Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [160]
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.
The telephone sounded. An SS lieutenant lifted the handset, said, "Yes, sir," and replaced it on the cradle. He told Dietrich, "The Rescue Squad has been summoned."
"Has an evacuation been ordered?"
"Not yet. They can hold out a while longer, General Eberhardt thinks."
Dietrich nodded. He suspected Eberhardt would rather allow everyone to be parboiled than expose the Führer to Jack Cray out in the open.
And Jack Cray was out in the open. Cray was within one hundred meters of him, Dietrich was certain. Somewhere in the Reich Chancellery, in the ruined wing, maybe even in the garden, hidden somewhere, waiting for Hitler to emerge. Cray's sniper rifle had been found, along with the note, and so Dietrich's deductions regarding Cray's plans had been entirely wrong. Now Dietrich simply had no notion how and where Cray would strike. Dietrich had failed.
Guards at the motor entrance pulled open the iron gates. The guards were made spectral by layers of smoke that dipped from the sky, hiding their heads and shoulders, then lifting to reveal them again. TeNo men ran through the gate, followed by a TeNo pumper truck with yellow flashing lights on top of the cab. A generator truck followed. The TeNo uniforms were the precise color of the smoke. Some of the Rescue Squad carried axes and pry bars. Many wore gas masks, and others were just now putting them on.
When the first truck arrived at the blockhouse, a TeNo officer jumped from the running board and held his identification card up to the guard at the door and said, "Captain Dreesen."
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