October had arrived, with colorful leaves falling from the few trees that had survived the war. The beautiful yellow, orange and red hues were a welcome embellishment of the otherwise gray and drab city.
But autumn had brought other, less welcome guests: low temperatures, harsh Easterly gusts, long hours of darkness, and fog. Frost covered the weeds and grass growing atop the rubble heaps, and would only melt away around noon.
Low visibility was the worst enemy of the pilots. Everyone in Berlin, Bruni included, became tense and bad-tempered when the constant engine droning stopped. And these days it stopped often, sometimes for twenty-four hours on end.
Victor had explained to her how ground controlled approach with radar talked the pilots down even during bad weather periods, but when
