Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [48]
The last of the tracers sped away across the sky, then blinked out in the distance, their own small admission of their folly Wisps of smoke rose from the Chancellery's roof, from the AA barrels Kahr heard the battery officer on the roof berate his men for slowness and poor aim. An SS guard was in a concrete tower to Kahr's right. The young guard looked unperturbed by the American flyover, and was examining with minute care a brown glove he held in his hand, and smiling.
Kahr's right boot had a hole in the sole, and dampness had worked its way to his sock. He knew his foot wouldn't dry all day, and he didn't dare remove his boot to air out the sock because the last time he did so no less a personage than Dr. Goebbels upbraided him for being out of uniform. Kahr had wondered later how the minister of propaganda had time to be concerned about a sergeant's bootless foot.
At the blockhouse door Kahr lifted his stiff gray linen identification card from a pocket. On the card was Kahr's photograph, a gold seal, a yellow diagonal bar, and the signature of the Führer's chief adjutant. Kahr had lost such a card three months ago, and had reported the loss immediately, and all Reich Security Service offices, the Wehrmacht Berlin regiment, the Gestapo, the Berlin police, and the Liebstandarte- SS Adolf Hitler were notified of the loss. But Kahr was not reprimanded because the authorities did not want to deter reports of lost passes. His lieutenant had ordered him to be more careful.
The sergeant had no idea how he had lost his pass. He didn't care about it anymore, anyway. Much had happened to Kahr since then, none of it good. He did not have the energy to care about such things as a piece of stiff linen, or these rude guards, or the destroyed garden behind him, none of it. The war's toll on Kahr had been so great that he could not find refuge even in bitterness. Ulrich Kahr was spent. Little was left of him.
The SS guard studied Kahr's face, comparing it with the photograph on the pass. Sergeant Kahr's mouth was crooked, lower on one side, giving him a carping look, even though he seldom carped. His eyes were dark and faded, with only a suggestion of life left in them.
The two guards were all polish and creases, brittle in their importance, guarding this hole in the ground. Every day this same guard glared at the ID photograph and then Kahr with renewed suspicion, and each time the guard handed back the pass slowly, as if he might change his mind at any moment. Finally the guard nodded, a grudging, almost imperceptible movement. When the other guard opened the heavy steel door, Sergeant Kahr entered the blockhouse. The door clanked shut behind him with the deep finality of the last sound on earth.
Kahr descended the stairs to one landing, then another, circling counterclockwise. The fetid smell reached for him, dank and sour. The bunker was surrounded by groundwater, and with every heavy rain the sewers backed up, filling the toilets with waste that would spill out into the halls. Added to the sewage smell were the odors of coal-tar disinfectant and damp wool uniforms. Kahr was sure these foul aromas chased away the good air, depriving his brain of oxygen, and so every shift he became dumber and dumber.
Then he heard the whine, his whine. Sergeant Kahr may have been the only person assigned to the bunker whom the ventilator system's incessant drone did not bother. Most compared the sound to a dentist's drill. Constant, always on, reaching every room in the bunker, inescapable. But Sergeant Kahr was one of the bunker's ventilation technicians. His duty was to maintain the equipment that sucked in new air and blew out old air. He took pride in his task and appreciated the whine because it constantly reminded bunker denizens of his importance. Kahr might be the lowest-ranking person in the entire complex, but the whine was suffered by