The Runner (22 page)

CHAPTER

24

H
IS NAME WAS
O
TTO
K
IRCH,
but everyone knew him as the Octopus, said Hans-Christian Lenz, and he controlled the upper levels of the black market in the Frankfurt–Heidelberg corridor. He was a fat man, three hundred pounds if an ounce, bald as an egg with a schoolboy’s apple cheeks and a rattlesnake’s glassy eyes. Dangerous, Herr Major. Very dangerous. No one knew where he’d been or what he’d done during the war. Most guessed he’d laid up somewhere safe—Vichy, France, Portugal, maybe Denmark—waiting for the fighting to end.

Waiting for
his time
to begin, Seyss added silently.

The two men were driving south toward Mannheim in Rudy Lenz’s battered prewar Citroën truck. The previous night’s haul was loaded in the back, concealed behind a pile of brick and masonry. The added weight slowed the truck to twenty miles an hour. It was good cover. The only Germans driving these days were those rebuilding their ravaged cities. Every few minutes an American jeep or truck sped by, horn blaring. The victors owned the road along with everything else.

Traffic thinned as they entered the outskirts of Mannheim. Allied bombing had so completely destroyed the city that there were simply no more people living there. Lenz turned right off the main road and for the next forty minutes guided the truck onto a series of unpaved tracks, each bumpier than the last.

The Octopus ran his operation from the ruins of a turbine-assembly plant in the center of town, a part of the city that looked to Seyss as if it had been hammered flat into a million tiny pieces. Where the plant had stood was a mystery, for nothing remained taller than five feet. Not a thing. It was a desert landscape, with miniature dunes of rubble and ash rising and falling as far as the eye could see. At eight o’clock on a clear and breezy morning, not a soul was visible.

In the midst of this wasteland, Lenz cut the engine and announced that they had arrived.

“Where the hell is everybody?” asked Seyss as he climbed from the cabin.

“Wait and see. Whoever says the German is not a resourceful animal is mistaken.”

Seyss walked to the rear of the truck, flipped down the tail, and began hoisting boxes to the ground. He couldn’t share his companion’s jovial mood until the transaction was completed and a thousand dollars, or its equivalent in Reichsmarks, lined his pockets.

“Don’t bother,” said Lenz, motioning at the boxes. “There’s plenty enough men for that. We’re
gross chieber,
you and I. Big-timers. We don’t do our own lifting.”

Seyss shook his head and kept hauling boxes from the truck. If nothing else, the activity helped relieve his tension. He had not slept well the night before, despite the success of their midnight raid. He was exposing himself too often. Walking too freely through cities rife with Americans and their lackeys. Revealing his name to too many people. He had no right to such bravado. He wasn’t worried about Bauer or Biedermann or Steiner, but now Lenz, too, knew his identity. Yes, Lenz was a
kamerad.
Yes, he was doing him a great service by turning over the profits from his half of the take. But what about his brother, Rudy? It went without saying that he knew Seyss’s name, too. Could
he
be trusted? The chain was growing longer. Sooner or later there would be a weak link.

A loud thump interrupted Seyss from his work. He put down the box in his hands and turned to see a line of men emerging from what looked like the maw of a coal mine, just fifteen feet away. The men approached the truck, several doffing their caps, and wordlessly took over the job from Seyss. A few minutes later the truck was empty and they’d disappeared back into the ground.

“I told you,” said Lenz. Standing with his arms crossed and his droopy mustache, he looked more than ever like an angry walrus. “It’s all underground here. Like the route to Hades.”

Seyss smiled as he followed Lenz into the tunnel, but he was growing anxious. He didn’t like confined spaces, much less ones controlled by the enemy. For some reason, that’s where he had cubbyholed Mr. Otto Kirch. Torches wired to shell-pocked walls lit the way. The place smelled of kerosene and tobacco, not cigarette smoke so much as the dusky scent of an old cigar. The ramp gave way to a large flat deck. Squinting in the half-light, Seyss saw that the area had once been an underground garage. The ceiling was awkwardly low, as if a bomb had landed on it dead center and not destroyed it, but by its sheer weight dropped it by five feet. Ahead, their boxes were visible, stacked neatly under a dim bulb.
Electricity,
mused Seyss.
Somewhere there is a generator and the oil to run it. What else is down here?

Presently a short, immensely obese man stepped from behind the boxes. He wore dark pants and a white shirt dotted with perspiration. A maroon beret sat atop his head like an egg cozy. Seyss needed no introduction. It was Otto Kirch. The Octopus.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” he called, his voice high-pitched and nasal. “I was just completing my final tally. I commend you, Herr Lenz. An excellent take. Excellent!” He tucked his clipboard under a meaty arm and walked over to where his two visitors stood. “Come to my office. I don’t conduct business in the open.” He hooked an arm with Lenz and guided him toward a steel door cut into the nearest wall.

Seyss followed at a polite distance, knowing Kirch was questioning Lenz as to his colleague’s identity. As much as Seyss did not like being here, Kirch must dislike his visiting. Each was a risk to the other’s security. Ducking his head, Seyss passed through the steel portal into a short tunnel, maybe five feet long. He emerged into an airy chamber, mercifully with a higher ceiling, something akin to the hold of an oceangoing freighter but three times the length. His first instinct was to search for exits. On both walls he found steel doors similar to the one he had just passed through. A dozen circular ducts holed the ceiling, providing a steady flow of fresh air. Kirch, it seemed, had created his own underground complex, blasting his way from garage to bomb shelter to storm drain. The route to Hades indeed. Who knew how big a maze he had created?

Advancing into the brighter recesses of the shelter, Seyss made out a grouping of long tables peopled by no fewer than two hundred men and women. Their bowed heads and precise motions spoke of feverish work. Looking closer, he noted a corroded trough filled with brown twine running through the center of each table. At one table, the workers would deliver the leafy substance into the trough. At others, the workers plucked it out again.

Lenz caught him staring. “Cigarettes, you idiot.”

Seyss took a step toward the tables, putting a name to the bold scent he had noticed upon entering Kirch’s world.

“Yes, cigarettes,” said Kirch. “The currency of the new Germany. Every day our precious reichsmark loses more of its value. The Allies forbid us to hold dollars. Still, we must buy and sell. We must trade with one another. What are we left with? Cigarettes. Lucky Strike. Chesterfield. Craven A. They have all the qualities of paper money. There is constant demand, a regulated supply, the size is convenient, and they last a reasonable time. Best of all, if you are very hungry, you can smoke one and maybe you will forget about your stomach for a while.”

Seyss smirked at Kirch’s hollow benevolence. The grotesque pig looked as if he hadn’t missed a single course of a single meal his entire life.

The Octopus took up position at the head of the first table, motioning for Seyss and Lenz to approach. “Every day, I have an army of two thousand men scouring the streets of Frankfurt, Darmstadt, and Heidelberg for the butts of cigarettes. Waiters, policemen, prostitutes, each with their own patch of ground.
Kippensammler
, they’re called. Butt collectors. The Americans toss away their smokes so indiscriminately. And why not? They are rich, no? Seven butts yield enough tobacco to make up one cigarette, which I can sell for four reichsmarks. Tomorrow it may cost five. I set the price. It’s my private treasury.”

Kirch set off from his “treasury” with a new urgency, leading them across the shelter, through another steel door and down a gargantuan sewer pipe lined with burgundy carpeting. Like many fat men, he moved quickly, not ungracefully. Two guards stood at the far end of the pipe, framing a set of golden doors that had been salvaged from a luxury hotel. Seyss laughed when he read the name engraved on the door push.
Vier Jahreszeitzen München.

Kirch allowed his customers to catch up before nodding to one of his bodyguards to open the door. One glance at the Octopus’s office was enough to answer anyone’s questions about why such stringent security measures were necessary two stories below ground at the tail end of an urban catacomb. King Solomon’s mines was Seyss’s first thought. Then the tomb of Tutankhamen, the boy pharaoh, and finally, Carinhall, Hermann Goering’s lavish estate near Berlin. The vast room was a cross of all three. Piles of women’s furs occupied one corner. Stacks of floor-size tapestries, another. Glass cabinets displayed a dozen diamond tiaras, and below them, collections of lesser jewelry, every bit as spectacular in their own right. Gold bars loaded atop wooden pallets winked dully from inside a caged enclosure. A selection of masterpieces hung on stained maple walls. Rembrandt, Rubens, some decadent modernists.

“Take a seat,” said Kirch as he laid the clipboard on his desk and installed himself in a port leather captain’s chair. “Mr. Lenz. Sergeant Hasselbach, was it?”

“Erwin Hasselbach,” clarified Seyss as he settled into his chair. Did Kirch sound suspicious or was it his imagination?

“Four boxes of margarine, two boxes of peaches, a box of Hershey bars . . .” Kirch read from his tally sheet, continuing until he had orally catalogued every box but one. “And finally, one thousand doses of penicillin. The women of Germany will be grateful.”

Lenz gave Kirch the belly laugh he’d expected.

“You boys hit gold this time,” said Kirch. “Eight hundred dollars or eight thousand reichsmarks. Take your pick.” He waited a second, then chuckled. “Or I could pay you in cigarettes.”

“Nein, nein,”
rumbled Lenz, still in the throes of his merriment. “We’ll take dollars.
Danke
.”

“Eight hundred dollars?”
Seyss cut in, sliding to the edge of his chair and engaging Kirch one on one. “That’s all you propose paying us for the entire lot?” He scoffed to underscore his view of such a paltry offer. As he had to split the sum with Lenz, he wanted to goad Kirch into offering two thousand U.S. Anything less left his problem unsolved. “Why, I can take the penicillin alone to my colleagues in Munich and receive twice that much. A thousand doses will bring ten thousand U.S. on the street. I don’t suppose you handle the retail end of things, so let’s say you unload the entire crate for four thousand dollars. Is twenty percent all you see fit to pay your suppliers? And what about the rest? The peaches, the margarine, the Spam . . . goodness, Herr Kirch, it is enough to stock a corner grocery for a month. Eight hundred dollars, you say? I’m afraid we cannot accept. Come, Hans-Christian, we have a little work in front of us, yet.”

Seyss tapped Lenz on the arm, signaling for him to stand. Kirch followed them both through porcine eyes. He spoke as the two men reached the glass doors.

“That is enough, Herr Hasselbach,” he called. “Herr Lenz, please instruct your impetuous colleague to retake his seat. You, too. If eight hundred is too little, perhaps you can tell me what is appropriate? And then you might wish to add why I shouldn’t simply shoot you here and now? The cost of two bullets—even American ones—is significantly less than eight hundred dollars.”

Seyss guided Lenz back to their chairs. When they were seated, he removed his glasses, polishing them with the tail of his shirt. “Let’s be frank, Herr Kirch. Business is good. Prices are high. Demand even higher. It’s hardly time for gentlemen to quibble. Shoot us if you like, but I imagine you’ll have a harder time coming across medicinal stores of such undisputed quality. Otherwise, pay us three thousand U.S. and we’ll see you next week.”

“Three thousand?” Kirch laughed. “I should shoot you both to rid the world of such arrogant pricks. Fifteen hundred. That’s double my first offer. You’d be smart to take it and run.”

“Twenty-five hundred,” countered Seyss, “and I’ll guarantee the penicillin.”

Kirch licked his lips, his abundant cheeks glowing. He was enjoying the negotiations. “Two thousand, and I won’t hear another word.”

“Twenty-two hundred and we’ll be silent as the grave,” said Seyss.

“Done.”

Seyss could not help but loose a short laugh as a monumental weight lifted from his shoulders.

He would have his money.

He would have his truck.

He was as good as in Berlin.

A
GAIN ALONE IN HIS SUBTERRANEAN
treasure chest, Otto Kirch returned to his desk and withdrew a crudely printed flyer bearing the heading “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” He studied the photograph of Sturmbannführer Erich Seyss and compared it to his mental image of the man who had been seated in his office five minutes earlier. Hasselbach was no sergeant, that was for certain. Only an officer had the balls to negotiate like that. But was he this man? The man on the flyer had light hair and wore no spectacles. Still, it was easy enough to change one’s hair color and to put on a pair of glasses. Kirch traced Seyss’s face with his finger, nodding his head as his certainty grew. Focusing on the eyes, he suddenly met Hasselbach’s victorious gaze and jumped in his chair.

A minute later, he picked up his telephone and dialed a number. “
Ja?
Herr Altman. Good news. I think I’ve found the man who you’ve been looking for.”

CHAPTER

25

T
HE MAN WHO CALLED HIMSELF
Klaus Altman stood in a grove of pines, fifty feet from the end of the paved road. He was staring at the entry to a bland little house blessed with a lovely view over the rooftops of Heidelberg. The owner of the house was inside, as were two of his guests. But they did not interest him so much as the man who had not yet arrived . . . the man whose shadow he’d been tracking for over a day.

Altman removed his jacket, and folded it neatly before laying it on a patch of grass. Settling into a crouch, he pulled a hankie from his pocket and wiped his balding crown. The day was warming up quickly and the heat was making him uncomfortable, and if he was honest with himself, nervous. Since meeting with Major Devlin Judge, he’d been working hard to find a trace of Erich Seyss. The little voice every police officer possessed told him that Seyss would be his ticket to bigger things within the counterintelligence section of the United States Army, for which he now worked. Tracking down your former comrades was a surefire way to demonstrate your loyalty to your new masters. Altman was nothing if not adaptable.

During the past thirty-six hours, he’d made a tour through the nightspots favored by former members of the SS—the Haifisch Bar in Heidelberg, the Red Door in Darmstadt, Mitzi’s in Frankfurt—keeping a not-so-casual eye peeled for men who had served with Seyss in the First SS Panzer division. He’d also peppered his contacts in the black market with questions about the White Lion’s whereabouts. A man on the run left a trail. He needed new identity papers, a safe spot to stay, a woman, and a way out of the country. There were only so many places to obtain such goods and services in postwar Germany and Altman knew them all. When Otto Kirch telephoned reporting that he had seen Erich Seyss, Altman was pleased but not altogether surprised.

Kirch had proposed a trade of sorts. A guarantee that his operations run undisturbed for the next six months in exchange for information where Seyss could be found. (Naturally, Kirch had refused to reveal where or when he had seen the wanted man.) Altman agreed and Kirch gave him the name and address of one Hans-Christian Lenz, domiciled in Darmstadt.

A stream of sweat ran into Altman’s eye, interrupting the recounting of his latest triumph. Damn this heat! One day he’d move someplace cooler. Somewhere in the mountains, maybe South America. He’d heard Peru and Bolivia were lovely. Many of his friends were there already. He dabbed an eye with his hankie and soon his good mood was restored.

This Lenz was a stubborn sort. At first he’d tried to deny even knowing Seyss, let alone where he could be found. Naturally, Altman had methods of persuading him otherwise. Seven years in the Gestapo had taught him all he needed to know about making a man talk.

And Lenz’s information
was
invaluable. He’d revealed where Seyss was staying in Heidelberg, as well as the names of his associates. He’d admitted that he did not believe Seyss was leaving the country. A man with his skills could be in Tokyo by now. So why, Altman had asked, did Seyss need a thousand U.S. dollars if not to escape Germany? The answer had required a little cajoling and a very stubborn thumbnail. Lenz had overheard Bauer and Biedermann discussing a buy they were going to make from a crooked American officer. He did not know what exactly they were purchasing, except that it was located at an armory in Wiesbaden. Another nail and Lenz had revealed the mother lode. Saturday night, he’d croaked. Midnight.

Altman grimaced at the memory. It was distasteful extracting information from a
kamerad.
He counted himself fortunate to have been stationed abroad during the war, in France, where he’d been spared such unpleasantries. He’d had no qualms about questioning the French. In fact, he’d rather enjoyed it. None more than an agent of the Maquis, or underground, known as Max. Max was a tough nut to crack. First they’d worked on his hands. Then his feet. Then his teeth. Not a word. Altman had been forced to drastic measures. A fourteen-inch water hose inserted into the man’s anus followed by twenty gallons of ice water had done the trick.
Désolé, mon pot.

Max’s real name was Jean Moulin. During the war, he had been chief of the resistance in Vichy, France.

Altman’s real name was Klaus Barbie. As chief of the regional Gestapo, they’d called him the Butcher of Lyons.

Barbie settled down for a long wait. He fished in his jacket pocket and drew out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. Liverwurst on white. Taking a bite, he mashed the soft bread in his mouth. Delightful! He was suddenly very happy with himself for having spared Lenz’s life. Fingernails grew back. He’d done the man no real harm.

Smiling, Barbie balled up the wax paper and stuffed it in his pocket. He had not yet told his superiors at CIC Augsburg a thing about what he knew. They’d rush over, storm the house, and go home with an empty net. First, he wanted to see Seyss. He wanted to lay his eyes on the White Lion. Once he knew that the most wanted man in Germany was staying at Rudolf Krehlstrasse 61, he’d go to his superiors and present his plan. Not to Augsburg, he decided, but to Bad Toelz. To Major Devlin Judge. Clearly, Judge was a man of importance. Just as important, he was respectful. He would be sure to reward Herr Altman generously for his travails.

The Butcher of Lyons was sure of it.