The Runner (16 page)

Guiding the jeep across the Maximilliansbrücke and up Maximillianstrasse, Honey sighed with distress. Munich was an absolute wreck. Eight-five percent destroyed, according to the Allied bombing survey. All this destruction was getting to him, making it harder and harder to keep up his smiling persona as the ever-ebullient young sergeant from Texas. There came a point when enough was enough. He’d seen it in others: the constant irascibility, the inability to get a decent night’s sleep, the need to keep moving, even if there wasn’t a damned thing to do. And he was reaching that place himself. He didn’t know what would happen if he ever got there. Some men started crying and didn’t stop for a month. Others blew their brains out. Neither alternative sounded very appealing. He just hoped it didn’t happen soon. He didn’t want to disappoint Wild Bill.

Ten minutes’ drive took him to an enormous redbrick building, formerly belonging to the Bavarian postal authority, that was more or less intact. Pulling over at the end of the block, he hopped from the jeep and entered the building. Today the boss was in town, down from Nuremberg where he was helping Justice Jackson check out the Palace of Justice as a possible site for the war crimes trial. Donovan was very concerned about Erich Seyss and anxious that everything possible was being done to track him down. He was also concerned about the men behind the investigation—especially Devlin Judge—though he wouldn’t say how or why. He wanted to hear everything that had happened at Lindenstrasse this morning. Honey’s job was to watch, listen, and report back.

Mounting the stairs to the third floor, Honey mulled over some of the things Donovan had told him three days ago. Apparently Seyss was guilty of a lot worse things than the Malmedy massacre. He had done unspeakable things on the Russian front.
Unspeakable.
That was Donovan’s word and he didn’t use it lightly. Seyss was dangerous all right. One of Hitler’s best. Donovan had said something else, too—something that made Honey very nervous. This wasn’t about a mere prison escape and the murder of an American officer. It was about something bigger.

As Darren Honey knocked on Donovan’s door, he had the feeling he was about to learn what.

J
UDGE ARRIVED IN HIS DRIPPING
office the next morning at seven, prepared for a long wait. Altman’s visit had unsettled him. If Oliver von Luck was dead, the investigation was, too. Unless the personnel records of the First SS Panzer Division listing the homes of Seyss’s comrades panned out, Judge had nowhere else to turn. He’d be left chained to his desk, twiddling his thumbs for the next three days while praying for Seyss to show himself and trip an alarm. He shot the wall calendar an unfriendly glance. Thursday, July 12. Three days until his transfer expired.

Time. He needed more time.

Bracing himself for the fact von Luck was dead, he spent an hour drafting a comprehensive list of divisional headquarters whose military police he would contact to keep the heat on Erich Seyss. The Seventeenth in Stuttgart, the 101st in Munich, the Seventh Cavalry in Heidelberg—which if he wasn’t mistaken was George Armstrong Custer’s former unit.

He was glumly whistling the Garry Owen when his phone rang five minutes later. It was headquarters of military intelligence at the War Department in Washington, D.C. In three rushed sentences, a timid lieutenant named Patterson confirmed Altman’s report, then abruptly hung up. Von Luck was, in fact, a Twentieth of July conspirator. He was arrested, tried by the People’s Court, and convicted. Sentence presumably death, though no official word had ever been received as to his fate. Click.

Judge threw down the phone, cursing the world. He damned Altman for being right and Lieutenant Patterson for confirming it! Pushing himself away from his desk, he rose and paced the perimeter of his office. There had to be another way to gather information about Seyss. Shadow his friends, track down his lovers, locate members of his extended family, but Judge had no time to gather such information. Stymied by his lack of resources, he sought refuge in anger. What kind of cruel gift was it to give a man every means to track down his brother’s killer while denying him the time to see the job through?

Fifteen minutes later, Judge’s world righted itself.

A captain with the military police detachment of the Forty-fifth Infantry Division radioed in that he recalled there being a prisoner named von Luck confined to a bed at Dachau. Yes, that Dachau—the oldest and largest of Hitler’s concentration camps situated fifteen miles northwest of Munich. A hospital had been set up on the premises to nurse the camp’s ill back to health. Though infirm, von Luck was under arrest as a security suspect. How could anyone forget that name?

Judge immediately contacted the officer now commanding Dachau and confirmed that the von Luck in question was, in fact, General Oliver von Luck, formerly deputy chief of the Abwehr, formerly trainer to German national champion Erich Siegfried Seyss, and that he was alive and in sufficient health to be questioned. An appointment to interview the prisoner was scheduled for two o’clock that afternoon.

Judge slammed his hand onto the desk and let go an enthusiastic, if abbreviated, rebel yell.

He was back in the game.

CHAPTER

17

G
EORGE
P
ATTON WAS LIVID.
The war had hardly been over sixty days and he’d been transformed from a general of the finest fighting men on God’s green earth into a cockamamie combination of bureaucrat, politician, administrator, and nursemaid. If this was what victory wrought, to hell with it! He wanted war. It was a children’s game compared to the tasks he’d been charged with as military governor of Bavaria.

Standing in his office on this warm, sunny morning, cigar in his mouth, he ran over the matters that needed his attention. He had to fix the roads, rebuild the bridges, repair the waterworks—including the whole damned sewer system. A toilet hadn’t flushed in Munich since 1944. He had to demilitarize and denazify the civilian government, essentially meaning he had to fire every goddamned man and woman worth a damn. He had to look after the care and provisioning of a million American soldiers, a million German POWs, and a million ragtag displaced persons whom nobody, especially himself, wanted anything to do with. And all of this . . .
all of this
. . . he was supposed to accomplish without the help of any German who had ever been a member of the Nazi party! It was madness. Seventy-five percent of the country’s 60 million citizens had had some tie or another to the National Socialists. Ike might as well ask him to juggle with one arm tied behind his back. Worst of all, now he had to hold hands with the godforsaken Russians as if they were a couple of besotted newlyweds. Madness!

A crisp knock on the door to his office relieved him of his miserable thoughts. “What is it?”

The door opened and two men walked in, Hobart “Hap” Gay, his chief of staff, and a squat, bowlegged Russian supremo he didn’t recognize. They all looked like apes anyway.

“Sir, I’d like to introduce Brigadier General Vassily Yevchenko,” said Gay, a tall, plain-looking general who had served with Patton since 1942. “General Yevchenko insisted on seeing you this morning. It seems there’s some problem with a few fishing boats we captured on the Danube River two days ago.”

“Excuse me, General,” Yevchenko cut in. “These boats on Danube. On
east side
of river and filled with German soldiers.”

Patton advanced a step, his cheeks coloring at the sound of the barbarian’s slur. All it took these days was the sight of a manure-brown uniform to set his blood racing. He’d had it up to his eyeballs with wining and dining the Russians. Since V-E Day, he’d eaten enough stuffed pig, borscht, and caviar, drunken enough vodka, and witnessed enough Cossack line dancing to last him the rest of this life and the next. It took every restraining muscle in his body to keep him from drawing his pistol and shooting this degenerate descendant of Genghis Khan right here and now.

“So?” barked Patton. “What the hell do you want me to do about it?”

“On behalf of Soviet government, we demand return of boats and prisoners immediately. All are property of Soviet armed forces.”

“What did you say?” Patton asked. “Did I hear something about a demand?”

Earlier he was livid. Now he was plain furious. Patton shot a disbelieving glance at Hap Gay, who shrugged his shoulders, then returned his attention to this pathetic example of Russian manhood. Stepping closer to the Russian, he saw that Yevchenko was sweating like a stuck pig.

“We demand return of river craft. They are property of Soviet armed forces.”

Hearing the Russian’s demand for the boats turned Patton’s mind to another subject that rankled him. Since occupying German territory, the Russian Army had been stealing every piece of machinery that wasn’t nailed down—washing machines, typewriters, radios, you name it, they grabbed it—and sending it back home. As for the big stuff, factories, refineries, foundries, they had entire divisions trained to unscrew every last nut, bolt, and screw and ship the lot east to Moscow. Scavengers is what they were. Vultures. What was worse, loudmouthed New York Jews like Henry Morgenthau not only condoned Stalin’s behavior, they insisted the Americans and Brits do the same. His crazed Morgenthau Plan—which Patton had figured for nothing more than some sort of ancient Talmudic revenge scheme—proposed robbing Germany of every last piece of industrial machinery it possessed. An eye for an eye, and all that. The crafty Semitic bastard even went so far as suggesting the Allies place members of the German military into indentured servitude for a period of ten years. Christ, but they were the same, the Jews and the Bolsheviks. Didn’t anyone see that the only ones the Americans could count on were the goddamned Germans themselves? Madness!

“Two tugboats, one barge, one skiff . . .’’ Yevchenko was describing the boats he “demanded” that the Americans return. “Rowboat with oars and dinghy.”

Suddenly Patton had had enough. Offering the Russian general his neatest smile, he strode to his desk, opened the top drawer, and drew out his pearl-handled revolver. With his smile firmly in place, he returned to Yevchenko—who by now had given up quivering for a posture of sheer frozen terror—cocked the pistol and placed it squarely against the man’s beribboned chest.

“Gay, goddammit!” he shouted, “Get this son of a bitch out of here! Who in the hell let him in? Don’t let any more Russian bastards into the headquarters.” He turned to Paul Harkins, a senior member of his staff, who had joined Yevchenko’s gripe session midstream. “Harkins! Alert the Fourth and Eleventh Armored and the Sixty-fifth Division for an attack to the east. Go! Now!”

Gay and Harkins dashed from the room to implement his orders.

Yevchenko, his pudgy countenance a squeamish yellow, remained face-to-face with Patton. After an eternity, neither man giving an inch, the Russian yelled “Devil!” then turned on his heels and ran after them.

When his office was once again empty, Patton let out a victorious belly laugh. In fact, he would have preferred to cry. This should be a day of rejoicing, he said to himself, without a worry about the future and the peace they’d fought for. But as no man would lie beside a diseased jackal, neither would he, George S. Patton, ever do business with the Russians.

He circled his desk, running a hand along its polished veneer, then collapsed into his chair. Churchill had had the right idea. Get into the Balkans, drive north into Central Europe, and take Prague and Berlin. Patton himself should have been in the German capital now. He’d pissed in the Rhine, why not on the Reichstag?

Restless with anger, frustration, and, despite the mountain of problems before him, boredom, he planted his hands onto the desk and stood, making a tour of his office. He stopped in front of a grand window overlooking the Isar River and the town of Bad Toelz. Past that lay a vast green plain, ideal territory for a rapidly advancing army of armored cavalry. And past that the East.

Patton picked up the telephone and rescinded the orders he’d given in Yevchenko’s presence. He was already in enough trouble with Ike for taking his daily equitation in the company of SS Colonel von Wangenheim. At least those bastards in the Waffen-SS knew how to fight. Strike like lightning, take no prisoners, and attack, attack, attack! They were magnificent sons of bitches! And they weren’t half wrong about what to do with the Jews, either. As for the Russians, they were scurvy bastards. The cooks in his Third Army could beat the living hell out of them.

Gay returned to the room with news that Patton had another visitor.

“Dammit, Hap, it better not be another red.”

“No, sir. It’s a delegation of city fathers. I believe, General, they wish to award you a commendation.”

Patton checked his watch. “By God, send them in, Hap. About time somebody thanks us for the bullshit we’re putting up with.”

“Right away, sir,” said Gay before retreating through the double doors.

Patton straightened his jacket and ran a hand along his collar, wanting to be sure that all of his stars were easily visible. The Boche loved pageantry almost as much as he did. Crossing to the window, he took up his position, hands clasped behind his back, eyes to the horizon. It was a decent pose, one that Napoleon used to greet his generals and lesser dignitaries. He fixed his gaze on a steeple in the distance, but his thoughts traveled far beyond.

To Prague. To Berlin. To Moscow.

East.

CHAPTER

18

I
NGRID GUIDED THE WHEELBARROW DOWN
the center of the dusty road. Her hands were raw, her shoulders sore and swollen.
Five more steps,
she told herself.
Five more steps, then I can rest.
She steered the heavy load around ruts and rocks and bumps and furrows, squinting to drive the sweat from her eyes. And when she had taken five steps, she took five more, and then another five.

Normally the trip to Inzell took less than an hour on foot. The road cut across the far side of the valley, skirting the lake before plunging into the forest where it descended rapidly in a dizzying series of switchbacks. Five miles and fifteen hundred feet later, it reached the village. Today, however, the journey might as well have been fifty miles. She’d left Sonnenbrücke two hours ago and was barely at the far end of the meadow. At this rate, she wouldn’t make Inzell until noon. She refused to think about the return trip up the mountain.

Gathering her breath, Ingrid struggled to adjust her grip on the slick handles. Her pace was deliberate, not only because of the weight of the load but because of its contents. Ninety-six bottles of wine lay in the iron bed, each wrapped in a damask hand towel borrowed from the linen closet. To be safe, she’d lined the wheelbarrow’s rusted bed with the smallest of her mother’s embroidered tablecloths. While the eight cases of Bordeaux wouldn’t enjoy the bumpy trek to Inzell, at least they’d reach their destination intact—which was more than she could promise herself.

Breathing in with one step, out with the next, Ingrid maintained her sober pace. In an effort to redistribute the load from her hands to her shoulders, she had fashioned a makeshift harness from the coarse rope Papa kept to bind fallen game. The harness was attached to the center of the bed and passed over her shoulders and around her neck. A chamois cloth laid against the nape of her neck protected her exposed flesh from the splintery twine.

A half mile ahead, the road disappeared into the shadows spread by a curtain of Arolla pines. A soft breeze skittered past, then died, teasing her with the relief the distant shade would provide. She spotted a patch of grass at the foot of a pine and decided it would make an ideal resting place.
Five more steps,
she whispered to herself.

A quarter of an hour later, she was there.

Collapsing onto the grass, Ingrid closed her eyes. The forest buzzed and chirped and squawked with the frenetic joy of a warm summer’s day but all she could hear was the throbbing of her own heart. After a moment, she sat up and took stock of herself. Her palms were an angry pink. Pale ovals surfaced across the underside of her fingers. Soon they would become blisters. Even seated, her legs trembled with fatigue. Pulling the cloth from her shoulders, she ran a hand along the back of her neck. The shallow groove left by the harness was hot to the touch. She checked her fingers for blood. Thankfully there was none.

Legs stretched before her, hands brushing the cool grass, Ingrid remained motionless until her heartbeat calmed and the sweat ceased pouring from her forehead. Her eyelids grew heavy. She wanted to sleep. A lazy voice told her not to worry about the return trip up the mountain. She could get a lift with an American serviceman. They were everywhere these days. Though forbidden to fraternize with Germans, none paid the rule much heed. Besides, she’d never had a problem convincing men to bend the rules—or even to break them.

Drifting off, she entertained a vision of herself stumbling into Inzell in her torn blue work dress and stained apron, the silk foulard tied around her head dark with sweat. Her face was blotchy; her lips crusted with spittle. She looked more like a haggard
hausfrau
than a damsel in distress. The horniest GI in Germany wouldn’t give her a second look!

Shaking off her desire to sleep, she stood and walked to the wheelbarrow. Several bottles had shifted during the journey. She rewrapped each and positioned them carefully on top of the pile. How easy it would be to drop one, she imagined. To lighten her load by a single, heavenly pound. Angered by her lingering lethargy, she dismissed the thought. Then what would she bring home to Pauli?

Ingrid bent her knees and draped the harness around her neck. Taking firm hold of the wooden grips, she rose. For one excruciating moment, every muscle in her being screamed. Clenching her jaw, she allowed herself one deep breath, then began walking. The path was three miles, all downhill.

She had done it before. She could do it again.

T
HE VILLAGE OF
I
NZELL BOASTED
a grocer, a butcher, a clothing store, and a combination tobacconist and kiosk. The stores were evenly spaced along either side of a narrow road. All were identical two-story buildings of burnished wood and whitewashed cement topped with dark shingle roofs. Running up the mountainside behind them were a host of chalets, cabins, and huts. Window boxes blossoming with daisies and dandelions brightened every sill. To all appearances, the war had never ventured into this alpine valley. At the far side of the village, a tall stone fountain shaped like Napoleon’s Obelisk shot water into a circular pool. Next to it stood a railway station, complete in every detail except one. No tracks passed before the passenger platform. Construction of the spur from Ruhpolding to Inzell had stopped in February 1943. After Stalingrad, every ingot of steel, every bar of iron, and every cord of wood was diverted to the protection of the Reich.

Setting down the wheelbarrow next to the fountain, Ingrid lifted the harness from her neck, then peeled the foulard from her hair and dunked her head into the cold water. A shiver of pride and relief swept her body. After rinsing her hands, she pulled her hair back into a ponytail and smoothed her dress. Her damp fingers made sure it clung in all the right places. Now she could do business.

“Good morning, Frau Gräfin Bach,” chirped Ferdy Karlsberg as she entered his tiny store. “How are you this lovely day?”

Like every grocer she’d known, Karlsberg was short and fat and, if not a pincher, at least a leerer. He had ginger hair and bright blue eyes and cheeks so bloated she swore he must be caching a dozen acorns for the winter. As usual, he was having a great deal of trouble keeping his eyes from her dress. Today, though, she welcomed his interest.

“Good morning, Herr Karlsberg,” she answered, determined to match his good cheer. “I’m wonderful, thank you.” She didn’t dare say it was much too hot for trudging down the mountain with a thousand-pound wheelbarrow. Instead, she chose her most vulnerable smile. “The usual, I’m afraid.”

She removed a yellow card from her dress and passed it across the counter. Her ration card entitled her to three loaves of bread, two hundred grams of meat, one hundred grams of butter, one hundred grams of sugar, a pound of flour and a pound of wheat each week. Theoretically, it was enough to ensure a daily intake of twelve hundred calories for three adults and one child. But theory died a quick death in the real world. The meat—sausage, actually—was often rancid. The butter, sour. The bread always black and stale. There was nothing wrong with the sugar, flour, or wheat once one removed the rat droppings.

Karlsberg tore a square of brown paper from a dispenser on the wall and laid it on the counter. Turning his back to her, he ran a hand along his shelves collecting first the bread, then the sausage. Naturally he chose the smallest ones. He measured out the flour and wheat, weighing them on a scale she was sure ran a few ounces heavy, then placed each in a paper sack. When she asked about her sugar and butter, he shrugged. “The food authority failed to provide any in the latest delivery. I am sorry.”

Ingrid offered Karlsberg her best smile. The food was hardly enough to feed a growing boy, let alone Papa, Herbert, and herself. She’d spent hours figuring how she might get her hands on a ration card entitling her to more food. Miners in the Ruhr were receiving double rations, as were farmers and skilled laborers. A widow and her child were hardly vital to the nation’s reconstruction.

There was another way.

She recalled her visit from General Carswell, his kindly smile and flirtatious manner.
Would she be interested in answering some questions about her father’s activities, say at the Casa Carioca in Garmisch?
Eyeing the meager provisions set on the counter, she decided she’d been naive to decline so quickly.

Karlsberg wrapped the bread and sausage, and using both of his stubby hands, slid them across the counter. “Is there something else I can help you with?” His eyes were fixed on the only thing he found more appealing than her wet dress—the wheelbarrow outside his front window.

Ingrid smiled coyly, baiting him. “Are you sure you don’t have any sugar?”

Karlsberg blushed, then grew angry at his shame. “Come around back and don’t make any trouble.”

Ingrid guided the wheelbarrow to the rear of the building where the grocer was already waiting. She found the charade ridiculous. Everyone in the valley knew Ferdy Karlsberg was a black marketeer. She supposed Herr Schnell, the local constable, had insisted he run his operations from the back of his store. It was just like a Nazi to condone an illegal activity as long as it didn’t soil the impression of legitimate business.

“What do you have to offer today?” Karlsberg asked, his smile back in place.

In the two months since the war had ended, Ingrid had become an expert in the workings of the black market. Reichsmarks were practically worthless, yet Germans were not permitted to own dollars. A new currency backed by a new government would not be introduced for a year or two. Still, people wanted something to eat, smoke, drink, and wear—in that order. The fiat of the new Germany was cigarettes, preferably American, preferably Lucky Strike. Want a pound of ham? Three cartons of Luckies. A bottle of White Horse scotch? Five cartons. A pair of hose? One carton. But most Germans did not have access to the American post exchange. For them—and Ingrid, who included herself in this number—any household item of value would do, provided you had someone to sell it to. Cameras and binoculars were in particularly hot demand. Wine, unfortunately, less so. For her, men like Ferdy Karlsberg existed.

Ingrid handed him a bottle, gauging his reaction as he removed the linen cloth.

Karlsberg’s eyes glowed when he eyed the label—a 1921 Château Petrus. “Is it all this quality?”

She nodded. What did the fool expect Alfred Bach kept in his cellar? A few Rieslings and a Gewürztraminer?

For the next hour, Karlsberg examined the bottles one by one, making notations on a block of paper. Petrus, Latour, Lafite-Rothschild, Eschezeau. Wines fit for a king. When he had finished, he tallied up his figures, and pronounced, “Ten thousand Reichsmarks.”

“That’s all?” Ingrid was unable to conceal her disappointment. Ten thousand Reichsmarks sounded like a lot, but these days it was only equal to a hundred prewar marks.

“The market dictates the prices, not I, Frau Gräfin.” He led her up the rear stairs into his back room. “How may I be of service?”

Ingrid handed Karlsberg a prepared list. His eyebrows rose and fell as he studied the paper. He gave her breasts a final ogle, then said, “Let us see.”

Karlsberg drew a blue linen curtain to reveal a wall of cardboard cartons and wooden crates. Spam. Peaches. Pears. Corned beef. The bounty of the American army. He took several cans from each and set them on the counter. An ice box squatted in the corner. He opened it and took out a half dozen boxes of Danish butter and a dozen eggs. A burlap bag full of sugar slouched against the wall. He emptied two brimming scoops into a paper bag. Apples. Potatoes. Corn. Soon the counter was covered with enough food to keep her household fed for a month.

She sifted the goods. Something was missing. “I asked for steaks. Last week you assured me that you would have some good U.S. chops.”

Karlsberg removed his spectacles and cleaned them with his apron. Several times he glanced up at her, only to look away when he met her gaze. Clearly he was mustering his courage. “I have the steaks,” he said haltingly, “but I’ve given you all I can for the wine.”

“You said ten thousand reichsmarks.”

“And I’ve given you ten thousand reichsmarks’ worth of groceries.”

“Nonsense!” she exclaimed. “These bottles cost at least that much
before the war,
if you were fortunate enough to find them.”

“Certainly, Fräu Gräfin is correct. However, customers are less discerning these days. A Latour may bring more than a simple
vin du table
, but not much.”

Ingrid fought to hold her tongue. The prick might as well have both hands in her pockets stealing her money. She could feel her face flush with anger.

Karlsberg reached below the counter and brought out a carton of Chesterfields. “Take some cigarettes. You can
kompensieren.
”

Kompensieren
meant to trade or to barter. This is how it was supposed to work: Ingrid would take Karlsberg’s cigarettes to a nearby farm and use them to purchase a hen or two, a dozen eggs, maybe even a gallon of fresh milk if she was so lucky. Bundling up her supplies, she’d find a train into the city—Munich, let’s say—and trade half her eggs for lightbulbs, one of the hens for heating oil, a pint of milk for some medicine. If particularly canny, she might end up with a few cigarettes to spare, and at day’s end, repurchase a bottle or two of wine from Karlsberg to toast her business acumen.

Good luck!

Ingrid had neither the time nor the opportunity to go from one vendor to the next trying to bargain for eggs or chickens or cigarettes. She lived in a secluded valley, fifty kilometers from the nearest town of any size. She had Ferdy Karlsberg and that was that. The only thing she could do with the Chesterfields was smoke them.

“It was steak I requested. It is for my boy.”

Karlsberg stared at her long and hard, then went to the freezer and took out a white box that he placed on the counter. “Here are the steaks,” he said, lowering his head as if ashamed by this show of weakness. “But you’ll get nothing else out of me.”