“Freedom!” responded the delegates.
“Those of you who stand for freedom will cast your vote now by following me from this hall!”
Hanna Kirchner was at his side. The two of them walked from the stage into a sea of aroused humanity. The SND and the Action Squads were dumbstruck at the sudden massive uprising.
A chant began as row after row emptied behind Ulrich and Hanna. “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”
And in a moment there was a handful of them left in the hall and the two colored sets of ballots remained on the stage. Berthold Hollweg sat ashen faced.
Sean O’Sullivan shook his head. He looked out into the streets where the chant rose to a new height.
“Freiheit! Freiheit! Freiheit!”
Chapter Fourteen
YOUR BELOVED FATHER PASSED AWAY QUIETLY IN HIS SLEEP LAST NIGHT. YOUR MOTHER IS HOLDING UP WELL UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES.
The emergency telegram, sent through the Red Cross, was signed by Fr. Dominick Fragozze, a priest Sean had known all his life.
It was not the same as losing Tim and Liam. This was a decision he and his father had made together and knew would happen. He was now given to wondering if he should have stayed home and done more. It was the hour of guilt every man knows after losing a parent.
His friends came by to express their sorrow, and realized he wished to grieve quietly, to remember his father and relive words and scenes of earliest childhood.
And General Hansen came by and asked him how he was holding up. “Here are all your emergency leave papers. Transportation is working out the best route home. We have you on an ATC flight out of Tempelhof in three hours.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“Sean, I wish I knew how to help you. Words can really never ease your pain and particularly with a man as fine as your father.”
“I appreciate the General’s concern,” Sean answered.
Andrew Jackson Hansen’s face drew tight with memory of his own. “I remember my father in his last days. He told me something very wonderful when he realized he was going. He said, ‘You have done us proud, Andrew. Your family and your country. You have brought food to starving people and more ... you have given them hope. What a good thing it is to be an American ... God bless America.’ ”
Sean lifted his eyes.
“My father told me something else. He said, ‘Andrew, the way you have lived your life has made it possible for me to sleep in peace.’ Your father would have said the same words to you, Sean. The way you have lived your life has given him the gift of being able to sleep in peace.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
When the burden of the funeral was done, Sean closed the old house forever. His mother and a widowed sister would share their days in a small cottage in the sun.
Chapter Fifteen
IGOR WAS NEVER ENTIRELY certain about his arrangement with Lotte Böhm. Circumstance brought them together for mutual convenience. From any point of view, the girl had a good thing in a Russian colonel, yet an attachment of great warmth developed.
Lotte seemed to adore him, stopped at nothing to please him, catered to his whims, moods, instinctively knew how to comfort him. Igor was pleased, but determined not to be deceived. He knew the girl had an overpowering fear of the realities of life in Berlin without his protection. As in all women, except his unlamented wife, Lotte was part actress. There was an outside chance she loved him, but he would not be fooled.
Families of high-ranking Russian officers began to arrive in Berlin. Igor held his breath until he received a letter from Olga that the importance of her work would keep them parted. He silently thanked the party.
For months he traveled through the Russian Zone of Germany stripping one factory after another as part of the reparations program. As that program was ending he was assigned to study reparations claims in the Western Zones.
Millions of German ethnics had been expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. They moved west in search of new homes. It was a simple matter to plant hundreds, then thousands of Soviet agents in their number to infiltrate everywhere.
Prime assignment of these agents was to gain information to be used to mount Soviet reparations claims. They photographed every factory, piece of machinery, rail yard, harbor, airport, and canal in the West. They drew mountains of data on mineral deposits.
Igor sifted this intelligence so that the Soviet Union could handpick the things it wanted. He noted at his weekly meeting with V. V. Azov that the arrival of Madam Azov did nothing to mellow the commissar.
“Comrade Colonel. The British are now ten thousand tons of coal behind schedule in deliveries to us. What have you to report on your negotiations?”
“I can report that the British are stubborn,” Igor answered.
“They owe us the coal. It must be demanded.”
“It is not quite so simple. The Ruhr mines are capable of only one third of their prewar capacity.”
Azov assumed it was for a lack of miners and offered to send “volunteers” from the Silesian districts of Poland.
“It is not a question of either miners or techniques. The English know the mining business. The machinery is obsolete. The miners do not receive sufficient ration for such difficult work. Transportation is broken down. These are technical problems that would only bore the commissar. Our own mines in the Soviet Union are suffering from the same problems.”
Azov hated engineers. They hid behind a foreign language. He insisted the pressure must be increased.
Igor insisted you cannot pressure an Englishman. “Besides, the British argue they don’t owe us the coal.”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
“For one thing, we have not returned fifteen thousand freight cars in which previous shipments were made.”
“A legitimate reparation.”
“Yes, of course. However, the British also claim we are behind in our shipments of brown coal to Berlin by some thirty thousand tons.”
Azov mulled it over. There was an agreement to exchange the industrial coal of the Ruhr for the brown coal from Silesia to heat the city. This was part of the general plan to exchange the natural assets of the four zones to keep Germany operating as a single economic unit. This was what the Potsdam Agreement said. The Soviets took the hard industrial coal for their own use in Russia and never delivered the soft coal from Silesia. Fortunately for Berliners the winter of 1945 was mild.
“The Silesian mines,” Azov said, “are no longer a part of Germany and therefore do not come under the economic exchange regulations. They are the property of the People’s Democratic Republic of Poland. We cannot force the Poles to send coal to Germany.”
Igor digested the commissar’s words. He had offered quickly enough to send in Polish miners, then in the same conversation defended the “autonomy” of Poland against delivering Silesian coal. Igor was on tricky ground.
“The British do not recognize the border changes ceding Silesia to Poland until a peace treaty is signed.”
Azov changed the subject.
“The West has agreed to an on-site inspection of the industrial complex preparatory to a reparations conference. You are assigned as a member of the inspection group.”
Igor nodded.
“You will begin next week in the American Zone. After inspections of the zones you will be assigned as a technical advisor to our delegation at the conference. The conference will be held in Copenhagen.”
Igor realized that Azov was watching carefully for a reaction to the name of a Western city.
Once, during the war, as the Soviet Union swept west along the Baltic he had seen plans to send three Soviet divisions into Denmark and occupy it. Unfortunately, the British got there first. He had not believed he would see a Western city outside of Germany in his life.