Christopher Reich - The Runner

Disturbingly, Judge seemed the only man at the table concerned about Seyss’s motives. Everyone else was focused simply on getting the arrest. After all, Everett had pointed out, once they had Seyss it didn’t matter a good goddamn what he wanted to do with the weapons. Even Honey had agreed. Four rifles, four pistols, and four uniforms were hardly something to worry about, he’d said. As for the truck, no one had the faintest idea what Seyss wanted with it and no one cared. End of discussion.

But Judge had never been satisfied to close a case with a bundle of questions left unanswered. Simple curiosity demanded he know what the White Lion was up to, what “last race for Germany” he’d been planning to run. After all, if Seyss failed, there might easily be someone ready to take his place. Replaying the questions, Judge came to the same conclusion over and over again. Seyss was not acting alone, but as part of a larger preconceived plan. The word “conspiracy” came to mind, then flitted away. Only by capturing him could Judge learn the scope of his endeavor.

“When I see that you’re in a safe spot, I’ll signal Colonel Mullins to order his men into the armory,” he continued. “Three clicks on the walkie talkie, right, Colonel? We’ll hit the sirens, throw open the garage doors and turn on the kliegs. The sound and light should be enough to make everyone freeze in their tracks.”

“You mean piss their pants, don’t you, Dev?” Mullins cracked and everyone laughed, even Judge.

“I guess I do.”

The plan was his creation, a variation on the standard “bait and wait”. It had been Honey’s idea, however, to put a man inside the warehouse, and to his dismay, Judge had heard his own voice volunteering for the role. He would have preferred taking Seyss and his cronies at their hideout in Heidelberg. Seyss was a cagey one, though. According to Altman, he and his comrades had left the house early this morning all going separate ways. It was the armory or nothing.

Replacing the chalk in its tray, Judge walked over to Rizzo and laid a hand on his shoulder. “If all goes according to plan, everyone will walk out of there in one piece. Capiche? ”

Rizzo grinned morosely. “ Capisco. ”

“Alright then. We adjourn until 20:00 hours.”

Klaus Altman grabbed Judge’s arm as they crossed the runway and headed toward the Jeeps that would drive them to Heidelberg.

“So, Herr Major, it appears you will have your White Lion.”

“As long as he shows, I don’t see what can go wrong.”

“I’m sure nothing will go wrong. Still, I can see you are curious. Inside you asked what Seyss is doing with Ivan’s uniforms, his guns. Do you really have no notion?”

Judge shrugged his shoulders, interested in Altman’s views, but not wanting to encourage him. The man was set to receive a promotion and a pay raise if Seyss was caught. That was already too much. “Didn’t you hear the others? It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, so long as we catch him.”

“I have my own ideas. Uniforms, guns, a truck with a full tank of gasoline and extra jerry cans. It seems he is planning a trip.”

“That much I gathered.”

Altman tugged on his cuff. “He is going east, Herr Major. East.”

“East,” Judge repeated. The word made him shiver.

Altman nodded, smiling his lascivious grin. “The question is why.”

Where were they?

Egon Bach held the receiver to his ear, damning the endless ringing. Pick up, he grunted. Pick up! Impatiently, he thumbed his spectacles to the bridge of his nose, oblivious to the perspiration fogging each lens. For two hours he’d been calling, dialing the number every five minutes, allowing the phone to ring twelve, fifteen, twenty times before hanging up. The Americans had tracked down Seyss. They had discovered his intention to purchase the Russian arms and transport. An ambush was planned this very evening to capture him. Pick up!

Egon stood in the factory foreman’s office on the production floor of Bach Steelworks facility seven in Stuttgart. Hovering beyond the glass partition were two MPs, his constant escorts when venturing outside of Villa Ludwig. With the Amis’ blessing, he had come to supervise the initial retooling of the plant. The machinery used for years to turn out armor plate, military tractors, and 88s was being reconfigured to manufacture products destined for a civilian, rather than military, economy. The large gun lathes and milling machines in machine shops twenty and twenty-one that had been used to produce heavy gun tubes would be reset to manufacture steel girders and sewer pipes. Railroad tire shop three, housing twenty-three lathes, a dozen grinders, and two shell banders, would henceforth labor to turn out streetcar wheels instead of high caliber artillery shells.

The businessman in Egon should have been ecstatic. Customers were customers no matter the cut or color of their garment. And the Americans paid cash. But today Egon was less the Konzernschef than the son of his country, and the commotion taking place just then in the southeastern corner of the plant horrified him. An entire company of American engineers were gathered around the behemoth 15,000-ton press, swarming on it like bees to a hive. The press was monumental. The base plate was fifty feet long and forty feet wide. The four stainless steel driving columns were sixty feet high and capable of guiding the stamping plate with a force of some thirty million pounds. The 15,000-ton press was the jewel in the family’s crown, so to speak, responsible five years earlier for the creation of the Alfried Geschutz , the largest mobile artillery piece built in the history of mankind.

Egon saw the gun in his mind, as clearly as if examining its blueprints: a polished steel cannon 100 feet in length weighing 250 tons. Nearly three stories high when set atop its own railcar, it looked like a monstrous tank, but in place of a turret was a breech block the size of a locomotive. The majestic gun fired armor-capped artillery shells twelve feet long without the propellant casing, each weighing 16,000 pounds. Everyone knows the crack of a rifle. Imagine, then, the bang when a seven ton shell is fired with enough high explosives to lob it twenty-five miles behind enemy lines! Despite his funk, Egon grinned malevolently at the memory. Apocalypse! It was the sound of the apocalypse!

Egon looked on as mobile crane rolled in, a steel mesh workman’s basket dangling from its hook. Two soldiers inside the basket swung an iron cable around the uppermost pinion. A whistle blew and the basket was lowered to the floor. There followed a controlled explosion christened by a puff of gray smoke. The crane rumbled forward, lifting the engineers to the appointed spot where with a thumb’s up they signaled that the pinion had been successfully blown.

Step one in the dismantling of the massive press.

Another act in the emasculation of the Reich.

Running a hand over his close-cropped hair, Egon raised himself up and down on his tiptoes, shaking his head. Below in the crowd — among, yet distinctly apart from the American engineers — stood four representatives of the Soviet government, recognizable by their coarse woolen jackets and coarser Slavic features. All were grinning like schoolboys.

Untermenschen , Egon hissed.

Though American engineers were responsible for dismantling the press, the great machine was not destined for Pittsburgh, Detroit, or even Long Beach. Once disassembled, it would be placed on a train carrying it eastward to its new home, somewhere in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The press that had made the Alfried Geschutz would soon be in the employ of Stalin and his greasy comrades.