The Runner (39 page)

CHAPTER

48

T
HE LOBBY OF THE
B
RISTOL
H
OTEL
was an oasis of shade and calm. Ivory linoleum floor, black marble counters, and a ceiling fan spinning fast enough to rustle the leaves of the Egyptian palms that stood in every corner. Ingrid presented herself to the concierge and asked if any of the reporters covering the conference in Potsdam were guests of the hotel, and if so, where she might find them. The question was hardly a shot in the dark. Only two hotels were open for business in the American sector, the Bristol and the Excelsior. Judge had promised her the reporters would be at one of them. The concierge directed a hand toward the dining room. “A few are presently lunching, madam.”

Ingrid thanked him and walked in the direction he had pointed. Instead of entering the dining room, however, she continued to the women’s loo. Her hair was mussed, her face sweaty, her shoes speckled with dust. Standing in front of the mirror, she tried to repair the damage, but her palsied hand only made it worse.
Sit down
, she ordered herself.
Relax.
She smiled, and the smile was like the first crack in a pane of glass. She could feel the fissure splintering inside of her, its veins shooting off in every direction. It was only a matter of time until she shattered.

The trip to the hotel had left her a wreck. She’d seen plenty of bombed-out houses, streets cratered from one end to the other, even entire city blocks razed to the ground. But nothing compared to the marsh of ruins through which she now walked. It was a bog of char and decay and rubble. Block after block blackened and leveled. Streets buckled open. Torn sewers spitting effluent. She’d felt as if she were descending into a nightmare one step at a time. And everywhere, people. Old men hauling wheelbarrows loaded with wood and pipe. Women carrying buckets of water. Mothers pushing perambulators crammed with their worldly possessions, leading their children by the hand. Other children—whole packs of them!—wandering on their own. All of them gaunt, dirty, and forlorn. A festival of the damned.

Stranger still—what really drove her batty—was the quiet. Berlin was nothing if not noisy: an exuberant symphony of horns and bells and shouts and squawks. Where had it gone? The silence that accompanied the squalor was unnatural. Walking, she would lift herself onto the balls of her feet, as if straining to catch a remark. All she heard was the constant
tap-tap-tap
of the trümmerfrauen; forlorn women chipping away a lifetime of mortar from an eternity of brick.

But all of it was bearable until she came upon the horse.

It was on the Ku’damm, just past Kranzler’s. A bulldozer had been by to clear the boulevard, plowing drifts of mortar and stone onto the sidewalks. Every twenty meters someone had carved a passageway to cross the street and it was through one of these crumbling couloirs that she’d spotted it. The animal lay still on the ground, surrounded by a small crowd. A wagon loaded with brick rested a few feet behind. The horse was terribly thin, stained black by its own sweat. Its fetlocks were tapered yet muscular, more jumper than draft horse. A lovingly braided mane hung limply on its neck. Obviously, the beauty had dropped from exhaustion.

Ingrid’s first instinct was to rush toward it, though she knew she could do little to aid the poor creature. Before she could reach the circle of onlookers, a man cried “
Achtung!
” and she heard a ghastly whinny as something heavy and not quite sharp struck the horse. Another blow cut short the animal’s cry.

There followed another
thwack,
and another. And a moment later, the horse’s rear haunch was handed through the crowd, passing from one person to the next, before being laid atop the wagon. A stream of blood curled between her feet, beckoning to her like an accusing finger.

“Saw!” cried the brusque voice, and she’d fled.

Brushing an errant strand of hair from her face, Ingrid leaned close to the mirror as if proximity to her reflection would help her sort out her feelings. She decided she’d been foolish to accompany Devlin Judge to Berlin. To abandon her child to join in another man’s crusade. Already she’d forgotten why she’d come. Was it to redeem her inaction during the war? Or to satisfy her long-simmering and silently fought feud with Erich Seyss? No one left Ingrid Bach until she said so! Was it this, then—her desire to be loved, to be attended to, to be found attractive—that had hastened her departure? Or robbed of a man’s presence for so long, had she mistaken Judge’s attention for something more lasting?

The arrival of Judge onto her mental stage softened her damning tirade and for a few moments she comforted herself with memories of their night together. But soon, her unsated guilt demanded that Judge, too, be accounted for and dismissed. What could he feel for her? She, the daughter of a war criminal, the lover of the man who had killed his brother? She was a whore who showed her breasts for a few days’ meals, a harlot who danced on a general’s arm to win his good favor. She still didn’t know what might have happened had she not seen Judge Friday night at Jake’s Joint. It was a question she refused to answer.

Whatever her intentions, she knew her motivations were ultimately selfish. By accompanying Judge, she’d cast herself as victim—of love, of war, it didn’t really matter—and again absolved herself of her responsibilities. To her country, her family, and, ultimately, to her herself.

When would she finally summon the courage to stand alone?

T
HE REPORTERS WERE EASY TO
spot. They sat gathered round a long table, six restless men in civilian garb among a placid sea of olive and khaki. They eyed her like starving dogs spotting the day’s only meal. Why shouldn’t they? She was the only woman in the room.

Ingrid decided that it was too crowded to approach them immediately. She didn’t want to attract more notice than she had already. She asked the maître d’ for a table and was shown to a banquette in the rear of the restaurant where she ordered canned ham with tomatoes and a Coca-Cola. She was very hungry. A breakfast of a hard roll and Hershey bar didn’t carry one far. Her meal arrived and she ate quickly, aware that all eyes were on her. Several times she heard hoots of laughter and looked over to see the newsmen observing her unabashedly. They’d finished eating before she’d arrived and looked to have settled into a long afternoon of drink. She waited until the room had cleared, then with some trepidation, rose and crossed the floor to speak with them.

Six eager faces turned up to her in welcome.

“I was wondering if I might ask a favor of you gentlemen,” she began.

“I was thinking the same thing, myself,” one of them shot back. He was a sweaty little man with a salt-and-pepper goatee and the name Rossi on his press pass.

Ingrid smiled and let go an easy laugh to let them know she could take a joke. Oddly, the chubby man’s rude remarks relaxed her. She had, after all, grown up with four brothers.

“It concerns one of the president’s associates,” she went on. “He’s my cousin, in fact. Chip DeHaven. Are any of you acquainted with him?”

“Yeah,” answered Rossi, “we’re fellow members of the Harvard Club, can’t you tell?”

“Actually,” Ingrid pointed out, “he attended Yale.”

Rossi flushed as his colleagues pounded him with acerbic laughter. The man next to him—slim, gray hair, and a ghost’s tan—chimed in. “Excuse me, ma’am, but we saw you talking to the concierge. We couldn’t help but overhear you speaking kraut. I didn’t know Carroll DeHaven had any German relations.”

Ingrid damned herself for her carelessness. Judge had told her to only speak English but the journey to the hotel had left her too flustered to remember. She considered denying the fact but wanted no more made of her nationality. “Carroll DeHaven
is
my cousin,” she said evenly, “on my mother’s side, if you must know, and I’m anxious to reach him. Would any of you be going out to Potsdam this afternoon? I’ve a letter that I’d like delivered to him.”

The lot of them shook their heads. Then Rossi jumped in, “Tell you what, sister. Come on upstairs, we can
sprechen Sie
a little, then you can tell me all about you and Chippie boy and Yale. You want him to get a letter, mail it!”

More laughter.

Ingrid shook her head, fed up with Mr. Rossi’s coarse behavior. She’d spent enough time chatting with the GIs guarding Papa at Sonnenbrücke to pick up some of their lingo. Finally, she’d been given an occasion to use it. Circling the table, she knelt close beside the obnoxious lout and brushed her most seductive finger along the underside of his bristly chin.

“Mr. Rossi, is it?”

“Hal.”

Ingrid flashed her eyes. “
Hal
. . . If I thought for a second that you knew the first thing about pleasing a woman, you know—how to make her really hum and purr—I just might consider it. But I can spot a limp-dicked paddywacker when I see one and I don’t care to waste my time with you. Terribly sorry . . .
Hal
.”

The table erupted in a gale of laughter. And to his credit, so did Rossi. When the commotion died down, he said, “Okay, okay, I apologize. Listen, lady, there are over two hundred of us reporters in town for the big show. Only two are allowed to attend the conference each day. The rest of us are stuck here twiddling our thumbs. I’m sorry, but if you want to talk to your cousin, you should go see Colonel Howley. He runs things in the American part of town. Frank Howley. Maybe he can help.”

Ingrid thanked the table and stood to go.

“And if he can’t,
schatzi,
” Rossi shouted after her, “don’t forget my offer.”

The table burst out all over again in boisterous laughter.

I
NGRID WAS PASSING THE FRONT
desk when Rossi caught up to her.

“Hey, sister, you want that letter to get to DeHaven, maybe I can help.”

She kept walking. “I doubt that.”

“A few of the guys are heading out to the Little White House tonight for a small shindig. Strictly on the q.t. A little poker, some booze, anything to get out of Berlin. Maybe we’ll see old Chippie.”

Ingrid realized she had no choice but to take the offer seriously. Stopping, she turned to face him. “Are you asking me to come with you?”

“If you can stand an hour’s car ride with a classy guy like me, why not? We’re leaving from the Excelsior around seven. Come by for a drink first.”

“The Excelsior at seven. Deal.”

Suddenly Rossi frowned, stroking his whiskers. “There’s just one thing I gotta ask you.”

Ingrid eyed him dubiously. “What?”

“Serious now. This letter, it’s not gonna get me into any trouble?”

Ingrid smiled. “Mr. Rossi, if you can get me to Potsdam, this letter of mine just might make for the biggest story of your career.”

Rossi shrugged, unimpressed. “Lady, if a dame like you goes out to a party with me, that’s the biggest story of my career.”

CHAPTER

49

“T
HE FLAG THAT WE ARE TO RAISE
today over the capital of a defeated Germany has been raised in Rome, North Africa, and Paris,” declared President Harry S. Truman from the steps of the Air Defense building. “It is the same flag that was flying over the White House when Pearl Harbor was bombed nearly four years ago, and one day soon, it will fly over Tokyo. This flag symbolizes our nation’s hopes for a better world, a peaceful world, a world in which all the people will have an opportunity to enjoy the good things in life and not just a few at the top.”

Seyss was only half listening to the words. It was bad enough having to stomach your own country’s propaganda; just plain nauseating trying to swallow someone else’s. Inching forward through the crowd of American soldiers, he was more concerned with the men on the stairs than with what they had to say. Truman was a particularly unimposing figure. Standing before the microphone, straw hat in hand, he wore a light summer suit, wire-rimmed spectacles, and two-tone shoes that would do a salesman proud. Behind him and to his right stood Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and, finally, George Patton.
A true friend of Germany,
Egon had said. A regimental band was off to the left, brass horns held at the ready.

Seyss kept his chin raised, his eyes glazed over with that proper mix of rapture, respect, and naïveté that the Americans reserved for their president. A few hundred soldiers had assembled for the flag raising and together with Seyss they had bunched themselves into the modest courtyard. Look at their faces. Such hope. Such faith. Such trust. How was it that their war taught them the opposite of his?

Step by step, ever so slowly, Seyss neared the president. He was careful not to jostle. Never did he push. If the men around him were aware of his movement, they didn’t mind it. A bead of sweat fell from beneath the brim of his cap, stinging his eye. He glanced up. The sun was at its highest, not a cloud to deflect its powerful rays. The day hot and sticky. Still, it was more than the heat causing him to perspire.

Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he lifted his cap and wiped his brow. He had the itchy neck, the twitching muscles, the flighty stomach, that came with the proximity to action. Twenty feet away, Truman droned on and on. Standing on his tiptoes, Seyss sighted a clear line of fire. The .45 rode high against his hip. The Browning he’d taken from Egon scratched the small of his back. Were he to draw his pistol and fire, he’d get off three shots, four at most. He’d kill the president, and if he was lucky, Eisenhower. But then what? The Horsch was parked three blocks away. A cordon of military police surrounded the gathering and a dozen heroes-in-waiting tugged at his elbow. He wouldn’t get far.

“We are not fighting for conquest,” Truman was saying. “There is not one piece of territory or one thing of a monetary nature that we want out of this war. We want peace and prosperity for the world as a whole. We want to see the time come when we can do the things in peace that we have been able to do in war.”

Truman stepped from the microphone and the crowd of soldiers broke into an enthusiastic cheer. Behind them, a few hundred Berliners had gathered. With dismay, Seyss noted that the locals were as fervent in their applause as the Americans. They’d clapped the same way when Hitler announced the retaking of the Rhineland and the Anschluss with Austria. When Paris fell, they’d gone absolutely crazy.

The cheering grew and grew, causing Seyss to wince with discomfort. Now was the time to act. The noise of gunfire would be swallowed by the boisterous ovation. He’d have a second more to get off an extra shot or two. In the ensuing confusion, he might even escape.

Still, there remained the bigger question: Would killing Truman, or even Eisenhower, “make the cauldron boil,” as Egon demanded? Would it spark a war between the Ivans and the Yanks? A conflict grave enough to bring in Germany on the Allied side? Of course not. Egon had been right all along. A Russian must be seen to kill the president. A Russian must kill Churchill, too. A Princeps for modern times, with Berlin, not the Balkans, the powder keg of Europe.

Seyss’s own eyes had borne out the Circle of Fire’s most outrageous claims. Day after day, Germany was being stripped of her machinery, her industry, her very means of survival. Two weeks after the Russians had moved out of western Berlin, their barges still traveled the Havel and Spree laden with disassembled machinery. The Americans were doing nothing to stop them. Hell, they were probably doing the same with their share of the pie.

In a few months, a few years, a decade at most, the Amis would be gone, leaving Stalin and his monstrous hordes poised from Danzig to the Danube. And when the Russians advanced, how was an agrarian state to stop them? With a commando force of holsteins and Herefords?

No, Seyss decided, he wouldn’t waste his life killing Truman alone.

Why write a footnote to history when he could write an entire chapter?

Just then the orchestra burst into the Star Spangled Banner and the crowd surged forward. All voices joined as one, heads tilted back as the flag was raised over the new headquarters of the United States occupational government of Berlin. God bless America!

J
UDGE HAD LOST
S
EYSS.
One second he had him, the next the crowd was driving forward and he was gone. One uniform among hundreds. Shoving his way through the mass of Germans, Judge neared the line of GIs meant to keep the citizens of Berlin a safe distance from their American masters. He shuffled to the right and stood on his toes, keeping his eyes pinned to the spot where, until a moment ago, Seyss had been standing. A news camera set on an elevated tripod blocked his view. He shuffled to the left and met the fierce gaze of a military policeman. Damning his luck, Judge lowered his head and retreated into the recesses of the crowd.

It had been near impossible to keep up with Seyss on the way to the ceremony. A three-stroke motorbike was no match for a twelve-cylinder Horsch, and several times Judge lost sight of him altogether. Only Seyss’s arrogance had saved him. The unmistakable black silhouette provided sharp contrast to the dull and ruined cityscape, standing out clearly from a quarter mile or better. And in those anxious seconds when the Horsch’s sleek profile was no longer in view, Judge steeled himself to act at the earliest instance.

Frantically, he’d asked himself what could he do? Shoot Seyss? He didn’t have a gun. Stab him? He didn’t have a knife. All he had were his bare hands and his will. But that, he determined, was enough. The sight of a filthy kraut grappling with an American officer would bring soldiers running in a hurry and give Judge ample opportunity to declare in his best Brooklyn accent that Seyss was an impostor, an escaped Nazi war criminal intent on harming the president of the United States. It was an accusation no one could lightly dismiss.

But when Judge had arrived at Kronprinzenallee, Seyss was already walking from his parked car, and in seconds, he had disappeared into the ranks of the gathered soldiers.

Abruptly, the ceremony ended. The flag fluttered in a light breeze atop the Air Defense Command. The orchestra played a Souza march. The assembled dignitaries shook hands with one another and slowly made their way from the podium. A hive of officers swarmed at the base of the steps, waiting to greet the president and the former supreme Allied commander. Despite his average height, Truman was easily visible. His pale straw hat stood in marked contrast both in color and shape to the olive military covers. An easy target. Judge cut through the crowd moving in a course parallel to Truman’s. He thought feverishly of what kind of diversion he could create. Something that would alert the president to the danger he was in. All he could think of was to yell what he shouted at opposing pitchers when they’d struck out Pee Wee Reese or Pete Reiser. “Get lost, you bum.” He looked around for something to throw. A bump on the head would hasten his departure, that was for sure. He found nothing. Naturally, the grounds had been cleared of debris for the ceremony.

By now, a picket of soldiers had formed around the president. Truman’s automobile drew up and he climbed in, followed by Ike and Omar Bradley, the two ranking generals present. Watching the sedan pull away, Judge breathed easier. Only Patton remained on the podium. His stiff posture belied some interior strain, either physical or mental. Judge eyed him, thinking,
You sonuvabitch. You’re helping Seyss. You’re a part of this.

An officer mounted the podium and addressed himself to Patton. He stood toe to toe with the general, shaking his hand exuberantly. Patton colored visibly and looked in either direction, but the officer did not release his hand. Only as he leaned forward to whisper something in Patton’s ear did Judge catch the tan skin, the arrogant jaw, and the flashing blue eyes.

“G
ENERAL,
I
BELIEVE IT
’
S TIME
we finally met.”

“The pleasure’s all mine, Captain. Did you serve under my command?”

“You might say that. Actually, I’m serving under it now.”

“Then you’re off-limits, son. My Third Army doesn’t grant R and R in Berlin. Which unit are you with?”

“A very special one. We call ourselves the Circle of Fire. My name is Seyss. Erich Seyss. Once I was a major.”

George Patton flinched, his normally ruddy mien flushing an exquisite plum. It wasn’t often a major could make the equivalent of a field marshal squirm and Seyss was enjoying the moment immensely. He leaned closer to Patton, whispering in his ear. “I wanted to thank you personally for the dossier on Terminal. I wouldn’t have a chance without it. But it’s hardly enough. Not if I’m to do a proper job and get out in one piece.”

“Spit it out, man,” Patton said through clenched teeth. “You’ve got your credentials, what else is it you need?”

“Be at the entry of the Cecilienhof tomorrow at eleven. Keep yourself visible. The fourth plenary session is scheduled to start at eleven-thirty. I’ll be accompanying you into the main hall, and if things go as planned, out again as well.” When Patton didn’t answer, he added, “Otherwise, I can’t promise what will happen to the dossier. It might be hard to explain how a man under house arrest got his hands on such sensitive material or how he got
here
, for that matter.”

“Egon Bach is indispensable to the rebuilding of Germany,” blustered Patton.

“You mean he
was
.” Seyss smiled, and before Patton could ask him what he meant, fired off a salute. “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning at eleven. Good day, General. It is an honor. Truly.”

Returning to the car, Seyss focused his mind on the task at hand. Tomorrow morning at ten he’d report to the Bristol Hotel for a ride out to Potsdam. He’d need some civilian clothes before then and some time to study Egon’s dossier. For all the information the papers gave him, it couldn’t begin to give him a picture of the setup of the place—the placement of security guards, who sat where, where the leaders lunched, the layout of the Cecilienhof itself. All that he must learn for himself.

Seyss sneaked through the crowd, finally breaking free of it at the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Prinz Albrechstrasse. Spotting the Horsch, he picked up his heels and walked a little quicker. It was a beautiful machine. The registration said it belonged to Karl Heinz Gessler. Now, there was a name from the past. During Ingrid’s time as a student at Humboldt University, the two had dined regularly at the Gesslers. The cuisine was terrible, as he recalled. Nothing but overcooked sauerbraten and lumpy spätzle.

The thought of Ingrid brought back Egon’s odd words. “Christ, I’m your boy’s uncle.” Seyss wanted to dismiss the remark as a ploy, an almost successful effort at distraction, but the words stayed with him. He wondered if Ingrid was the reason Egon had come to Berlin. Egon had stated that Judge had enlisted her help to track down her onetime fiancé. Brother and sister had never gotten along, but he’d always suspected that Egon was secretly mad about her. Maybe too mad.

More likely, it was Judge, Bauer’s capture and the subsequent call to Patton giving Egon ample reason to believe the American intended to travel to Berlin.
Judge!
Every time he heard the American’s name he felt a dread chill. Instinctively, he turned and scanned the street behind him. He saw the usual mishmash of city folk. A pair of trümmerfrauen hard at work. A one-legged veteran begging. A postman fiddling with his motorbike. Nothing to worry about. Calmer, he realized he’d half expected to see the fiery-eyed American bearing down on him. Nerves.

Unlocking the Horsch, he climbed into the driver’s seat and keyed the ignition. Over the velvet growl of the twelve-cylinder engine, he asked himself where in Berlin he might hide if he were traveling with Ingrid Bach and two days absent without leave? The answer came at once, and he smiled. Why not have a look? He needed a quiet spot to spend the afternoon, someplace sufficiently private where he could delve into Patton’s dossier without interruption. Who knew? He might find an old set of clothing.

Even better, he might find Judge.

K
NEELING ALONGSIDE THE PURLOINED MOTORBIKE,
Judge observed Erich Seyss slide into the sleek roadster. Whatever ideas he’d harbored about jumping him and screaming bloody murder he canned the moment he saw the German speaking to Patton. As far as Judge knew, any MP around the place might be one of Patton’s henchmen. Waiting for a puff of smoke to shoot from the exhaust, Judge swung a leg over the ripped seat and kick-started the engine. The Horsch pulled away from the curb and crept up the street. Judge allowed it a fifty-yard head start, then angled the bike into the center of the road and gave chase.

The black sports car traveled north along Wilhelmstrasse, slowing to cross Unter den Linden, then accelerating wildly when it reached the other side. Judge threaded his way through a gaggle of pedestrians, almost losing Seyss as the automobile made a sharp right turn around a devastated street corner. Opening up the throttle, Judge ducked low and cut the corner only to see Seyss turn again, this time left. Pylons of debris six feet high cluttered the road. He thanked God for the mess. One extended straightaway and Seyss would be out of sight.