The Runner

by Christopher Reich

  Judge wondered how it could be windier driving twenty-five miles an hour on a country road than sixty miles an hour on the autobahn. Instinctively, he extended a hand to check for the windscreen, but it was down. Someone had lowered it while they were inside the hospital. Having driven all day in the open air, wind buffeting him from right and left, he hadn’t noticed the light breeze tickling his face.

  The discovery that someone had tampered with his vehicle rekindled the suspicious buzz that had soured his gut since leaving Dachau that morning. Darting a glance over his shoulder, he spotted the jeep full of nurses rounding a bend. Everything okay back there. But why wasn’t there any traffic approaching from the opposite direction? He should have checked the accident itself. And if traffic was officially diverted, why hadn’t an MP been directing traffic instead of a regular GI? Something else struck Judge as odd; something the soldier had said. No problem, Major. Have a good night. Judge’s rank insignia were covered by his windbreaker. There were no oak leaves pinned to the epaulets of his jacket. How could the man have known he was a major?

  Judge leaned forward in his seat, squinting his eyes to make out the contours of the road beyond the headlights’ wash. The route had narrowed considerably. The canopy of leaves and branches hovered close above their heads, an impenetrable dark mass. He felt like Ichabod Crane galloping pell-mell down Sleepy Hollow. The nose of the jeep disappeared as the vehicle sped down a rolling dip. Judge’s stomach rose to his gullet. Ingrid let loose a yelp of surprise. The road flattened and in the instant before the jeep passed between two massive oaks, he saw it. A sparkle of silver at eye level. The word werewolf bulleted through his mind. At the same instant he saw that no angle iron rose from the bumper, and it came to him that this was not his jeep. He grabbed Ingrid’s head and shoved it into his lap, then fell on top of her. The whisper of razor-sharp metal stung his ear. The jeep veered right, its tires digging into the hardscrabble shoulder. Forcing himself upright, he grasped the wheel and returned the jeep to the center of the road.

  The jeep behind him. The nurses!

  Judge pressed both of his feet onto the brake and rammed his fist onto the horn.

  “What is it?” Ingrid shouted, hands clutching the dashboard.

  But Judge had no time to answer. Even before the jeep skidded to a halt, he jumped from his seat and ran back along the road, thrashing his arms in the air, yelling for the nurses to stop. Down came the jeep, barreling over the dip, its headlights bobbing, then diving as the road steepened. Over the engine’s whine, he could hear the nurses yelp with surprise, their young voices a giddy mixture of fear and excitement.

  “Get down,” he yelled, knowing they could not hear him, sensing the jeep accelerate even as it should be slowing. He prayed that an angle iron was welded to their front bumper, though usually only those vehicles used by military personnel carried such protection. The beams hit him in the eye and he heard the engine rev.

  “Stop!”

  Then he heard a stifled cry, two heavy thuds, and the jeep careered dangerously left, crashing head-on into the intractable trunk of a hundred-year-old oak.

  He walked now, his step sobered by what he knew he would discover. Ingrid Bach arrived at his side, breathing heavily, eyes wide with fright. Two of the nurses had been expelled from the jeep and lay in the road, their bodies twisted unnaturally. The wire had hit both below the eyes, snapping their necks even as it slashed through their noses deep into the skull and lifted them forcibly out of the jeep. Judge guessed they had been sitting in the backseat. The two in the front had suffered a quicker death. Both were slumped against the dashboard, headless, blood pumping from their necks like water from a hydrant.

  Ingrid fell to a knee, her scream dying stillborn in her throat, then buried her face in the lee of her arm.

  Judge tore his eyes from the grotesque panorama, helping Ingrid to her feet and rushing her to the jeep. Whoever had strung the wire might well be waiting nearby to ensure that their job was carried to fruition. He implored Ingrid to hurry, but she was half frozen with shock. With every step, he expected to hear the whiplash crack of a bullet fired in their direction.

  “What is it?” Ingrid asked him when they were back in the jeep. “What’s going on?”

  But Judge was not ready to give an answer. Either to himself or Ingrid Bach.

  Slamming the gearshift into first, he stepped on the accelerator and drove the jeep up the hill.

  CHAPTER

  37

  “RUM,” SERGEANT DEN SAVAGE WHISPERED to himself. “Very rum indeed.”

  Savage, a licensed civil engineer who had enlisted with the King’s Own Hussars in September of 1939, liked to think he’d had a decent war. Tobruk, Sicily, Normandy. Just the whisper of such storied names earned him an appreciative glance from the most hardened warrior. If he was lucky, it even got him a pint gratis at the local NAAFI pub.

  But Savage was no soldier. There’d been no storming of enemy parapets for him. No jumping from a plane behind enemy lines or braving a foreign beach under a hail of fire. Beau Geste, that was the next man. At five feet two inches tall and one hundred three pounds dripping wet, Savage was well aware of his physical limitations. “A bloke should know his place,” he liked to say, “and mine is to the rear, thank you very much.”

  The entire world knew about the Desert Rats. Well, Den and his team called themselves the Pack Rats. It was the job of this particular engineer of the King’s Own Hussars to collect, label, and store all weapons confiscated from the enemy. He’d taken potato mashers from the Afrika Korps and Schmeissers from the SS, rocket launchers from the Hitler Youth and pocketknives from the Volksturm. He knew every gun, rifle, and grenade used by the German Army and the ordnance to go with it. Still, for everything he’d seen and done, today’s job bothered him.

  “Rum,” he whispered to himself again. “Very rum indeed.”

  Savage strode down the center aisle of warehouse B392 in Dortmund, Germany, whistling for his men to gather round. The warehouse was packed to its gills with small arms and ammunition confiscated from Hitler’s baddies. Most had been taken by Monty himself, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, that is, England’s highest-ranking soldier (who, Den liked to point out, was no heavyweight himself). And Savage made sure the weapons were stored in kind. Pistols with pistols, rifles and rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, mines, grenades . . . well, he could go on forever, couldn’t he?

  “All right, lads, listen up,” he shouted when his thirty-five-man platoon had drawn close. “We’ve a bit of work ahead of us and I don’t want to hear any complaining from the pews. Church mice, lads. Follow?”

  “Ah, shut up, Sarge, and let us hear the bad news,” shouted Jimmy McGregor, a mealymouthed little bugger from County Antrim. You could always count on the Irish for a bit of lip.

  “Right, then, McGregor. If you’re so keen, I’ll let you have it right off, won’t I?”

  And for the next fifteen minutes, Savage outlined in excruciating detail the work order that he had received earlier that morning—the order that had his stomach growling with uncertainty. Savage’s men were to remove every weapon in the warehouse—all of which they had previously catalogued, cleaned, greased, and packed—strip them of their protective cosmoline coating, reinsert the firing pins, and return them to their wooden crates. Worst, though, was the final instruction. The crates were not to be nailed shut.

  “But Den,” asked McGregor, in his sheepish Antrim brogue, “without grease the guns will rust quicker than tin in a rainstorm.”

  “Don’t you go worrying about rust and the natural order of things, Jimmy McGregor,” said Savage. “The order’s from Monty himself. You have any questions, you’re to take it up with him. Now get to work.”

  Savage dismissed his men and returned to his office. He knew he’d been short with McGregor, but damn it all if he could help it. Something about the order just didn’t sit right with him. You see, for once, Jimmy McGregor was right.

  Yo
u only stripped guns of their grease and reinserted their firing pins if you expected to use them. And very soon at that.

  Rum, thought Savage, very rum indeed.

  CHAPTER

  38

  “I NEED TO SPEAK WITH General Patton now!” Judge said for the second time, his frustration bound and balled into a tight fist. “It cannot wait. I repeat, it’s a matter of grave importance.”

  It was eleven o’clock at night and he was standing inside the headquarters of the 705th Field Artillery Battalion in what used to be the rathaus, or city hall of Griesheim, a quaint hamlet twenty miles south of Frankfurt. Three hours he’d been driving, anxious to put as much distance as possible between himself and his “last known whereabouts.” Satisfied that he and Ingrid were for the time being safe, he’d stopped at the first spot where he could contact the one man who might put an end to this nightmarish situation.

  “Major, I don’t doubt you for a minute,” came the reply. “But the general is in Berlin visiting Ike and the president. All communications to him are routed through Third Army HQ. Anything you want him to hear, you’ll have to tell me. I’ll pass along the news first thing in the morning.”

  Judge held the phone away from his ear, biting his lower lip to keep from shouting. It hurt trying to be polite. It actually hurt! “Excuse me, but may I ask with whom I’m speaking?”

  “Colonel Paul Harkins,” came the gruff voice, the emphasis very definitely on “Colonel.”

  “Excuse me, Colonel, I should have told you that this is a matter pertaining to the ongoing search for Erich Seyss. General Patton asked me to contact him no matter what the time if I had any news. Once he hears what I have to tell him, I am certain he will applaud your initiative in allowing me to give him the news personally.”

  It hurt!

  Harkins’s laugh felt like a slap in the face. “Nice try, Major. Listen, if it’s about that brouhaha in Wiesbaden a couple nights back, let me put you through to General Everett’s staff. That’s his bailiwick. What’s the big deal, anyway? I thought Seyss was dead.”

  Suddenly, Judge found his patience had abandoned him and his powers of persuasion, as well. “I . . . must . . . speak . . . to . . . Patton.”

  A tired sigh smothered the line. “Okay, Major, that’s it for tonight. You’re wearing me out.”

  “You’re wearing me out, too, mac!”

  Judge hung up before Harkins could have the satisfaction. For a second he stood still, staring at the dead receiver as if it were the mitt that had dropped the game-winning ball. A pimply clerk sat at a table marked Reception a few feet away. At every mention of Patton’s name, he’d twitched as if given a couple hundred volts. Now he was staring at Judge with wide eyes, as if Judge were the general himself. So much for keeping a low profile.

  “Everything all right, Private?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the clerk, buttoning up his jaw. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Carry on, then.” Jesus, thought Judge, I sound like a goddamn soldier.

  Fatigue slumping his shoulders, he walked from the foyer. It was still too soon for a widespread search to have been initiated on any kind of official basis. But his presence had been noted, and come tomorrow, should someone ask—as he knew someone would—it would be reported.

  He’d spent most of the drive explaining the happenings of the past week to Ingrid—Seyss’s escape from Camp 8, the blown arrest at Lindenstrasse, meeting von Luck, Bauer, the debacle at the armory. Everything. Yet even as he’d recounted the events, he’d sifted through them, scrutinizing each carefully before positioning them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  It was clear that members of the American military were intent on concealing evidence that Erich Seyss had not been killed at the armory in Wiesbaden, hence, that he was very much alive. Someone had suffocated Oliver von Luck. If he were to believe the unfortunate Herr Volkmann, someone who had been awarded the Silver Star. Someone had tried to kill Ingrid and himself, and was clever enough to disguise the murder as the work of the German partisans known as werewolves. Working his way backward, Judge could therefore assume that this same group—this clique—had purposely kicked on the klieg lights in an effort to aid Seyss’s escape. No doubt the flashlights blinking out Morse code belonged to them, too.

  And if Judge had retained any of his skills as a detective, he could take Bauer’s confession to indicate that Seyss was not going to Babelsberg but to Potsdam, and that his trip had nothing to do with rescuing Egon Bach’s mislaid engineering drawings.

  But here he came to a halt. He had marshaled his evidence. He had presented his facts in a logical manner. He could envisage the crime itself. Yet the most crucial component of any prosecution was missing: motive.

  Why were members of the American military assisting a fugitive SS officer and the scion of Germany’s most powerful industrial family to carry out a heinous scheme whose success would ensure only personal heartbreak, national mourning, and political instability?

  Outside, the night air was warm and humid, smelling of honeysuckle and cut grass. A cluster of clouds scudded past a swollen moon while a transport plane buzzed overhead. The jeep was parked in the forecourt of the rathaus. Ingrid sat in the passenger seat smoking, her hair mussed like a bramble by the steady wind.

  “No one talks to Patton except his aide-de-camp,” said Judge, his heels crunching in the gravel drive.

  “Call someone else,” she ordered. “Bradley, he’s one of your heroes, isn’t he? Why not try Eisenhower himself?”

  “There is no one else. At least, no one I know.”

  “Find someone!” Ingrid looked away, as if wanting no more uttered on the subject.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” he fired back. “I don’t know anyone else. I’m an attorney, not a soldier. I’m supposed to be in Luxembourg questioning Hermann Goering, not rushing across the German countryside with my tail between my legs.”

  “Well, go, then,” said Ingrid, waving him off with a brush of her hand. “Go to the great Herr Reichsmarschall. And be sure to tell him that Papa’s standing invitation to visit us at Sonnenbrücke is canceled. I’ll be fine on my own.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Judge, rushing to the jeep. “You will not be fine on your own. Close your eyes and look at those nurses. That was supposed to be us.”

  Ingrid stared into his eyes, her features frozen into a mask of fear and hate and resentment. In her gaze, Judge saw his own fear, his own hate, his own resentment, not only of the mounting desperation of their plight but of her, of Ingrid Bach, blond doyenne of Berlin and New York, frequenter of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, platinum princess born to a world that he’d always disdained. How dare she address him as if he were one of her servants? What would she ask for next? Her mink stole and lace gloves? Judge shuddered with frustration, but said nothing. He recognized the enmity she’d aroused for what it was: the flip side of his growing attraction to her. Guilty desire’s ugly twin.

  Judge stalked up the drive, the shifting gravel denying his anger a sufficiently dramatic exit. No one talks to Patton except his aide-de-camp, he’d told Ingrid. What about Patton’s wife? What about when gracious Miss Bea gave Georgie a jingle? Did he tell her to get lost, too? Judge frowned. Crusty old bastard probably did, if the scuttlebutt going around Bad Toelz had anything to it. Word was Patton had himself a little number on the side, some distant family relation thirty years his junior he’d been screwing since he was stationed in Hawaii in the thirties. Her name was Jean Gordon, and apparently, just last May, he’d spent a few days closeted with her in London. V-E Day indeed! Judge bet the randy old goat wouldn’t let a call from her slip by.

  “Come here,” he called to Ingrid. “I need your help.”

  “What now?”

  “Come here!” He offered a hand to help her from the jeep. “You want to talk to Patton?”

  “Me?” She eyed his hand, not moving a muscle. “Do I look like his aide-de-camp?”

  “For your sake, I hope not, but
do as I say and you might get to say a few words to the great man himself.”

  Ingrid might have been glued to the seat. “I have no interest in speaking to Patton, Eisenhower, Truman, or any other American for that matter.”

  Judge supposed he should be flattered to be included in such august company. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Get over here, now!”

  Ingrid shot him a dark glance, but responded to the edge in his voice. Lifting her slender legs, she jumped from the jeep. Judge explained his plan as he escorted her inside battalion headquarters. Ordering the adolescent clerk to get him an open line, he dialed the number for Flint Kaserne. When the operator answered, he asked to be put through to Patton’s staff.

  “Office of the military governor.”

  Recognizing Harkins’s sandpaper baritone, he thrust the phone at Ingrid. “Go on,” he whispered.

  “Hello?” she said tentatively. Her English accent had crossed the Atlantic, docking at Oyster Bay. “I’d like to speak with General Patton.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m afraid he’s not in right now.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. He’s in Berlin. I wouldn’t dare bother him, but it’s quite important that we speak. My name is Jean Gordon. Perhaps the general has mentioned me?” Ingrid shot Judge a frightened glance. He smiled tightly and gave her a thumb’s-up.

  “Yes, Miss Gordon. Colonel Paul Harkins here. How are you tonight?”

  “I’d be better Colonel, if I could talk to George . . .” Ingrid paused before correcting herself. “I mean General Patton. I’m in a bit of a state, actually.”

  Harkins responded with requisite aplomb. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Gordon, but the general left me express orders that he’s not to be disturbed. He’s dining with President Truman and General Eisenhower this evening. That’s quite an event, even for him.”