Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [50]
Just then General Keitel emerged from the second door, from the conference room. In those two paces into the hall Keitel transformed his face. In the conference room he had been a worried supplicant, earnest but unassuming, offering nothing to offend. But as he stepped into the hall, Keitel's chin firmed, his head lifted haughtily, and his gaze became imperious. Even his dueling scar remolded itself, from an insignificant welt to a magnificent testament to Prussian honor. He must have been meeting with the Führer, the only person on earth who could drain the Wehrmacht chief of staff s face of its arrogance.
Then Kahr heard the golden voice, the remarkable tones that had once lifted Germany. "And, Keitel, you tell him it must be done. He must wheel around. There can be no other course of action."
The general half-turned, and answered, "Of course, my Führer."
Kahr gave the conference room the swiftest of glances. The leader was bent over a map table. He was wearing the pearl-gray tunic with the olive shirt and black trousers that he always wore in the bunker. On his left breast were his golden Party badge and the Iron Cross won in the Great War. Then General Jodl stepped around the table, and Sergeant Kahr's view of the leader was blocked, and Kahr knew it best to quickly move on anyway.
He walked straight ahead. Lockers were to one side, where Foreign Minister Ribbentrop was conferring with an SS general Kahr did not recognize, Ribbentrop fidgeted with a tunic pocket that contained a package of cigarettes, and he politely herded the general toward the door, apparently anxious to get outside for a cigarette. Smoking was forbidden in the bunker. Even matches were prohibited, some said for security purposes but most believed their banning was an extension of the Führer's loathing of cigarette smoke. Huddling at the rear of the corridor were the Luftwaffe's Chief of Staff General Koller, Major General Walter Buhle, and Hitler's adjutant, General Burgdorf. Aides to these officers— young men, eager and efficient, fairly panting—lined the wall opposite the lockers, waiting. The corridor was crowded.
Kahr glanced at his watch, wondering if he had time to visit the galley, which was through the door at the far end of the hall, then up the stairs to a second group of rooms, which included the servants' rooms, the communal mess, the pantry and galley. One of the cooks was sweet on Kahr, and would slip him pastry or a plate of veal. She liked to pretend the extra rations were her surreptitious gift to Sergeant Kahr, and she would make a production of looking over her shoulders to insure no one was looking as she passed the food to him, but in truth no one be- lowground cared that Kahr often carried extra food from the kitchen to his post in the ventilation room. The SS guard at the door to the stairway would glance at the food and say nothing. Kahr's wristwatch indicated he had better forgo visiting the cook this day.
The sergeant had noticed a stratification in the bunker's society. Those who spent most of their time belowground—the Führer's cooks and secretaries and waiter, his personal aide and bodyguard SS-Colonel Günsche, his valet Heinz Linge, Martin Bormann, the blond woman with the chirpy Bavarian accent Kahr had heard called Eva, the SS guards at the bunker's entrances, and a few others, including Kahr and the other technicians who ran the ventilation system and generators and telephone banks—were treated as family by the Führer. He listened to their problems and gave them advice, sometimes scolding, often encouraging. When one of his secretaries, Trudi Reymann, weepingly reported that her fiance hadjilted her, Hitler sat beside her for half an hour, patting her hand and cooing softly. When his waiter, Walter Gademann, broke his wrist in a fall, Hitler stood by the operating table in the bunker's surgery, chatting to Gademann to distract him from the pain as Dr. Morrel