Armageddon - Leon Uris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Thirty-eight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is Jigsaw ... ”

“Big Easy Fourteen calling Jigsaw ...”

“Tempelhof Airways calling Big Easy Thirty ...”

“This is Jigsaw ...”

“Gatow Airways calling Big Easy Six ...”

“This is Jigsaw ...”

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

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

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

“This is Jigsaw calling Big Easy ...”

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

“Of course not,” Sean said.

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

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

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

“Expecting to travel?”

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

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

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

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

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