Christopher Reich - The Runner

“I think the museum quarter would be the best place to start looking, don’t you?” Ingrid screamed with delight and pulled him close.

Guiding his hand to her breast, she kissed him in a very un-German fashion.

“I said, you’re not still interested?” Egon repeated.

“Of course not,” snapped Seyss, his attention again riveted to the here and now. He felt angry with himself for allowing his emotions free reign. Tucking in his jaw, he adopted the dry tone taught all SS officers. Sachlichkeit , it was called. The ability to view one’s circumstances with rigid objectivity. “Please pass along my regards to her and the boy.”

“I’ll be sure to,” laughed Egon, rudely. “Though I’m not certain she’ll be too pleased. She never quite recovered, you know.”

“It was a different time,” said Seyss, answering his own accusations as well as his host’s. “One had obligations.”

“As a party member, I understand. As Ingrid’s brother, I take a different view. You hurt her badly.” Seyss finished his beer and set down the empty glass. Five minutes listening to Egon’s nasal bray and he remembered how much he hated the impudent bastard. He was sick of the small talk. He’d risked his life to be here and killed two men in the process. It was time to get down to business.

“How did you find me, anyway?”

“It was easy once I realized you’d be on the Allies’ list of war criminals. Still, I’d have thought you’d have learned to follow orders in your time. It was a foolish thing, killing the camp commander. He was with us, you know.”

“It was necessary.”

“It was rash. One more Nazi on the run means nothing to the Americans. But you had to murder an officer. Damn it, man, what were you thinking?”

Seyss tightened the muscles in his neck as his temper flared. What could Egon Bach know about the need to avenge your comrades? To cleanse your soul with the blood of your enemy? About the beauty of looking into a man’s eyes as he died by your hand? The smaller man’s anger fired his impatience to learn the reason why he’d been told to come to Munich. But he’d be damned if he asked.

To temper his restlessness, he clasped his hands behind his back and made a slow circuit around the room. His eyes fell to a patch of wall where a replica of Alfred Bach’s golden party badge, the highest honor the Nazi party bestowed upon civilians, used to hang. In its place was a photograph of Alfred Bach with Edward VIII, the English monarch who had given up his throne to marry an American divorcée. Shocked, he took a closer look at the other pictures hanging nearby. The color photo of Adolf Hitler thanking Alfred Bach for the handmade armchair he’d been given for his fiftieth birthday had been replaced by one of the elder Bach in the company of Charles Lindbergh, the famed American flyer. Another showed Alfred Bach shaking hands with Winston Churchill, circa 1912.

“It’s not wise to wear your allegiance on your sleeve,” chimed Egon from across the room. “These days, it’s difficult to meet anyone who voluntarily joined the party, let alone someone who actually voted our Fuhrer into power. We’re a nation of amnesiacs. National Socialism is dead, Erich.”

But Seyss wasn’t interested in an apology for Bach’s cosmetic renunciation of the party. “And Germany?”

“The Fatherland will never die. You and I won’t allow it. What did Herder say about our country’s geist — its spirit?”

“‘It shall flourish so long as a single German lives,’” quoted Seyss from an ancient textbook.

“Exactly. Hurry up, then. We have a quarter of an hour until our guests arrive. I imagine you’re starving.” As Seyss followed Egon Bach into the hallway, he paused for a last look at the drawing room. A spray of chrysanthemums decorated a nook previously reserved for a National Socialist banner. The bronze bust of Hitler cast by Fritz Todt had been replaced by a replica of Michelangelo’s David. And, of course, there was the matter of the photographs.

The room had changed.

It was Erich Seyss who hadn’t.

Down, down, down, they walked, through a white-tiled catacomb lit by stuttering bulbs in steel mesh cages, a passage so narrow and dank that Seyss nearly succumbed to his recently acquired claustrophobia. Now, three hundred and thirty-seven stairs later, they had arrived. Barring their path was a gray steel door large enough to have locked down the boiler room of the battleship Bismarck . Above it, the words LUFTSCHUTZBUNKER 50 PERSONEN were painted in perfect black script. Air raid shelter. Fifty persons.

Egon leaned his shoulder into the door and gave a shove. “A little dramatic, perhaps, but necessary. Hard for my colleagues to visit the main house.”

“You mean they couldn’t fit into the trunk of the Mercedes?” Seyss asked dryly.

Egon did not laugh. “Go on, then. These are not men one keeps waiting.”

Seyss’s first thought was that he’d never seen a shelter decorated so opulently. The underground refuge was done up like the lobby of the Adlon in Berlin: navy carpets, teak coffee tables, sleek sofas. All that was missing was the Babylonian fountain spewing water from an elephant’s trunk and an unctuous maître d’hôtel eager to show them to a table.

Two older men stood waiting in the center of the room. Greeting them Egon turned to Erich and said, “I believe you know Mr Weber and Mr Schnitzel.”

“Good evening, gentlemen. It’s been some time.” Seyss delivered a firm handshake to each man, punctuated by a curt nod and a crisp click of the heels. He had worked with both during the war and if they weren’t friends, they were certainly well acquainted. Robert Weber was vice-chairman of North German Aluminium, the country’s largest metals company. Arthur Schnitzel was finance director of FEBA, a monolithic chemical concern.

“You’re looking well, Major,” said Weber. “May I offer my congratulations on your escape.”

“Yes, congratulations,” cawed Schnitzel, “though we could have done without the theatrics.”

Seyss answered with a clipped smile, staring daggers into the old man’s gray eyes until he averted his gaze. During his tenure as SS Reichsführer Himmler’s adjutant for industrial affairs, his brief had been to ensure that manpower requirements necessary to run their plants at full capacity were met. He was Himmler’s golden boy in those days, in charge of negotiating contracts between Germany’s most important industrial concerns and the SS Main Office for the transport and delivery of foreign impressed labor, mostly Jews and Mischlings from Poland and Russia. Suddenly, it was clear why they were meeting in an air raid bunker and not in Egon’s living room. Like him, Weber and Schnitzel were wanted by the Allied powers for war crimes. Slave labor, no doubt. Not everyone could be declared “necessary to the rebuilding of Germany.”

“Gentlemen, this isn’t a coffee klatsch,” said Egon, flitting between them at his usual frenetic pace. “We have much to discuss and little time. Help yourself to brandy and cigars, then let’s get started.” Schnitzel and Weber poured themselves generous snifters of YSOP, then took their places on a maroon velvet couch. Seyss sat across from them, choosing an antique armchair. Nothing like a little discomfort to focus the mind on matters at hand.

“Germany is in ruins,” declared Egon Bach, as he slipped down between Schnitzel and Weber. “We have no electricity. Sewage is kaput. No mail has been delivered since April. We no longer have a government, a police force, or even a soccer team. Coal is more expensive than caviar and cigarettes are worth more than both of them together. Verrückt! Crazy!”