AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Denied.”
“If I don’t make this call, sir, members of my staff will make it for me. It would really be best if I made the call.”
“Who are you going to call, Colonel, General Eisenhower?” Greene asked sarcastically. “Okay. Make your goddamn call, then get out of my sight.”
Mattingly leaned over Greene’s desk and dialed a two-digit number.
“Colonel Mattingly for General Eisenhower,” he said to whoever answered.
General Greene slammed his hand on the base of the telephone, breaking the connection.
“Now, just a moment!” he said, staring down Mattingly.
“I respectfully suggest, General, that there is no reason for me to involve General Eisenhower in this, providing you release me from arrest and deal with Colonel Schumann as I outlined.”
After a long moment, Greene, tight-lipped, nodded.
“Permission to withdraw, sir?” Mattingly asked.
Greene nodded again.
Mattingly came to attention, saluted, did an about-face movement, and marched toward the door.
He had almost reached it when General Greene called out to him.
“You ever hear, Mattingly, that he who laughs last lasts best?”
Mattingly turned, said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, sir,” then marched out of the office.
The problem, he thought, is that I understand why he’s furious.
In his shoes, I would be.
He didn’t get to be chief of Counterintelligence by being slow.
This is not over.
[THREE]
Tempelhof Air Base
Berlin, Germany
0915 1
8 October 1945
Instead of the gray skies and drizzle—or worse—that South American Airways First Officer Hans-Peter von Wachtstein expected to find in Berlin, there was bright sunshine and not a cloud in the sky.
He could see Flughafen Berlin-Tempelhof from a long way off.
So could SAA Captain Paolo Lopez, who was in the co-pilot’s seat of the Lockheed Constellation.
“My God, that’s enormous!” Lopez said.
“Until the Americans built their Pentagon, it was the largest building in the world,” von Wachtstein said.
There was a downside to the unexpected good weather. The ruins of the German capital—stretching for miles—could be seen just as clearly as could the graceful curved terminal of what was now U.S. Army Air Force Field Berlin (Tempelhof).
