Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [275]
Click, click, click went the heels of Hildegaard Falkenstein.
“I may not even take your ten dollars,” Scott said.
“Some guys are just born lucky ...”
Nick blocked the intersection. The girl walked boldly around the front of the car looking straight ahead. Nick began to feel he might have a winner.
“Fraulein,” Scott called, “could you please help us. We’re lost.”
She answered in rapid German, which they could not understand, and continued across the street.
“Ten bucks.”
“Not yet.” Scott got out of the car, blocked her way, gathering all of his boyish innocent charm, holding his hands apart helplessly and agonizing the conversation along in German. He mumbled a few choice words about the girl’s beauty under his breath.
Hilde tried to step around him, but he wouldn’t let her pass. Behind him, he could hear Nick Papas roar.
Words like “nylons” “chocolate” “perfume” were making no impression.
Hilde grew short. “If you do not stand aside,” she said in perfect English, “I will call for the police.”
“Well ... I’ll be damned.”
“Please let me pass. I do not play with little boys.”
“Little boys! Oh honey, if you knew what you were missing, you’d cut your throat.”
“Let me by or you’ll cut your own throat.”
She stepped forward, daring him to lay a hand on her. Scott backed off. She continued down the street and turned the corner at Gustav Freytag Strasse and walked into the Loveless house.
Nick Papas laughed until the tears streamed down his grizzly cheeks.
“All right, you Greek bastard, you want to sweeten that bet?”
“Jawohl!”
“Fifty says I have her in the sack in a week.”
“A bet,” and he began laughing all over again.
Scott slowed the car before the house of Lieutenant Colonel Clinton Loveless and made a note of the address.
The flight of Big Easy Four contained a crew beset with mixed emotions:
Stan Kitchek was star-gazed by a large romance. He ran on and on about Monika. Sweet girl supporting her child and old mother. But she had never really been in love. It was happening, just like that.
Scott was almost mad enough to tell Stan that Monika was a tank job ... but not quite.
Nick was a mosaic of assorted grins glorying in Scott’s discomfort.
As they talked to Tempelhof Airways, Stan got out of his seat for a moment and took a big carton from under the flight engineer’s table and handed it to Nick.
“What the hell’s that?” Scott asked.
“Well, every clear day I see little kids standing on the rubble piles at the end of the cemetery watching us land. Lot of times they’re at the airport, too. But did you ever notice that none of them ever came close to us, talked to us?”
“That’s the way krauts are,” Scott answered.
“Kids shouldn’t be that way,” Stan said, “anyhow, I thought I’d try something.”
“What’s in there?” Nick asked.
Stan opened the carton. The other two looked in curiously. Nick’s big paw fished out a tiny handkerchief parachute. Attached to the strings was a bar of candy. The carton held over a hundred parachutes and candy bars. “I rigged them up in my spare time,” Stan said. “I want you to toss them out of the back door just before we land.”
Nick was touched. Scott shrugged as though Stan were crazy.
The final right turn around the Tempelhof Beacon at five hundred feet began the steep glide that took them over the St. Thomas Cemetery between rows of half-bombed-out apartment houses. Stan looked out. Yes, the children were there on the rubble near the end of the runway. Full flaps ... the big bird slowed. Nick was at the back door throwing out the toy parachutes. They billowed, floated to earth. The children scrambled for them as the craft touched down on the end of the runway.
Within seconds hysterical phone calls were made from Russian spies in the apartments at the end of the runway, and from the Air Safety Center. Strange objects over St Thomas Cemetery! Parachutes! What kind of new sabotage were the Americans up to!
Candy bars?
Candy bars!
Candy bars!
People’s Radio decried it with passion. “The