Christopher Reich - The Runner

After buttoning his shirt, he grabbed a loden blazer and gave himself a final looking over. His shock was immediate and overwhelming. Staring back at him was a civilian. A man who would never again don his country’s uniform. A man who had lost the war. Cheeks scrubbed, hair combed, clothes just so, he looked more like a country squire than an escapee from an American prison camp. The thought came to him that he was betraying the comrades he’d left eighty miles away in a barbed-wire pen. He dismissed it. Any man who’d suffered even a little of war knew never to question his luck. Good fortune was like a weekend pass: never too soon coming and always too soon gone. Besides, Seyss didn’t imagine he’d be taking a vacation anytime soon.

The drawing room of the Villa Ludwig hadn’t changed since the war began. Louis XV sofas upholstered in burgundy chintz crowded every wall. The Bosendorfer grand, ever polished as if for that evening’s performance, shared its corner with an immortal Phoenician palm. And sagging from the walls hung the same succession of dreary landscapes by Caspar Friedrich. A mausoleum for the living, observed Seyss, as he entered the marble-floored chamber.

“Erich, so wonderful to see you,” declared Egon Bach, rising from a wing-backed chair. “Sleep the great healer? You’re looking fit, all things considered.”

Every large family has its runt and Egon Bach, youngest of the seven Bach children, claimed the title. He was very short and very thin and his cropped brown hair, cut a full inch above the ear, spoke volumes about his love of all things fascist. It was his vision, however, that had kept him from active service. His tortoiseshell spectacles carried lenses so thick his obsidian eyes stared at you from the end of a drunken corridor. But Seyss had never heard him complain about his physical shortcomings. Instead, Egon had joined the family business and used his position as sole heir in the executive suite to bring him the glory a battlefield never would. Whatever enmity he’d felt at being left out of the match he’d channeled into his work. Last Seyss heard, he’d been appointed to the firm’s executive board, the youngest member by thirty years.

“Hello, Egon. I apologize for keeping your father waiting.”

“Don’t apologize to Father,” he said sprightly. “Apologize to me.”

“You?” Seyss shook the smaller man’s hand, finding the grip cool and clammy. “You called me down here?”

A self-satisfied smile. “I’ve been running the firm for a year now.”

Seyss had difficulty imagining the diminutive man, two years his junior, running the behemoth that was Bach Industries. A little like Goebbels governing the Reich. “I hadn’t heard your father had retired.”

“He hasn’t — at least not officially. The Americans have him under house arrest. The past year he’s suffered a series of strokes that have left him soft. He’ll be dead before fall.”

Don’t smile, Egon, or I’ll cuff you, thought Seyss. “And how is it that you escaped the Allies’ interest? They’re a thorough bunch.”

“Thorough, but pragmatic,” answered Egon, sensing his anger, taking a wise step to the rear. “We’ve come to an arrangement. I’ve been declared necessary to the rebuilding of Germany.”

“Have you? Bravo.” Seyss raised an eyebrow, but decided not to delve any further into the subject. The Bachs had always managed some type of arrangement with whoever was in power. Monarchs, republicans, fascists. It came as no surprise that Egon had worked out something with the Americans. Approaching the window, Seyss peeked from the lace curtains. Fifty meters away, two American soldiers stood guard at the entry to Villa Ludwig’s driveway. “Where were they when I arrived last night?”

“On duty, of course. Otherwise, I would have met you myself.”

An arrangement, indeed. Enough to clear the Olympicstrasse of military police for an hour but not to rid himself of a permanent guard. Things were more complicated than Bach had let on. “ And your family? How did your brothers make out?”

Egon removed his glasses and as he polished them with his tie, his defenseless eyes crossed. “Fritz was killed at Monte Cassino a year ago. Heinz was in your area, the Dnieper Bend in the Ukraine. Apparently his tank took a direct hit. It was one of ours: a Panzer IV from our Essenmetalwerke. A shame.” The creep sounded more concerned about the failure of the equipment than the death of his brother. “You knew about Karl. Seven kills before he went down over the Channel.”

“I’d heard, yes.” The Bachs might be an arrogant bunch, but they were brave. Three of four sons lost. The Fuhrer could ask no more of any family. “My condolences.”

Replacing his glasses, Egon retrieved two beers from the cherrywood side bar. “To fallen comrades.”

“May their memories never be forgotten.”

The Hacker-Pschorr was warm, but still Seyss’s favorite, and its bitter aftertaste resuscitated memories of his time with the Bach family. In this room, he’s listened to Hans Frizsche, the voice of the German DNB, announce the Anschluss with Austria, and a year later the annexation of the Sudentenland. In this room, he’d received the orders canceling his leave in August of 1939. In this room, he’d lowered himself to one knee and asked the only woman he’d ever loved to marry him. For a moment, he allowed himself to drift with the tide of his bittersweet memories. Before he could stop himself, he asked, “And Ingrid?”

“At Sonnenbrucke taking care of father.” The Bachs owned homes in every corner of Germany. Each had a name. Sonnenbrucke was their palatial hunting lodge in the Hiemgauer Alps. “She always wanted to be a doctor,” added Egon. “Now’s her chance.”

“And Wilimovsky?” Egon shook his head brusquely. “Shot down in the east a year ago. Pity for a girl to be widowed so young, though it’s the boy I’m worried about. Just six.” Suddenly, he froze, his voice ratcheting up a notch. “Not interested are you?” Or have you been all along?

Seyss met Egon’s salacious gaze, but his thoughts were with Ingrid and the time was a crisp fall day in 1938. They had been seeing each other for a year and he had arrived that morning to spend his weekend pass at Villa Ludwig before continuing on to an infantry training course at Brunswick. Against her father’s will, she had decided to study medicine. With the Jews forbidden to practice, there was a growing shortage of doctors and she was anxious to break from her family. Even now, he could see her as she fell onto the couch in that exaggerated fashion which infuriated her father, a perfectly assembled mess of platinum hair and ruby red lipstick.

“I’ve decided to get a flat of my own,” she had said, after they’d had a cup of tea.

“What for?” he asked. “You have plenty of room here. Besides, your father won’t permit it.”

“I want us to be alone. You could come see me anytime you like. I’m sick of Fritz or Hilda barging in. Egon watches us through the keyhole.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re just eighteen.” He, being twenty-one, and the embodiment of wisdom.

“Almost nineteen,” she replied coquettishly, tracing the looping silver script embroidered on his left forearm. LAH: Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler . “An officer assigned to the Fuhrer’s bodyguard shouldn’t have to ask my father every time he wants to see me.”

Erich considered the dilemma. He didn’t like to admit that he was a stickler for rules and regulations. Earlier in the day, they’d argued about her make-up and clothing.

Adhering to the party line, he had found himself saying that too much lipstick was un-German and that pants demeaned her femininity. He’d even declared that an SS man couldn’t be seen with a “trouser woman”. At that, Ingrid had broken out laughing, and after a moment, he had joined her. He knew what he had said was ridiculous, but an uncontrollable part of his nature compelled him to defend the party’s philosophy. He was, above all, a good National Socialist. Truth be told, he adored her tight blouses and soft curls. The idea of spending the night alone with Ingrid Bach was overpowering.