Mainz: Rail center and arteries destroyed. Center of city a mass of brooding stone.
Offenbach: 60% destroyed. 93% of war-effort factories destroyed.
Kasseclass="underline" Wartime armaments factories made it a priority for Allied bombers. Not even Berlin took such a pounding for its size. Inner city entirely leveled.
And so it went in one city after another. The political section of the group spoke among themselves about the efficiency of American Military Government, the de-Nazifying procedures, the new legal codes and the speed of open elections.
Wiesbaden. The inspection of the American Zone was coming to an end. Now they saw an undamaged German city. And this, too, made a mark on Igor Karlovy. It was a great, plush old spa of sumptuous beauty, the likes of which he had never seen, something he had believed existed only for czars. The Taunus Mountains looked down on lush forests and the people had bathed in spas from the times of the Romans. Seeing this unspoiled place enabled Igor to put together bits of the ancient German culture that he had seen in the jigsaw of rubble.
At the Schierstein Harbor they boarded the yacht City of Cologne, which once belonged to Adolf Hitler, and sailed down the Rhine to the little sporting town of Rüdesheim and docked. Here the full splendor of that fabled river revealed itself. The Watch on the Rhine, the statue of Germania, stood high above the magnificent terraced vineyards.
German school children gathered to sing a welcome in their high-pitched voices. They sang the traditional “Lorelei” and the village dancers and band and singers added their odes to the ethereal beauty of the Rhine.
This was a side of Germany Igor Karlovy had never known. In the warmth and sentimentality of their songs, so like his own, he realized there was something in the German character other than brutality and militarism. How puzzling! But after all, did he not love a German woman? Had he not seen these things in her?
After an elegant banquet at the centuries-old mansion of Krone they tasted the wines at Castle Crass. As ancient wine-tasting ceremonies ensued, the party loosened up, and then ... brotherhood came about. Even NKVD General Lipski enjoyed himself and those limber ones among the Russians were soon showing off a few dance steps of their own to the delight of the American hosts and the German entertainers.
They boarded the City of Cologne at dawn with bombing hangovers. As the boat pulled away the children were there again, singing the “Lorelei.”
The boat moved down the river. Major O’Sullivan walked among the group shaking hands with each of them. In two short weeks he had gained their respect after the passing of the initial hostility. He seemed to be an unusually open and honest man as well as extremely pleasant.
Sean sat at the rail, caught up for a moment with the overwhelming beauty of the river. Igor Karlovy sat alongside him.
“Well, Major O’Sullivan, what will we do without you?”
“The British will take good care of you.”
“Will we be seeing you in Copenhagen?”
“Probably.”
There was general excitement as the yacht came around a treacherous bend and they could see the great basalt rock that rises out of the river and hovers in a large cliff over the water. The voices of the children singing the haunting “Lorelei” still reached their ears.
“So that is the ‘Lorelei,’ ” Igor said.
“Don’t listen too closely to the voices of the sirens, Colonel, or you may crash on the rocks.”
Igor smiled. “You would make an excellent dialectician.”
They rounded the bend passing those long low river barges and the outlines of the Mäuseturm showed itself against a gray sky over the terracing.
“I was told only last night that you returned from America from an unhappy event. Your father, I believe.”
“Yes.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Thank you, Colonel. He was quite old and quite tired.”
“And you have family left?”
“There is only my mother and myself. I lost two brothers in the war.”
This shattered Igor into a long silence.
“And you, Colonel?”
“I lost ... a childhood sweetheart ... and my son.”
“Then we really should be friends, shouldn’t we,” Sean said.
“I guess so. What part of America do you come from?”
“San Francisco.”
“Oh yes. California was once settled by Russians.”
“We stole California from the Spanish in a war of aggression ... however, we did purchase Alaska from the Russians, legally.”
Igor laughed. “From the Czars. We would not have made such a bad bargain.” Igor lit a cigarette. “Tell me, what did your family do?”
“We had all more or less just graduated from the university. I was teaching. My younger brother aspired to be a writer. He was a student of literature. The middle brother ... a follower of causes.”
“Three sons in the university. Your family must have had great wealth.”
“My father was an immigrant from Ireland. He was never more than a laborer.”
“Very interesting.”
Ivan Orlov, as always, hovered nearby. The NKVD had made a small error in assigning him to watch Colonel Karlovy ... he spoke no English. He made his presence so annoying that Sean asked to excuse himself. When he left, Ivan Orlov said, “Beware of Major O’Sullivan. He is a spy for American political security.”
At Cologne the American escort was joined by the British escorts. It was the same story. Cologne, Hanover, and the ports of Hamburg and the American enclave of Bremerhaven utterly mangled.
But the very worst they saw in all of Germany was the devastation of the Ruhr industrial complex. Düsseldorf, Essen, and Dortmund were all but wiped out.
The Soviet inspection group proceeded to the Copenhagen conference sobered. Neither the British nor Americans had hidden a thing.
Igor Karlovy had to admit to himself that Germany was more thoroughly destroyed than the Soviet Union.
What was horribly clear now was that the Soviet Government had deliberately lied to keep the Russian people from knowing the strength and participation of the West. Indeed, Western Germany had not been spared for a war of revenge.
Chapter Seventeen
THE CLOCK IN THE tower of the Copenhagen City Hall tolled the hour of seven. Igor Karlovy paced his room. Most of the staff would be asleep for another two or three hours. He opened the curtain, stepped out onto the balcony of his room at the Palace Hotel.
In the center of the street arose a column, and on it a pair of vikings blowing long trumpets. The Danes joked that the trumpets would sound when a virgin passed.
Raadhus Plaza stretched below. Copenhagen was starting a new day with wonderful briskness. Tens of thousands of Danes pedaled their bicycles, weaving around automobiles, and the square was alive with the sounds of cooing pigeons, sharp heels on stone, voices of the rapid, indistinguishable language.
How different from the movement of the troubled grim masses in Moscow, Igor thought.
Colonel Igor Karlovy was a man deeply disturbed. The five-week inspection tour of the Western Zones and the conference in Copenhagen were drawing to a close. He had felt uneasy about the safety of Lotte Böhm. No communication between them had been possible. The separation had made him realize that he loved her ... and he had committed a cardinal sin in losing his hatred for Americans.... Questions gnawed at him. They could never be asked.
One could watch Copenhageners for hours, Igor thought. The Soviet delegation was housed in a wing of the Palace Hotel in the heart of the city. The Americans were a mile and a half away at the D’Angleterre. Between them ran Frederiksborg Way, a narrow street lined with exclusive shops and department stores.