Armageddon - Leon Uris

Those journalists who had become authorities in the American Zone quickly pieced two and two together. Within minutes of the announcement, as it was flashed around the world, there was open speculation that Klaus and Emma Stoll would be the first tried under the proclamation.

DELIVER BY PERSONAL COURIER TO BRIGADIER GENERAL A. J. HANSEN, G-5, SUPREME HEADQUARTERS: I. G. FARBEN BUILDING: FRANKFURT

Dear General Hansen,

I am not certain whether your communication constituted an order or a request. At any rate, I am hereby notifying you that I reject it in either event.

In the opinion of my legal officer and in my own lay opinion, Klaus Stoll is guilty and deserving of the death penalty. However, it will take weeks to prepare proper legal documents and conclude a case ... tried in American tradition.

Emma Stoll has done nothing to deserve a death sentence.

PROCLAMATION #22 is against my conscience, my morality, and, in my opinion, contrary to the best interests of my country.

Sincerely,

Sean O’Sullivan

Chapter Thirty

ANDREW JACKSON HANSEN’S STAFF car and motorcycle escort wiped everything out of its path like a hurricane blowing down from Frankfurt.

Eric the Red bounced out of his car before it was brought to a full halt at the Rombaden City Hall, churned up the marble steps, down the statue-lined corridor, and burst into Sean’s office, slamming the door behind him.

Sean arose. “Good afternoon, General. I was expecting you’d be down here.”

“You snot-nose bastard! Are you trying to make us look like idiots!”

“No, sir. I’m trying to save you from looking like idiots.”

“What the hell are you protecting that goddamned ghoul Emma Stoll for!”

“I am attempting,” Sean said slowly, “to protect the good name of my country. She happens to come with the bargain. You’ve read the report, sir. Those bone handles are not human skulls.”

Hansen leaned on his knuckles, bent forward over the desk, and aped Sean’s soft, smooth speech. “But the world doesn’t know. And, Major, that story will never be set straight. Corney has done her job well. And if by some miracle the story is corrected the world isn’t going to give a good rat’s ass. The world wants Emma Stoll’s neck.”

“I won’t sign my name to a lynch order.”

Hansen’s fist crashed two, three, four times atop the desk, making it bounce under his fury. “Now you hear this, boy. Emma Stoll is going to die! The Germans will laugh in our faces if we spring her and the whole goddamned world is going to scream that we’re coddling Nazis!”

“And I don’t give a big rat’s ass what the world screams!” Sean bellowed right back in Hansen’s face. “And furthermore, I refuse to talk to the General while he is in such a rage that he has no control of his senses.”

Hansen stood upright with the astonishment of a child in the middle of a tantrum who has been doused in the face with a glass of water. Sean’s voice quivered for control. “What are we proving by Proclamation 22? Why bother with a sham of a kangaroo court? Let’s just take them out and shoot them. Adolf Hitler proclaimed the same kind of courts to get rid of undesirable elements. They were called People’s Courts. We call them Proclamation 22. Don’t you think I know the German people want Emma Stoll dead even more than we do. Sure, let her die for their crimes. Let Emma Stoll die for every one of them who screamed sieg heil. I’m sorry I lost my temper, sir. I have strong feelings on the matter.”

“Sometimes, Sean,” the general said quietly, “we see our country make an obvious mistake. We go along with it without protest because we believe in the ultimate right of what we are doing. Those times are the most difficult when a man is asked to believe so deeply that he will follow blindly and without question. What we have asked you to do is not your decision ... or mine. It is the decision of our superiors. Nor will the ultimate responsibility rest upon you. What can I say, Sean? This creature is not worth saving. And the world will never condemn you. Allow us this human mistake and go on believing.”

The pressure was intensifying now. Yes, Sean thought, it would be so damned easy to just sign the request for the tribunal. To resist was stupid and ridiculous. And when Emma Stoll was hanged there would be much cheering around the world and no one to grieve except a pet dog and a grandmother. In a decade or two some obscure professor of law might point out that Emma Stoll was denied a due process of law. But even America could make a mistake in the backwash and confusion of the war’s ending. And who would remember the name of the major who signed the order for the tribunal?

But to refuse was to invite calamity ... no one would understand or want to understand his position. He could never set the truth straight in people’s minds about the ivory handles. Why in God’s name stand up in the face of world wrath to defend a slut who hardly deserved to live.

“General Hansen, I have sat here, day in, day out, week after week listening to one German after another repeat the same story like broken records. They say, ‘We were only following orders.’ You see ...that is their justification for murder, castration, barbarism, degradation. They were just following orders. And I go to my billet and I get a little bit crocked every night and I think ...what if a few million Germans, or a few hundred thousand, had had the guts to stand up and refuse to commit crimes in the name of their country. I’m sorry, General Hansen. America doesn’t stand for Proclamation 22. I’m not going to commit murder in the name of my country for you or anyone else just because orders are orders.”

Hansen knew now what he had to do. “This is all beyond our hands and our scope, Sean. That is reality. You will report to Frankfurt in seventy-two hours with a request either for the tribunal or your resignation from the Army. I regret a willful and stubborn decision that will bring you much unhappiness.”

“I’ll take full responsibility for my decision, General.”

Hansen put on his cap and walked toward the door. “I’m sorry you came here, General. I’m sorry because I believed in you ... I believed in you when you told me ‘We are not Nazis....’”

It rained and the Landau became muddy again and the cobblestones of the great square were slick. It rained into the leaking hovels of the bomb ruins, and the wet misery added to the gloom inside City Hall.

No one spoke of it openly but General Hansen’s visit was a well-known secret. Sean gathered his people in one at a time to bring them up to date, for the obvious purpose of smoothly turning Pilot Team G-5 over to a new commander.

Pilot Team G-5 had been a grand experiment. All of them wondered if, with Sean gone, its conscience would not also leave. Maurice Duquesne would, most likely, be made commander if he would sign a request for the tribunal under Proclamation 22. The new beginning would be based upon a lie.

Maurice was perplexed by the predicament Sean had put him in. He did not wish to be confronted with such a decision. Duquesne knew that in the beginning all men are pure and driven by pure motivations. The men they believe in are also pure, in the beginning. But somewhere early in the journey all men come to that first moment of compromise. Maurice Duquesne compromised when he ran for his first office two decades before; he had gone on, hardly looking back for a moment’s remorse.

He had been a good servant of his people within a framework established before him. He knew that to compromise, to overlook truth at times, to be expedient at other times, to back down instead of making a fatal stand ... all these were practical tools of his profession. He loathed the incorruptibility in Sean that would force him into a corrupt decision; Sean’s idealism was stubborn and had little to do with reality. And, in the end, he was reluctantly filled with admiration for the man he wished he might have been.