Christopher Reich - The Runner

“Never trust the police,” Volkmann whispered, his English nearly without accent.

Judge felt a small hard-edged object being pressed into his palm. He didn’t know how to respond so he said “thank you”, and wished him a speedy recovery.

“Jesus,” called Sawyer from the door. “He’s worse than you, Doc. Talking to everyone of these savages as if he were their best friend.”

“I’ll be right there,” said Judge. Opening his hand, he ventured a quick glance downward and saw a small rectangular red, white and blue ribbon with a burnished star in its center — the chest decoration given to winners of the Silver Star. He looked back at Volkmann hoping for further explanation, but Volkmann had turned away, his duty fulfilled.

“Headed back to Heidelberg?” Sawyer asked, when the two had reached the Jeep parked in front of the camp headquarters.

“No, I’ll be heading to…” Judge paused, finding Sawyer’s gaze a shade too inquisitive. “I’ll be heading back to Third Army HQ at Bad Toelz. If I get my things packed in a hurry, I can catch a six o’clock plane to Paris. This investigation is finished.”

Sawyer leaned against the Jeep, tapping the vertical angle iron rising from the front bumper with the palm of his hand. “You tell old Georgia that the next time we’re on the polo field I’m gonna whip his rich behind, will ya?”

“It might be wise to phrase that a little nicer, but I’ll pass along the message.”

Climbing into the Jeep, Judge fired off a last salute, then gunned the engine. He had no intention of returning to Bad Toelz. He was headed due south, to a glittering seashell of a castle named Sonnenbrucke in the heart of the Bavarian Alps.

General Oliver von Luck had not died of natural causes.

He had been suffocated.

It was nearly noon when Devlin Judge arrived in the town of Inzell. If the drive from Heidelberg to Dachau had proven easy, the same could not be said for the trek to Sonnenbrucke. Once outside Munich, the road had begun a steady climb uphill, narrowing to the width of a Brooklyn sidewalk, then assuming an unfriendly series of twists and turns that left his stomach queasy and his arms cramped. The soaring pine vistas and plunging granite gorges were feet away, but miles beyond his internal horizon. Since leaving Dachau he’d been preoccupied by a single matter: the betrayal of his visit to the camp and the murder of General Oliver von Luck.

At first glance, it seemed an open and shut case. Who but Mullins knew he harbored doubts about Seyss’s death? Or that he wanted to use von Luck to identify Seyss’s body? Honey could only intuit such things and he could hardly have known that Judge would act so quickly. Knowledge and opportunity seemed to point to Mullins.

What, then, was Judge to make of the military ribbon I Volkmann had gifted him? The Silver Star was one of the nation’s highest military decorations, awarded to recognize conspicuous heroism and gallantry in combat. Fifty percent of men who received it did so posthumously. It was hardly an everyday trinket. Physical evidence so rare was a prosecutor’s dream, to be ignored at great peril.

Your chauffeur’s got himself a Silver Star, Mullins had said. He’s a hero .

Opening his hand, Judge stole a glance at the ribbon of red, white, and blue, and his doubts about Sergeant Darren Honey multiplied. Why had Honey secretly interrogated Bauer? Why had he instructed him to keep their conversation a secret? And to whom had he divulged the explosive content of Bauer’s statement? Honey was bright, ambitious and, Judge was beginning to realize, very, very sly.

Yet the consideration of motive prevented Judge from closing his case. Why would someone want to disguise Seyss’s escape from the armory? To ensure Tally Ho was graded a success? To keep George Patton smiling? No sir, answered Judge. Killing von Luck went far beyond currying favor with a superior. In the wake of Bauer’s revelation that Seyss had planned to lead his men to the outskirts of Berlin, accomplices to von Luck’s death were not only accessories to murder, but quite possibly treason. Seyss was not going to Babelsberg. He was going to Potsdam. And Judge had a good idea what he planned to do once there.

More than ever, then, he needed to prove that Seyss was alive. He required a witness who could point at the butchered remains lying on a gurney in the basement of the American Military Hospital in Heidelberg and state with irrefutable certainty, “That is not Erich Seyss.” Only then, could he return to his superiors, present Bauer’s confession, and demand that the search for the White Lion be reinstated.

Steering the Jeep past an ornate fountain, Judge braked in front of the village grocer. However detailed his roadmap, it did not show the route to Sonnenbrucke. When he’d come before, it was via a different and even more mountainous path. The store was small, half as large again as a Coney Island hot dog stand. Inside, a single counter was surrounded by sparse shelves that sagged with the memory of better times. The grocer’s cheery disposition belied his dim commercial prospects. When asked for instructions how to reach the Bach family hunting lodge, he escorted Judge to the front stoop and pointed to a steep dirt and gravel road peeling off from east side of the fountain. “Take that trail two kilometers until you come to a fork. Stay left, always going up, up, up. After another kilometer you come to a beautiful old oak at least twenty meters tall. Don’t turn there. Continue past it until…”

His words were drowned out by the shrill rev of approaching engines.

Two Jeeps barreled into Inzell, careering round the fountain then shooting up the road to Sonnenbrucke. Each carried four soldiers. A raiding party, thought Jude, images of rampaging injuns flooding his mind.

Dashing from the store, he threw himself behind the wheel of the Jeep and turned over the engine. It coughed and sputtered, then caught, firing fitfully. He grasped the gearshift and thrust it into first gear. Executing a U-turn, he slammed his foot on the accelerator and peeled out of Inzell like a rider for the Pony Express.

The road was steep and straight, graded from the dirt of the hillside. An army of enormous pine trees blocked out the sun, lining both sides of the path like an honor guard of Frederick the Great’s giant bodyguards. He downshifted into second gear, then plunged the gas to the floorboard. Through a curtain of dust, he could see the tails of the Jeeps far in front of him. One after the other, they disappeared. Judge slowed. A moment later, he heard the growl of their engines approaching. Raising his head, he caught sight of the first Jeep traversing a switchback twenty feet above his head. A shower of dirt and gravel sprayed his vehicle. Instinctively, he lifted a hand from the wheel to shield himself from the debris, and in that moment he lost his chance to navigate the hairpin curve ahead. Bringing the Jeep to a halt, he ripped the gearshift into reverse and backed up ten feet.

His troubles had just begun. Starting the Jeep on flat ground was one thing; starting it on an incline quite another. Time after time, he muscled the gearshift into first, applying the gas with his right foot while gently releasing the clutch with his left. Time after time, the Jeep bucked, stalled, and slid further down the hill. To hell with this, he thought, frustration heating to molten anger. Finding reverse, he cocked his head over a shoulder and guided the Jeep back down the road into Inzell. Once on flat ground, he started over.

Hurry! he urged himself, images of von Luck’s rigid body coming to mind.

Fifteen minutes later, he reached the top of the hill. The Jeeps were nowhere in sight. He had no trouble, though, finding Sonnenbrucke. It stood at the far end of a grassy valley, protected by towering stone sentinels.