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"Bouncing Betties?" Hermann asked.
"You didn't raise your hand, but I will forgive you this once. When someone steps on a Bouncing Betty, it goes off, then jumps out of the ground about a meter, then explodes again. This sends the shrapnel into people's bodies from their knees up. Very nasty."
The boys' faces showed they understood.
"Trying this one more time," Castillo went on, "after the minefields were in and the Volkspolizei and the border guards and the Army of the German Democratic Republic were congratulating themselves, a trooper of the Fourteenth reintroduced one of the oldest artillery weapons known, the catapult."
Willi's hand shot back up.
"The what?"
"I will demonstrate." Castillo reached for the sugar bowl, took out an oblong lump of sugar, and put it on the handle of a spoon. "What do you think would
happen if I banged my fist against the other end of the spoon?"
"They get the idea, Karl," Otto said. "You don't have to--"
BAM!
The lump of sugar flew in a high arc across the table and crashed against the plateglass window.
Hermann's and Willi's eyes widened.
"That is a catapult," Castillo said. "So what the troopers of the Black Horse did was build a great big one, big enough to throw four cobblestones wired together. They mounted it on a jeep and practiced with it until they got pretty good. And then they waited for a really dark night and sneaked the catapult close to the minefield--and started firing cobblestones. Eventually, one landed on a Bouncing Betty. It went off. There is a phenomenon known as sympathetic explosion, which means that one explosion sets off another. Bouncing Betties went off all over the minefield.
"The troopers got back in their jeep and took off. The Communists decided that they'd caught a whole bunch of dirty capitalists trying to sneak into their Communist paradise. Floodlights came on. Sirens screamed. Soldiers rushed to the area. All they found was a bunch of exploded Betties and some cobblestones."
Hermann and Willi were obviously enthralled with the story.
Castillo was pleased.
"After that happened a couple of times," he went on, "they started placing their mines on the other side of the fence. That was out of range of the catapult--"
"Excuse me, Herr Gossinger," a maid said as she entered the room and extended a portable telephone to Castillo. "It's the American embassy in Berlin. They say it's important."
"Thank you," Castillo said, and reached for the telephone.
"Hello?"
"Have I Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger?" a male voice asked in German.
Sounds like a Berliner, Castillo thought. Some local hire who will connect me with some Foggy Bottom bureaucrat too important to make his own calls.
"Ja."
"My name is Tom Barlow, Colonel Castillo," the caller said, now in faultless American English. "Sorry to bother you so early in the day, but the circumstances make it necessary."
Okay, the American guy speaks perfect German. So what? So do I. So do Edgar and Jack.
But he called me "Colonel Castillo"?
"What circumstances are those, Mr. Barlow?" Castillo asked, switching to English.
"I thought that you would be interested to know that an attempt will be made on your life today during the services for Herr Friedler. Actually, on yours and those of Herr Gorner and Herr Kocian."
"You're right. I find that fascinating. Are you going to tell me how this came to the attention of the embassy?"
"Oh, the embassy doesn't know anything about it."
