Christopher Reich - The Runner

But Seyss wasn’t quite finished. A last foray into his adolescent hiding place yielded a canvas web belt, black, tattered with age, eyelets and buckle freckled with rust. The belt was unremarkable except for its surprising weight. Around a kilo, if he wasn’t mistaken. Cut into the belt were ten oblong pockets. In each rested one hundred grams of gold smelted from the SS private foundry near Frankfurt. The slim ingots had been labeled “non-monetary” gold because of their lesser purity — just.95 versus the Reichsbank’s standard of.999. It was difficult and costly to purify gold extracted from candelabras, wedding rings, eyeglasses, watches, dental fillings and the like. Each ingot bore the imprimatur of the Third Reich: an eagle holding a wreathed Swastika in its talons.

Seyss clinched the belt low around his waist, tucking in his shirt over it, then patting himself down to make sure it wasn’t visible. Egon had provided him with two thousand American dollars, an amount well in excess of his needs. Still, Seyss preferred to be prudent. Egon Bach’s intelligence wasspitzenclasse, but his planning was too meticulous, cut through with the fanciful ambitions and precise timetables of an armchair general.

Seyss was to lead a squad of men into the Soviet zone of occupation, travel two hundred kilometers along the main corridor to Berlin, and pierce the guarded enclave of Potsdam. Former members of Seyss’s command had been tracked down and recruited. Good men, all. Contacts had been established along the route of travel — in Heidelberg, Frankfurt, and the German capital itself. He would have access to safe houses, revised intelligence, and most importantly, Soviet weaponry, transport, and uniforms.

Once in Potsdam, however, he would be on his own. He knew the objectives. How he chose to fulfill them was his choice. Only five days remained until the conference began and Egon had made it clear he must act soon afterwards. Something about insuring the last wishes of a country’s leaders be respected.

The rest, Egon had said, would take care of itself. Dominos, he’d laughed. One falling onto the back of the next.

Reviewing the carefully laid out plan a final time, Seyss selected those elements that would be of use and discarded the rest. While impressed by Egon’s logistics, he was also wary of them. Information flowed two ways. To his mind, the operation was already too big. He worried that Weber or Schnitzel, or one of their cronies among the Circle of Fire, might find the details of such a plan helpful in bartering his freedom from his American overlords. Then, of course, there was Egon, himself. His uneasy arrangement with the Americans left Seyss nervous. Very nervous indeed.

One last item remained inside the box. A photograph of a young couple standing in front of a sparkling fountain. Out of habit, he turned it over to read the date and place inscribed, though he hardly needed a reminder:3 September 1938, Nuremberg. My God, he looked magnificent, his uniform just so, his jackboots buffed to a high polish. So did Ingrid. Like the princess she was and would always be. He skimmed his nail over her face, imagining the feel of her cheek. Staring into her eyes, he saw only the heartache that was to follow — his abrupt goodbye, the cancelled nuptials, the failure even to explain himself — and he was accosted by a wave of shame.Sachlichkeit, he reminded himself. You gave her up for the Fatherland. He’d practically memorized Darre’s letter:The Office of Race and Resettlement therefore denies your application for marriage on grounds of violating section IIC of… He winced at the memory, though his belief in the verdict was undiminished, then continued his mental recital…so that the purity of the Fatherland may not be further diluted.

And with that recollection came another, not of Ingrid but of Egon, which given his current circumstance was perhaps more appropriate. The time was November 1940. A gray Friday morning in Munich. The two men were standing in the grand entry hall of Bach Industries headquarters following an armaments production meeting. Egon was raised high on his tiptoes, red in the face, lecturing Seyss with a rude forefinger.

“All you had to do was ask your superior officer for an exception,” he railed, “and you would have been permitted to marry Ingrid. She’s devastated, Erich. What is one eighth, anyhow? She’s a Bach, damn it. The Fuhrer has seen the family tree worked up by the Office of Race and Resettlement. You know yourself he overlooks this type of thing when it’s crucial to the Fatherland. I’ll ask him myself for an exception. He’ll only be too happy to oblige.”

Angered by Egon’s transparent artifice, Seyss managed a curt “No, thank you.” Egon was arguing on behalf of the family Konzern, not Ingrid. Somehow he thought an alliance with the “White Lion” might save the firm from future difficulties. Rubbish! Whether Seyss might obtain an exception was beside the point. It was a question of principle. An officer did not knowingly harm his own country. Blood was blood, and any foreign strain beyond an eighth was deemed to tarnish the country’s bloodstock. It was all there in the Nuremberg decrees.

“You’re a coward, Erich,” Egon spat, after a minute. “You’re much too afraid of the state you serve. I admire your devotion, but there comes a moment when a man stands up for what is his. If you loved Ingrid, you’d be married today.”

And then something inside of Seyss broke. One minute he was standing at perfect attention, the next he was whipping Egon across the face with his leather gloves, sending his glasses flying, forcing him to a knee. “Shut up!” he hissed. “Shut up! What do you know about courage or sacrifice? You, little Egon Bach, who fights his war from a quilted leather chair and a mahogany desk? You are a Jew, understand. Not a German.A Jew. You have no right to judge me.”

And saying the words, he finally believed them. Egon was a Jew. And so was Ingrid.

“I’m sorry, Erich. I’m sorry. Calm down, damn it!”

Seyss redirected his arm in mid-flight, slapping the gloves against his thigh instead of Egon’s simpering face. The lapse of self-control was regrettable, a sign his heart was not yet wholly subjugated to his Fuhrer’s will. Pulling the soft black leather tightly over each hand, he breathed easier. Egon’s glasses lay next to his boots. Seyss bent, polished them with a handkerchief and handed them to his newest enemy. “Next time, think before you talk.”

Nearly five years later, he hadn’t forgotten the incident or the stare of unvarnished hatred that had greeted his parting words. And neither had Egon. He would bet on it.

Giving a wistful nod, Seyss slid the photograph into his breast pocket behind Colonel Truchin’s identification. The room had grown warm and stuffy. A fly zigged and zagged through the air, its incessant buzz a drill in his ear. He replaced the cover and returned the box to its hiding place. He began to feel antsy. The railway station was a good hour’s walk and he didn’t want to miss his train. His persilschein was good for a one-way ticket home, listed for purposes of the mission as Heidelberg. Yes, he decided, he must leave now. Kneeling, he fitted the heating grate into place. And as his fingers pressed the metal into the floor, he experienced an odd sensation on the back of his neck, rather like a feather tickling the base of his scalp.

Get out, a familiar voice whispered.You’ve been here too long.

He was at the window in a second, venturing a lightning glance down the street. No cars approaching. No one was visible. He turned his ear into the wind, listening. Nothing. He breathed easier, happy that this time his instinct had misled him.

Then he heard it. A lone motor trawling down Lindenstrasse.