The Runner (41 page)

“Never,” she said, and he felt the venom in her words.

Tossing her shoulders, she tried to stand up but a firm arm locked around her back defeated her struggles. He slid down the couch and moved his head toward hers. Her lips were dry and chapped. Feeling her shift, he tightened his grip and placed a hand on her breast. She was always sensitive there, he recalled. He pressed his body into hers so that she might feel his attraction, then snuck in two fingers to unbutton his pants.

Just then the bucket clanked and clattered down three flights of stairs.

Startled, Ingrid gasped and held him tighter. Seyss shook her loose and jumped to his feet, grabbing the pistol and running into the bathroom. The fire escape groaned as someone mounted the steps. Jutting his head out the window, he caught sight of a mop of dark hair climbing the rusted stairs. He brought the pistol to bear and cocked the hammer. It was a man and he was coming up fast, but where was the uniform Ingrid had mentioned? Seyss waited, knowing a shot would ricochet off the scaffolding. He didn’t want to fire. A gunshot would bring unwelcome attention. The figure rounded the stairs. A head popped from the sea of metal slats, looking expectantly upward and Seyss was staring at the dirt-smeared face of a teenage boy.

“He paid me. He paid me,” the boy was yelling, hand raised to ward off Seyss’s bullet.

Seyss didn’t hear him.

By then, the door to Ingrid’s flat had crashed open and Devlin Judge was rushing across the room, a jagged section of pipe in hand.

CHAPTER

51

“R
AUS!
R
AUS!
”

Devlin Judge charged across the room, brandishing a heavy lead pipe. He yelled for Ingrid to get out of the apartment but she stood as if frozen. His ruse had brought them a few seconds, no more, and it was only through speed and surprise that they could take advantage of them.

Seyss dashed from the bathroom, a look of incomprehension heating to anger, then resolve. His hand rose sharply and he brought the muzzle of the Colt to bear. Before he could fire, Ingrid was upon him, hands working to free the pistol from his grasp. Judge leaped onto the coffee table and launched himself at the German. The gun bucked once, twice. The noise was excruciatingly loud, clotting his ears with an unbearable ringing. Gunpowder from the muzzle blast scalded his cheek and the next instant he collided with Seyss, his head spearing the German in the ribs. The momentum of flight propelled both men into the wall. With a thud, they landed in a confused heap.

Judge cleared his left forearm and pinned Seyss to the ground. Staring into his callous, confident face, he suffered every bitter emotion of the past ten days. His humiliation at being bested at Lindenstrasse, his frustration at allowing Seyss to escape from the armory, and his unspoken anger and will to revenge on behalf of his brother, Francis Xavier. These feelings and a hundred more for which he had no name came to an instant, uncontrollable boil inside him. Cocking his free arm, he delivered two quick downward jabs. The first blow connected solidly with Seyss’s cheek. The second glanced off his chin and scraped the floor, causing Judge to lose his balance. And in that instant Seyss’s fist erupted like a coiled spring, a freight train on a vertical track catching his jaw square on. Judge’s sight darkened and his vision collapsed to a narrow band of light, grainy and unfocused. He tumbled to the floor and his head struck something hard and uneven. Stunned, he thrust his hand behind him and his fingers danced across the cool metal of Seyss’s pistol. The discovery and its concomitant prospect of revenge most sweet enlivened him.

Scrambling to his feet, Judge noted with dismay that Seyss had risen, too, and was propelling Ingrid toward the door. Judge took aim at the plane of Seyss’s back. The trigger caressed his finger like lips to his ear, begging him to fire. He hesitated. A shot at such close range might easily pass through Seyss and kill Ingrid, too. He yelled for the two to stop, but even as he spoke, Seyss twirled, shunting Ingrid in front of him. He had another gun in his hand—and as Judge threw himself behind the sofa, it exploded. The bullet struck the wall behind him, misting the air with vaporized plaster. Ingrid screamed, and when he raised his head, the apartment was empty.

Judge ran to the door and popped his head into the hallway. Two more shots came his way but neither was close. Seyss was buying time, executing a retreating action to the Horsch with Ingrid, a flesh-and-blood shield. Judge slid down the stairs, his back to the wall. He was desperate to stop Seyss, but prudence forced him to pause at the top of each landing, to advance inch by inch until he could be certain the next flight was clear.

Reaching the street, he wasn’t surprised to see that Seyss had trundled Ingrid into the black roadster. She was half inside the sports car, her flailing arms providing a scrappy if ineffective resistance. Seyss jabbed the pistol into her ribs, hard enough to make Judge wince. He shouted for her to calm down, to do as he said, and she stopped fighting. He shoved her head into the tight compartment and climbed in beside her.

Twenty yards separated Judge from the car. Twenty yards from the woman he cared for and the man he wanted to kill. Keeping his body hidden inside the building’s entry, he released the cartridge and ran a thumb over the bullets. Five shells plus one in the snout. He imagined himself bursting from the protection of the building and blasting his way to the car, saw the spent brass casings, spitting from the Colt as he emptied the gun into Seyss’s torso. It was craziness. Seyss would take him the moment he showed himself. An idea came to him. The tires, he thought. Shoot the goddammed tires!

Arm extended, Judge peeked from the building. A young couple walking hand in hand interrupted his line of fire. Seeing his pistol, they turned and fled down the street. Just then, the Horsch’s engine spat brusquely and revved. Judge stepped from his hiding place and began firing. One, two, three shots. All misses. The Horsch screeched from the sidewalk, shuddering as it executed a 180-degree turn. Judge ran after it, firing wildly at the tires, praying no strays would violate the gas tank. He didn’t dare risk a shot at the tightly bunched silhouette inside the cockpit. Suddenly, he heard a fat bang, louder even than the gunshots and the left rear tire exploded.

I
NGRID FELT RATHER THAN HEARD
the tire blow. It was as if someone had kicked the car, knocking a leg out from under it. The Horsch veered left and Erich flung both hands onto the wheel to correct the vehicle’s course, letting the gun fall onto the floorboard at his feet. Spotting her moment, Ingrid sprang. Her ribs were very sore where he’d prodded her with the pistol, but she managed to twist and lunge across the armrests and make a grab for the wheel. Clutching the circle of polished wood, she yanked it right and held on for dear life. The car lurched into the curb, bounced off, then climbed onto the sidewalk. Seyss rose in his seat and delivered a vicious elbow to her chest. Crying out, she released the wheel and fell against the door. He thrust the wheel to the left, but by then it was too late. Traveling at forty miles per hour, the Horsch struck an elderly man, then careened through the plywood façade of an electrical goods store. Ingrid brought both arms in front of her face, wanting to scream but finding fear had lodged her cry deep in her throat. It didn’t matter. By then, the world was screaming for her—the splintered wood breaking upon the car, the furious engine howling in protest, the tires seeking purchase on the slick cement, and above it all, Erich yelling for the car to stop, stop, stop. Sliding across the deserted showroom, the Horsch slammed into the back wall and came to an abrupt halt.

S
EYSS SAW THE COLLISION APPROACHING.
Bracing one arm against the steering column, the other on the handbrake, he let the shock roll through him. He waited for a moment after the car had come to a stop, taking a deep breath, then making an inventory of his body’s complaints. His forearm ached. His chest was sore (from the collision with Judge) and his ankle throbbed curiously. He hoped it wasn’t broken. He raised a hand to his forehead, expecting to see blood, but it came away clean. Amazingly, the windscreen had not shattered.

He glanced at Ingrid. She was dazed and unmoving, but apparently unhurt. He remembered her ridiculous attempt at bravado, saw her grasping the wheel, tugging at it like a hellion, and he grew enraged. All of this was her fault. Running a hand across the floor, he found the Browning, then turned to face her.

“I’m sorry,
schatz,
” he said. “But really, I can’t have you messing up my life any further.”

Without further ado, he placed the barrel of the pistol against Ingrid’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Ejecting the cartridge, he saw he was out of bullets.
Shit.

Ignoring Ingrid, Seyss tried to start the car. He turned the ignition time and time again, but after a few wounded coughs the engine died altogether. Ingrid laughed but made no move toward him. The door was frozen solid, so he pulled himself out the open window. His first steps were tentative. A sharp pain stabbed at his ankle. A sprain, nothing worse. Reaching the sidewalk, he saw Judge in full flight running up the street. He’d never make it as a sprinter, but his form wasn’t bad. And with that gun he didn’t need to win, a close second would do.

Seyss unbuttoned his jacket and began to jog up the road. The motion flooded his wrenched joint with blood and for a few steps, he thought he might faint. Lengthening his stride, he was pleased to feel the pain subside. A crowd of onlookers had gathered round the entrance to the store. Burnt-out tanks and flak-torn aircraft were old hat, but an American officer crashing a Horsch roadster into a neighborhood store . . . that was a novel sight. Judge met his eye, then broke off the chase and ran into the store.
Idiot!
He actually cared for the girl. Ingrid must have freed herself, for a second later, Judge was back, rejoining his pursuit with a new vigor. Forty yards separated them. Putting additional weight on his weakened limb, Seyss was pleased to find it accept the exertion. He ran faster and the distance between them quickly grew.

And as he ran, he became aware of the curious stares thrown his way from the local gentry. It wasn’t usual to see an American fleeing a German. Not in Berlin, at least. Turning this observation over in his mind, Seyss discovered a neat solution to his problem. A nifty way to end this ridiculous charade once and for all.

Coming to the next corner, he turned left and headed west. Eichstrasse was practically on the border of the American zone of occupation. It was just a matter of time before he came upon an American installation. The sun shone high on the yardarm and soon he was sweating, his shirt damp and his jacket tight across the shoulders. Not wanting Judge exhausted, he slowed, allowing him to gain some ground. Judge rounded the corner a second later. He had settled into a steady stride and though perspiring heavily, looked ready to run another five kilometers. At his shoulder was Ingrid Bach. When had she turned into such an athlete?

Remembering the pistol, Seyss stoked his tempo. He heard Judge yell “Stop!” and not a second later a bullet whizzed overhead, sounding in its proximity like a drunken bumblebee. Then he saw it. A block up the road, an American flag flew from the balcony of a white stucco building—a
gemeindehaus,
or district governmental office. He smiled at the red and white stripes curling in the soft breeze. It wasn’t a flag he’d ever wanted to salute, but it was one he had surrendered to willingly. Prisoners on the eastern front couldn’t expect Hershey bars, Budweisers, or Lucky Strikes as part of their daily regimen. He stumbled purposely, wanting Judge to gain a few feet and the thought came to him that he was a fisherman and that he was reeling in a big catch foot by foot. Nearing the American flag, he yelled in his loudest voice.

“Get me some help quick. Crazy Nazi bastard’s trying to kill me. Will someone get down here?”

A moment passed. No one responded and Seyss felt a chill pass through his body. It was Wednesday afternoon. Maybe like German schools, the Americans closed their doors after twelve o’clock midweek. Just as quickly, though, his fears were put to rest. The doors to the stucco building burst open and four GIs peeled downstairs, each carrying an M-1 rifle.

J
UDGE SAW THE
A
MERICAN FLAG
and smiled. He would catch Seyss. He would explain everything to the CO and that would be that. The White Lion was finished. Just a few more steps. Tucking in his chin, he ignored the fire that had engulfed his lungs three blocks back and urged his knees higher, his legs faster. Seyss had stopped running and was waving the squad of GIs in his direction, saying something about “a crazy Nazi” and “war criminals” and “a murder.” In his overheated state, Judge couldn’t make it all out.

“I’m an American officer,” he shouted when he was within spitting distance of the soldiers. “That man is an escaped war criminal.” But he was too out of breath to make himself understood. His ragged rebuttal sounded more like, “offzer,” “awrcrimnal.” He sounded just like the rabid Nazi Seyss claimed he was. The GIs were all around him now, and he didn’t like how they were eyeing him. Seyss stood behind them, ten feet away.

Judge raised a hand to get a breath, panting, “I’m an Ameri—”

A rifle butt crunched into the back of his neck and he didn’t say anything else.

CHAPTER

52

T
HE
E
XCELSIOR
H
OTEL.
S
EVEN O
’
CLOCK.
The bar.

Arriving at the appointed hour, Erich Seyss sauntered into the dimly lit lounge and shouldered his way through the dense, boisterous crowd. Their bubbly chatter had the relentless quality of an incoming tide, ebbing and flowing, growing ever louder. It was the sound of men and women getting drunk and not giving a damn. He took a seat at the far end of the mahogany bar and ordered a beer—a Hacker-Pschorr, thank you. Only his favorite would do tonight. If he were in Munich he’d ask for a plate of pretzels and a little mustard, too, but this was Berlin—
American Berlin
—so he settled for a bowl of stale peanuts.

The beer came and he took a great big draft. Eyes closed, he savored the frosty suds coasting down his throat, cooling his belly. He took a deep breath and tried to relax for a minute or two. It was anxious time. The time between heats. The time to keep his muscles warm. The time to concentrate on the final event.

It was impossible. Too much had happened during the day. Too much was yet to come.

He’d stayed at the
gemeindehaus
in Wedding long enough to see a groggy Judge carted away in handcuffs and Ingrid taken into custody with him. She’d made the mistake of screaming that Judge was an American while insisting with equal vigor that Seyss was a German, a war criminal, and an assassin who wanted to kill the president, to boot. The soldiers had looked at her as if she were crazy, but a minute later, one produced a flyer bearing Judge’s photograph stating that he was wanted by the provost marshal for desertion and obstruction of justice. Maybe she wasn’t so crazy after all. Regardless, Judge would be held in custody for a minimum of twenty-four hours. Thanks to darling Ingrid, that was all the time Seyss needed.

Finishing his beer, he slammed the mug onto the counter, snapped his fingers, and made his way into the hubbub. Time to move. He was looking for a portly little American with a beer belly and goatee, a reporter named Rossi. Great, he thought, another Italian, and wondered if there were any left in Sicily. The men in the crowd were half military, half civilian, but they were all talking about the same thing: Stalin, the goddammed Russians, and how they had better watch who they were pushing around.

Adopting a friendly attitude, he coasted through the throng, tapping the odd forearm and asking its owner if he’d seen Rossi around. The third man he approached fit Ingrid’s description to a
T.
“I’m Hal Rossi. Who’s looking?”

Seyss disliked him immediately. The greasy smile, the dancing eyes. He was too glib by half. “Dan Gavin,” he replied in a voice loud enough to make any self-respecting German cringe. “I understand you ran into my friend Ingrid Bach this afternoon.”

“Yeah, yeah, I sure did,” said Rossi. “She’s a lovely gal. Coming soon, is she? We’re due to leave anytime.”

Seyss gave an earnest shake of the head. “I’m afraid she won’t be joining you this evening. She took ill around five. Something she ate. What do they call it? Berlin tummy.”

Rossi looked as if his mother had dropped dead while kissing him good-night. “No. Really? Jeez, I’m sorry to hear that. Make sure you give her my best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

Seyss promised to give her the message. “Listen, Hal,” he added before the forlorn Ami could get away. “Ingrid wondered if I might go in her place. I’m sure she told you she had something important to tell Chip DeHaven. I’ve known Chip forever and I don’t want to let Ingrid down. It would mean so much to her. Got room for another body?”

Rossi tapped his forearm, signaling to come closer. “Is it all that serious?” he whispered, “Ingrid was pretty worked up about having to see DeHaven. She said it might make a decent story.”

Seyss looked this way and that, as if afraid of prying ears. “Without being too dramatic, I have to admit it is. But hardly anything newsworthy. A family matter, actually.”

“Figures.” Rossi shrugged, pepping up a second later as he rediscovered some spark of inner cheer. “Well, Danny boy, you’re not as pretty as Ingrid, but if I’m lucky, after you talk to Chip you’ll spot me a hand or two of five-card stud.”

Seyss smiled inwardly. To hell with Patton and the rendezvous at the Cecilienhof tomorrow morning at eleven. He was going to Potsdam tonight. “Kind of you to take me along, Hal, but that might be asking too much.”

And together they headed to the bar to cement their new friendship.

Seyss had just one question: What the hell was five-card stud?

T
HE
F
ORD CARRYING
E
RICH
S
EYSS,
Hal Rossi, and three other half-soused American newshounds pulled into the drive of Kaiserstrasse 2 at nine fifteen. If they were an hour late, at least they’d made good use of the time. Five better chums weren’t to be found anywhere in Germany. A quartet of soldiers surrounded the car, opening the doors on cue. Climbing from the sedan, Seyss saluted the ranking officer and followed Rossi and the others into the house.

The Little White House was an ungainly toad of a home; an unsmiling three-story palace painted a tepid mustard with narrow windows and a sloping red shingle roof. Sitting on a broad knoll overlooking the Wannsee, it did, however, have a wonderful lake view.

Seyss paused on the front landing, wanting to survey the grounds. A dozen soldiers milled around the courtyard chatting with the newly arrived chauffeurs. A pair of Russian sentries stood at the gate, their rigid posture attesting to a largely ceremonial role. No threat there. But nearby in the lavender twilight waited Stalin’s crack troops, patrolling the wooded hills and dales of Babelsberg and its adjacent community, Potsdam.

Crossing the border into Potsdam, Seyss had been amazed at the sheer number of Red Army troops Stalin had shipped in to provide security for Terminal. The entire route to the Little White House was lined with pea green. Yet his searching eye hadn’t stopped at the side of the road. He was quick to discern bands of soldiers roaming the wooded hills. He’d read a note in Patton’s dossier stating that “Stalin promises to have a man behind every tree.” The author might have added “and a submachine gun, too.”

Inside, the party was in full swing. Lights blazed from the main salon and Seyss could see a group of gray-haired men sitting round a card table engrossed in their hands. Someone was playing the piano badly and singing even worse. He let his companions lead the way down the corridor, making sure he stayed comfortably to the rear. His first order of business was to get out of the house. Leave immediately and he’d have ten or fifteen minutes until one of his new cronies remarked upon his absence. If luck was with him, they’d be either too tight or too involved with a good hand of cards to notice.

God forbid he see Chip DeHaven. He had no idea what the man looked like, whether he was young or old, fat or thin. How to explain his fraud did not bear imagining. No words could gild his suspect presence. Someone would ask to see his identification or his orders and all he could provide was the dog tag of a GI killed nine months ago in France. It was a situation from which there would be no escape. No, he decided, he could not see Chip DeHaven.

Mumbling something about needing the commode, he backtracked to the foyer and ran upstairs. He found a bathroom halfway down the hall and locked the door behind him. Moving to the sink, he washed his face with cold water, willing away the effects of the alcohol he’d drunk. He raised a hand in front of him, trying to hold it steady. Its reflection in the mirror betrayed a tremor, and suddenly, he could feel his heart pounding inside of his chest as if it were straining to break free of its mooring. He took several deep breaths and the palsy disappeared.
Stand straighter,
he told himself.
Chin up. You’re in your element. Behind the lines in another man’s uniform. A Brandenburger.

And as he stared at his countenance, daring himself to accept this final challenge, he began setting forth his plan to reach Ringstrasse 2, Stalin’s private residence no more than five kilometers away, where this evening the grand marshal of the Soviet Union was entertaining Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, and their highest advisors. No doubt it was a fete of some opulence. Seyss had attended a similar dinner three years earlier, when Hitler had feted Mussolini in Berlin upon the latter’s daring escape from Gran Sasso, and he knew that it would be a ritzy affair—vodka, caviar, music, the works. No one had an inferiority complex like the Bolshies. More importantly, he knew that security would not just be tight, it would be impossible. A formal guest list would exist and no matter the emergency no one not properly vetted would be admitted. An unknown American, therefore, would have no chance of gaining entry. The right Russian, though, might make it.

Seyss’s attention fell to his pocket, where he held between his fingers a rough-hewn piece of paper the size of a passport. Removing it, he read over the name and the unit designation. Colonel Ivan Truchin, Fifty-fifth Police Division, NKVD. Born August 2, 1915, Stalingrad. For two months in the summer of ’43, he’d posed as the great Truchin, defender of Stalingrad, parading up and down the streets of Minsk, offering the district commander his advice on the proper placement of artillery, tanks, and troops in defense of the coming German attack. He had come unannounced with neither orders nor adjutant, just an unquestioned confidence the equivalent of divine right. Move everything to the north, he had said. The Nazi warlords will surely concentrate their attack there in hopes of capturing the bridges intact. And they had listened. Was it not the NKVD who, fearing mass desertion during the battle for Stalingrad, lined up every platoon, every company, every battalion, and shot every tenth man in the head to teach a stern but much-needed lesson? If they don’t get you, we will. Was it not the NKVD who liquidated the entire officer corps in the purges of ’36 and ’37? One million or two, who was counting? Was not Lavrenti Beria, chief of the NKVD, Stalin’s closest confidant? One ignored a colonel of the Soviet Secret Police at his peril—his very great peril.

So, then, Truchin it would be.

He gave himself a final looking over in the mirror.

“Live dangerously,” he whispered, and smiling grimly, left the bathroom.

I
N THE COURTYARD, HE COLLARED
Sergeant Schneider, the chauffeur who’d driven them from Berlin.

“Get in the car,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to town. General Patton phoned. He needs me right away.”

Schneider was a bluff country boy from the mountains of Vermont, a “Green Mountain Raider,” he’d said proudly, who’d arrived in Germany only the month before. Not one to question an officer’s orders, he fired off a salute and opened the rear door.

Seyss climbed in, settling into the wide leather banquette. When Schneider had guided the automobile out of the gates and onto Kaiserstrasse, he leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Change of plan, sport. We’re headed to Stalin’s house. I’ve got a message for President Truman.”

Schneider beamed with excitement, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror. “But you’re a public affairs officer, aren’t you? I mean, that’s what I heard you telling everyone on the way out.”

Apparently, Schneider listened as well as he talked.

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” said Seyss, with just the right mixture of pride and uninterest. “Ringstrasse two. Know where it is? President’s waiting on me.”

“Yessir.”

As Schneider accelerated the Buick along the winding road, Seyss peered from the window into the shadowy hills, searching for signs of increased security. He saw them immediately. Whole platoons of infantry resting to the side of the road. A sudden profusion of armored personnel carriers. A bounty of barbed wire strung at fifteen-foot intervals along the ground. They were getting close. Very close.

Cresting a rise, they came upon a guardhouse and a candy-striped pole barring the path. Three soldiers snapped to attention as an officer rushed from the temporary booth. Seyss did not want him to speak with Sergeant Schneider. Flinging open the door, he leaped out of the car and intercepted the stocky man at the front bumper.

“Good evening, Colonel,” he said, spying the golden laurel that decorated the Russian officer’s epaulets and noting the blue stripe that indicated he was a member of the secret police. “My name is Gavin. Daniel Gavin. I have an urgent message for President Truman. Eyes only.”

“I’m sorry, Captain. No uninvited guests are permitted beyond this point. If you’d like I can phone and allow you to speak to one of your president’s security detachment. Perhaps Mr. Cahill? If necessary, he can come and fetch you.”

The Russian gestured to the guardhouse and smiled obligingly. Black hair cut to a stubble, pronounced cheekbones, and a single bristly eyebrow forming an uninterrupted hedgerow above his eyes, he was every bit the Mongol warrior. A descendant of Genghis Khan indeed. But his English was flawless and unaccented. Delivered in an unctuous voice the product of Moscow’s finest diplomatic school, it was every bit as fluent as Seyss’s.

“That’s very kind of you,” said Seyss. “I take it you have a direct line.”

“This way.”

Seyss followed him to the hut, but before the colonel could pick up the phone, he leaned close and spoke to him in the earthy Russian of a native Georgian. “Evening,
tovarich.
I commend you on your English. Impeccable. I only wish you had the same control over your men. Are you aware that a mile back a few of them have a cozy little bonfire going just out of sight of the main road? You should see them, smoking American cigarettes and giggling like a bunch of maidens.”

Before the colonel could ask a question or voice his disagreement, Seyss handed him the identification card carrying Truchin’s name. As the colonel studied it, Seyss continued speaking. “I lost enough men at Stalingrad not to give two shits about this petty bullshit. But humor me. Send a man back to clear it up, won’t you, Colonel . . .’’