Christopher Reich - The Runner

“Everything all right, Private?”

“Yes sir,” replied the clerk, buttoning up his jaw. “Everything’s fine.”

“Carry on, then.” Jesus , thought Judge. I sound like a goddamn soldier .

Fatigue slumping his shoulders, he walked from the foyer. It was still too soon for a widespread search to have been initiated on any kind of official basis. But his presence had been noted and come tomorrow, should someone ask — as he knew someone would — it would be reported.

He’d spent most of the drive explaining the happenings of the past week to Ingrid — Seyss’s escape from Camp 8, the blown arrest at Lindenstrasse, meeting von Luck, Bauer, the debacle at the armory. Everything. Yet, even as he’d recounted the events, he’d sifted through them, scrutinizing each carefully before positioning them like pieces of jigsaw puzzle.

It was clear that members of the American military were intent on concealing evidence that Erich Seyss had not been killed at the armory in Wiesbaden, (hence, that he was very much alive). Someone had suffocated Oliver von Luck. If he were to believe the unfortunate Herr Volkmann, someone who had been awarded the Silver Star. Someone had tried to kill Ingrid and himself, and was clever enough to disguise the murder as the work of the German partisans known as “werewolves”. Working his way backwards, Judge could therefore assume that this same group — this clique — had purposely kicked on the klieg lights in an effort to aid Seyss’s escape. No doubt the flashlights blinking out morse code belonged to them, too.

And, if Judge had retained any of his skills as a detective, he could take Bauer’s confession to indicate that Seyss was not going to Babelsberg, but to Potsdam, and that his trip had nothing to do with rescuing Egon Bach’s mislaid engineering drawings.

But here, he came to a halt. He had marshaled his evidence. He had presented his facts in a logical manner. He could envisage the crime itself. Yet the most crucial component of any prosecution was missing: motive.

Why were members of the American military assisting a fugitive SS officer and the scion of Germany’s most powerful industrial family carry out a heinous scheme whose fruition would ensure only personal heartbreak, national mourning and political instability?

Outside, the night air was warm and humid, smelling of honeysuckle and cut grass. A cluster of clouds scudded past a swollen moon while a transport buzzed overhead. The Jeep was parked in the forecourt of the Rathaus. Ingrid sat in the passenger seat smoking, her hair mussed like a bramble by the steady wind.

“No one talks to Patton except his aide-de-camp,” said Judge, his heels crunching in the gravel drive.

“Call someone else,” she ordered. “Bradley, he’s one of your heroes, isn’t he? Why not try Eisenhower, himself?”

“There is no one else. At least, no one I know.”

“Find someone!” Ingrid looked away, as if wanting no more uttered on the subject.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he fired back. “I don’t know anyone else. I’m an attorney, not a soldier. I’m supposed to be in Luxembourg questioning Hermann Goering, not rushing across the German countryside with my tail between my legs.”

“Well go, then,” said Ingrid, waving him off with a brush of her hand. “Go to the great Herr Reichsmarschall. And be sure to tell him that Papa’s standing invitation to visit us at Sonnenbrucke is canceled. I’ll be fine on my own.”

“No, you won’t,” said Judge, rushing to the Jeep. “You will not be fine on your own. Close your eyes and look at those nurses. That was supposed to be us.”

Ingrid stared into his eyes, her features frozen into a mask of fear and hate and resentment. In her gaze, Judge saw his own fear, his own hate, his own resentment, not only of the mounting desperation of their plight, but of her, of Ingrid Bach, blonde doyenne of Berlin and New York, frequenter of the Sherry Netherland Hotel — “the Sherry, darling”, platinum princess born to a world which he’d always disdained. How dare she address him like he was one of her servants! What would she ask for next? Her mink stole and lace gloves? Judge shuddered with frustration, but said nothing. He recognized the enmity she’d aroused for what it was: the flip side of his growing attraction to her. Guilty desire’s ugly twin.

Judge stalked up the drive, the shifting gravel denying his anger a sufficiently dramatic exit. No one talks to Patton except his aide-de-camp, he’d told Ingrid. What about Patton’s wife? What about when gracious Miss Bea gave Georgie a jingle? Did he tell her to get lost, too? Judge frowned. Crusty old bastard probably did, if the scuttlebutt going around Bad Toelz had anything to it. Word was Patton had himself a little number on the side, some distant family relation thirty years his junior he’d been screwing since he was stationed in Hawaii in the thirties. Her name was Jean Gordon, and apparently, just last May, he’d spent a few days closeted with her in London. VE Day, indeed! Judge bet the randy old goat wouldn’t let a call from her slip by.

“Come here,” he called to Ingrid. “I need your help.”

“What now?”

“Come here!” He offered a hand to help her from the Jeep. “You want to talk to Patton?”

“Me?” She eyed his hand, not moving a muscle. “Do I look like his aide-de-camp?”

“For your sake, I hope not, but do as I say and you might get to say a few words to the great man himself.”

Ingrid might have been glued to the seat. “I have no interest in speaking to Patton, Eisenhower, Truman or any other American for that matter.”

Judge supposed he should be flattered to be included in such august company. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Get over here, now!”

Ingrid shot him a dark glance, but responded to the edge of his voice. Lifting her slender legs, she jumped from the Jeep. Judge explained his plan as he escorted her inside battalion headquarters. Ordering the adolescent clerk to get him an open line, he dialed the number for Flint Kaserne. When the operator answered, he asked to be put through to Patton’s staff.

“Office of the Military Governor.”

Recognizing Harkins’s sandpaper baritone, he thrust the phone at Ingrid. “Go on,” he whispered.

“Hello?” she said tentatively. Her English accent had crossed the Atlantic, docking at Oyster Bay. “I’d like to speak with General Patton.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m afraid he’s not in right now.”

“Yes, yes, I know. He’s in Berlin. I wouldn’t dare bother him, but it’s quite important that we speak. My name is Jean Gordon. Perhaps the general has mentioned me?” Ingrid shot Judge a frightened glance. He smiled tightly and gave her a thumbs up.

“Yes, Miss Gordon. Colonel Paul Harkins here. How are you tonight?”

“I’d be better Colonel, if I could talk to George…” Ingrid paused, before correcting herself, “I mean General Patton. I’m in a bit of a state, actually.”

Harkins responded with requisite aplomb. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Gordon, but the general left me express orders that he’s not to be disturbed. He’s dining with President Truman and General Eisenhower this evening. That’s quite an event, even for him.”

“I’m sure it is, Colonel Harkins, but…” Ingrid sighed, adding a note of desperation to her voice, “not as big as the news I have for him.”

“Oh?” Harkins’s voice dropped a notch.

“News about a delivery we’re both expecting. Something due seven months from now.” Judge cringed as Ingrid delivered the coup de grace. “February twenty-second to be exact.”

To his credit, Harkins answered in a flash, surprise nowhere in his amiable tone. “Well, Miss Gordon, in that case I’m sure the general wouldn’t mind if I passed you along to him. He’s at the Bristol Hotel on the Kurfurstendam. The Kaiser’s suite.” Harkins rattled off a number and a second later Ingrid said “good night” and hung up the phone.