Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [153]
"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