Armageddon (43 page)

Ulrich stared out of the narrow, barred window. The red wall of the prison and a high chimney hovered over them. That was the last thing that Wolfgang saw.

He walked from the place. The door slammed behind him.

Chapter Four

“J
UST BEFORE THE BATTLE
mother!”

sang Shenandoah Blessing,

“I am thinking most of you!

While upon the field we’re watching,

With the enomeee in view!”

“Slob! Quiet!” Sean demanded. “You’re gonna wake up Bo.”

“Filled with thoughts of home and Gawd!

For well they know that on the morrow ...

Some will sleep beneath the sod!”

“Friggin’ blubber!” Sean puffed as he lugged the massive, enormously drunk policeman up the steps. They stopped on a landing, Sean propped the big man against the rail and caught his breath. Blessing threw his arms apart and bellowed ...

“Farewell mother you may ne-ver, Prrrrrreessss me to your heart agin!

But oh, you’ll not forget me mo-ther, If I’m numbered with the slain!”

“You’ll be numbered with the slain all right if you don’t shut up!” Sean draped Blessing’s limp arm over his shoulder and continued the tortured climb. “Bo!”

Bolinski’s door opened.

“Help me with this fat son of a bitch!”

“You woke up Bo.” Blessing emoted, switching suddenly from latent musical aspirations to a crying jag. “Goddam, Major, they don’t write songs like that no more ...

“Hark! I hear a bugle sounding,

Tis the signal for the fight,

Now may Gawd protect us, moooother...”

“This bastard must weigh a ton,” Bo said.

“How about it, Major, baby? Did yore little ole’ fat boy here clean the Russkies? Did we win a pile or did we win a pile? Huh, Major, baby?”

“You’re a sweet old fat bastard,” Sean admitted.

The strangeness between the Russians and their former allies ended explosively. Throughout the ruins of Berlin parties at all levels of command erupted. There were enlisted men’s brawls in makeshift cellar night clubs, and plush vodka and caviar affairs of the top echelon ... brotherhood flowed freely.

General Hartly Fitz-Roy, the British governor, gave a boar hunt from a lodge, still intact, once belonging to an elector of Brandenburg. The Englishman was aghast when Marshal Popov showed up with a submachine gun. It was damned unsporting, but as host he could say nothing except for a mumble under his breath.

The French arrived in Berlin and threw a great feast in their own honor. General Yves de Lys grimaced in horror at the way the Russians belted down their superb wine.

Russians wept out songs of the motherland, Cossacks made great leaps, Mickey Mouse watches became a gift of the proof of lasting friendship.

Sean and Blessing had helped launch a new Russian junior officers’ club. Halfway through uncountable litres of vodka and gallons of beer, past innumerable songs and toasts, the light heavyweight champion of a Russian division issued a challenge to any man in the room regardless of weight or nationality. The offer proved irresistible to Sean.

A British lieutenant gave them both lengthy discourses on fair play, and in a makeshift ring Sean dazzled everyone with his dancing-master tactics—until his vodka-rubbered legs left him open for a wild hook that knocked him flat on his back.

Sean decided upon arising, no more fancy work. He cold-cocked the Russian in forty-six seconds, collecting for his backers numerous watches and great denominations of occupation currency.

Shortly thereafter it came to light that Shenandoah Blessing had once been a wrestler, working his way through college under the nom de plume of the “Mad Russian.”

The frivolity continued as he threw six Russians, an Englishman, two Americans, and a Frenchman in succession. Finally motorcycle escorts brought in a 300-pound Siberian with a handlebar moustache. Blessing was rather tired and he was dethroned. But, by this time, the Russian officers were cleaned of a month’s pay and their new club a shambles.

The party broke up at six in the morning with the Russians serenading their guests farewell and declaring them the salt of the earth.

Sean and Bolinski unloaded their burden on a bed never meant to absorb the shock of so large a falling body. Bed and occupant crashed to the floor and there they let him lie.

“Come on into my room,” Bo said. “I’ve got some coffee warmed up.”

Sean flopped into a big chair and began laughing. “Haven’t done that since I was a kid at a couple of Irish wakes.” He pulled out large wads of occupation currency from every pocket. “Got to send some of this crap back to the Russkies tomorrow to help pay to repair their club.”

Bo Bolinski watched the major with a bit of fascination. Sean was always proper, at times somewhat pompous. Bo counted a black eye, ten scraped knuckles, buttons off his shirt, saw a mellow drunk with a cigar stub entrenched in his jaw.

“What the hell you doing up this time of the morning?” Sean asked as he sipped the coffee.

“Colonel Hazzard asked me to study these regulations for the four-power occupation. He wants an opinion on them today.”

“They stink,” Sean said.

“Looks like you’ve made a private peace tonight with the Russians, anyhow,” Bo said.

“We’re under orders to play up this brotherhood crap and con each other for information. Once the Russkies loosen up, they’re not too hard to take. Anyhow, they’re not Germans.”

Sean stood up, dispensed with the cigar, walked into Bo’s bathroom, and rinsed his mouth out. There was coldness between the men. In all the time they worked together Sean knew little of Bo except the statistics; lawyer, Notre Dame, married and two children, Chicago. Not that Bo hadn’t been loyal and efficient.

“Bo, you pissed at me because I pulled you out of Rombaden and brought you to Berlin?”

“No one forced me into G-5, Major.”

“What’s wrong?” Sean said abruptly.

“I can’t hate Germans like you do, Major. I get sick when I see kids digging through our garbage cans. I get sick every time I drive into Berlin.”

Sean did not answer.

“Morning, O’Sullivan,” Hansen smirked at his hungover officer. “I understand you and your fat friend tried to annihilate the Russian officer corps last night.”

“All in the spirit of brotherhood, sir.”

“Were you able to get any information on this V.V. Azov?”

“They clam up the minute his name is mentioned. It’s my guess that he’s the signal caller.”

“It’s starting to add up that way.”

“Sir, I want to bring up these rules governing the Berlin occupation.”

“Shoot.”

“We’re in trouble if we accept them.”

“Neal Hazzard put you up to this?”

“We’ve discussed it.”

“For a so-called fighting soldier, Hazzard does a monumental amount of bellyaching.”

“He’s got a right to if he’s expected to be commandant by these rules. However, we reached the same opinion independently. So did Lieutenant Bolinski. The whole document is written by Russians, in Russian, and for Russians.”

“No matter what the rules are,” Hansen answered, “the success of the four-power occupation depends solely upon the desire of the Russians to cooperate.”

“Why do we have to bend over backward to let them know we’re not going to hurt their feelings? They’re not bashful. Pretty damned soon they’re going to have us believing that they won the war single-handed.”

“It’s about all we can do to prevent them from giving the Yugoslavs a sector of Berlin. The Russians say they’re entitled to it more than the French. How do you answer that?”

“Colonel Hazzard has his work cut out for him.”

“We all have.”

“All four licensed political parties, headquarters, Russian Sector. Police Headquarters, Russian Sector. Radio Station, Russian Sector. City Hall Assembly and Magistrate, Russian Sector. University, Russian Sector.”

“Sit down, Sean. I hate to make that headache of yours worse this morning, but you’d better read this.”

TOP SECRET. RECOMMENDATIONS, POTSDAM CONFERENCE

Sean had worked on some parts of this himself.

RECOMMENDATION:

We must make the Russians spell out their reparations demands or they can stretch them for infinity. The Russians must be made to account for what they have already taken out of their zone of Germany and apply it against the total bill.

We must establish four-power control to govern the flow of reparations to the Soviet Union. Inasmuch as Russians demand great deliveries from the Western Zones of Germany we should not agree to make such deliveries until they agree to an accounting and controls.

REJECTED:

The spirit of mutual trust which we hope to establish will be damaged if we offend the Soviet Union in this manner. Sean flipped the page.

RECOMMENDATION:

We must force the Soviet Union to adhere to the principle of running Germany as a single economic unit. This is being made impossible because the Soviet Union has already physically cut off their zone of occupation from the rest of Germany. We must insist on open borders, open commerce, and free interzone travel.

REJECTED:

This would make the Soviet Union feel that we are against their moving the Polish borders west to the Oder/Neisse line. Although we have not agreed to these border changes, the Soviet argument of setting up a buffer has merit.

“They didn’t ask us about any goddamned border changes,” Sean said. “They just did it”

“Read on, Major.”

RECOMMENDATION:

There is grave concern over allowing the Soviet Union to use our currency engravings and plates to print occupation currency with no method of accounting. The Soviet Union could flood our zones with paper money, buy out Western Zone resources and create inflation.

REJECTED:

Fiscal and monetary experts agree these arguments are possible. However, the Soviet Union would greet the demand to return engravings as a direct question of their honesty.

RECOMMENDATION:

The declaration of the Potsdam Conference guaranteeing freedoms to the German (and Slavic) people and further guaranteeing free elections is a farce.

The Soviet Union cannot guarantee something for other people they dare not give their own people. The Russian people have lived under a police state in one form or another for the entire 1200 years of their recorded history.

We must insist on a definition of freedom, free elections, and democratic institutions.

REJECTED:

A proclamation at the end of the conference is necessary. It would take two decades to negotiate the exact meanings.

There was more, much more. Sean handed the file back to General Hansen quietly. “It was all I could do to push through things like the air corridors. So, we’ve got to sit still and wait for them to push us too far.”

“Will we know it when they do?”

“Not today,” Hansen said. “The war against Japan ended a week ago. Today we see American boys in the uniform of their country parading through the streets of enemy capitals demanding to be sent home. It is going to take time for our countrymen to realize that Americans can never go home again.”

Chapter Five

E
RNESTINE AWAKENED SHARPLY FROM
her nightly funk, sweaty, terrified. For hours she fought off sleep, for the darkness brought horror. Then a complete exhaustion drugged her into a semiconscious state far into the night, and she wandered into that torment of blood and ghosts and hollow voices.

She dressed in a half daze, walked pasty-faced into the kitchen, where the family was taking breakfast of a sort of gruel.

None of them had gotten over the shock of the Amis requisitioning their house, forcing them into a bomb-battered set of rooms in Friedenaüof the Steglitz Borough. Bruno and his wife slept in the kitchen, the girls in an oversized alcove with half a wall shorn away.

Bruno bemoaned the latest cruelty of fate, the loss of his house; he, a government official of status; he, who had a chauffeur-driven automobile until late in the war. Now he was reduced to waiting on tables in a French soldiers’ beer hall.

Thanks to Ulrich they were not all in labor gangs and had a few extra grams of ration. However, hatred between the brothers did not waver. Bruno felt his brother could do more. The family was barely staying alive. Hilde could not hold a job. She had always been pampered and her head was filled with illusions of becoming an actress.

Bruno’s pride was damaged at the idea that his wife had to work as a chambermaid in an American officers’ billet. She had never held a job in her life and one could hardly consider her a common
hausfrau.
Ulrich got her the job. The Americans were generous with the bones they tossed out for her doing their laundry.

In the beer hall Bruno decided the indignities of rowdy Frenchmen had to be borne in order to survive. Soldiers left half-smoked cigarettes, wanted girls, and had access to food; neighbors needed to barter, so he served as an intermediary in small dealings. In spite of the degradation Bruno and his family subsisted better than the starving neighbors around them.

Ernestine sat at the table. Her mother looked from her to Hilde. By contrast, Hilde seemed to show no effects of the times. “You look bad this morning,” Herta said.

“Who looks well in Berlin these days,” Bruno mumbled. “Everyone is a walking ghost.”

“I am just a little tired,” Ernestine answered.

“Your Uncle Ulrich offered you a job at Democratic Party Headquarters. I want an explanation of why you refused,” her father said.

“I would rather not talk about it,” she answered.