Armageddon

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.

Colonel Carter Smith and his wife hired her as a housekeeper and governess for their three small children. At last there was a chance to eat decently and earn a few extra packs of cigarettes a week. With tobacco a medium of exchange, she could buy Herr Brueckner the services of a good doctor and bring them precious ounces of meat and butter.

In the home of Colonel Carter Smith, Hildegaard had her first true love affair. She fell in love with the children, and they with her.

Tony and Lynn Loveless jumped on Daddy as he turned into the gate and showered him with a bath of new German words. He played in the yard with them until the weariness of the day overcame him.

“Martini. I’m bushed,” he said, bussing his wife.

“Here, lover,” Judy said, pouring it from the tall mixer. She stood behind his chair, rubbed the back of his neck. He groaned.

“We knocked them over today,” Clint said. “Six hundred ground-controlled approach landings in Berlin. Crusty was so pleased he forget to chew us out at the staff meeting.”

“How many tons?”

“Over five thousand.”

“That’s wonderful.”

Clint sipped, purred his deep content as her fingers massaged magic spots.

“Clint, I found a German maid, pending your approval.”

“Speaks English?”

“Fluently.”

“Where’d you dig her up?”

“She belonged to a Colonel Carter Smith, Army people. They are being shipped out to Japan. She has an A-l recommendation. Mrs. Smith says the children are beside themselves with grief to be separated from her. She taught them German. Anyhow, she has a famous name to boot. I hear her uncle is practically the political leader of Berlin.”

Clint smiled inwardly. That would be like Judy. She still had a little of New York in her. She’d have a name to drop.

“Honey, that’s your department,” he said.

“Well, you must interview her. Everyone says it is important to establish that the man is the head of the house to a German.”

“Okay, okay, let’s see it”

“Fraulein Falkenstein, would you come in, please?”

Clint knocked over his martini. He cleared his throat authoritatively and asked a few questions ... to make it official.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Clint commented when she left the room.

“Lover,” Judy said, “be an angel and don’t try it or Momma will slit your throat.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” he repeated.

Ernestine opened the envelope, which, in addition to regular postage, had affixed a special “Berlin Tax” stamp issued to support the city.

My Dearest Sister Ernestine:

I must be the lucky cat who always lands on her feet. I adore my new home with the Loveless family. It has taken much of the pain away by the departure of the Smiths. My room is quite decent and comfortable. The boy is Tony, nine years old and the girl, Lynn, who is ten. They are very affectionate and well behaved, for American children.

At the end of my first week, Mrs. Loveless gave me a carton of cigarettes upon learning my responsibility to the Brueckners and she promises a bonus of a carton a week. Erna! Do you know what that means? They passed off the kindness by saying they were both trying to cut down on smoking. They are a typical American family with extreme generosity. She is the true master of the family as was Mrs. Smith, but is clever enough not to let him know it.

The Americans are strange people, but they fool you. Just when I am beginning to think Colonel Loveless is shallow-minded, he shows his genius in other ways.

I remember how Father used to treat our maids and I suppose that was what bothered me the most when I began working. Yet, I am never treated as a maid. Not the way we treated them.

I am glad to hear that Colonel O’Sullivan has found a room away from his own quarters. It will save you embarrassment. How does Uncle Ulrich look upon all of this?

I must run. Each night I read to my babies in German and I look forward to it so much. I hear them calling “Hilde” so I rush this letter to you with love.

Hilde

In downtown Wiesbaden, Die Valkyrie Club, a traditional old beer hall, had been converted into a garish, stadium-sized nightclub—Winkelmann, proprietor.

Sturdy old cement pillars were painted off-pink; sequined drums and trumpets revolved from the ceiling; purple drapes encased the band stand and special up-chuck bowls had been bought from a Luftwaffe barracks and installed in the men’s room.

Winkelmann was a decent sort of chap. No airman was cheated or mistreated within his walls. The prostitutes working out of the place had to guarantee fair play, correct prices, and no clipping or rolling.

The semiprofessionals and just plain nice kids who wanted a place to have a glass of beer and dance lent an air of respectability.

Drunks were always sent home at Winkelmann’s expense by taxi, after checking in their wallets for safekeeping.

The American authorities realized that in any military town Die Valkyrie Clubs had to exist. Actually, Winkelmann was doing them a good turn by running a trouble-free operation. All of this gave Winkelmann a great deal of pride. He took particularly good care of choice friends with his personal inner-circle stock.

Before the war he had been a poor boy who had spent his life in servitude of the arrogant Wiesbaden aristocracy, and he hated them. His coming into a position of importance paled the old Wiesbaden gentry. When Wiesbaden was Wiesbaden, bawdy houses like Die Valkyrie could never have existed! Winkelmann was a good soldier, but never a Nazi. He felt that the sponsors of the city, particularly the Rhineland industrialists, were Nazi to the core.

Nick Papas, a personal favorite, entered the tarnished portals and was led to Herr Winkelmann’s personal bar built around an oversized mock coffin with a plaster cast of a nude adorning the lid. Matches were struck on either breast.

“Hello, Nick. Was gibt’s?”

“Need a favor.”

“Of course.”

“You know Stan Kitchek?”

“Your copilot?”

“Yeah. The Looey needs a broad.”

“Send him in.”

“Stan’s a funny kid. He’s shy. Besides, he would never go for a broad on an out-and-out business deal. Something to do with his childhood training.”

“So, we’ll get him a girl who will go for car fare and cigarettes.”

“No ... I told you Stan’s funny. He’s got to feel, you know ... in love. He likes the big story, the hand-holding, the fond farewell.”

Winkelmann shook his head. “I never understand people like that. Well, it takes all kinds.”

“So, you know a broad with puppy-dog eyes and a sad story who speaks English?”

Winkelmann thought, lit up with an idea. “There’s a German restaurant two blocks down and left on the alley called Mutter Rubach’s. There’s a waitress there named Monika. I’ll give her a call and you take it from there.”

“What’s the tab?”

“For you, nothing. How about you and Captain Scott? I got three new additions to my personal stock. They just escaped in from the Russian Zone, eighteen and nineteen years old. Maybe you boys will come up to my place later and we can take some pictures and have a group therapy session.”

“Sorry ... dammit ... we got to fly the second time bloc tomorrow. After we get Stan started, maybe we’ll strafe the strasse for a quick one.”

The sudden appearance or three Amis in Mutter Rubach’s, a German sanctuary, caused the entire tone of the room to soften to a hush of suspicious whispers.

Monika was there and waiting. They played the game out. She served them. Stan thought she was very pretty. Scott said to her, my pal would like to know you better and Monika said if Stan waited in a bar down the street she would join him for a drink after she went off duty, and Stan went away happy, leaving Nick and Scott with big mugs of beer.

By now, assured that the Ami intruders were merely flyers and not counter-intelligence looking for Nazis, the place returned to normal.

A combo of accordion, piano, and drums played a medley of Viennese waltzes with the roving musician hovering over the Ami table and patronizing them. Nick winked at Scott as the accordion player finished and hoped for a tip.

“Speak English?”

The accordion player said he did, a little.

“Have a cigarette. Here, take a few for your drummer and piano player.”

“Oh, thank you, sir.”

“Keep the pack.”

Deep bows. He held the pack for the other two to see. They stood and bowed.

“What would you like us to play, sir?”

“A nice German song.”

“A polka, perhaps.”

“Naw ... I’d like to hear a good old German marching song ... like my grandpoppa played in the band in Milwaukee.”

“Sorry, sir! I don’t know any.”

Nick’s magic pocket produced another pack of cigarettes. The accordion player’s eyes bulged. He walked back to the platform, spoke rapidly to the other two to weigh the prize against the risk of playing forbidden music.

They decided to go it! The combo broke into the “Westerwald March!”

After the first three notes many of the Germans scurried from their tables, paid their checks, and hustled out of Mutter Rubach’s.

Others sat mesmerized. Nick and Scott waved friendily to them to show how much they were enjoying it and put another pack of cigarettes on the piano and the medley was now in full swing with the “Schwabenwinkel.”

Backs became ramrod; there were smiles of nostalgia on old, moustached lips; surges of pride ... beer mugs tapped the table tops in rhythm, and a few tears flowed. The musicians became carried away by their own candor and swept into a marching medley.

As the music crackled off the walls of Mutter Rubach’s and turned into a second and third chorus, voices began singing and tables were being thumped in a frenzied joy.

Scott wanted to blow a whistle when he got outside to watch them tear the place apart escaping, but Nick talked him out of it. Nick had a ’41 De Soto which he had inherited at the end of a large card game. “A little strasse strafing to round out the evening, mein kapitan!”

“Jawohl.”

“I’ll flip you for first run.”

Scott lost the flip of the coin so he took the wheel for Nick to operate. “Where to?”

“Platter Strasse.”

It was a good arterial because it ran from the downtown area toward the Neroberg Hills, where most of the Germans lived. There would be a number of girls looking for rides home, generally.

They trailed a lone girl making her way along the street.

“Make a pass,” Nick said. The front looked okay. The girl smiled at his greeting. “Full flaps, landing gear down, cut engines. This will make nine straight kills, mein kapitan. In no time I will be a double ace.”

He left the car, gently blocked the girl’s route, and told her in fractured German that she had lovely legs which should be encased in nylons ... which he just happened to have ... and would she like a ride home?

They parted an hour later, the best of friends, without knowing each other’s name, the girl several gifts richer.

Nick took the wheel.

“What the hell were you doing up there? Making a lifetime career?”

Nick grunted a happy grunt.

Scott was bored. “I’d shack regular if I could get a place away from that cruddy BOQ and if that Crusty bastard gave me ten minutes free time. This strasse strafing is like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“I miss now and then,” Nick said, “but that’s because I’m ugly. Tell you what, Captain, let’s make it sporting. I’ll bet you a ten spot I can pick out a Schatzie you can’t connect with.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Ja oder nein?”

“It’s your ten bucks, Nick ... only, no animals.”

“Legit broad ... all the way... for ten?”

“You’ve got a bet.”

Scott checked his watch. The German movie house would be emptying. He told Nick to drive him along Rhein Strasse in the general direction of the Kurhaus, where many maids working in American homes would be passing. They checked out a half-dozen girls, passed them up ... then both of them saw her at the same time!

Click, click, click went the heels of Hildegaard Falkenstein.

“I may not even take your ten dollars,” Scott said.

“Some guys are just born lucky ...”

Nick blocked the intersection. The girl walked boldly around the front of the car looking straight ahead. Nick began to feel he might have a winner.

“Fraulein,” Scott called, “could you please help us. We’re lost.”

She answered in rapid German, which they could not understand, and continued across the street.

“Ten bucks.”

“Not yet.” Scott got out of the car, blocked her way, gathering all of his boyish innocent charm, holding his hands apart helplessly and agonizing the conversation along in German. He mumbled a few choice words about the girl’s beauty under his breath.

Hilde tried to step around him, but he wouldn’t let her pass. Behind him, he could hear Nick Papas roar.

Words like “nylons” “chocolate” “perfume” were making no impression.

Hilde grew short. “If you do not stand aside,” she said in perfect English, “I will call for the police.”

“Well ... I’ll be damned.”

“Please let me pass. I do not play with little boys.”

“Little boys! Oh honey, if you knew what you were missing, you’d cut your throat.”

“Let me by or you’ll cut your own throat.”

She stepped forward, daring him to lay a hand on her. Scott backed off. She continued down the street and turned the corner at Gustav Freytag Strasse and walked into the Loveless house.

Nick Papas laughed until the tears streamed down his grizzly cheeks.

“All right, you Greek bastard, you want to sweeten that bet?”

“Jawohl!”

“Fifty says I have her in the sack in a week.”

“A bet,” and he began laughing all over again.

Scott slowed the car before the house of Lieutenant Colonel Clinton Loveless and made a note of the address.

The flight of Big Easy Four contained a crew beset with mixed emotions:

Stan Kitchek was star-gazed by a large romance. He ran on and on about Monika. Sweet girl supporting her child and old mother. But she had never really been in love. It was happening, just like that.

Scott was almost mad enough to tell Stan that Monika was a tank job ... but not quite.

Nick was a mosaic of assorted grins glorying in Scott’s discomfort.

As they talked to Tempelhof Airways, Stan got out of his seat for a moment and took a big carton from under the flight engineer’s table and handed it to Nick.

“What the hell’s that?” Scott asked.

“Well, every clear day I see little kids standing on the rubble piles at the end of the cemetery watching us land. Lot of times they’re at the airport, too. But did you ever notice that none of them ever came close to us, talked to us?”

“That’s the way krauts are,” Scott answered.

“Kids shouldn’t be that way,” Stan said, “anyhow, I thought I’d try something.”

“What’s in there?” Nick asked.

Stan opened the carton. The other two looked in curiously. Nick’s big paw fished out a tiny handkerchief parachute. Attached to the strings was a bar of candy. The carton held over a hundred parachutes and candy bars. “I rigged them up in my spare time,” Stan said. “I want you to toss them out of the back door just before we land.”

Nick was touched. Scott shrugged as though Stan were crazy.

The final right turn around the Tempelhof Beacon at five hundred feet began the steep glide that took them over the St. Thomas Cemetery between rows of half-bombed-out apartment houses. Stan looked out. Yes, the children were there on the rubble near the end of the runway. Full flaps ... the big bird slowed. Nick was at the back door throwing out the toy parachutes. They billowed, floated to earth. The children scrambled for them as the craft touched down on the end of the runway.

Within seconds hysterical phone calls were made from Russian spies in the apartments at the end of the runway, and from the Air Safety Center. Strange objects over St Thomas Cemetery! Parachutes! What kind of new sabotage were the Americans up to!

Candy bars?

Candy bars!

Candy bars!

People’s Radio decried it with passion. “The latest American trick is to bribe little children in a heartless effort to justify remaining in Berlin.”

In the days that followed, children in the zone made thousands of toy parachutes for their “friends” in Berlin. Sidney the Kangaroo hopped all the way to New York to collect tens of thousands of candy bars. The ritual of the candy drop took place from many Skymasters every day.

Ulrich Falkenstein said, “It is good for little children to look up to the sky and see a rain of candy bars.”

And thus, the legend of Stan Kitchek, “The Chockolade Flyer,” came to be.

Chapter Twenty-three

A BATTERED ALARM CLOCK sounded. It was two in the morning. Sean reached over the bed for Ernestine. “Honey, don’t get up,” he said, half asleep.

“I will be back as quickly as I can.”

She left the bed groggy and shivering and bundled herself in a heavy robe.

Reinickendorf Borough was receiving its two-hour morning allotment of electricity. Like the rest of the women in the building she yawned around in the middle of the night.

She heated several pans of water. They would be lukewarm by morning, but they could be partly reheated by a “blockade blitz pill” so Sean would not have to shave and wash in icy water. She put up hot thermoses of coffee and breakfast broth, ironed a few pieces of clothing, did a light wash, and cleaned, and did all of the chores that required light and electricity.

Propriety had to be served. This meant finding a room away from his own quarters for himself and Ernestine. It was a room in Reinickendorf in the French Sector close to where the new airfield was being built, a third floor walk-up with some bomb damage, but it did have its own tiny bath and kitchen alcove.

Except for a telephone that could reach him from Headquarters they lived like Berliners. Reading, eating, bathing by candlelight or by the flicker of a kerosene lamp.

“Above all, stand tall,” Berliners were told every night at another rally.

It was hard to stand tall after hours-long waits for rations, scrounging for rare and precious articles such as soap, patching unpatchable clothing, stuffing paper in shoe soles, walking five miles to and from work in darkness. Life was further reduced to semiprimitive existence.

Hospitals scheduled operations and X-rays at rare hours; schools struggled on without heat, light, textbooks. Radios were heard by pooling to save precious batteries; most of the news was broadcast on mobile trucks.

Dentists’ wives supplied power for drills by generating electricity by pumping bicycle wheels; concerts and lectures and rallies were held by candlelight; cinemas played in the middle of the night to audiences who often walked across half the city to get to them.

There was no glass to replace a broken window, no parts to repair a watch, no automobiles for civilians, no malt for beer; no typewriter ribbons for offices, no paint, no cosmetics, no hardware, no machine parts.

Rubble fields were bulldozed or cleared by hand and blockade gardens attempted to induce a few vegetables from the earth with seeds donated from Munich and Hanover and Heidelberg.

Blockade runners crossed from the Russian Zone at great risk and their black market prices were high. The Americans “officially” frowned on it, but quietly saw to it that the blockade runners got enough gasoline to keep in business, for even at smugglers’ prices any food augment was precious.

Yet, out of this darkness a legacy came into being. Berliners were hanging together, shrugging at hardship, laughing at their own plight:

“Better dried potatoes than Kumm Frau.”

“Thank goodness the Americans aren’t blockading and the Russians trying to Airlift us.”

The life of powdered eggs, scavenging for twigs, the long lines, the candlelight, the Russian abuses, the checkpoints went on, but the people became tougher with an infectious feeling of martyrdom cementing them together.

The only moment a Berliner’s heart leaped with fear was when the beat of the engines stopped above them. Berlin lived on one lung and its faint heartbeat was the sound of the engines of the birds.

In this battle of will power, they held their share of the fortress wall.

A short way from where Sean and Ernestine had their room, the third airfield raced to completion.

The engineers of the 350th Support Squadron in Berlin picked an area adjoining French Headquarters, near the Tegel Forest—a flat field an equal distance from Tempelhof and Gatow. They scoured Berlin for heavy construction equipment, but were able to come up with little more than steam rollers dated from the turn of the century.

At the Hanau Base in the American Zone the heavy equipment was assembled, cut up by torches, transported in the C-74 and C-82 transports, and put on special flying duty on the Lift. Ten thousand barrels of asphalt were brought to Berlin along with pierced steel planking.

The Airlifting of the thousands of tons of machinery and supplies for the new runway was the minor part of the story.

There was no steel or rock for foundation of a runway that had to measure from two to ten feet in thickness. Western Berlin was searched for unused rail lines which were pulled up and carted to Tegel. Rubble and paving stones were hauled in.

A volunteer labor force was assembled from the people. The pay was poor, but there would be a hot meal served on each shift to keep them going. Twenty thousand Berliners answered the call!

Nearly half this force were women and they reported to work wearing dresses, business suits, dilapidated army uniforms, wooden shoes, tennis shoes, barefooted, wearing bathing suits in the heat, rags in the rain.

Every facet of the social and professional life was represented in this labor army that in the aspects of its massiveness resembled the construction of an Egyptian pyramid. But, unlike Egyptian slaves, these people worked themselves into exhaustion with a tenacity beyond measure, for there is no way to measure human determination.

A small force of fifteen American officers and less than a hundred enlisted men governed them as they cleaned, salvaged, crushed, carted, shoveled, and spread by hand a million feet of rock and brick.

The airport which they said could not be built in a year under the circumstances was nearing completion in a mere ninety days!

Ernestine returned to bed as the lights of Reinickendorf went out and the neighboring borough of Wedding was given their two-hour quota. Sean had fallen back to sleep. She hoped there would be no early call from his Headquarters today.

Chapter Twenty-four

NELSON GOODFELLOW BRADBURY INHERITED the deal at a table of colleagues at the Dahlem Press Club.

“Low ball,” he announced.

“They landed another five thousand tons by GCA today,” Clarke of AP said.

“I’ll open,” said Whittsett from Hearst

“The next Russian move has got to be a corker,” Clarke mumbled.

“My next move is to call you.”

“Call.”

“Beats me.”

“Call.”

“What do you think, Nellie? Where do they hit next?” Bishop of CBS pondered.

“They’ve got a number of possibilities. Clamp down on smuggling, try a physical take-over of the City Hall and Magistrat ... number of possibilities.”

A waiter behind him bent forward to speak. “Telephone, sir.”

He passed the deal to Clarke and lumbered to the phone booth.

“Hello, Nelson Bradbury speaking.”

“You know who is here speaking?”

Nellie recognized the gauzed mouthpiece “disguise” of a Russian press officer named Sobotnik.

“Yes.”

“It would be in your interest to leave the club now and walk west on Argentinische Allee for further contact.”

Click.

Nellie shook his mop. The great Russian mania for secrecy and mystery had to be served. He cashed out of the game and left the club. The streets looked like London during the blackout days.

He walked a great enough distance to establish that he was alone and unfollowed. Sure enough, a black staff car from the Russian Embassy trolled past slowly from the other side of the street. Nellie stopped at the corner, yawned, waited for the car to make a second pass.

Two men emerged, unmistakably NKVD. They could be distinguished even in the poor light ... they played their parts like bad actors: large brim hats, ill-fitting double-breasted suits, bony faces, sinister manner.

He got into the car on orders and held up his handkerchief to offer it as a blindfold. The NKVD men did not think it was funny. They drew the curtains and whisked down the Potsdamer Chaussee and over to the suburb of castles and mansions. He was driven to the fortress of Marshal Alexei Popov, led to a library, and closed in.

He speculated on the nature of his midnight summons. The Soviet strategy was clear. They wanted to keep the West talking and force concessions because of the pressure of the blockade. Yet, they were in no hurry, because all the top Soviet planners predicted a collapse of the Airlift in the winter.

In Moscow and at the United Nations their statesmen talked in circles. Just as the West indicated breaking off negotiations, the Soviets yielded just enough to keep the talks on. They agreed to a plan for new four-power currency for Berlin. On the surface it appeared to be a Russian softening. However, Marshal Popov received instructions to prevent actual execution of the agreement.

Despite the blackmail card of the blockade, Nellie felt a number of things were giving the Russians short hours of sleep. The Berliners were proving to be pressureproof. The Americans and British came back from the disaster of Blue Monday with the ground-controlled approach landings and now some sort of engineering miracle was taking place at Tegel. The Russians wanted no part of the coming December elections in Berlin.

Finally, a rising anger of world opinion was stronger than expected. Rallies for Berlin were erupting everywhere and the German people were showing a unity that was frightening to the Russian mind.

The silver fox of the Soviets, Marshal Alexei Popov, came to the library in an amiable mood.

“So good of you to come.”

“Are you going to behead me, Marshal?”

Popov slapped Bradbury on the shoulder. “I have liked always your candor. Sit, please.”

Nellie loaded his glass with vodka and whacked away at the tray of caviar, paper-thin slices of Polish ham, smoked sturgeon, and other delectables long missing on the other side of the Brandenburg Gate.

“I want to clarify misconceptions of the Soviet position. Your press should expose your people to the truth of the situation.”

In all of his travels Big Nellie always wondered if they believed their own words. “Let us say, sir, that we expose our people to your side of the question ... almost as you expose the Russian people to our side.”

Popov laughed heartily. He knew he could not bully the journalist and wished no further repartee with him.

Popov reviewed the situation, said the West was in Berlin illegally, and had turned the city into a base for spies. In the zones of occupation Nazis were being used to rebuild the German military for a war of revenge against the Soviet Union.

Nellie doodled some notes, hearing nothing new, and knowing this was not why he was called to Potsdam.

Popov continued to say that the friendly and peace-loving Soviet people had tried to make a settlement, but talks had failed because of Western treaty-breaking.

“Mainly, it is a lie that the Soviet Union is using the threat of starvation in Berlin. There is no blockade of Berlin!”

The body blow had been delivered!

“The Airlift aggression is unnecessary. The Soviet Union guarantees food for every Berliner and to return to work all of those workers unemployed by the American and British aggression.”

Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury went away from Potsdam a worried man. No one in the American and British headquarters, and not the most optimistic Berliner, believed the Airlift could keep the city going during the winter.

The Russian guarantee of food and jobs might prove irresistible to the Berlin housewife with a couple of children and the man thrown out of work and was meant to crush the West, for the price of Russian food and jobs was acceptance of the Russian currency.

He was deposited a few blocks from the Press Club, and immediately called Sean, who was in the room at Reinickendorf. “You better get me to see General Hansen,” he said excitedly.

In the middle of the morning the Western governors, the Berlin commandants, and the German political leaders floundered without course. Popov and the Russians had trapped them. There was no choice but to wait and see.

General Trepovitch was selected to read the proclamation on People’s Radio the next day.

“There is no blockade of Berlin! The Soviet Union can no longer stand by idly and watch the Airlift aggression bring further suffering to the workers of Berlin. Your Soviet brothers hold out their open arms.

“Beginning Monday the people in the so-called American borough of Neukölln may cross to their brothers at the borough town hall of Treptow in the Soviet Sector and turn in your illegal ration cards and B marks. You will be issued a new ration book guaranteed by the Soviet Union giving you five hundred more calories of food a day. Your illegal B marks will be exchanged for regular marks at the rate of one to one.”

An awesome moment of decision had come! Every man and woman had to search deeply and alone to find his own answer. Face starvation in the winter; if you survive the winter ... what then? Continue to live in fear of another Russian onslaught of another kind? Perhaps direct invasion ... like the last one.

Would it not be better then to simply submit to survive and accept the Russian offer as the only way out of an impossible trap. The revenge would be horrible if the Russians were rejected.

The procedure was simple. On given days, citizens of a Western borough were to go to a neighboring Russian borough and exchange ration books and currency. There were over two million people in the Western Sector. The Soviets figured if only half of them crossed over initially the shaky city administration would collapse and the West would be hopelessly deluged by Russian marks.

In the Russian boroughs of Treptow, Freidrichshain, Pankow, Mitte, and Prenzlauer Berg they staffed for the onslaught!

The week of great decision came and went with no change in the life of Berlin. Two per cent of the people in Western Sectors changed to Russian rations.

Chapter Twenty-five

CLINT LOVELESS STUDIED THE list for repair or replacement of equipment. The top priority read: starters, landing lights, harnesses, inverters, indicator master gyro fluxgate compasses, ammeters, indicator gyro horizons, and on down to windshield wipers, transmitter oil pressure, propellers.

The general had had him at Erding to break the spare-parts repair bottleneck.

There was a knock on his door.

“Come in.”

Scott Davidson entered. “Hello, Scott.”

“I had to come to Headquarters on some other business and wondered if I could see you for a few minutes.”

“Sure.”

He pushed his paperwork aside and rubbed his eyes. Scott studied his office curiously. It was a wonderland of charts and maps.

MAJOR PROBLEM AREAS

PRIORITY PROJECTS

CAUSES OF PILOT FATIGUE

Scott had always seen the colonel as a guy on the general’s coattails, always looking green when he left the plane in Berlin. This first sight of his office gave him a sudden new respect.

“Sir,” Scott said, “I’ve just finished this report and wanted you to have a look at it.”

Clint took the folio. The cover read: THUNDERSTORM FLYING by Captain Scott Davidson, Chief Pilot, Airlift Wing, Provisional.

Clint made a sour face. “This is out of my line. All I know about it is that I hate it.”

“That’s just the point, Colonel. Before I submit it to the chief pilot here, I’d kind of like a layman’s opinion.”

Clint shrugged, put the folio on a stack of papers, and said he’d read it.

“Colonel, long as I happen to be here, I just happened to remember something else. You are in a hell of a position to do me a favor.”

“So?”

“Shall I get to the point?”

“By all means,” Clint said, handing him back the report on thunderstorm flying.

Scott smiled. “Sir ... I’d like an introduction to your housekeeper.”

“No.”

“But ...”

“I don’t want any of you crushed-hat bastards knocking her up. She’s too good a maid.”

“Colonel, I don’t have that in mind at all.”

“Then you must be queer.”

“The truth is that I met her once and well ... I was pretty damned crude. I’d like to make amends.”

Clinton Loveless had grave doubts about the sincerity of Scott Davidson. But what the hell ... trying to keep men away from Hilde was as ridiculous as ... trying to keep men away from Hilde. Furthermore, Clint flew with Scott and placed his life in the man’s hands too often to be uppity.

“Colonel, could I just happen to drop around your house, like for dinner ... or something?”

“Like maybe you’ve thought this over?”

“Well, sir, as a matter of fact, with me flying two runs a day to Berlin and all my paperwork, I’ve got limited time off.”

“Like when do you have in mind?”

“Like tonight ... Colonel?”

Clint was amused by Scott’s gall. “Cocktails are at six-thirty. I assume you’ve already cased my house and know how to find it.”

“Goddamn, Colonel, you’re a good troop.”

Judy thought Scott Davidson was adorable and just loved being part of the scheme. When Hilde served drinks in the living room she was introduced to the captain and matter-of-factly said she had met him. If she was uncomfortable about his sudden appearance, she did not show it.

“Won’t you join us for dinner, Captain?”

“Oh no, that would be putting you to too much trouble.”

“Nonsense.”

“Well ...”

“We insist, don’t we Clint.”

“We insist.”

“Hilde, set a place for Captain Davidson.” She nodded, went to the kitchen for her own dinner and to feed the children.

Scott waited until a reasonable time had passed in order to give proper attention to the hostess, then found a pretense to get into the kitchen.

Hilde was at the kitchen table joking with Tony and Lynn. Scott poured himself a glass of water, edged his way into the group, and quickly endeared himself to the children in the continuation of his outflanking her by having the family go crazy about him.

Tony and Lynn were sent off to put on their pajamas and study. Hilde flitted about the kitchen putting the final touches on the dinner as Judy and Clint discreetly remained in the living room with the martini mixer.

“Sure is a pleasant coincidence,” Scott said.

“I think not,” she answered.

“Look, I wanted to find you to tell you I’m sorry about the other night. We were tired and I just had too much to drink.”

“I don’t think you’re sorry.”

“I went to a lot of trouble to find you so I could show just how sorry I am.”

“What you are sorry about is that your ridiculous pride has been damaged. This trouble you are going to now is an attempt to redeem it.”

Hilde was neither amused, charmed, or swept up by him. The resistance was failing to melt on schedule for Scott Davidson.

“Can’t I have a clean slate?” he persisted.

Hilde set the bread knife down, wiped her hands on her apron. “This town is filled with easy girls who should be able to fill your appetite. You’re only going to damage your pride further if you attempt to see me.”

“You’re being too rough. I’m a lot of fun, Hilde.”

“Strange, Captain. I find you dull, spoiled, and immature.”

Nick Papas snapped his fingers together eagerly. It was the first bet he had ever collected from Scott. “Poop, Captain, poop.”

Scott peeled off five bills of ten-dollar military script.

“Fifty bucks.” Nick kissed the money with mock ecstasy. “Most beautiful bet I ever collected. Five O!”

“What’s up?” Stan Kitchek asked in amazement.

“I asked the captain to donate to buy candy bars for you to parachute to the kids in Berlin. Look what he did. He gave me fifty bucks.”

“Gee, Scott,” Stan Kitchek said with a catch in his throat, “that’s awful nice.”

Chapter Twenty-six

THE BERLINERS’ REJECTION OF Russian rations forced Marshal Popov to advance the timetable for the take-over of the city. They clamped down on the blockade runners, sending a half dozen of them to the firing squad. Harassment of Berliners at the checkpoints against the B marks reached a new high. And then an assault on the city government just short of all-out war!

Action Squads trained with military precision assembled in Marx/Engels Platz under the control of Russian officers in civilian disguise. They poured in, over five thousand strong, many in American lend-lease trucks.

They converged on the City Hall and the Magistrat buildings armed with clubs, knives, stones, carrying banners and slogans.

This was the tactic that crumbled freedom in Czechoslovakia. This was the replay of the Prague riots. The Action Squads broke into the buildings, smashed up offices, and left the main chambers in a shambles. American, British, and French liaison officers were beaten up and the phone lines to the Western Sectors were cut.

The riot grew! Neither the Russian Sector police or the Red Army were anywhere to be seen, allowing the Action Squads free hand. At the end of the day Oberburgermeister Hanna Kirchner was able to see General Trepovitch to demand protection.

The Russian shrugged. “I cannot keep the workers from staging a democratic demonstration. They hate the imperialist Airlift aggression. It is the free right of the workers to protest.”

The angry little lady came to her feet. “I never believed,” she spat, “there could ever again be anything as loathsome as the Nazis. The Soviet Union has won that honor.”

Trepovitch sprung to his feet.

“Go on, hit me,” she dared.

He dared not She spat on his desk and walked out.

The next day the “riots” continued.

Hanna Kirchner defiantly drove to her office, but the doors were now blocked by Red Army guards and she was not allowed to enter.

People’s Radio announced more Red Army guards were coming, explaining that the anger of the workers compelled the Soviet Union to protect the citizens of Berlin from their corrupt officials.

Andrew Jackson Hansen returned to his old posture as Eric the Red. He spewed a stream of oaths in frustration against the outrage. When Neal Hazzard and Sean were able to calm him down they entered a conference with the British and French to reach a mutual decision.

The third day of riots at the City Hall and Magistrat was allowed to continue. The Western commanders then contacted Hanna Kirchner and told her that the Berlin Assembly and Magistrat could continue operation in the Western Sectors of the city.

On the fourth day of riots, Oberburgermeister Hanna Kirchner called for the Assembly to come into session in the British Sector at the Student’s Haus on Seeinplatz.

People’s Radio retorted that night, “The workers of Berlin have been abandoned by flunkies carrying out the dirty work of the imperialists.”

Armed now with the “fact” that the Democrats, Christians, and Conservatives had “abandoned” their offices, the Soviets swept all non-Communists from borough offices in their sector, including three mayors. The Russians padlocked vital files at the Magistrat.

A massive shift of population and offices followed as members of the free parties fled to the new sanctuary of the West. Each day a new department of the government splintered off and opened new offices there. The climax was an assembly of sixteen hundred Communists at the Admiral Palast.

“The people of Berlin have been left to the mercy of the revenge seekers,” Rudi Wöhlman cried to his audience. “Look at the Magistrat and Assembly. They have been abandoned! This is the time to elect representation for the workers!”

This rump meeting of Communists by hand proclamation declared Heinz Eck as Oberburgermeister of “Free” Berlin. A new Magistrat now to be known as the Berlin Soviet was proclaimed without debate, protest, or formal vote.

In the beginning of September 1949, the Soviet Union had evaded an open election and split the city into two parts.

“My God!” Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury said, “my God!”

From his vantage point high in the shell of the gutted Reichstag he looked down on the Platz der Republik. The people had gathered to protest Russian atrocity.

A mass of humanity jammed the square; they were packed solid in the destroyed Tiergarten. The great Charlottenburger Chaussee was a solid bulk of people backed all the way to the Victory Column restored by the British. Berliners spilled over the area against the Brandenburg Gate where it touched the Russian Sector. There had never been a gathering like this. A half-million Berliners rose in anger.

Usually an orderly people, they became enraged when the Russians saw fit to change the guard at a monument which sat just inside the British Sector. The Berliners called it “Tomb of the Unknown Raper.” A student climbed the flag pole on the Brandenburg Gate and ripped the hammer and sickle from its mast. Only courageous action of the British guards prevented a full-scale uprising.

It rained and they were drenched, but it did not seem to matter. One by one the leaders came to the rostrum and defied the Soviet Union.

The great figure of Ulrich Falkenstein, hatless and refusing the protection of an umbrella, faced this unprecedented sea of human wrath. He had kept his sacred word to General Hansen. The people had held.

“Berliners!” his voice echoed through them in the midst of their ruin. “I have said that you were never Nazis. And I say now: Berliners will never be Communists!”

Chapter Twenty-seven

SCOTT DAVIDSON HAD FALLEN upon hard times. First he ran into a new boss like Hiram Stonebraker. Now a rebuff by a German maid! ... No broad had ever called him dull!

Scott had accumulated four days’ leave. He and Nick went on an historic binge from Rüdesheim to Wiesbaden to Frankfurt to Mainz, which ended with Nick’s car sinking slowly in the Rhine River. And he had plenty of Schatzies ... six girls in four days.

But, as Hildegaard had suggested, they were rather easy. This annoyed Scott. He was going to show her! Actually, all he showed was a throbbing headache and a queasy stomach. It was a strange, unique, humiliating experience to be so bluntly rejected. Scott proved her contention that he was spoiled and immature. He was left with no choice but to strike his banners in defeat and forget her, but he couldn’t.

He was edgy for a week after his binge. Scott seemed disinterested even when Nick told him he had gotten a two-room flat in Frankfurt. Nick and Stan became worried. He had never acted like this before.

The Ring Church on Friedrichstrasse emptied of old aristocrats in threadbare finery who stopped for a word with the black robed minister. Hilde came from its confines with Tony and Lynn Loveless. They all thought it would be good for their German lessons to hear the sermon in the language.

She stepped into the sudden light, shading her eyes, a cameo in lace and white gloves. The Loveless children, scrubbed and polished, circled around her, running off their relief to be free from the confinement.

“Lovely sermon.”

Hilde turned and faced Scott Davidson.

“Hi kids,” Scott said, “how about a milk shake at the Eagle Club. I always like a milk shake after church.”

“I am afraid not. It will spoil their dinner.”

“Aw, Hilde,” Tony complained.

“I said, no.”

“Well, we got to listen to our Aunt Hilde,” Scott said. “Mind if I walk you home?”

“Otherwise you plan to make a scene here in front of the church,” she hissed in a low voice.

“Hey, you kids run on ahead. I’ll see if I can’t get Aunt Hilde to change her mind.”

Tony gave a sour “ugh, girls” look and trotted off with his sister.

Hilde looked beautiful; he offered her his arm but she ignored it.

“Wouldn’t like to see a dull, immature, spoiled flyer from time to time, would you?”

“Captain Davidson, the kind of friendship I am interested in goes against your manly nature.”

“I thought about that and I’d like to see you anyhow. Maybe I’m maturing?” He was eating crow now and there was no use rubbing it in.

“I accept your apology because I believe you mean it now. However, I do not wish to see you.”

Hilde did not believe in platonic relationships between men and women. It might begin that way with the best of intentions; sooner or later it would drift toward sex. With a man like the flyer, sooner. In Berlin, in the old days, she had been too self-centered to be excited by the beginning of a romance. Later, a deep hatred of men was born.

Some of it had mellowed in the home of Colonel Smith and of the Loveless family. Now wisdom told her that there were good men and there was good love in the world, but she always excluded herself from the possibility.

They gathered the children, crossed the street, continued quietly.

“Don’t get angry,” Scott said after a time, “but I learned that you never go out on dates.”

“Life is much more simple that way,” she answered.

“I promise I won’t complicate things.”

It had been a lonely year for Hilde. Scott was charming and he could be controlled now that she had his absolute respect. She knew she was trying to fool herself because in three or four dates he would return to being what he really was. Yet, she did not want to send him off again. They came to the head of the colonnade.

“Why don’t we have that milk shake,” she said. “I can always feed them an hour later.”

He started to offer her his arm again, but held it back. He had entered a strange new world of the fear of rejection. Hilde took his arm and they walked down the colonnade.

Chapter Twenty-eight

TEGEL AIRFIELD NEARED COMPLETION a mere three months from the day the first shovel was set into the earth.

One obstacle remained in this strange blockade—the transmitter of People’s Radio sat near the end of the runway.

Although the French role had been minor, it was dramatic. Colonel Jacques Belfort personally supervised the dynamiting of the Russian tower. The Russians branded them “cultural barbarians,” but to no avail.

The first Skymasters from the zone set down in Tegel in autumn of 1948, pushing the daily tonnage to six thousand.

The Soviet concept of the blockade, a logical and routine political maneuver, had failed to achieve its initial aims. The whole matter was getting out of hand. While the Russians continued to be certain of ultimate victory, much of their confidence was undermined by the small miracles performed by the West.

The Kremlin sent out a contagious new line of thinking to probe for a way out of the blockade mess without a loss of face.

V. V. Azov was a prisoner in his Potsdam mansion. It was in the wind that he would be liquidated. Indeed, an undercurrent of anxiety ran beneath the entire Soviet command. Even Marshal Alexei Popov, the greatest Soviet war hero, might be falling out of favor.

Igor Karlovy placed his own good fortune on the fact that he was the foremost aviation traffic expert in the command. However, this technical skill could not sustain him in Berlin forever.

“How can you remain so certain,” V. V. Azov demanded of Igor, “that the operation of the new runway at Tegel will not allow the Airlift aggression to continue indefinitely?”

The commissar’s face was ashen and he had developed a bad twitch. At times, Igor thought, he seemed to be on drugs.

“If they had ten runways in Berlin, the Lift would still collapse in winter. There is an entirely new set of problems never solved in aviation.”

“It seems the Americans have ways of solving quite a number of unsolvable problems.”

“I assure you, Comrade Commissar, they are barely holding even now. Coal reserves have fallen to less than a two-week supply. A single streak of bad weather in December and they have no choice but to quit.”

“Igor,” Lotte pouted, “you sit for hours and stare and say nothing.”

“Huh ... what ... what did you say?”

“You are bored with me.”

“No, no my pet.”

“You used to sing to me all the time, even when you were not happy.”

“Do you want a man or a nightingale! Dammit, woman! I have problems on my mind!”

Lotte cried. In the last week or two all he had to do was look at her crossly and she would cry. She wept over nothing. He walked into his study and slammed the door behind him.

His frequent black moods were not caused by the growing desperation of the Russian command. Igor was an engineer and he would not be bullied against his judgment. What was getting him down like a growing poison was the hatred and rejection of the Berliners. The defiance of a half-million workers, their scathing humor, their willingness to sacrifice anything to avoid the Soviet way of life.

And the damned Americans and their damned chocolate flyers ... the kangaroo and the candy bars....

Sean looked at his watch; Ernestine would be at the room in a few moments. He emptied the bag of groceries. There was a knock on the door. Strange, he thought, Ernestine has a key. He opened the door and faced Igor Karlovy.

“Come in,” Sean said.

Igor looked about the shabby room. It reminded him of rooms in Moscow. “Forgive me for showing up in this manner, but you know how things are done in Berlin. It has been a long time, O’Sullivan.”

They shook hands.

“So, we are all just men,” Igor said, “and all in the same boat.”

“Can I expect to be reading about my frailty in your papers tomorrow?”

“Of course not,” Igor said, “there are certain things we Russians honor. Besides, everyone from Popov on down is too vulnerable.”

Sean scrounged the cupboard, found a half bottle of vodka, and offered Igor a cigarette.

“The record of our past friendship appears to have gained value in our command,” Igor said. “I have been told to bring you a message.”

“Go on.”

“We are ready to implement a four-power currency control immediately and guarantee your access routes to Berlin.”

Sean knew that the Russians were capable of reversing themselves overnight on any given issue and offer an unexpected treaty without apparent reason. “I’ll see that General Hansen gets the message.”

“With your personal recommendation, I hope.”

“As a matter of fact, no,” Sean answered.

“Between friends,” Igor said, “this whole quarrel is becoming costly for both sides. The prospect of having to impose a blockade during the winter is not pleasant. On the other hand, there is no way your Airlift can run through the winter. We have both proved our points. I believe we should both save face as gracefully as possible.”

Sean laughed. “Come on, Colonel Karlovy. What’s a few thousand Germans starving to death? You’re bringing this offer because you don’t want to go into the winter and find out we can pull the city through.”

The Russian stiffened. “When can I have your answer?”

“You know the address here.”

The door burst open and Ernestine saw the Russian first and became masked in fright.

“An old friend,” Sean said, stepping into the candlelight.

Igor tipped his fingers to his cap and thought it time for him to go. “Good-by, Colonel ... aufwiedersehen, fraulein.”

Igor locked himself in his office, shocked by O’Sullivan’s abruptness. Had O’Sullivan spotted a Soviet weakness that quickly? Had he in truth been sent to transmit Russian fears?

He reached up on a shelf, took his mandolin down. It was covered with dust. He blew the film away, tuned the sour strings, then remembered that Lotte had not greeted him. He found her asleep on the living-room couch.

She fluttered her eyes open. “I lay down for a moment. I must have dozed,” she said.

She was quite pale. What the devil was getting into her? She had always been a picture of health and energy. Now all this weeping and dragging about.

In the topsy-turvy world of working by night and running days together one was apt to overlook small things. Igor thought ... how long has it been? How long?

“You little fool!”

She did not answer.

“You are pregnant.”

“Yes,” she said.

He was seized with panic! Where to run! What to do!

She took his hand and made him sit. “I have always loved you, Igor. I am not afraid.”

He knelt beside her and lay his head in her lap. “You little fool ...”

“I must have something when you are gone.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

SCOTT SHOVED A BOUQUET of roses into Judy Loveless’ hand. “You are a sexy babe ... it’s you I really crave.”

“I also think you’re great ... but damn, you’re ten years late. Come in, Scott, Hilde will be down in a minute.”

Lynn and Tony picked Scott’s pockets for the ransom that usually turned up. Tony found a wooden Hussar carved in the Black Forest, and Lynn a charm in the shape of a heart to go on a bracelet they were building.

He began to tell the children about a hair-raising landing with three Jap Zeros on his tail, which he never made, and they didn’t think he made, but it was exciting the way he told it.

Hilde entered dressed the way Judy had advised for a football game. She looked like a co-ed from William and Mary.

“We better get in gear or we’ll miss the kick-off.”

“I won’t be too late, Mrs. Loveless.”

“No rush.”

“Wiedersehen, children.”

A chorus of soldiers’ whistles greeted Hilde as Scott led her to their seats. She settled between him and Nick Papas. Scott explained that the enemy was the team in the blue shirts, the Army from Heidelberg, and the whites were the Air Force, Wiesbaden. Nick Papas had three bills riding on the outcome.

At the first crunching blocks, Hilde’s eyes bulged. “Mein Gott! They’re killing each other!”

“The idea, honey,” a perplexed Nick Papas explained for the third time, “is the man who is running ... well, his team has four turns to advance the ball ten yards ... or meters. Then, they are entitled to another four chances ... see?”

She jabbed Scott in the ribs. “Why didn’t you explain it that way?”

“For Christ’s sake, watch the game.”

“Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“If he must only make ten meters, why did he just run twenty-five meters?”

“Because ... because his true objective is to get it all the way down the field and score a goal.”

“Ja, ja, now I see.”

“Good.”

“Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“Why does he kick the ball?”

“For Christ’s sake, watch the game.”

“Mein Gott!” Hilde hid her face in Scott’s shoulder as the Air Force safety man took the punt and the Army gang tackled him viciously.

“Come on, Hilde,” Scott said. “He isn’t hurt and he isn’t mad. Look, he’s running back to play ... he likes the game.”

“I will watch and I will be very still.”

The stands came to their feet. The soldiers were in a state or hysteria over an interception.

“Who has the ball, Nick? I did not see.”

The Army officers were guests at the Scala Officers’ Club and celebrated their victory rousingly. Hilde changed to high heels as Judy had instructed her to do.

Scott was barely able to have a dance without being cut in on. Anyhow, it was kind of nice to study her from a distance. She danced near their table with a pink-cheeked, fuzz-faced Army second lieutenant, and winked to Scott. He appraised her backside, her legs, her bust. It all checked out ... gorgeous. He didn’t know how long he would be able to keep his promise.

A wild, barefoot congo line circled the club, a converted theater, moving from the little bar and dance floor to the main bar, where the band on the stage joined as they picked up dancers. They congoed up the stairs to the balcony where couples were necking and back down again and Hilde laughed until her sides hurt She continued to bubble all the way home.

“It has been a wonderful day ... the most wonderful day since ...” Since the last time she saw Scott. Scott was wonderful days.

But she understood by his silence what was happening and was bound to happen. He pulled up to the curb.

“Let’s sit and talk a moment,” he said.

“Okay. I don’t know how to thank you for the day.”

“That’s a bad question to ask me. How long you figure we’re supposed to go on like this?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Hilde, we’ve got to bend a little. I’m a nice guy.”

She shook her head. “That is just the trouble. You aren’t a nice guy. You are a rat, just like I am. We are two of a kind. I do not dislike you because you are a rat ... but I know you.”

“All right, so we’re both rats. Then what’s the harm?”

“Good night, Scott.”

Hilde tried to compose a letter to Erna, but found herself contradicting her own ideas.

When it came to a definition of love she did not know it. Scott was a wanderer who would never change his ways. Yet, she had never cared for a man as she did for him. She even desired him, but to give him sex would be the beginning of the end.

From the time she began to work for her first American family, Colonel and Mrs. Smith, a new experience began. The colonel was a great bear of a man who spoke softly and with warmth. He called her “Miss Hilde.” He was a gentle person, perhaps like Uncle Ulrich would be if she knew him better. The colonel’s children loved to cuddle on his lap for their story.

But there was strength in Colonel Smith too. One could tell that by the respect his officers showed, although they seemed at ease around him.

She and Mrs. Smith shopped together and she was allowed to join certain family outings, and after a while they even gossiped together. It was strange, this nice way the Americans treated each other. It was how an officer like Scott and a man from the ranks like Nick could share a brotherly love.

Hilde remembered her shock the first time she saw Colonel Loveless chase his wife through the garden calling, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

And she remembered standing in the hallway in the morning listening at their bedroom door when Tony and Lynn jumped into bed with them and they all wrestled.

At first Hilde resented Ami laughter. Sure, the Amis could laugh ... they were not hungry. Their cities were not in ruins, but they laughed as much about themselves and their own failings as anything else.

In the rigid adherence to reverence for her father Hilde remembered little laughter and little warmth for anyone but Ernestine. She had never known a German man who did not take himself seriously. Perhaps, she wrote to Ernestine, the Americans deserve laughter.

Judy knocked on Hilde’s door the next morning as she sat before the mirror brushing her long, thick brown hair. Mrs. Loveless muttered something envious.

“Hilde, Colonel Loveless has managed to get three days off starting Saturday. We would like to get away, just anywhere. He hasn’t seen a thing of Germany except air bases.”

“I hope he isn’t called back to his office like the last time you tried to get away.”

“Never can tell.”

“Everything here will be fine.”

“By the way, it will be all right to entertain Captain Davidson here while we’re gone.”

“I don’t know if we will be seeing each other again.”

“Little fight?”

Hilde shook her head.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Hilde.”

She set the brush down and felt a need to speak to Mrs. Loveless. “In German we have a word. He is filled with Wanderlust ... he is a rover.”

Judy lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed. “A lot of people who care for each other see that life rewards in different ways. We say in America, half a loaf is better than none. Hilde, may I speak to you frankly?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“When I interviewed Mrs. Smith about hiring you, she was quite frank with me. As you know by their letters and gifts, they care for you very much. So do I. So, I talk as a friend. Mrs. Smith told me, one thing you will notice about Hildegaard ... she never laughs. And she said ... I don’t think Hildegaard has ever laughed from the day she was born. I don’t think she knows how.”

Hilde was surprised by the truth of the discovery.

“Scott Davidson makes you laugh. You are a happy woman when he enters the room. In the end, this might have to be worth a few tears.”

Shortly after Scott arrived in Germany he accepted a Permanent Change of Station status. The definition of Temporary Duty on the Airlift was vague and taking Permanent Station in Germany meant a lot of privileges. Anyhow, Scott didn’t really give a damn where he was stationed.

Hiram Stonebraker brought the first changes of his ways. As a chief pilot of an Air Wing he found himself constantly fretting about housing for his crews, their fatigue, the ground-controlled approach landings in the steep glide paths over crowded cities, a beacon which gave off a weak signal, and a number of other things he didn’t give a damn about before. And then came Hildegaard Falkenstein.

Stan Kitchek was glad about Hilde. He was a purist. He had a nice girl back in Seattle and would have her till hell froze over. He was riddled with guilt when he needed another woman.

Nick didn’t get to do so much bumming around with Scott after Hilde came into the picture, but he was crazy about her. Scott had a judgment day coming all his life and Hilde was the first girl Nick knew with the stuff to pull it off. She showed it by not giving in.

The Air Force and Army had set up low-cost holidays in requisitioned German resorts in Bavaria. Scott’s leave was overdue. He had flown nearly a hundred flights to Berlin, but his own growing sense of duty kept him at his desk.

Stan and Nick Papas shoved off for Bavaria hunting a couple of new Schatzies. Scott stayed on to fly the general and Colonel Loveless to Burtonwood in England, recommissioned as the 59th Air Depot. Clint headed a team of production control people to try to break the bottleneck of the 200-hour overhaul.

The Skymasters went to a hangar known as Station Number One where the process began with a stripping of radios and instruments and continued from hangar to hangar where they were steam-cleaned to remove the coal dust, then parts and instruments and engines were broken down, rebuilt, tested, reinstalled, checked out.

Only five Skymasters a day could be completed on the line. Others were backing up in Germany awaiting overhaul.

Douglas and Lockheed Aircraft sent engineers over to consult with Clint on proper methods to stop tank leaks, a continuing menace. A special team from Erding Base was given a course on a sealing method known as TC-48 so they could teach it to all maintenance crews in Germany.

After the general and Clint Loveless finished their inspection Scott remained to confer on pilots’ complaints about hydraulic-system seepage, tire wear, faulty wiring, fire hazards, foreign matter in oil screens, and those other things a chief pilot worried about.

Five days after he arrived in Burtonwood, Scott picked up a renovated Skymaster at Station Number Five and flew it back to Rhein/Main.

Scott stood before the door of the Loveless house not having the slightest idea why he should return. Hilde opened the door, and felt a sense of relief on seeing him for the first time in two weeks, but stifled her joy.

“Bad penny,” he said.

“Come in.”

“Anybody in?”

“Colonel and Mrs. Loveless are out and the children are asleep. If I had known you were coming I would have kept them up.”

“I’m hungry,” Scott said.

He sat at the kitchen table. She served him cold chicken and noodles and dark bread.

I am so glad you’re back, she thought.

I must be crazy, he thought.

Chapter Thirty

“CLINT!” HIRAM STONEBRAKER BARKED, “what have you done for Fassberg today?”

“For Fassberg, sir?”

“Goddammit, we’ve got to think about Fassberg! I’m away for a week on an inspection and Fassberg has fallen three hundred tons a day behind Celle. When you return for the staff meeting, you damned well better tell me what you intend to do for Fassberg!”

“Yes, sir.”

Stonebraker had gone to the States with his Logistics people to inspect a materiel depot built at Middletown, Pennsylvania, to support the Airlift. While he was gone, Lieutenant Woodrow Beaver struck!

Beaver had quietly written to Al Capp, creator of Lil’ Abner and father of the Shmoo, an American leprechaun put on earth to cure man’s ills. Beaver reckoned the Shmoo could be helpful to the Airlift.

The lovable pear-shaped little fantasy could be converted into beef, ham, or cheese if one was hungry. You could build a house out of a Shmoo or make them into dresses and shoes. Shmoos could be converted into any denomination of currency. There was nothing Shmoos couldn’t do.

Al Capp agreed to help. Beaver had some inflatable Shmoos made and all was in readiness for the moment Hiram Stonebraker left Germany on the Middletown inspection.

Beaver had Armed Forces Radio dramatically announce that Shmoos were coming to Berlin!

Ten every day would be parachuted and those lucky Berliners who found them could convert them at the Red Cross for CARE PACKAGES.

At the end of the week, the Shmoos had won the heart of the Berliners.

“Beaver! Get in here!”

Stonebraker shoved a Task Force Times under his nose. “Well?”

Beaver studied the paper earnestly. “You mean the photo contest to name the Airlift Queen, sir?”

“I mean the goddamned Shmoos!”

Beaver handed the general cables from AP, UP, INS. The Shmoo had stormed the front pages. NBC was sending a top team to document the life of a Shmoo from birth, through a dramatic corridor flight, and on to the German family who found him in Berlin. Three Soviet papers carried front-page editorials denouncing the Shmoos.

“Get the hell out of here,” Stonebraker said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Beaver!”

“Sir?”

“What did you do for Fassberg today?”

“I sent them a Shmoo this morning.”

When Beaver was out of sound-wave blast, a WAF secretary brought in a little plastic Shmoo and set it on the general’s desk. The note tied around its neck read: “My name is Buff (Morgan) Shmoo and I have been presented to the boss by his devoted staff. I am guaranteed to triple housing procurement, break the bottleneck at Burtonwood, prevent fog at Tempelhof, predict the weather with unerring accuracy. I am a nice Shmoo and I desire only to serve humanity.”

“Where in the hell has the Navy been?”

“Taking care of the Air Force wives!”

Two Navy squadrons of Skymasters arrived, flush with spare parts, wealthy with mechanics, and stuffy with a pride that told them they could put more tons down in Berlin than any squadrons in the Air Force. Now a fleet of two hundred Skymasters forged the Air Bridge with a hundred more of the British.

A huge new transport, the C-74, arrived in Germany with twenty tons of spare engines! An engine Lift began directly from the States.

Globemasters and other new transports came to be used in flying special loads of heavy and bulky machinery. They brought in a dozen new generators for the Western Sector power plant.

Multimillion candlepower, high-intensity lights were installed extending from the center line of the Tempelhof runway through the St. Thomas Cemetery. EVEN THE DEAD CANNOT SLEEP IN PEACE FROM THE AMERICAN AGGRESSION, cried People’s Radio.

Superb new beacons and ranges lined the corridors; radar control became absolute; ground-controlled approaches in Berlin gave a promise that this was the miracle to beat ... General winter.

An army of transportation on the ground kept the rhythm of movement from mines and ports and depots and railheads and marshaling yards to the ready lines at the air bases in uninterrupted tempo.

New tie-down straps, new weight charts, new communication systems ... loading crews could empty a ten-ton trailer into a Skymaster in twenty minutes. In Berlin, unloading crews could unload ten tons in fourteen minutes.

A direct coal line ran from the Ruhr mines to the sacking plants at Hanau to the air bases at Celle and Fassberg. Mobile weather and operations trucks now briefed the pilots at planeside to cut down turn-around time.

Mobile canteens fed them at planeside; mobile maintenance trucks cured minor ills; turn-around time in Berlin was whittled to a mere thirty-two minutes from touch down through unloading to takeoff.

The immense weather-gathering data centers funneled in data and weather forecasts were changed every half hour. At Gatow in Berlin a method of using the canals to carry the coal by barge to the power plant cut out trucks and saved thousands of gallons of gasoline.

At Great Falls in Montana, MATS laid out an exact duplicate of the Berlin corridors where new crews were trained. Skymasters were loaded exactly as they would be at Fassberg, Rhein/Main, Y 80, Celle. They flew the Montana countryside along beacons and ranges duplicating those in Germany. They landed by GCA around beacons and at glide angles that matched Tempelhof, Gatow, and Tegel in every detail.

On Air Force Day in 1948 the Combined Airlift Task Force set down 6800 tons of coal in Berlin. The next day a special Lift of shoes, blankets, and warm clothing was flown in. Fifteen thousand children were flown out by the British to foster homes in the zones.

There were tears and smiles at Tempelhof. The people of Berlin showered the flyers with gifts that ranged from family heirlooms to trinkets made by school children.

As the first tests of winter were upon them, the American President announced that sixty more Skymasters were coming to Germany! The might of the American nation and the audacious British fortitude had been molded into the most magnificent use of the military in a time of peace.

It rolled now with unstoppable momentum from the engine build-up plants in Texas and California;

from the Materiel Centers around America;

by the Sealift, Marine X;

by the engine Lift;

by the assembly lines of the factories;

by the energy and ingenuity at Erding and Burtonwood and Hanau;

by the raw courage and the skill of the flyers;

by the sleepless hours and labor in bad light and cold of the mechanics and laborers.

As the Gooney Birds were retired one by one from the Lift the beat ... beat ... beat ... of the giant metronome that Hiram Stonebraker envisioned had been created with the hands of selfless dedication.

Chapter Thirty-one December 2, 1948

BERLINERS AWAKENED BY CANDLELIGHT IN icy hovels. The first snows of winter floated down on long shivering lines of voters waiting at the polls. With the Soviet Union boycotting the election, the Democratic Party won a majority in the Western Sector. The first act of the new Assembly was to vote Ulrich Falkenstein as Oberburgermeister of West Berlin.

The United States, Britain, and France then resumed a three-power Kommandatura for the Western boroughs. Among their first duties was to ascertain, with the new Magistrat, how much coal could be rationed to the people. Stocks were at a perilous new low and winter was going to make greater demands.

It was then announced to the Berliners that they would be rationed twenty-five pounds of coal per family for the winter. Ulrich Falkenstein appealed to the Kommandatura to allow them once again to put the forests to the ax to augment this sparse allotment and it was agreed.

Hanna Kirchner, now speaking for the Berlin housewives, told her old comrade that the beloved trees should be spared and taken only as a final desperation.

“Hanna,” he said, “trees can grow again in the same place. But if we leave Berlin, we shall never grow here again.”

The last of the birches and pines and lindens of once proud forests were felled and People’s Radio mocked, “The last act of Western vandalism is to destroy Berlin’s watershed and beauty.” Meanwhile, at the town of Helmstedt in the British Zone, long lines of coal trains waited in hope for an act of Soviet humanity to allow them to clear and go to Berlin. The trains grew white with snow and rusted in silence.

The defiance in Berlin continued to grow.

Brigadier General Neal Hazzard announced that Americans would help establish a new university in their sector. As thousands of students and faculty broke out of their academic prison in the Soviet Sector, the Free University of Berlin was born and took its first tottering steps in classes held in a hundred damaged, patched-up buildings around the borough of Steglitz.

From the moment of the first Airlift death, Neal Hazzard forbade social contact with the Russians. The breach between the two cities widened on other lines as the Berlin Symphony was forbidden to play on the other side of the Gate and all cultural contact melted.

The Russian prodding never ceased. A threat to cut the American phone lines to the zone was countered by an American promise to cut Soviet phone lines.

Soldiers on both sides became touchy and a sudden battle nearly erupted when Marshal Popov was hauled down for speeding through the American sector and overzealous Russian guards became threatening.

The Soviet Union seemed obsessed with the building of a War Memorial Cemetery to their dead in the Battle of Berlin in Treptower Park. It was not understood how this could endear them to the Berliners, even of Wöhlman’s ilk. A grotesque ode to death was being imposed upon a fallen enemy. First, the pink marble from Hitler’s demolished Chancellory was taken to the place and great plaques and monuments bearing Stalin’s words, histories of battles, great metal wreaths and statues depicting the agony of Russian heroism were ordered.

In this odd battle of wills, many of the bronze castings were ordered from West Germany. Neal Hazzard played upon the Soviet mania for the project by holding up delivery of the castings until everything was paid for in Western currency.

Counter-Intelligence reported that many of the Soviet Command were leaving. One by one, members of the Russian staff failed to show up at normal public functions. A new crop of officers appeared on the scene. And then it was confirmed that V. V. Azov had disappeared!

A week after Azov vanished, the opera box belonging to General Nikolai Trepovitch was empty at a performance of Aïda. Three days later a small five-line box on the last page of the Red Army publication announced that Marshal Popov would assume General Trepovitch’s duties in addition to his own.

As the West continued to meet the challenge of winter head on and the temper of the Berliners turned to pure iron, Popov ordered more Yak fighter planes into the corridor. They buzzed dangerously close to the Skymasters and British Yorks. Antiaircraft fire was apt to commence in the corridors close to the stream of planes without prior warning. Target sleeves were towed into the paths of incoming blocs.... But the Sky Bridge did not waver.

The French followed the softest line, insisting to the last that the Soviet Union could be negotiated with ... and then their patience collapsed.

The three military governors of the West called together a press conference to make a dramatic announcement. The honor was given to General Yves de Lys, who stood before the microphone looking into a room crammed with journalists from both sides of the Gate.

“As of 0600 this morning, all trade from the Western Zones of Germany to the Soviet Zone is suspended. All transit by waterway, highway, and rail through the Western Sectors of Berlin is ceased.”

The West had launched the counterblockade!

Chapter Thirty-two

PERIODICALLY, M.J. MADE HIRAM throw a party for staff and wives as a peacemaking gesture. Clint and Judy trotted off to it.

It was snowing when Scott arrived. He went upstairs to see the children. Lynn was down with a sore throat. His magic pocket turned up a charm of a little Berlin bear. For Tony there was a figurine of a top-hatted, ladder-carrying chimney sweep. They were made up by the Berlin Chimney Sweep Association and given as presents to several hundred Airlift crew members. A welcome fire crackled when he came down to the living room.

“How were your flights today?”

“Germany has a monopoly on weather,” he said. He never complained, so it must have been rough.

“I didn’t get a chance to phone your sister,” he said, “but I did find an old pal at Tempelhof who said he’d deliver a package.”

“That is wonderful. I will give you a box tonight before you leave.”

Hilde had made up a parcel for Ernestine of shoes, a warm sweater, underclothing, cosmetics, some tinned food.

“I hope you meet Erna someday,” Hilde said. “She is a wonderful girl. It is a shame we only got to know each other so late and under much hardship. I look forward so much to good times with her one day.”

Scott sat on the big hassock and stared into the fire. “I’m getting grounded for a few weeks,” he said.

“Is anything wrong?”

“No. The flight surgeon says I’ve flown too many hours, even by Stonebraker’s standards.”

“Scott, I have never said it, but I want you to know how wonderful this thing is that you do for Berlin. With Erna there, it means even more to me.”

He shrugged. “We didn’t vote on coming to Germany. We’re told where to fly.”

“And to drop candy bars to children? And to give up a good life like Colonel Loveless and your general?”

“It has been an interesting challenge,” Scott said in what was a semi-official tone of voice.

“Anyhow,” she said, “I am glad you won’t be flying for a time. You need a rest.”

“I’ll be taking a leave, Hilde. I want to go away someplace for a week where they don’t know about airplanes. Will you go with me?”

She did not go through with her reflexive reaction to say no because that could mean sending him away for good ... nor could she tell him she really wanted to go. “It would be a mistake, Scott.”

“No strings,” he said. “Don’t answer tonight. I’ll call you between flights to Berlin tomorrow. My leave starts day after tomorrow.”

As Scott drove to Rhein/Main he knew it would be a long day. A light, freezing rain had iced the road.

Bloc time neared. The crews reported to Operations. Scott’s ship would be Number One with a mixed cargo of flour and coal married to malt.

Navigation kits with maps and routes from Italy to England were issued. They were briefed on altitudes, the hack watches synchronized. En route frequencies were gone over.

Plane Number Eight would carry a weather observer;

Plane Number Nine, a check pilot;

Plane Number Ten, an intelligence photographic unit;

Plane Number Twelve, a team from Time and Life;

Plane Number Fourteen, three VIP’s from the State Department.

The weatherman said, “After climbing through moderate to heavy icing you will break through on top at five thousand feet. It will be visual all the way on top. Winds are light, averaging fifteen knots from 320 degrees. A low-pressure cell is slowly developing in the North Sea area which might cause a significant weather in the next forty-eight hours.”

An Intelligence briefing stated that Russian Yak fighter- plane activity had increased between Eilsleben and Bernsburg.

Outside, the ten-ton trailers loaded the Skymasters. Loading sergeants supervised the teams of twelve Polish laborers who deftly filled, married, and tied down the cargo.

Jet engines mounted on trucks blasted hot air onto the wings of the Skymasters to de-ice them. After many systems were tried and given up, this proved the best. It was developed by a group of enlisted men at Rhein/Main.

Scott and Stan reached Big Easy One as the jet engines were being driven off. Nick handed Scott his visual-inspection sheet.

A second inspection was made with the pilot and copilot walking around their bird checking wing-tip skin for cuts, loose rivets, checking the de-icer boots, the prop blades for pits and looseness, looking for frayed cables and loose cowlings, for foreign matter in the air scoops, for leaks, for tire conditions, for faulty shuttle valves. The inspection continued in the efficient silence of a pair of surgeons in a medical amphitheater.

Inside the craft, Nick checked the cargo compartments for fire extinguishers, checked the cargo tie-downs, the hydraulic fluid gauges for levels. In the cockpit, Stan went down his list: cabin heater, circuit breakers, reserve fluids.

The three pairs of trained eyes were unable to determine a flaw. Nick brought three boxes into the cabin. One was for delivery to Hilde’s sister in Berlin. A second box contained toy parachutes and candy bars. The third box held a number of small toys collected from school children to be distributed in Berlin for a planned Operation Santa Claus at Christmas.

Stan droned down the check list as the trailers drove off.

“Auto pilot servos.”

“Off.”

“Wing flaps.”

“Up.”

“Cross Feeds.”

“Off.”

The dialogue continued until stationtime. The tower called Scott’s ship, Big Easy One. He taxied to the end of the runway, lined up, and held.

At precisely 0700, zulu, Frankfurt Air Traffic Center atop the I. G. Farben Building turned the bloc to Rhein/Main.

The tower cleared the bloc for takeoff and at three-minute intervals they were airborne.

Scott held his takeoff heading executing a turn at the Darmstadt Beacon climbing at exactly 350 feet per minute at 125 miles per hour. He went over the Darmstadt Beacon at 900 feet on the button, continued to climb toward the assigned altitude, watching for icing.

On a heading of 085 degrees, Stan tuned in for the Aschaffenberg Beacon. In moments its signal, a faint dit-da-da-da-dit was heard ... became louder. Over the beacon the needle swung wildly, telling them they had reached the null.

Scott turned now to a heading of 033 degrees. Stan tuned in the Fulda Range that would lead them to the Southern corridor. Over Fulda, the bloc set up their precision chain. Each ship radioed his time as he passed over the range and they adjusted their spacing to the three-minute interval and an air speed of 170 mph.

The line of birds droned toward Berlin in flawless precision.

At that same moment, there was activity all over the zones and in the corridors.

A bloc of coal cargo planes from the Fassberg Base moved toward Berlin in the Northern corridor.

At the British base at Wunsdorf, a bloc of Tudor tankers drank in petroleum from underground storage tanks, scheduled to take to the air in forty-six minutes.

At Y 80, crews of the 333d Troop Carrier Squadron of Wiesbaden’s 7150th Composite Wing were in the Operations briefing room.

In the Center corridor aircraft of the 40th Troop Carrier Squadron headed back to the joint base at Celle.

In Berlin, ships of Navy VR 6 were being unloaded at Tempelhof.

Nick checked the cargo, came forward. “Every time I look at all this coal, all I can think of is I’m sure glad we don’t have to carry the ashes out of Berlin.”

Scott didn’t hear him. He was trying to face up to a rejection by Hilde. He flirted with the idea of telling her he loved her, even throw out a hint of marriage ... but he knew she would see right through the scheme.

“We’re picking up ice,” Stan said.

This, Scott heard. “Wet the props down.”

Stan adjusted the rheostat that sent a stream of isopropyl alcohol along each propeller blade. When an inch of ice formed on the leading edge of the wings Scott ordered the de-icer boots turned on. Chunks of ice flaked off into the air stream as the boots inflated and deflated.

The engines groaned under the new load until the plane burst on top into the sun at 5200 feet.

Their eyes burned with the sudden light. They fished about for their sunglasses. Below them lay a solid carpet of clouds.

Stan called Tempelhof. The weather was clear to Berlin. As they continued down the corridor the clouds below them scattered and they could see the ground. Today it held a mantle of new snow.

The magnificent cycle continued all around them:

at Rhein/Main the crews were at planeside making their checks;

at Fuhlsbuttel flour was loaded into British Dakotas and on the taxiways;

at Lübeck, newsprint in the new five-hundred-pound rolls was loaded on trailers to be carried out to the craft;

at Schleswigland, garrison supplies for the French and British had been cleared to take off.

Scott’s bloc from Rhein/Main was now under control of Tempelhof Radars. Stan and Nick began the prelanding preparations.

Berlin burst below them, never failing to stun the eye. Chains of lakes and canals interwoven with the stubbed forests. And then mile after mile of gutted-out shells.

Tempelhof Airways slowed the bloc to 140 mph, brought them to 2000 feet. As Scott turned over the Tempelhof Range Beacon, the other bloc, which had flown in down the Northern corridor from Fassberg, had landed at Tegel and were already unloaded and in taxi position to take off.

Scott turned left over the Tempelhof Range. At Wedding Beacon over the French Sector he made his downwind leg to 1500 feet.

“Tempelhof to Big Easy One, use caution. Cross winds fifteen knots gusting to twenty-five knots, west to east. Braking action poor.”

Nick grunted. There was always a kicker to landing in Germany.

“Blowers.”

“Low.”

“Auto pilot”

“Off.”

Flaps were set to 10 degrees.

“Booster pumps.”

“High.”

“Landing gear.”

The wheels groaned out of their prison, thumped down, locked.

“Flaps.”

Scott set them full down. The bird lowered, chopped at the sudden bursts of wind shooting up from the ruins. The blitz of high-intensity lights in the St. Thomas graveyard led them to the runway. Scott’s angle of descent dropped the ship below the level of the four- and five-story apartment houses on both sides of the cemetery.

A Russian spy in an apartment checked off his Skymaster as number 104 to land since midnight. This figure would be checked out against figures received at the Air Safety Center.

A hundred little parachutes billowed from the back door. Cold, numb children ran from rubble piles as the candy bars floated into the cemetery.

The Skymaster was put down deftly two feet after the beginning of the runway in the dead center, giving the full length to nurse it down the slippery steel planking. A FOLLOW ME jeep picked Scott up, led him to the west aprons.

Six seconds after Scott cut engines, a ten-ton trailer was backed to the door of his craft. The first German laborer, bone-thin and ragged, went to the pilot’s cabin. Scott gave him a pack of cigarettes and told him to split it among the crew. Most of the pilots did the same.

Tie-down webs were freed. A human chain emptied the ten tons of cargo in sixteen minutes. Nick lost the toss and waited for the mobile canteen to buy coffee and sandwiches.

He watched the swarm of activity, never failing to marvel at the place. Once Tempelhof had been a parade ground for Prussian pomp. In the early days of aviation it had been made into an airfield with stands for barnstorming shows.

Hitler built an enormous edifice to house Goering’s Air Ministry. Great steel canopies were high enough to shelter a plane while being loaded and unloaded along the crescent-shaped building.

The building itself, one of the largest in the world, ran from seven floors below the ground to seven above it. The Russians had flooded these subterranean basements, where fighter-plane assembly plants were safe from Allied bombers. Yet, with all of this massiveness, there was the irony that room was planned for but one undersized runway.

Stan found the Red Cross girl and gave her the package for the Operation Santa Claus collection while Scott ran down a buddy who promised to deliver Hilde’s package to Ernestine Falkenstein.

A mobile Operations and Weather truck gave them plane-side briefings on the return flight. Good luck ... so far, the low in the North Sea had not developed into a front.

The VIP’s were impressed; Time and Life were impressed.

Women laborers swept the coal dust off the apron and sacked it. Some days they swept up three or four tons.

A short ceremony had been staged for the journalists with their crew being presented with gifts from the Metal Workers’ Union.

A number of the planes were partly loaded with light bulbs in crates bearing the crest of the Berlin Bear and the defiant inscription:

MANUFACTURED IN BLOCKADED BERLIN.

In thirty-two minutes after touching down at Tempelhof they were going through takeoff procedures again. New blocs were en route, on the way back, or being formed up. The immense Traffic Control Center atop the I. G. Farben Building in Frankfurt mapped this endless parade.

Scott’s heart was in his mouth as he cleared Berlin. In an hour and twenty minutes he would call Hilde and she would give him an answer.

Chapter Thirty-three

“HILDE, YOU’VE BEEN CRYING,” Judy Loveless said, coming into the kitchen.

“I used to cry a lot. I haven’t in a long time.”

Judy closed the door behind her. “Scott? Your family?”

“Scott. Could I have your advice?”

“I don’t think I should interfere, Hilde.”

“Please.”

“Okay.”

Hilde dried her eyes and poured Mrs. Loveless a cup of coffee from the always ready pot, then she sat opposite.

“Scott is going on leave. He has asked me to go with him. Till now there has been nothing between us, I assure you. But he is how he is and he will not change. Somehow ... I can’t find the words to send him away.”

“What do you want from him? A playmate? A dancing partner? Do you think it’s fair to keep him hanging around?”

“Then what you say is, I must submit.”

“What I say is you are so much on the defensive you’re not giving yourself a chance to discover your own feelings.”

“I don’t love him.”

“Hilde ... look at me. Have you ever been in love?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe Scott Davidson has either. Eventually you must expose yourself to the risk of finding love.”

“If I could believe I could have something like you and Colonel Loveless have ...”

“We didn’t pick it off of a tree, Hilde, or find it parked at our front door one day. Being in love is troublesome and it brings pain ... and it also means being able to give of yourself.”

Hilde bowed her head and swallowed hard.

“You’re a big girl, Hilde. If you want love, you’re going to build it on tears, room by room.”

A contribution to the perfection of the Airlift was for the craft to radio ahead to its home base and give in code information on whether his ship needed maintenance or carried cargo.

Those planes needing minor repairs or carrying cargo from Berlin reported it ahead; the information was relayed to the various centers to have everything in readiness as the plane touched down.

Scott’s plane was Number One. It would go to Hardstand Number One. A loading master had the chart of the plane and had a trailer loaded with cargo, Trailer Number One.

When each plane cut engines in the matching hardstand number the matching trailer pulled up to continue the cycle flawlessly. The mobile planeside briefings brought in the latest weather data and flight-plan changes.

Number Seventeen reported an oil leak, was pulled out of the bloc, and a new craft took the number.

The control centers charted each bit of loading and maintenance information, engine hours, cargoes, air-traffic bloc times, and fed the data back to the control center at Headquarters in Wiesbaden.

Turn-around time for the bloc was to be forty-nine minutes. Scott grabbed a ride to his office with the Production Control jeep.

He asked the operator for the Loveless number.

“Colonel Loveless residence.”

“Hi ... it’s me.”

“Hi, me.”

Scott heaved a sigh. “Ja oder nein?”

“Ja.”

“You ... you mean it?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, I got to run. I’ll call you soon as I get back from Berlin. We take off in the morning.”

“I’ll wait to hear from you.”

Scott returned to Big Easy One beaming. He clapped his hands together to beat off the cold. Nick handed him the trip sheet. He pinched Nick’s cheek. “You’re a nice Greek boy, Nick Papas, a nice, nice boy.”

“What’s it? What’s it?”

“Tell Lieutenant Kitchek he’s a nice Polish boy and to check out this nice bird.”

“The way you’re flying you might reach Berlin ahead of the bloc.”

Nick grumbled off. He knew what had happened. Scott was going on leave tomorrow. Ten will get you fifty, Hilde was going with him. It was going to be like Cindy all over again. He wanted Hilde to have held out. The bastard always won.

“Before you get too happy,” Stan said, “that low in the North Sea has deepened. Berlin is full of weather. It’s a cinch we’ll have to land by GCA.”

“Good,” Scott beamed, “I need the practice.”

Stan looked to Nick as if to say ... is he crazy?

“Fly this bird,” Scott said when they passed Fulda.

He needed to think. He stretched in a makeshift bunk. The long-eluded victory was almost his. Scott chastised himself for not confronting her with this decision earlier. What the hell, the longer the wait, the sweeter the victory!

He decided to play it smooth and wait until she gave all the signs. He had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Hilde. And dammit, she never meant to let him go all the while!

Thirty-five minutes past Fulda, Nick shook him from his reverie. He returned to his seat.

“How’s the weather?”

“Ceiling in Berlin is five hundred feet, visibility a half mile.”

Scott grunted. It was getting close to minimums. The altimeter showed the plane losing altitude. Scott glanced out of the left window and saw the thin white line forming over the black boots, a sight that always quickened the pulse of a pilot.

“Watch the ice, Stan,” he said, easing the yoke back to bring the plane to proper altitude.

While wetting down the props and concentrating on the instruments, they had no way of knowing a fuel line in the engine was breaking from metal fatigue and would drip raw gas onto the hot cylinders.

“Tempelhof Airways, this is Big Easy One forty minutes east of Fulda at six thousand feet. Center-line check.”

“Big Easy One, this is Tempelhof Airways. We have you under radar control. You are on center line. Report at each thousand-foot level. You are cleared to descend to four thousand.”

“Roger.”

The fuel line ripped open.

“Big Easy One this is Tempelhof. Ceiling three hundred feet, visibility one half mile. Winds fifteen knots from the northwest, braking action poor. Turn over to Jigsaw at forty-five.”

Jigsaw! The code name for ground-controlled approach. A chain reaction of tension was set off down the entire bloc.

They were all flying blind. Teams of specialists in the electronic shacks on the side of the runways would soon guide their flight by ethereal voices.

As turbulence shook Big Easy One the hot exhaust ignited the trailing fuel.

“Christ!”

A streak of fire poured from the number-three engine down the side of the plane the instant the fire-warning light came alive.

“Oh shit,” Nick said.

Scott reached over Stan, pulled the fire wall shut-off valve, and looked at his watch to let thirty agonizing seconds pass.

“This is Big Easy One. Emergency. Engine on fire.”

Scott pulled the CO₂ extinguisher handle discharging white foam to battle the flaming engine, set down the landing gears to ventilate the wheel housing. The fire smothered to stillness.

Scott’s trained hand closed the cowl flaps and retarded the throttle on the smoking engine. He nodded to Stan, who pushed the feathering button and snapped off the booster pump. The giant prop slowly turned right-angled to the air flow and came to a halt

“Tank.”

“Off.”

Scott flipped the ignition switch. Stan looked out of the window.

“I think we’ve got it.”

Scott looked over his shoulder at Nick. The unlit cigar had been chewed in half. He flipped a book of matches back. “Go on, light it.”

“All heart, you’re all heart.”

“This is Big Easy One calling Tempelhof Airways. Fire under control, number-three engine feathered.”

The bloc behind Scott held rigid discipline. A struggle was now on to bring in the wounded bird.

“This is Tempelhof calling Big Easy One. Contact Jigsaw on Charlie Channel.”

Stan switched to the emergency channel and established contact with GCA.

“This is Jigsaw. What are your intentions?”

With the immediate emergency under control Scott wanted to try for Gatow or Tegel, where the landing would be easier than the steep glide over the cemetery.

“This is Big Easy One calling Jigsaw. Can you give me permission to land at Gatow or Tegel?”

“Stand by.”

Gatow had an emergency. A plane had blown a tire and the runway was out of use. Tegel had fallen below minimums and was shut down.

“Big Easy One this is Jigsaw. Cannot comply with your request. Both fields out of operation. Can you turn around and go back to the zone, over?”

Stan and Nick kept quiet. The few seconds to decision did not allow the luxury of discussion or prolonged procrastination. Scott did not know for certain what had caused the fire and therefore not certain it would not erupt again. There was nothing left to fight it with. He had ten tons of cargo on three engines and an icing condition.

“Let’s get this mother down,” he said to his crew over the intercom. They nodded in agreement.

“This is Big Easy One calling Jigsaw. We want to make an immediate landing at Tempelhof.”

Stan and Nick were already going through the emergency procedures, leaving Scott free to concentrate on the instruments. Nick looked outside. Nothing could be seen.

They listened as Tempelhof Radar diverted the rest of the bloc into the Center corridor and back to Rhein/Main.

“This is Jigsaw calling Big Easy One. We have you positive. What is your altitude?”

“This is Big Easy One. We are at fifteen hundred.”

“Maintain that altitude until further advised.”

Nick and Stan worked down the prelanding check list.

“This is Jigsaw,” an airman named Ed Becker said, wondering why he had come to Germany, why he was sitting before this luminous green scope being thrust into the role of the Lord. Turn left Heading 337.”

“Left Heading 337,” Stan repeated after Scott’s execution.

Fire wagons, ambulances, crash trucks tensed in readiness as the fog began to fall close to the ground.

“This is Jigsaw,” Ed Becker said. “You will land on left runway two seven. Wind fifteen knots northwest, cross winds from right, altimeter three zero zero three.”

“Roger. Altimeter three zero point zero three.”

The NCO behind Ed Becker handed him further weather.

“Big Easy One this is Jigsaw. Ceiling one hundred feet, visibility one eighth of a mile.”

“Oui vey,” Nick whispered.

Stan pretended he didn’t hear the transmission, kept working around Scott on the control panel.

“Ask them if they have the high-intensity lights to maximum?”

“This is Jigsaw calling Big Easy One. Lights are on full. You are over Wedding Beacon. Turn right to a heading of ninety degrees, maintain fifteen hundred feet.”

“This is Big Easy One. Right ninety degrees, altitude fifteen hundred.”

Fog-entombed Tempelhof grew deathly silent. The theodolite measuring the ceiling tried vainly to pierce the thickening fog. Airman Ed Becker studied the blip on the radar screen with a growing ache in his chest and back. The blip was approaching the base leg.

“This is Jigsaw. Turn right to a heading of 180 degrees, maintain fifteen hundred feet, perform prelanding cockpit check.”

Stan repeated the instructions.

The clock in the dark room ticked, ticked, ticked. Strange glows cast from the screens put an eerie color on their drawn faces. The blip inched along the scope.

“This is Jigsaw. You are approaching final leg.” Ed Becker calculated a correction for wind drift. “This is Jigsaw. Turn right to a heading of 276.”

Ed Becker’s job was done.

“This is Jigsaw. Stand by for final controller.”

Master Sergeant Manuel Lopez of San Antonio had Big Easy One in the precision scope.

“This is Jigsaw calling Big Easy One,” said a mixture of Texas drawl and Spanish. “How do you read me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“This is Jigsaw. I read you five square. You need not acknowledge further instructions.”

Everyone in the shack gathered behind Sergeant Lopez’s chair. His job was to keep the plane on proper azimuth, an imaginary line in the sky that ran to the beginning of the runway to keep the craft at proper glide.

“You are a little right of center line. Correct five degrees left to 270.”

The blip on the precision scope was now in dead center, heading at the runway.

“Big Easy One, you are on center line six miles from touchdown and approaching glide path.”

The million-candle-power krypton lights could not force the fog to yield.

“Big Easy One, ten-second gear warning.”

Nick pushed the gear handle. The nacelle doors reopened and the plane shuddered as the gear extended.

“You are in the glide path. Begin descent at 550 feet per minute.” Lopez watched the glide scope as it settled high. “You are above glide path one hundred feet, increase your rate of descent.”

The flaps were set. Stan and Nick had completed the final check and reported to Scott. Nothing left now but that voice and Scott’s nerves. Scott focused himself on the instruments, thought of, but gave up, the idea of a stick of gum. The other two looked outside into nothing. Stan flicked on the wipers. No light at all.

“This is Jigsaw. You are cleared to land. You are four miles from touchdown ... you are drifting slightly below the glide path ... adjust rate of descent up twenty-five feet ... turn right to 272 degrees.”

Beat ... beat... beat... beat ...

“Big Easy One this is Jigsaw. You are one mile from the end of the runway approaching GCA minimums and coming up on the cemetery. You are on center line, excellent rate of descent ... you are a quarter of a mile from touchdown ... you are on the glide path ... on center line ... you are fifty feet above glide path over the runway. Take over and land.”

Lopez closed his eyes and prayed.

“I see the lights!” Stan cried.

Scott saw the runway lights rush by! His speed was high due to excess turbulence and altitude at the end of the runway. He had all the power off. Big Easy One cannonaded far down the runway.

Scott shoved the nose wheel down and as it bounced hard on the runway he started gingerly hitting the brakes as the plane careened, slipped closer to the end.

They hit the overrun. Scott plied the brakes as hard as he dared. Big Easy One halted two feet from the railroad track siding.

They sat for several seconds. Stan took off his earphones and got out of his seat. “Wise guy,” he said.

“Smart ass,” Nick said.

The fog was so thick that the FOLLOW ME jeep which drove them to Operations became lost en route and ended up in the old Luftwaffe pistol range two miles on the other side of the second runway.

“Sorry, Captain Davidson, no takeoffs after dark with three engines, no three engine takeoff from Tempelhof. No way to fix a fuel leak at Tempelhof.”

“I know that, goddammit. I helped write the manual. I want the first ride back to Rhein/Main or Y 80.”

“Sorry, Captain Davidson, operations are closed down.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Go to sleep, I think, sir. We’ve arranged quarters for you and your copilot at the Columbia Club and your engineer at Transit Airmen’s Quarters. We trust you will be comfortable.”

“Dammit, I’m supposed to start my leave tomorrow.”

“It is ceiling zero. And please bear in mind that Berlin is blockaded by land and sea. I suggest that you do not try those routes.”

“All right, wise ass, I want to phone Wiesbaden.”

“Sorry, Captain, you need a priority to get a phone line out of Berlin.”

As he left in utter defeat he turned at the door at the harassed young officer. “I don’t like you,” Scott said.

Chapter Thirty-four

HHDEGAARD FALKENSTEIN HAD a lightness of heart and a happiness she had never known before Scott picked her up.

Things are on the way, he thought, as they drove into the countryside.

She had not been into the villages and forests for longer than she cared to remember. She had never traveled with this feeling of wonderment. How lovely it was. How lovely Scott Davidson was. Hilde’s eyes glowed with the discoveries that came from her daring to open locked doors.

At the end of the first day’s drive they decided to stop for the night at Rombaden, about halfway to the Bavarian Alps.

Over the Landau River from the city, the Four Seasons Hotel had rooms available to American officers. Hilde remembered being in Rombaden once with her father in the early days of Hitler. It was a big Nazi city then.

The Four Seasons was a bit seedy from the lack of upkeep and new replacements and the uniforms were threadbare, but there was still a touch of the old elegance.

Scott was warm. Scott was understanding. He brushed away all awkwardness by taking separate rooms on different floors.

Dinner was only adequate, but the aristocratic service made her feel like a queen.

They drove across the bridge to Rombaden and for the next hours engaged in pub-crawling along the wild and reputed Princess Allee filled with the bawdy, the singing, the risqué.

They were happy crossing back over the Landau to the hotel. Off the lobby a great fire roared in the seventeenth-century fireplace and they sipped cognac, which Scott knew the bar could find if they really wanted to.

It was cozy and dreamy. Hilde cuddled close to Scott and lay her head on his shoulder.

For Scott Davidson, the long-awaited, long-denied sign was being given. World flyer and past master of the moment of woman’s surrender; triumph was close at hand. He allowed Hilde to loll in her joy, let her approach the delicate moment. He must do nothing to deter her own train of thought. He became deliberately passive.

Hilde’s inner conflict began the moment she decided to go away with Scott. She began to realize that she deliberately invited temptation in the hopes of having him. She remembered so many things now. The voices, the sounds, the smells. Scott was American. He was a big man and he smelled good. He was clean, like they were.

“Honey, we’d better turn in,” he whispered. “We have a long drive tomorrow. I’ll see you to your door,” he said in pure Virginian.

He turned her lock.

“Good night, Scott. It has been a most beautiful day.”

“Good night, honey,” he said boyishly.

Hilde took his hand and brought him into her room. Scott, like a little child, allowed himself to be led. Hildegaard’s embrace had none of the calculation or sophistication of a trained lover. She was crazy with desire.

Scott knew her eruption had to come from the liberation of long-imprisoned emotions. Careful, he said to himself, careful, Scott. He handled her with deliberate slowness ... and then they were at the bedside.

Even in this mad moment Hilde longed to cry out, “I love you, Scott,” but she could not do it. She writhed with passion, fearing that her declaration would be a sign of weakness.

She almost cried in desperation, begging him to assure her that he loved her. But Scott gave no word. They lay, side by side, like a pair of animals unable to declare love.

As suddenly as Hilde’s passion rose, it collapsed. She rebelled at his touch. They lay stiffly, awkwardly, dumbfounded, silent.

Hilde spoke first ... a harsh whisper to ask him to leave. Scott did not like men who either pleaded with women or tried to manhandle them. Even at the brink, a man has to keep his pride. He had guessed wrong before ... he guessed wrong again.

Scott left her without a scene, got into his car, returned to Princess Allee, and drank himself into a stupor. Near dawn the German owner called for the American Constabulary, which established that the captain belonged at the Four Seasons and returned him to the hotel.

Scott’s fingers felt the big, soft down pillow. It took a long time for him to fight his eyes open. The room was in shadow light from an opening in the drapes. He sat up, ever so slowly, held still until the thumping in his head beat more quietly, and smacked his lips to get rid of the foul taste.

The fire in the fireplace was nearly out. Scott moaned and shivered to the window, pulled the drapes open. The Landau River flowed below him. “Christ, where am I?” The Four Seasons Hotel ... Rombaden ... Hilde! Ugh! The marble floor of the bathroom chilled his feet. He dunked his head in the water basin, examined himself in the mirror.

Hilde!

Hilde was packed and waited in the lobby for a taxi to take her to the train station in the city across the river. Scott Davidson approached with that damned boyish innocence with no trace of anger.

“I guess we should sit and talk,” he said.

“I don’t want a scene.”

“Only women make scenes,” he said. “Besides, I’m a sick man. Hilde, sit down. The one thing you should know is that, come hell or high water, I’m a gentleman.”

She walked to the fireplace and edged onto a couch. “You are a clever man, Captain. I would suppose that your memoirs should rank with the greatest.”

“Hilde, I don’t get it. You know what I am and you went away with me ...”

“Stop it,” she demanded. “It is true that I love you and I need you. And I do thank you for arousing feelings in me I did not know I possessed. Scott, you are a fighter pilot by instinct. Your life is only for the moment of the kill.”

“Then take me for what I am.”

“For you, Scott, the kill is the beginning of the end. For me, love is going to be the beginning of the beginning.”

The hall porter came and told Hilde a taxi was waiting. Scott said she would be ready in a few moments.

“If it will give you any consolation,” she said, “this trip was my fault. It was unforgivable of me to put a little boy in a candy store and tell him not to touch.”

Scott felt a need for a few light, face-saving remarks. “See you around.”

“You are never to call on me again,” she said firmly.

Scott saluted, grinned. “If you knew what you were missing, you’d cut your throat.”

“My dear Scott ... so would you.”

Hilde left. Scott watched her disappear. As the cab drove off he seemed to remember faintly the tear-filled voice of his wife telling him that someday he would crash and it would be monumental; for when Scott Davidson got dumped a hundred people whose hearts he had broken would be standing on the side lines and cheering.

Nick Papas prepared the dining-room table for a payday card game. The captain came in.

“What the hell you doing back?”

“Phased out.”

“Finished?”

“Kaput. That’s baseball.”

“You still care for her?”

“Hell no.”

“It’s just as well,” Nick said. “Pour yourself a belt and sit down because I’ve got some poop for you. Remember Chuck Ames?”

“Airways, Philippines.”

“That’s right. Saw him last night in Frankfurt. He’s just been transferred here from Berlin. Anyhow, he’s been in Berlin from the first day of occupation.”

“So?”

“He was here a couple weeks ago looking for housing and all that crap. He was at the Scala Club and he saw you there with Hilde.”

“I didn’t see him.”

“He took off. Tell you why. He had met Hilde in Berlin over a year ago. Only then, her name was Hilde Diehl, and she worked in a joint called Paris Cabaret. Scott, them damned women fool you every time ... she was a hooker.”

Chapter Thirty-five

A MAID LED GERD to his Uncle Ulrich’s study. He was surprised by the austerity in which the Oberburgermeister of Berlin lived, although it was in keeping with his political image with the people.

The idealists such as his uncle were necessary for that transition period Germany was going through to keep the occupation authorities content. Soon enough, Gerd thought, the German people would look to the new generation of businessmen such as himself who were rebuilding Germany from its ashes. The Ulrich Falkensteins would pass on and no one would replace them.

Ernestine entered. “Hello, Gerd, won’t you sit down?” He made himself comfortable, lit an Ami cigarette. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve,” he said tersely. “It would please us if you paid us a visit.”

“I see.”

“It is Father’s idea and I agree. We should try to become a family again.”

“I am sorry,” she said. “I will never go to your home so long as Hilde is not welcome.”

“Erna, we must begin again somewhere. You will find a number of changes in Father’s attitude.”

Ernestine had met her mother secretly from time to time and learned that her father was in poor health. In their visits her mother had spent most of the time echoing Father’s views about the cruelty of fate. Yet, this was a good moment. Ernestine had always desired a reunion and the first move had come from her father.

“Our parents,” Gerd said, “must accustom themselves to a new generation which rebels at the kind of obedience we were forced to give. Having Frau Kirchner as Oberburgermeister of Berlin came as a prelude of drastic changes in the German society.”

Ernestine had spoken about Frau Kirchner and the new generation of Germans with her uncle many times. Gerd, like most Germans, dropped the hostility of the defeat as well as their Nazi friends when it was no longer profitable. His attitude, arrogance, and ambitions had not changed. The only change was the way of doing business. Gerd was clever, she thought, and his kind will be able to convince people, particularly the Americans, about the “new” Germany.

“You will come?” he asked again.

“It is a matter I must discuss with Uncle Ulrich.”

“By all means. I hope you decide favorably. I trust Uncle Ulrich will honor us with a visit,” he added carefully, “and I should like you to meet my fiancée.”

She spoke to her uncle about Gerd’s visit later in his study where they had whiled away many hours just talking together.

“It is not like Father to either forgive or forget anyone whom he feels has wronged him,” Ernestine said.

Ulrich nodded.

“From the time you were sent to the concentration camp until you returned to Berlin your name was forbidden as was Uncle Wolfgang’s.”

“Time,” Ulrich said, “time softens us all up. It bleeds the will power that is needed to sustain a long feud.”

“But do you really believe this comes from his heart?”

“I think,” Ulrich said, “the ring is closing.”

“Don’t be a mystic, Uncle.”

“But mystics we must be. Men such as Bruno are common in our people. They are certain their life is guided by a mysterious fate and not by themselves. Unavoidable ‘fate’ is a built-in excuse for failure. One, like your father, who sees himself as a victim of fate is apt to be superstitious, unclear of mind. Bruno cannot admit to himself his life was a lie. He has wrapped himself in ‘fate’ to avoid both guilt and shame of the Nazi era. But ... every man and woman who lived in Nazi Germany in our generations must, in the end, seek an acquittal from God.”

“Once I had a letter from that boy in the SS,” Erna said. “It was his last, from Stalingrad. He wrote me that now that he was facing his Maker he was frightened because of the things he had done.”

“Yes. And it is the same with Bruno. It will be the same with sixty million Germans. They will come to that place far up the road where they can no longer avoid the questions.”

“But what does Father seek from us?”

“An avenue of redemption, a proof of his innocence. Some Germans will stand at the Lord’s throne and say, see here, God, I had a Jewish friend. I did not like what happened to him. Bruno Falkenstein builds a case. He will say, God, my brother was in a concentration camp and he has returned to our family. My daughter has left my roof, but I am so great and generous I have forgiven her. Am I not worthy?”

“What should we do, Uncle?”

“He is your father ... my brother ... our burden, our cross.”

Bruno advanced toward his daughter, took her hand, patted it. “It was good of you to come, Erna,” he said, his voice choking with emotion.

“Froeliche Weinachten, Vater,” she whispered.

Herta ran from the room in order not to show tears.

“Sit, sit,” her father said.

His old pinstripe suit was worn out, but there was still a trace of grandness in it. It hung on him poorly. Even by candlelight she was struck by how he had aged. It was this that gave her a sudden knowledge that a parent was slipping away.

They lived in the same rooms, but the rooms were warm while the others in the building were freezing. The candlesticks were silver. The windows were not covered with tin and boards, but by heavy drapes. The little alcove shared by Erna and Hilde was a tiny luxury of leather couch and desk for Gerd.

As they spoke of small things she realized that his age, his illness, had caused a loss of anger.

“I have learned that you are not well these days, Father.”

“The wear and tear of life. Fate has dealt us cruel blows.”

“Gerd told me it is not necessary for you to work any longer. How do your days pass?”

“I am growing old. I make my peace with God.” He rubbed the back of his hand nervously ... faltered. “How is Hilde’s health?”

“She is happy. She lives in Wiesbaden and works for an American family.”

“The Amis are not too bad. They have paid back much for how they ruined Berlin with their bombs.”

Gerd arrived with his fiancée, Renate Hessler. The girl was only nineteen years of age; Herta assured Erna she was from a “good” German family.

Renate was waxen-faced and moved with the forced gestures of a mannequin. Gerd had her lavishly decorated in a way that belied the hardships outside. Her speech was superficial. She could talk about almost nothing other than clothes.

Ernestine saw her as decorative ornament for Gerd to parade in public. Renate would be trained in the German manner to serve her man. The luxuries Gerd would be able to bring her was ransom enough to assure him he would be allowed innumerable mistresses.

After an exchange of drivel, Erna was tempted to ask Gerd if Renate was a member of the new Germany or the old.

“Ulrich will come?” her father asked for a third time.

“Yes, but Christmas is a bad time for the Oberburgermeister of Berlin. He has many orphanages and hospitals to call upon.”

“Yes, yes, I understand.”

The electricity in Steglitz Borough was turned on an hour early as a Christmas gift from the Americans. Herta scampered to the stove to prepare the meal.

At long last the car of the Oberburgermeister stopped before the building. A number of passing people stopped, surrounded him. They stood in the snow to shake the hand of Ulrich Falkenstein ... their new “father.”

Erna watched all this from the window above and looked at Gerd and her mother and Renate, and wondered if anything had really changed at all.

As Ulrich disappeared into the building, Erna watched the excitement rise in her father. He stood, adjusted his dress, a shadow of the old pomp, shoulders back, erect.

Gerd welcomed his uncle at the door with a proper bow, then the brothers stood face to face. Ulrich opened his arms and Bruno came to him and they embraced.

“Froeliche Weinachten, Bruno.”

For the first time in her memory, Erna saw her father cry.

Chapter Thirty-six

HILDEGAARD THOUGHT THAT IT was cruel of the Americans to order Colonel Loveless away on Christmas Eve. Clint came home in the afternoon and informed the family that he had to go to the Erding Base. There was a foul-up on the small-parts assembly lines.

Hilde rushed the dinner of goose. It was eaten half-heartedly, the opening of gifts around the tree became confused and miserable. Clint pulled out when the staff car came.

On Christmas Day he phoned from Erding. Judy cried and Lynn cried because Daddy was alone. The children and Hilde all insisted Mommy go down to Erding and stay with him. Clint was miserable but protested the idea ... weakly.

When everyone reassured her they wanted her to make the trip, she packed her bags in minutes. Clint meanwhile drove to Munich to find a hotel room.

When Hilde and the children saw Judy off at the railroad station it became a good Christmas for everyone.

Erna’s letter came the next day. When the children had been put to sleep, she stoked the fire and read it over for a third time.

Erna was a saint. Hilde knew she would never have gone back to her father, first. Hilde did not hate him so strongly as she once believed. These days hate was tempered by pity and the wisdom of maturity. Time healed so many things. Perhaps it could heal this too. Perhaps she would see her family again.

She wrote to Erna that the silly business with the flyer was over. Having lost her heart for the first time, it was proving difficult. She reaffirmed her contention that love was a bother and could bring nothing but pain.

Hilde wrote of thoughts of coming back to Berlin. She wanted to study so that in time she could carry her own weight. But mostly, she wanted to be with Erna and to help take care of Uncle Ulrich.

A phone call came from Munich. Colonel Loveless had gotten a room at the Bayerischer Hof. Hilde heard Mrs. Loveless giggle on the phone and whisper, “Clint, stop it.” They were having a grand time. Mrs. Loveless said the colonel would have to stay at Erding till after New Year’s.

Hilde assured her everything at home would be under control and insisted she stay with him. Colonel Loveless took the phone, “Hilde, I love you,” he said. When the call was done, she returned to her letter to Erna.

The doorbell rang. Scott Davidson stood out in the cold. Except for rare moments, Hilde had learned complete control of herself; she walked away, leaving the door open. He trailed in slowly, holding his hat in his hand.

“Hi.”

Hilde turned her back to him, braced herself.

“Know something. I’ve never been lonely at Christmas before. I’m lonely as hell.”

“The children have missed you.”

“How about you?”

“I cannot say I have been happy.”

“Me, too, I’m not happy.”

“Scott, I asked you not to see me. If you persist I will move away from here. It will make life very difficult for me.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we get married.” He came up behind her slowly. “I love you, Hilde.”

She looked through misty eyes at the fire. Scott sat on the big hassock. “We act like a couple of people facing a firing squad.”

“Once I believed that marrying an American would answer all my problems. I wanted a world that did not exist And then ... I had too much of another kind of world. Somewhere in between there will be a life for me ... back in Berlin. As for us, Scott ... it won’t work.”

“Hilde. I’m me. I won’t ever change in a lot of ways and I couldn’t promise that. But I know that you are the only one I’ve ever really wanted in my life and I know damned well that I’m going to do whatever is necessary to make it work.”

A smile came from her heart. She believed him.

“We’ll both have to learn how to give,” he said. “I know you’ll take care of me, Hilde ... I never felt anyone ever could before. I want more than anything to take care of you.”

“Scott, there is so much more to it.”

“No, there isn’t, except we’ve been damned fools.”

“You don’t understand. After the war survival had many prices. Berlin was a nightmare: I was very vain and foolish ...”

“I don’t give a damn what happened in Berlin.”

She found the strength to face him, somehow. The shadow of the fire played on her face. “I did not go to sleep with you because the only thing that I could have from you was your respect ... Scott, I was a prostitute.”

“I know all about Hilde Diehl and the Paris Cabaret.”

Hilde hid her face and cried softly. “Oh God ... why did you come back?”

She felt his closeness and the love in him and she let herself be held and soothed. “I came back because I’d be some kind of a damned fool to let you go.”

“Is there really a chance for us?”

“We know the worst in ourselves and each other and we’ve faced it openly. I guess a couple of people like us have the best chance in the world.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

THE NEW YEAR’S OFFICE party was in full swing. Sean ducked it to get back to his own office to finish work on a pressing document.

There was the first rumblings of a shift in population from the Soviet Zone. Because there was an avenue of escape Sean felt that there could be floodlike crossings of refugees in the future. They had to establish ways to weed out spies among the refugees, establish secret places to protect important defectors, arrange housing for ordinary refugees, ways to move them from Berlin into the zone quickly. Most of all, Sean underlined, The Gate Must Be Kept Open.

This is the only offensive position we hold against the Communists.

We can physically bleed their economy by encouraging more people to defect....

He was interrupted by the phone.

“Colonel O’Sullivan.”

“Hi, this is Lil.”

“Hi.”

“I’ve been trying to reach Bless for half an hour.”

“Last time I saw him he was feeling no pain and chasing a couple of WAC’s around General Hansen’s desk.”

“That fat cop! He knows we’ve got a party tonight and he knows I’ve got to get to the commissary and he knows he’s got the car.”

Sean glanced at his watch. “I’ve got about a half-hour’s work. I’ll run you to the commissary because I think he’s going to need a nap.”

“You’re a love.”

“Ernestine said she’d be over by nine to help you get everything ready.”

Sean put in a call to have “patrols” scour the halls for Blessing and send him to his office. He continued to work on his report.

“Just before the battle ... mother ...

I am thinking most of you!”

Sean sized up the alcohol content of his friend. Bless was about fifty-fifty, still in operating condition. He plopped into a chair, scratched his belly, and set his feet on Sean’s desk. “You sent for me, sir?”

“Lil’s got the storm flag up.”

“Ohhhh, Jesus. I was supposed to take her to the commissary. Ohhhhh, Jesus. I bet she chews out my tail.”

“If you’ll crap out for fifteen minutes I’ll run you home and take her to the store. You’ve got to get a nap if you’re going to be jolly at the party later.”

“Sean, you’re a pal. You got it made. Don’t get married.”

“Matter of fact, that’s kind of what I have in mind. New Year’s is a good time to begin with a clean slate.”

Bless became sober, quick. His feet dropped off Sean’s desk with a thud and he broke into a sweat. “You better come to my office,” he said grimly.

Sean was puzzled by the sudden change. He followed Bless across the hall; the door was locked behind them. Bless unlocked his desk and Sean was handed a familiar-looking folder. Blessing had his hands on his face. “I swear to God, I don’t know what to do.”

Without opening the folder, Sean sensed what had happened. “How long have you had this?”

“About two weeks ago CIC had him listed along with about twenty others for a routine check. It was only last week we found those hidden files from the Labor Ministry. No one has seen this but me ... and you.”

Sean opened the cover ... BRUNO FALKENSTEIN.

His trained eye searched the pages of the Nazi documents. There had been three Falkenstein brothers all raised in the tradition of the pre-war Democratic Party labor movement.

Ulrich became a major figure in the unions and political life in Berlin. His brothers, lesser figures.

When Hitler came, Ulrich and Wolfgang were among the few who held to their beliefs in the face of disaster. Ulrich went to Schwabenwald Concentration Camp; Wolfgang was murdered by slow strangulation at Plötzensee for his part in the plot against Hitler.

Bruno was the mediocre of the three. Nazi doctrine appealed to mediocre men. The Nazis made mediocre men big, gave them positions beyond their ability in a normal society in exchange for unquestioning obedience. Bruno became a Nazi. Today he echoed the German chorus that he was forced into it to protect his livelihood, and because he had no choice.

Because of his background he was put into the Labor Ministry. Public knowledge of his activities was deliberately kept vague by him. Even his own family knew little except that he was considered a fairly important official; both his income and privileged way of life proved that out.

The documents Sean read were sealed in Bruno Falkenstein’s own hand! He had planned and executed operations for the securing and shipment of tens of thousands of slave laborers from Poland for the Krupp and I. G. Farben industries. Bruno Falkenstein, by his own signature, was a Nazi criminal.

Sean set the folder on Blessing’s desk, glassy-eyed with confusion.

“I’ve been a cop for a long time, Sean,” Bless said. “There were times I had a prisoner who I knew should be free. Listen to me, Sean ... there is a time when a cop has to be judge and jury.”

“He deserves what’s coming to him ...”

“Sure he does, but you don’t and neither does Ernestine. Neither does his brother. Maybe they’ll throw the book at him just to prove he isn’t being protected by Ulrich Falkenstein. And don’t forget, he may be a bastard, but it’s her old man. Sean ... there’s thousands of these bastards getting away. This one won’t matter.”

Sean O’Sullivan sat in the darkness like an agonized Hamlet. Over their little room in Reinickendorf, British Hastings burst through the clouds into the snowfall, landing at Tegel.

What terrible forces were there that were making their love hopeless? They had struggled to overcome ... they had nearly succeeded. Once he had judged a man harshly for the same thing. He had re-created the sin of Dante Arosa the moment he hid the files on Bruno Falkenstein. He who had never been able to understand Dante Arosa’s human weakness.

Ernestine longed for a relationship that would bring Hilde back to the family. If Bruno Falkenstein were sent to prison the raging scandal and her own sense of guilt would make a life together impossible.

If he continued to keep the secret, he would have to ask her to begin life with a lie hanging over their heads that would grow instead of diminish. Sean’s own sense of right and wrong told him that God could not permit such a lie to remain hidden and untested.

She came to their room, brushing the snow from her. At that moment he loved her more than right or wrong ... more than his sense of duty. He wanted now only to survive for a month, a week, a day ... and he was filled with fear.

Chapter Thirty-eight

“COMRADE COLONEL,” MARSHAL ALEXEI Popov said to Igor, “one would gather that the Americans and British did not study your estimates of their collapse.”

When a political commissar harassed you that was one matter. When a marshal of the Red Army questioned your competence, it was another.

“If you will recall the conference of our decision,” Igor began his defense, “I explained at that time a great deal of the success or failure of the Airlift would depend on American determination. I was ordered to stick to mathematics.”

“And what about your assurances the Airlift would collapse this winter?”

“If our intelligence had supplied me with proper information about the high development of ground-controlled approach systems, I would have made a different estimate.”

It was, in fact, everyone’s blunder, but no one’s blunder. Popov realized that the faithful ally, General winter, had been beaten. The colonel was a good officer, Karlovy’s estimation of the situation had been echoed throughout the entire Soviet command.

“Make contact again with the American,” Popov said. “Inform him that I want to begin personal discussions with General Hansen.”

Igor felt the same amazement as everyone at Headquarters. With only half the days of the winter considered safe for flying, the Airlift was setting down five thousand tons every twenty-four hours. From time to time, the operation was closed for an hour or a day. At times, the Western Sector’s coal stocks dipped below a week’s reserve and food became so scarce that part of the city was a hairline away from starvation, total darkness, freezing.

But the momentum of the Airlift was so powerful it was able to recover instantly. Beat ... beat ... beat ... the giant metronome ticked on through driving winds and sleet-covered runways ... beat ... beat ... beat ... Tempelhof ... Tegel... Gatow.

The electronic miracle wrought by GCA became so finely honed that the planes could be brought down in their interval virtually blind. GCA was the final link in solving the riddle. Beat ... beat ... beat ... Tempelhof ... Tegel ... Gatow ... ten tons ... ten tons ... ten tons.

Soon it would be spring and the Airlift would soar to greater heights. The scent of colossal victory for the West was in the air.

“Look up to the sky, Berliners,” Ulrich Falkenstein’s voice came over the loudspeaker trucks, “look up to the sky for that is where freedom comes ...”

Under his leadership they had made a city of their own with its own police, university, currency. Berliners knew their own strength and the strength of their allies. They took the offensive.

The Western counterblockade shut off raw materials from flowing into the Russian-raped Zone and it staggered the economy. Blockade runners risked bullets to crash into the Western Sectors. People stood up against the bully police of Adolph Schatz.

And then, in the scheme of things, Adolph Schatz was found to be no longer useful to the regime and he disappeared without mourners.

Beat... beat... beat... Tempelhof... Tegel... Gatow. “This is Jigsaw calling Big Easy Twenty-two. You are one mile from touchdown. You are on center line. You are on the glide path ...”

“This is Jigsaw ... ”

“Big Easy Fourteen calling Jigsaw ...”

“Tempelhof Airways calling Big Easy Thirty ...”

“This is Jigsaw ...”

“Gatow Airways calling Big Easy Six ...”

“This is Jigsaw ...”

The Soviet Union launched a last-ditch propaganda campaign attacking the legality of the air corridors claiming they were no longer valid. The precisely drawn and clearly stated documents made up three and a half years earlier by Hiram Stonebraker proved unassailable.

To back Soviet claims, Popov flooded the corridors with more fighter planes without advising the Air Safety Center. Ground firing erupted all through the Soviet Zone along the corridors. Searchlights were shined into the eyes of American and British flyers.

Beat ... beat ... beat... Tempelhof... Tegel ... Gatow.

“This is Jigsaw calling Big Easy ...”

“I hope my arrival at this time of night is not awkward,” Igor said.

“Of course not,” Sean said.

“No, no, fraulein, please stay,” he said to Ernestine. “This time I brought the vodka,” he continued trying to be friendly. “I saw you were running low. May I?”

He took off his cap, sat at the table in the center of the room, and filled three glasses. Sean offered him a cigarette.

“Lucky Strikes. I confess I am going to miss these.”

“Expecting to travel?”

Igor shrugged. “I have been guilty of gross underestimations.” He spread his arms out like an airplane, pointed toward the window, where the engines’ drone renewed itself each 120 seconds. “If I hadn’t seen it myself, I would not have believed it possible.”

Igor hoped that he would be allowed to work and teach the things he had learned about air safety and GCA at the Air University. He believed great efforts should be launched to imitate the American transport system although he realized no study of the Airlift would be allowed to be taught for that would be an admission of American superiority.

He touched glasses with Sean, drew hard on the cigarette. “My errand this time is to ask you if General Hansen is amenable to discussions with Marshal Popov?”

“The marshal knows our phone number,” Sean answered.

So blunt and logical, Igor thought. Igor walked to the window, watched the procession of planes for several moments. “For some reason I do not like to leave like this. Nothing seems to be answered. I think I am most sorry about the fact you and I haven’t become better friends.”

“The doors were always open until our flyers started getting killed.”

“When does all this stop?”

“A long time ago we made a pact not to talk politics. It’s too late in the day to get involved in Marxist dialogue.”

“A parting thought perhaps. That would not be treaty-breaking.”

“What good would it do, Colonel Karlovy? Where you are going you cannot pursue your curiosity.”

“That does not keep me from being curious.”

“It will end when the Russian people stop accepting their own degradation as a condition of life and when the Russian people refuse to allow themselves to be used to degrade other human beings.”

Igor was white-lipped. “I’m sure I don’t understand you.”

“I’m sure you do,” Sean said.

The Russian smiled, gulped down his vodka in the grand style, nodded to Ernestine, shook Sean’s hand, coldly, and started for the door, then turned. “I should like your assistance on a personal matter,” he sputtered.

Igor loathed himself for each step of his return. He sat, filled his glass again, stared glumly at the floor. “The girl, Lotte, is with child ... she has a damned fool notion that doctors in the American Zone are better. In this instance, the mother bears the entire burden and I honor her decision,” he lied. “Will you help her cross over?”

“Yes.”

“Good, she will be pleased. What do you want her to do?”

“Is she able to move around freely?” Sean asked bluntly.

Igor was now faced with the first of his confessions. “No ... the two of us do not go out together ... because of the lack of transportation,” he further lied.

“When you are at Headquarters, is she free to move?”

Igor did not want to answer, but knew he must.

“My chauffeur is from the ... political side of things ... she is always in his sight.”

“Does she ever cross through the Gate?”

“From time to time she is driven to the free market in the Tiergarten.”

“Good enough,” Sean said. The quicker the execution was made, the better the chance for success. “Tomorrow,” he said.

Igor’s pain registered visibly.

“Tomorrow,” Sean repeated, “between noon and two o’clock she is to come to Tiergarten. She is to carry absolutely nothing out. She will wear a red bandanna and look for a vendor named Braunschweiger. She will identify herself to him as Helen and ask to purchase a Swiss watch.”

“The driver?”

“He will be accosted and delayed by some British security people the moment she makes contact. They will demand to see his papers and otherwise stall him. We will create a confusion and during it she will be taken out and hidden. I can’t tell you how, but we’ll get her back to the zone.”

Igor nodded that he understood. The final degradation was on him now. He took a letter from his tunic and handed it to Sean. It was instructions to a West Sector bank where he had a blind, numbered account in B marks. “This will take care of her and the child for a number of years.”

Ernestine realized that this was no spur of the moment plan, but a long thought out and dangerous move. “How can you let her go knowing you will never see your own child!”

Igor smiled pathetically. “I can assure you, fraulein, it is not easy.”

Sean put his hand on Igor’s shoulder. “We can get you over too.”

Igor shook his head. “We don’t learn, either of us. The greatest single mistake made by the Soviet command was not to understand how much an American loves his country. You see, Colonel O’Sullivan ... a Russian loves his just as much.”

“But in Berlin you are wrong,” Sean said.

“That is the final love,” Igor said. “To know the faults and the wrongs of that which you love ... and go on loving just the same.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

SCOTT DAVIDSON WAS GIVEN a new toy to play with.

The first Boeing C-97, a mammoth multipurpose transport called the Stratofreighter, arrived at Rhein/Main. Twin-decked, its four powerful Pratt Whitney engines could cruise at half again the speed of the Douglas Skymaster and bring in a twenty-five-ton pay load.

The tail had a pair of clam-shell doors and a self-contained power hoist running the length of the plane that could load on and set in large pieces of machinery, trucks, cannons, then roll them forward on the ball-bearing strips on the floor.

It was a magnificent ship destined to serve MATS as an interim plane until even larger and faster transports could be developed; America knew now that she must never again be without Airlift capacity.

The roomy forward-control cabin seemed like a summer palace after the confines of the Gooney Birds and Skymasters. Scott tested the ship with the Boeing people, certain that his new love of this big old bird was a sign of advancing age.

It was a long way removed from the first milk run to Berlin with the Gooney Birds setting down eighty tons a day ... the Skymasters brought in six and seven thousand tons. Yet, it was less than a year that it all had started!

On flight number two hundred to Berlin, Hiram Stonebraker handed him a set of gold oak leaves. “Major,” he said, “we’re kicking your ass upstairs. We want you over at Headquarters as vice operations chief.”

Scott would be the number two pilot in the entire Airlift. His first job would be to write a manual on the characteristics and use of the Stratofreighter in Operation Vittles.

As winter ended, old hands took new duties. New crews came with new ships. The long-standing joke of the Airlift, the illusive definition of “temporary duty” was finally explained. With the new crews coming from Great Falls, rotation from Germany was commenced.

Stan Kitchek was lost after Scott’s transfer to Headquarters. He was promoted to captain, accepted “permanent change of station,” made a first pilot, and transferred to the base at Celle which had been turned into the model of the Airlift, the epitome of precision of air-cargo transportation.

Master Sergeant Nick Papas was advised that he had a month’s leave accumulated, which was now payable. He phoned Scott.

“Want to say good-by to an old Greek?”

They met in the bar of the NCO Rocker Club in Wiesbaden a little later. Nick was packed and ready to take off.

“So, what are you going to do now?”

“Check the bank balances in Chicago. Then, who knows? I got twenty years service come September. Maybe I’m getting a little old for this crap. I may just do it up in real Greek style, have the relatives send a girl over from the old country.”

“Hey, how about that.”

“I never said anything about you and Hilde. I’ve seen a lot of fighter pilots in my twenty years. Lot of them don’t grow up. I never figured you’d get your wings clipped.”

Scott cracked an egg, emptied it into the mug of dark beer, swirled it around. “Know what, Nick. I looked real close in the mirror today. I’ve got four gray hairs. When I think about it ... I guess I’m the luckiest bastard who ever lived. It’s easy to come out of the clouds when you’ve found something better on the ground.”

“Sorry I won’t be standing up for you. When do you figure to get married?”

“Lot of red tape. We’re looking for a final clearance any day.”

Nick looked at his watch, gulped his beer down. “It’s that time.”

Scott drove him to Y 80 where he had passage on MATS on a States-bound Skymaster.

In the end there were no words to cover six years of intimate comradery.

“See you around, Major.”

“So long, Nick.”

He waited until Nick’s plane was out of sight, and with him a part of his own life had flown away.

German girls by the thousands were trying to marry American servicemen. Many wanted it only as an avenue of escape from the nightmare of their war-ravaged world.

American boys who had never been exposed to the open and free relationship of a European woman wanted one of their very own.

It became necessary for the American authorities to institute barriers and rigid screenings to prevent a flood of bad matches.

Scott went to Colonel and Mrs. Loveless and candidly discussed Hilde’s past. Clint acted as her sponsor, engineered the papers with his own brand of deftness. His influence with General Stonebraker, the general’s personal like of Scott, plus the Falkenstein name would all help to smooth the way. Even so, there was a long winter of red tape.

Clint went to see the final authority, the chief chaplain of USAFE, and judged him to be a true man of the cloth and decided to lay it on the line.

The chaplain found it refreshing. Finding a confessed prostitute was as rare as finding a confessed Nazi. After giving Mary Magdalene as the obvious parable, he interviewed Hilde and assured her she could set a date with Major Davidson.

Clint and Judy often said they had never seen two people more in love, more grateful for the existence of the other, more willing to give of themselves, more awed by their late discovery.

Colonel Matt Beck and his vice chief, Major Scott Davidson, sat before Hiram Stonebraker. The general chewed their asses out.

Incidents of Russian buzzings and close flying were mounting. A Skymaster had been bullied out of the corridor, was pounced upon by Yak fighter planes which forced it to land on a Soviet airfield. Matt Beck wanted fighter plane escorts.

The general said he didn’t have grounds for the request. Both Intelligence and his own estimates were that the Russians were putting on a last-ditch show trying to force more landings for face-saving value.

“What have we got? Gutless wonders? Now I don’t want any more of our people scared out of the corridors!”

When Scott and Colonel Beck were alone, they summarized the situation in a short sentence. “Too many replacement crews.”

Most of the original Airlift crews had been on bombers during the war and were disciplined to hold formation in the face of flak and enemy fighters. While the Russians annoyed the old-timers, they never made them deviate from course.

The two worked on a revision of pilot rosters to keep the maximum number of old hands in every time bloc and squadron.

Next day, Scott came into Colonel Beck’s office, annoyed. Y 80 had a time bloc scheduled for the 12th and 333rd Troop Carriers that showed it to be 75 per cent new crews who had never faced a buzzing. Moreover, nine of the crews were making their first run to Berlin. Russian activity was reaching a new peak.

“I think I’d better go down to Y 80,” Scott said, “and take this bloc in and out of Berlin a couple of times.”

The colonel agreed.

Major Scott Davidson briefed them. They looked to him with a sense of relief and with an admiration given an old flyer of his caliber.

“It’s a game of trying to make you flinch,” Scott said. “They’re like yappy puppies. Don’t let them know you know they’re alive. Let’s hack time now.”

Bloc time was twenty minutes away. Scott phoned Hilde.

“Going to take a couple of runs to Berlin, today,” he said, “we’ve got to get these people steadied down.”

Hilde masked her disappointment as always. She hated him to fly, and was in knots until he returned. She knew, though, that she could never say anything about it ... now or ever.

“I’ll go to the hotel and wait for you,” she said.

“I may be late.”

“I’ll wait ... Scott ... I go to my room and I look at the ring twenty times a day. Would it be bad luck if I wore it around my neck on a chain. That way I could tuck it into my bosom so no one can see I’m wearing it.”

“Great idea. I can fish it out later.”

“Scott!”

“Then ... you can stick it through my nose.”

“I’m serious. I want so much to have it close.”

“Sure. Maybe you’d better get some use out of it before it turns green. I’ll try to phone your sister if I have time.”

“Aufwiedersehen ... I love you ...”

“Me too ...”

He detected a tremor in her voice. Just sentimental ...

Scott lined them up over Fulda. They moved into the Southern corridor. Below the ground was lush and green with the coming of spring.

The interval was established for the 110-mile run to Berlin. For twenty minutes it was clear and smooth. Soon they would be under the control of Tempelhof radars.

His copilot, a likable young redhead a few months out of flying school, was on the yoke while Scott stretched. He looked over his shoulder to the flight engineer, another youngster ... and he missed Nick’s cigar smoke.

“Big Easy Fourteen calling all craft. Three Yaks at one o’clock.”

Scott took the yoke quickly. His copilot spotted them coming straight down the line. A hundred feet above them the Russians leveled off, ducked back into the clouds.

“They’re just clowning today,” Scott said on the intercom. “This is Big Easy One to all craft. Keep your interval. This is Big Easy One calling Tempelhof Airways. Are we under your radar control, over?”

“This is Tempelhof Airways. You are coming into Radar Control. Caution. There are twelve unidentified blips around your bloc.”

Scott frowned ... twelve ...

Omar Kum Dag was a rarity in the Red Air Force. He was one of the few flyers from Ashkabad in the distant Turkman Republic. His comrades considered him reckless. Kum Dag could be counted upon to take abnormal risks. His squadron leader was worried that he had a compulsion to either kill himself or prove himself because of his yellow skin and the constant teasing of the others.

They were not pleased when Kum Dag was assigned to the mission. After all, they were ordered only to have some harmless fun with the American birds.

“Look at that stupid son of a bitch doing a victory roll,” Scott snarled as Omar Kum Dag’s Yak zoomed and spiraled right in front of him.

The copilot was pale and unnerved. Scott gritted his teeth as the Russian dived perilously close again, now wishing for the first time he had the guns and speed to go after him. Fun was fun, but only a crazy man buzzed a defenseless craft like that.

The Russian captain leading the squadron admonished Kum Dag angrily as the Yak streaked up to the clouds and circled for another pass. He was ordered to quit, but Omar Kum Dag did not hear.

He was detached by the roar, the surge, the mania to come even closer so no one would ever again doubt his courage.

“This is Tempelhof calling Big Easy One. There’s a blip on your tail ...”

Hilde’s hair fell into her eyes as she flitted about the kitchen in that sort of furor she always generated while making a meal. She talked to herself, admonished herself for the lack of seasoning in the soup.

She stopped for a moment, wiped her hands, felt through her blouse, and touched the ring that lay between her breasts. It made her happy and she began to sing ... tonight she would love him and love him and love him.

Colonel Loveless closed the kitchen door behind him.

“What on earth are you doing home, Colonel? It is only three o’clock.”

The colonel looked deathly sick and he began to tremble as an unintelligible sound came out of his throat. Hilde dropped the plates from her hand.

“No!” she screamed.

“Oh God ...” Clint moaned. “Oh God ...”

“Scott! Scott!”

He gripped the writhing girl and held her until a blackness overcame her.

Chapter Forty

SPRINGTIME!

Ulrich Falkenstein had shepherded his people through the winter. He felt it proper now to respond to invitations and receive ovations for his people in Paris and London, New York and Washington.

In exactly four years after the last Russian cannon fired down the Unter Den Linden, the greatest paradox of the century had happened. Berlin had completely reversed its meaning in the eyes of the world. In the resurrection of 1949, a stunning series of events occurred that halted the Communist scourge on the European continent.

Western Europe, now infused with the blood of the Marshall Plan, staggered from its ruins and the despair was replaced by a dynamic new birth. The sound of building was heard again.

As the West took this new lease on life they declared that they would defend themselves from further Soviet outrage in unity. In this springtime of 1949, NATO, the common defense, was born as a son of the Truman Doctrine.

In the resurrection of 1949 a new German state of the three Western Zones was in the making. A constitution was drawn with mankind’s hope that a new kind of Germany would emerge.

The Soviet Union had failed. They had failed to stop the formation of a Western-oriented Germany; they had failed to drive the West from Berlin. The Airlift poured six and seven thousand tons of goods into Berlin every day. The pressure was off the West for negotiations for a settlement.

More generators were flown in and as the coal stocks grew the electrical capacity was raised. Raw materials were flown in and the acute job shortage began to ease.

The Airlift was now putting down tonnage equal to what the rails and highways had delivered before the blockade.

Consumer goods began to appear in dribbles: clothing, soap, bedding, books, radios, shoes, pots, pans. The B marks were replaced by the same Western currency used in the zones.

Those devils who used the threat of starvation were now finding themselves on the receiving end. The Western counterblockade staggered Soviet Berlin and Soviet Germany, creating havoc and turning the tables. Time, that ally which the Soviet Union used as a merciless tactic, now turned into a tactical enemy ... now it was they who wanted to make a peace.

Hiram Stonebraker ordered the Combined Airlift Task Force to create an all-out operational assault on every tonnage record with an elaborate plan. With weather promising, midnight of the day of April 16 was chosen as the start of the twenty-four-hour period. Woody Beaver seized upon the occasion to name it “The Easter Parade.”

At midnight the first blocs moved for Berlin from Y 80 and Fassberg with all other bases in ready.

M.J. and Hiram breakfasted at his usual hour of 0600. As he ate, he called the Control Center. His chief of staff was already there and reported everything had moved through the night on schedule.

Stonebraker quelled his anxiety. It would be a long day, the plan was daring, and he wasn’t sending in a single goddamned ounce of cheese.

“You know, M. J.,” he said in a rare show of nostalgia, “I signed the order yesterday taking the last Gooney Bird out of the Lift. I’ve been thinking about it. It’s a fine old ship. Maybe nowhere near as sophisticated as these new birds, but it knows all the tricks of the sky. When our backs were to the wall and it was needed ... it came through. They tell me the Gooney Birds will all be retired, but I’ll bet you that ten years from now in any air base in the world ... you’ll find a Gooney Bird.”

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

“BERLINERS! THE 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

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

“I’m glad you made the decision to bring this in,” he said.

“Sir ... I am guilty ...”

“Sean. These papers took a long time being processed at your desk. That is all there is to it.”

“Sir ...”

That is all there is to it, understand.”

“Not after what I did to another man for the same thing.”

“There are differences. You will refuse to recognize them now because of the punishment you are inflicting on yourself. I should like to know about Fraulein Falkenstein?”

“She sent me away.”

Hansen realized that the girl’s decision had come out of love for him to allow him to try to create some kind of normal life.

“I’m sorry, Sean.”

“Our wounds run too deep. I cannot make peace with the Germans. Erna and I ... tried to fool ourselves. No real peace can ever be made until we pass on and the new generation of Americans and Germans make it.”

“I’m afraid you’re right, Sean.”

“General, please help me get out of Germany.”

A PAUSE FOR REFLECTION

by Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury

West Berlin is delirious with victory. The Western world has won its first and only victory of the cold war.

In a year’s time, a quarter of a million flights into Berlin carried two and a half million tons of cargo flying over a half million miles.

It cost us a quarter of a billion dollars and seventy lives. This is cheap, as battles go. We gained immeasurable technical knowledge and this victory brought out the finest qualities of American courage and ingenuity.

We have renewed our bond with the British ally and we have found a new ally. In this first test, the Berliner was pure iron. But those among us who believe this is a final victory are fools. The Soviet Union has had its momentum halted by the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Airlift. The Kremlin is merely pausing to reflect.

The agreement ending the Berlin blockade, like all Soviet agreements, is useful to them for the moment. They have not changed an iota of the promise to devour the human race with communism.

The Soviet Union will catch its bearings and shop around for cheap victories. The West will be tested again and again.

In the end, the Soviet Union must always come back to Berlin, the scene of their defeat. As long as the West remains, the Soviet Union cannot consolidate her colonies behind closed doors and is faced with living with exposure of her way of life.

Already one sees the drab existence that lies in store for the Russian Zone of Germany, now contrasted by the surge in West Germany. The Kremlin cannot stand such public exposure and they must try to run us out of Berlin again and again. A battle is won. The war goes on.

The end of the Second World War saw the Russians, secluded for centuries, suddenly come out of their shell and pour beyond their borders.

I think it will take a long time for them to learn to live with the rest of the world and to learn that most of the human race has no desire to be made over in their image.

American determination must make new Russian victories come harder. Then will they look into their own house, cleanse their own ills and decide to join the family of man and let the world live in peace. Until the Soviet Union learns this, we are in for many hard years.

And what about the Germans?

The present generation would like to forget the Nazi era. Tough luck. They are bathed in the blood of thirty million dead. There is no way to cleanse themselves.

What of the German who swears he was not a Nazi?

Before we pass judgment on the Germans let me say that I have never found an American who has expressed personal guilt over the fact that we destroyed a people and their civilization in brutal indifference to gain the North American continent. And damned few feel guilt as Americans for the dropping of atomic weapons on undefended civilian cities.

Fewer still take personal responsibility for the fact that twenty million Americans live as second-class citizens in our country. While it is easy for us to see the faults in the Germans and the Russians, we most conveniently fail to see them in ourselves.

The Germans tell us that all men are inhuman. True. Nonetheless, when the final book on man’s inhumanity to man is written, the blackest chapter will be awarded to the German people in the Nazi era.

How about the coming generation of Germans? Are they to be held responsible for the sins of their fathers? Can a German boy be any more innocent than the Polish boy who must live with the scars inflicted by the German?

All of us are the sum total of our past. The Nazi era is part of the sum total of the heritage of unborn German generations. Yes, they are responsible.

The road to redemption is to face up to the truth of the past. Only the successful experience of a democracy will ever bring these people around.

The German citizen who has historically permitted himself to be politically ignorant must stop turning his “fate” over to the “father” who fills his lunch bucket.

There must be more to German political stature than a loaf of bread and making the best deal to survive. Already we hear complaints about the taxation to save Berlin. Yet, we must be skilled and patient and hope that by living with Americans some of it will rub off on them.

If there is ever to be a redemption of the German people, it began in Berlin.

Berliners boast that they are different. So do the people of Hamburg, Munich, and San Francisco. Which Berliners are different? The ones in the Western Sectors or those in the Soviet Sector?

We see too many fearsome signs of Nazi-like revivals across the Brandenburg Gate. The only difference is the color of the flag and the hammer and sickle replacing the swastika. All the rest is the same. They are, in fact a weak people who must lean upon someone else.

Some leaders in Berlin will tell you that Berlin has always been the heartstone of democratic German thought. It has a long tradition of labor and liberalism. This is true.

It is also true that it was the heartstone of Prussian militarism and the German General Staff that brought the world to such misery.

Other Berliners will tell you they were never Nazi. I saw the Hitler legions goose-step through the Brandenburg Gate past fanatical mobs of Berliners screaming “sieg heil.”

Giving the Berliner all the benefits of the doubt that they were still partly Nazi and I ask, “How much is being a little bit Nazi?”

Berliners will say they saw tyranny before and were quick to spot it again. When they did, they stopped it. This is a hard point to take issue with. Even professional German haters who may claim that Berlin stood because of terror of the Russians cannot answer why they decided to do this while expecting the West to quit the city.

We conclude: The people of Berlin have achieved a victory for democracy. This victory neither exonerates them nor pays the bill for their participation in Hitler’s Germany.

Berlin was the Nazi capital. Nothing can change that.

West Berlin has contributed more for the freedom of mankind than any people in the world since the end of the war. Nothing can change that fact, either.

When I asked a wise American general, “Will the German people change?” he answered me with the wisdom of all great men. He said, “Come back in twenty-five years and I’ll give you an answer.”

Chapter Forty-three

“ERNESTINE.”

“Yes, Uncle?”

“Can you take a little something to eat, child?”

“I am not hungry, Uncle.”

“You have just sat here day after day with almost no food or sleep. You will be very ill.”

“Please do not worry about me.”

“I must go to make a public appearance with General Hansen. Won’t you come with us?”

“I am tired, Uncle. I wish to stay.”

“Erna ... Hilde is coming back to Berlin today. She is flying home from Frankfurt. She will be with us tonight.”

“Hilde?”

“Hilde, your sister, will be here tonight.”

“How wonderful it will be to see her.”

“I hear the doorbell. It must be General Hansen’s aide.”

“Uncle ... why doesn’t Sean call me?”

“You must forget him. He flies away today.”

“Why didn’t he call to say good-by?”

“Erna ... he did call many times, but you would not talk to him.”

“Oh, yes ... yes ... I remember now.”

“The general’s aide is here. I must go now. Shall I open the curtain and let in some light?”

“No, I am more comfortable this way.”

“How is the girl?” General Hansen asked in the car.

“She is beyond sorrow. I will thank God when this day is over, knowing that her sister has returned. It will take a long time for her to get over this.”

“Herr Falkenstein ... please know, sir, that that boy is like a son to me. He tried beyond human limits. I swear that to you ... he tried.”

“My concern is not for him.”

The two old warriors drove off to meet their cheering publics. Through the hell they had survived together, they had formed a deep mutual admiration. Ulrich Falkenstein gave the general a copy of a law passed by the Berlin Assembly granting an education without cost at the Free University to every son and daughter of an American who died on the Air Bridge.

The presence of the American Commandant General Neal Hazzard set off a wild ovation by the crowd assembled before Tempelhof. His car was swamped. Neal was weary from drinking and celebrating in what must have been every German bar in the Western Sectors. As he shoved through, babies were thrust into his face to be kissed and he was embraced. Women grabbed his hand and kissed it. It could be said that no occupation governor in the world’s history was held in such esteem by those he had conquered.

He finally was able to get into the main building and found the office where Colonel O’Sullivan awaited departure. Sean, his mighty friend through battle after battle of nerves, was a shell of himself.

“Sean, are you going to be all right?”

“Why wouldn’t she say good-by to me ... why... why?”

Hiram Stonebraker’s personal Gooney Bird had been sent to take O’Sullivan to Frankfurt. An aide said the plane was in readiness.

“Can you make it?” Neal asked.

Sean nodded.

Beyond the building in the square the festivities were reaching a new pitch. They could hear an Army hand play “Stars and Stripes Forever.” They could hear the wild shouts and ovations of the Berliners.

Neal Hazzard walked slowly, supporting Sean. They entered the Gooney Bird. Neal waved the crew away. “The colonel has a virus. Stay away from him and let him rest.”

“Good-by, Sean,” Neal said. “God bless you.”

“So long, Neal,” he whispered.

A deafening roar burst anew from the crowd which had jammed into every possible space in the plaza before Tempelhof.

Oberburgermeister Ulrich Falkenstein had arrived with General Andrew Jackson Hansen.

Neal Hazzard pushed his way through the adoring mob to join them near the speaker’s stand, and when they saw him ascend the steps the hysteria of West Berlin burst anew. They ascended the steps together, waving to the multitudes.

“Falkenstein! Hansen! Hazzard!” a hundred thousand throats chanted. “Falkenstein! Hansen! Hazzard!”

For a terrifying second the three men stopped and looked at the sky as Tempelhof Tower cleared the Gooney Bird bearing Sean O’Sullivan.

The Gooney Bird passed above Ulrich Falkenstein’s flat. Ernestine watched it disappear and drew the curtain. She walked slowly into the kitchen, shut the door, pulled down the window, and drew the blind. She went to the stove, stood over it a second, her eyes transfixed on the gas jets. Her hand reached out and she turned them on. They hissed. Ernestine sat back in a chair as the smell reached her nostrils. She drank it in deliciously. And soon her eyelids grew heavy and she began to doze.

Judy Loveless held Hilde’s hands on a wooden bench at the Frankfurt Airport on the civilian side of Rhein/Main. Clint stood in front of them, his hands in his pockets. Tony imitated his father. Lynn sat on Hilde’s lap, sobbing.

“Hilde,” Judy said, “the offer to come and stay with us is always open. You know we mean it.”

Hilde smiled. “My father needs me. He has asked for me. It will be a terrible ordeal. And that foolish sister of mine went and lost her heart when I warned her not to.”

“And you, Hilde? What about your heart? Will you get over Scott?”

“We are two foolish sisters.”

“You must write to us.”

“I promise, Mrs. Loveless. Colonel, I am so glad you are going home.”

“Well,” he said, “Utah isn’t exactly home.”

“You and Mrs. Loveless will always have a home ... because there are the two of you.”

At the moment that life passed from Ernestine, her uncle stood before his people.

“Berliners,” he said, with a voice echoing over the mass, “we cannot express our gratitude by the mere naming of this place as the Airlift Plaza. We cannot tell what is in our hearts. The way we shall express our thanks to those American and British flyers who have given us freedom is to keep this city a fortress. I beg you now to all stand in silent reverence to those who have given their lives for Berlin.”

The Gooney Bird touched down at Rhein/Main. Colonel O’Sullivan was met and driven to the civilian side of the field where a MATS flight would return him to the States.

At that moment the loudspeaker called for German Nationals to board a Pan-Am flight to Berlin.

The scene around Hilde was filled with tears and embraces. When, at last, she was told she could delay no longer, she ran out a few steps and blew a kiss to the Loveless family.

Past the gate she was on the field. In her haste she did not see the American Army colonel coming in her direction.

They bumped together. The packages in Hilde’s arms tumbled to the ground and they both knelt instinctively to pick them up.

“I beg your pardon, fraulein,” Sean said.

“I am clumsy, it was my fault,” Hilde answered.

“Please let me help you.”

He fitted the packages into her arms. He put his fingers to his cap in a salute. “Aufwiedersehen, fraulein,” he said.

“Aufwiedersehen,” she answered.

The two of them went their separate ways.

A Note of Thanks

It is impossible to mention everyone who helped me on this project. Some of those who helped me behind the Iron Curtain cannot be mentioned by name. However, it would be impossible not to acknowledge others.

For their logistical support, my deepest gratitude is extended to: General Lucius B. Clay; Father of the Airlift, Lieutenant General William Tunner; and to my good and true friend, Brigadier General Frank Howley, who was Commandant of Berlin in those fearsome days.

I am indebted to the United States Air Force for unstinting cooperation. To Colonels James Hunter and “Dinny” Dinsmore, who set up the complicated German and American contacts, interviews, and itineraries; to Air Force Historian Joseph Tustin; Captain Lionel Patenaude, the PIO Officer, Tempelhof and Berlin; and my pal Lieutenant Colonel William G. Thompson, who traveled with me throughout Germany and later guided me through the Airlift and flying phases of the writing.