Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [236]
“Then you’re happy?”
“What makes you think otherwise?”
“Well ... it’s just that I’ve been wiping my ass on plain white toilet paper for almost sixty years and I can’t figure out any difference and I wonder if you really can.”
“It’s all in a day’s work, General. I didn’t invent the American way of doing things. I’m just a member of the crowd. Let’s order lunch.”
Everything was served in sauce far too rich for Hiram Stonebraker’s catholic taste, but he decided not to mention his further discomforts. He set his knife and fork down carefully, wiped his lips with his napkin.
“Clint. I’m entangled with a logistical problem of feeding and supplying raw material and fuel to sustain a population of over two million persons by air.”
“It’s that Berlin business,” Clint said. “I’ve been following it. I heard on the news last night that you were going to Germany.”
“I’ve been able to get all the CBI boys together. They’re en route to Wiesbaden right now.”
“General, somebody’s crazy. There’s no way to do it.” Clint took out a pencil and began to scribble on the tablecloth, a crude but acceptable New York custom. Hiram Stonebraker watched his pencil work with stunning rapidity and knew the spark was still in the man.
“You people,” Clint said, “have to be talking in terms of five million gallons of aviation fuel a month.”
“That’s right. We have had to stop four oil tankers at sea and rush them to Germany to finish out this month.”
“The Gooney Birds are only flying by instinct. They’re shot.”
“We’re going to bring over C-54’s.”
Clint was ahead of the general. “C-54’s were designed to carry troops over long distances. You say you will make them carry freight on short hauls. How are those engines going to stand up under so many take-offs and landings with heavy loads?”
“We don’t know yet, for sure.”
“What kind of facilities do you have to overhaul them?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“Where in the hell you going to find spare parts and trained people?”
“I can’t answer that either, Clint.”
“And what about landings. The C-54 has a fragile nose wheel. How the hell is it going to hold up under the poundings of heavy loads? You’ll burn up tires and brakes faster than they do at Indianapolis.”
The general saw Clint Loveless get caught up in his own enthusiasm for a moment.
“Spark plugs are going to cost you between fifty-five and sixty-one cents a copy. We’ve got to be talking about forty thousand a month. And what is this crap about flying coal? How do you fly coal?”
“That’s what I mean, Clint. These are problems worthy of you. I’ll make you my vice chief of staff or something. Mainly I have to have a production-control man who knows what the hell he’s doing.”
Clint buried his head in his hands and said, “No, no, no, no. I just got carried away for a minute. It’s out of the question.”
“We need you, Clint.”
“My two wives would never sit still for this ... Judy and Whitcomb Associates.”
“They can spare you for a few months.”
“General, Judy has been sparing me most of our married life. She worked as a hashslinger, salesgirl, and maid to put me through college. I graduated just in time to trot off to war. In ten years of married life we’ve had a fat fourteen months in which we weren’t worried about the next meal. Pudge Whitcomb has limited loyalties. They’re limited to Whitcomb Associates. I’m thirty-seven and I’ve found a happy home. I make seventeen thousand dollars a year and I have a two-thousand-dollar expense account.”
“That’s a lot of money, Clint. I’ve never had that much.”
“And I’m not going any place but up.”
“That all depends, Clint, on what you consider to be up.”
Chapter Eight
THE FOURTH OF JULY was celebrated in the American Sector and elsewhere in Western Berlin with exchanges of oratory and promises of mutual loyalty. There were modest picnics, small parades, and sports contests.
In Steglitz Borough, Oberburgermeister Hanna Kirchner