Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [246]
“We can fly in pierced steel planking and asphalt,” Clint said, “and we are certain we can use the rubble in Berlin for a base. Labor is no problem. The ball breaker ... pardon me, General ... the clinker is how to fly in bulldozers, steam rollers, graders, rock crushers. There aren’t any in Berlin.”
The question of flying in heavy machinery was a new monster. There had to be a certain amount of food brought in daily before they could move in the asphalt and planking.
“You worked with the Magistrat, what’s the food picture?”
“Stores are running very low, General. Less than a month’s supply of staples.”
“How much, Clint?”
“We’re going to have to fly in fifteen hundred tons of food a day.”
“What the hell are those people doing, glutting themselves in an orgy? Christ almighty, we’ve only reached a thousand tons a day of everything with the British. That has to be reevaluated and cut in half.”
Clint shook his head, no. “It would be lighter to fly in flour and have them do the baking in Berlin. Allowing for a one per cent loss we can squeeze by with six hundred and fifty tons a day.”
“What the hell else are those people gorging themselves on?”
“By dehydrating potatoes and vegetables and powdering milk we can swing it with a minimum of eighty tons of potatoes, forty-four tons of vegetables, and twenty-one tons of milk. Sixty tons of fat, a hundred tons of meat and fish, all boned.”
Stonebraker grunted.
“Thirty-eight tons of salt and ten tons of cheese.”
“What the hell do they need ten tons of cheese for?”
Clint continued to drone out the meticulously planned list of the most valuable foods supplanted with vitamins. There would also be need for whole milk, special foods for hospital patients, food for the zoo, and for seeing-eye dogs. When he was done, Stonebraker knew Clint had figured it down to the ounce. In truth, they were asking two and a quarter million people to cling to bare threads and forget every comfort and most necessities known to a civilized community.
“Hello, M.J.,” Hiram said, bussing his wife’s cheek. “How was the flight?”
“Just fine, dear,” she answered, searching for signs of fatigue on him.
“How are things at home?”
“Dorothy and the children are all settled in and will stay for the duration.”
“Good, it was wonderful of Jack to let her come.”
The town was mostly dark when they arrived except for the lights burning at his Headquarters complex. M.J. commented that it appeared to be a pretty city. Hiram said he didn’t know as he hadn’t seen much of it.
“It was spared,” he said, “because some people had designs on it as an occupation country club.”
As she suspected, he lived in a hotel within walking distance of his office. A pinstriped, cutaway-dressed German manager of the requisitioned Schwarzer Bock Hotel welcomed M.J. profusely. It was a magnificent hostelry in the grand old style with great high ceilings, marble fireplaces, enormous baths, glass-fronted wardrobes, glittering chandeliers, antique clocks, seventeenth-century writing desks, and an abundance of marble. Their suite looked down on a small square, the Kranz Platz, which was the site of the original Roman spring.
When the attendants were finally shooed out, M.J. loosened the general’s shoe laces, and went about doing those things to force him to relax, then she unpacked.
“How is the mission going, dear?”
“Just fine. We have a few minor problems, but those will be ironed out.”
From the hall came the sound of an alley-cat chorus of nonharmonizing voices.
We are poor little lambs,
Who have gone astray,
Baa, baa, baa.
We are little black sheep
Who have lost our way ...
M.J. opened the door and Perry Sindlinger handed her a great bouquet of roses and Clint Loveless held two magnums of champagne. They piled in ... Pancho, Ben Scudder, Swede, Sid, and Lou Edmonds.
Crusty mumbled that unfortunately he would have to bounce for drinks. After a good and true welcome they crawled off wearily, well past midnight.
At last the general