfellows,” he said, looking directly at Erna.

Sean caught her pleading look and remembered his promise of restraint.

“Yesterday,” Gerd continued pensively, “your airplanes brought bombs. Today the crowds stand and watch Tempelhof with a holy vigil.” He deliberately offered Sean a very expensive cigar, lit his own. “I used to be an antiaircraft gunner. It is still strange for me to look up into the sky without trying to shoot you down.”

Sean flung the champagne from his glass into Gerd’s face.

“What the devil!”

“Gerd! His brother was a pilot.”

Gerd stiffened, waved his friends back. A small smile formed at the corners of his mouth. “Forgive me, Herr Oberst.”

The zither player picked up a melody quickly.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sean said.

“Sean,” she said outside, “he did not know.”

But he did not hear. There was not another word exchanged until he stopped the car before her uncle’s flat.

“Good night. Please see yourself in.”

“I cannot let you go away like this.”

His fists clenched and his face contorted with rage and confusion. And he could hold it no longer. He buried his hands in his face ... lost ... alone. She tried to touch him but he became rigid.

“Oh God,” she cried, “I cannot stand it any longer. Please take me to your room ... please, Sean ... please.”

I will drink the bitterness from you ... I will give you love for every hour you have known hate ... I will overcome all of that in us that you despise ... my love is strong enough to do this ... yes, my love is strong enough.

German woman! I am making love to a German woman! Me! Me and that Nazi! In the dark blurs and whirls he could hear the roar of engines over the rooftop ... the static of the radio, its station off the air ... In an instant of realization he was being devoured with a desire to snap her neck ... and it was like no love he had ever known. The fury to love and to kill at the same instant transcended all things.

And then he lay in disgust at his weakness in a strength-ebbed silent oratory of self-condemnation.

Ernestine was tight beside him.

It is done, she thought. You are my man now, Sean.... You are my man.

Ernestine sat in the deep window frame as the daylight came. There was little to be seen outside; the fog swirled angrily close to the ground.

Overhead there was the unabated thunder of the engines on the first leg of the approach to Tempelhof. Ernestine walked back to the bed and brushed his hair with her fingers. There was sadness in his eyes.

“I did not know I could ever listen to the sound of engines again without terror. Now, they are like a lullaby, like the sound of waves coming in to the shore.”

She lay beside him and he folded his arms about her without words.

There were a few remarks while they dressed, as he made an effort to spare her pain.

“Hello, Uncle Ulrich ... I am sorry I did not phone ... I was with a girl friend and it became late.... Yes ... I am going straight to work.”

Sean kept thinking that it would be best if they got out before his housekeeper arrived. She was the niece of Ulrich Falkenstein and had to be spared an indignity, but he could say nothing.

They drove away, silently.

“If you will leave me off at the Tempelhof Station, I can take a train to work.”

He agreed, it would not look right to pull up in front of her building.

The usual morning crowd of Berliners was clustered near the station watching the planes take off and land, take off and land, take off and land.

This morning the birds groped through a heavy fog under ground-controlled approach. The Berliners gasped with each
new landing as they caught sight of the craft at the last instant, bursting through the white shroud.

He stopped the car. There was an awkward moment of not knowing how to say good-by. Ernestine knew enough to go with dignity. She swung the car door open.

Sean grabbed her wrist. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Will it make you happier to know that I knew you wanted to murder me last night. If that is what you would have chosen to do, I would not have uttered a protest. If I cannot bring you life, I am yours to kill.”

“I’ve got to see you again,” he said, not believing his own words. “Tonight.”

“Aufwiedersehen.”
She ran quickly out of the car and he watched her disappear up the steps of the elevated. The crowd on the platform screamed at the same instant. A Skymaster dropped almost on top of them!

The ground quaked as the plane smashed into the side of a building several blocks away, and after an ear-splitting blast, glass, brick, and pieces of the craft spewed ... a belch of flame. There was a terrible second of silence ... then the explosion!

Sean was swept into the midst of a mass of running humanity. The plane and the building were demolished. All that was left was a section of the tail, the American Star, and MATS, ALASKA.

There was a sorrowful wail of the horns of ambulances and police cars over the screams of horror. Sean O’Sullivan was transfixed by the leaping flames of the pyre.

“Tim! Tim! Tim!”

“Herr Oberst!” a German policeman begged, “Herr Oberst, do not go closer! They are all dead!”

“My brother is in that plane! Let go of me you goddamned fool!”

“Herr Oberst! Someone ... please help me with him ... he will be killed.”

Sean was dragged away from the scene and held until he calmed. He was brought back to reality by the voice of the Lorelei ... the voice of Ernestine!

“Sean! Come to your senses!”

He looked up at her. She was framed by the flames and the wreckage. His eyes were black with a hatred she had never seen.

Chapter Twenty-one

“G
ENERAL
H
ANSEN,”
U
LRICH
F
ALKENSTEIN
said, “I must tell you how deeply my own grief runs.”

“It was bound to happen,” Hansen replied.

The two had always had misgivings. At this moment the German feared the city’s freedom was being talked away in a four-power conference in Moscow. Hansen retained his universal doubts about the Germans. Yet, the death of the three American flyers had a shocking and sobering reaction. The Berliners thought that perhaps the alliance with the Americans was not so weak after all. And for the Americans it was a time of awakening to an understanding of the depth of their commitment.

Hansen’s aide said that the official party was formed in the outer office. Soon a line of cars bore the mourners to the place of the wreckage.

The scene was that of a stilled battlefield. The debris had been taken away, the blood washed from sight, the agony of the inferno stilled, and what remained was a new shrine ... a tail section of a Skymaster welded into a mangled wall, a torch marking the spot of impact.

Long orderly lines of thousands of Berliners passed by slowly and other hundreds knelt in the streets and prayed. Thousands of flowers were brought and a great sense of tragedy swept the city.

Sean O’Sullivan remembered another line of Germans a few years back whom he had ordered to tour a concentration camp. They, too, wept openly, but for reasons strangely removed.

Hanna Kirchner, weary from the burden of office under feuding masters, lay a wreath in the name of the city and said what was expected. “We will never forget this. It will give us the courage to survive.”

As the photographers recorded the scene, the sound of the engines over them continued in three-minute intervals.

Andrew Jackson Hansen returned to his car, feeling that he had passed a Rubicon. A strange kinship had been born and for the first time he realized that the people of Berlin would hold.

Sean returned from the ceremonies pale. He closed the door of his flat behind him and unbuttoned his blouse slowly, then saw Ernestine standing before the fireplace.

“Your maid let me in,” she said.

Sean nodded, hung up his blouse. The iron man who had played at God was still puzzled by his own mortal weakness.

“Do you know what happens to a man who worships hate as you do?” she asked.

“I love you, Ernestine,” Sean whispered, “and I hate myself for loving you.”

“Our only chance, Sean, is finding a great love that can overcome all else.”

“We’re just people, not gods,” he said. “We’re asking too much.”

“Look at me, Sean. I am a German woman. Nothing can change that. You are my man. Nothing can change that, either. Whatever will happen now will happen. I can never leave you.”

He held her and was overcome with a longing for peace, for the voices to be stilled. And for a moment, he was happy.

Chapter Twenty-two

M
Y DEAREST SISTER
E
RNESTINE:

So, you are in love! Knowing you, it must be serious. I wish I were there to hold your hands and dry your eyes when things go badly.

For me, the news is so sad. Colonel Smith has gotten his orders to transfer to Japan. The Americans seem to be sent everywhere in the world. I have grown to love their children as my own and I don’t know how I’ll be able to get along without them. Oh, Erna if I could only have my own children without the trouble of a man.

I cannot go back to the Brueckner home. They are barely making ends meet so I will try to find another American family to work in. Colonel and Mrs. Smith promise a high recommendation.

Wiesbaden is consumed with the Air Bridge and you know how flyers behave away from their airplanes. I rarely leave the house except once a week to see the cinema or to visit the Brueckners. The Americans have brought many new films over. Actually, they are old ones, but we could not see them during the Nazi days.

I close now. Be careful with your heart, Erna.

Your loving sister,

Hilde

The first months after her escape from Berlin, Hildegaard Falkenstein lived in an ennui. The Brueckners, an elderly couple who were dear friends of Uncle Ulrich, took her in with open arms; they had lost two sons in the war and their house was empty.

For a time they existed well. This was fortunate, for Hildegaard needed much care until she mended and was able to walk again in the sun. When she came to her senses she behaved like ages of harlots before her. Redemption became a fanatical cause. Her brush with near doom left a lasting mark.

Hildegaard became like a daughter to the Brueckners, changing her past ways to an unselfish giving of which she had never before been capable.

After a while the Amis requisitioned the Brueckner house, forcing her and the old couple to move up into the hills into cramped quarters with the rest of the Germans. Then Herr Brueckner became ill. Hildegaard realized that both Ernestine and her Uncle Ulrich had been contributing to her support beyond their means. For the first time she wanted to find work, but there was little she was trained to do.

She found a job as a shopgirl, but it was meager compensation. Later she became a waitress in a cafe on the Wilhelmstrasse where the Ami airmen were generous with their tips. Hilde was still beautiful and flyers were still flyers and they wanted to have the one they could not get.

When Herr Brueckner’s need for medical attention grew greater, she swallowed her pride and applied for work as a domestic for an American family. At first she feared her past in Berlin might have followed her to Wiesbaden, but that proved unfounded.

She had on her side the fact that she spoke creditable English, made a lovely appearance, and carried the respected name of Falkenstein. She made application, answered the Fragebogen, took the necessary medical examination, and passed all clearances.