The Runner (33 page)

“You see, Gruber,” Seyss was saying, pointing at the offender. “One bullet, only. Get that man. Bring him here. Now!”

“But, Herr Major, the woman was still alive.”

“Get him!” Seyss could not allow logic to interfere with his orders. He heard a whistle blow and another twenty women were jogged into the pit. Two carried infants.
Funny,
he thought,
why don’t they make more fuss?
A squad of soldiers lined up behind them. They raised their rifles and fired. The women collapsed. A baby cried and one of the soldiers ran into the pit and fired off a few shots.

“There,” shouted Seyss, gesturing madly at the extermination squad, “Look, Gruber, that man is firing indiscriminately. One bullet. What is so hard to understand? Replace him at once.”

Gruber averted his gaze. “With who?”

“Someone from Erhardt’s company.”

“They’ve been dismissed. Some of the men are upset. They are no longer fit.”

No longer fit.
Seyss knew what that meant. A little killing and they’d broken like children.

“Upset?” he yelled. “What about me? I am upset, too. What am I to say to Himmler when I return to Berlin? ‘The men refuse your order.’?’’

He remembered his last meeting with the Reichsführer SS. A leisurely perusal of the statistics just in from Einsatz Kommando A in Riga, his pal Otto Ohlendorf’s command. There were 138,500 Jews killed, 55 Communists, 6 Gypsies. That meant 400,000 rounds of ammunition expended at a cost of two reichsmarks per bullet. Himmler inquiring in his unhurried professorial voice, “Unacceptable. Wouldn’t you agree, Herr Sturmbannführer?” He flicked a paper or two, his finger coming to rest at a particularly bothersome figure. “Fifty thousand children. That’s fine. But can you explain to me why our men require two bullets to eliminate a child? Solve the problem, Seyss. One bullet. See to it. The waste makes me sick.”

Seyss strode to the endless line of women and pushed another twenty into the pit. “Take proper aim and use a single round,” he shouted to the
Einsatz
squad. “Reichsführer Himmler is giving you a direct order. Do you understand?” He drew his pistol and passed behind the line of women, brushing the nose of his pistol against the bare nape of their necks. He stopped at the last woman. She had fine blond hair and a fair complexion. Hardly the Semite to look at, but he’d been fooled before. And placing the gun to the base of her skull, he pulled the trigger.

“You see. It’s not so hard. One bullet!”

Inside the closet, Seyss cringed as the words reverberated inside his skull. Yet even as the tattered vestiges of his conscience hung in the dark beside him, he twirled the knife in his hand, turning the blade up to deliver a slashing blow, willing the officer to open the closet door.

Inches away, the American stood in the alcove, asking if the woman wanted a glass of water. She said sure, and he walked into the bathroom, humming along with the radio. Something about sitting under an apple tree. Seyss couldn’t make out the lyrics. His mind was fuzzy. He was hot and his muscles ached. The soldier returned to the bedroom. Seyss heard a bottle being set down on the desk and a glass to go with it. Then the bedsprings again. The woman made a terrible braying noise as she was being fucked.

“Sächliclikeit,”
he whispered through gritted teeth.
Objectivity. Control. Discipline. You are a man standing inside a wooden box. The darkness is temporary. Consider it a test of your stamina, a measure of your physical abilities.

But reason was no cure for his untethered anxiety.

Suddenly, the closet was unbearable. The jacket scuffing the back of his neck, the shelf collapsing upon his head, the musty odor scratching his nostrils, invading his throat. Worst, though, was the smell of his own body. He could no longer remain so close to himself. Still, for one more agonizing second, he managed to choke down his fears. He ignored the clothing crawling all over him and his olfactory distress. Squeezing his eyelids tightly, he even dredged up a moment of calm, if calm is what you call it when your skin is covered with goose bumps and your heart beating hard enough to crack a rib.

And then like a frayed cord, his discipline snapped.

“To hell with it,” he said, and quietly hauled himself out of the closet.

The two were splayed across the bed, the American on top of his German whore, copulating vigorously. Seyss crossed the room in two strides, planting his knee in the crook of the soldier’s back before he could turn his head. Dropping his knife to the bed, Seyss threw his left arm around the American’s neck and took firm hold of the jaw. He braced his right arm across the rim of the man’s shoulders, pulled the body taut against his knee, and gave a single ferocious twist to the left. The vertebrae snapped instantly and the body fell limp.

It was over in three seconds.

If the whore was screaming, Seyss couldn’t tell. Her labored gasps sounded no different from her annoying bray. Shoving the American’s corpse off her, he sat down on the bed, sure to retrieve his knife.

“Shh,” he said, covering her mouth with a hand. “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”

She was very pretty, no more than eighteen beneath all that cheap makeup. She had blond hair and deep blue eyes and for a moment she reminded him of one of the maidens he’d slept with in the Lebensborn hostel, some busty zealot from the Bund Deutscher Mädchen eager to provide the Reich with a passel of racially superior children. He looked at her again and realized he’d been mistaken. She looked like Ingrid Bach.

And as she ventured a smile, nervously nodding her cooperation, he kissed her on the forehead and plunged the knife into her chest.

T
HE UNIFORM FIT BETTER THAN
he had expected. The trousers fell to his heel and not a millimeter below it. The waist was a few sizes too large, but a belt cinched it nicely. And the jacket fit as if tailor-made. He had shaved and showered, taking pains to doctor the raw groove where Judge’s bullet had nicked his scalp. He had shampooed his hair thoroughly, so that no longer was it the same ink-bottle black but a dark, lustrous brown. Using a pair of nail scissors, he had cut it very short, then doused it with tonic and parted it directly above his left eye.

After giving his tie a final going over, Seyss buttoned up his jacket. In one pocket, he carried a little more than two hundred dollars and a picture of his sweetheart back home. In another, the few dog tags and identification card he’d picked up in Munich. He looked damned sharp clad in khaki. What a wonder it did for his soul to be in uniform once again. The wrong uniform, to be sure, but who was he to argue? These days everything was upside down.

Adjusting the cap squarely on his head, he brought himself to attention. Something was wrong. He checked the uniform, the tie. Everything was in order. What was it, then? He looked himself up and down until he found the problem. His posture. He looked as if he were waiting for the Führer to pass in review.
Relax, old man.
He dropped a shoulder and forced his stomach to droop. And in a moment he’d achieved the indolent attitude, at once cocksure and uncertain, of the citizen soldier.

Better, but not perfect.

Then he saw it.

It was his face. It was too closed. Too private. Too German. Americans were so trusting, so wide-eyed, so eager. Every feeling they’d had—every heartbreak, every crush, every promotion, every setback—was there to see, smack in the middle of their face.

Smile, he told himself, and taking a deep breath, stretched his cheeks from ear to ear. Raise your eyebrows. Open your eyes a shade wider. He thought of his childhood, a day at the carnival, the prospect of the Ferris wheel. He pictured himself at the top gazing over all Munich, then gave himself a fat sausage for good measure. Bliss!

He looked in the mirror and saw an American officer staring back.

Bringing himself to attention, he raised his right arm and laid his rigidly aligned fingers to the tip of his brow.

“Good morning,” he said aloud, “Captain Erich Seyss reporting for duty.”

CHAPTER

40

D
ARREN
H
ONEY HAD NEVER SEEN
General Donovan in such a state. Normally a man of unshakable calm and storied reserve, Donovan was pacing back and forth across his office like a caged tiger, first shouting, then whispering, and yes, even growling. It was readily apparent how he’d earned the nickname Wild Bill.

“This Patton thing has become a mess,” railed Donovan. “If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said all his talk about going after the Russians was just bluster. Something that riding partner of his, von Wangenheim, put into his head. Now I’m not so sure.”

“The general still has that damned Nazi on the payroll?” Honey scratched his head in bewilderment. Since arriving in Bad Toelz in late May, Patton had taken his daily equitation in the company of his groom, one Baron von Wagenheim. Like Patton, von Wagenheim was an Olympian, winner of a gold medal in dressage at the 1936 games in Berlin. He was also an unrepentant Nazi who had spent the war as an SS colonel of cavalry. “I thought Ike would have put an end to that by now.”

“Just one of Georgie’s ‘eccentricities,’ says dear old Ike. He doesn’t have any idea of the anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic bilge the old kraut is spewing.”

“And Patton’s falling for it?”

“Falling for it?” Donovan chortled disgustedly. “Why, he eats up every word like it’s his Thanksgiving turkey. Georgie’s convinced that Henry Morgenthau is a lunatic and that Stalin has his sights on the Eiffel Tower. He’s put former Wehrmacht troops in charge of guarding a camp of DPs and he wants to commandeer a village in the mountains and turn it into a concentration camp for Jews. Instead of denazifying the place, he’s hiring every goddammed one of them he can find. He’s gone over the top, I tell you. Over the top!”

Donovan stomped to his desk and fiddled with a tape recorder. “I asked the Signal Corps to put a bug on Georgie’s phone a week back. I want you to listen to this. You won’t believe your ears.”

Honey grimaced involuntarily.
A bug on Patton!
Weren’t they supposed to be spying on the enemy?

Donovan switched on the recorder and a moment later a scratchy voice hollered across the room. There was no mistaking its owner. George Patton at his irascible best.

“Hell,” shouted Patton, “we are going to have to fight them sooner or later. Why not do it now while our armies are still intact and we can have their hind end kicked back into Russia in three months? We can do it easily with the help of the German troops we have, if we just arm them and take them with us. They hate the bastards.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, George,” chuckled a British voice on the other end of the line.

Donovan whispered “Monty” and Honey’s stomach fell to the floor.

Patton went on. “You don’t have to get mixed up in it at all if you are so damn soft about it and scared of your rank. Just let me handle it down here. In ten days, I can have enough incidents happen to have us at war with those sons of bitches and make it look like
they
started it!”

“We’ve already stacked the weapons,” said Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery. “One whisper of war and I’ll have the bloody Wehrmacht rearmed within twenty-four hours. But that’s all I’m prepared to do at this point. By the bye, your little Jerry still on the move?”

“Hell, yes,” roared Patton. “The man’s indomitable. If the entire German Army were made up of sons of bitches like him, you’d still be trying to take Caen.”

“That I very much doubt,” retorted Monty, bristling at the insult. “Still, I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep your boys off him. There’s a photo of him in every constabulary in the British zone. Chap sets foot here, he’s done for.”

“It hasn’t been easy. Ike stuck me with a real pain in the ass to head up the investigation. Probably the only man in Europe who could actually find ‘my little Jerry.’” Patton managed a fair imitation of Monty’s languid brogue. “But don’t worry your aristocratic behind. Everything’s well in hand.”

“Right, then,” said Monty. “I’ll catch up with you in Berlin next week. Cheerio.”

Donovan switched off the recorder, then fell into a worn leather chair next to his desk. “We taped it Friday afternoon. Patton’s in Berlin now. How d’ya like it?”

Honey crossed to the window and looked down on Maximillianstrasse. Panes of glass rattled as a tram passed below, ringing its bell in advance of its next stop. The fact was, he didn’t like it at all. He was tired of the subterfuge, tired of peeking into other men’s lives—even if it was for the good of the country. He didn’t like knowing that Ike was impotent and had been for the entire war (his girlfriend, the Brit Kay Summersby, was an agent, too) or that Patton was as mad as a heated-up bull rhino. Sometimes he couldn’t believe that just three years had passed since he’d put on his country’s uniform; three years since he’d been working as an assistant greens keeper at the Congressional Country Club just outside of Washington, D.C.

In March 1942, Donovan had taken over the club and turned it into a top-secret training center for agents of the OSS. Hearing Honey speaking German with one of the landscapers, he’d pulled him aside and begun questioning him about his background. The OSS needed native German speakers, he’d said, and Honey, the son of German-Czech immigrants, whose real name was Darius Honnecker, qualified as one. A month later, Honey was back at Congressional, not as a gardener but as an agent in training.

“Maybe the rumors are true, sir. You know, that General Patton took too many spills playing polo, one too many bumps to the noggin.”

“You think George is crazy?” Donovan laughed off the suggestion. “People have been saying the same thing since he graduated from West Point. That wasn’t one lunatic talking to another we heard. It was two old war horses plotting their final campaign. Besides, does it really matter?”

“No, sir, I guess it doesn’t.”

“I’m every bit as keen as Patton to stop the Russians where they are,” said Donovan, “but another war is hardly the answer. Right now, our attention has to stay focused on the Pacific. We’ve got to finish off those damned Japs before we do another goddammed thing. You hear what Patton said about ‘them starting it’? What does that rascal have in mind?”

Honey recounted Seyss’s desire for Russian uniforms, weapons, and transportation, his mention of “a last mission for Germany,” and Bauer’s statement that Seyss was leading his men to Babelsberg. “If Seyss is going to Potsdam, it can only be one thing, can’t it?”

Instead of being shocked at the news, though, Donovan appeared pleasantly surprised. “He’s a clever goose, I’ll grant him that. Patton always did want to take Berlin.”

Honey shook his head, his disbelief mixed with contempt and horror. “Will you warn the president’s security detail?”

“Right away, but unfortunately, security in Potsdam proper is being handled by Stalin’s boys. He’s got five thousand thugs in the woods surrounding the area. I doubt he’ll let our men lend a hand.”

Honey envisioned the countryside swarming with uniformed Russian soldiers. To someone accustomed to passing himself off as the enemy, their presence would be a godsend. “I don’t think they’ll stop Seyss,” he said. “The man is very resourceful. He spent two years on and behind the Russian front. If Stalin’s got five thousand of his men up there, he’ll take that as an invitation to join them.”

Donovan took to pacing again. “Problem is, Georgie’s got his cards mixed up. It’s Stalin who’s holding all the aces. He has over three million men within fifty miles of the Elbe. Over a million pieces of artillery, too. Meanwhile, we’ve been hightailing our boys out of the European theater of operations as quickly as we can. We pick a fight with Uncle Joe, we could end up back at Dunkirk in sixty days.”

Honey didn’t like Donovan’s brooding. “Even if we couldn’t defeat the Russians, we could hold them in check.”

“Could we? They outnumber us three to one. Their tanks are superior to ours and they have an unlimited supply of manpower.”

“But you’re forgetting something, General.”

“Am I?”

“Our scientists, sir. I mean, they’ve been working on a device for a few years now. You can’t help but pay attention to the scuttlebutt.”

“You don’t miss much, I’ll grant you that.” Donovan pulled a crumpled yellow paper from his jacket pocket that Honey recognized as an intercept of a top-secret diplomatic wire traffic. “Secretary of War Stimson received this yesterday.”

Honey read the intercept.

“‘Operated on this morning. Diagnosis not complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations.’” And skipping ahead, “‘Dr. Groves pleased.’”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“One of those devices you’ve heard about is ‘operational.’ A single bomb the equivalent of twenty thousand tons of TNT. The damned thing works!”

Honey tried to figure out what twenty thousand tons of TNT could do. The biggest raids on Berlin and Dresden and Stuttgart, the ones involving two or three hundred bombers, had dropped no more than a hundred fifty tons of high explosives on a target. Donovan was talking about a single bomb capable of delivering more than a hundred times that amount. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

“The Savior indeed,” said Donovan. “This time I think we can safely say God is on our side. Problem is we only have two of them and they’re both headed to Japan. Anything comes up with Stalin in the next ninety days, we’re out of pocket.” Sighing, he rose from his desk and joined Honey at the window. “Which brings us to our last complication, your friend Major Judge. Last we’ve heard, he’s gone under. Disappeared with Ingrid Bach twenty-four hours ago, after calling Third Army Headquarters and asking Paul Harkins for Patton. What do you think he’s up to?”

“That’s easy,” responded Honey. “The same thing we are.”

“Is he capable?”

Honey imagined the determined brow, the quick temper. “Of what? Getting to Berlin? I’d say yes. Of finding Seyss once he’s there? Maybe.”

Donovan mulled over his answer. “Judge certainly discovered that Seyss was still alive quickly enough. You were right guessing he’d try and use von Luck to identify the body, but you didn’t foresee that he’d bring Ingrid Bach into this. You said he wouldn’t expose the girl to anything dangerous. Why do you suppose he didn’t come to us instead?”

It was an annoying habit of Donovan’s to dissect his men’s thinking, expose their faults, then go right back and ask them for another opinion. “I don’t know,” answered Honey. “Seems he doesn’t trust us.”

“‘
Us’?
Who’s ‘us’? ‘Us’ doesn’t exist. ‘You,’ I think, would be more accurate.” Donovan stared at the afternoon sky, wagging a finger at an invisible adversary. “What I really need to know, then, is if Devlin Judge is capable of killing Seyss?”

Honey paused before answering, knowing he was treading on very thin ice. “I’m not sure. Either he’s not as strong as he believes himself to be or he’s holding part of himself in check.”

“So, he might be, but it wouldn’t come easily. He’d hesitate.”

“Yessir. That’s correct.”

Donovan’s eyes had taken on a dreamy cast. Once he’d told Honey that his job was not to see the world as it was but to see it as it would be in an hour’s time. “Hmm,” he whispered. “Maybe that’s good.”

“Sir?”

“Just thinking. Patton wasn’t
all
wrong, you know.”

And then the reverie was broken. Donovan wrapped an arm around Honey’s shoulder and guided him to the door. “We’ve got a plane standing by to fly you to Berlin. There’s no train running that way, so maybe you’ll gain some time on Seyss. Al Dulles will pick you up and show you around town, introduce you to some of our contacts. You’re cleared to attend the conference, but don’t expect to get into the actual negotiating sessions. You know where Seyss needs to go to do his job. Keep an eye peeled and it shouldn’t be too hard to spot him. And if you run into Judge, you might want to enlist his help in this thing.”

Honey halted in midstride. “You sure? I thought we didn’t want him involved in this any further.”

“We didn’t.” Donovan smiled mischievously and Honey knew he was busy weaving some intricate plot. “But things are different now. Remember, Captain Honnecker, the only constant in our business is change.”

Honey frowned inwardly, wondering when their work had become a business. “And what do I tell him?”

“Why, the truth. It’s nothing he doesn’t know already. Just make sure he keeps his mouth shut afterward.”

Honey cocked his head, not sure he’d heard correctly. “Sir?”

Donovan responded to the pained expression on Honey’s face. “Don’t look so upset. We can’t have anyone besmirching Georgie Patton’s reputation. America does love its heroes.”