In the end, the Hazeltines approve of their new son-in-law, upon which Mac learns from Hazeltine that Otto will be named the new head of Western European Operations, with Mac getting a promotion to VP of Procurement back in Atlanta.
Meanwhile Scarlett and Mac coach Otto on how to speak to her conservative Southern father ("The Civil War was a draw."). In a frenetic race against time and the arrival of the Hazeltines' plane, Mac outfits Otto in complete paraphernalia befitting his new aristocratic status, while Otto rails against being forced to join the detested bourgeoisie (his Communist Party membership is paid up through the year). Scarlett is dubious that her father will be fooled by the ruse, but is reassured that her baby will now be part of a long line of bleeders, which will please her snobbish mother. Mac arranges to have Otto adopted by an impoverished count, who now works as a washroom attendant and includes a photo of the family castle with the price of adoption (destroyed in the 17th Century by the Ottoman Turks). With the boss on the way, he finds that his only chance is to turn Otto into a son-in-law in good standing - which means, among other things, making him a capitalist with an aristocratic pedigree (albeit contrived by adoption). Under pressure from his stern and disapproving wife Phyllis (who wants to take her family back to live in the US), and with the revelation that Scarlett is pregnant, Mac sets out to bring Otto back with the help of his new Soviet business associates. After Otto is forced to listen endlessly to a cover of the song " Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" during interrogation, which was intentionally badly distorted during playback, he cracks and signs a confession that he is an American spy. Since Hazeltine and his wife are coming to Berlin to collect their daughter the very next day, this is obviously a disaster of monumental proportions, and Mac deals with it as any good capitalist would - by framing the young Communist firebrand and having him picked up by the East German police, using all his wiles, as well as his sexy secretary Fräulein Ingeborg, to get his way. Mac tries to come to terms with the fact that he let his boss's daughter marry a Communist and learns the horrible truth: the couple are bound for Moscow to make a new life for themselves ("They've assigned us a magnificent apartment, just a short walk from the bathroom!"). And where I come from, everybody's against the Yankees.
When the Southern belle is confronted about her foolishness in the matter of helping him blow up anti-American "Yankee Go Home" balloons (how the couple met) she simply replies with, "Why, that ain't anti-American, it's anti-Yankee. Mac is assigned the unenviable task of taking care of this young whirlwind.Īn expected two-week stay develops into two months, and Mac discovers just why Scarlett is so enamored of West Berlin: she surprises him by announcing that she's married to Otto Piffl, a young East German Communist with ardent anti-capitalistic views. Scarlett Hazeltine, the boss's hot-blooded but slightly dim 17-year-old socialite daughter, is coming to West Berlin. Hazeltine, at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta.
After working on an arrangement to introduce Coke into the Soviet Union, Mac receives a call from his boss, W.P. While based in West Germany for now, Mac is angling to become head of Western European Coca-Cola Operations, based in London. "Mac" MacNamara is a high-ranking executive in the Coca-Cola Company, assigned to West Berlin after a business fiasco a few years earlier in the Middle East (about which he is still bitter).