The Runner

by Christopher Reich

  The businessman in Egon should have been ecstatic. Customers were customers no matter the cut or color of their garment. And the Americans paid cash. But today Egon was less the konzernschef than the son of his country, and the commotion taking place just then in the southeastern corner of the plant horrified him. An entire company of American engineers were gathered around the behemoth fifteen-thousand-ton press, swarming on it like bees to a hive. The press was monumental. The base plate was fifty feet long and forty feet wide. The four stainless-steel driving columns were sixty feet high and capable of guiding the stamping plate with a force of some 30 million pounds. The fifteen-thousand-ton press was the jewel in the family’s crown, so to speak, responsible five years earlier for the creation of the Alfried Geschütz, the largest mobile artillery piece built in the history of mankind.

  Egon saw the gun in his mind, as clearly as if examining its blueprints. A polished steel cannon one hundred feet in length weighing 250 tons. Nearly three stories high when set atop its own railcar, it looked like a monstrous tank, but in place of a turret was a breech block the size of a locomotive. The majestic gun fired armor-capped artillery shells twelve feet long (without the propellant casing!) each weighing sixteen thousand pounds. Everyone knows the crack of a rifle. Imagine, then, the bang when a seven-ton shell is fired with enough high explosives to lob it twenty-five miles behind enemy lines! Despite his funk, Egon grinned malevolently at the memory. Apocalypse! It was the sound of the apocalypse!

  Egon looked on as a mobile crane rolled in, a steel mesh workman’s basket dangling from its hook. Two soldiers inside the basket swung an iron cable around the uppermost pinion. A whistle blew and the basket was lowered to the floor. There followed a controlled explosion christened by a puff of gray smoke. The crane rumbled forward, lifting the engineers to the appointed spot where, with a thumb’s-up, they signaled that the pinion had been successfully blown.

  Step one in the dismantling of the massive press.

  The first act in the emasculation of the Reich.

  Running a hand over his close-cropped hair, Egon raised himself up on his toes, shaking his head. Below in the crowd—among, yet distinctly apart from, the American engineers—stood four representatives of the Soviet government, recognizable by their coarse woolen jackets and coarser Slavic features. All were grinning like schoolboys.

  Untermenschen, Egon cursed.

  Though American engineers were responsible for dismantling the press, the great machine was not destined for Pittsburgh, Detroit, or even Long Beach. Once disassembled, it would be placed on a train carrying it eastward to its new home, somewhere in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The press that had made the Alfried Geschütz would soon be in the employ of Stalin and his greasy comrades.

  Unable to bear watching, Egon ripped the glasses from his face and began vigorously cleaning the lenses. Only a year ago, Bach Industries had controlled major industrial facilities in twelve countries. Tungsten mines in France. Ore in Greece. Shipbuilding in Holland. Steelworks in Ukraine. All listed on the books for their acquisition price: one reichsmark. The rewards of a grateful nation. They were gone now, returned to their former owners. It was a pity, but he could not hold himself to blame for their loss. The rape of Bach Industries under his very eyes, well, that was another matter altogether.

  Sliding on his spectacles, Egon dialed the Heidelberg exchange for the final time. As the phone rang two hundred kilometers to the north, he ran a manicured finger over the buttons of his vest. Pick up, he muttered. Pick up. This was Seyss’s doing, he decided. The man was impossible to control. What could he have been thinking, venturing onto the black market when his picture was plastered over every square inch of the American zone of occupation? Did the man think himself immortal? It had been a mistake using him after he’d killed Janks and Vlassov. Seyss was too much the loose cannon Ruthlessly efficient, yes, but also completely unreliable—Egon’s best and worst bets rolled into one.

  Ten. Eleven. Egon’s worry grew with each unanswered ring. God forbid the Amis succeed in arresting Seyss and his men. Seyss wouldn’t say a word, but what about the others? One of them was bound to talk. The Americans would put two and two together: Seyss, the decorated Brandenburger, headed to Berlin dressed as a Russian on the eve of Terminal. An idiot could deduce what he had planned. Pick up!

  After twenty rings, Egon slammed the receiver into its cradle. One of the MPs shot him a concerned glance through the glass partition but Egon waved him off with a broad smile. The smile was a ruse. He was damn near apoplectic with worry. Where were the fools? He had fallbacks set up. Another armory in Bremen. One in Hamburg. Friends to spirit Seyss to safety. He must warn them off the mission.

  A second muffled explosion drew his attention back to the press. Another bolt had been blown. The crowd of engineers threw out a boastful hoorah. In a day, all that would remain of the press would be a few loose screws and a pool of grease.

  Returning to his desk, Egon picked up the phone. To hell with Seyss and Bauer. There was no longer any time to waste. There existed only one man he might still call to avert a disaster. Egon dialed the number and placed the phone gingerly to his ear, preparing himself for the raw and untethered force on the far end of the line. When the party answered, he spoke rapidly, careful to temper his frustration with the proper respect. He could not reach his men, he said. He had no way to warn them. Other measures must be taken. If, that is, the listening party still desired to see the mission to its conclusion.

  The man laughed, a resonant chuckle full of enough confidence and bravado to make even Egon relax for a moment. “Natürlich,” he said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  And when Egon hung up, he breathed that much easier. His carefully conceived operation might still come off. Yet he could not deceive himself any longer. Seyss could not be trusted. He’d already put the mission in jeopardy once. If, by some miracle, he were to escape tonight, he would do it again. It was his nature. Egon decided then and there to keep an eye on Seyss himself. There remained one meeting that Seyss could not miss. One chance for Egon to intervene.

  Just then, a shrill whistle ripped the air. Rushing to the window, Egon grimaced as a steam locomotive was shunted onto the loading track and lumbered across the factory floor, whining to a stop adjacent to the fifteen-thousand-ton press. Two flags drooped from atop the engineer’s cabin, both red with golden accents.

  Egon saw them and shuddered.

  The Hammer and Sickle.

  CHAPTER

  30

  INGRID BACH STOOD NAKED BEFORE the full-length mirror, carefully studying her body for clues to her ruinous behavior. Her eyes were clear, if pouchy from lack of sleep; her shoulders sunburned from her excursion to Inzell several days before. Her breasts were full and if no longer as firm as she would have liked, still round and high on her chest. Her legs were taut and slender, and except for a patchwork of bruises—medals from her campaign to keep Sonnenbrücke in working order—those of a woman in her prime.

  But she saw none of this.

  Staring at her reflection, she recognized only a succession of her failed selves. The teacher, the actress, the doctor, the painter she’d sworn to become and hadn’t. The jilted lover, the ungrateful daughter, the false wife, the inadequate mother . . . the possibilities stretched before her like an endless tapestry of her own weaving. She was an embarrassment. To herself, to her family, and, harking to the faraway cry present in every German’s soul, to her country.

  Behind her, the sun continued its evening descent, its last rays burning the sky a fiery orange. In its wake, the shadows of Furka and Brunni, the hooded peaks that held Sonnenbrücke in their eternal purview, lengthened and grew obscure, menacing her in a way her own conscience never could.

  Turning from the mirror, Ingrid crossed the bedroom. An antique oil lamp rested on her dresser and next to it a box of matches. The basement was full of the lamps, leftovers from the days before electricity ventured so deep into the mountains. Son
nenbrücke had belonged to the Hapsburgs then. Franz Josef himself had built the lodge in 1880, his idea of a cozy family retreat. Foreseeing the need to gild his family’s flight into exile, he’d sold the property to her father sometime during the Great War. An aphorism about one man’s misfortune being another’s luck came to Ingrid’s mind. She wondered whether Papa was a scavenger or a savior. She decided both, which, given her current uncharitable mood, was worse than being either.

  Removing the lamp’s glass veil, she struck a match, then fired the tattered wick. She waited for the flame to catch, then lamp in hand, padded to her dressing room. Seated at her vanity, she was confronted once again by her own damning stare. How could she account for her recent behavior? Exposing herself to Ferdy Karlsberg in exchange for a few quarts of ice cream; dating the scoundrel Carswell as a prelude to requesting increased rations. And if he’d balked, she asked herself, if he’d whispered that he could only give these things to his mistress, then what? Would she have slept with him? Would she have compromised her body as she already had her spirit? Never, she resolved vehemently. But part of her remained unconvinced.

  After washing her face, Ingrid returned to the bedroom. Off came the decorative pillows, off came the bedspread. The window was open and a cool breeze swept her body, leaving her skin prickled with goose bumps. Walking to the sill, she thrust her head into the night. Ten minutes after the sun had dipped below the mountains, the valley lay hidden beneath an impenetrable shroud. She dropped her eyes to the brick portico twenty feet below. One push and she would be free. Free of her guilt, her worry, her shame. Free of the cursed name that haunted her from morning till night. The Bachs—bankrupt whores of a broken Germany. They’d whored for the Kaiser, for Weimar, for the Führer. Who was next? Why, the Americans, of course. Ingrid, with her platinum hair and ruby-red nail polish, was only continuing the family tradition, if on a smaller scale.

  Which brought her face-to-face with Devlin Judge. He hadn’t asked her to dance solely to apologize for having disturbed her father. He’d wanted information about Erich, she was sure of it. Another American seeking to exploit her company for his own interest. Still, she couldn’t scold the man, not after what he’d done to Carswell. She had little doubt that he was under military arrest. She couldn’t imagine what would happen to a German officer should he strike a field marshal. A firing squad? Twenty years’ hard labor? She shuddered at the prospect. Her Erich would never do such a thing. Any objection he harbored toward Carswell’s behavior, he’d deliver during a private moment, if at all. He was a soldier to the core. But Judge was an attorney, likewise acquainted with the consequences of disregarding regulation. Why did one obey his superiors and the other his conscience?

  The unexpected entry of Erich Seyss into her intimate thoughts thrust Ingrid back in time. She saw herself standing in the window of her apartment on Eichstrasse, her secret lovers’ nest in the heart of Berlin. She felt Erich steal in behind her, his fingers waltzing up her legs, over her belly, caressing her breasts. “So, Schatz,” he’d said in his dead-on imitation of Adolf Hitler, “only ten more children until you receive the gold medal of German womanhood. This is no time to rest. We must work, work, work!”

  That was the Erich she had fallen in love with: the unannounced visitor, the wild and tireless lover, the trustworthy confidant who had encouraged her to take an apartment unbeknownst to her family, the adroit mimic ready to lampoon even the most sacrosanct of subjects. Her best friend.

  But even as they had fallen to the bed, giggling mischievously as they raced to undress each other, part of her mind had remained on guard. There was another side of him, too, one she’d begun to see with disconcerting frequency: the hidebound soldier, the slogan-hurling party man—“Kinder, Kirche, und Küche,” “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer,” “Deutschland Erwache, Jude Verrecke!”—the vitriolic anti-Semite. In short, the ideal Nazi every Aryan aspired to become.

  And in the heat of their lovemaking, when he was deep inside of her, arms pulling her to his body, when they were as close as man and woman could be, she looked into his eyes and asked herself which of these men he truly was?

  And the absence of an answer frightened her.

  A sudden breeze cooled the room. Catching a chill, Ingrid rushed to her bedside and wrapped a hand-knit afghan around her bare shoulders. She returned to the window, eager for the scent of cooling pine and night-blooming jasmine. Her thoughts of Erich faded and she found herself, instead, thinking of Devlin Judge. If she’d learned anything from Erich, it was to distrust her instinct.

  She wondered if she’d been hasty in ascribing ulterior motives to Judge’s actions. With a guilty smile, she acknowledged that he hadn’t only been thinking about his investigation. Pressed so close to him, it had been impossible to ignore his desire. Any stirrings she’d experienced in return were purely reflexive. Still, she couldn’t help but remember the feel of his body, his confident hands, the scent of his neck. He’d smelled of scotch and sweat and temper and decision. How long had it been, anyway? One year? Two? No, it had been longer. She hadn’t slept with a man since April of ’42 when Bobby went east. Three years, she mused, both aghast and amused. She’d never have guessed she could go so long without companionship. It couldn’t continue like this forever.

  But she would never consider someone like Judge. He was just another victorious soldier eager for his foreign fling.

  In the distance, a kingfisher let go his mournful call, a scratchy bellow that accentuated her melancholy and forced her lacerating eye back upon herself. If she was to question Judge, why not herself? What made her think he would consider her, even for a moment? Whatever longing he felt was no doubt as reflexive, as instinctive, as her own. He was a lawyer and an investigator. He knew full well the crimes of which her father had been accused. He would never want a woman who carried the tainted blood of a war criminal.

  The question of her own guilt in the matter arose daily.

  Upon her demand, her father’s lawyer, Otto Kranzbuehler, had slipped her a copy of the indictment. The stories were difficult to comprehend, let alone believe. Twenty-five thousand workers had perished in the Essen facilities alone. Beatings, starvation, murder—the charges described a litany of brutalities beyond her imagining. Yet how was she in any way responsible? She hadn’t set foot in any of her father’s plants for ten years. Business was never discussed at home and the Bach women were not encouraged in their interest in the family’s affairs. Still, part of her refused to relinquish her guilt. She was a German. As a citizen, was it not her duty to know what was happening in the country of her birth?

  Ingrid searched the ink-black night for an answer and found none. For the second time that night she found herself examining the portico below for a solution to her problems.

  One push.

  The driveway was miles away, the cut brick hard and unforgiving. She imagined her fall—the sudden drop, the rush of air, the terrible thud. But her problems would not perish with her. How would Pauli eat tomorrow? Who would look after Papa? How would Herbert manage?

  Frightened by her mere consideration of the idea, Ingrid spun from the window and rushed to her bed.

  One more day, she promised herself.

  One more day and things will be better.

  CHAPTER

  31

  THE ARMORY WAS AS STILL AS a mausoleum. The place smelled of cosmoline and petrol and the dank rot of ten thousand wooden crates. It smelled of defeat, thought Erich Seyss as he stepped inside and a towel of moist air settled around his neck. The last time he’d come, a string of dying bulbs had provided some light. Tonight, the building lay shrouded in darkness. Electricity had been cut six hours ago. Looking into the maw of the building was like staring into the abyss, a black so complete it was without dimension.

  Seyss helped Rizzo close the barn-sized doors, then switched on his flashlight and whispered for his men to form up. A pool of beams grew at his feet as Bauer, Biedermann, and Steiner formed a circle around
him. The three had made their own way to Wiesbaden, uniting at a friendly bar a short distance from the armory where he and Rizzo had picked them up. “My associates,” Seyss had explained succinctly, and in a tone that begged no elaboration. He’d ordered them not to speak in Rizzo’s presence and so far they’d obeyed. He had no idea how the American would react if he knew he was arming four SS troopers. Seyss suspected Rizzo already had a hint. Two days ago, the American hadn’t stopped talking the entire drive up from Heidelberg. The south side of Philly, the delicious German fräuleins, Artie Shaw versus Harry James, Stalin versus Churchill—Rizzo had an opinion about everything and everybody. Tonight, he hadn’t spoken two words.

  “I take it our merchandise is where we left it?” Seyss asked.

  “Sure,” said Rizzo. “I mean, why shouldn’t it be? Nobody’s been here since the other day.”

  There it was again . . . the edginess.

  “Simply asking, Captain. No need for worry.”

  Rizzo laughed apologetically. “I don’t have too many museum curators looking for Russian machine guns.”