Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [52]
The ventilator whine was loudest in this room. Kahr asked the Wehrmacht sergeant who had admitted him, and who was now standing in front of the control panel making the final entries of his shift into the log, "Anything new?"
Sergeant Hans Fischer lowered the notebook. "Power was out four times for a total of ninety-three minutes. The generators were up and running within two minutes each time."
It was a boast. The diesel generators were complicated to start, and it was a nervous business because the most important people in the Reich were a few feet away in thick blackness waiting for the return of light.
"There is still a small oil leak at the base of starter one. No better, no worse. I telephoned Erwin and he said he was on his way, but he must have been detained."
Erwin Gockel was a Wehrmacht mechanic, and he was scheduled to look for the reason for the oil leak. In any event, the room had a second starter engine, the spare. The room also contained yellow canaries in a wicker birdcage.
Fischer signed out on the roster, nodded good-bye to the canaries, and left the room, still stretching the aches out of his limbs. The job involved mostly sitting on a hard chair staring at dials.
The generators and starter engines and the fan boxes occupied much of the room, and an instrument panel took up much of the remainder. The panel — gauges and toggles and warning lights — monitored the generators and the ventilating system, some of which Kahr had designed. He had caught the Führer's attention once, when Kahr had insisted to his captain that an air-intake grate behind a jumper bush in the Chancellery garden should be raised as protection against an attack with heavier-than-air gas. Due to his experience in the Great War, Hitler feared gas. The gracious captain had mentioned Kahr in the report that had resulted in the grate being raised. Later a note of appreciation from Hitler himself had been taped to the ventilator control panel. On stationery decorated with the national eagle and a swastika, the note had read, "Sgt Kahr I appreciate your work with the grate Hitler". Kahr had often wondered if the Führer had taped it to the panel himself, perhaps having had to first search for pen and paper, then the tape, finally entering the generator room to put up the note, wondering where just the right place was so Sergeant Kahr would be sure to see it. This little scene pleased Kahr greatly, and he had replayed it endlessly in his mind.
Kahr looked at the oil- and water-pressure gauges, making notes in the machinery logbooks attached to the panel by cords. He lifted a rag from the wall hook behind his chair and checked six dipsticks, two for each of the diesel engines and one each for the starter motors. The room was dimly lit by a single overhead bulb, and Kahr had to bend close to his work, making sure the lines of oil were up to the marks on the sticks. Then he wiped away the few drops of oil that had leaked from the starter motor. Two jerry cans of gasoline were next to a box of gas masks. A diesel fuel tank was also squeezed into the room, and Kahr twisted off its cap and checked its level with a dipstick. The tank contained only two hundred liters of diesel, a small amount due to the possibility of fire. The two or three liters that were consumed by the engines each day during the blackouts were replaced daily, through a fuel pipe with its outlet in the garden above.
Also squeezed into the room were two metal cots with mattresses. When more than one mechanic was on duty, there was no rule against one taking a nap. And in an emergency, the generator-ventilator mechanics would quarter in this room.
Sergeant Kahr returned the rag to the hook, then lifted a pinch of birdseed