Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [260]
“How many barrels of asphalt?” Stonebraker asked quickly.
“Ten thousand.”
Stonebraker grunted.
“And Crusty ... the Magistrat appealed to Neal Hazzard today. The hospital inventories are dangerously low. We are going to have to get several thousand tons of emergency drugs and supplies in immediately.” At last, Chip Hansen sent his regards to M.J.
Stonebraker set the phone down slowly. “We have to fly in ten thousand barrels of asphalt,” he said to Clint.
Clint wanted to cry.
“What the hell, Clint. No matter how rough we have it, it’s ten times rougher on those people in Berlin.”
Stonebraker pulled himself out of his chair. He reeled back suddenly, falling against the wall, groaned from a terrible pain in his chest, sunk to his knees, then began to crawl back to his desk.
“General!”
“Clint ... top ... drawer ...”
Clint found a box of nitroglycerin tablets. Take One in Case of Attack. He administered the pill, laid a cushion beneath his head, loosened his collar, and went back to the phone as the general writhed and gasped for breath.
“No ... no ... phone ... lock ... door ...”
Clint wavered. The general’s life hung in the balance, yet with pain-wracked effort it had the sound of an order. Clint set the receiver down, and locked both entrances.
The general groaned and broke into a cold sweat, and then it subsided. Clint wiped his face with a damp rag.
The general clutched his wrists. “You keep your mouth shut about this.”
“It’s not worth your life, General. We’re not going to make it, anyhow.”
“Goddamn you, Clint! Goddamn you! Don’t let me ever hear you say that again.”
Chapter Seventeen
A FLIGHT SURGEON, SWORN to secrecy, left the general’s suite after assuring M.J. and Clint that he was resting well.
Clint remained shaken and M.J. tried to comfort him. “His seizures come and go. It is something we have to live with and I made up my mind a long time ago we weren’t going to live in fear.”
“They had no right to call him back,” Clint said.
“At first, I thought that. But it would have killed him quicker if they had left him behind.”
“This mission burns out airplanes and breaks down men. Neither we nor the machines are meant to stand up under this kind of pounding.”
“Then, Clint, the only way the general will survive is if he continues to believe it can be done.”
Clint returned to his room at the Rose Hotel and was awake far into the night. Hiram Stonebraker, those G-5 people in Berlin, the flyers at Y 80, and the mechanics at Rhein/Mud made up for a lot of those whorehouses on Madison Avenue. He was glad now that he had come.
The next day was Sunday; he called M.J. to inquire.
“The general has gone to his office,” she said.
“I’ll be damned.”
What a day! Clint looked around the street outside the Rose Hotel. His first day off and the sun was shining.
Stonebraker kept his staff housed in a cluster of requisitioned hotels diagonally across the Koch Brunnen Square from Headquarters. The plush Schwarzer Bock, Rose, and Palast held the top-ranking people. Lesser hotels scattered all over the city were requisitioned for junior officers and enlisted personnel.
Clint walked to the main exchange for toilet gear and cigarettes. Wiesbaden had been spared except for a single stray stick of bombs. In the heart of the city all the grandiose civic and commercial buildings had been requisitioned by the Air Force for USAFE and all those other offices and wings needed to run the tremendous air establishment. Beer halls had been converted into mess halls and the late-comer, the First Airlift Task Force, took a block on Taunusstrasse with shops and apartments and converted it into a makeshift command post.
Clint returned to the Rose, wondered what the hell to do. He went to the Bier Stube at the Palast, a congregation point for Airlift people. The Lift was back in full operation; no one was around this early. Might as well see a little of Wiesbaden, he thought, and strolled to the Wilhelmstrasse along a line of once elegant shops and still lovely sidewalk cafes.
Out of the immediate