The Runner

by Christopher Reich

  “Ingrid,” he shouted, his voice sandy and weak.

  And waiting, he begged the star, and whatever force had made it, for an answer.

  But by now every security officer in Potsdam had descended onto the terrace. The FBI men and their machine guns were pushing their way through ranks of uniformed NKVD regulars. British agents had surrounded a wholly unperturbed Winston Churchill, who Judge heard call for “a whiskey, a bloody great big one, and make it snappy.” Stalin stood nearby, huddled with his top commanders.

  Peering through a forest of milling legs, Judge fought for a sign of Ingrid. Then he saw her; she lay prone, her legs crossed at the ankle, her form unmoving. Clenching his stomach, he called her name through gritted teeth. “Ingrid!”

  Abruptly, his view was blocked by a familiar figure kneeling at his side.

  “Are you all right, young man?”

  President Harry S Truman folded his jacket into a square and placed it under Judge’s head.

  Judge touched a hand to his hip and it came away warm and wet. The other slug had taken him in the shoulder. Curiously, his entire body was numb. The pain, he realized, would come later. He pulled himself forward an inch or two to regain sight of Ingrid Bach.

  “Keep still,” Truman said, his earnest features etched with concern. “We’ll get a doctor here in a jif.”

  Suddenly Ingrid’s legs twitched. General Vlassik was kneeling at her side, speaking to her. Applying a compress to her shoulder, he helped her sit up. Her face was pale, her blouse soaked through with blood, but she was alert. She was alive.

  Judge closed his eyes for an instant, sure it was his Francis Xavier who had answered his prayer. “Yessir,” he said.

  Truman brushed his hand against Seyss’s uniform. “Jesus. One of theirs. And I thought Stalin had security wrapped up damned tight.”

  “No,” Judge protested, fighting to raise himself on an elbow. “He’s not a Rus—”

  A firm hand pressed him to the ground, cutting short his words. Crouching alongside the president, Darren Honey gave a discreet but unmistakable shake of the head.

  “Not what?” Truman asked.

  Judge looked at Honey a moment longer, then he knew. They had wanted this to happen. Honey. Vlassik. The OSS and whoever was behind it.

  “Nothing,” said Judge. “I wasn’t sure if he was dead.”

  “He’s dead all right, damned Communist.” Harry Truman glanced over his shoulder. Seeing Stalin, his jaw hardened. His eyes shot back to Judge, but he was looking right through him. “Maybe I can’t trust that sonuvabitch after all.”

  Judge turned his head, losing himself among the tall pines that bordered the rolling lawn. No, he thought to himself, you probably can’t. And maybe it’s better that way. Maybe mistrust was the best form of vigilance.

  And closing his eyes, he saw himself standing on the docks of the Brooklyn Navy Yard with Francis: two brothers with their hands locked together in farewell. Curiously, he was unable to speak, unable to offer any warning about the future, even to say good-bye, and after a moment, Francis turned and disappeared into the busy crowd, leaving him only the question in his eyes and the weight of his expectations.

  EPILOGUE

  “DAMMIT, WOODRING,” BELLOWED GEORGE PATTON, “have you got this fine example of American engineering gassed up and ready to go yet? We have ourselves a few dozen pheasants to nab for Sunday dinner. They won’t wait all day, you know.”

  Private First Class Horace C. Woodring snapped open the rear door of the custom-made Cadillac model 75 and fired off his crispest salute. “Yessir, General. She’s all set. Guns and the dog will ride up ahead with Sergeant Spruce in the jeep. If you’ll just climb in, I promise I’ll have you in the woods bagging those birdies inside of two hours.”

  Patton roared with laughter and slid into the roomy backseat. “Get in, Hap,” he called to his long-time adjutant, General Hobart Gay. “I told you Woodring was the best. He’s the fastest there is. Better than a Piper Cub to get you there ahead of time. Isn’t that right, Woodring?”

  “A private never disagrees with a general.”

  The cheerful driver waited for Gay to settle in next to Patton, then shut the door behind him. Sliding behind the wheel, he spent a moment adjusting the rearview mirror so that he could keep sight of Patton at all times. It was rare to see the general in such high spirits. His mood had been almost unremittingly grim since his transfer to the Fifteenth Army in early October. Losing command of his beloved Third Army had dealt him a crushing blow, though everyone agreed afterward that he’d never been cut out to be military governor of Bavaria, or any other place for that matter. Not with his mouth. Not old “Blood and Guts.”

  The last straw had come at a press conference in September. Before an assembly of some fifty reporters, Patton had publicly voiced his sentiments about the Nazis being no different from Republicans or Democrats, while admitting that he’d made use of many former Nazi officials to run the Bavarian government.

  There was more to Eisenhower’s decision to relieve Patton of his command than that. Much more. But Woodring kept those facts to himself. After all, he reminded himself, he was only a driver and not privy to such sensitive information.

  Making a sweeping left turn, he powered the Cadillac onto the autobahn, his keen blue eyes searching the asphalt for signs of ice. Sunday, the ninth of December, had dawned raw and cold. At 7:00 A.M., the thermometer hanging outside the motor pool had read thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Two hours later, a timid sun had broken through the cloud cover. Expanses of newly fallen snow hugged both sides of the highway, sparkling like twin fields of diamonds.

  Their route took them south from Bad Nauheim along the Kassel-Frankfurt-Mannheim autobahn toward the wild, game-rich forests of the Rhine-Palatinate. Approaching the town of Bad Homburg, Patton insisted they exit the autobahn and visit the ruins of a restored Roman outpost in the foothills of the Taunus Mountains. Woodring obliged. In his few weeks driving for the general, he’d learned to expect detours—Patton always wanted to visit this hospital or that cemetery—and had factored a little extra time into that morning’s timetable.

  For ten minutes, Patton slogged through the muddy ruins in his knee-high leather boots, crowing about “his friend Caesar” and “conquering Gaul” and “the glory of battle.” Woodring smiled inwardly. The crazy old goat truly believed he’d fought at Julius Caesar’s side.

  Just before ten, the two-vehicle convoy left Bad Homburg, continuing on its southward trek. Patton sat forward in his seat, a rapt expression illuminating his dour features. They were driving over territory the Third Army had taken eight months before. Past Frankfurt. Past Darmstadt. Past Wiesbaden. Patton didn’t stop talking for a moment’s time, pointing out bridges his men had captured, beaming with undisguised pride at his soldiers’ derring-do, and, of course, his own.

  Near eleven, Woodring left the autobahn for a second time, transferring to National Route 38. In another quarter of an hour, he spotted a sign indicating that they were nearing the city of Mannheim. Soon he began to recognize familiar landmarks. A kiosk. A hotel. A police station. He’d traveled this part of the route a dozen times in the dead of night. Flashing past on their right was a marker showing that they’d entered the village of Kaefertal. The road was littered with debris: half-tracks lying upside down, charred Tiger tanks, horsecarts splintered and upended. The town looked as if the war had ended yesterday.

  “Look at the derelict vehicles,” Patton exclaimed, grimacing at the passing sights. “How awful war is. Think of all the waste.”

  “It’s terrible, sir. Just terrible,” answered Woodring, but his eyes were glued to the road in front of him, not on the parade of broken armor. Approaching from the opposite direction was a large two-and-a-half-ton truck, a standard army transport. Seeing it, Woodring flashed his lights once and got a flash in return.

  Two hundred yards separated the vehicles. One hundred. Woodring moved the Cadillac toward the center of the road. At fifty yards
, he accelerated to thirty miles per hour, raising an arm to point out a crumpled Mercedes staff car off the right-hand side of the vehicle.

  “Would you look at that?” said Patton, half standing in the cabin, craning his neck to get a glimpse.

  It was precisely then that the oncoming transport turned left, directly into the Cadillac’s path. Woodring sat back in his seat and calmly spun the wheel to the left, waiting a half second, then braking with all his might. He heard Gay say “Sit tight,” and a split second later, the two vehicles collided. With an angry scream of metal, the truck’s right front fender plowed into the Cadillac’s hood, crushing the radiator and releasing a geyser of steam. Patton, already leaning on the front seat, was thrown forward, his head striking the dashboard, then flung back like a rag doll into the passenger seat.

  The accident was over in a second, the truck come to rest at a right angle to the Cadillac.

  Woodring flung open his door and rushed to the rear of the vehicle. Patton lay in Gay’s arms, bleeding profusely from wounds to the forehead and scalp.

  “Hold tight, General, we’ll get an ambulance here pronto. You’re going to be fine, sir.”

  “I believe I am paralyzed,” said Patton, his gravelly voice absent any fear. “I’m having trouble in breathing. Rub my shoulders, Woodring. Work my fingers for me. Rub my hands.”

  Woodring did as he was told while Gay supported the general from the rear. Running a hand behind Patton’s neck, he felt a distinct outcropping an inch or two below the skull.

  Patton looked at him imploringly. “I said rub my hands, dammit.”

  Just then the truck driver stuck his head in the open door. Woodring met his gaze and nodded. Everything had gone off as planned. Patton’s neck was broken at the third vertebra. It was a mortal injury. He’d linger a few days, a week at most, but there was nothing any doctor could do to save him. By Christmas, he’d be dead and buried.

  George Patton was staring up at Woodring, a tear welling in his eye. “Jesus,” he moaned. “This is a helluva way to die.”

  Woodring sighed grimly, pleased he wouldn’t have to speed things along. The OSS taught a man to do almost anything. He’d killed Nazi generals while they slept on the eve of D-Day, chased a fugitive war criminal across Germany, even helped save the life of the president of the United States. Hardest, though, was getting used to being called a different name every day. Woodring. Honey. Who knew what was next? Maybe someday someone would use his real name: Honnecker.

  For now, though, it was still too German.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Many veterans of the Second World War, both American and German, offered generously of their time and recollections during the research and writing of this novel. Some I am proud to acknowledge, others have preferred to remain anonymous.

  In Germany, Dr. Gunther Weber shared with me his experiences of day-to-day survival in the wreckage of postwar Germany, as well as elements of his training and duty with the 1st Parachute Division of the German army. In the course of an afternoon, over a delightful apfelstrudel and more than a few Pilsner Urquells, two strangers from different generations and different countries became friends.

  Colonel James Scanlon (USAF ret.) related the derring-do of a nineteen-year pilot who after completing 30 missions aboard a B-17 “Flying Fortress” transferred to P-51s so he could “have a little fun.”

  Master Sergeant Jewel Phegley (USA ret.) was kind enough to describe his time as a “Nazi hunter” in southern Germany.

  Lt. Col. James Milano (USA ret.) discussed his experience in Austria working to establish an intelligence network to spy on Soviet occupation forces. His excellent book Soldiers, Spies, and the Rat Line (Brassey’s) revealed a good deal about the sordid dealings of the United States intelligence services with former members of the SS. Anyone interested in the subject, and Klaus Barbie, in particular, could do no better than to view the riveting documentary Hotel Terminus, by Marcel Ophuls.

  General Thomas Ayers, (USA ret.) was kind enough to steer me through the labyrinthine animal that is the United States Army in the course of my research.

  I would additionally like to thank my outstanding guides in Germany: Elizabeth Keiper in Dresden, Sarah Slenczka in Nuremberg, and Bob Woshington in Berlin.

  Few figures in the annals of the Second World War are as fascinating as General George S. Patton, Jr. To be sure, he was a military leader of unsurpassed skill and vital to a timely victory in the European Theatre of Operations. Yet for a man who demanded the utmost in discipline from his men, he was often incapable of exercising a like control over himself. It is this, his flawed humanity, that makes him such an exhilarating and controversial figure.

  The roots for my characterization of Patton were drawn wholly from the historical record. I can recommend without reservation two superb biographies: Patton: A Genius for War by Carlos D’Este and Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago. It is worth noting here that the OSS was well aware of Patton’s leanings and in June of 1945 ordered his phone tapped. Portions of his conversations are quoted verbatim in the novel, though I must point out that his correspondent was fictitious. Patton was relieved of his command September 22, 1945, for inflammatory comments concerning his use of former Nazis in the occupational government of Bavaria. General Dwight Eisenhower said afterward that he hadn’t fired Patton for what he’d said, but for what he was going to say next.

  I must mention that Private First Class Horace C. Woodring had no known affiliation with the OSS. He was merely the soldier unlucky enough to be driving the car in which George Patton suffered his fatal injuries.

  The rest is the author’s fantasy.

  As always there are many others who deserve my sincerest thanks.

  Susanne Reich was a partner from the beginning, offering love, encouragement, as well as invaluable editorial advice.

  Sarah Piel at Arthur Pine and Associates cast a constructive eye over early versions of the manuscript and lent her excellent judgment to subsequent revisions. Lori Andiman, also of Arthur Pine and Associates, helped spread the word across the globe.

  Leslie Schnur showed the author her every faith in his talents. For her support I will be forever grateful.

  Irwyn Applebaum and Nita Taublib welcomed me with open arms and pulled out all the stops, artistically and professionally.

  To my editor, Mitch Hoffman, I offer my respect and thanks. His unflagging enthusiasm, deft insight, and ever diplomatic criticism made a tough job easier, and maybe even fun.

  Finally, to my agent, Richard Pine, my heartfelt appreciation. Two down and a dozen to go!

  Continue reading for a taste of

  Chris Reich’s

  next heart-pounding thriller . . .

  THE

  FIRST BILLION

  —coming from

  Delacorte Press in fall 2002!

  “SO YOU’VE SEEN IT?” Gavallan had demanded as Grafton Byrnes entered his office.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it,” answered Byrnes with a calm Gavallan did not share. “Not the best PR one of our deals has ever gotten, but not the worst, either.”

  “I’m not so sure. Timing couldn’t be worse, that’s for certain.”

  Byrnes strolled across the room with the easy authority that was his trademark. He was taller by an inch, dressed in a navy crew neck sweater over a white oxford button-down, brown corduroy slacks, and Belgian loafers polished to a spit shine. His face was craggy and lean, with eyes that appraised but never accused, and a smile that forgave all sins.

  “Want something to drink? Pellegrino?” Gavallan spun in his chair and opened the compact refrigerator hidden in his credenza. “I’ve got one of those new lattes in a bottle. How ’bout that?”

  Byrnes took up position behind him, peering over his shoulder. “Nothing with caffeine, thanks. I’ll take a mineral water. No, no . . . one without any bubbles.”

  Gavallan handed him a bottle of Ozarka and selected an ice-cold can of Orange Crush for himself. He considered h
is teenager’s sweet tooth his only vice. Vintage European automobiles, chilled Russian vodka, and Stevie Ray Vaughan playing the blues at excruciating volumes counted as passions, and were thus exempt.

  “Skoal, brother,” he said, lifting the can of soda pop.

  “Skoal, my man.”

  It was a joke between Texans, “Skoal” being both an informal “Cheers” and the tried-and-true chewing tobacco of their youths.

  Gavallan had known Grafton Byrnes his entire adult life. They had met at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where Byrnes had played regimental commanding officer to Gavallan’s plebe. Every time Gavallan mouthed off, it was Byrnes who administered the punishment. A hundred push-ups on the deck. A thousand-yard sprint in shorts and tennis shoes through waist-high drifts of midwinter snow. Two hours of reciting the Uniform Code of Military Justice while doing Roman chairs against the commons room wall. If harsh, the abuse was well-intentioned. It was Byrnes’s job to make sure Cadet John J. Gavallan made it through the Zoo, and to that end he tutored him in calculus, instructed him on how to properly hold his knife and fork, and taught him to iron a razor-sharp crease into his trousers.

  Retiring from the Air Force a major, Byrnes had followed him to Stanford Business School, then to Black Jet Securities two years after its founding. He was pretty much Gavallan’s older brother, and as close a friend as he could ever hope for.

  “You know this guy, the Private Eye-PO?” Gavallan asked.

  Byrnes shrugged, offering a wry smile. “I do now. Who is he exactly? Or should I say ‘what’? Some sort of Internet gadfly?”

  “You could say that. Calls himself the Robin Hood of the Valley’s pink slip brigade. He spies on the rich to protect the poor.”

  “The poor being who?” smirked Byrnes. “The laid-off techies who can’t afford their Beamer payments?”

  “More like the average investor who lost his shirt when tech stocks took a beating.”