The Reichssicherheitsdienst; the Fuhrer’s personal bodyguard. After a lightheaded moment of reflection, Kurt’s curiosity got the better of his fear. “What do you want of me?”
“Gotthard Hentschel, Herr Wolff. Do you know him?”
“The engineer at the Chancellery,” answered Kurt. “He has had me find parts for him.”
“He needs you, Herr Wolff. He has a generator with whooping cough, a ventilation system that doesn’t believe in air, and he desperately needs some assistance. There’s a party going on and the smell is spoiling it.”
“Party?” Kurt repeated.
“What?” Balter said, a comic tone in his voice, “You haven’t gotten your invitation? Never mind. Mine was misplaced, as well. The Fuhrer has just gotten married, you see. Champagne and chocolate cake for everyone.”
“Married.”
“To the lovely Miss Eva Braun. She replaces the Fuhrer’s dog Blondi he had poisoned yesterday. She’s much prettier than Blondi, but she can’t fetch worth a damn—” Another airburst illuminated the cellar as a blanket of artillery shells landed north toward Behrenstrasse, shaking dust from the beams and planks above. The sergeant instinctively dropped into a squat and hunched his shoulders. Once the pieces of the city settled, he glanced up. “Come,” said Balter. “Between loads. We must hurry, unless you prefer borscht to wiener schnitzel. The Russian lines are just a few hundred meters from here.”
“How can you tell?”
“The telephone operators in the bunker have been calling numbers street by street. Every so often someone answers “Da?”
“Where are you taking me, sergeant?”
“Hentschel maintains the lights, water, and air for the Fuhrer’s headquarters in the bunkers beneath the old Chancellery.” His head cocked to one side. “Hentschel told me you were in the 16th Bavarian Reserve in the first war,” the sergeant said.
“I was.”
“Astonishing. You know, that’s the Fuhrer’s old regiment.”
“Yes. I knew him then.”
“Then it will be like old times for you. Old comrades swapping stories in the trenches over a tin of mystery meat.” He held out a hand.
“Old comrades,” Kurt repeated to himself. He placed the trench knife in his bag and took the sergeant’s hand. Balter pulled him to his feet. The man was built like a tank. Kurt held his bag in his left hand and followed the sergeant toward the stairs. “So, how is my old comrade doing?” he asked the sergeant.
“You mean Adolph Hitler?”
“Yes. I hear since I knew him he’s been promoted,” Kurt said, his comment swallowed by another explosion. Just as well, thought Kurt. People react badly to humor nowadays. Some jokes are even terminal—especially ones about Hitler. Still, when Kurt caught a glimpse of Sergeant Balter’s face, he was chuckling.
The air on the street was thick with brick dust and that singular reek of a shelled city composed of a mix of fuels: petroleum, rubber, wood, explosives, and human bodies. The day before there had been a body hanging from the lamppost on the corner of Jaegerstrasse and Mauer: a white-haired old woman in a dowdy blue dress. Kurt hadn’t known her. She was just one of the countless dead in Berlin. As Kurt followed Balter through the rubble, he could make out in the light of the false dawn that both the old woman and the lamppost from which she had been hanging were gone. In their place was a crater still smoking from the shell that dug it.
The young man hanging from the watchmaker’s sign on Mauer was still there, however, his left shoe mysteriously missing. The cardboard hanging from his neck by a length of twine proclaimed his sin: “Too cowardly to fight for the fatherland.” This one Kurt had known: the Reinard boy. His father had died in France in the first war, his brother on the Eastern Front in this war, his mother and sister killed in the same bombing. At twenty-two Emil Reinard hadn’t quite mastered reading or speaking. He had very bad eyes and was a bit slow. He had a singing voice, however, that could make a stone weep.
Kurt averted his gaze as he and the sergeant crossed the street at a crouched run. In moments they were in a maze of crumbling walls and smoking rubble, Kurt wheezing as his lungs fought for oxygen. As the dawn light touched the eastern sky, lightening the ubiquitous smoke, they came to the edge of Wilhelm Platz facing the south wing of the old Reich Chancellery. The floors immediately above the massive double doors were missing from a direct hit. Somehow the delicate second floor balcony had survived. The entrance doors were blocked with rubble.
Balter cursed and said, “Over there.” He pointed to the far right of the Chancellery beyond the D-shaped drive with its primordial echoes of horse drawn carriages, liveried servants, marching bands, and sleek black limousines. “Ahead,” said Balter, “between the Chancellery and the Foreign Ministry. Unless Ivan rearranged the rubble since I left, there’s a path.” He looked at Kurt, who was gasping, trying to catch his breath. “You’re not that old, Herr Wolff.”
“Gas,” said Kurt. “Near Wervicq . . . Great War.”
Balter glanced again at the street, frowned, and held out his hand. “Forgive me. Let me carry your bag.”
Gratefully, Kurt handed it over. While he caught his breath, he studied his guide. Sergeant Balter’s thick features and solid build were misleading. He had intelligent brown eyes and an unobtrusive wariness that took in everything. Balter waited until Kurt gave him the nod, then the pair crossed Wilhelmstrasse at an angle, rounded the corner of the Chancellery’s north wing, and entered the narrow alley just as a fresh flight of artillery shells rattled overhead. The alley was piled with rubble, but there was a cleared path winding its way between the mounds of fractured stone and brick.
Kurt rested again, steadying himself against an upended slab of concrete. By the time Balter returned looking for him, Kurt had caught his breath. He nodded and they continued to pick their way through the path until it widened to the left. Parking places, loading docks—it was impossible to tell from the mountain of rubble that covered it. The sergeant led them past that into a narrow alleyway between the still standing walls of the two buildings. It jogged abruptly to the right and a few meters later to the left widening out into a garden, a few delicate flowers poking through the rubble and the splinters of shattered trees.
“In here, Herr Wolff!” called the sergeant, pointing toward a door in the Chancellery building.
“No guards?” asked Kurt.
Balter grinned. “I believe you will find the guards at the bottom of the stairs keeping out of the rain.” The rattle of another flight of shells passing overhead urged Balter to push Kurt toward the door. “And it doesn’t look like the weather is going to improve any time soon.”
They descended a long straight concrete staircase, its arched ceiling, steps, and platforms illuminated only from the middle and bottom. The bulbs in the fixtures at the top of the stairs had been shattered. The lower they went, the more it seemed to Kurt that the weight of the punished city bore down upon them. At the bottom of the stairs was an odor that easily overpowered the stench of the burning buildings and bodies coming from the surface. It was a mix of diesel fuel, sweat, unwashed clothing, raw concrete, mildew, and sewage. There was another smell, as welclass="underline" Kurt frowned and glanced at the sergeant. “Chocolate?”
“As advertised,” said a smirking Balter.
“What is that sewer smell?”
“Invigorating, isn’t it? The bunkers are at a lower level than Berlin’s sewers. There would appear to be some seepage.” He smiled wryly. “A slight design flaw, perhaps, but be of good cheer. The ventilation system is supposed to be working at this end.”