Christopher Reich - The Runner

He handed von Luck the photograph and watched him study it. The general brought the picture close to his face, his eyes squinting, and for a long time didn’t move. He appeared to be staring through the picture and into his own past. Finally, he laid the magazine on his lap and sighed.

“More than anything, Seyss had the desire to be great,” he said. “ An indomitable will. Unfortunately, there is only so much a man can will his body to do. What success he enjoyed was a tribute to his hard work.”

“And yours,” added Judge.

Von Luck’s rebuke was immediate. “Do not try to flatter an old soldier, major.”

Judge lowered his gaze to the floor, embarrassed by his mawkish behavior. The sight of von Luck and so many ambulant corpses had compelled him to a kindness more appropriate for a victim than a suspect. Von Luck may well have plotted against Hitler, but for years he had willingly served him.

“And as an officer?” Judge asked.

“The most aggressive, certainly. The most clever?” Von Luck shook his head. “But he could bluff. He was a Brandenburger, after all.”

Corporal Dietsch had mentioned that von Luck had founded something called the “Brandenburg Regiment”. All traces regarding such a unit had come back negative.

“Just what is a Brandenburger?” asked Honey.

“The Brandenburg Regiment was established in 1938,” said von Luck. “Our goal was to train soldiers to fight behind enemy lines. Not as commandos, mind you, though, of course, they were versed in sabotage and killing, but to actually become the enemy, to insinuate themselves into their units and cause total chaos, a disintegration of the enemy’s command structure. We required three skills of our recruits: that they be fit; that they possess another language as their own — Russian, Polish, French — you can imagine which ones we found vital; and that they be bold. Any man can muster the courage to run into a hail of machine-gun bullets. That is simply adrenaline. We needed men with the requisite self-confidence to pass themselves off as members of an enemy unit for weeks, even months, at a time. Professional impostors, if you will.”

Honey raised an eyebrow. “And this worked?”

Von Luck laughed with surprise. “ Ask the Poles, or better yet, the Russians. Several times we managed to land a man inside Stavka command in Moscow.”

“Little good it did you,” said Honey. “You should have left Stalin well enough alone.”

But Judge had stopped listening. Part of his mind had stolen back to Lindenstrasse 21 and he found himself meeting Erich Seyss’s emotionless gaze as if for the first time. Seyss had called himself Klaus Licht from bureau five, section A of the building inspector’s office. Only afterward had Judge caught the twisted humor. Bureau Five, section A of the Reich Main Security Office or Sicherheitsdienst dealt with the transport of Jews from occupied territories to death camps in the east. And Seyss had traipsed through Camp 8 wearing a deflated soccer ball on his head painted to look like an American soldier’s helmet. As von Luck said, a professional imposter.

“Where did Seyss fit in?”

“He was seconded from the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler to the Brandenburg Regiment in early thirty-nine. He saw duty in Poland and Holland, and, of course, in Russia. He was transferred back to the Waffen SS in late forty-one.”

“And in all those places, he worked behind the lines?”

Von Luck shook his head insistently, as if Judge hadn’t quite grasped the idea. “No, Major, he lived behind the lines. He became the enemy. He spoke a little Dutch, but his Russian was that of a Muscovite. As a child, he had a white Russian governess.”

Judge looked away, digesting the information. His attention was drawn to a bed three down, where a swarthy man, smaller and thinner than von Luck, had risen and now stood shaking a fist in his direction. The man — he looked for all the world like a skeleton — met Judge’s eye and held it, then lifted his smock, squatted, and with great deliberation shat on the floor. When he finished, he scurried back to his bed and pulled the sheets over his head.

“Ah no,” moaned Honey. “Oh God.”

Judge felt his eyes water as bile rose in his throat.

But von Luck was unfazed. “Pay Herr Volkmann no mind,” he advised. “Many of the prisoners — excuse me, thepatients — have temporarily mislaid their manners. He’s afraid that if he uses the commode, you’ll steal his bed from him. Actually, he’s quite civilized. An intellectual, believe it or not. Until forty-three, he was a professor of theology in Hamburg. His conscience chose an unfortunate moment to unburden itself.”

Judge bit his lower lip and stared for a moment at his polished shoes. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to scream, to cry, or to wrap his hands around von Luck’s fragile neck and snap it. The old Nazi was too arrogant by half. It was increasingly clear he harbored no guilt whatsoever about his role in fostering the system that destroyed men like Herr Volkmann.

Strangely, Judge sought solace in his brother’s memory.

He wanted to bury his head in Francis’s shoulder and ask him why, and how, and what for, and he wanted God to answer. Surely, this was equal to murder. This was the degradation of the human condition, the theft of man’s dignity, his transformation into an animal, or worse, a savage. Judge had never felt so torn between his desire to believe and his instinct not to. His heart was stuck between beseeching God and cursing him. Better yet, why say anything at all? What was the point if no one was listening?

Honey’s clear voice slapped him to attention. “When was the last time you spoke with Erich Seyss?”

Von Luck appraised his interrogators with hungry eyes. “I risked my life to kill Adolf Hitler. Once I’m better, I do not wish to spend what remains of it in your custody, however benevolent. If you want my help, at least tell me why I am being detained.”

“You’ve been classified as a security suspect,” said Judge, less patient now. “Just because you decided you didn’t like Hitler doesn’t absolve you of any crimes you might have committed earlier. Besides, you blew it. All you did was leave Hitler a little deaf in one ear and more crazy than ever. We’re waiting to see if something turns up against you.”

“Such as?”

“Don’t know. But seeing that you served as Canaris’s deputy for four years, I wouldn’t be surprised if we found something. Torturing prisoners of war. Shipping off Jews to Treblinka. Shooting political prisoners. If you acted within the confines of the rules of land engagement as prescribed by the Geneva Convention, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“And if I cooperate?”

Judge suppressed a self-satisfied smile. He had him. “Then, we’ll see, won’t we? Please answer the question, General. When was the last time you saw Seyss?”

“A year ago in Berlin. We exchanged a few words then parted, each of us on our own separate way. Him to the front, me to Dachau. Amazing we both made it through.”

“I thought he was like a son to you,” said Judge. “Why no celebration? A beer at the officer’s mess? Dinner and a night on the town?”

“I saw him, Major, during my interrogation in the basement of Gestapo headquarters.” Von Luck smiled so that the jagged stumps of his teeth were visible. “It was where I had my dental work performed. Charming, don’t you find?”

Honey squinted in revulsion. “Seyss did that?”

“Actually, the butt of his pistol. I believe it was a Walther .38. An excellent way of proving his loyalty to the Fuhrer, don’t you think?”

It was indeed, thought Judge. Ask an acolyte to destroy his mentor. A son to kill his father. He should feel shocked by the tactic, but he wasn’t. His time in Germany was working on him. He remembered a picture he’d come across in his researches; a photograph of an interrogation cell taken at one or another government ministry in Berlin. Naked concrete walls bleeding with damp, sturdy iron rings bolted to them at different heights. Schoolboy’s chair standing in the corner. Drain set into the center of the floor, cement around it stained black. For all intents and purposes, it might have been in the basement of Gestapo headquarters.