Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [169]
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“Sean, I wish I knew how to help you. Words can really never ease your pain and particularly with a man as fine as your father.”
“I appreciate the General’s concern,” Sean answered.
Andrew Jackson Hansen’s face drew tight with memory of his own. “I remember my father in his last days. He told me something very wonderful when he realized he was going. He said, ‘You have done us proud, Andrew. Your family and your country. You have brought food to starving people and more ... you have given them hope. What a good thing it is to be an American ... God bless America.’ ”
Sean lifted his eyes.
“My father told me something else. He said, ‘Andrew, the way you have lived your life has made it possible for me to sleep in peace.’ Your father would have said the same words to you, Sean. The way you have lived your life has given him the gift of being able to sleep in peace.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
When the burden of the funeral was done, Sean closed the old house forever. His mother and a widowed sister would share their days in a small cottage in the sun.
Chapter Fifteen
IGOR WAS NEVER ENTIRELY certain about his arrangement with Lotte Böhm. Circumstance brought them together for mutual convenience. From any point of view, the girl had a good thing in a Russian colonel, yet an attachment of great warmth developed.
Lotte seemed to adore him, stopped at nothing to please him, catered to his whims, moods, instinctively knew how to comfort him. Igor was pleased, but determined not to be deceived. He knew the girl had an overpowering fear of the realities of life in Berlin without his protection. As in all women, except his unlamented wife, Lotte was part actress. There was an outside chance she loved him, but he would not be fooled.
Families of high-ranking Russian officers began to arrive in Berlin. Igor held his breath until he received a letter from Olga that the importance of her work would keep them parted. He silently thanked the party.
For months he traveled through the Russian Zone of Germany stripping one factory after another as part of the reparations program. As that program was ending he was assigned to study reparations claims in the Western Zones.
Millions of German ethnics had been expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. They moved west in search of new homes. It was a simple matter to plant hundreds, then thousands of Soviet agents in their number to infiltrate everywhere.
Prime assignment of these agents was to gain information to be used to mount Soviet reparations claims. They photographed every factory, piece of machinery, rail yard, harbor, airport, and canal in the West. They drew mountains of data on mineral deposits.
Igor sifted this intelligence so that the Soviet Union could handpick the things it wanted. He noted at his weekly meeting with V. V. Azov that the arrival of Madam Azov did nothing to mellow the commissar.
“Comrade Colonel. The British are now ten thousand tons of coal behind schedule in deliveries to us. What have you to report on your negotiations?”
“I can report that the British are stubborn,” Igor answered.
“They owe us the coal. It must be demanded.”
“It is not quite so simple. The Ruhr mines are capable of only one third of their prewar capacity.”
Azov assumed it was for a lack of miners and offered to send “volunteers” from the Silesian districts of Poland.
“It is not a question of either miners or techniques. The English know the mining business. The machinery is obsolete. The miners do not receive sufficient ration for such difficult work. Transportation is broken down. These are technical problems that would only bore the commissar. Our own mines in the Soviet Union are suffering from the same problems.”
Azov hated engineers. They hid behind a foreign language. He insisted the pressure must be increased.
Igor insisted you cannot pressure an