Christopher Reich - The Runner

He looked in the mirror and saw an American officer staring back.

Bringing himself to attention, he raised his right arm and laid his rigidly aligned fingers to the tip of his brow.

“Good morning,” he said aloud, “Captain Erich Seyss reporting for duty.”

Darren Honey had never seen General Donovan in such a state. Normally a man of unshakeable calm and storied reserve, Donovan was pacing back and forth across his office like a caged tiger, first shouting, then whispering, and yes, even growling. It was readily apparent how he’d earned the nickname, “Wild Bill”.

“This Patton thing has become a mess,” railed Donovan. “If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said all his talk about going after the Russians was just bluster. Something that riding partner of his von Wangenheim put into his head. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“The general still has that damned Nazi on the payroll?” Honey scratched his head in bewilderment. Since arriving in Bad Toelz in late May, Patton had taken his daily equitation in the company of his groom, one Baron von Wangenheim. Like Patton, von Wangenheim was an Olympian, winner of a gold medal in dressage at the 1936 games in Berlin. He was also an unrepentant Nazi who had spent the war as an SS colonel of cavalry. “I thought Ike would have put an end to that by now.”

“Just one of Georgie’s ‘eccentricities’, says dear old Ike. He doesn’t have any idea of the anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic bilge the old kraut is spewing.”

“And Patton’s falling for it?”

“Falling for it?” Donovan chortled disgustedly. “Why he eats up every word like it’s his Thanksgiving turkey. Georgie’s convinced that Henry Morgenthau is a lunatic and that Stalin has his sights on the Eiffel Tower. He’s put former Wehrmacht troops in charge of guarding a camp of DPs and he wants to commandeer a village in the mountains and turn it into a camp for Jews. Instead of de-Nazifying the place, he’s hiring every goddamned one of them he can find. He’s gone over the top, I tell you. Over the top!”

Donovan stomped to his desk and fiddled with a compact tape recorder. “I asked the Signal Corps to put a bug on Georgie’s phone a week back. I want you to listed to this. You won’t believe your ears.”

Honey grimaced involuntarily.A bug on Patton! Weren’t they supposed to be spying on the enemy?

Donovan switched on the recorder and a moment later a scratchy voice hollered across the room. There was no mistaking its owner. George Patton at his irascible best.

“Hell,” shouted Patton, “we are going to have to fight them sooner or later. Why not do it now while our armies are still intact and we can have their hind end kicked back into Russia in three months? We can do it easily with the help of the German troops we have, if we just arm them and take them with us. They hate the bastards.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, George,” chuckled a British voice on the other end of the line.

Donovan whispered “Monty” and Honey’s stomach fell to the floor.

Patton went on. “You don’t have to get mixed up in it at all if you are so damn soft about it and scared of your rank. Just let me handle it down here. In ten days, I can have enough incidents happen to have us at war with those sons of bitches and make it look like they started it!”

“We’ve already stacked the weapons,” said Field Marshall Sir Bernard Law Montgomery. “One whisper of war and I’ll have the bloody Wehrmacht rearmed within twenty-four hours. But, that’s all I’m prepared to do at this point. By the by, your little Jerry still on the move?”

“Hell yes,” roared Patton. “The man’s indomitable. If the entire German army were made up of sons of bitches like him, you’d still be trying to take Caen.”

“That I very much doubt,” retorted Monty, bristling at the insult. “Still, I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep your boys off him. There’s a photo of him in every constabulary in the British zone. Chap sets foot here, he’s done for.”

“It hasn’t been easy. Ike stuck me with a real pain in the ass to head up the investigation. Probably the only man in Europe who could actually find ‘my little Jerry’.” Patton managed a fair imitation of Monty’s languid brogue. “But don’t worry your aristocratic behind. Everything’s well in hand.”

“Right, then,” said Monty. “I’ll catch up with you in Berlin next week. Cheerio.”

Donovan switched off the recorder, then fell into a worn leather chair next to his desk. “We taped it Friday afternoon. Patton’s in Berlin now. How d’ya like it?”

Honey crossed to the window and looked down on Maximillianstrasse. Panes of glass rattled as a tram passed below, ringing its bell in advance of its next stop. The fact was he didn’t like it at all. He was tired of the subterfuge, tired of peeking into other men’s lives — even if it was for the good of the country. He didn’t like knowing that Ike was impotent and had been for the entire war (his girlfriend the Brit, Kay Summersby, was an agent, too) or that Patton was as mad as a heated-up bull rhino. Sometimes he couldn’t believe that just three years had passed since he’d put on his country’s uniform; three years since he’d been working as an assistant greens keeper at the Congressional Country Club just outside of Washington DC.

In March 1942, Donovan had taken over the club and turned it into a top secret training center for agents of the OSS. Hearing Honey speaking German with one of the landscapers, he’d pulled him aside and begun questioning him about his background. The OSS needed native German speakers, he’d said, and Honey, the son of German-Czech immigrants whose real name was Darius Honnecker, qualified as one. A month later, Honey was back at Congressional, not as a gardener, but as an agent-in-training.

“Maybe the rumors are true, sir. You know, that General Patton took too many spills playing polo, one too many bumps to the noggin.”

“You think George is crazy?” Donovan laughed off the suggestion. “People have been saying the same thing since he graduated from West Point. That wasn’t one lunatic talking to another we heard. It was two old war horses plotting their final campaign. Besides, does it really matter?”

“No sir, I guess it doesn’t.”

“I’m every bit as keen as Patton to stop the Russians where they are,” said Donovan, “but another war is hardly the answer. Right now, our attention has to stay focused on the Pacific. We’ve got to finish off those damned Japs before we do another goddamned thing. You hear what Patton said about ‘them starting it’? What does that rascal have in mind?”

Honey recounted Seyss’s desire for Russian uniforms, weapons, and transportation, his mention of “a last mission for Germany”, and Bauer’s statement that Seyss was leading his men to Babelsberg. “If Seyss is going to Potsdam, it can only be one thing, can’t it?”

Instead of being shocked at the news, though, Donovan appeared pleasantly surprised. “He’s a clever goose, I’ll grant him that. Patton always did want to take Berlin.”

Honey shook his head, his disbelief mixed with contempt and horror. “Will you warn the President’s security detail?”

“Right away, but unfortunately, security in Potsdam proper is being handled by Stalin’s boys. He’s got five thousand of his thugs in the woods surrounding the area. I doubt he’ll let our men lend a hand.”

Honey envisioned the countryside swarming with uniformed Russian soldiers. To someone accustomed to passing himself off as the enemy, their presence would be a godsend. “I don’t think they’ll stop Seyss,” he said. “The man is very resourceful. He spent two years on and behind the Russian front. If Stalin’s got five thousand of his men up there, he’ll take that as an invitation to join them.”