Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [270]
She lay beside him and he folded his arms about her without words.
There were a few remarks while they dressed, as he made an effort to spare her pain.
“Hello, Uncle Ulrich ... I am sorry I did not phone ... I was with a girl friend and it became late.... Yes ... I am going straight to work.”
Sean kept thinking that it would be best if they got out before his housekeeper arrived. She was the niece of Ulrich Falkenstein and had to be spared an indignity, but he could say nothing.
They drove away, silently.
“If you will leave me off at the Tempelhof Station, I can take a train to work.”
He agreed, it would not look right to pull up in front of her building.
The usual morning crowd of Berliners was clustered near the station watching the planes take off and land, take off and land, take off and land.
This morning the birds groped through a heavy fog under ground-controlled approach. The Berliners gasped with each
new landing as they caught sight of the craft at the last instant, bursting through the white shroud.
He stopped the car. There was an awkward moment of not knowing how to say good-by. Ernestine knew enough to go with dignity. She swung the car door open.
Sean grabbed her wrist. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Will it make you happier to know that I knew you wanted to murder me last night. If that is what you would have chosen to do, I would not have uttered a protest. If I cannot bring you life, I am yours to kill.”
“I’ve got to see you again,” he said, not believing his own words. “Tonight.”
“Aufwiedersehen.” She ran quickly out of the car and he watched her disappear up the steps of the elevated. The crowd on the platform screamed at the same instant. A Skymaster dropped almost on top of them!
The ground quaked as the plane smashed into the side of a building several blocks away, and after an ear-splitting blast, glass, brick, and pieces of the craft spewed ... a belch of flame. There was a terrible second of silence ... then the explosion!
Sean was swept into the midst of a mass of running humanity. The plane and the building were demolished. All that was left was a section of the tail, the American Star, and MATS, ALASKA.
There was a sorrowful wail of the horns of ambulances and police cars over the screams of horror. Sean O’Sullivan was transfixed by the leaping flames of the pyre.
“Tim! Tim! Tim!”
“Herr Oberst!” a German policeman begged, “Herr Oberst, do not go closer! They are all dead!”
“My brother is in that plane! Let go of me you goddamned fool!”
“Herr Oberst! Someone ... please help me with him ... he will be killed.”
Sean was dragged away from the scene and held until he calmed. He was brought back to reality by the voice of the Lorelei ... the voice of Ernestine!
“Sean! Come to your senses!”
He looked up at her. She was framed by the flames and the wreckage. His eyes were black with a hatred she had never seen.
Chapter Twenty-one
“GENERAL HANSEN,” ULRICH FALKENSTEIN said, “I must tell you how deeply my own grief runs.”
“It was bound to happen,” Hansen replied.
The two had always had misgivings. At this moment the German feared the city’s freedom was being talked away in a four-power conference in Moscow. Hansen retained his universal doubts about the Germans. Yet, the death of the three American flyers had a shocking and sobering reaction. The Berliners thought that perhaps the alliance with the Americans was not so weak after all. And for the Americans it was a time of awakening to an understanding of the depth of their commitment.
Hansen’s aide said that the official party was formed in the outer office. Soon a line of cars bore the mourners to the place of the wreckage.
The scene was that of a stilled battlefield. The debris had been taken away, the blood washed from sight, the agony of the inferno stilled, and what remained was a new shrine ... a tail section of a Skymaster welded into a mangled wall, a torch marking the spot of impact.
Long