Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [173]
They boarded the City of Cologne at dawn with bombing hangovers. As the boat pulled away the children were there again, singing the “Lorelei.”
The boat moved down the river. Major O’Sullivan walked among the group shaking hands with each of them. In two short weeks he had gained their respect after the passing of the initial hostility. He seemed to be an unusually open and honest man as well as extremely pleasant.
Sean sat at the rail, caught up for a moment with the overwhelming beauty of the river. Igor Karlovy sat alongside him.
“Well, Major O’Sullivan, what will we do without you?”
“The British will take good care of you.”
“Will we be seeing you in Copenhagen?”
“Probably.”
There was general excitement as the yacht came around a treacherous bend and they could see the great basalt rock that rises out of the river and hovers in a large cliff over the water. The voices of the children singing the haunting “Lorelei” still reached their ears.
“So that is the ‘Lorelei,’ ” Igor said.
“Don’t listen too closely to the voices of the sirens, Colonel, or you may crash on the rocks.”
Igor smiled. “You would make an excellent dialectician.”
They rounded the bend passing those long low river barges and the outlines of the Mäuseturm showed itself against a gray sky over the terracing.
“I was told only last night that you returned from America from an unhappy event. Your father, I believe.”
“Yes.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Thank you, Colonel. He was quite old and quite tired.”
“And you have family left?”
“There is only my mother and myself. I lost two brothers in the war.”
This shattered Igor into a long silence.
“And you, Colonel?”
“I lost ... a childhood sweetheart ... and my son.”
“Then we really should be friends, shouldn’t we,” Sean said.
“I guess so. What part of America do you come from?”
“San Francisco.”
“Oh yes. California was once settled by Russians.”
“We stole California from the Spanish in a war of aggression ... however, we did purchase Alaska from the Russians, legally.”
Igor laughed. “From the Czars. We would not have made such a bad bargain.” Igor lit a cigarette. “Tell me, what did your family do?”
“We had all more or less just graduated from the university. I was teaching. My younger brother aspired to be a writer. He was a student of literature. The middle brother ... a follower of causes.”
“Three sons in the university. Your family must have had great wealth.”
“My father was an immigrant from Ireland. He was never more than a laborer.”
“Very interesting.”
Ivan Orlov, as always, hovered nearby. The NKVD had made a small error in assigning him to watch Colonel Karlovy ... he spoke no English. He made his presence so annoying that Sean asked to excuse himself. When he left, Ivan Orlov said, “Beware of Major O’Sullivan. He is a spy for American political security.”
At Cologne the American escort was joined by the British escorts. It was the same story. Cologne, Hanover, and the ports of Hamburg and the American enclave of Bremerhaven utterly mangled.
But the very worst they saw in all of Germany was the devastation of the Ruhr industrial complex. Düsseldorf, Essen, and Dortmund were all but wiped out.
The Soviet inspection group proceeded to the Copenhagen conference sobered. Neither the British nor Americans had hidden a thing.
Igor Karlovy had to admit to himself that Germany was more thoroughly destroyed than the Soviet Union.
What was horribly clear now was that the Soviet Government had deliberately lied to keep the Russian people from knowing the strength and participation of the West. Indeed, Western Germany had not been spared for a war of revenge.
Chapter Seventeen
THE CLOCK IN THE tower of the Copenhagen City Hall tolled the hour of seven. Igor Karlovy paced his room. Most of the staff would be asleep for another two or three hours. He opened the