Armageddon

Blessing had also worked in the build-up of a system of spies and informants, for the facts of life demanded quick, accurate intelligence. Dozens of volunteers had buried themselves in the ranks of the Communist Party and even became Action Squad members for the purpose of keeping American Headquarters informed of moves.

That is how he knew that the talk of Mongol troops was true and their presence outside Berlin deliberate.

Blessing was among those Western officers singled out for abuse over People’s Radio, which described him as a strikebreaker, lyncher, and fascist bully in the tradition of the Storm Troopers. He came in for cartoon treatment in their papers, which depicted him as obese, stubble-bearded, fanged, clawed, drooling, hairy.

His answer to the last attack was to take Lil and the two boys to the Russian Sector and have a Sunday picnic on the Müggel Lake.

He lowered the volume on the radio as Gil Hodges took a called third strike. “What are the girls gossiping about these days?”

“Usual PX talk. Who’s sleeping with who. Who’s drinking too much.”

“What do they say about the situation here?”

Lil shrugged, feigned innocence. “Not too much. Bless, that sure is a nice girl Sean has. We got to have them come to dinner again soon.”

“Come on, Lil. What’s the talk?”

She dropped the ball of wool, lit a cigarette, and glared at him with that expression that said he was acting like a cop. They’re all scared to death.”

“You?”

“I know we can’t leave. I’m trying as best I can not to show it to the kids.”

“And the rest of the girls. They want to leave?”

“Stop grilling me.”

“We got to know.”

“Well, a dozen I know of, maybe more, have asked to be evacuated.”

“If they start to move out, every dependent in the garrison will want out, except Agnes Hansen and Claire Hazzard.”

The phone interrupted them.

“Blessing,” he said.

“Hardy,” a Constabulary officer said, “better get over here right away.”

“What’s up?”

“Tide’s coming in tomorrow. We’re going to have to send out the fishing boats.”

Bless turned his back to Lil to get a grip on himself before he set the phone down, but she saw the receiver wet with perspiration.

“Honey, rig me up a thermos of coffee and a couple sandwiches. I got a little extra duty.”

He left the room quickly to dress.

She had seen him react this way too many times not to know there was danger. In a few moments he returned, strapping on his duty belt and checking his pistol. He slipped his MP arm band on, she handed him the white Constabulary helmet and a lunch bucket.

“Keep the boys home from school tomorrow and stay in the house.”

“Tell me.”

“You can’t communicate this to anyone, Lil. The Commies are going to try a Putsch in the morning.”

“How serious is it?”

“There is a pistol in my closet in the inside pocket of my winter coat. I don’t want you and the kids to be taken alive.”

Chapter Four

FOR SEVERAL DAYS INFORMERS WORKING inside the Russian and Communist groups had alerted the Americans that they were brewing a “workers’ Putsch.”

The logical time to try it would be early in the morning during rush hour when the trains exchanged populations from sector to sector. The Communists first would infiltrate organizers who would move to key points in the Western boroughs.

The leaders would be followed by Action Squads, armed with concealed clubs, knives, stones, bottle bombs, and small arms, who would be loaded on the underground and elevated trains from various points, cross into the Western boroughs where their leaders would be waiting at the town halls, the power plant, radio transmitter, RIAS, and key factories. When they reassembled they would begin riots and seize their locations.

The plan was to create chaos in several dozen places and force the West to commit its garrisons to restore order. Then a second wave of Communists would cross over in trucks and grab dozens of new targets. This follow-up group would include Soviet soldiers and Schatz’s SND police dressed as civilians. By now, the West would be spread too thin to cope with the new mayhem.

At this point, General Trepovitch would offer to send in his troops from the outskirts of the city provided the Western troops agreed to return to their barracks. Tempelhof and Gatow airdromes were the prime targets and would be closed due to “technical difficulties.”

With the West in their barracks, the Russians would “in fact” control the entire city in a bloodless coup.

The propaganda organs would then leap into action and explain that the workers, tired of Western imperialism and unemployment, had rebelled. Only the benevolence of the Soviet Union prevented a blood bath.

0515. Putsch day.

Blessing’s breath darted out, evaporated in the morning chill as his driver, Danny Sterling, pulled up to the Kreuzberg Town Hall where a temporary command post had been established in the foyer.

The Borough of Kreuzberg lay directly across from Mitte Borough in the Russian Sector where a series of rail lines would exchange the heaviest traffic.

Blessing had checked his subway and elevated stations, which were due to take the first shock of the Putsch. It was deceptively calm.

Deputy Police President Hans Kronbach, who had quietly built a force loyal to the Magistrat, made his decision earlier to commit them. They were staked out along with the newly trained Order Companies to spot Communist leaders.

The Constabulary under Blessing would act as a mobile force. In the Russian Sector, dozens of American informers were in Mitte, Pankow, Friedrichshain, Treptow, for the purpose of watching for Communist movement.

The final back-up force was the regular garrison under Colonel Mark Parrott with headquarters at Tempelhof and all troops poised to move to trouble spots.

Blessing stepped outside the Kreuzberg Town Hall, uncapped the thermos jug, sipped some coffee, and offered some to his driver. The street was gray and quiet with only the first small sounds of the day, wheels on the pavement, a pair of angry hungry cats.

He walked over to Victoria Park, where a group of police were hidden, and spoke a few words to the German officer. The quiet made him restless. He got into the jeep and told Danny to drive him toward the major subway and elevated transfer point on the Yorck Strasse. It was 0545. If their information was correct, the Communists would be coming soon. Bless tuned in on the British and French frequencies and heard them checking in. They stopped at Yorck Strasse and waited. 0600.

The sound of wheels on steel rails humming in the distance from the direction of the Russian Sector grew louder and louder. The train leaped into view with a smell of brakes as it screeched to a halt. The doors opened and the first rush of morning passengers exploded onto the platform.

Four known Communists were buried in their number to take up a position at the Kreuzberg Town Hall. At the foot of the steps they were spotted by a member of an Order Company.

Four American Constabulary walked quietly alongside each, snapped on handcuffs, and walked them away quickly and efficiently toward a holding station. One of the Communists began to protest. The soldier locked his arm with a billy club and pressured so that it would break. The Communist became quiet.

Blessing picked up the microphone in the jeep. “This is Sportsfisher One calling all piers. The tide is coming in. How is fishing in your area?”

“Hello Sportsfisher One, this is Redondo,” the squad at Moritz Platz subway radioed back. “One small sand shark.”

“Sportsfisher One, this is Venice Pier,” Koch Strasse detachment called, “the tide is coming in fast but no fish yet.”

‘This is Long Beach Pier calling Sportsfisher One,” called the key complex of Anhalter Banhof, with its numerous exchange points and masses of movement in proximity to the Russian Sector. “We picked up two sand sharks, three blues of about sixty pounds, and a man-eater.”

“This is Sportsfisher One calling Long Beach. Are they hitting hard?”

“This is Long Beach. No, they’re kind of sluggish. We reeled them in easy.”

The pattern was beginning to open. Blessing listened to the British and French frequencies again. All along the line Communist leaders were getting picked up as they departed the trains.

“This is Santa Monica Pier,” called Grozgorschen Strasse elevated. “Couple of big blues hanging around right here. I think they’re waiting for the school of mackerel.”

Bless returned to his command post at Kreuzberg and phoned over a direct line to Colonel Parrott at Tempelhof. In the first fifty minutes they had snagged some seventy Communist agitators.

At Potsdamer Platz, the key exchange point, the first school of mackerel, an Action Squad, was bagged.

A Joint Command in the British Sector assessed the information. By 0620 three hundred known agitators and Action Squad members with no explainable business in the Western Sectors had been spotted and swept up in quick, sure movement.

At 0702, two railcars containing the largest load yet, three hundred Action Squad people, moved for the destination of Beussels Strasse elevated, where they were to disperse for the joint targets of the power plant, the Plötzensee Prison, and the West Harbor. A tip-off came ahead of them and they walked off the train into a mixed company of French and British soldiers with fixed bayonets.

By this time the Russian monitors smelled a Western trap and this was confirmed by the fact that none of their leaders had reported back to Putsch headquarters. And then a frantic call came to Schatz by one Communist who had slipped the Western net after seeing his comrades rounded up.

“They were waiting for us!”

A nausea-wracked, trembling Adolph Schatz phoned Soviet Headquarters and cried, “We have been betrayed!”

Trepovitch tried to head off the disaster of sending more people in. At this rate the West could deplete their loyal core of Communist strength in an hour and it would take weeks, if not months, to build up for another try. He branded Schatz as an incompetent German lout, called off the attempt, and shouted that he was surrounded by spies.

Brigadier General Neal Hazzard entered the mess hall of the Staff NCO Club and the 250 officers and men came to attention. He asked them to be seated and told the guard to shut the door.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Hazzard said. “Fifty of you people have requested to evacuate your families. I have asked the rest of you here so as not to identify and embarrass the others. Here’s the score. When General Hansen left for Washington we told him we’d be here when he got back.

“By that I mean the United States would be in Berlin. In this garrison, the United States of America particularly means our wives and children. For the next two weeks no request for transportation out of Berlin will be acted upon ... as my old friend Trepovitch would say ... for technical reasons.”

A murmur of puzzlement greeted his terse announcement.

“To walk out of here with our tails between our legs would be giving aid and comfort to the enemy and would make a spectacle of our country. This garrison stays ... men ... women ... children.”

Chapter Five

THE MEETING OF THE NATIONAL Security Council was going badly against General Hansen. The President, for the most part, listened to the divergent arguments, interrupting only now and then for a sharp question.

The room housed a glitter of silver stars and braid of admirals and their banks of ribbons to attest to bravery. These were the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Secretary of Defense was there; the Secretary of State was there; the Secretary of the Treasury was there with the Vice President and the ambassador to the Kremlin. Behind them sat their experts and planners.

The forces seeking accommodation, settlement, compromise, appeasement had built an insurmountable case. The State Department had treated the Berlin blockade as an accomplished Soviet victory and sought ways to get off the hook with the least loss of face.

“The B marks have to be withdrawn from Berlin.”

“Throw the matter open to the United Nations while attempting to make a direct political settlement with the Russians.”

Practical men from the Pentagon with slide rules and charts had their turn.

“Berlin is dead weight. The city not only has to import food, but it has to import raw material to keep its industrial complex functioning. As a former national capital the city has tens of thousands of former government employees with no new means of support. Berlin has 300,000 pensioners.”

“Berlin is still in ruin.”

“Berlin cannot be saved.”

“Mr. President. I do not believe anyone can make a determination of how long we would have to be committed. General Hansen speaks in terms of forty-five to sixty days, but suppose it has to go longer. It could well run into months.”

“We have been unable to draw up a cost estimate, but it will run millions a day. The Soviet Union might deliberately keep the blockade going in an effort to bankrupt our economy.”

“Berlin cannot be defended. It is entirely indefensible.”

The generals gave their opinions on the condition of the defense establishment. The country could not call up enough reserve to deter the Kremlin’s planning. Hansen’s own commander, Billy Crossfield, had told him the same thing.

“Sure, we could send an armored convoy up the autobahn, but it is a calculated risk that could mean total war. Suppose the Russians did make a challenge or suppose the closeness of the situation made them fire by accident. Our forces would be swamped.”

“Mr. President. It is suicide to put all of our air transport capability into supplying Berlin. It simply makes us too vulnerable to pressure everywhere else in the world.”

“Mr. President. I do not believe it is possible to supply Berlin from the air, not even for the forty-five days General Hansen desires.”

The ambassador to the Kremlin reported complete frustration in attempts to see Stalin or Molotov, much less pin them down to a meeting.

General Hansen was not without his champions. Hardline men demanded action, but they spoke more out of pride and anger, for on this day practical men brought home the unpleasant facts of life.

“General Hansen,” the President said, “I think we should wrap up this meeting. Is there any more you believe we ought to know?”

Andrew Jackson Hansen studied the room. They were all there. Friends and a few adversaries of three decades. They were hard-nosed, brilliant, dedicated men and he was beaten, for this was not a situation that could be solved with logic. How could one convince wise men to go against the grain of their knowledge?

Yet, there had to be a flicker of hope, for in the final analysis it was not a joint decision, but that of the lone man at the end of the table, the President. He would have to weigh and decide on the words of the day after his captains departed. He was an earthy man, the President, and he was strong on the issue of stopping communism. He was ahead of his countrymen, his diplomats, his Congress, and even some of his military.

There was little room spared in the pages of glory for a general whose fate or talent kept him from the romance of a combat command, the utterance of a salty slogan under enemy fire, or the drawing of a gory wound; but Andrew Jackson Hansen believed, and he placed those beliefs on the line now. The general was pale and watery-eyed from a persistent cold. His chest was heavy from four days of argument at conference tables.

“Mr. President,” he began hoarsely, “gentlemen. A few years ago we concluded a war with the naive hope that an accommodation could be achieved with the Soviet Union to bring us a lasting peace. I shall not insult the intelligence of this distinguished body by a recounting of tragic errors made ... not by you and me alone ... but by the temper of the American people. We know that all that has prevented total collapse has been that thin, thin line of British and American troops on the European continent.”

An uncomfortable fidgeting began around the table from those who had followed the line of try to reason with the Soviet Union.

“If there is one lesson we should have learned it is that the Soviet Union looks upon diplomacy as merely another means of waging war. They do not come to the conference table to seek peace or solutions ... they come to seek victories.

“The blockade of Berlin is designed to force this country to negotiate under pressure.”

He left his chair, walked down the length of the table so that he stood at the opposite end of the table from the President and the eyes of every man could be seen by him. His voice grew more harsh and slower and the room was awesomely silent.

“What are the objectives of the Soviet Union? Above all to prevent us from the formation of a democratic Germany, but if they accept that as an accomplished fact, they fall back to the second goal of ejecting us from Berlin.

“Germany’s only chance of being rebuilt along democratic lines and our only chance of converting her into an ally is possible only as long as the United States stands behind her. And who, who will trust the United States after we leave Berlin? Who in Europe and Asia will believe that the United States will not abandon them too? And, gentlemen, I ask you ... will we believe ourselves?

“Lenin said, give me the currency and I will control the nation. Take the B marks out of Berlin and we have lost Berlin! But is the currency or even the formation of a democratic Germany the true issue? It is not.” His voice quivered.

“The Soviet Union will engage us in a war for one reason and one reason alone ... because they think they can win. Do you think they need a currency issue? They’ll invent any damned issue that will please them when they feel the time is ripe.

“Gentlemen. Mr. President. We have fought two wars against the German people in our lifetime. I know some of you here who have lost sons. And God knows there is no love of Germany from me. Yet, we find ourselves in this alliance and the man and the woman in Berlin shows us he is made of remarkable stuff.”

Hansen’s fist pounded the polished oak.

“Contrary to every evaluation made here today I flatly state that the people of Berlin will not crack.” And his voice fell to a whisper.

“We have been told that this city cannot be supplied or saved or defended. I say that it is not expendable. Have we lost the imagination, the skill, the guts that has made our nation perform two centuries of miracles? Are we too content to defend ourselves? Have we lost faith in ourselves?

“You speak of costs, gentlemen. Has anyone calculated the cost to our coming generations if Europe is lost?

“If we leave Berlin, the Soviet Union is then free to consolidate its empire behind a closed border. As long as we retain our outpost in Berlin, communism can never consolidate.

“We cannot abandon the one place on this planet where we hold an offensive position.

“This is no ordinary city. Berlin ... is our Armageddon.”

Hansen leaned forward, his knuckles pressed against the table and turned white. He looked now at the President alone. “In the name of God, Mr. President, the future of freedom on this earth requires our presence.”

The full misery of Hansen’s cold crashed down on him with the feeling that his mission had failed. He returned to his hotel, the Hay-Adams, and received a score of old comrades rather listlessly.

Those who had attended the meeting tried to buck him up, but he hadn’t the spirit for it. The repeated specter of the national apathy that preceded the war had come back to haunt the military. The country was a fat cow riding a postwar boom and things over there just did not matter.

By evening his aide insisted that he accept no more visitors and take no more calls, but get into bed and send for a doctor. Hansen growled against medical attendance, ate a bowl of hot chowder, had tea spiked with brandy, then sat in the greatest dejection of his life staring at the White House just over the way. He sat alone recounting the past four days.

What had gone wrong? He blamed himself for failure to bring home the truth. There was small solace that the man in the White House now wrestled with this problem.

Beyond the White House jutted the illuminated obelisk pointed skyward in memory of George Washington, and past that the circle of lights and airplanes taking off and landing in quick succession at the Washington National Airport on the river. He did not believe he could ever see an airplane again without thinking of Tempelhof.

Weariness overtook him. He dozed in his chair.

He did not know how long he slept, but when he was awakened by the phone it was dark outside. He squinted at his watch. It was three in the morning. He was certain his phones had been shut off by his aide.

“Hello,” he rasped.

“General Hansen?”

“Speaking.”

“Sorry to disturb you at this hour, but the President would like to talk to you.”

Hansen looked out of the window again and drew an image of the Chief.

“General, how’s that cold of yours?”

“I’ll live, sir.”

“I’ve sent a couple bottles of Jack Daniels over to your hotel. Best thing in the world. Take a couple of stiff belts before you go back to sleep. I’ll send a doctor over to see you in the morning.”

He was about to spout that he didn’t want a doctor, but thought better of it

“General, I’m going to send you those Skymasters you want. You get back to Berlin and tell those people we intend to stick by our word.”

A long grateful silence followed.

“It is going to take a little time to convince everybody here, but you just leave that to me. You can depend on the first squadrons arriving within the week. Now, what else do you need?”

“I’d like General Stonebraker recalled.”

“It has my approval.”

“Good. I’ll leave for California in the morning to see him.”

“Give him my best and get over that cold.”

By the next morning Hansen had made a remarkable recovery. His aide had his plane stand by at the MATS terminal and as he flew out for Los Angeles to see Hiram Stonebraker, the Defense Department announced that Skymasters would be on the way to Germany shortly.

More B-29’s marked for less peaceful missions touched down on British airfields loaded with A-bombs as Operation Top Hat was put into effect.

And then the British Parliament was stunned by a couple of fiery speeches by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. In cold anger seldom heard in the ancient Commons, the British lion, minus a few of the old teeth but none the less still potent, said bluntly that tampering with British rights in Berlin meant war.

This powerful reaction from the West gave the Kremlin reason to re-evaluate. The Russian troops in Berlin suddenly melted away and with open-armed benevolence for the “sake of world peace,” they invited Western missions to come to Moscow and talk over a Berlin settlement.

Chapter Six

A STAFF CAR DROVE Hansen between a pair of whitewashed brick pillars, down a gravel-top road that was flanked by young hedge and bisected an orange grove, and continued to a bluff that hovered above the Pacific Ocean. Along the bluff rambled a California Spanish-style house.

When Hiram and Martha Jane Stonebraker greeted him, he thought how wonderful they both looked. Deep healthy tans had erased the signs of fatigue that came with the constant pressure of duty.

They showed him around the layout with obvious pride. The Stonebrakers had four acres which ran from the highway to the bluff and included a beach below. The land held an orchard, a small corral with horses for the general and visiting children and grandchildren, and an extensive garden for Martha Jane. It was located near the Ventura County line at the end of Malibu strip. The Malibu movie colony was fifteen miles away with only a few ranches between them and the nearest settlement.

Hansen saw it all with a twinge of envy. He and Agnes had never known this kind of peace and he wondered if such a place was ever in the cards for them. He had misgivings for his mission of taking Crusty away from it.

Hours were needed to fill each other in on old comrades and the situation in Germany. They sat the afternoon out on a patio which stood at the far edge of the bluff where it sloped gently to the shore and was covered with a wild array of multicolored pelargoniums. The tide was out and they could see the rock-filled surf surging ever so gently.

As the sun moved behind them, M.J. brought cocktails and sweaters so they could enjoy the last sharp contrast of sea and sky.

“How do the days go here?”

“I take a horseback ride on the beach every morning, summer and winter, check out the orchard and stable. And ... I’ve got a bit of correspondence and a lot of reading.”

“Ever get a yearning to be back in harness?”

“Hell no. Chip, I made more money last year as an advisor to private industry than I ever made in uniform in a year. Seems I know a thing or two after all. I have been invited to sit on the board of two airlines to develop their freight services ... if I wanted to work that hard.”

“It’s good to see you like this.”

“It took a long long time to get here and it’s only for a short stay.”

The light failed and the breeze became stiffer. They walked toward the house. “I’ve got a boat at the cove about five miles down the highway. Let’s go fishing tomorrow.”

During dinner, Hansen continued to avoid the purpose of the visit. M.J. was suspicious and sent out a number of indirect questions.

After dinner, the two men settled in Crusty’s study. The room was filled with mementoes of the Hump and photographs and gifts of presidents and kings and grandchildren.

“Okay, Chip, let’s have it.”

“I brought some papers with me that I want you to study and give an opinion on.”

“About this Berlin situation?”

He nodded. “We are committing ourselves to supply Berlin by air.”

“For how long?”

“Long enough to take the pressure off negotiations. Forty-five days ... sixty. Talks are starting in Moscow next week and it could end sooner than that.”

“And if negotiations collapse?”

“We will have to supply the Western Sectors indefinitely.”

Crusty Stonebraker, who once insisted on air corridors to Berlin, showed no sign of emotion. The reports would reveal the situation accurately. “I’d better get started reading.”

Hansen could see from his bedroom across the patio to Crusty Stonebraker’s study. The light burned until very late and on several occasions Crusty paced the patio bundled up in an old flying jacket looking out to the sea as if hoping to find mystical answers coming in with the tide.

Breakfast the next morning was in silence. Crusty grunted through the meal and said, “Let’s go fishing.”

They drove in a jeep down the highway and turned off onto a eucalyptus-lined road that ran down to the ocean. The sun was trying to force its way through the morning fog as they parked at the foot of a long wooden pier.

The Betty-Lee, a rock-cod sportsfishing boat, was just pulling away filled with half-asleep anglers.

Crusty grabbed the tackle box and poles and they walked down the pier to the bait shop.

“Morning, General.”

“Morning, Bob. Where are they hitting?”

“You can jig or troll for bonita.”

“Got a freezerful waiting to be smoked.”

“Yesterday the half-day boat came in with a dozen good size halibut at Trancas and the bass were going crazy right in front of your place. I’ll run you out to your boat.”

They took the stairs that ran down the pilings to a floating platform dock and got into the skiff and putted out to where the M.J., a practical and stout twenty-six-foot cabin cruiser, was moored.

The dock hand helped pull the canvas cover back, held the skiff fast while the two men transferred, and pulled away calling, “I’ll wait for you at the bait receiver, General.”

Crusty went about the business of blowing out the bilge, checking the hose fittings and levels, starting, warming up, connecting the live-bait tank. The M.J. showed that its owner was obviously a man of great knowledge in the science of the proper use of space.

Hansen cast off the painter and Stonebraker pulled alongside the bait receiver, handling the boat with the sure touch of an old barnstorming pilot. They took on a scoop of anchovies and headed out of Paradise Cove.

Chip Hansen fixed the poles with halibut leaders as they turned Point Dume, ran up the coast awhile, and began a drift on the edge of the kelp beds.

They sat with their lines in the water for several moments. Crusty pulled in a calico bass, put it into the gunny sack, and studied the horizon. The water was warming up. Soon the albacore and yellow tail would be running near Catalina.

His wife had become quite a fisherwoman in the past three years. They had been looking forward all winter and spring to trips to Catalina and the Channel Islands.

“Well,” Chip broke the silence, “you read it?”

“I read it”

“It can be done, then. We can supply Berlin by air.”

Crusty Stonebraker did not answer.

“Well, what do you think?” Hansen asked.

Crusty stared at his old friend. “I think you’re out of your friggin’ mind.”

Hansen handed Stonebraker his orders from the President recalling him to active duty. He said he knew Crusty all along would do it and told him a plane and crew were at his disposal.

“I’m going to have to have my own people and I don’t want any interference.”

“You’ve worked with Barney Root. He’s a good troop and all for you. The President has given this mission top priority and I’ll damned well back you up.”

“Chip, I’ll do my best to hold things together, but you’ve got to make a political settlement or we’re going to fall flat on our ass.”

“Have you told M.J.?”

“She smelled a rat the minute you phoned from Washington. I’ll follow you to Germany in a couple of days. I’ve already prepared a list of people I want transferred to Wiesbaden. I want to stop off in New York and see if I can get a particular man for production control... and I’ve got to call my daughter-in-law and see if she can come out and keep this place running.”

That same day Crusty gave instructions to his lawyer and went over everything with the maintenance couple. He was in his study going through the last of his papers.

Chip Hansen sat in the kitchen with M.J. grabbing a sandwich, and avoiding her eyes, for she was frightened and on tenterhooks.

“Isn’t there someone else?” she blurted.

Chip saw her on the brink of tears.

“No one in the world knows more about air transport than Crusty. We have our backs to the wall.”

She sat opposite him, gripped his wrist. “He has a heart condition, Chip.”

“I know. I hope you can get to Germany as soon as possible and take care of him.”

She got up and tried to work at the sink. He gave up on eating his sandwich. They could hear the car coming down the road.

“Chip, I don’t blame you. Don’t make this your responsibility. You’ve got enough to think about. Anyone in your place would have come for his help and he would have agreed.”

“Thanks, M.J.”

“All right,” Crusty Stonebraker bellowed, “let’s get the goddamned show on the road.”

The driver loaded their bags.

Hiram Stonebraker pushed out his leathery face, looked around the corral and the orchard, and for a long time at the sea. “Don’t worry, M.J.,” he said, “we’ll clean up this mess in two months and we’ll be back here when the yellow tail begin to hit.”

Chapter Seven

CLINTON LOVELESS’S SWIVEL-HIPPED SECRETARY entered his office. “General Stonebraker has arrived,” she said.

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

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

“Hello, Clint.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“About what?”

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

“Lovable old codger,” Pudge wheezed.

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

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

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

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

“Check.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Sounds interesting.”

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

“I guess I follow you.”

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

En route Clint continued his dissertation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clinton Loveless looked as though he had been struck.

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

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

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

“Then you’re happy?”

“What makes you think otherwise?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re going to bring over C-54’s.”

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

“We don’t know yet, for sure.”

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

“I don’t know that, either.”

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

“I can’t answer that either, Clint.”

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

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

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

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

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

“We need you, Clint.”

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

“They can spare you for a few months.”

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

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

“And I’m not going any place but up.”

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

Chapter Eight

THE FOURTH OF JULY was celebrated in the American Sector and elsewhere in Western Berlin with exchanges of oratory and promises of mutual loyalty. There were modest picnics, small parades, and sports contests.

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

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

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

The woman was obviously shaken as she told her story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hanna Kirchner summoned Adolph Schatz into her office in the Magistrat.

In the presence of the department heads of the Magistrat and the leaders of the Assembly she addressed the tormentor of Berlin.

“I accuse you of collaboration with the Soviet Union against the people of Berlin by police brutality, by the hiring of ex-Nazis, by the use of political terror through your so-called SND and for participation in the ‘workers’ Putsch.’

“Yesterday, you attempted to fire five hundred policemen because they are members of free parties. You will either answer these charges here and now satisfactorily or you are discharged as president of police.”

Adolph Schatz, a bully all of his life, blinked with disbelief at the little woman behind the big desk. He growled that all of them would regret it and stormed from the place beelining for Soviet Headquarters.

Trepovitch naturally denounced the Magistrat action as “illegal.”

At the same time People’s Radio ridiculed the move, Hans Kronbach entered RIAS. Adolph Schatz’s forte was political terror. He was neither a good organizer nor an efficient administrator. While his strong-armed squads ran rampant for three years, Hans Kronbach had constructed an excellent police force predominantly loyal to the Magistrat.

Hans Kronbach as the new police president issued an order for all police to report to the Western Sector. The next morning 90 per cent of the Berlin force crossed over to where Hans Kronbach established a new office.

Adolph Schatz had outlived his usefulness, but for the sake of saving Russian face he continued to run a police force in the Russian Sector. Berlin now had two police forces.

This was the first break within the city government but there were more to come as department after department underwent merciless harassment. The Germans, now finding safe haven, fled to the West.

The British returned to the people of Berlin their Victory Column commemorating the Bismarck Wars.

The United States redesigned the eagle at Tempelhof as an American eagle and set it atop the building.

Trepovitch said that this was all a return to militarism and in the same breath announced there would be no more midday meals for workers from the West in the Russian Sector.

At the Tempelhof elevated station, throngs gathered each day to watch the Gooney Birds take off and land.

Dozens of men were gathering in Wiesbaden from all over the world wearing the China/ Burma/ India Theater of War arm patches and waiting for the arrival of the boss, Major General Hiram Stonebraker.

Although the first load of coal had been dramatically flown into Berlin, the situation was desperate. The Gooney Birds were weary beyond weariness and so were the crews. Rain leaked into their cabins and there wasn’t so much as a spare windshield wiper left in Europe.

Chapter Nine

CLINT LAY ON THE BED with his back propped up sipping a martini and watching Judy dress. It was a repeat performance of a ten-year ritual that neither of them seemed to tire of. Judy had a rounded voluptuous body, soft without being fat. She always sat before the mirror putting on her face without a bra because she knew Clint liked to look at her. When she finally did slip into the bra, it was the signal for him to begin shaving and showering as the timing would work out for both of them to be dressed at the same time.

Clint reached to the nightstand, grasped the martini pitcher, swirled it, drained out another half glass.

“Who are we?” he intoned abstractedly.

“Sweet people on the high road to becoming sweet rich people.”

“We are perverters of the American dream. We prostitute for the worthless products of a flabby society.”

“That nasty old man must have upset you, lover. You haven’t been yourself all week.”

“That nasty old man is Hiram Stonebraker, humanitarian. He handed me a mirror and said, look at you, Clinton Loveless. Will the American people pull through with white toilet paper? Will womanhood survive with the old, gray telltale boxes?”

Judy slipped into her bra delicately and glanced into the mirror. Clint wasn’t even looking.

“It’s that thing in Germany with all the airplanes.”

“Yes ... that ... thing.”

“I don’t know that I’m in favor of spending tens of millions feeding Nazis. What for? Another war?” She opened her closet. “Clint, start shaving. We’ll be late for dinner.”

“Who are we?”

Judy went to him, rumpled his hair, lifted his legs, and put them on the floor. “We’ll ditch Milt and Laura early and get back and make love like animals.”

Clint stretched and walked into the bathroom.

“I’ll put the children down,” she said putting on a robe.

Clinton and Judy Loveless met Laura and Milton Schuster in the lobby of the restaurant. Clint and Milt shook hands; Judy and Laura bussed cheeks and each said, “Darling how lovely you look,” or words to that effect and Milt said, “Let’s have a drink.” He had come straight from the office and was in need.

The restaurant was noisy. The meal was smothered in sauce. The four of them sat side by side along the wall with other fashionable New Yorkers ... like sides of beef in a butcher shop window.

Milt Schuster was a pale, articulate lawyer in one of the big ad agencies and as a matter of company and personal policy gave his dissertation on “that idiot in the White House.”

Clint didn’t know about that. He thought Harry Truman was doing a hell of a job both feeding the world and keeping it from moral collapse. American prestige had never been so high. However, he did not wish to intrude on Milt Schuster’s soliloquy because it wouldn’t change Milt’s mind anyhow.

Laura began chattering about an Italian film by a newly acclaimed genius, Dino Massavelli. “The picture has such honesty, such realism ... so earthy. Why can’t Hollywood make such films?”

“Because it would bore the crap out of people,” Clint said. “Laura, you liked that picture because it showed a couple of Dagos pissing in an alley and the leading lady refused to shave her armpits. Otherwise no one, including Dino Massavelli, had the slightest idea what the picture was about.”

Milt Schuster said that business was on the skids because of the bureaucracy in Washington. Laura said they simply must see the Cuban-African Dance Group at Town Hall. Clint knew she got kicks from it because of a half-dozen six-foot Negroes built like there was no tomorrow, muscles glistening in their own sweat. Looking at Milt, who could blame her? They had to gobble down the last course because it was getting close to curtain time.

The check came to $61.00, which never failed to hit Clint like a kidney punch. He greased his way out of the place passing the bulwark of captain, maitre d’, check-room attendant, wash-room attendant, and a frantic doorman who blew his whistle desperately for a taxi that never came.

It was only six blocks to the theater ... let’s walk it. They galloped off at a half trot. Fortunately the curtain was fashionably late. They were forced to split up because seats were hard to get, even at fifteen bucks apiece. As was the custom, Clint drew Laura Schuster.

The theater was another of those New York atrocities, an ancient firetrap that seemed to have been constructed for the discomfort of the audience.

The play was a ridiculous bore from six minutes after the first curtain. A grand old team, who were once fine performers, went through the motions and would continue to do so as long as smart New Yorkers plunked down fifteen bucks a ticket.

By the second act Clint had hypnotized himself into complete detachment. His mind was on airplanes flying and landing in rhythm, unloading, pouring life blood into a city of two million human beings. Clint had thought of little else since General Stonebraker had come and gone.

He thought of writing to the general to give him some ideas on the removal of long-range navigation equipment which wouldn’t be needed on the short hauls and the removal of other compartments which, with proper loading, could increase each pay load by a ton in a Skymaster.

What the hell, Clint thought, Stonebraker’s staff will think of these things. Goddam, they’d all be there ... Perry Sindlinger, Matt Beck, Sid Swing, Pancho, Lou Edmonds ... what a wild-assed bunch of reprobates.... The bubble burst with a merciful final curtain.

The narrow, dirty street was swarmed with a sudden outpour of humanity from other drafty, uncomfortable theaters. They wrestled with the usual indecision of how to round out the evening. Judy suggested a chanteuse and combo at one of those East Side cabarets, also constructed for human torture with postage-stamp-sized tables.

Laura Schuster thought maybe that clever, clever little review at the Side Alley. She knew Milt would like it because it ripped the hell out of the Truman family. Laura also suggested a screamingly funny singer down in the village who was on the brink of being closed because of obscene lyrics. “He’s so witty,” Laura explained.

Milt Schuster suggested they go to Sardi’s because Milt didn’t have much imagination and Sardi’s was the traditional place to go.

Clint envisioned further discomfort and mob scenes and preposterous tabs.

They joined the new flock of sheep converging on Sardi’s, waited for forty minutes, and after proper apologies from a profusely perspiring headwaiter they were seated against the wall.

“The play was utterly divine,” Laura Schuster said.

Milt thought it had its moments.

Judy said there was still a lot of magic in the team of Hunt and Martin.

“The play was unadultered crap,” Clint said. They tittered because Clint was in one of his cleverly candid moods. “This evening cost us a bill ... one hundred dollars to eat garbage and sit on planks to hear a crusty old fart mumble lines completely without conviction. Clara Martin has a grandson in Princeton. I resent a talentless playwright telling me she is a desirable mistress. And I am about ready to throw up listening to you three literate people justifying this crap.”

They grinned at him sickly.

“Tomorrow night we may debase ourselves by going to a comfortable neighborhood theater and for two bucks watch a great movie, but God almighty, we have to rip it apart because it was made in Hollywood. You know what we are. We’re not only phonies ... we’re suckers.”

Judy quickly patted Laura Schuster’s hand. “Clint will call you sweet people tomorrow and tell you how sorry he is. Good night, darlings.”

On the way home the cab driver said, “Why in hell should I be loyal to the goddam Dodgers, I ask you? In 1928 I had a good business, I had a house paid for, I had dough in the bank. Comes the crash, I’m wiped out. Lemme ask you somethin’ pal, did the Dodgers care about me? Hell no. So, why should I care about the Dodgers?”

Clint gave an exorbitant tip for his friendly philosophy; then resented the doorman because he always felt capable of opening his own door.

Judy knew there was a choice of two ways to handle him, either have a counterexplosion of her own, or give him overwhelming sex for a week to smother his discontent.

He loaded a glass with scotch and stared morosely out at the perpendicular cement prisons of Manhattan, again not watching Judy undress and this worried her. She scented herself, slipped beside him.

“Lover ... momma wants.”

“Who are we? My kids don’t even know what sunshine looks like. It’s rationed out here in cheap, grotesque snatches when their Nana parades them over to that hood-filled excuse for a park.”

“Clint, honey, I told you Pudge Whitcomb talked vice presidency at the last cocktail party. He means it, and when it comes through we can move to a wonderful penthouse with our own roof garden ...”

“Filled with false hedges because no self-respecting plant would grow here. Do you suppose we’ll ever see the moonlight again? Does it ever shine over this place or are we too damned busy elbowing our way into Sutton Place to look for it.”

She pressed her bosom close to him. Clint got up and left the chair. “We’re antiseptic. We don’t even get dirty on vacations any more. The white linens of Nassau for Mr. and Mrs. Clinton Germless. We don’t even draw ants on a picnic!”

“Clint, that’s enough.”

“You know what I once did, Judy? I helped that nasty old man lift a half-million tons of oil and rice and fly it over the highest mountains in the world. We did it through monsoons and low freezing levels and on muddy airstrips. We put more material into China by airplane than trucks did on the Burma Road ... more than the ships brought into their ports. We did it with airplanes. By God, I was somebody in those days.”

“You can’t live that for the rest of your life. You’re a big boy now. We’ve worked too damned hard to get what we have.”

“Have? We deserve this. This is why Judy Loveless was a hashslinger to put her husband through college. All for this ... phony, overpriced suckersville down there.” He belted the drink down and refilled his glass. “You’re right, Judy, that nasty old man shouldn’t have come. He shouldn’t have said ... Clint ... we need you ... he shouldn’t have said that.”

Chapter Ten

THE NEXT DAY CLINTON Loveless sported a fearsome purple hangover. His swivel-hipped secretary patched him up as best she could with a limited supply of drugs and coffee and followed him, pad in hand, to the sacred inner sanctum where J. Kenneth Whitcomb III was about to conduct a top-level think session.

As the brain trust gathered, the level of tension mounted. Pudge’s father inherited railroads, lumber acreage, and oil holdings from his own tycoon father, a robber baron at the end of the last century.

During the 1920s Pudge’s father was dissatisfied with the way many of his products were being sold and so created Whitcomb Associates as his own ad agency to sell a better corporate image. The advertising agency was never designed to be other than a minor holding. Pudge was the family black sheep; at will-reading time it was the perfect inheritance for a son held in low esteem.

Pudge proceeded to fool all of his contemptuous brothers and sisters by becoming a business phenomenon and the first of the clan to make the covers of both Time and Fortune. Whitcomb Associates took on the new accounts that made his father scream from the grave and turned losers into winners. He was an American success story.

The seat of Pudge Whitcomb’s genius lay in his ability to exploit other people’s brains. The inner sanctum proved this point. Counter-clockwise there was Dick Buckley, a lawyer who could be described only as brilliant and who, in his youth, dazzled as a court-room performer. His days were now spent weaving a maze of verbal gymnastics designed to keep Whitcomb Associates and some of their borderline accounts within the hair-split of the law. He was immersed in keeping the Pure Drug and Food people off their backs “because it was run by those Pinks in Washington.”

Next to Dick sat Jerry Church, who, in younger days, won fellowships for biochemical research. He was over his eyeballs in a home in West Hampton and all of his talents became vented in one direction, self-survival. The colors mixed for pre- and after-shave lotions dominated his research.

Charlie Levine was next in line. Charlie once had a love affair with the English language and believed in finding talent to perpetuate its beauty. As an editor he had to prepare twenty-five to thirty books a year by established authors, mostly bad. There was the business of making contracts with literary agents, fighting the blood-curdling inner-office political wars, giving razz-matazz speeches at sales meetings, belting down two and three martinis at luncheons with visiting royalty among the authors.

Once in a while Charlie ran across a promising manuscript, one that would need a few months of dedicated work. Charlie was too damned tired and overworked to give it the devotion it needed.

Charlie took a dislike to himself upon realization that most books were mediocre and a publisher would push a bad one because of its exploitation value. Not that this in itself was evil. It was the pretending of standing on a pedestal that was evil, when one was really just another Madison Avenue whore.

Charlie decided to become a good whore as long as he was one. Pudge Whitcomb ran a good whorehouse. He now used the words he loved to insult the intelligence of the reader and listener, but if pounded into the brain often enough became part of the bastardization of the language he loved.

On the other side of the table was Gustav Von Gottard, a slick Viennese psychiatrist who was retained at an exorbitant salary to associate products with basic human desires for them.

And there was Clinton Loveless, a production genius.

J. Kenneth Whitcomb III made his entrance.... It was alleged he played some thirty minutes or so on Yale’s varsity before he was booted out of the school. It was known that he saw Pat O’Brien portray a famous coach and never got over it.

“This is the big game,” he began, “and that is why you, you, you, and you are here. You are my first-string team.”

Look at the stupid sons of bitches taking notes, Clint thought.

“We’re picking up the ball on our own ten-yard line and we’re going to hit hard, we’re going to hit fast. We’re going to drive, drive, drive, and we won’t stop ... we won’t stop till we score.”

Pudge’s male secretary dutifully, reverently, placed ten bottles of aspirin tablets in a row on the table.

Pudge lifted the product of Robson Drugs and pushed it forward. “Here’s the ball. Duo-Aspro.”

Robson Drugs had been hauled before the courts four times in six years for unpure products and cited for false advertising ... by those Pinks in Washington.

“Professor?”

Gustav Von Gottard stroked his beard, looked off into space dreamily, swung on the swivel chair. “Ve know zat ze deep colors, ze reds und purples iss making people sink of hangovers.”

Clint winced.

“Zerefore ve muss sink softly ... a soft blue of ze sky... ze pink of a voman’s flesh ... ze color must be subtle ... soft ...”

“Got that Jerry?” Pudge asked his chemist

“Check.”

“Go on, professor.”

“I am sinking zat ven man iss in pain he needs varmth ... he looks for ze vomb ... for ze bosom for comfort.”

“Tit-shaped aspirin ... subtly, of course. Charlie, your play.”

Charlie Levine, former editor, chewed on the end of his pencil sincerely, scanning his notes. “How do we hit this? Do we go with a cold-turkey sell or do the science bit? Do we figure on added new ingredients and make it something unpronounceable but highly medical or do we swing with the doctor in the white coat. This is off the top of my head, but why not stick with the pounding hammers, the bubbles being released in the stomach, and call it pain-go or sooth-o.”

Dick Buckley interjected, “We’ve got to go easy on the man in the white coat. The Pinks have been persecuting Robson Drugs ... because old man Robson gave a big donation to the Republican Party.”

“Dick’s our defense,” Pudge said.

“Check,” Charlie Levine said. “I’ll lay out the blurb with drums pounding and segue to soft music after Duo-Aspro gets in the blood stream.”

“Chopin music,” Gustav Von Gottard said.

“Check.”

“Jerry, got everything so far?”

“You want pink, tit-shaped aspirins with baking soda added.”

“Clint, baby, you’re being awful quiet this morning.”

Clinton Loveless got to his feet and looked grimly from one to the other. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have an important announcement.”

They leaned forward, with bated breath.

“Gentlemen,” Clint said, “the Confederates have fired on Fort Sumter.”

And with that, he departed Whitcomb Associates.

“I’m not going to let you do this,” Judy cried.

“You’re not big enough to stop me. Let’s don’t end ten years of marriage with me knocking you flat on your back.”

“What in the name of God has come over you? What will you do when you come back from Germany?”

“For the next several months Hiram Stonebraker is giving me the opportunity to practice and relearn my chosen profession. Once I saved a little steel mill from going under. I might just do the same thing again.”

“And we ate canned beans for a year while you were doing it.”

“And two hundred people went back to work when I finished the job. Cut it. It’s all talked out.”

“All of it, Clint ... all of it? How about you and me?”

“That’s up to you.”

“I know you love me, Clint.”

“Almost enough to give up my self-respect.”

A half hour later, Clint’s bags were at the front door when the Loveless apartment was graced by the presence of Pudge Whitcomb himself. The slash-mouth smile was more diagonal than usual. Judy said, “Thank God you’re here ... talk some sense into him.”

“Clint, baby, you’ve been playing the game too hard. You’re a little down.”

“Nonsense. I haven’t been working hard enough.”

“You’re our star halfback. Forget the Robson account. One more citation from the Pinks and we’re going to drop them anyhow. In the meantime, here’s a pair of ducats for Nassau for you and Judy and a bonus to cover expenses.”

“I don’t like Nassau. I might want to go someplace crummy, like Atlantic City.”

“Name it.”

“Germany.”

“Clint ... a little over a year ago when I asked you to join the team ...”

“Can it.”

Pudge began to perspire. “Big deal feeding Germans! Don’t you think your own American people come first! This country needs you! The team needs you!”

The doorman phoned up that a taxi was waiting. Clint picked up his bags.

Pudge stood in the doorway. “I’m tearing up the old contract and writing a new one.”

“Spell it out.”

“All right, it goes like this. Vice presidency, stock options, member of the board, twenty-five grand a year, and a five-thousand expense account.”

Judy’s eyes pleaded.

“Ass was always overpriced in New York,” Clint said. He brushed Pudge Whitcomb aside and left.

Chapter Eleven

THE SIGN ON THE desk read: THE BUCK ENDS HERE. Hiram Stonebraker had once seen it on the President’s desk, admired its philosophy, and the President sent him a copy.

The men in his office had been assembled from all over the globe. They had created the first miracle of air transport, the Hump.

“You people,” Stonebraker crackled, “were brought here because you once had a reputation as can-do people.”

Perry Sindlinger, now a full colonel, would serve as chief of staff; Colonel Matt Beck, a flyer’s flyer, would run Operations and as such be chief pilot; Lieutenant Colonel Sid Swing was back at logistics; Lieutenant Colonel Jose Mendoza, considered the most ingenious maintenance man in the old Army Air Corps, was there, as was Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Buck Rogers, who had been spirited away from the Army to supervise cargoes and ground transportation and act as staff liaison with the Army; Lieutenant Colonel Ben Scudder, who set up communications on the Hump, would do it again with the new sophisticated electronic aids.

There was Major Lou Edmonds, a forlorn weatherman; and last, old Colonel Swede Swenson, who had put down a string of airfields in the Assam Valley and Bengal Valley and Kunming and would again supervise air installations.

“In the few days since I have arrived to assume this command you people have treated me to a monumental amount of bitching about living quarters and being torn away from families. This goddamned mission is not part of the occupation country club. You are here to work, and what I mean is, if you don’t have a coronary in two months I’ll know you’re not putting out.”

Hiram Ball Breaker was back in the saddle. He hadn’t changed a bit, they thought.

“This mission is to be considered as war. You might encounter a little less flak, but if the Russians don’t fire it, depend on me. Now, as for getting yourselves out of this mess, consider twenty years ... if you’re lucky.”

Jesus Christ, Swede thought, I’ll bet the old bastard couldn’t wait to get back into uniform so he could start chewing asses.

“I expect a full survey of the situation and your reports within twenty-four hours. Remember, an aircraft grounded is of no value. Until spare parts get here we have to cannibalize. Now get in gear and come back with answers.”

The first blow to Stonebraker was the recall of Barney Root to Washington, with General Buff Morgan named the new USAFE chief.

Hiram, like Chip Hansen, was not a member of the WPPA (West Point Protective Association) and had had innumerable run-ins in the past with Morgan.

“Buff, this is Crusty. What kind of crap are you giving my people on housing.”

“Just hold your water.”

“Hell. My people have been pulled away from their families on twenty-four hours’ notice. I hate to disturb this magnificent occupation plant, but I suggest you move your country club to the suburbs and give us the housing so we can get at our work.”

“Now, you just wait a minute there, Crusty.”

“Got no time to wait. I have a thousand technicians coming in in the next couple of days and I’m not going to hold up this mission because the grand occupation country club won’t get moving. I have to have six hundred billets immediately.”

Buff Morgan grumbled that he would get on it. An old scenery chewer himself, he held the lifeless phone in his hand cursing at it for two minutes after Stonebraker hung up.

Stonebraker had come in like a hurricane. Buff Morgan was upset ... everyone in USAFE was upset.

Stonebraker noticed a young officer pace about in his outer office, had spotted him before the Staff meeting.

“You!”

“Me, sir?”

“You. Get your ass in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“That’s what I’d like to know, General. All I know is day before yesterday orders came for me to report here directly to you.”

“Where were you stationed?”

“Andrews Air Force Base.”

“What’s your name?”

“Beaver, sir. Woodrow Beaver.”

“Beaver! Goddammit, you’re not Beaver!”

“Begging the General’s pardon, I regret that I am Woodrow Beaver. At least, I’m quite certain I am.”

“Hell, they sent me the wrong Woody Beaver!”

“It looks that way, General. I suggest, therefore, I return my ass to Andrews immediately.”

“Not so fast, Beaver. What do you do?”

“I’m a PIO officer.”

Stonebraker chuckled. “Two Woody Beavers and both PIO people.” He squinted closely at the young officer. “You don’t look too bright to me.”

“I am extremely bright.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t. I said you didn’t look like it.”

He had learned his first lesson in living with Hiram Stonebraker ... never back down.

“Beaver. I’m going to give you forty-eight hours to learn to be PIO for this mission. Take the office next to mine and come back tomorrow with extremely good suggestions.”

“Yes, sir.”

Perry Sindlinger returned from message center and handed a teletype to the general.

CLINTON LOVELESS AO 359195 HAS REPORTED TO MATS, WESTOVER, REQUESTING SPACE TO WIESBADEN. SAYS HE IS A MEMBER STAFF, MAJOR GENERAL STONEBRAKER. HE HAS NO ORDERS. ADVISE AND FORWARD ORDERS.

“I’ve already answered,” Perry Sindlinger said. “It will be good to have Clint here.”

Clinton Loveless arrived at Wiesbaden in the middle of the night dazed by the sequence of events following his departure from New York. Judy’s tears, Pudge Whitcomb’s asthmatic laugh, the children’s bewilderment all fogged together and an utter weariness was sealed by a bouncy bucket-seat flight across the Atlantic.

Perry Sindlinger was at the ramp to meet him. They drove back to the general’s headquarters in the center of Wiesbaden, where, in the middle of the night, carpenters were knocking walls out of adjoining buildings to expand the work area.

“Hello, General,” Clint rasped.

“It’s about time you got over here. I’ve got a plane standing by at Rhein/Main to run you to Berlin tonight.”

Clint bucketed down a quart of coffee while Perry and the general brought him up to date.

“Hansen’s trouble shooter, a Colonel O’Sullivan, will meet you at Tempelhof. You get together with the Germans in the Magistrat and find out just what it is going to take to feed these people. Cut everything to the bone. Swede and Buck Rogers are in Berlin looking over the air installations and ground facilities. See them. Come back with a rounded, thumbnail picture.”

“Yes, sir. What are we landing in Berlin now?”

“The day I took over the command, a week ago, we put down a thousand tons with the British.”

“How far can we push this?”

“With the present setup, not another ounce.”

Clint understood, and got up to leave. The general gave ever so slight a nod that said he was glad Clint had come.

“By the way, sir. What am I?”

Stonebraker scratched his head. “Lieutenant Colonel, I think, vice chief of staff, or something.”

“Air Force or Army?”

“Air Force. We’re all Air Force. Even Buff Morgan and his country-club set.”

The situation was worse than Chip Hansen or the President realized. Stonebraker’s chief of staff told him bluntly that if C-54’s didn’t arrive, the whole mission would turn into a fiasco.

They were short on every kind of personnel: weathermen, crews, mechanics, engineers, radiomen, radarmen, office personnel, cooks, doctors, carpenters, drivers.

Housing, food, medical facilities were substandard. Rhein/Main, the key base outside Frankfurt, was at 150 per cent of capacity with more people pouring in each day. There were no beds and a food shortage loomed. Rhein/ Main had the worst living and working conditions of any American air base in the world. It was called, without affection, Rhein/Mud.

With lives left dangling all over the world in a peacetime mission, morale was bound to collapse.

Air Installation reported that the two American bases of Rhein/Main and Y 80/Wiesbaden were inadequate in length of runways, taxiways, hardstands, fueling facilities, loading and unloading facilities, hangar space, dump space, administration buildings, and all lighting; flood-lights, approach lights, hangar lights were below standard.

Communications told General Stonebraker that most existing equipment was obsolete. Beacons and ranges to and from Berlin could not control precision flying in the narrow corridors. There was no ground-controlled approach system to “talk down” pilots in bad weather.

Ground transportation had to have more and larger trucks and trailers, spare parts, garages, mechanics, drivers. Better roads and storage dumps were an urgent necessity. Rail lines and spur lines had to be built to bring in aviation fuel from the port enclave of Bremerhaven; rail lines were needed to bring in the Ruhr coal; loading and unloading of aircraft was erratic and awkward and cargoes were bulky, improperly packaged, improperly weighed, improperly tied down.

Colonel Matt Beck told Stonebraker in his report that crews were flying too many hours. Coal was a dangerous cargo, with explosion potential. The weather was the worst in Europe and the approaches to Berlin were treacherous, running over Russian airstrips, demanding steep angles of glide into the midst of a jammed city.

The two Berlin airports of Tempelhof and Gatow were only ninety seconds apart by air. More radar was urgently needed to keep control of everyone’s position. Unless ground-controlled approach was installed to maintain positive air discipline, mid-air collisions were possible.

The staff meteorologist, Lou Edmonds wrote: “If we were to list all airfields in the United States in descending order, the worst would be Pittsburgh. If we were to list Pittsburgh among the Central European cities, it would be the best.” He promised late-summer fogs, violent turbulence from thunderstorms, and in the winter, low icing levels and crosswinds.

The logistics and maintenance men added the final amens. The Gooney Birds were covered with dangerous grime from coal and flour cargoes that was wrecking delicate instruments and setting in corrosive action on cable systems. The numerous take-offs and landings with heavy loads placed unmerciful stress on engines, brakes, tires. There were no facilities for proper maintenance; the spare part situation was beyond mere desperation.... This was Hiram Stonebraker’s inheritance.

Clint returned from Berlin and gave the general further bad news.

“Both the Tempelhof and Gatow strips are breaking down. Just stand there a half hour and watch the Gooney Birds land and see the blue flames shoot off their tires. With C-54’s hitting the runway with triple the present loads, Swede figures the runways will be knocked out in a matter of a few weeks.”

Clint had drawn a list of urgent needs. A new runway at both Tempelhof and Gatow, and then the repair of existing ones. New aprons were needed for loading and unloading, new lighting. Finally, they had to find the site for a third airfield.

“We can fly in pierced steel planking and asphalt,” Clint said, “and we are certain we can use the rubble in Berlin for a base. Labor is no problem. The ball breaker ... pardon me, General ... the clinker is how to fly in bulldozers, steam rollers, graders, rock crushers. There aren’t any in Berlin.”

The question of flying in heavy machinery was a new monster. There had to be a certain amount of food brought in daily before they could move in the asphalt and planking.

“You worked with the Magistrat, what’s the food picture?”

“Stores are running very low, General. Less than a month’s supply of staples.”

“How much, Clint?”

“We’re going to have to fly in fifteen hundred tons of food a day.”

“What the hell are those people doing, glutting themselves in an orgy? Christ almighty, we’ve only reached a thousand tons a day of everything with the British. That has to be reevaluated and cut in half.”

Clint shook his head, no. “It would be lighter to fly in flour and have them do the baking in Berlin. Allowing for a one per cent loss we can squeeze by with six hundred and fifty tons a day.”

“What the hell else are those people gorging themselves on?”

“By dehydrating potatoes and vegetables and powdering milk we can swing it with a minimum of eighty tons of potatoes, forty-four tons of vegetables, and twenty-one tons of milk. Sixty tons of fat, a hundred tons of meat and fish, all boned.”

Stonebraker grunted.

“Thirty-eight tons of salt and ten tons of cheese.”

“What the hell do they need ten tons of cheese for?”

Clint continued to drone out the meticulously planned list of the most valuable foods supplanted with vitamins. There would also be need for whole milk, special foods for hospital patients, food for the zoo, and for seeing-eye dogs. When he was done, Stonebraker knew Clint had figured it down to the ounce. In truth, they were asking two and a quarter million people to cling to bare threads and forget every comfort and most necessities known to a civilized community.

“Hello, M.J.,” Hiram said, bussing his wife’s cheek. “How was the flight?”

“Just fine, dear,” she answered, searching for signs of fatigue on him.

“How are things at home?”

“Dorothy and the children are all settled in and will stay for the duration.”

“Good, it was wonderful of Jack to let her come.”

The town was mostly dark when they arrived except for the lights burning at his Headquarters complex. M.J. commented that it appeared to be a pretty city. Hiram said he didn’t know as he hadn’t seen much of it.

“It was spared,” he said, “because some people had designs on it as an occupation country club.”

As she suspected, he lived in a hotel within walking distance of his office. A pinstriped, cutaway-dressed German manager of the requisitioned Schwarzer Bock Hotel welcomed M.J. profusely. It was a magnificent hostelry in the grand old style with great high ceilings, marble fireplaces, enormous baths, glass-fronted wardrobes, glittering chandeliers, antique clocks, seventeenth-century writing desks, and an abundance of marble. Their suite looked down on a small square, the Kranz Platz, which was the site of the original Roman spring.

When the attendants were finally shooed out, M.J. loosened the general’s shoe laces, and went about doing those things to force him to relax, then she unpacked.

“How is the mission going, dear?”

“Just fine. We have a few minor problems, but those will be ironed out.”

From the hall came the sound of an alley-cat chorus of nonharmonizing voices.

We are poor little lambs,

Who have gone astray,

Baa, baa, baa.

We are little black sheep

Who have lost our way ...

M.J. opened the door and Perry Sindlinger handed her a great bouquet of roses and Clint Loveless held two magnums of champagne. They piled in ... Pancho, Ben Scudder, Swede, Sid, and Lou Edmonds.

Crusty mumbled that unfortunately he would have to bounce for drinks. After a good and true welcome they crawled off wearily, well past midnight.

At last the general and his wife settled into bed. Just as M.J. rolled over to get comfortable, Hiram sat up, turned on the lamp, and grabbed the bedside phone.

“Get me Colonel Loveless at the Rose Hotel. Hello ... Clint. Get back up here, right away.”

Hiram was out of bed, wrestled into a bathrobe, and paced the living room until his vice chief of staff arrived from the hotel down the block.

“November, 1943,” Stonebraker said. “I sent you to the Assam Valley to get some tractors flown into Chengtu.”

“By God!”

“Think, Clint.”

“By God!” Clint’s voice trembled. “By God. We had a little sergeant in maintenance. I remember now. He was a

regular impresario with a cutting torch.”

“Remember how we got those tractors over the Hump, Clint!”

“Yes, sir. This little guy cut them each up into fifty parts, numbered each part, flew with them to Chengtu and welded them back together.”

“Why in the hell didn’t you think of this earlier?”

“Because ... sir ... I’ve been too busy keeping the goddamed food down to fifteen hundred tons.”

“All right ... what was his name?”

“Christ ... let me think ... a real gook name ... Homer ... Halbert ... Remus ... something like that. Freshwater.”

“Goldwater?”

“No ... let me think ... we sent him a citation. Drinkwater! Clarence Drinkwater!”

“Get back to Headquarters, find out where he is, and get him over here.”

Clarence Drinkwater, auto wrecker and junk dealer from Atlanta, Georgia, was approached the next afternoon in his yard by a man from Air Force Intelligence.

He was very happy because he spent his days cutting up junk with a torch and was pleased to know that his rare talent was needed. He packed an extra case of chewing tobacco for he always needed a chaw to help him concentrate.

Twenty-four hours later he arrived in Germany at the Hanau Engineer Base into the waiting arms of Clint Loveless, who nearly broke into tears watching Clarence begin cutting up rock crushers, graders, bulldozers, and all the heavy machinery needed to make new runways in Berlin.

Big Nellie sat in Hiram Stonebraker’s suite listening to the general explain the mountain of new projects that had been initiated to support the mission. Work had begun on rail lines, highways, airstrips, dumps.

A spare-parts base had been established outside Munich at Erding; MATS announced the first Skymasters would be on the way from Hawaii and Alaska and Tokyo and the Caribbean, and the President had authorized the call-up of ten thousand reserves.

“I’m hoping to be able to give the order to stop the cannibalization of the Gooney Birds. It is still a great old craft and I hate to see them lose their integrity. If we intend to airlift Berlin ...”

“Excuse me, General. What did you just say?”

“I said, if we intend to airlift Berlin ...”

“Airlift ... my God ...”

“Never thought much about it.”

In his column, Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury told America that a new word had been given to the English language by the rightful father, Hiram Stonebraker. It would capture the imagination of the world.... The word was Airlift.

Chapter Twelve

HONOLULU

Master Sergeant Nick Papas, a sizable and burly man, made into Tiger Quong’s Gentleman Bar in Pearl City. Tiger was weary, making motions of mopping the bar, waiting to close. He poured Nick a beer. Nick chug-a-lugged it.

“Where’s the sleeping beauty?”

Tiger pointed to a tiny office off the hallway. Nick entered. Captain Scott Davidson was passed out cold, sprawled on a cot. Nick had been looking for him all over Honolulu when the Tiger chased him down by phone.

He stared down at the captain. “Christ, what a sorry-assed sight,” then brought Scott Davidson up to a sitting position. He was like a limp rag doll. Nick slung an arm over his shoulder and dragged him into the men’s room, where Tiger was waiting with a bucket of ice water. The frigid dousing stunned him from his reverie.

“You son of a bitch,” Scott moaned, “you son of a bitch. I’m sick ... I may die ...”

“Go in the can, stick your finger down your throat, and vomit.”

“Goddam you, Nick. You’ve got no respect for rank.”

“Puke already. Tiger’s tired. He wants to go home. I want to go home.”

After Scott did as he was told, he recovered enough of his senses to study his sorrowful appearance in the mirror.

“You better get some sleep. You’re due at the CO’s office at 0730. There’s flak up we may be flying out to Germany.”

“I can’t go back to the base looking like this.”

“I’ll take you to Cindy. She’s been looking for you.”

“Did she find me?”

“No.”

“Then let me sleep at your place.”

“I said, she’s waiting for you.”

“With a pickax. I can’t take any of her static tonight She started me on this bender in the first place.”

“Sure, she’s got a hell of a nerve getting teed off just because you tried to pick up another broad right in front of her ... a married one at that.”

“Nick, you going to let me sleep at your place or not?”

“Come on ... Captain ...”

Nick shoved a fin into Tiger Quong’s protesting palm. The two of them assisted the wobbly flyer into Nick’s car and he drove toward Honolulu, then up to the Pali Hills, where Nick maintained a flat that belied his rank.

Nick Papas had been a flight engineer for fifteen years and remained in the Air Force because it supplied a source of new blood for his card-playing proficiencies. Nick backed a number of enterprises in Chicago’s Greek section staffed by relatives; a bar, a garage, a piece of a laundry, and a small hotel.

Despite his harsh appearance he was a pushover, with deep loyalties to persons other than Greek relatives. He supported the Church heavily and a string of charities from an orphanage to an animal shelter.

Scott Davidson was about his closest buddy. He had flown with the captain for nearly two years, and during the war Nick was there when Scott’s plane cracked up on a jungle runway.

With rough gentleness, Nick helped the captain undress and spilled him into bed. Scott clung to it, groaning, as the room started to whirl.

He folded Scott’s rumpled uniform, pinned a note on it for the houseboy to press it first thing in the morning, then set the alarm and lay in bed mulling over whether or not to call Cindy.

He wondered why bastards like Scott Davidson always tied up with nice girls like Cindy. Nevertheless it was something to watch him wheel and deal. Scott was a sort of alter ego.

“Hello, Cindy ... this is Nick. Sorry to call you so late.”

“Did you find him?”

“He’s at my place. I thought it would be better. I got to hustle him down to Hickam first thing in the morning.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’ll live.”

“Thanks, Nick.”

“Good night, Cindy.”

The next morning, with the help of thiamine chloride and charcoal pills, tomato juice and coffee, and in a rejuvenated uniform, Captain Scott Davidson was able to make a creditable appearance in the office of Colonel Garrett, commander of the 19th Troop Carrier at Hickam Field.

In thirty-six hours Scott would lead a group of eleven Skymasters as chief pilot on orders reading “extended training mission.” The flight plan was Hamilton Field in California to Westover, Massachusetts, to the Azores, and end at Rhein/Main in Frankfurt, Germany. Everything in the squadron would go; spare parts, office equipment, all crews, all personnel. Colonel Garrett said everyone should carry enough gear for two months “temporary duty” in Germany. He confided to Scott that twelve Skymasters of the 20th Troop Carrier Squadron at the Panama Canal and nine

Skymasters from the 54th in Alaska were getting ready for the trip to Germany. A big show seemed to be shaping up.

Scott had to get off his binge quickly. As chief pilot there were stacks of paperwork, briefings, meetings, inspections. Late in the afternoon all personnel were called and Colonel Garrett dropped the bomb with less than twenty-four hours to go. The meeting broke up with a stunned scrambling. Half the men were married, and others deeply committed to the area with apartments, cars, and furnishings. Once the shock set in, a breakneck scurrying ensued to salvage, say farewell, get the squadron ready.

Scott took a last look around the pleasant little studio apartment that stood along the Ala Wai Canal. There wasn’t much for him to take, a few shirts, a change of uniform, some toilet gear. Most of what was there, Cindy had brought and put the touches and frills that made it warm. Scott began to scribble a note saying good-by and asking her to sell his car, his only visible asset. He heard a key in the lock and his heart sank. He was hoping to get away before she came.

Cindy was still wearing the white uniform of a dental assistant. “I was passing by on the way home,” she said. “I saw your car parked out front.” She went to the phone, called her home, and told the housekeeper to go ahead with dinner for the children, she would be in late. And then she saw Scott’s handbag and uniform.

“You don’t have to leave,” she said. “I’ll settle for half a loaf.”

“I’m flying out tomorrow.”

She looked at him curiously.

“I was ordered out We’re going to Germany on that supply run to Berlin.”

“How long do you expect to be gone?”

Scott shrugged.

“And it all happened so fast you weren’t even given time to say good-by,” she said acidly.

“I’m chief pilot. The whole squadron goes. I’ve been over my eyeballs in work.”

“Too busy to phone.”

“I was just writing a note.”

“So long, Cindy. See you around, sometime,” she said with sarcasm. Those were the exact words he had planned.

“I want you to sell the car,” he said, “keep half ...”

“For practical considerations?”

Oh Christ, he thought, she’s simmering to a boil and getting good and bitchy. He was hoping to avoid a scene, but that seemed impossible. He sighed, now resigned to an unpleasant raking over. For some reason they all went in for the dramatic exit.

“I was hoping,” she said with her wound showing in every inflection, “that there was some feeling between us.”

“There was a lot.”

“I even thought, for a while, we had grown to mean something to each other. You were so good with the kids ...”

“Cindy, there were never any promises. You went into this like a big girl.”

“You have a lovely way of making a girl feel like a cheap whore.”

Here comes the self-condemnation bit, he thought. In the beginning a game was played. She wanted a husband, most of them did. He maneuvered to have her without commitment. Cindy knew what the score was. She had been divorced for five years. She’d been in other beds before, and she would again after he left.

Even though she accepts the rules in the beginning she has to begin to justify the affair by making herself believe it is more than an affair. She wants to feel needed. That is the face-saving stage. And then the initial excitement fades and she gets possessive and jealous. About that time another woman begins to look exciting.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t enjoyed it,” he said. “Why can’t we call it a day like nice people. We buried it last week, anyhow.”

She turned away from him to fight off tears. She’d be damned if she would cry in his presence.

The bastard had it all down to a science, even the farewell scene. She gained control of herself and looked at him. Lean, blue-eyed, curly hair. She had committed the cardinal sin of falling in love, and when she saw him slip away she compounded the sin by becoming desperate.

“So long, punk,” Cindy said.

“Cindy ...”

“Get out.”

The Skymaster lifted majestically over Mamala Bay, banked, gained altitude, and made a great horseshoe turn over Waikiki. Scott had a single fleeting thought for Cindy as he looked out of the window. By the time they passed over Diamond Head, he blew a long breath of relief. The orders had come just in time. Soon there was nothing below but blue water.

Scott’s copilot and friend of years, Stan Kitchek, had been glaring at him all morning. They barely exchanged a word beyond the official language of the checks. Stan switched off the radio to the intercom.

“You’re a no good son of a bitch,” he said to Scott.

Scott didn’t answer.

“I went over to say good-by last night. You couldn’t even spend the last night with her? You couldn’t even make a little game like you were sorry to go? She was crying her heart out. You’re a no good son of a bitch.”

“Fly the goddamned plane,” he snapped, “I’m going to sack out.”

He wrestled out of the seat and started for the makeshift bunk at the back of the cabin. Nick Papas’ big square frame blocked his way.

“All right, Nick, I didn’t beat her.”

“You should of, it would have been better.”

“Don’t kid yourself. There’ll be somebody else in the sack with her in a week.”

“You’re a prick ... Captain ... sir ...”

Scott took the cigar out of Nick’s teeth and stamped on it “No goddamned cigar smoking in the cabin.”

Scott shoved past him angrily, curtained himself in the bunk. Soon, he thought, the sweet music of the engines would sing him to sleep and he could forget. Everybody’s pissed at me ... Cindy ... Stan ... Nick ... half the squadron. Nobody can stand to see a happy bachelor escape.

The music of the engines did not work. Scott squirmed, bunched his jacket beneath his head. Once he had gotten hooked and it ended in disaster. What do women want, disaster? I’m doing them a favor by kissing them off.

Scott Welton Davidson, a son of Norfolk, Virginia. From the beginning, Scott had it his way. A comfortable home and too much doting. He was a three-letter athlete at Matthew Fontaine Maury High School and touted as one of the best in the state.

It was easy to smile his way through. He carried it out of Norfolk to William and Mary College where coeds adored him. The studies were easy, the girls were easy, the games on the field were easy.

Scott was among the first to enlist when the war started and one of the first in all of Virginia to come home on leave with flyer’s wings on his chest and new officer’s bars on his shoulders. Merely another chapter in the success story.

In that strange crush of war, furloughs, sentiment, Barbara Lundy somehow managed to win out over the competition. The Queen of the Chesapeake Festival, the senior class president, was in many ways Scott’s female counterpart.

Scott and Barbara. New flyer’s wings, big war, and lots of patriotic fever ... new wife.

It was a picture-book marriage of the All American Boy to the All American Girl. Norfolk was the proudest city in the country. It was a scene to sell War Bonds.

No one in Norfolk was really surprised when Scott Davidson became the first Virginia ace of World War II. In a dogfight over Bougaineville he shot down three Jap Zeros in a single day to bring his tally to seven.

And one day, Barbara received the dreaded telegram:

YOUR HUSBAND HAS BEEN WOUNDED IN ACTION.

Scott’s squadron had been rammed in one of those crazy last-ditch suicide orgies. Both he and his craft were badly torn up, but he managed to nurse it to a belly landing on a New Guinea airstrip. Nick Papas was one of those who pulled him out of the ship before it exploded.

A Red Cross Girl in Australia wrote for him, “Don’t worry honey, it was only a scratch.”

At the age of twenty-three Scott Davidson refused to believe the big lark of life was over. In a hospital in Australia, identified to Barbara only by a mysterious APO number, he fought to a remarkable recovery.

It was disappointing not to be able to get back into fighters, but the big slow transports of the ATC had their compensations. He could move around to a number of civilized places where he was able to break marriage vows he never intended to keep in the first place.

As a flyer he became enthralled with the precision-flying of four engines and learned to love his new home in the clouds. He was tried time and again as a squadron commander but Scott had no mind for turning in reports on time or taking the responsibility for other men. He just wanted to fly.... And then, one day, the war was over.

Scott returned to Norfolk, bemedaled, to accept the latest chapter of glory, the worship of the returning war hero.

He weighed a number of offers. In those days it was good to have Scott’s name in your business.

He made a vague pass at reorientation to civilian life. Soon he left his young wife confused and weeping by his strange, morose behavior. Scott was still out there, maybe flying over a nameless island, shooting, drinking, gambling, singing ... loving. After her naive desperation passed, she saw a stranger who looked not at her, but through her. The humiliations piled until she had no choice.

“You’re a spoiled little boy. You’ve had it all your own way all your life. You can’t love anyone because you love yourself too much.”

Scott took it like a gentleman and with a sense of relief that he would soon be free of this trap. And all the while Barbara was cutting their ties, she loved him.

“You haven’t got the courage to live in this world and take your share of its responsibilities and its bitterness. You think you can go on living in the clouds, but you’re fooling yourself. One day life is going to catch up with you and you’ll crash harder than you did on that jungle airstrip and when you do there will be a lot of people whose hearts you have broken standing on the side lines and cheering.”

Scott justified the final phase with Barbara by saying he was a lousy husband and she deserved better.

Scott flew off with his infectious smile and easy way, seeking the thrill of new conquests, and he left a trail of damned fool women like Cindy who thought for a moment the wings of the eagle could be clipped.

Chapter Thirteen

SCOTT CUT ENGINES AT the hardstand at Rhein/Main and growled for Nick and Stan to secure the craft. He was weary. He stretched, looked forward to a hot soaking tub, securing a three-day pass, and shaking down Frankfurt for quail.

As the last craft of the squadron cut engines, a burst of activity erupted. The planes were engulfed by ten-wheel army trailers whose crews began pulling out the cargo; first sergeants assembled the squadron personnel on the apron, and maintenance men queried each captain on the condition of his ship.

Colonel Matt Beck, head of Operations and chief pilot on Stonebraker’s staff, met Scott at the bottom of the ladder.

“Would you come over to Operations with me, Captain,” he said. “We want to run down the personnel and condition of the craft.”

“Excuse me, Colonel ... what’s the fire?”

“These ships will be worked on tonight and stripped of certain components. They’ll be flying cargo to Berlin tomorrow.”

“We’re beat, sir ...”

“You’ll bed down on the field tonight and be ready to fly tomorrow.’’

Scott’s bath and the great treat that lay in store for German womanhood went up in smoke. He got into Colonel Beck’s jeep, drove down the row of Skymasters.

The first thing Scott saw of Rhein/Main was a coal dump fifteen feet high covering an acre of land, and a field of antennas that covered another acre. He had never seen anything like it. Bustle was everywhere. Huts were being hammered together for enlisted personnel like a Gold Rush boom town. Maintenance docks, hangars, warehouses, fire stations were being erected; roads were being built on a base of mud. They passed an immense park of the transportation corps jammed with newly arrived trucks and trailers. The sign read: 24TH TRANSPORTATION TRUCK BATTALION, UNITED STATES ARMY. Negro soldiers were shaking them down.

Across the road, Colonel Beck pointed to a small city of displaced persons who were the laborers. The movement, the gray dinginess, the mud that encased the entire field, the temporary structures all reminded Scott of wartime. Rhein/ Main was a far cry from the neat lawns and hedges of Hickam Field.

Matt Beck stopped before another temporary building marked 7497th airlift wing. He was asked to wait in the colonel’s office. The place meant business, he thought. He stretched and tried to doze.

Hiram Stonebraker, who had been inspecting the new building projects entered the office wearing a pair of grimy fatigues. “You the chief pilot of the 19th out of Hickam?”

Scott blinked his eyes open.

“What’s the status of your craft?”

He didn’t answer.

“What the hell’s the matter with you. You tongue-tied?”

“So far as I know, you’re a kindly middle-aged gentleman in dirty dungarees. I never give them classified information.”

Stonebraker looked at his coveralls, stifled a smile. He walked out of the office right into Matt Beck, who had heard the end of the conversation in horror. “I’ll tell him who you are, sir.”

“Never mind. Get his record over to Wiesbaden, then shoot his ass over there.”

The thing that ultimately made Hiram Stonebraker a major general while other men remained majors was his gift of selecting and using men.

He read the book on Scott Davidson, found two men in his Headquarters who knew of the captain personally.

Scott was a hot pilot, guts and ice water. He had knocked down eleven Jap Zeros with a P-38, and later, flew a Thunderbolt. He had more strafing and ground-support mission on Marine and Army invasions than could properly be recorded.

He had survived a miraculous landing in a badly damaged craft, suffered wounds that might have finished a lesser man. He made an even more miraculous recovery, as the medical record showed, to fly again for ATC and MATS, where he was considered a superb pilot.

Hiram Stonebraker liked what he read ... except for certain things on the fitness report: THIS OFFICER IS A POTENTIAL LEADER BUT IS LACKADAISICAL, IS ALWAYS LATE WITH REPORTS, AND AVOIDS RESPONSIBILITY.

“We met earlier today, Captain,” Hiram Stonebraker said.

The two silver stars adorning each shoulder were much in evidence now. “I had a sort of feeling I may have made an error in judgment ...”

“You were within your rights. I’d have chewed you out if you hadn’t demanded proper identification.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Captain, I’m going to recommend you for a temporary appointment as chief pilot of the Wing at Rhein/Main. It’s a big job. Cut the buck and I’m sure it’s yours permanently. You’ve got a lot to be briefed on to get the picture of what we’re up against here, so I’ll turn you over to Colonel Beck again.”

“General... I ... uh ...”

“Well?”

“Sir, I appreciate the General’s confidence ... even on a temporary basis. However, sir, I’m afraid I might let you down. I’m just not much on the administrative end of things.”

“You can speak better English than that.”

“If the General gives me leave to speak.”

“The General does.”

“Sir, I made myself live when I should have been dead so I could fly again,” he said with a southern charm, sincerity, and appeal that could melt the hardest heart. “I lay there in a bed for six months while they were pulling lead and aluminum out of me and pumping me full of blood. The only thing that made me pull through was the thought of flying, General ... I’m just not cut out to play wet nurse to boy pilots or pin up numbers in a chart room.”

Crusty knew the breed all right. The old crushed-hat gang, a direct descendant of the barnstormer. They would fly into a brick wall and the eye of a hurricane, but you couldn’t give them a command or make them make decisions.

But Hiram Stonebraker also knew men. He liked something in this boy and he wanted to believe he could get the best from him. Scott was the first in with the Skymasters and certainly the best pilot who had shown up so far.

“You’ll do what I tell you to do. Now get down to Operations and learn your goddamned job.”

Throughout the night weight and balance supervisors removed excess items from the craft in from Hawaii. The long-range navigation equipment, navigator’s stool, wash water, forward fuselage tanks, bladders, partitions, troop benches were peeled out to make room for another ton of pay-load cargo to Berlin.

Matt Beck personally briefed the new arrivals and would take the number one craft today to Berlin as their time bloc approached. Ten planes would make the flight. The eleventh was to remain at Rhein/Main for a special detail, Captain Scott Davidson to fly it. Clinton Loveless briefed him on the plan.

“Bomb coal!” Scott cried. “Somebody’s out of their goddamned mind.”

“Captain, this is the general’s idea. No matter what happens to this experiment, you must keep your mouth shut. You’re too cute to have your head shrunk.”

“But, Colonel ... anybody in his right mind knows you can’t bomb coal.”

“If, just if, we can drop coal sacks in Berlin in an open field ... just if, I say, it would save thousands of hours of landing, unloading, and turning around. We’ve got to try out all ideas.”

Scott shook his head. “Your show, sir.”

Scott made a short flight to the outskirts of Offenbach to where an open field was marked out for the experiment. He flew low over it and flapped his wings to tell the ground observers he had spotted the target area.

On the edge of the white circle stood Hiram Stonebraker, Clinton Loveless, Perry Sindlinger, and a half-dozen other eager members of the staff.

Scott circled the craft to come in downwind, dropped to three-hundred-foot altitude, reduced air speed, and as he hit the edge of the circle a signal was sent back to a crew who released duffel bags filled with coal. They zoomed earthward. He made two more passes flying slower and lower, enabling many more sacks of coal to be thrown out of the door.

The duffel bags burst into shreds as they hit the ground and the coal was splintered into fractions. An angry black column of dust arose, raining down a storm of coal, and the winds sprayed and spewed it for miles beyond the target area.

The observers on the ground were gagged and blanketed with dust and in a moment resembled characters in a high school play using burnt cork on their faces.

Clint saw Perry Sindlinger, whose eyes resembled two burned holes in a blanket. He started to laugh, tried to control himself, because somebody there didn’t think it was very funny. They bit their lips to contain themselves as a pitch-black Hiram Stonebraker faced them.

“Doesn’t work,” Stonebraker said.

Chapter Fourteen

MARSHAL ALEXEI POPOV HAD made an error. He decided to allow a Western journalist to tour the Soviet Zone of Germany to “prove” freedom of the press. Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury was chosen.

His articles became increasingly more terse and when faced with censorship he began smuggling out stories through those mysterious channels known only to the society of newspapermen.

The last article had deep repercussions:

POPOV’S FOLLY. A FARCE IN THREE ACTS by Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury.

Until recently the Communists continued to go to elaborate lengths in East Germany to parade in public members of opposition parties to “prove” political freedom existed in the worker’s paradise. Berthold Hollweg is their most famous relic.

This farce of showcasing a few inept democratic politicians is over. Also over is freedom of speech, assembly, justice, worship, and all those other petit bourgeois annoyances tolerated by the decadent capitalist society.

The consolidation of the Soviet Zone of Germany is complete. The last voice of freedom is still. Any hope for democracy is dead.

V. V. Azov, a mysterious puppet master, calls the plays from a shuttered mansion in Potsdam.

The life and times of Comrade Rudi Wöhlman show him to be perfect in the role of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Wöhlman is about ready to call together a “people’s” congress. At the end of the congress plans will be announced for a “People’s Republic” with Leipzig as the provisional capital.

Later, when the West is hopefully squeezed out of Berlin, this city will be named capital of the newest police state.

A four-hundred-thousand-man para-military “People’s Police,” which is the nucleus of an East German Army, are in existence to persuade the people that this is the right thing. The existence of this organization is in violation of all agreements to cleanse militarism from German life.

A back-up force of twenty divisions of infantry and armor under the command of Marshal Popov ensures full acceptance of the new way of life.

Why is there such a panic to form a People’s Republic while the Communists continue to talk out of the other side of their mouths for unification?

The call for unification is the most hideous libel in all of the postwar Soviet profanities. The fact is the Soviet Union lives in terror of a reunited Germany which they cannot control.

They cannot control Germany so long as the West remains. They cannot win Germany through free elections.

The West is beginning to hammer out its own plans for the political and economic merger of their zones and, therefore, the Soviet Union must make unification impossible by the creation of a puppet state.

The fat, sad-eyed reporter was denounced in traditional terms as a “reactionary tool of yellow journalism” and ejected from the Soviet Zone through the Brandenburg Gate and advised he could never, never return.

Sean was happy to learn that Big Nellie was back in Berlin, for life granted him few real friends. The Press Club in Dahlem was jammed with journalists now who had been caught up in the Berlin story. It was good, Sean thought. The press had been a faithful ally of General Hansen from the beginning, and at last the Airlift story was catching the public fancy.

Sean brought Big Nellie up to date on the events in Berlin. The Lift had set down two thousand tons the day before. This was less than half the required daily minimum, but more Skymasters were on the way. He spoke of the big building programs at Tempelhof and Gatow.

“As a matter of fact, I just left two of Stonebraker’s men. They’re scouting around in the French Sector for a site for a third airfield.”

Sean said the Berliners were holding up unbelievably under intolerable conditions, but there was a growing fear among Falkenstein and the German leaders that the West might negotiate Berlin away without their having a voice in their own fate.

Big Nellie handed Sean a copy of the column he had just filed. “It’s a masterpiece,” he said.

Sean smiled. As usual, he had found a unique thesis.

SOPHISTICATED SIEGE

by Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury

All of the classic definitions of the word “siege” are defied by the bizarre blockade of Berlin. It is a situation unique in history.

Man has laid siege to man from the mythological siege of ancient Troy to the Biblical sieges of Jerusalem and Jericho on through to the sieges of Carthage and Paris and in recent years we saw it in the blockades of the Spanish Civil War.

Until Berlin, all sieges have had the goal of military victory. Long and involved sieges were embarked upon to starve and demoralize the besieged and followed by an attack that spelled destruction or submission. The Siege of Berlin breaks all of the rules and in many ways does the complete opposite of historic conceptions. In Berlin the enemies live side by side, eat together in the same cafes, swim in the same lakes, attend opera together, and in some instances have social contact.

Here, the enemies go to extremes

not to get into a fight.

This is a battle of will power. The protagonists battle for the minds and souls of men.

The phenomenon runs through the performance of normal life. The railroads, canals, sewage plants, phone systems continue to function only by cooperation between the Russians and the West even though there is no official contact between them.

Even the Airlift is closely watched by Russians in a four-power Air Safety Center.

Two separate police forces cooperate on certain criminals. Populations shift daily by hundreds of thousands through public transportation facilities.

The city administration has the ridiculous and near impossible task of trying to serve two masters while being voted into office to serve a third. And while the Berlin Magistrat is forced to take orders from both sides you will find duly elected Communists in public office in the Western Sectors and duly elected borough mayors from the democratic parties in office in the Soviet Sector.

Two currencies wage a battle for recognition confounding every rule of economics. This fight for the money is a good measuring stick of the way the people think, for despite its impossible physical position the Western B marks continue to thrash the “wallpaper marks” of the Russians.

In this, strangest of all sieges, the West continues to hang on by the skin of its teeth while in Karlshorst and Potsdam Trojan horses are being built for the Berliners, and in Moscow, Trojan horses are being built for the West.

Sean handed the column back to Nellie. “Like you said, nothing short of brilliant.”

“Sean,” Big Nellie said abruptly, “you’re wearing your heart on your sleeve. Tell me to mind my own business.”

“Things used to be clear to me.”

“None of us like to see our magnificent points of view moderated by shades of gray. It’s like admitting defeat. You were once a mean, exacting, German-hating son of a bitch.”

“Only a Russian clings to something as absolute truth ... until the commissars replace it with another absolute truth.”

“Don’t play verbal gymnastics with me, Sean.”

“Am I chasing windmills? Do I see changes in these people because I want to, or are they really happening?”

Big Nellie grunted. It was still that girl, and Sean was seeking justifications. “Talk to most of our people in Germany and they’ll tell you what a sweet, kindly, sentimental folk the Germans are. They may have been slightly misled by Hitler, but we apologize for them. Most Americans in Germany will tell you that most Germans didn’t know what the Nazis were doing.” Sean grunted.

Bradbury shook his mop of hair. “My distinguished colleagues are quick to sing odes to the noble Berliner. The Germans haven’t changed, Sean, they’ve just shifted a little with the prevailing winds. Wait till this blockade goes into a sixth month and all those unity rallies around Germany will vanish in smoke. Wait until a Berlin tax takes a liverwurst sandwich out of their lunch buckets and you’ll see how fast they get tired of Berlin. I’ve already heard it ... Berlin was really never our capital ... Berlin is a problem of the Americans.”

As Big Nellie attacked the wall of justification he was building Sean wondered how far he had committed himself to making peace with the Germans in order to have Ernestine. Was he groping for signs that did not exist?

“The German people,” Big Nellie said, “are not going to make a democratic state out of the Western Zones because they long for democracy. They’ll do it because we order them to do it. Their political convictions and their love of freedom begins and ends with a full lunch bucket. They do not possess the inner convictions to survive an assault on a democracy. They’re out to make the best deal they can to save their asses and they’ll turn to the first strong man again who keeps their lunch buckets full. Heard enough?”

“You might as well finish.”

“No one was more shocked than the Russians when they learned how easy it was to control Germans. We say, make a democracy. On the other side of the gate they say, make a police state. Think they’ll rebel? Hell no, they’d have to tramp on somebody’s lawn to do that. Three years after Hitler and they’re marching over there with torches and banners. Three years and they’ve got block wardens and kangaroo courts again. Neighbor rats on neighbor in the grand old German tradition. You use informers. You know it’s no sin to them to spill their guts to save their necks.”

Big Nellie heaved a deep sigh, touched Sean’s hand. “I get a little wound up in this, but somehow I can’t get used to my new peace-loving democratic German ally.”

“I had it coming,” Sean said.

“You’re my pal, Sean. The things you feel are deep and intense. If you try to cover them, they’ll come back and haunt you.”

Chapter Fifteen

“BEAVER! GET YOUR ASS IN here! ”

“Sorry, sir, he’s at the Press Club with the daily handouts.”

“I want him in here the minute he gets back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hiram Stonebraker held before him a copy of the Task Force Times, a one-page daily paper edited by Woody Beaver with a headline reading: Sidney Hops Into Hamburg.

It appeared that Woody Beaver had got hold of a kangaroo and was having the animal escorted around Germany appealing to Germans to fill its pouch with presents for West Berlin and particularly toys for the children. Sidney was collecting more tons than the Airlift was flying and getting more space in the Task Force Times than the C-54’s.

Woody Beaver had learned his job, all right. Too damned well, Stonebraker thought. The Press Club was a converted mansion once belonging to a cement king and sat in West Biebrich on the Rhine. Beaver wheeled and dealed, planting Stonebraker’s views, and when they differed with Buff Morgan’s resorted to devious methods.

In public he rarely left the general’s side, and was quick to tap his shoulder when he felt the general was about to make a salty utterance, particularly about the occupation country club.

Beaver started the Task Force Times on twenty-four hours’ notice because Stonebraker thought it would be a good separate entity and said, “The Stars and Stripes is good for morale. At first Buff Morgan did not take kindly to a enough for the rest of us peasants.”

When he finally did authorize it, he conveniently forgot to allot paper, but Beaver proved equal to the task by foraging and scrounging so that the first issues came out in a variety of shapes and colors.

One of Beaver’s brain storms was to hold a contest to give the Airlift an even more romantic name. “Operation Vittles” won the day and was good for copy in the world press. The contest winner, by coincidence, was a WAF working in Headquarters whom Beaver just so happened to be dating at the time.

Stonebraker decided to humble his rambunctious press officer by pouring on flight duty. On his third flight to Berlin, Beaver happened to pick up a passenger, a fraulein working at the mobile field canteen at Tempelhof. Their return flight somehow went wrong and they ended up in Marseilles.

The girl stuck to her story that she stowed away, and Beaver insisted that his instruments got fouled up by a strange magnetic phenomenon. Stonebraker told him to concentrate on his public-information efforts.

“Beaver has just entered the building, sir.”

Stonebraker emitted a low, ominous gurgle like a stewing volcano.

“Beaver! Where did you get this goddamned animal.”

“You mean Sidney, sir? Well, I was up at Fühlsbuttel covering the arrival of the first Australian crews and this kangaroo was their mascot and ... anyhow... I thought ...”

“Beaver, I’m not running a zoo.”

“Sir, yesterday we got a ton of toys in Lübeck and we’ve got a pledge of a ton of sausage from Bremen. Now you know these Germans have never been hot for each other. This is a very good sign.”

“What the hell are you, a political philosopher? How the hell we going to get this junk to Berlin?”

“By the end of the year we might be able to spare a few planeloads for an Operation Santa Claus.”

“Santa Claus!”

“Just look at all these things we’ve collected.”

Stonebraker realized it was a great public relations idea and backed off ever so slowly.

“After all,” Beaver said, “you commanded me to use my initiative and make advance planning.”

“Well ...”

“Sidney’s brothers, Humphrey and Octavius, have just arrived. We can cover all three Zones if the General will just sign this authorization for some extra trucks.”

Stonebraker scratched his name on the requisition, then proceeded to chew Beaver’s tail out for a cartoon in the Task Force Times making jest of what the Airlift referred to as “temporary duty.”

“Beaver, I see by a decent paper, The Stars and Stripes, that Bob Hope is giving a show in Paris. It is my opinion that Bob Hope would be good for the morale of our people.”

“Excellent idea, sir. I’ll write an invitation for your signature.”

Hiram Stonebraker shook his head, no.

“You go to Paris and bring Bob Hope back with you, personally.”

“But ... but ... but ...”

“Beaver, I believe in you.”

“Yes, sir,” he croaked. He slunk toward the door.

“And Beaver,” the general said, chuckling devilishly, “don’t come back without him.”

Chapter Sixteen

CLINTON LOVELESS WAS DEEPLY involved in the Airlift Control Center of Headquarters on Taunusstrasse in Wiesbaden. Here were direct lines to Frankfurt Air Traffic Control Center and Tempelhof Approach and Gatow and all the fields in the zones. Minute to minute records were kept twenty-four hours a day recording movement of all air traffic, the status of each squadron, weather maps, and forecasts. And mainly, the Howgozit board showing the tonnage set down in Berlin. In these days it had edged to three thousand tons a day.

Statistical Service turned the Control Center and the staff conference room into mazes of charts and graphs showing turn-around times, engine availability, utilization of craft, flying hours per crew, and all those facts needed to keep a precision control as accurate as the precision of flying in the corridor itself.

A dozen Skymasters from the 46th at Bergstrom had come; sixteen from the 22d Transport from Fairfield, California; nine came from Great Falls, Montana; they came from Westover; more were on the way from Hickam and Tokyo and Kelly in Texas; the Airlift was growing larger than its parent, MATS.

The Air Materiel Command secured spare parts from all over the world and manufacturing lines rolled again for yet more parts. At Erding outside Munich a German/ American manual of parts was written and German technicians hired to fill the growing gap prepared to renew 40,000 spark plugs a month and break down and reconstruct any and all instruments in the Skymaster.

The unpronounceable base of Oberpfaffenhofen, known as Obie, was activated for the two-hundred-hour overhaul; engine build-up was begun at Rhein/Main; daily spare-parts trains ran from Obie and Erding to the new rail head of Zeppelheim, which fed into Rhein/Main and Y 80.

Ten thousand Americans were there or on the way and with other thousands of British, Germans, and displaced persons some 50,000 people would be involved in supplying Berlin.

A Sea Lift to support the Airlift, called Marine X, poured in ten million gallons of aviation fuel a month and brought in new engines built in Texas and wheat from Canada.

The Headquarters of the Weather Wing was established in a confiscated house once belonging to the Von Ribbentrops, which had been used as a Gestapo horror house. They built up the most extensive system of gathering weather data from stations around the world ever known to aviation.

At Rhein/Mud the Operations office had a sign which read: COAL AND FEED STORE, FREE DELIVERIES, H. BALL BREAKER, PROPRIETOR.

In the Pilot’s room at Y 80 another sign read: CONGRATULATIONS, YOU MADE IT AGAIN.

As the Americans flew the southern corridor with ever-growing precision the British flew into the northern corridor out of their fields at Fassberg, Celle, Lübeck, Fühlsbuttel, and Wünstorf.

As August wore on it became apparent that closer liaison would have to be established with British Headquarters which was located in the medieval town of Lüneburg and exchanges of personnel began to take place.

British Operation Plain Fare put on a magnificent show. The British had but a hundred aircraft, many of which were Dakotas, their counterpart of the Gooney Bird. They were closer to Berlin than the American Zone so their craft could make three round trips a day, but they had only two crews for each craft.

The main British effort was flour, which accounted for half their cargo tonnage. The British solved the cumbersome problem of flying in Berlin’s gas and oil, which was loaded in bulky barrels. They contracted civilian tanker planes. Shortly, the Tudors and Lancasters flew in all of Berlin’s liquid fuel by flying tanks.

The British solved the most perplexing problem of flying salt, which had proved to be deadly corrosive. It was beaten by flying the salt in the belly of waterproof Sunderland seaplanes, which landed on Berlin’s Havel Lake.

In preparing for the winter, when the lake would freeze, they were designing panniers that could be slung under the craft ... as salt was carried in ancient caravans.

“Get on this thing and whip it, Clint,” Hiram Stonebraker said.

Clint drew up cargo-loading charts on every Skymaster in the Lift, dozens of ideas for lightweight packaging, and a manual for proper loading.

“Clint, go over to Hanau and do something about this coal situation.”

Clint told the people at Hanau responsible for coal procurement that he wanted them to buy a better grade and weigh each sack more accurately because they were overloading the planes.

Coal was being carried in surplus duffel bags that had to be wetted down to cut down seepage, which was wrecking cable systems and instruments. Wetting-down added to the weight of the cargo; he wanted to test a five-ply paper sack. Although paper sacks would only last for three flights against the duffel bag’s twenty, it would still be cheaper. It would mean a half-million new sacks a month.

At Hanau, Clint looked over the new ideas for tie-down rods. The canvas webbing was wearing out too fast. He liked the looks of light metal webs and rods and wanted to test it immediately.

At Hanau, Clarence Drinkwater had established a school to teach the Germans the tricks in cutting up heavy machinery and they went to work cutting up the shipments of small generators brought in by Marine X to raise Berlin’s capacity.

“Clint, Chip Hansen phoned to say they are down to a four-day supply of newsprint. He feels it is vital to the morale of the Western Sectors to keep the press going.”

Clint flew to Sweden, where he and a paper manufacturer designed an undersized roll of newsprint weighing only five hundred pounds.

“Clint, get down to Obie and see what the bitching is all about on the maintenance docks.”

The wooden docks were inadequate. Clint wanted light metal ones that could be assembled like temporary grandstands. He put in a priority message to Air Materiel Command to procure them and Sea Lift them at once through Marine X.

Hiram Stonebraker came to the end of a sizzling argument with Buff Morgan over the red-line phone about air time and space. Stonebraker insisted that the air had to be clear of USAFE and civil traffic at Rhein/Main and Y 80 during the Airlift bloc times.

It was causing a nightmare of scheduling, but Stonebraker would allow nothing to interfere with the Lift’s priority. The argument ended with Buff Morgan threatening to take the matter up with Chip Hansen.

Hiram slammed the phone down and continued with a number of well-chosen words about the USAFE country club when a message from Air Materiel was handed him: NAVY TURNING OVER ONE HUNDRED C-54 ENGINES AT ONCE. FLYING FIFTEEN OVER VIA C-82. BALANCE WILL ARRIVE BY MARINE X BY END OF MONTH.

Holding the message in his hand, he walked to the Control Center and studied the engine availability board. The navy engines would come just in time.

Because of the high usage of craft, the type of cargo, the pressure of heavy loads, and numbers of takeoffs and landings, the breakdowns were mounting so that nearly 20 per cent of the craft were on the ground at a single time for spare parts and repairs.

On the squadron level there were inspections at twenty and fifty hours in addition to unscheduled repairs. At a hundred hours each craft was given a more detailed inspection. At a thousand hours the craft was sent back to America for complete overhauls.

A bottleneck had developed at the two-hundred-hour interim overhaul at the new base at Obie. This two-hundred-hour inspection meant the training of hundreds of Germans and the loss of thousands of flying hours. Stonebraker wanted to eliminate the Obie Base and the two-hundred-hour overhaul, but both USAFE and MATS were against him. He returned to his office to receive a call from Clint Loveless, who had just gotten in from his latest trip, this one to British Headquarters on the possibility of setting up a jointly run operation at their fields at Celle and Fassberg. The British had more fields than planes to fill them, was closer to Berlin, and more Skymasters were coming into the American Zone than their two fields could handle.

Clint went to the general’s office and was startled at first sight. The general seemed to be chalky-colored. He showed Clint the message on the navy engines. Clint blew a sigh of relief.

The general called in his aide, told him to phone M.J. and say he would not be there for dinner, and told his aide to get something to eat for Colonel Loveless and himself.

“Clint. This hundred navy engines won’t be enough. I’m meeting with USAFE tomorrow to try to cut out the two-hundred-hour inspections. I want you to support my position.”

Clint pondered. The Skymasters were being asked to do a job for which they were never designed. All the manuals no longer applied.

The chief pilots had worked out methods to get the greatest efficiency with the least wear through absolute power settings and by cutting down ground-idling time.

Yet, the repeated stress of take-offs with heavy loads and high manifold pressure had resulted in piston erosion. The high usage of craft simply played hell on combustion chambers and there was excessive wear on seals, gaskets, ignition wiring.

Hydraulic systems, particularly the gear-retracting mechanism, were overworked and the coal and flour cargoes eroded cables, wires, contacts, plugs, instruments, radios.

There were breakdowns on the long, delicate nose wheel, never designed for the unusual poundings they were receiving in the many take-offs and landings; fuel leaks were a constant source of headache.

The two-hundred-hour overhaul meant they needed greater logistical support, would have to find and build up 30 per cent more spare parts, find facilities and train aircraft and engine mechanics far beyond the capacity of the base at Obie.

Clinton Loveless and Hiram Stonebraker knew that in the unromantic, poorly lit, drafty hangars, mechanics torn from families and living in muddy tin-hut camps were going to make or break the Airlift.

It was the one problem that could never be solved, only appeased, for the Lift demanded the greatest maintenance and logistics operation in aviation’s history.

“What about it, Clint?”

“I’m sorry, General. I can’t support your view. We have to continue the two-hundred-hour overhaul.”

Stonebraker knew he was whipped. His own staff would not back him on this issue. The Obie Base could only work during summer and autumn and there was no base in Germany that had the facilities to do a two-hundred-hour overhaul in winter. It meant that a wartime British base would have to be reactivated and the C-54’s would have to fly out of Germany.

The dinner came. General Stonebraker ate at his desk, Clint on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“You’ll have to go to England, Clint. Some MATS people will be looking over bases. I have the old Burtonwood Base in mind. Let me know if we’ll be able to get it into shape quick enough.”

“When do I go, sir?”

“Well ... you might as well take a day off tomorrow.” He nibbled at his food and asked Clint how the cooperation with the British was shaping up. Clint said, no strain. The general knew the British would come through from the old CBI days. With joint American/British bases operating soon in Fassberg and Celle and running nothing but coal perhaps they could build up the precariously low reserves in Berlin.

Lieutenant Beaver knocked, entered. Stonebraker ran through his papers, studied the cartoon for the next day’s Task Force Times. It depicted Airman Kimacyoyo (Kiss My Ass, Colonel, You’re on Your Own) at a desk marked, DEPENDENTS HOUSING PROCUREMENT. An exploded cigar had blackened his face and the caption read: “I Told You it was a Thankless Job.” Hiram snickered as he initialed an okay. The cartoon would burn up Buff Morgan.

He studied the incoming VIP list. Beaver persisted that one of the journalists was a “must see.” There was a British Cabinet Minister to be escorted on an inspection of Y 80 and also a French general.

“Frigg the French. They’re not doing a goddamned thing for the Airlift.”

“They fly the flag in Berlin, sir, and we’re intending to lay down an airport in their sector.”

“Any more of your goddamned friends coming in here to interfere with this operation, Beaver?”

The next week Vice President Alben Barkley was due and Garry Moore was scheduled to put on a show at the requisitioned Opera House.

“Where the hell are the Howgozit figures?”

Beaver produced a slip of paper taken from the Control Center with figures listing by squadron the number of flights and total tonnage. It was a terrible day. They had only set down six hundred tons when the weather put the Lift out of business.

His face grew long. How do you whip the weather? He thanked Beaver quietly and dismissed him.

A phone call came on the red line from Chip Hansen in Berlin. Buff Morgan had taken the air-space beef to him. Stonebraker refused to back down; Hansen said he would try to smooth USAFE’s ruffled feathers.

“Crusty, I just got the figures on the new airfield.”

“How many barrels of asphalt?” Stonebraker asked quickly.

“Ten thousand.”

Stonebraker grunted.

“And Crusty ... the Magistrat appealed to Neal Hazzard today. The hospital inventories are dangerously low. We are going to have to get several thousand tons of emergency drugs and supplies in immediately.” At last, Chip Hansen sent his regards to M.J.

Stonebraker set the phone down slowly. “We have to fly in ten thousand barrels of asphalt,” he said to Clint.

Clint wanted to cry.

“What the hell, Clint. No matter how rough we have it, it’s ten times rougher on those people in Berlin.”

Stonebraker pulled himself out of his chair. He reeled back suddenly, falling against the wall, groaned from a terrible pain in his chest, sunk to his knees, then began to crawl back to his desk.

“General!”

“Clint ... top ... drawer ...”

Clint found a box of nitroglycerin tablets. Take One in Case of Attack. He administered the pill, laid a cushion beneath his head, loosened his collar, and went back to the phone as the general writhed and gasped for breath.

“No ... no ... phone ... lock ... door ...”

Clint wavered. The general’s life hung in the balance, yet with pain-wracked effort it had the sound of an order. Clint set the receiver down, and locked both entrances.

The general groaned and broke into a cold sweat, and then it subsided. Clint wiped his face with a damp rag.

The general clutched his wrists. “You keep your mouth shut about this.”

“It’s not worth your life, General. We’re not going to make it, anyhow.”

“Goddamn you, Clint! Goddamn you! Don’t let me ever hear you say that again.”

Chapter Seventeen

A FLIGHT SURGEON, SWORN to secrecy, left the general’s suite after assuring M.J. and Clint that he was resting well.

Clint remained shaken and M.J. tried to comfort him. “His seizures come and go. It is something we have to live with and I made up my mind a long time ago we weren’t going to live in fear.”

“They had no right to call him back,” Clint said.

“At first, I thought that. But it would have killed him quicker if they had left him behind.”

“This mission burns out airplanes and breaks down men. Neither we nor the machines are meant to stand up under this kind of pounding.”

“Then, Clint, the only way the general will survive is if he continues to believe it can be done.”

Clint returned to his room at the Rose Hotel and was awake far into the night. Hiram Stonebraker, those G-5 people in Berlin, the flyers at Y 80, and the mechanics at Rhein/Mud made up for a lot of those whorehouses on Madison Avenue. He was glad now that he had come.

The next day was Sunday; he called M.J. to inquire.

“The general has gone to his office,” she said.

“I’ll be damned.”

What a day! Clint looked around the street outside the Rose Hotel. His first day off and the sun was shining.

Stonebraker kept his staff housed in a cluster of requisitioned hotels diagonally across the Koch Brunnen Square from Headquarters. The plush Schwarzer Bock, Rose, and Palast held the top-ranking people. Lesser hotels scattered all over the city were requisitioned for junior officers and enlisted personnel.

Clint walked to the main exchange for toilet gear and cigarettes. Wiesbaden had been spared except for a single stray stick of bombs. In the heart of the city all the grandiose civic and commercial buildings had been requisitioned by the Air Force for USAFE and all those other offices and wings needed to run the tremendous air establishment. Beer halls had been converted into mess halls and the late-comer, the First Airlift Task Force, took a block on Taunusstrasse with shops and apartments and converted it into a makeshift command post.

Clint returned to the Rose, wondered what the hell to do. He went to the Bier Stube at the Palast, a congregation point for Airlift people. The Lift was back in full operation; no one was around this early. Might as well see a little of Wiesbaden, he thought, and strolled to the Wilhelmstrasse along a line of once elegant shops and still lovely sidewalk cafes.

Out of the immediate bailiwick of Headquarters Clint could see that the city was a crown jewel, with tradition and grandeur. It had a history as a spa dating back to Roman times, and was heavily patronized by the aristocracy and Rhineland industrialists.

He crossed the Wilhelmstrasse to the flower-studded colonnade, which began with a statue of Bismarck. On one side was the Opera House and on the other a park and fountains. As airmen and their girls passed him, he began to feel lonely.

Clint hummed, “Sunday in the Park.” Christ, he hated Sunday in the park in New York; it was like a ghetto boxed in by sheer walls of high buildings.

He was drawn toward the end of the colonnade by the sound of the Air Force band playing a Sunday concert before the Kurhaus.

AQUIS MATTIACIS read the carved lettering above six columns supporting the domed roof of the Kurhaus. The original Roman name of the city and the site of the springs with curative powers held a building rumored to have been built by twenty-six millionaires each having put up huge sums.

The Kurhaus had been requisitioned as the Eagle Club to serve American families. Ping-pong tables stood on marble floors and a soda fountain was installed in one end of a dining room. The German books were gone from the oriental-carpeted library and replaced by English tomes.

Behind the Kurhaus stretched a magnificent park of lakes and little bridges and riding trails and tennis courts, once patronized by arrogant monocled barons, slash-cheeked steel kings, and their hourglass-figured ladies.

He could hear the band playing “William Tell Overture.” Why the hell did all bands play “William Tell Overture”? Maybe it wasn’t a good idea having a day off.

Clint caught a taxi and drove up the hills to the Neroberg Officers’ Club. The great hotel was in a lush setting, a forest on a foothill of the Taunus Mountains looking down on Wiesbaden and the Rhine. Clint sat at the bar, listened to Egon at the piano.

There were mostly USAFE people around and even though they didn’t give a damn what was happening at Erding and Rhein/Main and Obie they could not escape the Airlift. Along with the gossip and complaints of how tough it was to live off the German economy, there was tension. There was a lot of talk about wanting to get dependents out of Germany before the Berlin thing blew up.

Clint looked around in growing desperation for a face from Headquarters. He bought Egon a round; the German played, “This Love of Mine,” which he and Judy thought of as “their” song.

He bummed a bathing suit, took a drive down to the Opelbad, a luxurious pool set in the woods and vineyards over the city. He studied the women at pool side with a practiced eye, but none of them was as voluptuous as Judy....Screw it, Clint thought.

“Where to, sir?” the taxi driver asked.

“Airlift Headquarters.”

Clint sighed with relief as he entered Taunusstrasse 11. He went first to the Control Center and chatted with the duty control officer, who gave him a capsule briefing, then went upstairs to Operations and made his own hasty calculation that they would set down three thousand tons.

He went to his office, put the hot plate on for coffee, took off his blouse, and began to read over the preliminary agreement drawn up with the British for the joint operation of bases at Celle and Fassberg. He dialed General Stonebraker’s office.

The general’s secretary answered.

“This is Colonel Loveless. General in for me?”

“Hello.”

“Clint Loveless, sir.”

“Yes, Clint.”

“How’s your ... indigestion, sir.”

“Fine.”

“I’m working over the agreement with the British. I’ll try to have it on your desk tomorrow afternoon before I shove off for Burtonwood.”

“I thought I gave you the day off.”

“You did, sir. I don’t know what to do with a day off.”

“Well, long as you’re here, have the agreement on my desk this afternoon.”

Clint clenched his teeth for a long second. “Yes, sir. By the way, General, did you see the memo on how the British are getting the sparrows off the Gatow airfield?”

“No.”

“Seems like one of their airmen used to train falcons for hunting. They’re sending some over from England. Say they’ll have those sparrows out of there in an hour.”

“Why the hell didn’t we think of that!”

“Guess we’re not too much on falconry.”

“By the way, Clint, M.J. is having cocktails and dinner for some of the staff and wives who are particularly angry at me. Why don’t you join us at the dining room at seven.”

“Sounds like a winner, sir.”

Clint dug into the agreement, now happy he had returned to work. His phone rang.

“Colonel Loveless.”

“Suh, this is Sergeant Bufford,” a Texan drawled. “I’m here at Rhein/Main at the Lost Wives’ Club. We got us a Mrs. Clinton Loveless who came in by commercial aircraft. We reckon she belongs to you, suh.”

Clint blinked with disbelief. “Has she got two pale kids with her?”

“Ma’am, you got two pale kids?”

Judy took the phone. “Clinton. Will you please come over and get us.”

“I’ll be damned.”

The general grumbled that the agreement would be late reaching his desk, but nevertheless gave Clint his own staff car and had his aide contact the hotel to arrange a suite.

Judy didn’t know for sure if she had done the right thing by coming to Germany without telling him, but when they embraced and he sniffled while he hugged the children, she knew it was all right

Tony and Lynn were deposited in a bathtub the size of a small swimming pool while the travel-weary wife collapsed with a martini.

Clint got the children fed. They were terribly impressed by the waiters in formal suits who scraped and bowed and carried on with a great deal of pomp. He unpacked and got them off to sleep.

Judy revived herself and came back to the parlor looking, feeling, smelling all woman and ready for love, but Clint was pensive.

“You aren’t happy I came.”

“We have a lot of rivers to cross.” There hadn’t been an exchange of letters for six weeks, except the one Clint had gotten from Milt Schuster. Judy had been to see him about a divorce.

“I was hurt and angry when I went to see Milt. And when the anger passed I was just plain lonely. Clint, doesn’t the fact that I came here say that things will be your way. I guess I just don’t like an empty bed.”

“You’d have no trouble filling it with someone who shares your ideas about getting up in the world.”

“I can’t, Clint ...” He stood and turned away from her. “I’ll make it up to you, honey,” she said. “We’ll get a little house here ...”

“Dammit, Judy. You don’t just walk down the street and get a little house.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“In the past six weeks I’ve been more alive than at any time in my life. We have an airman at a base outside Munich who figured out how to renew spark plugs for twenty-one cents a copy. New, they cost sixty cents. We use fifty thousand of them a month. A young officer in Headquarters across the street has worked out a load calculator that helps us carry up to five hundred more pounds of cargo on every flight. We have displaced persons who can unload ten tons of coal in twenty minutes. We’ve done all kinds of miracles here ... but we’re whipped. I know my girl Judy. She doesn’t like a loser.”

“Clint, I love you. I’ve just started to learn why and how much. There’s a part in this for me too.”

He nodded and began to pour his heart out and Judy knew what she had to do. She could take him away from this awesome thing for little snatches at a time, brace him up, send him back to battle.

“That nasty old man is the greatest person I have ever known ... and he’s going to die. He’s got a time bomb in his chest.”

After a while Clint was happy that she had come. He stretched out on the bed. It was kind of like the early days when they scratched to make ends meet; she was so wonderful then.

“Let’s make a baby,” Judy purred.

Clint agreed.

The phone rang.

“Clint, get over to Headquarters right away.”

Clint didn’t bother to ask what particular problem was annoying the general.

“And we’ll be flying out to Berlin tomorrow in the second time bloc at Rhein/Main.”

“What about my trip to England, sir?”

“It will have to hold. They got the ground-controlled approach equipment in operation at Tempelhof. The weather is closing in again. We’ve got to look it over and break that bottleneck.”

“Be right over, General.” He set down the phone and looked at his astonished wife. “That’s the name of the game,” he said.

Chapter Eighteen

IT RAINED A DELUGE. Rhein/Mud was a lake.

Miserable teams of displaced persons and drenched airmen prepared the line of Skymasters for flight. Hiram Stonebraker’s car, bearing a limp wet flag with two stars, stopped before Operations, 7497th Airlift Wing, as bloc time approached.

On sight of the general, the sign regarding Ball Breaker’s Feed and Coal Bin was stashed away for display at a more appropriate time.

Stonebraker, shaking the water off him, entered the chief pilot’s office.

“You going to run us up to Berlin, Captain?”

“Yes, sir,” Scott Davidson answered. “We’ll be number fifteen in the bloc.”

“When you reach Tempelhof Airways, tell them I want to try out a ground-controlled approach.”

Scott studied the wicked downpour outside. “Couldn’t of picked a better day for it, General.”

“See you at the briefing. By the way, Scott, getting enough flying time?”

“Plenty ... sir.”

As Stonebraker stepped back into the hall two pilots were reading the Task Force Times and laughing. The cartoon depicted the weatherman having hung himself and two pilots on seeing the body commented, “Oh-oh, the weather’s bad again.”

Thirty crews drawn from a cross section of squadrons filed into the briefing room. The weatherman stood before his map.

“The European Continent is under the influence of a deep low off the British Isles causing a prognosis of bad flying weather for the next forty-eight hours.”

A grumble around the room.

“Ceilings will vary from zero to five hundred feet, visibility from zero to one and a half miles.”

“Lovely,” Nick Papas mumbled.

“A tight pressure gradient causing strong winds aloft from the northwest, three hundred fifteen degrees. Winds will be forty to forty-five knots.”

It would be a long day.

Scott Davidson stood before the men and briefed them on new VHF radio installations and beacons in the center corridor, then gave a lecture about being fed up with the numerous little accidents on the ground which were causing great time waste. He spoke of the tricks of taxiing heavy loads, executing turns, and braking carefully to handle the delicate nose wheel of the C-54.

As Hiram Stonebraker heard him speak he felt smug about his hunch on Davidson. Scott had been able to charm commanders’ wives, con and duck responsibility in the past, but was quick to recognize that with Stonebraker his luck had run out, temporarily. Then, keeping the big birds in the corridor and getting tons into Berlin became like wartime all over. The mudhole of a base, the urgency of the Airlift, and the endless challenges were turning him into a fine chief pilot. Scott ended the briefing by repeating his own dislike of cigar smoking in the cabin ... for Nick’s benefit.

Stonebraker and Clint Loveless waited in the staff car near the craft as the rain pelted down on the team of a dozen Polish displaced persons and the American sergeant in charge of the loading. They became drenched beneath their ponchos as they filled the ship with sacks of coal, barrels of asphalt, and married the load to distribute it evenly with a number of lightly packaged cartons marked DANISH CHEESE.

Stan Kitchek and Flight Engineer Nick Papas walked around in ankle-deep water in the pre-takeoff inspection while Scott signed his clearance forms at Operations and picked up a flight kit.

The steps were rolled up and they all boarded. Clint sat in a jump seat installed in the rear of the flight deck. The general stood behind the copilot. Up and down the hardstands trucks drove off, stairs rolled away, wheel chocks were pulled, engines coughed to life, and the line of birds started taxiing carefully on the wet taxiways.

As bloc time approached Scott watched as the tower released the first plane. As its engines revved to takeoff power, sheets of water gushed off the wings. It sloshed down the runway leaving a high spray and went nearly to the end before becoming airborne. It disappeared immediately into the weather.

Stan intoned the check list.

“Nose wheel.”

“Centered.”

“Parking brake.”

“Set.”

At a three-minute interval the second bird disappeared into the gray overcast.

“RPM.”

“Eight hundred.”

“Fuel pressure.”

“Seventeen.”

“Oil pressure.”

“Seventy.”

Nick told Clint Loveless to buckle in because it was going to be rough. Clint hated it. Nick plugged into a jack and gave the general a pair of ear phones.

“Main tanks.”

“On.”

“Booster pumps.”

“High.”

“Cowl flaps.”

“Trail.”

“Generators.”

“On.”

Nick pushed against the windows to make certain they were locked. They were, but they were leaking.

By the time Scott was nearing the end of the runway he could see that rain had slowed the interval of takeoff.

Stan called the tower.

“This is Big Easy Fifteen calling Rhein/Main Tower for taxi and takeoff instructions.”

“Big Easy Fifteen, this is Rhein/Main Tower. Bloc time is changed to zero seven three seven. Take off on runway two six. New altimeter setting is three zero, zero, zero. The time is zero seven three six, zulu.”

“Roger.”

“Big Easy Fifteen, clear to line up and hold.”

Scott coaxed the bird into position at the end of the runway.

“Big Easy Fifteen, this is Rhein/Main Tower. You are cleared for takeoff.”

As he pushed the throttle forward the multithousand-horsepower in the Pratt Whitney engines leaped to life. He felt the strain of the great engines plowing through the water and he knew he would need most of the runway.

Stan Kitchek called out the speed. At eighty Scott eased the yoke back, tilting the nose wheel off the ground.

“Ninety, ninety-five.”

Scott pulled the yoke and the bird lifted cleanly into the sky and was in an instant submerged in the weather and flying on instruments. He flew to nine hundred feet, banked south toward the Darmstadt Beacon, which his copilot had tuned in, crossed it, began his climb.

The ship bucked violently. Clint Loveless broke into a sweat. Stan asked for and received clearance to go up to six thousand feet. Scott fought the yoke as the turbulence threw the bird around, trying to gain altitude for the forty-five-mile run to the Fulda Range.

Over the Fulda Range on the edge of the Southern corridor the planes in the bloc checked their time with each other and adjusted their speed to set up the precision chain into Berlin.

He turned to a heading of 057 degrees and subtracted 10 degrees to crab into the wind, which was hitting from the northwest at forty knots and pushing him to the right of course.

Clinton Loveless wanted to die. He tried to think of other things to take his mind off his misery ... about getting back to Wiesbaden and making love to Judy. Even that didn’t help.

Nick Papas sipped coffee from a thermos, offered some to the general. He thought that two flights to Berlin today would be rougher than hell. There was a big card game on tonight in Frankfurt ... with luck he would make it.

Scott and Stan were too busy keeping the bird on course to think about anything.

Hiram Stonebraker felt it was a perfect day to try out the new ground-controlled approach system up at Tempelhof. After they landed, he planned to watch the GCA system land the next bloc from Wiesbaden, and then spend the day in Berlin with Clint on a number of problems.

Hiram Stonebraker had few flyers’ superstitions. One of them was that on each of his twenty flights to Berlin, he flew with Scott Davidson.

They reached the midway point in the 211-mile run in the corridor. While radio contact would be at a minimum, the general tapped Stan on the shoulder, took the copilot seat, and switched on the intercom.

“Good day to try out the GCA.”

“Yes, sir ... a lulu.” Scott nodded over his own shoulder. “Looks like Colonel Loveless’d rather be somewhere else.”

Clint’s chalky lips seemed to mumble prayer between the pitches and rolls.

“He’s a good engineer. He should know how safe these birds are.” Stonebraker produced a long cigar. “Mind if I smoke, Captain?”

Scott hated cigar smoke in the cabin. Nick, who always chewed an unlit cigar, shoved a light to the general’s, then lit his own cigar with a sigh of comfort. Scott grimaced.

The general saw the sweat glisten from Scott’s forehead from battling the yoke. He could almost feel the ache in the flyer’s hands and shoulders. The boy was doing a beautiful job of flying.

“How about that GCA landing, Scott. Can you handle it?” the general prodded.

“You can bet on it, General.”

Scott crabbed into the wind again. “In weather like this, General, I’d like to see us carry a heavier load of gas.”

Stonebraker pondered. The C-54’s held large wing tanks. Clint and the production people had worked it so that in the short hauls of the Lift they would carry only 20 per cent capacity. This would make weight for greater cargo loads. At six pounds a gallon, this meant many hundreds more pounds of cargo.

“What’s your reckoning, Scott?”

“In this kind of turbulence, the fuel splashes around violently. It’s causing the tanks to split.”

Gas leaks were a nemesis and they were having trouble sealing the tanks. He made a note to look into Scott’s suggestion.

Scott flicked on Tempelhof. “This is Big Easy Fifteen calling Tempelhof. I want a center-line check, over.”

“This is Tempelhof calling Big Easy Fifteen. You are one half mile right of center line.”

Pretty slick, Stonebraker thought, pretty slick flying.

In Berlin the radarscopes, which could look through clouds and obstructions, were being blanked out by the rain pattern and were losing airplanes.

Inside the radar shack, the NCO made a frantic call for the officer in charge.

“Sir, we’ve picked up two planes from Gatow.”

“What altitude?”

“Six thousand feet. They’re drifting into the Rhein/Main stream.”

The officer took the microphone. “Tempelhof to all Big Easy craft. Raise your altitude one thousand feet.” Hiram Stonebraker detected the anxiety in the transmission.

In Tempelhof a call to Gatow confirmed that a bloc of British Yorks had stacked for landings and two of the craft had been blown out of their holding pattern toward Tempelhof.

The ground-controlled approach system was given an auspicious inauguration as the first three craft were “talked down” through the blinding storm.

Ground-controlled approach talked to Big Easy Four and started to lower him over Berlin in a large square pattern. Scott knew a relatively inexperienced pilot was at the yoke of Four.

When he missed his approach and was started around again it caused a chain reaction. As the Rhein/Main bloc bit the Planter Beacon they had to hastily climb into holding patterns.

Scott took his ship up to twelve thousand feet over the beacon and the crew broke out oxygen masks. The planes in back of him were forced to climb up to twenty thousand. It was like taking a long train of railroad cars and suddenly stacking them skyward, end to end. Scott looked out of the corner of his eye as the general’s anger grew.

As the planes stacked higher the chatter over the radio became greater, breaking down the rigid discipline needed. In the radar shack, a new emergency arose as Big Easy Twenty-nine drifted clear out of the corridor.

The bloc was now like a tall column of cyclone-blown planes moving in a vicious circle. Across town the British were having the same trouble over Gatow.

Ground-controlled approach tried to nurse Big Easy Four down a second time but the inexperienced pilot missed his second approach by coming down the runway too fast.

The planes pushed up higher. A bloc would be following from Wiesbaden soon and breathing down their necks to make the situation impossible. Another plane from Gatow drifted toward Tempelhof. Communications collapsed.

Hiram Stonebraker knew that they would not be able to prevent a mid-air collision or a crash much longer.

“That’s enough of this crap for one day,” he mumbled. He picked up the microphone. “Clear the air! This is General Stonebraker in Big Easy Fifteen! This is a direct order! All craft will be diverted to their home bases immediately! Suggest the same procedure to Gatow.”

A shattering silence followed. Their hearts sank as Tempelhof dispatched them one by one back to the zone.

Igor Karlovy had arrived early at the Berlin Air Safety Center so he could follow the progress of the day when he learned of the bad weather. He monitored the American and British confusion, and heard them sent home in defeat He smiled inwardly as his prediction came to pass.

Chapter Nineteen

CLINT WAS SO WORRIED that the general would have a seizure on the return trip that he forgot how rough the flight was. But the general was amazingly calm. The worst had happened. While the young hands floundered, his years of experience averted a crash. On the return to Rhein/Main he sat at Nick’s seat with a pad and pencil searching for an illusive bit of magic.

Clint Loveless was down as he had never been down. He hardly heard Judy’s cry for joy when he returned to the hotel. As luck, or someone else’s misfortune had it, an Army colonel from Camp Perry had broken with his wife and their house became available. Judy had seen it. It was a lovely six-room place on Gustav Freytag Strasse in a beautiful area where most of the American families lived in requisitioned houses.

What she did not know was that Hiram Stonebraker had threatened the housing procurement officer’s life if he failed to find a place for the Loveless family.

“What the hell’s the difference,” Clint said sourly, “we’ll probably be going back to the States soon. The Lift was finished today.”

“Oh, Clint ... I’m so sorry. The general?”

“He still refuses to believe it.”

A mantle of gloom fell on Airlift Headquarters as the Tonnage Board in the Control Center read ZERO for the second straight day as the weather closed Berlin down.

Hiram Stonebraker stayed in his suite and studied. The Lift in basic form was two one-way streets into Berlin, the North and South corridors. A single one-way street, the Central corridor, was used to leave Berlin.

Similar makes of aircraft flew in bloc times at the same speed and staggered altitudes of five hundred feet. Precision flying in the narrow air lanes through absolute power settings had become a science. It all narrowed down to a single bottleneck—the air over Berlin.

The ground-controlled approach system had put down the first three planes of the bloc cleanly. When Big Easy Four made two missed approaches it caused the rest of the bloc behind him to stack ... and then the breakdown in communications, radar control, holding patterns. The key lay somewhere in the behavior of Big Easy Four.

What was it? What was it? What was it?

M.J. broke up Hiram’s two-day meditation. There was to be a cocktail party and dinner to honor the arrival of his British counterpart, Air Commodore Rodman, for the formal signing of the joint Bases Agreement at Celle and Fassberg. He sent his chief of staff to meet the Commodore and his party at Y 80 and took him to the Schwarzer Bock Hotel.

Stonebraker stopped by at Rodman’s suite later and apologized for not meeting him earlier.

Rodman understood. “Bloody nuisance, this weather,” he said in the understatement of the year.

On the main floor of the Schwarzer Bock was a room rebuilt intact from a fifteenth-century castle. The general’s cocktail parties were held here, and on such occasions he baffled his staff by making a lie of the terrible stories about him. He was the epitome of charm to the ladies and his British guests.

Over cocktails:

Judy Loveless gushed with joy over the new house. M J. would be happy to go hunting for household wares.

Jo Ann Sindlinger, wife of the chief of staff, a tall, gravel-throated, happy Texan, gave Judy the word on where she might obtain a German maid. “They work for little more than room and board, you know.”

Clint and Group Commander Dudley speculated about the Burtonwood Base. Clint didn’t think that the base would be able to handle more than five craft a day on the two-hundred-hour overhaul.

Chief of Staff Sindlinger and Group Captain Cady were pleased with the way American/ British cooperation was shaping up.

Sid Swing, the logistics chief, talked to Lieutenant Colonel Mendoza, the maintenance chief, and Ben Scudder, the chief communicator, about changing the VHF crystals at Erding and they told Squadron Leader Nevins they wanted to study the British Eureka/Rebecca radar systems more closely.

Sid’s wife, Mary, was flirting with a British officer, as usual.

Ann Mendoza and Sue Scudder complained about the overcrowding at the high school.

Lou Edmonds told Chief Pilot Matt Beck the weather might clear.

Sarah Beck told Betty Edmonds there was a crystal factory at Neu-Isenburg that cut glass to your own pattern, was dirt cheap, and they made a date to drive over.

Air Commodore Rodman said he had landed a twenty-two pound salmon in Scotland on twelve-pound line. Hiram reckoned that the best battle, pound for pound, was with the Chinook salmon and invited the Commodore to come to Malibu some day when the albacore were running.

Dinner was served. As the first course arrived, Hiram Stonebraker stood up suddenly. “Commodore. Would you ask your people to adjourn immediately to the next room?”

The Englishman looked baffled.

“Ladies, will you excuse us?” Hiram said. “Gentlemen, please.”

Those who knew Hiram Stonebraker were not surprised at the sudden conference call. He shut the door, then had a tablecloth pinned on the wall. “Gentlemen. I have just solved the way to end the stacks over Berlin.”

They were all stunned.

He drew a diagram of the flow of the air bridge: planes following each other at three-minute intervals to the Planter Beacon on the first approach leg at Tempelhof.

“Here is the new difference. There will be no more stacking in case of weather. If a plane misses his approach or for any reason cannot land he is to return to his home base in the Center corridor and come back in the next bloc.”

If Big Easy Four had been sent back after his first attempt during the fiasco, there would have been no stack over Berlin!

It was so utterly simple, but so utterly perfect!

“We will not only fly to Berlin in three-minute intervals, we will land in three-minute intervals. The rhythm will not be broken by a missed approach. The craft will return to base and the beat ... beat ... beat will continue behind him.”

For a moment no one moved, scarcely breathed.

“He’s got it,” sputtered Air Commodore Rodman.

“Why in the hell didn’t we think of this earlier?” Stonebraker admonished himself. “Well ... let’s return to the ladies.”

Born from the fiasco of Blue Monday and Black Tuesday, Hiram Stonebraker had found the magic key to convert disaster into victory.

TO ALL AIRLIFT STATIONS: IN CASE OF MISSED APPROACH, AIRCRAFT IS TO BE DIVERTED TO HOME BASE THROUGH CENTER CORRIDOR AND RETURNED ON NEXT BLOC. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL AIRCRAFT BE ALLOWED TO STACK. STONEBRAKER.

For the first time in the history of aviation the ancient ritual of stacking and holding patterns was eliminated and there was the feeling for the first time that the Airlift could succeed.

In a matter of days the tonnage rose from three thousand to thirty-five hundred tons ... to four thousand tons ... and then the daily goal of forty-five hundred tons was reached. It was reached on a stormy day during which ground-controlled approach talked down 80 per cent of the flights.

The joint British and American bases at Fassberg and Celle went into operation with the arrival of more Skymasters. The daily tonnage went over five thousand! The inevitable merger of forces came into being. As in war, the old Allies combined in peace with Hiram Stonebraker commander and Air Commodore Rodman vice commander of COMBINED AIRLIFT TASK FORCE.

The air bridge roared on day and night, and now the beat ... beat ... beat ... was that of a giant metronome, and with each beat another ten tons was transfused into the city of Berlin.

The engineers and the Berliners labored in a fury to complete the third airfield at Tegel. Day ... night ... day .. . night ... beat ... beat ... beat... ten tons ... ten tons ... ten tons.

Although the miracle had come within grasp for the first time, the greatest single challenge still lay ahead, for soon they would face that long time ally of the Russians ... General winter.

Chapter Twenty

“HOW THE DEVIL DID you get here?” Sean asked.

“Lil Blessing drove me over,” Ernestine said. “Well ... do you ask me in?”

Sean held the door of his flat open, awkwardly.

“So this is your sanctum.” It was a lovely flat, of course. The occupation forces took the best. “Well, aren’t you glad to see me?”

“I wasn’t prepared for an invasion.”

“Look,” she said, reaching into a shopping bag like those carried by all Berlin women. She produced two steaks.

“Where the hell did you get those?”

“Black market.”

“You, in particular, with your uncle’s name should never go to the black market,” he lectured.

“Oh, stop it, Sean. Lil Blessing gave them to me. She said I could find my way to your heart with these, but you don’t have one.”

“Ernestine Falkenstein, look at me. I said, look at me. Are you tipsy?”

“Poo-poo-poo.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Poo-poo-poo. Just enough to have the courage to storm into your fortress.”

Sean knew he must relent or he would have a bawling female on his hands. “Okay, there’s the kitchen. Get busy. I’m starved.”

Ernestine heaved a sigh of dismay. “Oh dear, I thought you would say that. Oh Sean, I studied so hard to be a lawyer I just never learned to cook. I’ll just ruin the steaks and you’ll never see me again.”

“Well now, didn’t you and your great friend Lil Blessing prepare for such a contingency?”

“You might just offer me a drink, you know.”

He found the mildest liquor in the cabinet, sherry. She sipped, breathed contentedly, set the glass down. “I made reservations for us at Humperdink’s. It is a fine restaurant, even though it happens to be in the Russian Sector. Uncle and I eat there often. Franz said he would personally attend to the steaks.”

“You’ve got yourself a date. Stay away from the booze and I’ll make myself dashing.”

As he left the room, Ernestine walked to his desk and looked at the pictures of his brothers and his father.

Humperdink’s, about the only building on Gernerstrasse not flattened, was a large house converted into one big room broken into paneled booths. The walls and crannies held boar and stag heads, beer mugs from the Middle Ages, Dresden figurines, and tapestries.

Lothar, an elderly blind man, played the zither at the entrance of the candlelit room. Actually his name was not Lothar, nor was he blind. As a former SS officer, the disguise proved excellent to keep him out of the hands of the justice seekers.

“Herr Oberst,” Franz said bowing profusely again and again. “An honor, sir.”

He took the steaks, swore to do them justice, escorted the two to a choice booth already enhanced with the presence of a bottle of chilled champagne. The room was warm and sentimental. Ernestine sipped, then sang to the zither melody. Sean, she thought to herself, have you grown tired of me before you even let yourself know me? Oh, you lion among men. It was growing painful now and she knew she could not show him. She longed to say, “Ich liebe dich.”

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular.”

Franz ushered three German couples to a large table in the center of the floor. She recognized her brother Gerd among them.

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

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

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

“Hello, Erna.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mother and Father?” Erna asked.

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

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

“She is in Wiesbaden, is she not?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sean did not answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What the devil!”

“Gerd! His brother was a pilot.”

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

The zither player picked up a melody quickly.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sean said.

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

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

“Good night. Please see yourself in.”

“I cannot let you go away like this.”

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

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

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

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

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

Ernestine was tight beside him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They drove away, silently.

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

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

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

This morning the birds groped through a heavy fog under ground-controlled approach. The Berliners gasped with each

new landing as they caught sight of the craft at the last instant, bursting through the white shroud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tim! Tim! Tim!”

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

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

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

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

“Sean! Come to your senses!”

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

Chapter Twenty-one

“GENERAL HANSEN,” ULRICH FALKENSTEIN said, “I must tell you how deeply my own grief runs.”

“It was bound to happen,” Hansen replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your maid let me in,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Twenty-two

MY DEAREST SISTER ERNESTINE:

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

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

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

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

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

Your loving sister,

Hilde

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

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

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