Five Past Midnight

by James Thayer

  After a moment—always just long enough to irritate him— Sergeant Fischer threw the bolts and opened the door.

  Kahr shouted above the whir of the fans, "We've got to keep company with the dry goods Orders."

  Fischer did not understand much, but he understood orders. He said sullenly, "First it's canaries, and now it's the stores."

  Kahr lowered the sack to the floor, then pushed it against the base of a generator. When he left the room to return to the pantry, Fisher locked the door behind him.

  The sergeant made five more trips to the pantry. Helena flirted with him a little each time, and the SS guard at the circular stairs tasted a sample from each bag. At the end of his labors, Kahr had moved 180 kilograms—about 330 pounds—of flour into the generator room, Sergeant Fischer's scowl deepening with the start of each of Kahr's journeys back to the pantry because he was anxious to escape the bunker.

  When Kahr finally relieved Fischer and locked himself into the generator room, he noticed that his exertions with the bags—throwing them off his shoulder onto the concrete floor—had resulted in a fine veil of flour on the generators. The sergeant pulled out a rag and began wiping down his machinery: those big Benz generators and the fan boxes and the air purifiers, and all the red and green pipes. He knew it was to be — one way or the other — the last time he would ever do so.

  17

  RSD GENERAL EUGEN EBERHARDT stepped down from the Funkwagen, the cordoning-off order in his hand. He had overseen security for all of the Führer's public appearances and at his residences and headquarters for thirteen years, and the guiding principle had always been the same: erect a wall of guards between the Führer and potential trouble. In years past, tens of thousands of Germans would flock to any wreath-laying or Knight's Cross ceremony, and SS troopers would be stationed at such small intervals that each could grip the belt locks of the men to his left and right. Three other cordons would also be established, using the SS and RSD, the BDM, and Hitler Youth, even the Female Police Auxiliary Helpers. Eberhardt understood and was comfortable with these massive shows of force. But today's cordoning-off order was new entirely. It was less an impenetrable wall than it was a knotty scheme. Eberhardt didn't like it.

  Otto Dietrich was waiting for him on the street. The detective's driver, Egon Haushofer, was leaning against his car's fenders, a dandelion cigarette in his hand, burned down almost to his knuckles.

  Eberhardt waved the four-page cordoning-off order as if he were about to throw it away. "Otto, I never thought you'd side with the Gestapo, goddamn them, anyway. Not after the knock they gave your head."

  The back of Dietrich's head hurt so much he could not wear a hat. "This plan is better, General."

  Eberhardt stared at the order another moment. Smoke drifted by in long and winding loops. A tire plant upwind was burning, and the scent was foul and inescapable.

  His voice as mournful as an undertaker's, the general said, "You know, Otto, there was a time early in my career when I thought protecting the Führer was simply an all-out, full-blown effort, and that all I had to do was to stop a bullet or defuse a bomb. But I learned quickly— and I'm reminded again today—that it involves endless negotiations, and that politics and appearances and territories must be accounted for. And now .. ," He held up the cordoning-off order. "And now this goddamn mess of an order."

  Dietrich exhaled quickly against the new and caustic scent of ammonia. So the terror bombers had found—somehow and against all odds—a working factory, this one a chemical plant—to destroy. Berlin- ers found no irony in the bombers' Germanic thoroughness.

  Dietrich said, "Preventing Jack Cray from attempting to assassinate the Führer won't be enough, because Cray will try and try again. He must be caught."

  "He must be killed." The new voice belonged to Gestapo Müller, who moved into their circle as if he'd been invited. "I agree with the inspector. If we cordon off the entire government quarter with fifty thousand men, so that the Chancellery is entirely out of sniper rifle's range—the American will simply come back another day. We must let him think today is like every other day regarding the Führer's security. Let the American have his chance with his rifle. Or, at least, let him think he is getting his chance."

  Dietrich added, "And we'll be there when he tries. We've left him five firing sites, three that look into the garden, and two that look onto the Voss Street Chancellery entrance. There is no site remaining that looks onto the Wilhelmstrasse motor gate."

  Eberhardt knew all this, of course. He and Dietrich had overseen the destruction of fifteen structures that looked upon the Chancellery. Most of the buildings had already been damaged, and Eberhardt's crews had pulled down the buildings' husks.

  Dietrich said, "Jack Cray will appear at one of those firing sites today. I am sure of it."

  "So am I," Müller said. ''Those sites will be like hornet traps. Cray will find them easy to enter, but impossible to escape. We have ten troops at each one of them. Well armed, well trained, and hidden."

  "And you are sure he is going to try for the Führer today?" Eberhardt knew Dietrich's theory, but he wanted to be convinced.

  "The old lady told us so," Müller said.

  Another Gestapo vehicle appeared out of the smoke — unmarked black vehicles with sufficient gasoline to move about were invariably the Gestapo these days — stopping across from the Funkwagen, near a burned-out delivery truck, the name of the vendor — BREMEN PRODUCE — just distinguishable under black soot covering the side panels. Rudolf Koder emerged from the car. He put his hands in his coat pockets and leaned against the front fender, eyeing Dietrich with disdain, and apparently waiting for Gestapo Müller.

  General Eberhardt said, "Your man had no call to murder that woman, that countess, Müller."

  "Would you rather have sacrificed the Führer's life? That was our choice, wasn't it? Either she talked, or the American would have been successful. Do you deny the logic of the choice?"

  "Well, that doesn't mean you should—"

  Müller cut him off. "Once again the Gestapo had to do your job for you, Eberhardt. You needed to know when Jack Cray was going to make his move, and you didn't have a clue. Now you do, thanks to Agent Koder over there."

  "We still don't know." Dietrich felt the need to defend the RSD general. "Not really." The detective made a swift noise in his throat, angry at himself, and embarrassed. He did not have the courage to argue with Gestapo Müller, to argue that the murder of the countess was an outrage, or that the ends did not justify the means.

  "Jack Cray said good-bye to the countess this morning, meaning he would not be sleeping at her apartment another night." Müller rocked on his heels. "Cray believed the countess's place to be secure. He wouldn't tell her he would not be returning if he were staying in the city any longer. Cray is going into action today."

  Dietrich wished he could fault Müller's reasoning.

  "And we think Cray's plan will begin with a bombing raid." Müller nodded along with his own words. "And the American planes always come between nine and noon. Any other time, we'd be suspicious."

  Dietrich glanced again at Rudolf Koder. Blood rose in the detective's face.

  Müller had a pavement voice. "General Eberhardt and Inspector Dietrich, your conclusion is a house of cards: Cray using a bombing run to try to chase the Führer from the bunker. But this speculation on your part is the best we have, as you say yourself."

  Somewhere in the distance the wail of an air-raid siren began, a wavering tinny trill. Then another, and another, until the sound had rushed to every corner of the ruined city.

  "Here come the Americans, then," Heinrich Müller announced needlessly. He started toward Koder's car without saying anything more.

  "We'd better get belowground, Otto." Eberhardt walked toward the underground station, "If our theory is correct, these bombs are going to fall on the government quarter, all around us."

  Dietrich followed at Eberhardt's elbow. His anger bubbled up. "I'm going to kill
that son of a bitch Rudolf Koder when I get the chance." He was instantly abashed.

  Eberhardt turned to grip the detective's arm and gave him a corrosive look. "The Russians will be here any day, and they'll surely do that work for you." After a few more steps he added, "Koder and his boss Müller are too dangerous for us to fool with. So don't do anything to get yourself hung, Otto."

  18

  "WILL I BE SEEING you again?" Cray looked up from the blanket he was about to roll. In the center of the blanket were the clothes the countess had made for him. Near the blanket was the burlap bag containing the antitank mines and the stick grenades. "After I leave here in a few minutes . . ." His voice trailed away.

  "I can't go with you." She wrapped her arms around herself. "I've already told you so."

  Cray threw onto the blanket a roll of cheese, a loaf of bread, a canteen, and a gas-mask container. The masks were issued to Berliners early in the war. This one had belonged to the countess, and she had never taken it out of the box. Cray gathered up the blanket's corners to form a bundle. He was wearing refugee clothing, two pistols in his belt under his coat, and the knife tucked into a sleeve. Once again the left side of his face was covered with a smudged bandage, and his hair and eyebrows were dark. On his head was a filthy workman's cap that covered the bandaged gash on his forehead. He would be indistinguishable from thousands upon thousands of other refugees fleeing west through Berlin's tortured streets, everything they owned on their backs.

  "Where's the rifle you went to so much trouble to get?" she asked. "It's already where it should be." He was always vague. An air-raid siren down the street began a shrill piping, joined after a few seconds by another.

  Cray brought up his wristwatch. "Right on time." She shivered. "Do you know the one thing I'm going to miss about you?"

  "My looks?"

  She didn't even smile. In the smoke-filtered morning light, her face was as pale as candle wax. "The sense of invulnerability you give me When you first showed up, I was frightened beyond my wits. I knew I was in immense danger every second I was with you. But your brainless bravura is infectious. You've convinced me you will live forever, and are no more vulnerable to the German war machine than those American bombers on their way here now. I've come to feel safe around you. As safe as I've felt since my husband died and I started working for the Hand. I'm going to miss that."

  "Not my looks? You sure?"

  "Can you be serious one second?"

  He looked away a moment, out the window. They were in the second floor of a burned-out clothing store. Most of the roof had been ripped off by an HE blast, and the fire that followed had charred everything else. Rolled in blankets, they had slept that night in the one corner of the room that still had a roof. Puddles of rainwater filled sagging points in the floor. Scavengers had stripped the store of everything but coat hangers, and they lay about the floor and stairs where Cray had placed them to prevent anyone stealing up on them as they slept. They were on Kellner Street, nine blocks from the Reich Chancellery.

  He said quietly, "I tried to be serious with you. It didn't work."

  "You were serious? About what?"

  "About what is going to happen to Berlin in a few days, a week. What might happen to you if you stay here. You didn't give me any reason to hope I could change your mind. So now I'm back to my good- natured self."

  She stared at him, her expression softening Suddenly. She laughed. "Can I predict your future?"

  "Sure."

  She looked through a gap in the ceiling. The sun was pale, silver instead of gold. Her eyes found him again. "Someday back in the United States you'll trick some woman into marrying you, Jack. Some young lady who'll have no more idea who you really are than you do."

  He smiled, then rose to his feet, lifting the blanket pack and the burlap bag to his back.

  "What a terrible trick you'll be pulling on her," Katrin said, trying to smile. "I don't know whether I should be sorry for her or envious."

  "Do one more thing for me?" Cray asked. "Meet me at the Tier- garten airstrip, near the East-West Axis."

  "I can say good-bye here as well as there."

  "It'll give me one more chance to convince you. Maybe you'll change your mind between now and then, and leave Berlin with me."

  "I won't. I belong here."

  "Seeing me board that plane might change your mind." He grinned. "Might break your heart and change your mind."

  She could not help but smile with him. "I'll be at the park, if you'd like. But I won't go with you, Jack."

  The bundle and bag over his shoulder, stepping across coat hangers and around an overturned desk, Cray said, maybe to her, maybe to himself, "I can be pretty convincing."

  He descended the stairs, made his way around debris on the first floor, walked outside into the watery sunlight, and started in the direction of the Reich Chancellery.

  19

  ULRICH KAHR knew the air raid had begun when his desk started to shiver. Only a little at first, then the old Wehrmacht-surplus oak desk began to dance toward the generators, and the sergeant had to grab it and drag it back. His chair shifted under him, wanting to scoot toward the door, sliding as if it were on ice. His pencil box vibrated and moved to the edge of the desk, then fell to the floor. The control panel, with its luminous dials and toggle switches shifted in front of Kahr's eyes like a kaleidoscope. When he rose from his chair, the floor shifted under his feet like beach sand pulled by waves.

  The room went black, a disorienting, impenetrable black. Kahr moved unsteadily toward the door, to the flashlight that hung on the wall near the door frame. The room quieted as the fans wound down. He moved the beam of light to the fan box. He tripped the fan switches so that when the bunker again had electric power the fans would remain still.

  Then the light beam found the starter engine. He knew the routine well enough, but never had the room trembled so violently, and when he reached for the starter engine's cord, it shimmered in front of his hand and he had to stab at it several times before he could close his hand around it. He planted his feet squarely — the floor vibrating under him — and yanked the cord. The little engine popped several times, then blared like a trumpet.

  The sergeant let it warm up for the prescribed sixty seconds before pulling the clutch lever that engaged the belt to the first diesel engine, which began a low grinding. In a moment the diesel would be warm enough to run without the aid of the starter engine.

  Kahr withdrew a service knife from the desk drawer, then pulled the mattress from its cot onto the floor. He stabbed into the mattress and raked the ticking with the blade, then again and again, shredding it, his arms throwing outsized shadows on the pool of light from the flashlight. He lay the knife aside to tug out the stuffing, all of it, until the mattress cover was limp.

  He interrupted himself to disengage the starter motor. The diesel hummed satisfactorily. He pressed the kill button on the starter engine and threw the main switch. The overhead bulta flickered on in the room, and throughout the bunker, not as brightly as with outside power, but adequately.

  The sergeant carried the mattress wadding the few steps to the second generator, this one not running. He put most of the wadding to one side, but retained a handful. He lifted his helmet from the desk. The fuel line was interrupted by a drain valve near the filter. He held the upside-down helmet under the valve, then opened the line. A thin stream of diesel oil fell into the helmet. Kahr dropped the stuffing into the helmet, and let the fuel soak the fabric. When it was saturated, he put it aside on the floor and dipped another tuft of wadding into the diesel. After a few moments he had soaked all of the fabric, and it lay on the floor, oozing fuel.

  The lightbulbs abruptly regained their full brightness, and then a buzzer at the control panel indicated power had been restored to the bunker. Normally, Sergeant Kahr would now shut down the diesel generator. This time he left the big machine — all green and brass and glorious — droning along.

  He looked at his watch.
The room continued to twitch and ripple as the earth carried bomb shock waves to the bunker. He was to wait five minutes from the first blasts. A few more seconds. The entry buzzer sounded with the correct sequence. Two, one, one. Kahr ignored it. The canaries sang unknowingly.

  Another glance at his watch. At the control panel he threw five switches, each engaging an electric motor that closed a gate in the ventilation system. After a few seconds signal lights on the panel indicated all five gates had worked. Instead of bringing in fresh air, his system was now recycling old air, taking it out of the bunker, circulating it through his pipes, and returning it again to the bunker. If Kahr were to do no more, and if the air purification system remained off, it would be several moments before occupants of the bunker noticed that their air was becoming warm and foul.

  But he had more to do. He opened a service gate on one of the green pipes, then pushed wads of the damp and reeking mattress stuffing into the pipe. He compressed them a bit, making sure the wet wads were not entirely blocking the pipe. Then he opened another green gate, and stuffed another wad of diesel-impregnated fabric into it. He repeated the procedure nine more times, until each green pipe contained his preparations.

  He unbuttoned his pants and yanked on the matchbox. He grimaced as hairs came away with the tape. He opened the box to fish out a match. Again he checked his wristwatch. The time had come. He struck the match against the box, and it flared to life. He pushed the small flame into the opening of a green pipe until it was against the fuel-soaked wad. The material caught fire. He quickly closed the gate, trapping the fire inside the pipe. It would burn slowly until it had new air.