Christopher Reich - The Runner

Kirch set off from his “treasury” with a new urgency, leading them across the shelter, through another steel door and down a gargantuan sewer pipe lined with burgundy carpeting. Like many fat men, he moved quickly, not ungracefully. Two guards stood at the far end of the pipe, framing a set of golden doors that had been salvaged from a luxury hotel. Seyss laughed when he read the name engraved on the door push: Vier Jahreseitzen Munich .

Kirch allowed his suppliers to catch up before nodding to one of his bodyguards to open the door. One glance at the Octopus’s office was enough to answer anyone’s questions about why such stringent security measures were necessary two stories below ground at the tail-end of an urban catacomb. King Solomon’s mines, was Seyss’s first thought. Then the tomb of Tutankhamen, the boy pharaoh, and finally, Carinhall, Hermann Goering’s lavish estate near Berlin. The vast room was a cross of all three. Piles of women’s furs occupied one corner, stacks of floor size tapestries another. Glass cabinets displayed a dozen diamond tiaras and below them, collections of lesser jewellery, every bit as spectacular in their own right. Gold bars loaded atop wooden pallets winked dully from inside a caged enclosure. A selection of masterpieces hung on stained maple walls. Rembrandt, Rubens, some decadent modernists.

“Take a seat,” said Kirch, as he laid the clipboard on his desk and installed himself in a port leather captain’s chair. “Mr Lenz. Sergeant Hasselbach, was it?”

“Erwin Hasselbach,” clarified Seyss as he settled into his chair. Did Kirch sound suspicious or was it his imagination?

“Four boxes of margarine, two boxes of peaches, a box of Hershey bars…” Kirch read from his tally sheet, continuing until he had orally catalogued every box but one. “And finally, one thousand doses of penicillin. The women of Germany will be grateful.”

Lenz gave Kirch the belly laugh he’d expected.

“You boys hit gold this time,” said Kirch. “Eight hundred dollars or eight thousand Reichsmarks. Take your pick.” He waited a second, then chuckled. “Or I could pay you in cigarettes.”

“ Nein, nein ,” rumbled Lenz, still in the throws of his merriment. “We’ll take dollars. Danke .”

“ Eight hundred dollars ?” Seyss cut in, sliding to the edge of his chair and engaging Kirch one on one. “That’s all you propose paying us for the entire lot?” He scoffed to underscore his view of such a paltry offer. As he had to split the sum with Lenz, he wanted to goad Kirch into offering two thousand US. Anything less left his problem unsolved. “Why I can take the penicillin alone to my colleagues in Munich and receive twice that much. A thousand doses will bring ten thousand US on the street. I don’t suppose you handle the retail end of things, so let’s say you unload the entire crate for four thousand dollars. Is twenty percent all you see fit to pay your suppliers? And what about the rest? The peaches, the margarine, the spam… goodness, Herr Kirch, it is enough to stock a corner grocery for a month. Eight hundred dollars, you say? I’m afraid we cannot accept. Come, Hans-Christian, we have a little work in front of us, yet.”

Seyss tapped Lenz on the arm, signaling for him to stand. Kirch followed them both through porcine eyes. He spoke as the two men reached the glass doors.

“That is enough, Herr Hasselbach,” he called. “Herr Lenz, please instruct your impetuous colleague to retake his seat. You, too. If eight hundred is too little, perhaps you can tell me what is appropriate? And then you might wish to add why I shouldn’t simply shoot you here and now? The cost of two bullets — even American ones — is significantly less than eight hundred dollars.”

Seyss guided Lenz back to their chairs. When they were seated, he removed his glasses, polishing them with the tail of his shirt. “Let’s be frank, Herr Kirch. Business is good. Prices are high. Demand even higher. It’s hardly time for gentlemen to quibble. Shoot us if you like, but I imagine you’ll have a harder time coming across medicinal stores of such undisputed quality. Otherwise, pay us three thousand US and we’ll see you next week.”

“Three thousand?” Kirch laughed. “I should shoot you both to rid the world of such arrogant pricks. Fifteen hundred. That’s double my first offer. You’d be smart to take it and run.”

“Twenty-five hundred,” countered Seyss, “and I’ll guarantee the penicillin.”

Kirch licked his lips, his abundant cheeks glowing. He was enjoying the negotiations. “Two thousand and I won’t hear another word.”

“Twenty-two hundred and we’ll be silent as the grave,” said Seyss.

“Done.”

Seyss could not help but loose a short monumental weight lifted from his shoulders.

He would have his money.

He would have his truck.

He was as good as in Berlin.

Alone again in his subterranean treasure chest, Otto Kirch returned to his desk and withdrew a crudely printed flyer bearing the heading, “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” He studied the photograph of Sturmbannführer Erich Seyss and compared it to his mental image of the man who had been seated in his office five minutes earlier. Hasselbach was no sergeant, that was for certain. Only an officer had the balls to negotiate like that. But was he this man? The man on the flyer had light hair and wore no spectacles. Still, it was easy enough to change one’s hair color and to put on a pair of glasses. Kirch traced Seyss’s face with his finger, nodding his head as his certainty grew. Focusing on the eyes in the photo, he suddenly met Hasselbach’s victorious gaze once again and jumped in his chair.

A minute later, he picked up his telephone and dialed a number. “ Ja? Herr Altman. Good news. I think I’ve found the man who you’ve been looking for.”

The man who called himself Klaus Altman stood in a grove of pines, fifty feet from the end of the paved road. He was staring at the entry to a bland little house blessed with a lovely view over the rooftops of Heidelberg. The owner of the home was inside, as were two of his guests. But they did not interest him so much as the man who had not yet arrived… the man whose shadow he’d been tracking for over a day.

Altman removed his jacket, and folded it neatly before laying it on a patch of grass. Settling into a crouch, he pulled a hankie from his pocket and wiped his balding crown. The day was warming up quickly and the heat was making him uncomfortable and, if he were honest with himself, nervous. Since meeting with Major Devlin Judge, he’d been working hard to find a trace of Erich Seyss. The little voice every police officer possessed told him that Seyss would be his ticket to bigger things within the counter-intelligence section of the United States army, for whom he now worked. Tracking down your former comrades was a surefire way to demonstrate your loyalty to your new masters. Altman was nothing if not adaptable.

During the past thirty-six hours, he’d made a tour through the nightspots favored by former members of the SS — the Haifisch Bar in Heidelberg, the Red Door in Darmstadt, Mitzi’s in Frankfurt — keeping a not so casual eye peeled for men who had served with Seyss in the First SS Panzer division. He’d also peppered his contacts in the black market with questions about the White Lion’s whereabouts. A man on the run left a trail. He needed new identity papers, a safe spot to stay, a woman, and a way out of the country. There were only so many places to obtain such goods and services in post-war Germany and Altman knew them all. When Otto Kirch telephoned reporting that he had seen Erich Seyss, Altman was pleased, but not altogether surprised.