Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [283]
They gathered the children, crossed the street, continued quietly.
“Don’t get angry,” Scott said after a time, “but I learned that you never go out on dates.”
“Life is much more simple that way,” she answered.
“I promise I won’t complicate things.”
It had been a lonely year for Hilde. Scott was charming and he could be controlled now that she had his absolute respect. She knew she was trying to fool herself because in three or four dates he would return to being what he really was. Yet, she did not want to send him off again. They came to the head of the colonnade.
“Why don’t we have that milk shake,” she said. “I can always feed them an hour later.”
He started to offer her his arm again, but held it back. He had entered a strange new world of the fear of rejection. Hilde took his arm and they walked down the colonnade.
Chapter Twenty-eight
TEGEL AIRFIELD NEARED COMPLETION a mere three months from the day the first shovel was set into the earth.
One obstacle remained in this strange blockade—the transmitter of People’s Radio sat near the end of the runway.
Although the French role had been minor, it was dramatic. Colonel Jacques Belfort personally supervised the dynamiting of the Russian tower. The Russians branded them “cultural barbarians,” but to no avail.
The first Skymasters from the zone set down in Tegel in autumn of 1948, pushing the daily tonnage to six thousand.
The Soviet concept of the blockade, a logical and routine political maneuver, had failed to achieve its initial aims. The whole matter was getting out of hand. While the Russians continued to be certain of ultimate victory, much of their confidence was undermined by the small miracles performed by the West.
The Kremlin sent out a contagious new line of thinking to probe for a way out of the blockade mess without a loss of face.
V. V. Azov was a prisoner in his Potsdam mansion. It was in the wind that he would be liquidated. Indeed, an undercurrent of anxiety ran beneath the entire Soviet command. Even Marshal Alexei Popov, the greatest Soviet war hero, might be falling out of favor.
Igor Karlovy placed his own good fortune on the fact that he was the foremost aviation traffic expert in the command. However, this technical skill could not sustain him in Berlin forever.
“How can you remain so certain,” V. V. Azov demanded of Igor, “that the operation of the new runway at Tegel will not allow the Airlift aggression to continue indefinitely?”
The commissar’s face was ashen and he had developed a bad twitch. At times, Igor thought, he seemed to be on drugs.
“If they had ten runways in Berlin, the Lift would still collapse in winter. There is an entirely new set of problems never solved in aviation.”
“It seems the Americans have ways of solving quite a number of unsolvable problems.”
“I assure you, Comrade Commissar, they are barely holding even now. Coal reserves have fallen to less than a two-week supply. A single streak of bad weather in December and they have no choice but to quit.”
“Igor,” Lotte pouted, “you sit for hours and stare and say nothing.”
“Huh ... what ... what did you say?”
“You are bored with me.”
“No, no my pet.”
“You used to sing to me all the time, even when you were not happy.”
“Do you want a man or a nightingale! Dammit, woman! I have problems on my mind!”
Lotte cried. In the last week or two all he had to do was look at her crossly and she would cry. She wept over nothing. He walked into his study and slammed the door behind him.
His frequent black moods were not caused by the growing desperation of the Russian command. Igor was an engineer and he would not be bullied against his judgment. What was getting him down like a growing poison was the hatred and rejection of the Berliners. The defiance of a half-million workers, their scathing humor, their willingness to sacrifice anything to avoid the Soviet way of life.
And the damned Americans and their damned chocolate flyers ... the kangaroo and the candy bars....
Sean looked at his watch;