Like a dog, Logan sniffed the air. There was no smell of smoke and death. American artillery chose that moment to open up. Shells shrieked overhead and hit something a few miles away. They waited for return fire, but nothing happened. It was weird. Where the hell were the Germans!
• • •
Harry Truman paced angrily around his desk in the Oval Office which, until recently, belonged to his late predecessor. He needed fresh air and a drink, some bourbon and water, light on the water. Real light on the water. He was being lied to and condescended to and it galled him all to hell.
At least he was making some headway with his so-called key advisers. They were Roosevelt’s men and were only gradually coming to the reality that their loyalty was to the office of the president and not a dead man. Truman was a small man physically, but a terrier when it came to temperament. He was always being underestimated since, unlike some of the dandies from the State Department and the graduates of West Point and Annapolis, he’d never been to college. They didn’t know all the time he’d spent reading and learning, acquiring a superb but informal education.
He’d also been annoyed that secrets, such as the atomic bomb and the Yalta agreements, had been kept from him, but that was the way FDR operated.
Damn it to hell, he thought. He was so poorly prepared for his new job that he wanted to curse, which he did frequently and colorfully, much to the consternation of some of FDR’s people, especially those from the State Department.
Most galling to him was the fact that the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin, America’s erstwhile ally, was lying through his damned Communist teeth. He had agreed to free elections in those areas his armies would conquer that were not part of Hitler’s Axis. Instead, Stalin was gobbling up countries like a child taking candy at Easter and seemed to be daring Truman to do something about it. Free elections were not about to happen in Poland or anywhere else.
Stalin apparently thought Truman was weak, inexperienced, and ineffective. Inexperienced, Truman admitted, but by damn, he was not weak and would not be ineffective.
Berlin was the final straw. Stalin had said he would not attack Berlin and now he was approaching the German capital with a massive army. The Yalta agreements called for Germany to be divided into four zones-American, Russian, French, and British-and that Russia could advance west of Berlin to the Elbe River. The agreements also said that Berlin would be divided among the four powers.
But with Stalin lying about everything, would he share Berlin once he took it? Stalin could not be permitted to keep what Americans had rightfully earned with their blood. American soldiers were across the Elbe, although in small numbers, and some of his advisers were urging him to send them on to Berlin to show that America would not be pushed around.
But that could also mean a confrontation with the Red Army. Damn.
“Mr. President?”
“Yes, General Marshall?” The army’s highest-ranking and most respected officer was one of the few who’d shown him total respect from the outset.
“Have you made a decision?”
Truman took a deep breath. First choice was to stop at the Elbe, as the agreements called for and Eisenhower wanted. Second choice was to rush full bore to Berlin and damn the consequences.
However, a third alternative had been proposed, and Truman liked it. He would send a small force, maybe two divisions, in the direction of Berlin to signal America’s intent to take and keep what she was entitled to. Two divisions should not threaten Stalin and, if they ran into heavy German resistance or the Red Army, they could either stop or pull back.
Stalin was testing him. He would not fail the test.
“Yes, General, I have made up my mind. Send two divisions toward Berlin.”
CHAPTER 2
As Steve Burke entered his small Georgetown apartment, he devoutly wished the evening had been more of a success. While he had taken the lovely and amazingly sensuous Natalie Holt out to dinner and a movie, and while there was the implied promise that he might be able to do it again, there were no tangible results for his efforts. Of course, an old Laurel and Hardy comedy was not exactly his first choice for a movie that would lead to a night of sexual adventure, but it had been her idea and he had acquiesced. And here it was, not even midnight, and he was at home, once again alone with his thoughts and books.
He flipped his brimmed cap on the couch and took off his short Eisenhower jacket. In a city of uniforms, he knew he looked nothing like an officer in the army. Burke was over six feet tall, but so thin he almost looked frail, and his hair was thin as well. Indeed, the only thing thick on him were the lenses of his glasses. No, he did not look like a warrior. He knew he looked-and felt-more like an Ichabod Crane type of college professor dressed up in a uniform for a costume party.
And whoever started the rumor that any male, single or not, would be gobbled up by the hordes of female secretaries and clerks who vastly outnumbered the men in Washington must have been joking. Burke was very single, and since coming to Washington his social life had been far less than spectacular. As to any sexual life, well, he might as well have been in a monastery.
Yet Natalie Holt, a staffer of some sort in the State Department, had agreed to go out with him. He had first seen her at a party at the Russian embassy and watched from a discreet distance as a small horde of real military and diplomatic types had fawned and fussed over her. And why not? She was tall, dark-haired, lithe, intelligent, wide-eyed, lovely, educated, and doubtless unattainable.
He had managed an introduction and struck up a brief conversation. That one talk led to a longer one and, in ensuing weeks, a number of casual dutch treat lunches that she seemed to enjoy. Her apparent pleasure made him ecstatic. He realized he had a crush on her. They had found common ground in their mutual expertise on Russia, and he was delighted to realize that someone as lovely as she could be so intelligent and educated.
The lunches were followed by an offer to take her out on a real date, which, to Steve’s astonishment, she accepted. So why the hell did she want to see a Laurel and Hardy film? Because, she had answered, it made her happy and these times were so gloomy that she sometimes needed something silly to lift her spirits. Silly like going out with him, he wondered, and banished the idea. He was slipping off his tie when the phone rang.
“Lieutenant Colonel Burke,” he answered, still uncomfortable with the title the army had conferred on him. A mature woman’s voice asked if he could confirm that he was indeed the Lieutenant Colonel Steven Burke of the Russian Section of the War Plans department, and he assured her he was. She then informed him that General Marshall would like to see him immediately.
“Which General Marshall would that be?” he asked innocently. There were a lot of generals in Washington, D.C.
There was the sound of gentle, middle-aged feminine laughter. “Colonel, you are being summoned by the chief of staff.”
He flipped a mental coin. Either the caller was telling the truth or someone was playing a joke on him. He felt it was the latter. He was about to make a snide comment when the woman continued. “Let me reiterate; you are the Lieutenant Colonel Burke who is a Russian expert on the War Plans staff, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there are a number of Colonel Burkes around as well as, just perhaps, more than one General Marshall, and I so wanted to make certain I had the right one too.” The caller had teased him gently, but he still felt his face flush. “Yes, Colonel, the General Marshall who is chief of staff of the U.S. Army does wish to see you, and right now. Does that pose a problem?”