The Runner (20 page)

“The civilian wing. Reserved for businessmen, politicians, and industrialists eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the Führer. I have no idea what such men might have wanted with Seyss. I was an officer of the Wehrmacht, Major. I am a professional, not a fanatic.”

Judge thought it amusing how defeat tempered a man. Von Luck, the promulgator of such profound military axioms as “Victory forgives all, defeat nothing,” and “Imitation is the bravest form of deception.” To the professional soldier, passing oneself off as the enemy was an act of cowardice. And shooting a defenseless prisoner, a crime punishable by death. How much more fanatical could a professional soldier become?

“Still, I don’t envy you your task,” von Luck continued. “Once Seyss is committed to something . . . anything, he is unstoppable. Erich was never so much a Nazi as a patriot. He was fond of Houston Chamberlain. ‘The ideal politics is to have none; but this nonpolitics must be boldly recognized and forced upon the world.’ Understand that and you will understand Seyss.”

Judge got the drift, if not the nuances. Shoot first, ask questions later. Not much of a clue to a man’s whereabouts in a country of 50 million people. “So you’ve got no idea?”

Under the hospital smock, the wasted shoulders rose and fell, but von Luck’s eyes held their focus. “Are you familiar with the work of Wagner?”

Judge nodded, while Honey shifted restlessly on his stool.

“Think of Erich Seyss as Parsifal unmasked. At once a romantic and a realist. A man willing to destroy himself, as well as everything and everyone around him, to validate his principles.”

“Götterdämmerung,”
said Judge.
The Ring of the Nibelungen.
The mention brought back memories of the family gathered round the wireless on Sunday nights, listening to Wagner broadcast live from the Met. It had been his mother’s one lasting link to Germany. Music. And he’d grown to love it as much as she. Brahms, Beethoven, and, of course, Wagner. His mother claimed he was the greatest German to have ever lived. She’d never mentioned he was its greatest anti-Semite, too.

“Bravo, Major.” Von Luck leaned forward, his bemused expression indicating that he was ready to part with the information he held dear. “Did you know that Seyss deserted his post as Heinrich Himmler’s adjutant to be with the woman he loved? He knew his punishment would be severe, yet he chose to go all the same. In the event, he was sentenced to twelve months with a punishment battalion on the eastern front. Only a true German would destroy his career for a woman.”

“Who was she?” Judge phrased the question nonchalantly, but already his heart was beating faster.

“The richest and prettiest woman in Germany. Her name was Ingrid Bach.”

CHAPTER

22

S
ONNENBRÜ
CKE GLITTERED LIKE A SEASHELL
in the morning sun, a fairy-tale chateau with spiral towers and stone battlements. Surrounded on three sides by soaring granite peaks, it stood alone in a lush meadow at the head of a valley deep in the Bavarian Alps, ten kilometers from the Austrian border. A jewel, thought Devlin Judge, as he viewed the castle from a road high above the valley floor. Worthy of a prince, not a scoundrel.

Finding Ingrid Bach had proven easy. Her father, Alfred, stood high on the United Nations War Crimes Commission’s list of war criminals—ranked sixteenth among the first twenty-two to be tried that fall in Nuremberg—and his capture in April had made front-page news. “Germany’s Cannon King Corralled,” read one rag. “Bach Busted!” screamed another. Too senile to be put in the dock, he was being held under house arrest at his hunting lodge in the mountains. His daughter, Ingrid, was there, too, though of her own volition, acting as his nursemaid and caretaker.

Judge held his breath as the jeep squealed around yet another hairpin curve. The road was in miserable condition, hardly more than a rocky furrow carved from the mountainside. Two feet to his right, the track crumbled and fell away. He had only to extend his head over the jeep’s chassis to stare down a thousand-foot precipice. This part of the country had been dubbed the “national redoubt.” In these mountains, it was rumored Hitler had constructed an
alpenfestung
, a mountain fortress into which his loyal soldiers could withdraw to marshal their strength for one last stand against the Allied forces. If true, he had chosen well. The dense forest and rugged terrain made the area impenetrable.

Judge glanced at his driver, an eager corporal supplied by Seventh Army HQ. Despite the hazardous road conditions, he seemed perfectly at ease, humming “We’ll Meet Again” as he shifted through the gear box in preparation for another one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. Honey had begged off the trip, wanting to meet with sources of his own that he claimed might have information about Seyss’s whereabouts. No doubt men of Altman’s ilk.

The nose of the jeep dipped as it came around the curve. A rear tire dug into a pothole. The vehicle bucked, then shot down the road. Gasping, Judge fell back into this seat. He would never complain about Manhattan’s streets again.

Fifteen minutes later, he arrived at Sonnenbrücke.

A pink granite driveway wound for a mile through waist-high grass. They passed a gazebo overlooking a pond slick with algae and a fractured dock extending from the shores of a small lake. Two jeeps were parked a half mile from the lodge. Several GIs, all with mitts, stood in a square playing catch. Apparently Alfred Bach posed little threat of escaping the bonds of his house arrest. The driver slowed and gave Judge’s name to the nearest soldier. The GI threw a fastball to his buddy in left field, then waved them on.

Judge waited until the jeep had come to a complete halt and the engine extinguished before getting out. He hadn’t thought about his ribs or his tailbone for the last two hours. It was his legs that were killing him, rigid as pistons and still braced for the unexpected tumble off the cliff. A loud bang in the woods beyond the lake made him duck his head. The sharp crack was followed by another, and then another, until it sounded as if someone were blowing off a string of firecrackers.

An elderly manservant in a black frock coat and striped trousers opened the door before he could knock. “May I help you, sir?” His English was impeccable—Oxford or Cambridge or wherever all the snobs in merry old England lived.

“Devlin Judge, here to see Frau Bach.” As he spoke there was a commotion behind the door. The butler took a step back and whispered something about “being polite,” and “it not being her place,” then stalked off. In his place stood a slender blond woman wearing a sleeveless brown dress.

“We’ve really had quite enough of your chums coming onto our land and acting as if they can take as much game as they please,” she began, in the same faultless English. “Morning, noon, and night, that’s all one hears.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
It’s absolutely dreadful. Father detests it. He jumps in his bed every time a rifle goes off. He’s very ill and needs all the rest he can get. That means peace and quiet.” She paused long enough to study the rank insignia on his shoulder. “Major. And as for the chamois they’re butchering, I shouldn’t be surprised if the forests will soon be empty of them. One doesn’t use a bloody machine gun to kill a small antelope. Wouldn’t you agree, Major . . .’’

“Judge,” he answered. “Devlin Judge. Judge Advocate General’s Corps.” He winced at his mistake. “Excuse me, Provost Marshal’s office.” In the course of her speech she had moved onto the landing, so that now she stood only a few inches from him. She wasn’t beautiful, at least not by New York standards. Her hair showed dirty roots and fell in an uneven tide onto her shoulders. Her face was too angular and bore not a trace of makeup. A universe of tiny freckles dotted her nose and cheeks. Her lips were dry, and in places, cracked. Why, then, was he so insistently cataloguing her faults?

She had set a hand on her hip and was nibbling at a chewed fingernail. “So?”

Inclining his head, he asked slowly, “So what?”

“So what are you going to do about the ruckus? Just because we lost the war doesn’t mean you can step all over us. The shooting is driving us mad. Forget about Papa.
I’m
going to kill myself if it doesn’t stop soon.”

Judge needed a moment to recover from her verbal barrage. Making a half turn, he stared out at the forest, and as if sensing his attention, the shooting stopped.

“Congratulations, they’ve taken another chamois.” Her triumphant grin stank of sarcasm. She looked over his shoulder, but not before he noticed that she had a chipped front tooth. “I should bloody well charge for them. Twenty dollars a head. That would solve things.”

“I assume you are Ingrid Bach,” Judge said finally, his patience wearing thin.

“Go to the top of the class, Major. If you don’t mind, though, I prefer my husband’s name. Von Wilimovsky. Ingrid
von Wilimovsky
. These days Bach is about as bad as Hitler. Pity us, don’t you?”

Pity wasn’t the word he had in mind. Disdain and scorn were more like it, and if she continued rambling on like a broken phonograph, he’d add despise to the list, too. He hadn’t expected her to be overtly contrite, but Christ, she could at least play at humility. Instead, she was just one more rich girl waiting for the favors she was owed.

She stepped into the entry and motioned for Judge to follow.

He was inside a medieval lair, a wood-paneled great room that could swallow his one-bedroom apartment whole. A minstrel’s gallery circled the perimeter, and below it hung enough portraits to fill the Met. The paintings were spaced at three-foot intervals. Here and there, however, one was missing, leaving him with the impression of a decaying set of teeth. A great fireplace yawned at the far end of the room, dark, unlit, and tall enough for a man to step into.

Seyss, you here?
Judge thought to himself. In a place this big, he could keep himself hidden for years. Maybe he should have taken Honey’s advice and brought along a few men to search the premises.

“I expect you’re here to see Father,” she said. “He’s no better than last week. The doctors call it
zweite kindheit.
Second childhood.”

Judge saw no reason to disabuse her of the notion. “Keep ’em talking” was the interrogator’s cardinal rule. She led him into a small parlor, with throw rugs and easy chairs and lace-curtained windows looking onto the lake. The horns of a dozen small mountain goats and, he guessed, chamois, decorated the paneled wall. Sitting down, she freed a cigarette from the folds of her dress.

Judge tucked his cap under an arm, drawing a Zippo from his pocket. He’d never been a smoker, but experience had taught him that good manners opened doors as well as loosened tongues. “Allow me.”

“An officer
and
a gentleman,” she said, guiding the lighter to the cigarette. “How pleasant.”

Judge lowered himself into an armchair opposite her, gazing at the lake, then at the imposing mountains. Not a bad place to pass the war. On the table next to him was a petite green porcelain vase. A second glance revealed a glass cabinet against the wall filled with similar pieces.

“Schönes Dresden,”
he said, speaking German to satisfy an unannounced urge to impress her.

Ingrid Bach brushed the vase with her fingertip. “Meissen is my one true love. Did you know that King Augustus thought it would prevent him from growing old ‘An antidote to decay,’ he called it. When he died, they counted forty thousand pieces of porcelain inside his palace.”

“My mother was a collector, too,” said Judge, looking to establish a common ground.

“Oh?”

“Well, not exactly. She had two pieces.”

Ingrid laughed, then caught herself. “That’s a start, anyway. Why didn’t you say you were from Berlin?”

“My mother was from Berlin,” he said. “I’m from New York.” He never volunteered Brooklyn.

“My cousin is from New York, too. He’s in the Foreign Service. I believe he’s traveling to Potsdam as we speak. His name is Chip DeHaven. Do you happen to know him?”

Judge raised a disbelieving eyebrow. Most recently, Carroll “Chip” DeHaven had served as an aide to President Roosevelt at Yalta and Teheran, but he had made a name for himself as first secretary to the U.S. embassy in Moscow. During the first years of the war, he’d been a vocal supporter of Lend-Lease and one of the few to call for America’s early entry into the war. Judge couldn’t imagine that she was related to such an East Coast blue blood. “Your cousin is Chip DeHaven?”

“Father’s sister’s second son. Just don’t call him Carroll. He positively hates that name.” And when she saw his continued skepticism, she shot him a nasty glance. “Five eleven Fifth Avenue. Corner of Sixty-second. Just up from the Sherry. We used to visit when I was a little girl.”

She meant the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, of course. Suddenly he found her smug delivery overbearing. He knew why, even if he didn’t care to admit it. She was the rich girl lording it over her poor guest. Every bit as annoying as the Yalies who infested the U.S. attorney’s office.
The Sherry.
As if she owned the place. No doubt she’d crossed on the
Hindenburg.

“Actually, I’m not here to see your father,” he said, sitting straighter to signal that the pleasantries were over. “I’m an investigator with the Third Army. That’s General Patton’s outfit. I came to speak with you.”

Ingrid Bach’s face lost its color. “Me? Whatever for? Shouldn’t you be chasing down my brother? I mean, he’s the shit of the family. I’m just a nurse and widow.”

Judge had never seen a guiltier response. The shifting of focus off herself; the hands grappling at each other; the voice jumping half an octave. She was up to something. The only question was whether it was harboring a fugitive war criminal.

“We’re looking for a man whom we have reason to believe may have visited you recently.”

Her glib tongue had suddenly grown tired. “Oh?”

“His name is Erich Seyss.”

“Erich Seyss?”
For a moment longer she stared at him with wide eyes. Then her shoulders dropped and she loosed a relieved sigh. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve come all this way to ask me if I’ve seen Erich. Whatever for? I’m sorry to ruin your day, but I’ve neither seen nor heard from him in ages.”

“When exactly did you see him last?”

“October twelfth, 1939,
exactly
. My twentieth birthday. He told me he couldn’t marry me. A lovely gift, wouldn’t you say? It beat the hell out of anything Papa gave me.”

She stubbed out her cigarette and pulled back a curtain to look over the lake. He could see that her mind was moving on to matters of greater importance. He was no longer a problem to be dealt with, just one to be dismissed.

“Has your father had any contact with Seyss?”

“Papa?” She kept her gaze fixed on the lake. “The only person Papa has contact with is me.”

It was evident to Judge that she was telling the truth—about Seyss and about her father—but something compelled him to force the issue, maybe her brusque dismissal of his visit, maybe her unquestioned confidence, or maybe because, after Ingrid, he didn’t have any place left to turn. “I’d still like to ask him myself.”

She jerked her head from the window, her attention once again where it should be. “Papa is very ill. He does things to himself. I’m afraid I cannot permit you to see him.”

But Judge was already rising from his chair and moving past her into the great hall. Nothing conveyed authority better than motion, even if he didn’t have any idea where old man Bach was laid up. “I’m sorry, but I can’t return to HQ without having questioned him about Seyss. Can you please show me to his room.” It was not a request.

She stood at his shoulder, glaring at him with undisguised contempt. “Follow me.”

She led him across the hall and through a large kitchen. A basket of wood sat next to a cast-iron furnace. A half-plucked chicken lay splayed on a cutting board large enough to slaughter a buck—which he realized was what it had been intended for. A bolt of silver fabric was draped across a chair, a needle and thread placed on the table nearby. Behind a glass partition, a wine rack ran from floor to ceiling. Only a few bottles remained. For such a wealthy family, the kitchen looked downright barren.

Ingrid walked ahead with a watchman’s deliberate pace, not saying a word. Her silence dug at him like a pickax. Part of him wished he hadn’t asked to see her father. He could tell her right now he’d decided it wasn’t necessary; he could apologize and go back to Bad Toelz. But each time he began to speak the words died stillborn on his tongue. A stronger voice reminded himself that he was just doing his duty as a police officer. He wasn’t there to be her friend.

A
LFRED
B
ACH LAY ASLEEP IN
a large bed in a sunlit room on the second floor of the lodge. A white comforter had been drawn up over his shoulders so that only his mottled face and wispy gray hair were visible.