The Runner (24 page)

Carswell didn’t see the punch coming. Judge simply grabbed his shoulder, swung him around, and gave him as solid a right hook as he’d ever delivered in a lifetime of barroom brawls, street spats, and gutter fights. Carswell spit out a tooth, then dropped like a rock.

Honey materialized from the crowd, latching on to Judge’s arm and dragging him toward the front door. “We have to leave immediately, Major.”

“I’ll take my punishment,” said Judge, shaking loose Honey’s arm. With a man shot in the parking lot and a three-star general roughed up, the military police would be there any minute. Turning toward the bar, he spotted Ingrid Bach helping Carswell to his feet. Against his will, a flash of jealousy fired his cheeks. How could she even look at that son of a bitch? He felt as if she had rammed a knife into his gut and was slowly twisting it. He’d never learn.

“Major, the military police are already here,” Honey was saying, his rubbery face even more animated than usual. “They’re waiting for us out front.”

“What are they waiting for? If they want to arrest me, they can come in.”

“Dammit, Major, this isn’t about your hitting the general—you’ll have to deal with that later.” Honey took him physically by the shoulders and shook him. “We got him. I told you to be patient. He’s in Heidelberg.”

Judge felt the booze and the adrenaline and the welt of his attraction to Ingrid abruptly dissipate. In their place came a nervous energy, a clear burning excitement.

“Seyss. You’re talking about Seyss? He’s in Heidelberg?”

“Yessir!” shouted Honey, smiling now, nodding his head vigorously. “Altman tracked him down. The White Lion is ours.”

CHAPTER

28

E
ARLY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, INSIDE
a torpid Quonset hut at Airfield Y31 on the outskirts of Frankfurt, five men gathered round a conference table to review for a third and final time their plan to capture Erich Seyss. Each betrayed the anxiety gnawing at his gut in his own particular fashion. Spanner Mullins ripped at the cuff of his splendidly pressed uniform, eyes darting from one man to the next as if trying to guess who held the ace of spades. Darren Honey slouched in his chair, hands drumming the table, his shit-eating grin stowed in a safe place. Next to him sat the German informant, Klaus Altman, ramrod straight in his too-large suit, forehead awash in sweat, cracking one knuckle, then the next. An outsider and wanting everyone to know it.

Nearest to Judge stood Major General Hadley Everett, Patton’s dapper chief of intelligence, caressing his gambler’s mustache as he droned on about the necessity to arrest Seyss before the Big Three arrived in Berlin.

“Georgie tells me Ike is counting on some good news to pass on to President Truman when the three meet in Berlin tomorrow,” Everett said. “Our efforts to bring in Seyss coincide with the kicking off of the operational phase of Tallyho. I can’t imagine a better way to get things started than to capture Seyss. It would send Fritz just the right message.” He shot Judge a bullying glance, walleye holding him for a second before caroming to a far corner. “Not to mention free up some precious resources
and
please everyone concerned.”

Great, thought Judge, he should have figured someone would turn the hunt for Seyss into a political football. Stealing a glance at his watch, he saw that it was only two-fifteen. The temperature was ninety and climbing. Above the table, a fan turned too slowly to do anything except push the clouds of cigarette smoke from one side of the hut to the other. He felt miserable. His head pounded in time to his heart. His tongue had grown a coat of fur. And no wonder . . . he’d polished off a half bottle of booze last night. If that wasn’t enough, the knuckles of his right hand ached as badly as his bruised ribs. All morning he’d been waiting for word that General Carswell was pressing charges. Laughing, Mullins had told him not to worry. Ike would be none too pleased to learn that a lieutenant general under his command considered plinking unarmed, if larcenous, Germans part of a Friday evening’s entertainment.

With Everett finished speaking, Mullins lumbered to his feet and walked to the south end of the table where he addressed himself to a chalkboard set on rollers. A schema of the Wiesbaden armory decorated the black slate.

“Once more for those of you in the bleachers,” he began, and Judge saw Everett flash a grin. One point for Spanner. “Dusk falls at ten thirty. Immediately afterward, we’ll move our lads into position around the armory. Troops from Military Police Company Seventy-three will be divided into four platoons and positioned here, here, here, and here.” He banged his chalk at the four corners of the outpost. “Sergeant Honey will take the platoon opposite the entry. Two platoons with yours truly will be opposite the garage, so that when we get the signal from Major Judge, we can illuminate the poor bastards and make sure no one shoots one of our own, namely the villainous Captain Jack Rizzo. You may stand and take a bow.”

Rizzo was seated in a far corner of the Quonset hut, along with a pair of brutish MPs to keep him company at
ten
. Hearing his name he smiled glumly and wisely chose not to respond. He’d been pulled in at ten that morning as Judge, Mullins, and Honey were en route to Frankfurt in an army transport. According to Altman’s unnamed source, Seyss was doing business with the American officer who controlled the keys to an armory in Wiesbaden. As there was only one armory in town, the path quickly led to Rizzo, who as it turned out was already under suspicion of selling Russian weapons to his fellow GIs. Given the choice between fifteen years at Leavenworth or a dishonorable discharge, Rizzo not only confessed to his crimes but promised his full and complete cooperation.

“As for you, Captain,” Mullins continued, pointing a finger at the swarthy black marketeer, “you’re to play it very cool indeed, which I imagine should pose no problem at all to a man of your criminal bent. You’re to lead your chum Fitzpatrick, as Mr. Seyss calls himself, and whoever accompanies him, into the armory and take them directly to the spot where we’ve gathered the weapons.” Mullins indicated a bay deep inside the armory adjacent to the doors leading to the garage. “Understand?”

Rizzo said yes.

“Good lad. And there you’ll wait, making small talk, twiddling your thumbs, picking your I-talian nose for all we care, until you hear my signal.” Here Mullins produced a silver whistle from the folds of his uniform and gave it a good long blow. Everyone rushed to plug their ears and Judge was pleased to note a look of discomfort on Everett’s face. “And when you do, you’ll be smart to hit the ground double-quick. Got that, boy-o? Remember, you’ll have a friend close by. Won’t he, Dev?”

Spotting his cue, Judge walked to the blackboard. He accepted the chalk from Mullins and drew an
X
next to the small box that indicated where Rizzo had placed the weapons Seyss wanted to purchase. “I’ll be lying on top of the stack of crates, just above and behind you, Captain. You don’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll be keeping an eye on you the entire time you are inside the armory. Just be sure to maneuver Seyss into the open so that a direct line of fire exists from the garage to the weapons. We don’t want him playing hide-and-seek inside the armory. Too many guns and too much ammunition.”

Indicating to Rizzo where Mullins would be positioned, Judge asked himself again what Seyss wanted with Russian weapons and uniforms. How had he been able to locate his former comrades so rapidly? And how, according to Altman’s informant, had he gotten his hands on a couple thousand dollars even before selling supplies pirated from an army convoy? Maybe he’d been digging up cash back at Lindenstrasse along with the dog tags. Or maybe somebody else had given the money to him.

Disturbingly, Judge seemed the only man at the table concerned about Seyss’s motives. Everyone else was focused simply on getting the arrest. After all, Everett had pointed out, once they had Seyss it didn’t matter a good goddamn what he wanted to do with the weapons. Even Honey had agreed. Four rifles, four pistols, and four uniforms were hardly something to worry about, he’d said. As for the truck, no one had the faintest idea what Seyss wanted with it and no one cared. End of discussion.

But Judge had never been satisfied to close a case with a bundle of questions left unanswered. Simple curiosity demanded that he know what the White Lion was up to, what “last race for Germany” he’d been planning to run. After all, if Seyss failed, there might easily be someone ready to take his place. Replaying the questions, Judge came to the same conclusion over and over again. Seyss was not acting alone but as part of a larger preconceived plan. The word
conspiracy
came to mind, then flitted away. Only by capturing him could Judge learn the scope of his endeavor.

“When I see that you’re in a safe spot, I’ll signal Colonel Mullins to order his men into the armory,” he continued. “Three clicks on the walkie-talkie, right, Colonel? We’ll hit the sirens, throw open the garage doors, and turn on the kliegs. The sound and light should be enough to make everyone freeze in their tracks.”

“You mean piss their pants, don’t you, Dev?” Mullins cracked, and everyone laughed, even Judge.

“I guess I do.”

The plan was his creation, a variation on the standard “bait and wait.” It had been Honey’s idea, however, to put a man inside the warehouse, and to his dismay, Judge had heard his own voice volunteering for the role. He would have preferred taking Seyss and his cronies at their hideout in Heidelberg. Seyss was a cagey one, though. According to Altman, he and his comrades had left the house early this morning, all going separate ways. It was the armory or nothing.

Replacing the chalk in its tray, Judge walked over to Rizzo and laid a hand on his shoulder. “If all goes according to plan, everyone will walk out of there in one piece.
Capische?”

Rizzo grinned morosely.
“Capisco.”

“All right, then. We adjourn until twenty hundred hours.”

K
LAUS
A
LTMAN GRABBED
J
UDGE
’
S ARM
as they crossed the runway and headed toward the jeeps that would drive them to Heidelberg.

“So, Herr Major, it appears you will have your White Lion.”

“As long as he shows, I don’t see what can go wrong.”

“I’m sure nothing will go wrong. Still, I can see you are still curious. Inside you asked what Seyss is doing with Ivan’s uniforms, his guns. Do you really have no notion?”

Judge shrugged his shoulders, interested in Altman’s views but not wanting to encourage him. The man was set to receive a promotion and a pay raise if Seyss was caught. That was already too much. “Didn’t you hear the others? It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, so long as we catch him.”

“I have my own ideas. Uniforms, guns, a truck with a full tank of gasoline and extra jerry cans. It seems he is planning a trip.”

“That much I gathered.”

Altman tugged on his cuff. “He is going east, Herr Major. East.”

“East,” Judge repeated. The word made him shiver.

Altman nodded, smiling his lascivious grin. “The question is why.”

CHAPTER

29

W
HERE WERE THEY?

Egon Bach held the receiver to his ear, damning the endless ringing.
Pick up
, he grunted.
Pick up!
Impatiently, he thumbed his spectacles to the bridge of his nose, oblivious to the perspiration fogging each lens. For two hours he’d been calling, dialing the number every five minutes, allowing the phone to ring twelve, fifteen, twenty times before hanging up. The Americans had tracked down Seyss. They had discovered his intention to purchase the Russian arms and transport. An ambush was planned this very evening to capture him.
Pick up!

Egon stood in the factory foreman’s office on the production floor of Bach Steelworks facility number seven in Stuttgart. Hovering beyond the glass partition were two MPs, his constant escorts when venturing outside of Villa Ludwig. With the Amis’ blessing, he had come to supervise the initial retooling of the plant. The machinery used for years to turn out armor plate, military tractors, and 88s was being reconfigured to manufacture products destined for a civilian, rather than military, economy. The large gun lathes and milling machines in machine shops twenty and twenty-one that had been used to produce heavy gun tubes would be reset to manufacture steel girders and sewer pipes. Railroad tire shop three, housing twenty-three lathes, a dozen grinders, and two shell banders, would henceforth labor to turn out streetcar wheels instead of high-caliber artillery shells.

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.