“So, the chairman is not available for a meeting?”
Ambassador Harriman’s voice was stiff, as cold as the ice of a Moscow winter, thought Hartnell Stone as he listened to his boss’s side of the phone conversation with the Kremlin.
“Then I will speak to Foreign Minister Molotov. I see. You will leave messages for both men and for their assistants. Yes. Thank you. Good-bye.” He hung up the telephone. “Well, Hartnell, my lad, looks like no one’s home right now.”
“My god, don’t they understand what’s happening?”
“Probably not. I don’t, not really. Do you?”
“It’s a confusing mess.”
“Oh. Then you
do
understand.” Harriman laughed. “No, I’m not surprised at this. A little disheartened, but not surprised. As nearly as I can figure it, it goes like this. The battle starts. It’s probably as a result of some dumb accident, but with a couple of hundred thousand trigger-happy maniacs on both sides, it doesn’t take much for shooting to break out. They were having five or
six minor incidents a day over in Berlin and were managing to keep the lid on. This time it doesn’t work.”
“Why not?”
“God only knows. Maybe the snafu spreads up the line. Maybe somebody’s brother or cousin got killed and the relative is out for revenge. Maybe somebody sees a medal or a promotion to be had. Maybe it’s just a string of coincidences. Won’t be the first time. Or maybe it’s not a coincidence. Maybe somebody’s decided to take advantage of this one. But I still think it was an accidental start.”
“Why?”
“We wouldn’t have started it, not because we’re necessarily so goody-goody, but because we don’t have the strength to go on the offense. Not even Patton would think that. The Russians, on the other hand, do have the strength to start something, but my best guess is that they really don’t want World War Three with us. At least not yet. When Stalin says that Russia has paid a much bigger price than we have in this war, he’s right. Plus, if this were a deliberate, planned attack, it would look different. It would be more coordinated, probably on a wider front, backed by more troops, and probably with more noticeable preparation, not just a little local thing that spreads out.
“Now, exploiting an accident is not quite the same thing as planning a deliberate attack. If push comes to shove, they can claim we started it, and in the confusion and the fog, who knows? They might even be right—an accident could as easily happen on our side as on theirs. At least if they have to back down, or decide it’s time to stop, they can use ‘it was just a misunderstanding’ as an excuse. So now we come back to the Kremlin. Stalin and Molotov get a call from me. Should they take the call or not? All right, Hartnell, explain it to me. What would you advise them if you were on the other team?”
Stone took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. Okay. The situation is, it’s an accident, but they’re exploiting it. They don’t want World War Three, but they do want Berlin, and if they can get the upper hand and win a few more negotiating points, why not.” He looked at Harriman for confirmation, but the American ambassador folded his hands across his chest and had on his best poker face. Stone wouldn’t get a hint whether he was on or off the mark.
“So until this settles down and the smoke clears, there isn’t anything he can gain by talking to us,” Stone said. “His forces are clearly superior, but they still have to finish the job of taking Berlin. Afterward, he’ll want to talk armistice and claim this whole thing was started by an American provocation, and he’ll have some cockamamie piece of evidence to throw on the table. And as you say, it might even be the truth, though the claim’s the same either way.”
He thought for a minute, and then he nodded with understanding. “And then he’s going to throw your own words back in your face.” Harriman cocked an eyebrow at that. “Remember a few months ago, when you were telling him
that the Teheran deal was off? He’s going to grab the Teheran territory that you said he couldn’t have, and a little bit more besides. Then he’s going to tell you that he would have happily settled for the Teheran deal, except
you
were the one that threw it out, forcing him to this sad action.”
Harriman nodded. “I think you’ve got it. Unless, of course,” the ambassador added, “the president really is holding that ace up his sleeve he’s been talking about … .”
Patton left strict orders that he be wakened immediately if there was any change in the situation, and went to bed after midnight, sleeping on a cot in an upstairs office of the huge building. No one disturbed him, but he still woke up before dawn. Taking only five minutes to shave and put on a clean shirt and slacks, he headed downstairs to the large conference room that had been turned into a command post for the Army of Berlin.
“They’re still shelling the heck out of Nineteenth Armored, General,” reported the major who had been supervising the dispatches through the early morning hours. “But there’s been no movement, no firing, on any other sectors.”
“Get me Henry Wakefield on the line. I need to know how his boys are holding up.”
“Actually, sir, he’s on his way to the HQ. Should be here within the next half-hour. He did tell me that they haven’t given any ground, yet.”
“Good.” Patton concealed his worry with a hearty nod, then turned to look at the large map hanging on the wall. That provided no answers—and he had the damned thing memorized by now, anyway—so he stalked aimlessly around the room, looking over the shoulders of the three switchboard operators, going over the teletype reports from SHAEF. He was considerably relieved to see Hank Wakefield come through the door. The general looked hearty, if worried, and ambled over to the table where a large urn of coffee was percolating.
“They’re bringing a shitstorm, Georgie,” reported the CO of the Nineteenth Armored. “I don’t think any American unit has ever come under this kind of artillery fire before. Bob Jackson had his boys dig in pretty well during the siege, so they’re doing okay. But we’ve taken a lot of casualties, more than a hundred killed since the bastards started shooting. Can’t we hit those guns with some bombers?”
“Ike has asked for clearance—I guess it has to go all the way to the president. But he’s hoping to get use of the Nineteenth Air Force.”
“Georgie, these are my boys,” Wakefield said. The strain showed in the lines around his eyes as he fixed his gaze on his army commander. “I’ve had a lot of them since Normandy. I’m goddamned if I’ve got them all the way here just to make them sitting ducks for a bunch of fucking Russki guns.” He
looked at Patton, then said in a deceptively mild tone, “If you want to wait on some fucking chair warmers for permission, that’s your business, but I thought Third Army took care of its own.”
“Now listen here, you son of a bitch,” Patton said, his own anger rising to the surface, “You know good and goddamn well that I am moving heaven and hell here. I have screamed at every fucking bastard I can get to take my phone call, and if I could reach my hand through the wires I’d have throttled five or six people by now. Got it? And if that ain’t enough to suit you, hell, Henry, if Ike can’t get us some air support, I’ll climb into a goddamned transport and bomb the cocksucking Russian bastards myself! Does that fucking suit you?”
Wakefield nodded, pulled out a cigar, and lit it. “It’s a start.”
“That was General Wakefield.” Ballard didn’t try to soften the news; his men would realize the truth in any event. “No word yet on air support. But we can’t afford to give ground. We’re going to have to tough it out right where we are.”
He didn’t release the string of curses that rose in his throat, but it wasn’t easy to meet the eyes of the men in his headquarters staff. They were down in what had been some kind of holding tank in the cellar of the slaughterhouse. Everyone was haggard, sweaty, and unshaven. The explosions of the enemy barrage were an unending background, sometimes near, other times right on top of them.
The building itself had been half demolished by the shelling of the last twenty-four hours. Ballard looked out periodically, and saw that this entire strip of Potsdam, where Nineteenth Armored had dug in, had been pounded severely.
As usual, CCA was the front line of the division, with CCB deployed in reserve. They were positioned along one side of a moderately wide city street, an avenue that extended from the wide Havel River on their left flank to a long lake, the Sacrower See, on the right. Over the months of the siege, the men had fortified positions in houses, down in cellars within stone and concrete buildings wherever possible. They had laid logs and timbers over their emplacements in anticipation of shelling, secured rear entrances and escape routes, scouted fields of fire, massed ammunition and supplies.
But nobody had expected anything like this. This was a version of hell, where steel and fire fell from the sky in a relentless rain, promising the threat of obliteration at any moment.
The door at the end of the long chamber opened, and Smiggy dropped down the steep iron steps, quickly pulling the hatch closed after him. His coat of dust looked dry and powdery, as compared to the oily film on the men who’d been cooped up in here for the last few hours.
“Any sign of troop movements?” Ballard asked.
Captain Smiggs shook his head. “Just the damned guns. They’re coming from all along the southwest. I think most of the batteries are massed right in the middle of the city, on those open lawns by the resort hotels.”
“All right—good work,” Ballard said. “I’ll go out in an hour.”
“Hey, listen to that.” Major Diaz, CO of the artillery battalion, held up a hand.
Ballard noticed it right away, the pounding of the guns abating, slowing to a sporadic blasting over the space of a minute or two.
“I see airplanes!” cried a PFC manning one of the watch stations around the upper rim of the HQ. “
Lots
of airplanes! They’re our boys—attacking!”
Ballard was the first one up the ladder. He pushed his way through the hatch, out into the open air. Shell holes pocked the ground, and the high stone wall around the yard had been knocked down to half its height in a number of places. Rocks, bricks, timbers, and other debris—he stepped around a broken teapot, saw a cracked picture frame on the ground—were scattered everywhere, the litter of the long barrage.
In the sky, American fighter-bombers made a cloud as thick as the mosquitoes on a summer night, swarming down on the Soviet positions in wave after wave of devastating bombing runs. Other fighters battled through the air, dogfighting with the hundreds of Russian aircraft that were snarling into the fight. Now the sound of new explosions thundered through the air, vibrated in the ground …
But finally the explosives were falling on the other guys.
“Do you mean to tell me that it was a plane crash that caused all this?” Marshal Zhukov’s voice was low, but that only served to make the messenger—a two-star general from his communications section—more nervous.
“Yes, Comrade Marshal. An American fighter crashed, apparently as a result of a collision in the sky. It landed on our main exchange in the Potsdam area, knocking out not only our communications with the First Ukranian Front, but also our connection to the American SHAEF, in the west.”
The marshal snorted, a sound of contempt. “And then this General … ‘Benko’ … of the Second Guards Tank Army decides to commence the attack?”
“That would seem to be the case, Comrade Marshal. There was a colonel of intelligence … a Colonel Krigoff … who was in an observation post, and reported signs of an American attack. Apparently he convinced the army CO that there was immediate danger.”
“I remember this Krigoff,” said Zhukov. “He has already cost me two generals. We will come back to him, but for now, tell me: What has been the American reaction to this sudden attack?”
“They have not withdrawn, and nor have they fired back. Perhaps they do not want to risk revealing their guns—we are facing a division here on the Potsdam isthmus, and even reinforced they won’t have more than thirty or forty heavy artillery pieces. Benko opened up with something like a thousand guns, so the Americans might have realized that counterbattery fire would be futile.”
“Sometimes
everything
is futile,” breathed the great soldier under his breath.
“I beg the marshal’s pardon?”
“Nothing. But tell me about the air battle.”
“The American tactical bombers finally attacked this morning. We assume it took some time for their General Eisenhower to get authorization for the air strikes. Once they came in, they were furious—more than a thousand sorties in the first hour.”
“Surely the Red Air Force intervened?”
“Of course, Comrade Marshal. Our own fighters flew heroic resistance, and as of this afternoon the air battle was still raging. We have lost many planes, also shot down many enemy aircraft.”
“But in Potsdam, the Americans are sitting tight, eh? Then I think we should turn up the pressure a little bit. We will wait a day, perhaps, but then I shall have General Benko resume his bombardment after dark tomorrow, and move a few battalions of tanks forward by dawn. We’ll see how the Yankees like our T-34s.”
“Yes, Comrade Marshal, at once!”
“Oh, and General?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Tell this Colonel Krigoff that I would like to see him.”
Oppenheimer came into the lab, shaking his head in exasperation. The reaction was dramatic enough that many of the other men left their tables, microscopes, and Geiger counters to come over to the director.
“What is it?” asked James Conant, the young chemist who had been president of Harvard University at the start of the war.
“A call from Groves, of course. Excuse me,
General
Groves.” The peevishness was not like the director, and served to further focus his men’s attention on him.
“Well?” Conant pressed.
“They need the gadget in England, as soon as we can get it there. We aren’t going to have time to do the Trinity test—the first test will be the first time it’s used.”
“That’s ridiculous! You can’t be serious! Impossible!” The objections, not
surprisingly, came from all corners of the lab, enough of a hubbub that more people gathered in the hall outside the door.
“The shaped charges need more design, more testing!” protested Conant loudly. “We don’t even know if we can make them work.”
“They
have
to work,” Oppenheimer said coolly. “It might be impossible—there are days when it seems this whole damned project is impossible! But we all joined this operation to help our country win the war. Now, by God, it looks like we have the chance to do just that.”