Five Past Midnight (46 page)

Kahr brought out his box of matches and scratched a match against the score.

23

FOREIGN MINISTER RIBBENTROP struggled with his gas mask. A strap was caught on his ear. He wrestled with it, swearing and coughing. Finally the goggles were squarely over his eyes. He lit a cigarette, perhaps figuring no one would notice, and he lifted his mask momentarily to draw on it.

Keitel had found the captain of the guard, an
SS-Hauptsturm-
führer
who was overseeing three men working a pry bar at the generator-ventilator room door. Keitel yelled at them to hurry, then tugged at his high collar and gulped the blackened air. He jammed his thumb against the door buzzer again and again.

The bombing raid had just ended, and the bunker had stopped its trembling. But it was filling with acrid black smoke that obscured the walls and ceiling. Fumes gushed from the grates along the hallway.

"Keep at that door." The guard captain began walking the hallway, demanding at each door, his voice muffled by a gas mask, "Report any fire."

Martin Bormann emerged from the conference room and held a handkerchief to his mouth. Bormann was called the Brown Eminence because of his cunning and his brown uniform, one of the last of the Old Fighters to wear brown. An SS orderly rushed up to Bormann to give him a mask. Bormann pulled it over his face.

On the guard captain's orders, guards had assumed their emergency stations. At each end of the center hallway an SS guard wearing a gas mask stood near the door, a submachine gun in his hands. Another guard stood precisely in the middle of the hallway holding a pistol, and yet another posted himself outside the door that entered Hitler's conference room and bedroom, the guard's Walther ready and his head— hidden under a gas mask—moving left and right like a metronome.

Smoke was thickest near the ceiling, and the throng appeared headless to Minister Goebbels, who was shorter than everyone else in the hallway. General Speidel helped one of the Führer's secretaries into a mask, then gestured that she should kneel to get below the densest smoke. Gasping, another secretary stumbled into a folding table, spilling three bottles and a deck of cards onto the concrete floor. One bottle shattered, and wine sped along the floor. The pilot, Baur, lifted his mask to wipe his eyes with his fingers.

Noise in the bunker was ear-rending. The ventilators had again started their dentist-drill whine, pushing smoke into the area. The Führer's dog, Blondi, howled and barked at the smoke as it paced in front of the conference room door. The SS crew frantically worked on the ventilator room door — metal on metal — and the door squealed in protest. Goebbels had found someone to yell at — a hapless Propaganda Ministry aide — whom Goebbels, it was suspected, employed for that very purpose because he had no luck shouting at his wife. The gramophone played a piano solo, one of the Führer's favorites, Schumann's
Kindenzenen,
too loudly. And all the coughing and swearing and arguing — all of it echoing in the long concrete tunnel.

Alfred Jodl stepped into the hallway, breathing stertorously, tears running down his rounded cheeks. He called, "We must evacuate. Give the order."

"No, sir," replied the guard captain. "Our orders are to remain belowground if at all possible, and it is still possible."

Jodl was six ranks above the captain, but the captain was in charge of bunker security. Jodl abruptly turned away, bumping into Minister Speer, who was standing in the middle of the hallway staring through his mask goggles at a ventilator grate with evident detachment, his hands clenched behind his back, the smoke still flowing from the grate. He knew of the backup system because he had helped design it. Black smoke was rushing from half the grates. The other half was not in operation, not moving smoke or fresh air.

The crew at the ventilator room door jammed the pry bar's blade into the space between the steel door and the steel frame, but it was a question as to whether the door or the pry bar would give first. Two guards yanked on the bar, but it lost its purchase, and the guards had to catch themselves to prevent spilling backward. The captain plunged the bar again into the crack.

Smoke flowed from half the grates, now darker and more dense. It hid the ceiling, and more of the acrid haze was sinking toward the floor. Keitel could not restrain himself. He marched over to the guard captain. "I order you to evacuate the Führerbunker, Captain."

He let up on the pry bar. "Sir, there is no fire belowground."

Keitel's chin went up. The dueling scar on his cheek was magnificent, even in the smoke. "I will not stand for impudence from a…"

"If there's no fire, we stay here." A new voice.

The captain was relieved to see RSD General Eberhardt, who had just entered the bunker. Eberhardt's countenance was grim. He slipped the straps of a gas mask over his head.

"Eberhardt, we cannot breathe this air," Keitel said. "It is time to leave the bunker."

Not wanting a trace of self-pity to color his words, Eberhardt spoke carefully and firmly. "I have failed to stop the American commando. He is still out there, and I have no doubt he is nearby."

Keitel's black scowl dissolved as he coughed, a rattling hack that bent him over so that his medals hung away from his coat, and that ended in a whistling wheeze. He managed, "Look around, for God's sake, Eberhardt. We can't stay down here. We'll suffocate."

General Eberhardt's voice was weary. "Your mask is secure against the smoke, sir."

Still staring at the ventilation grates, Albert Speer said, rather idly, his words lost in the tumult, "What's that new material? Chalk dust? Coming from the second set of vents."

Speer did not have long to wonder, and perhaps no one else belowground noticed the white powder.

At that instant, in the locked ventilator room, Sergeant Kahr dropped the match into the green pipe and slammed shut the cover.

The flour-air mixture in the pipes ignited. Fire roared through the system.

The guard captain heard the muffled explosion, and turned from the ventilator room door to see fire pour out grates that lined both long walls of the bunker hallway, flame rushing into the hallway from six grates and spilling to the floor.

He opened the sprinkler valves at his station in the corridor, twisted both valves to their fully open position. A few drops of water came from overhead sprinklers, but nothing more.

"Extinguishers," yelled the guard captain. He pushed the nearest SS guard's shoulders and pointed at the door to the kitchen wing. The guard hurried through the door for them.

Fire pooled in the hallway beneath the grates, then spread across the floor like rushing water. A secretary screamed. Speer removed his jacket to try to douse one of the lakes of flame. A patch of rug caught fire. An orderly turned to run but knocked the gramophone off the table, and it shattered on the floor. The dog fled. Smoke was thick and choking. Fire crawled up the cement walls, blackening them. Flames leaped about, as if searching for combustibles. A gilded chair that had been under a grate was a ball of flame. The air temperature in the bunker rose quickly. More screams and confused shouts.

The guard captain punched the TeNo button on a wall box, then, not satisfied, lifted a telephone handset from the wall. He yelled into it, "We need fire and TeNo crews in the Führerbunker immediately." He listened a moment, then added, "I don't give a goddamn if your entire building just blew apart. I mean right now. This is no drill."

Eberhardt caught the guard captain's eye. Patches of fire were along the hallway and in many of the rooms. More fire coming from the grates. But perhaps this was the worst of it. The smoke was dense, but everyone had gas masks. With jack Cray outside, Eberhardt was still reluctant to order the bunker evacuated, despite the heat and smoke and turmoil. The guard captain understood, and nodded his agreement.

General Eberhardt brought up his wristwatch, close to his mask's eyepieces. The fires were spreading. Two sofas were burning, and more of the rug. Eberhardt had no idea whether the bombing run had caused the smoke and fires, or whether someone in the generator-ventilator room had done some mischief. He and the guard captain could wait another two or three minutes before deciding whether to evacuate the bunker.

And hope soared within the general. Perhaps the American had failed. Perhaps this was Jack Cray's attempt to flush the Führer from the bunker, and this fire and smoke were the worst Jack Cray could do. Fire was spreading, but it might be contained. The American hadn't chased the Führer to the surface yet. Not yet.

24

BLOOD CAME AWAY with the receiver when TeNo Captain Klaus Dreesen lowered the telephone. A gash along his temple was spilling blood. A splinter from the wall, he guessed hazily. Dreesen heard shouts from his squad members, then a muffled scream from one of them trapped in back of the building. He pressed his temple below the wound, trying to bring his thoughts together. Blood dribbled onto his fingers.

The captain's Mauerstrasse building was the headquarters of the Technical Emergency Corps unit that was to respond to an emergency in the Führerbunker. His unit was held in reserve for just such a summons.

Twelve months of training for this moment, for a real emergency in the bunker, and all Dreesen could think of was how much his goddamn head hurt. And then, after the alarm had sounded, the Führerbunker guard captain had telephoned to yell at him, as if Dreesen needed to be told his job. Dizzy and staggering, he turned toward the ruin.

He and his men were already in uniform, as they were during each air raid. The bombs had sounded like they were landing blocks away, but one must have dropped late from a bomb bay, and hit the building next door to the north with a force that blew in the squadron's headquarters wall and dropped much of the second floor onto the ground floor. Half the building was in ruin, with dust and smoke still billowing and limbers still swinging. A pipe had broken, and water rushed across the concrete floor. Fire was working on a pile of wood fragments that had a moment before been lockers, and two of Dreesen's men were putting it out with pump extinguishers. A wall clock was in pieces on the floor, the face lying on its scrambled springs. The bomb had shredded several TeNo uniforms that had been hanging near the lockers, and mangled strips of white herringbone fabric were sprinkled across the room.

One of Dreesen's men sat on the hoses, his mouth open, blood flowing from an ear. Another TeNo member searched for his spectacles in a pile of boots, groaning softly, one arm hanging limp and useless. Beams hung through the ceiling, and several were hanging down almost as far as the trucks. A stack of portable street barricades had been tossed together with half a dozen pole stretchers. Chunks of the ceiling were still falling.

Even so, even in the ruin, the months of drills began to pay off. His crew was responding to the bells, was emerging from the smoke and rubble, some donning their masks, others putting on tool belts, some carrying pry bars and axes, some limping, others grimacing against injuries. A squad member pulled on the chain to raise the door. Because of the bombing run, it was as smoky outside as in. Another crewman pushed rubble from the top of the pumper, then climbed in and started the engine. A second vehicle—the generator truck—cranked into life. Two TeNo men were already in the cab. Captain Dreesen climbed onto the running board.

The trucks pulled onto Mauerstrasse. Curtains of smoke rose and fell. Debris was scattered across Kaiserhof platz, the plaza that separated TeNo headquarters from the Reich Chancellery. Buildings in various states of ruin—the Propaganda Ministry, the Chamber of Culture, the Hotel Kaiserhof, the Transportation Ministry—drifted in and out of Dreesen's view. Two blocks east, fires consumed a row of buildings, but Dreesen could see only an orange haze through the smoke, seemingly suspended in the air at the rooflines. Sirens wailed from every direction.

A dozen more of Dreesen's men hurried out of the building, some in masks, others holding cloth to their faces against the smoke, forming out of the haze from a neighboring flat that was used as a barracks.

Dreesen barked an order, unnecessarily. His men knew the procedure. Debris was scattered across the plaza. A few TeNo men hopped aboard the trucks, but most began running toward the Reich Chancellery, knowing they would make better time than the vehicles.

Captain Dreesen glanced at his watch. He smiled with cold pleasure. Three minutes since the alarm, and they were underway. Despite the bomb blast that had gutted his headquarters and had injured some of his men, his TeNo squad was rolling in three minutes.

The countless drills had just paid off. The trucks lurched around a fallen masonry arch. The smoke shifted, and the Chancellery was suddenly visible. Dreesen grinned again.

25

OTTO DIETRICH picked up the telephone, rubbed the handset nervously a moment, then without using it returned it to the cradle behind the SS guard's booth. The detective had heard a muffled explosion, the sound made hollow and metallic by its route up the stairwell, followed by thicker smoke pouring from the door. General Eberhardt— sixty feet under Dietrich's feet in the bunker—would call if there was anything Dietrich needed to know.

The massive blockhouse was in front of Dietrich, with its steel door open. Smoke continued to drift up the stairs and out through the door, joining the haze that filled the garden from the bombing run, obscuring the walls of the Chancellery. Six SS guards stood near the door, and two more by the booth. The guards knew of Dietrich's authority, knew of Himmler's letter in his pocket, and knew he had the Führer's ear. Still, they looked at the plainclothesman with suspicion. Dietrich paced, ignoring the guards. A young guard watched from a tower, appearing and disappearing in the dense smoke. Rudolf Koder no longer bothered to hide that he was trailing Dietrich. He waited near the blockhouse, watching the detective.