The Runner

by Christopher Reich

  Seyss nodded, quick to draw his own inferences.

  “You’ve fought against the Russians,” said Egon. “What do you think Mr. Stalin will do with the tanks and cannons that now line the Elbe? Do you think he will send them back to Mother Russia? Of course not. He will move them to our border and he will wait. He will wait for the Americans to go home and for the British to withdraw. He will wait until our factories are no more and our presses are dismantled and the lot of us are in the fields milking Holsteins and tending flocks of sheep with our thumbs up our agrarian asses. That is what he will do. And then he will attack. I give him two days until he is at the Rhine.”

  Weber lectured Seyss with the butt of his monocle, his voice crackling with a fevered intensity. “Today we live as a conquered people. But the Americans are like us. They are not an evil race. Each day, they work to make sure we have enough to eat and that our sewers no longer back up and that we can have a few hours of electricity. The Bolsheviks are not cut from the same cloth. They are from the East. Untermenschen. Subhumans. The descendants of Genghis Khan. It would be better to die than to submit to their will!”

  Weber sounded like an editorial from Der Strumer, thought Seyss. Unfortunately, everything he said was true.

  “I agree that Stalin is a bastard,” burst Seyss, no longer able to bottle his frustration. “I agree that the dismantling of our industrial capacity poses a grave threat to our nation’s ability to defend itself. And that we cannot permit our mines to be flooded. But, gentlemen, what do you wish me to do about it? I am a soldier, not a politician. Tell me to take an enemy ridge, I can assemble my men, put together a plan, and attack. Ask me to convince the Americans not to make Germany an agrarian state, I don’t know how I can help.”

  “The two aren’t as far removed as you might think,” said Weber, eyes bright.

  Egon Bach lifted a calming hand. “We understand your confusion. Just hear us out. At first we, too, were skeptical as to our ability to color the final outcome. But the situation is too important to let fate run its course unchallenged.”

  “Then tell me what you want me to do.” Despite its size the room was beginning to close in upon him. A pallor of smoke hung in the air. Even with bulbs burning in four lamps, the shelter seemed to be growing dimmer and dimmer.

  Egon raised both hands in front of him, patting the air. “In due time, Erich. In due time.”

  Seyss sat ramrod straight. He knew the longer the preface, the more dangerous the mission. Sächlichkeit, he thought, drawing a heavy breath. Discipline.

  “Thirteen years ago, my father convened a group of gentlemen unhappy with the complexion of Germany’s politics,” said Egon. “The Depression had silenced our country’s factories. Our own firm was on the verge of collapse. Father’s guests shared the same bleak prospects. Krupp. Thyssen. Rocher. Men who had constructed the steel works, rolling mills, foundries, and shipyards that power our nation.”

  Egon paused, sweeping his owl’s head to look each man in the eye. He was a mesmerizing little creep, Seyss would give him that much.

  “Father recognized that only one man could save them. Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist Workers party. Hitler would rearm the nation and lead us to war. And though war wasn’t a pleasant prospect, as a businessman he recognized it was the only solution to their problems. But in November of 1932, the Nazi party was in danger of collapse. They had lost thirty-five seats to the Communists in the most recent elections. Worse, they were all but bankrupt. Goering came to Father and confided that without an immediate cash infusion the party would be unable to pay the mountain of bills it had run up in the election. A failure to meet their obligations would be catastrophic. Ernst Roehm and his storm troopers were threatening to rebel and throw Hitler out. If that happened, President Hindenburg would have no choice but to seek a chancellor from the left. An entente with the Communists was even possible, God forbid.

  “Father proposed that his colleagues join him in a new league of industrialists. Not a luncheon group who would waste their time quibbling about quotas and tariffs over seven-course meals at Horchers but one that would focus their efforts on influencing the proper political direction for the Fatherland. He had even thought of a name for his secret assembly of coal barons, steel magnates, and iron makers. The Circle of Fire.”

  “The Circle of Fire,” repeated Schnitzel, the words rolling off his tongue in a cloud of blue smoke.

  Egon’s grateful smile was like a doff of the hat. “Father’s solution was simple. First they would pay the Nazis’ debts. Then, as one, they would travel to Berlin and demand that Hindenburg make Hitler chancellor. The old man was a landowner like them. He would listen. The rest, as they say, is history. Two months later, on January thirtieth, 1933, Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor of Germany. Bach Industries was saved.”

  Seyss smiled inwardly, recalling a phrase every schoolboy knew by heart. Wenn Bach blüht, so blüht Deutschland. When Bach prospers, so prospers Germany. So much for destiny and the will of the people.

  “Over the past weeks, we have brought the Circle of Fire back to life,” said Egon. “Friends, colleagues, even former competitors who share our worries have joined us. Why, you ask? For one reason and one reason only. To ensure that Germany remains intact long after our occupiers have departed.”

  If Seyss had been alone with Egon, he would have thought the younger man joking. To ensure Germany remains intact. That kind of bluster was his trademark. But when spoken in the company of Schnitzel and Weber, men as hardened by the war as any veteran of the front, his words adopted a gravitas usually denied by his youth.

  The Stork laughed and the tension in the room dissipated. “That’s when the answer came to us. Germany must become indispensable to the Americans.”

  “Indispensable?” asked Seyss.

  “Indispensable,” repeated Schnitzel, smiling. “An ally.”

  Seyss smiled, too, but in disbelief. “An ally?”

  “Yes,” said Schnitzel. “Their soldiers dote on our women and children. Many of their families come from the Fatherland. Why are you so shocked?”

  Seyss clamped his jaw shut, eyeing the Stork as if he were mad. “The Amis have just spent the past three years beating the living shit out of us and you expect them to turn around and give us a kiss on the cheek?”

  Weber coughed once, a rude honk that passed for a laugh in Prussia. “Of course not. We’ll have to give them a kick in the ass first.”

  Exasperated, Seyss raised his hands, then let them fall. “If the German people are to become the Americans’ ally, who’s to be our mutual enemy?”

  The three men found the remark humorous, their conjoined laughs rumbling long and low like distant thunder.

  “Relations between the Americans and the Russians are touchy,” said Weber, when their mirth had been exhausted. “The Red Army has limited the Americans’ and Brits’ access to Berlin, yet the city is to be governed by all three powers. The first American troops will arrive in two days to take up their permanent station. How long before they are at each others’ throats?”

  Schnitzel’s cheeks glowed with excitement. “Stalin has overstepped himself in Poland and Czechoslovakia. He has promised free elections yet he’s seen to it that his puppets are in place in both countries. He has violated the agreement he made with Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill at Yalta four months ago. We have it on good authority the Americans aren’t pleased.”

  Seyss shrugged his shoulders. “So? Do you expect Eisenhower to cross the Elbe because Stalin has thrown up a few roadblocks and taken a little more land than agreed upon?”

  “Of course not,” the Stork retorted. “We expect you to give him a much better reason.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you,” hissed Egon, and the room fell silent. “Terminal. It is the Americans’ code name for the conference to be held in Potsdam in a week’s time. There, the provisions governing reparations—measures which will include the settling of our borders and the
emasculation of our industrial might—will be settled. The new American president, Truman, will attend, as will Churchill and Stalin. It would be a pity if something should happen to flare the tensions between these three great Allies. Personally, I can think of only one thing. And it is a soldier’s job, not a politician’s.”

  A soldier’s job.

  Seyss stood and paced the room’s perimeter. So there it was: another foray behind enemy lines. He should have known it was something of the kind. Why else single him out? He spoke Russian like a commissar. His English was his mother’s. He’d spent practically the entire war roaming unfriendly territory. Strangely, he felt relieved, the burden of ignorance lifted from his chest at last.

  “What exactly do you have in mind?”

  Egon Bach drew a cigar from his pocket and lit it. “Sooner or later, the flame of democracy will ignite the cradle of communism. We want you to provide the spark.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE United States Army of Occupation, military government of Bavaria, was located in the barracks and classrooms of the former SS academy at Bad Toelz, a sleepy hamlet perched on the banks of the Isar River twenty miles south of Munich. The academy was impressive: a three-story stone edifice painted a rich cream with steep gabled roofs that ran in a continuous square around a parade ground the size of Ebbetts Field. Stands of mature poplars stood sentry at each corner of the parade ground. A flagpole rose from its center, the Stars and Stripes snapping to attention in the warm morning breeze.

  Devlin Judge hopped from the jeep as soon as it had pulled to a halt, and followed his driver into the building. Marching up a few stairs, he came to a wide corridor running in either direction as far as the eye could see. The place was as busy as Grand Central Station. A steady stream of soldiers zipped back and forth as if drawn by a magnetic force. To a man their uniforms were impeccable, their posture equally so. This was Patton’s command all right. “Spit and polish” and “blood and guts.”

  Judge walked for two minutes down the hallway. A broad black stripe ran down the center of the flagstone flooring. Every fifty feet, a pair of soldiers knelt low vigorously maintaining its sheen. His escort turned right leading him up a broad winding staircase. A different word was painted across the base of each step. Entschiedenheit. Mut. Lauterheit. Decisiveness. Courage. Integrity. Brocades of black cloth were draped like bunting from the walls. Between them painted in Gothic script were the names of the SS’s elite divisions: Das Reich. Viking. Totenkopf. All over Germany, Allied soldiers were working to efface all traces of the Nazi party from the landscape. The swastika had been outlawed in every shape and form. Yet here it looked as if Patton were maintaining a shrine to the worst element of the German army: the SS.

  At the top of the stairway, the two men turned right again and continued to the end of the hallway where a brace of military policemen in gleaming white helmets and matching Sam Browne belts stood at attention beside an open door. Hanging above the door was a small red flag with four gold stars. Instead of entering the office, though, Judge’s escort continued past it, stopping at the next door down. A hand-lettered sign announced United States Army of Occupation, Provost Marshal. He knocked once, then opened the door and allowed Judge to pass before him.

  “Get in here, Detective,” boomed the familiar voice. “On the double.” Rising from his desk—all six foot four of him—Stanley Mullins crossed the room, arms open in greeting. “Hello, Dev. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about Father Francis. A loss to us all.”

  “Hello, Spanner. Long time.”

  Mullins pulled him to his shoulder, whispering in his ear, “It’s Colonel Mullins, these days, if you’d be so kind. The boss is a bit of a stickler.”

  Judge accepted the outstretched hand and gave it a firm shake. “Colonel Mullins it is, then.”

  Mullins bobbed his chin, but failed to provide the expected wink. “Good to see you, lad. You did the right thing coming to visit.”

  So far as Judge knew, Mullins had never set foot in the old country, yet there was no mistaking the lilting brogue. He wasn’t just tall but thick, and the twenty pounds he’d put on since Judge had last seen him gave him not only the girth of an oak but the solidity, too. His hair was thinning, more salt than pepper, parted expertly and slicked into place with a handful of brilliantine. His complexion was ruddier than Judge remembered, the blue eyes a tad more suspicious. He was Irish at first sight, but God forbid you joked about his love of a good pint. Come from five generations of coppers, Mullins didn’t touch a drop. Not a teetotaler, mind you, just a man who appreciated control. And control was what was written all over him. In his uniform with the creases sharp enough to cut butter and the blouse bathed in enough starch to stand at parade rest. In his stride, the long, precise steps, each premeasured, each perfectly executed. And mostly, Judge thought, in his posture, a bearing so rigid, so upright, that even standing still, it conveyed its own kinetic aggression.

  “I remember you joined up a couple years back,” said Judge, when Mullins had stopped pumping his hand. “What’s it been?”

  “Three years and then some.”

  “St. Paddy’s Day, wasn’t it?” Mullins had thrown an Irish wake to mourn his leaving the force. Judge had received an invite but didn’t attend. By then, Brooklyn was off-limits. “I wanted to stop by and send you off. I’m sorry.”

  “Nonsense, lad. You had more important things to do than bid your old boyfriends farewell. I’ve been keeping track of you in the papers. Assistant United States Attorney Devlin Parnell Judge—Brooklyn’s very own gangbuster. Tell me, Dev, what’s your streak up to these days? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”

  “Something like that.” Actually, it was twenty-nine. Fifty-eight out of sixty cases won over a four-year period. A career built on the backs of corrupt city officials, shady building contractors, and union thugs. He’d earned the moniker Gangbuster for putting away Vic Fazio, a small-time hijacker looking to muscle in on Lepke’s turf of murder for hire by accepting contracts to knock off total strangers, men and women outside the rackets.

  “Fair number without a loss,” Mullins grinned suspiciously. “Not paying off the bench, are you?”

  “What? And have you lose faith in me? Never.”

  Mullins laughed, wagging a finger. “There’s my straight-shooter. Just remember, I knew you before you converted.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” said Judge. “You won’t let me forget.” He laughed, too, but less brightly, thinking it was the debts you could never repay whose reminder bothered you most.

  Mullins draped an arm over his shoulder, steering him toward his scarred headmaster’s desk and the pair of wooden school chairs set before it. “Well, lad, I’m pleased to set eyes on you again. You waited a damn sight long enough to get into the game. Frankly, I was beginning to wonder.”

  Judge chose to ignore the implicit chastisement, the hint of duty unfulfilled. It was a delicate issue, even now that he wore an olive drab uniform and a campaign cap. The fact was that Thomas Dewey, special prosecutor for the state of New York, an appointee of the president of the United States, had asked him personally to stay on. The army needed bodies, he’d said, not minds. And certainly not minds as astute as Judge’s. If he wanted to help his country, he should start at home. Clean up New York City. It had practically been an order.

  Bodies, not minds.

  The recollection of the words and the urbane attorney who had uttered them sent a proud shudder along Judge’s spine. For a kid raised on the streets of Brooklyn, it was the compliment he’d always dreamed of receiving. So he’d stayed. But as the war dragged on, year after year, as his promotions came faster and the cut of his suits improved, a voice inside him protested that he liked the size of his office a little too much, that he spent too much time adjusting the dimple in his Windsor knot, and that he grinned too eagerly at the sight of his name in cheap newsprint.

  Judge settled into a chair, dropping his briefcase to one side. He
explained about his appointment to the International Military Tribunal four months earlier, his more recent discovery that Erich Seyss was responsible for Francis’s death, and his push for a transfer to the unit looking into Seyss’s escape. “I hope you don’t mind my forcing myself on you.”

  Mullins looked up from the nickel cigar he was unwrapping. “No, you don’t, lad. You don’t mind at all. And bully for you. You’ve got family to answer to. I imagine your wife’s proud of you. Teresa, wasn’t it?”

  Judge laughed softly, surprised by the acuity of Mullins’s memory, then remembering that he’d been at the wedding. “Maria Teresa O’Hare. Italian and Irish split down the middle. A half breed like me.” He smiled apologetically. “We’re not together anymore.”

  Mullins struck a match and fired the cigar. “What do you mean ‘not together’?”

  “We divorced two years ago.”

  “Oh?” Mullins’s countenance ruffled behind a cloud of blue smoke. Divorce wasn’t in an Irishman’s vocabulary. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “We were drifting apart for a long time before that. She wanted the job on Park Avenue, you know, white shoe firm, the athletic club, weekends in the country. I chose the other road—Dewey, the U.S. Attorney’s office, working weekends. It was the only law I knew.”

  Mullins pulled the cigar from his lips and leaned his bulk over the desk, the inquisitive blue eyes not settling for an excuse when the truth was so close at hand. “Was it the boy, God rest his soul?”

  “Ryan?” It figured that Mullins had the temerity to come right out and ask. Whether it was the gossip in him or the father confessor, Judge didn’t know. But he couldn’t deny the sympathy in his voice. For all his faults, Mullins cared for the men under his command as he would his own sons. “I don’t know. Yeah, maybe. When he left us, we couldn’t use him to patch over our differences any longer. Anyway, neither of us tried too hard after that.”