Christopher Reich - The Runner

Ten minutes’ drive took him to an enormous red brick building, formerly belonging to the Bavarian postal authority, that was more or less intact. Pulling over at the end of the block, he hopped from the Jeep and entered the building. Today, the Boss was in town, down from Nuremberg where he was helping Justice Jackson check out the Palace of Justice as a possible site for the war crimes trials. Donovan as very concerned about Erich Seyss and anxious that everything possible was being done to track him down. He was also concerned about the men behind the investigation — especially Devlin Judge — though he wouldn’t say how or why. He wanted to hear everything that had happened at Lindenstrasse this morning. Honey’s job was to watch, listen, and report back.

Mounting the stairs to the third floor, Honey mulled over some of the things Donovan had told him three days ago.

Apparently, Seyss was guilty of a lot worse things than the Malmedy massacre. He had done unspeakable things on the Russian front. Unspeakable. That was Donovan’s word and he didn’t use it lightly. Seyss was dangerous all right. One of Hitler’s best. Donovan had said something else, too something that made Honey very nervous. This wasn’t about a mere prison escape and the murder of an American officer. It was about something bigger.

As Darren Honey knocked on Donovan’s door, he had the feeling he was about to learn what.

Judge arrived in his dripping office the next morning at seven, prepared for a long wait. Altman’s visit had unsettled him. If Oliver von Luck was dead, the investigation was, too. Unless the personnel records of the First SS Panzer Division listing the homes of Seyss’s comrades panned out, Judge had nowhere else to turn. He’d be left chained to his desk, twiddling his thumbs for the next three days while praying for Seyss to show himself and trip an alarm. He shot the wall calendar an unfriendly glance. Thursday 12 July. Three days until his transfer expired.

Time. He needed more time.

Bracing himself for the fact that von Luck was dead, he spent an hour drafting a comprehensive list of divisional headquarters whose military police he would contact to keep the heat on Erich Seyss. The Seventeenth in Stuttgart the 101stin Munich, the Seventh Cavalry in Heidelberg — which if he wasn’t mistaken was George Armstrong Custer’s former unit.

He was glumly whistling the Garry Owen when his phone rang five minutes later. It was headquarters of military intelligence at the War Department in Washington DC. In three rushed sentences, a timid lieutenant named Patterson confirmed Altman’s report, then abruptly hung up. Von Luck was, in fact, a Twentieth of July conspirator. He was arrested, tried by the People’s Court and convicted. Sentence presumably death, though no official word had ever been received as to his fate. Click.

Judge threw down the phone, cursing the world. He damned Altman for being right and Lieutenant Patterson for confirming it! Pushing himself away from his desk, he rose and paced the perimeter of his office. There had to be another way to gather information about Seyss. Shadow his friends, track down his lovers, locate members of his extended family, but Judge had neither the means nor time to gather such information. Stymied by his lack of resources, he sought refuge in anger. What kind of cruel gift was it to give a man every means to track down his brother’s killer while denying him the time to see the job through?

Fifteen minutes later, Judge’s world righted itself.

A captain with the military police detachment of the Forty-fifth Infantry Division radioed in that he recalled there being a prisoner named von Luck confined to a bed at Dachau. Yes, that Dachau — the oldest and largest of Hitler’s concentration camps situated fifteen miles northwest of Munich. A hospital had been set up on the premises to nurse the camp’s ill back to health. Though infirm, von Luck was under arrest as a security suspect. How could anyone forget that name?

Judge immediately contacted the officer now commanding Dachau and confirmed that the von Luck in question was, in fact, General Oliver von Luck, formerly deputy chief of the Abwehr, formerly trainer to German national champion Erich Siegfried Seyss, and that he was alive and in sufficient health to be questioned. An appointment to interview the prisoner was scheduled for two o’clock that afternoon.

Judge slammed his hand onto the desk and let go an enthusiastic, if abbreviated, rebel yell. He was back in the game.

George Patton was livid. The war had hardly been over sixty days and he’d been transformed from a general of the finest fighting men on God’s green earth into a cockamamie combination of bureaucrat, politician, administrator and nursemaid. If this was what victory wrought, to hell with it! He wanted war. It was a children’s game compared to the tasks he’d been charged with as military governor of Bavaria.

Standing in his office on this warm, sunny morning, cigar in his mouth, he ran over the matters that needed his attention. He had to fix the roads, rebuild the bridges, repair the waterworks — including the whole damned sewer system. A toilet hadn’t flushed in Munich since 1944. He had to demilitarize and de-Nazify the civilian government, essentially meaning he had to fire every goddamned man and woman worth a damn. He had to look after the care and provisioning of a million American soldiers, a million German POWs, and a million rag-tag displaced persons whom nobody, especially himself, wanted anything to do with. And all of this — all of this — he was supposed to accomplish without the help of any German who had ever been a member of the Nazi party! It was madness. Seventy-five percent of the country’s sixty million citizens had had some tie or another to the National Socialists. Ike might as well ask him to juggle with one arm tied behind his back. Worst of all, now he had to hold hands with the Godforsaken Russians as if they were a couple of besotted newlyweds. Madness!

A crisp knock on the door to his office relieved him of his miserable thoughts. “What is it?”

The door opened and two men walked in, Hobart “Hap” Gay, his chief of staff, and a squat bow-legged Russian supremo he didn’t recognize. They all looked like apes anyway.

“Sir, I’d like to introduce Brigadier General Vassily Yevchenko,” said Gay, a tall, plain-looking general who had served with Patton since 1942. “General Yevchenko insisted on seeing you this morning. It seems there’s some problem with a few fishing boats we captured on the Danube River two days ago.”

“Excuse me, General,” Yevchenko cut in. “These boats on Danube. On east side of river and filled with German soldiers.”

Patton advanced a step, his cheeks coloring at the sound of the barbarian’s slur. All it took these days was the sight of a manure brown uniform to set his blood racing. He’d had it up to his eyeballs with wining and dining the Russians. Since VE Day, he’d eaten enough stuffed pig, borscht, and caviar, drunk enough vodka, and witnessed enough Cossack line dancing to last him the rest of this life and the next. It took every restraining bone in his body to keep him from drawing his pistol and shooting this degenerate descendant of Genghis Khan right here and now.

“So?” barked Patton. “What the hell do you want me to do about it?”

“On behalf of Soviet government, we demand return of boats and prisoners immediately. All are property of Soviet armed forces.”

“What did you say?” Patton asked. “Did I hear something about a demand?”

Earlier he was livid. Now he was plain furious. He shot a disbelieving glance at Hap Gay, who shrugged his shoulders, then returned his attention to this pathetic example of Russian manhood. Stepping closer to the Russian, he saw that Yevchenko was sweating like a stuck pig.