Armageddon - Leon Uris

In Ufa he met Maria Majoros, the young daughter of a Spanish Communist who, like his own father, was a martyr of the Communist world.

At what moment does one try to describe the first awakening? What happens when the long suppressed emotion bursts alive like springtime? How does one tell of the sensation of first love? First a meeting of the eyes ... then, perhaps, stolen glances ... going out of the way to be at a place where you know she is passing ... a first rendezvous filled with trembling and fumbling, and then ... a knowing of love.

It was discovery that there were other things on this earth that belonged to most men that had been denied him.

Wild great cries of love to each other in stolen places ...

BULLETIN!

HEINRICH HIRSCH AND MARIA MAJOROS WILL APPEAR BEFORE THE KOMSOMOL COMMITTEE FOR THE PURPOSE OF SELF-CRITICISM.

Who told on them? Did it really matter? Was there ever life away from prying eyes?

They took their medicine. They stood side by side daring not to look at each other. The portrait of Stalin glared down at them; it always did. The angry eyes of the Komsomol Committee executives scorned them, and they confessed their shame.

“I beg for the understanding of my comrades for this petit bourgeois indulgent act I have committed,” Heinrich Hirsch said of the love of the only woman he had known. “I am humiliated for allowing myself to forget my Communist upbringing and behavior unworthy of a member of Komsomol.”

For an hour Heinrich Hirsch was berated; and then, Maria Majoros, a woman of proud Spanish blood, blurted her “confession”:

“The manifestations and provocations of my act with Heinrich Hirsch are contrary to the duty of a socialist woman. I beg mercy from my comrades to prove myself again worthy of making my contribution to world revolution.”

When the further debasement of Maria Majoros was over the girl was sent away from Ufa, never to be heard from again.

Heinrich Hirsch, the twenty-five-year-old deputy to Rudi Wöhlman on the German People’s Liberation Committee, had now finished his journey into the past at the flat on Geyer Strasse 2.

The old woman in the room was still filled with a fear of the strange young man.

“Don’t be frightened, Mutter, ” he said softly, “I just wanted to see what it looked like.”

He walked outside into the shambles of Berlin. The homecoming was done.

Chapter Five

IGOR KARLOVY REQUISITIONED A mansion in Karlshorst for his billet. It was relatively undamaged, and the twelve rooms were the most luxurious he had ever been in. The headquarters office was established in the main drawing room; he did his own work in his enormous, lush bedroom. Reports poured in from all over the city with data for the dismantling of the Berlin industrial complex. In a few days he was due to hand in his own findings to Commissar Azov and the German People’s Liberation Committee.

A sound of singing reached his ears, the voices of his men. Igor took off his glasses, put them down for a moment, and listened from his desk. The song, known to him from childhood, was called “Volga, Volga,” a song of the cossacks and their lure. It was Russian, melodic, and mournful. Young Feodor’s voice sang with nostalgia.

A fine boy, young Feodor, Igor thought ... my most promising officer. They had been through it all together, Feodor and the colonel. They were more like brothers than senior and junior officers.

The voice of Ivan Orlov joined in the chorus. Ivan sings well, Igor thought, but that is about all. He hangs too closely on the words of the commissars and the edicts. He spies on us.

Igor stretched, yawned, patted his flat hard stomach, and slipped into his tunic without buttoning it and went into the living room. The singers were warmly comfortable after the first flushes of victory and the afterglow of Vodka. They sat about in the deep comfort of the great house with their boots off and their tunics open.

“Sit still, sit still,” Igor said as he entered.

Feodor tossed a mandolin to the colonel; he perched his foot on a stool, lit a cigarette, and caught up in the chorus:

Volga, Volga you’re my mother,

Volga, you’re a Russian stream ...

Captain Boris Chernov came in from the outside just as the song came to its sorrowful end telling of a young princess being thrown into the waters as a sacrifice.

“You’re late,” Igor admonished. “I’ve been holding up the entire report on your account.”

“Forgive me, Comrade Colonel,” Boris said, slyly holding up a woman’s delicate watch. “I got delayed by a little German dumpling.”

Ivan Orlov laughed. Igor set his instrument down, snatched the papers out of Boris’ case, and returned to his bedroom slamming the door behind him.

“What bothers the colonel?” Boris asked.

“He thinks our officers shouldn’t screw the German women,” Feodor snapped, coming to the colonel’s defense.

“Nonsense,” Ivan Orlov said.

“Let me tell you that many officers are condemning the whole thing and want to put a stop to it.”

“I was at headquarters”—Boris laughed—“an old woman was complaining she was raped eighty-four times. The doctor insisted she was enjoying it or she wouldn’t have bothered to count.”

Ivan laughed; Feodor got more angry.

“Come now, Feodor,” Boris said. “Do you think the Germans deserve better?”

“The hell with both of you,” Feodor answered. “Besides, I don’t think much of your taste. As for me, I wouldn’t stick mine between a German woman’s legs.”

Igor Karlovy was standing in the doorway, his fists clenched. “Carry on your goddamned discussion elsewhere. I’m trying to finish my work.”

Forty-eight hours after his report was filed, Commissar Azov summoned Igor to meet with the head of the German People’s Liberation Committee.

V. V. Azov, who made a fine art of keeping himself inconspicuous, mysterious, and anonymous, had a mansion in Potsdam on the Wannsee. His house was in a forest, shades eternally drawn, grounds heavily guarded.

The usual portrait of Stalin hung over the conference table in the dark-paneled room replacing an oil of Prussian nobility. Even in the worst days of Leningrad, Igor thought, there was never a shortage of Stalin’s portraits. V. V. Azov looked expressionless and bored as he took his place at the table.

Two members of the German People’s Liberation Committee sat opposite him. Igor personally disliked most of the Germans on the committee. It was true that all of them were tested Communists who had fled Hitler, yet he felt there was too much German left in their souls.

Rudi Wöhlman’s face reminded Igor of the little field rats that used to attack the grain stores on the family farm ... thin face, thin beard, glinting front teeth. He had brought with him his young aide, Heinrich Hirsch.

“To get directly to the point,” Azov said, “I find your report unsatisfactory.”

Igor had dealt with party people successfully all during the siege and the great offenses out of Russia, across Poland, East Prussia, and Germany. He wished they would let him stick to Air Force problems, but his own talent trapped him; he knew the language. “If the Comrade Commissar would get to specifics I am certain I can offer explanations.”

“Many of our recommendations have been rejected,” Heinrich Hirsch said sharply.

“Let us take the transfer of railroad cars as an example. You deleted it,” Azov said.

“I am certain,” Igor answered, “the Commissar is aware there is a different gauge in the German and Soviet rail systems that make their rolling stock useless to us. With our transport and distribution problems the rail cars have better use in Germany.”