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.