The Runner (25 page)

CHAPTER

30

I
NGRID
B
ACH STOOD NAKED BEFORE
the full-length mirror, carefully studying her body for clues to her ruinous behavior. Her eyes were clear, if pouchy from lack of sleep; her shoulders sunburned from her excursion to Inzell several days before. Her breasts were full and if no longer as firm as she would have liked, still round and high on her chest. Her legs were taut and slender, and except for a patchwork of bruises—medals from her campaign to keep Sonnenbrücke in working order—those of a woman in her prime.

But she saw none of this.

Staring at her reflection, she recognized only a succession of her failed selves. The teacher, the actress, the doctor, the painter she’d sworn to become and hadn’t. The jilted lover, the ungrateful daughter, the false wife, the inadequate mother . . . the possibilities stretched before her like an endless tapestry of her own weaving. She was an embarrassment. To herself, to her family, and, harking to the faraway cry present in every German’s soul, to her country.

Behind her, the sun continued its evening descent, its last rays burning the sky a fiery orange. In its wake, the shadows of Furka and Brunni, the hooded peaks that held Sonnenbrücke in their eternal purview, lengthened and grew obscure, menacing her in a way her own conscience never could.

Turning from the mirror, Ingrid crossed the bedroom. An antique oil lamp rested on her dresser and next to it a box of matches. The basement was full of the lamps, leftovers from the days before electricity ventured so deep into the mountains. Sonnenbrücke had belonged to the Hapsburgs then. Franz Josef himself had built the lodge in 1880, his idea of a cozy family retreat. Foreseeing the need to gild his family’s flight into exile, he’d sold the property to her father sometime during the Great War. An aphorism about one man’s misfortune being another’s luck came to Ingrid’s mind. She wondered whether Papa was a scavenger or a savior. She decided both, which, given her current uncharitable mood, was worse than being either.

Removing the lamp’s glass veil, she struck a match, then fired the tattered wick. She waited for the flame to catch, then lamp in hand, padded to her dressing room. Seated at her vanity, she was confronted once again by her own damning stare. How could she account for her recent behavior? Exposing herself to Ferdy Karlsberg in exchange for a few quarts of ice cream; dating the scoundrel Carswell as a prelude to requesting increased rations. And if he’d balked, she asked herself, if he’d whispered that he could only give these things to his mistress, then what? Would she have slept with him? Would she have compromised her body as she already had her spirit? Never, she resolved vehemently. But part of her remained unconvinced.

After washing her face, Ingrid returned to the bedroom. Off came the decorative pillows, off came the bedspread. The window was open and a cool breeze swept her body, leaving her skin prickled with goose bumps. Walking to the sill, she thrust her head into the night. Ten minutes after the sun had dipped below the mountains, the valley lay hidden beneath an impenetrable shroud. She dropped her eyes to the brick portico twenty feet below. One push and she would be free. Free of her guilt, her worry, her shame. Free of the cursed name that haunted her from morning till night. The Bachs—bankrupt whores of a broken Germany. They’d whored for the Kaiser, for Weimar, for the Führer. Who was next? Why, the Americans, of course. Ingrid, with her platinum hair and ruby-red nail polish, was only continuing the family tradition, if on a smaller scale.

Which brought her face-to-face with Devlin Judge. He hadn’t asked her to dance solely to apologize for having disturbed her father. He’d wanted information about Erich, she was sure of it. Another American seeking to exploit her company for his own interest. Still, she couldn’t scold the man, not after what he’d done to Carswell. She had little doubt that he was under military arrest. She couldn’t imagine what would happen to a German officer should he strike a field marshal. A firing squad? Twenty years’ hard labor? She shuddered at the prospect. Her Erich would never do such a thing. Any objection he harbored toward Carswell’s behavior, he’d deliver during a private moment, if at all. He was a soldier to the core. But Judge was an attorney, likewise acquainted with the consequences of disregarding regulation. Why did one obey his superiors and the other his conscience?

The unexpected entry of Erich Seyss into her intimate thoughts thrust Ingrid back in time. She saw herself standing in the window of her apartment on Eichstrasse, her secret lovers’ nest in the heart of Berlin. She felt Erich steal in behind her, his fingers waltzing up her legs, over her belly, caressing her breasts.
“So, Schatz,”
he’d said in his dead-on imitation of Adolf Hitler, “only ten more children until you receive the gold medal of German womanhood. This is no time to rest. We must work, work, work!”

That was the Erich she had fallen in love with: the unannounced visitor, the wild and tireless lover, the trustworthy confidant who had encouraged her to take an apartment unbeknownst to her family, the adroit mimic ready to lampoon even the most sacrosanct of subjects. Her best friend.

But even as they had fallen to the bed, giggling mischievously as they raced to undress each other, part of her mind had remained on guard. There was another side of him, too, one she’d begun to see with disconcerting frequency: the hidebound soldier, the slogan-hurling party man—
“Kinder, Kirche, und Küche,” “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer,” “Deutschland Erwache, Jude Verrecke!”
—the vitriolic anti-Semite. In short, the ideal Nazi every Aryan aspired to become.

And in the heat of their lovemaking, when he was deep inside of her, arms pulling her to his body, when they were as close as man and woman could be, she looked into his eyes and asked herself which of these men he truly was?

And the absence of an answer frightened her.

A sudden breeze cooled the room. Catching a chill, Ingrid rushed to her bedside and wrapped a hand-knit afghan around her bare shoulders. She returned to the window, eager for the scent of cooling pine and night-blooming jasmine. Her thoughts of Erich faded and she found herself, instead, thinking of Devlin Judge. If she’d learned anything from Erich, it was to distrust her instinct.

She wondered if she’d been hasty in ascribing ulterior motives to Judge’s actions. With a guilty smile, she acknowledged that he hadn’t only been thinking about his investigation. Pressed so close to him, it had been impossible to ignore his desire. Any stirrings she’d experienced in return were purely reflexive. Still, she couldn’t help but remember the feel of his body, his confident hands, the scent of his neck. He’d smelled of scotch and sweat and temper and decision. How long had it been, anyway? One year? Two? No, it had been longer. She hadn’t slept with a man since April of ’42 when Bobby went east. Three years, she mused, both aghast and amused. She’d never have guessed she could go so long without companionship. It couldn’t continue like this forever.

But she would never consider someone like Judge. He was just another victorious soldier eager for his foreign fling.

In the distance, a kingfisher let go his mournful call, a scratchy bellow that accentuated her melancholy and forced her lacerating eye back upon herself. If she was to question Judge, why not herself? What made her think he would consider her, even for a moment? Whatever longing he felt was no doubt as reflexive, as instinctive, as her own. He was a lawyer and an investigator. He knew full well the crimes of which her father had been accused. He would never want a woman who carried the tainted blood of a war criminal.

The question of her own guilt in the matter arose daily.

Upon her demand, her father’s lawyer, Otto Kranzbuehler, had slipped her a copy of the indictment. The stories were difficult to comprehend, let alone believe. Twenty-five thousand workers had perished in the Essen facilities alone. Beatings, starvation, murder—the charges described a litany of brutalities beyond her imagining. Yet how was she in any way responsible? She hadn’t set foot in any of her father’s plants for ten years. Business was never discussed at home and the Bach women were not encouraged in their interest in the family’s affairs. Still, part of her refused to relinquish her guilt. She was a German. As a citizen, was it not her duty to know what was happening in the country of her birth?

Ingrid searched the ink-black night for an answer and found none. For the second time that night she found herself examining the portico below for a solution to her problems.

One push.

The driveway was miles away, the cut brick hard and unforgiving. She imagined her fall—the sudden drop, the rush of air, the terrible thud. But her problems would not perish with her. How would Pauli eat tomorrow? Who would look after Papa? How would Herbert manage?

Frightened by her mere consideration of the idea, Ingrid spun from the window and rushed to her bed.

One more day
, she promised herself.

One more day and things will be better.

CHAPTER

31

T
HE ARMORY WAS AS STILL AS
a mausoleum. The place smelled of cosmoline and petrol and the dank rot of ten thousand wooden crates. It smelled of defeat, thought Erich Seyss as he stepped inside and a towel of moist air settled around his neck. The last time he’d come, a string of dying bulbs had provided some light. Tonight, the building lay shrouded in darkness. Electricity had been cut six hours ago. Looking into the maw of the building was like staring into the abyss, a black so complete it was without dimension.

Seyss helped Rizzo close the barn-sized doors, then switched on his flashlight and whispered for his men to form up. A pool of beams grew at his feet as Bauer, Biedermann, and Steiner formed a circle around him. The three had made their own way to Wiesbaden, uniting at a friendly bar a short distance from the armory where he and Rizzo had picked them up. “My associates,” Seyss had explained succinctly, and in a tone that begged no elaboration. He’d ordered them not to speak in Rizzo’s presence and so far they’d obeyed. He had no idea how the American would react if he knew he was arming four SS troopers. Seyss suspected Rizzo already had a hint. Two days ago, the American hadn’t stopped talking the entire drive up from Heidelberg. The south side of Philly, the delicious German fräuleins, Artie Shaw versus Harry James, Stalin versus Churchill—Rizzo had an opinion about everything and everybody. Tonight, he hadn’t spoken two words.

“I take it our merchandise is where we left it?” Seyss asked.

“Sure,” said Rizzo. “I mean, why shouldn’t it be? Nobody’s been here since the other day.”

There it was again . . . the edginess.

“Simply asking, Captain. No need for worry.”

Rizzo laughed apologetically. “I don’t have too many museum curators looking for Russian machine guns.”

“Pity. You’d be a rich man.”

“Give me some time,” cracked Rizzo, his voice steadier. “We just opened for business.”

Seyss relaxed a notch. That was more like the Rizzo he knew. “Lead the way. Once we gather up everything, we’ll take a look at the truck. You have it ready?”

“Yep. Gassed up and rarin’ to go. She’s a beaut. A Ford deuce and a half with Ivan’s red star painted big as life on the hood and the doors. Must’ve been shipped over during Lend-Lease. Whatever you do, promise me you’ll get it the hell out of town in a hurry. Anybody stops you, just speak a little Russkie and pretend you don’t understand what they’re saying.”

Seyss smiled inwardly. That was precisely his plan. “Come the dawn, we’ll be far from these gates. Don’t be worrying yourself, Captain.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Follow me.”

Rizzo set off as if on a forced march. From the entry, he turned left, counting off the stacks of crates as he passed them. Reaching six, he made an abrupt right turn and vanished into one of the narrow corridors that ran the length of the armory. Seyss followed close behind, then Bauer and the others. Their flashlights cut a shallow path, barely illuminating the concrete floor five feet in front of them. Above their shoulders, the crates brooded like crumbling statues to a pagan deity.

Seyss felt at home in the darkness, his incipient fear of tight spaces lost amid the trudging of rubber-soled feet and the hushed intake of breath. A frisson of excitement warmed his stomach, the same self-congratulatory sensation he experienced before a race when he sized up the competition and determined he would win. He reminded himself that this was only a preliminary heat. The main event would engender a return to Berlin, a return to the city of his greatest triumphs and his greatest defeats.

Arriving at a crossroads of sorts, Rizzo thrust his flashlight in front of him and made a sweep of the area. “There you are, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Your next exhibit.”

Seyss handed his flashlight to Bauer, then stepped past Rizzo. The guns and uniforms he had picked out sat on top of a pile of splintered palates: the Mosin-Nagant sniper’s rifle with twenty-seven notches cut into the stock, the Pepshkas with their drum barrels, the Tokarev pistols, the pea-green tunics with sky-blue epaulets. Everything exactly as it had been left. A metal trunk rested on the ground next to the pallets. He flipped open the locks to find the ammunition he’d requested. But all that was no longer enough. Proximity to his goal made him the greedier.

“Grenades,” Seyss called. “For true authenticity, our exhibit will require a few dozen grenades.”

Rizzo hesitated, looking lost. “They’re in the ammo pen.”

“Go get them.”

Rizzo checked over his shoulder, looking toward the entrance to the garage as if expecting someone to answer for him. “They’ll cost you more.”

Seyss pulled an envelope from his jacket and handed it to Rizzo. “Surely you’ll toss them in gratis. It would be the gentlemanly thing to do.”

Rizzo opened the envelope, running a thumb over ten hundred-dollar bills. Again he glanced over his shoulder toward the garage. “I don’t know. Guns, a little ammunition, that’s one thing. Grenades, they’re a whole ’nother ball game. And if you don’t mind my saying, your friends don’t look too much like gentlemen.”

Behind them, Bauer, Biedermann and Steiner were sorting through the uniforms. Though they spoke in hushed tones, one could not mistake the clipped cadence of their language.

“The war has made rogues of us all, I’m afraid,” said Seyss, his patience at an end. Something was wrong. He could feel it. Rizzo was too nervous, too much changed from their last visit. Removing Bauer’s work-issue Luger from the lee of his back, he pointed it at Rizzo’s chest, and said “The grenades, Captain. It’s not a point for discussion.”

“Give me a break, will you?” Rizzo’s hands shuttled from one pocket to another searching for his key ring.

“Front left,” said Seyss. “Don’t pretend you don’t know where they are.”

Rizzo muttered something about “fuckin’ Nazis” and how “he never wanted to do this in the first place,” then in a fit of frustration, threw the keys at Seyss. “Get ’em yourselves. They’re free. All you want. Where do you think you’re going, anyway?”

“Where am I going?”
Seyss cringed at the remonstrative twang to Rizzo’s voice. Staring hard at the American, he caught the man’s gaze dart high above his shoulder, the brown eyes open wide in expectation. He knew the look. Hope, impatience, desperation rolled into one. Spinning his head, he followed Rizzo’s eyes, but saw only the fuzzy outline of crates receding into the darkness. Someone was there, though. He knew it. He yanked Rizzo by the collar and jabbed the pistol’s snout under his jaw. “What’s happening here, Captain?”

“Nothin’s happening. What do ya mean?”

Seyss levered the barrel up, so that the gun sight punctured his skin. “Say again?”

Rizzo moved his mouth, but no words came out. Or if they did Seyss did not hear them. For at that moment, a siren wailed, a door flew open, and the midnight sun burst into the armory.

W
HICH DUMB SON OF A BITCH
turned on the kliegs?

Devlin Judge buried his face in his arm, squeezing his eyelids shut to block out the brilliant light. Who turned on the lights? Who ordered the siren? No one was supposed to have moved until he gave the signal.

Lifting his head, Judge pried open an eye. Spears of shimmering white punctured his dilated pupils. The light immobilized him, nailing him to his splintery perch on top of a stack of Sokoloy machine guns. One hand slid to the walkie-talkie by his waist. It stood upright, its antenna poking through a draft vent cut in the roof. No, he had not keyed in the signal by mistake.

For two hours, he’d been waiting for Seyss. Waiting for the White Lion to show his prized skin. From his vantage point high above the armory floor, he’d followed Seyss’s progress through the armory. Everything had been going according to plan—Seyss and his men arriving at twelve midnight on the nose, Rizzo leading them to the guns and uniforms, keeping the conversation light. Then Seyss had asked for the grenades and Rizzo had broken.
A few more feet
, Judge wanted to yell at him.
A few more feet and we would have cast the net!

An entire company of military police surrounded the armory, 175 men in all. Armored personnel carriers stood at all four corners of the compound. Two jeep-mounted klieg lights had been set up inside the garage to ensure proper visibility. But no one was to have budged, no one was to have moved a muscle, until Judge keyed in the signal and Mullins blew his goddammed whistle.

Forcing open his eyes, Judge saw the armory floor awash in a spectral light. Seyss stood directly below, a gun in his outstretched hand. He looked no different than he had a few days ago, hair dyed black, dressed in a navy jacket and trousers. His plan withering around him, he appeared cool and relaxed. Rizzo cowered a few feet away, raising his hands to his face as if to defend himself against a blow. It struck Judge how they looked like actors on a stage, their every feature defined, their movements dramatized by the kliegs’ merciless vigil. Then, as if a casual afterthought, Seyss raised the pistol and fired it point-blank into Rizzo’s face. Rizzo dropped like a sack of manure. No thespian could replicate the ocean of blood advancing across the concrete floor from the back of his head.

For one long second, all was static; a beautifully lit diorama scored by a bullet’s earsplitting report and a siren’s undulating wail. Seyss stood poised above Rizzo’s body, while his comrades were captured in various positions of distress. Bauer, the stockiest and oldest of them, stared blindly into the blaze of the kliegs; Steiner, the spindly clerk, checked the chamber of the sniper’s rifle with a marksman’s competence. And Biedermann, blond and cagey, crouched behind the steamer trunk packed with ammunition. Then came the bone-crunching staccato of a heavy machine gun and all was motion.

Chunks of wood and tin and concrete erupted from the walls, the floor, the mountains of rotting crates, arcing through the air like exploding rock. Seyss ducked his head and dashed for protection behind the nearest box. With his pistol, he motioned for Steiner to fire at the light. His exhortations came too late. The lanky dark-haired man managed only to lift the rifle to his shoulder when he was caught in the chest with a string of bullets. He had no time even to scream. Lifted off his feet, his thorax burst in an ejaculation of torn flesh and viscera. As his body hit the floor, Judge saw that he had been cut in two. Seyss was yelling for Bauer to get down and for Biedermann to come to him. But Bauer was already down, digging his nails into the concrete floor as if he were hanging from a cliff. And Biedermann, hiding behind the ammunition box, looked as if he wasn’t going anywhere either. A thirty-cal bullet penetrated the trunk, setting off a chain reaction of small-arms fire. A split second later, rounds began to explode inside the box. Biedermann looked this way and that, indecision creasing his features. Just as he began to move toward Seyss, a bullet exited the trunk, finding his jaw, and a microsecond later, his brain and skull. A cap of gore sprayed from his head and he collapsed.

Judge yanked his pistol from its holster and took aim at Seyss.
Safety off, hammer back
. All evening long, he’d been wondering how he’d react when he saw him, whether, as Seyss himself had advised, he’d shoot first and ask questions later, or if he’d heed his commitment to an orderly arrest. But the turbulent events of the moment, the cacophonous sound and fury erupting all around him, freed him from the choice. Tightening his finger on the trigger, he acknowledged his darkest wish and swore to bring it to fruition.

The Colt bucked in his hand, the first shot going high and to the right, tearing a gaping hole in the crate above Seyss. He fired twice more, but the bullets went astray.

Seyss spun, bringing his pistol in line with his eye, trying at once to aim and to glimpse the man who wanted to kill him. For a split second, their eyes locked, the hunter and the hunted, the prosecutor and the pursued. The light cast Seyss’s face with a crystalline clarity—the cut of the jaw, the flared nostrils, the determined set of his milky blue eyes. Nowhere could Judge read fear. The world was exploding around him, his comrades lay dead and dying, yet Seyss maintained an expression of absolute assurance.

Judge pulled the trigger again, missing, as Seyss let off four rounds in rapid succession. Flame spit from the pistol and Judge slammed his head onto the crate, raising an arm to protect his face from the shards of wood slicing through the air like broken glass. Two inches from his head yawned a jagged hole as large as a pumpkin. He rolled away from it and brought his gun to bear on Seyss.

But Seyss was gone, running across the open floor toward Bauer, his last unwounded comrade. His excursion was short-lived. Three MPs brandishing Thompson submachine guns darted through the door leading from the garage, their entry presaged by ragged bursts of fire. Seyss skidded on a heel as he fought to return to the relative safety of his previous position. He fired twice, felling two of the policemen, and a third time shattering one of the kliegs.

Still the siren wailed.

Judge felt a reckless tide swelling inside him. Everything was going wrong. Rizzo was dead. So were Seyss’s comrades, and now, two American MPs. The army had a term for this: FUBAR—fucked up beyond all recognition. All because some stupid sonuvabitch had turned on the kliegs before he’d been given the order. Overcome with anger, remorse, and most of all frustration, he jumped to his feet and yelled as loudly as he could, “Seyss! Stop, you yellow bastard!”

Seyss turned as if slapped. Never compromising his stride, he raised his gun and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He was out of ammunition. Judge took dead aim at the moving figure and fired. The first bullet was high, showering Seyss with a barrage of splinters. The second appeared to pass right through him. A jagged chunk of wood spun from the crates behind his shoulder and struck him in the head. Seyss stumbled, bringing a hand to his face as he collapsed to the ground. Judge stepped close to the edge, craning his neck for the sight of blood, even as he contained a triumphant whoop. Had he shot him? With Seyss halfway to the unlit recesses of the armory, it was difficult to tell.