Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [262]
“Why the hell didn’t we think of that!”
“Guess we’re not too much on falconry.”
“By the way, Clint, M.J. is having cocktails and dinner for some of the staff and wives who are particularly angry at me. Why don’t you join us at the dining room at seven.”
“Sounds like a winner, sir.”
Clint dug into the agreement, now happy he had returned to work. His phone rang.
“Colonel Loveless.”
“Suh, this is Sergeant Bufford,” a Texan drawled. “I’m here at Rhein/Main at the Lost Wives’ Club. We got us a Mrs. Clinton Loveless who came in by commercial aircraft. We reckon she belongs to you, suh.”
Clint blinked with disbelief. “Has she got two pale kids with her?”
“Ma’am, you got two pale kids?”
Judy took the phone. “Clinton. Will you please come over and get us.”
“I’ll be damned.”
The general grumbled that the agreement would be late reaching his desk, but nevertheless gave Clint his own staff car and had his aide contact the hotel to arrange a suite.
Judy didn’t know for sure if she had done the right thing by coming to Germany without telling him, but when they embraced and he sniffled while he hugged the children, she knew it was all right
Tony and Lynn were deposited in a bathtub the size of a small swimming pool while the travel-weary wife collapsed with a martini.
Clint got the children fed. They were terribly impressed by the waiters in formal suits who scraped and bowed and carried on with a great deal of pomp. He unpacked and got them off to sleep.
Judy revived herself and came back to the parlor looking, feeling, smelling all woman and ready for love, but Clint was pensive.
“You aren’t happy I came.”
“We have a lot of rivers to cross.” There hadn’t been an exchange of letters for six weeks, except the one Clint had gotten from Milt Schuster. Judy had been to see him about a divorce.
“I was hurt and angry when I went to see Milt. And when the anger passed I was just plain lonely. Clint, doesn’t the fact that I came here say that things will be your way. I guess I just don’t like an empty bed.”
“You’d have no trouble filling it with someone who shares your ideas about getting up in the world.”
“I can’t, Clint ...” He stood and turned away from her. “I’ll make it up to you, honey,” she said. “We’ll get a little house here ...”
“Dammit, Judy. You don’t just walk down the street and get a little house.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“In the past six weeks I’ve been more alive than at any time in my life. We have an airman at a base outside Munich who figured out how to renew spark plugs for twenty-one cents a copy. New, they cost sixty cents. We use fifty thousand of them a month. A young officer in Headquarters across the street has worked out a load calculator that helps us carry up to five hundred more pounds of cargo on every flight. We have displaced persons who can unload ten tons of coal in twenty minutes. We’ve done all kinds of miracles here ... but we’re whipped. I know my girl Judy. She doesn’t like a loser.”
“Clint, I love you. I’ve just started to learn why and how much. There’s a part in this for me too.”
He nodded and began to pour his heart out and Judy knew what she had to do. She could take him away from this awesome thing for little snatches at a time, brace him up, send him back to battle.
“That nasty old man is the greatest person I have ever known ... and he’s going to die. He’s got a time bomb in his chest.”
After a while Clint was happy that she had come. He stretched out on the bed. It was kind of like the early days when they scratched to make ends meet; she was so wonderful then.
“Let’s make a baby,” Judy purred.
Clint agreed.
The phone rang.
“Clint, get over to Headquarters right away.”
Clint didn’t bother to ask what particular problem was annoying the general.
“And we’ll be flying out to Berlin tomorrow in the second time bloc at Rhein/Main.”
“What about my trip to England, sir?”
“It will have to hold. They got the ground-controlled approach equipment in operation at Tempelhof.