Christopher Reich - The Runner

“Heil Hitler.”

And in that moment, the past rushed forward and grabbed him, a relentless assault of sound and vision that stirred his soul and quickened his heartbeat.

“Heil Hitler.”

A thousand jackboots slapped the concrete in perfect cadence, their immaculate thud resonating deep in his gut.

“Heil Hitler.”

The clipped tenor of the drill sergeant’s command set him at attention, while the crisp attack of the drummer’s tattoo promised him a share of his country’s imminent glory.

Seyss closed his eyes, but sleep refused to come. The certainty of his capture and the shock of his reprieve had left him unbalanced. He needed to focus his thoughts on the future, not the past. It was difficult. As far back as he could recall, there was only war or the prospect of it. Even in his heyday as his nation’s greatest sprinter, he’d looked forward to a career as a soldier. Now the war was lost and he was forced to consider what lay ahead, what lay beyond Potsdam. Beyond Terminal.

First thing tomorrow, he would inquire about the President’s visit. If Truman was coming into Berlin, he wanted to know where and when. The opportunity might be too good to pass up.

More important was the meeting scheduled for ten o’clock in the morning at Grosse Wannsee 24. The residence of Herr Joseph Schmundt, executive vice-president of Siemens and devoted member of the Circle of Fire. Seyss wished he’d arrived a day earlier so that he’d have had adequate time to reconnoiter the site. The ambush in Wiesbaden had left him cautious. The prospect of walking into an unknown building made him antsy. Maybe it was just a runner’s aversion to relying on others.

Regardless of his worries, he would have to go. He couldn’t expect to make his way to Potsdam and do his job without proper information about the security measures implemented to protect the Big Three. At a minimum, he needed to know the layout of the Cecilienhof, a floorplan of the homes where each leader was staying, their daily schedules, and if possible, a rota of the guards stating when they changed shifts. Most of all, he needed a failsafe route across the Russian lines and into the conference area. Egon Bach had promised him all that and more.

Drawing solace from his lack of choice, Seyss finally let himself relax. There was a certain comfort to be found in the absence of alternatives. Resignation, some might call it. Duty, others. Seyss preferred fate. It had the added allure of predestination.

“Heil Hitler,” he said again, this time silently. And falling into a deep sleep, he once more returned to the past, to an eternal moment when his life stretched promisingly before him, when his happiness lay in the wicked grin of an eighteen-year-old girl and the Fatherland teetered on the precipice of destiny.

The Grunewald was a picture of controlled chaos.

A dozen trucks had arrived before them, a restless, belching column of iron and steel parked beside a grass beam deep in Berlin’s largest park. Engines growling, they disgorged their human cargo. The passengers, most of whom like Judge — or rather, Karl Dietrich — were former German soldiers in transit to their homes, fled from the trucks and milled about a dirt clearing, huddled gray figures drifting in and out of the thickening dusk. Judge estimated their number to be three hundred, maybe more. It was too dark to tell. He wondered why everyone was hanging around, why they weren’t legging their way through the surrounding forest back to home and family. A second glance supplied him the answer. A cordon of soldiers ringed the clearing, every man carrying a rifle at port arms.

Concerned, Judge looked closer. A dozen GIs walked among the Germans. They carried flashlights and billy clubs, the batons to lift suspicious chins and the lights to rake unshaven faces. They were singling out the bigger men; not the tall ones so much as the ones with some meat on their bones. Most had dark hair and a certain wideness of beam and for a terrifying moment, Judge thought they were looking for him. Word had spread that he’d passed himself off as a kraut, he told himself. He’d been an idiot to think he could get by unnoticed. The GIs prodded the larger men toward a fenced-in pen that Judge only then saw a hundred meters down the road. A few Germans resisted and the prodding turned nasty in a hurry. Shouts of pain and anger erupted from every corner of the clearing. The word “ arbeitspartei” was uttered and Judge relaxed a notch.

It wasn’t a manhunt. It was an impress gang.

Ducking inside the truck, he kept a tight hold on Ingrid’s hand as the other passengers jostled past and jumped from the tailgate. A mild panic overtook him, a dreary mix of self-pity and anger. He didn’t have to worry about being captured, just being stuck in a work gang.

The shouting grew louder as scuffles began to break out all over. A whistle shrieked and many of the GIs abandoned the cordon to join the foray. Ten seconds later, the clearing had devolved into a tangled braid of khaki, green and gray. Judge figured that if he and Ingrid could slip along the side of their truck, then slide in front of its hood, they could make it across the road and into the impenetrable dark of the forest beyond. He explained the situation to Ingrid, then whispered, “Stay close. No matter what you do, don’t leave me.”

Judge threw a leg over the tailgate and jumped to the ground. Lifting a hand, he helped Ingrid down. Five feet away, a guard remained as immobile as a statue. Judge stepped toward him, asking in clumsy English, “What’s going on?”

“We need some men to build us a decent HQ,” answered the guard, his jaw moving under the helmet’s lip and nothing else. “You krauts are stupid not to cooperate. Where else you gonna get three squares a day? Move along, now.”

But Judge had no intention of “moving along”, at least not to any work camp. He turned to his right and advanced along the side of the truck. He kept his eyes on the ground, his step purposeful but not hurried. If I don’t see them, they won’t see me: motto of a delinquent’s youth. He shot a glance over the hood. It was less than twenty yards to the woods, closer than he’d thought. He slinked past the cabin, then the wheel well, clutching Ingrid’s hand as he cut between the trucks.

Just then, a billy club landed hard on his shoulder and he knew he didn’t have a chance. “ Halten-sie sofort! ”

Judge turned to face a jug-eared sergeant backed by two privates. For another second, he considered fleeing. He told himself to drop Ingrid’s hand and run like hell. A dash into the inky anonymity of the forest. One look at the grin animating the privates’ eager faces robbed him of the notion. Try it, they were daring him. We need the exercise.

“Namen?” the sergeant asked. He was a pudgy kid with a dimpled chin, red hair and, of course, the jug ears. He spoke decent German.

“Dietrich,” responded Judge.

“And her?”

“My wife.”

“Where do you live?”

“Schopenhauerstrasse eighty-three,” said Ingrid. “It’s not far from here.”

The sergeant chewed on the answer, his eyes taking a long walk up and down Ingrid’s physique. Judge looked at her, too: a momentary glance that confirmed just how mismatched the two of them were. She was dressed in her navy cashmere cardigan, a white shirt and flannel slacks; he, in the torn and stinking garments of a railway-dwelling mendicant. Even after a twelve hour journey her hair was in the finest order, her cheeks clean, her smile freshly pressed. As for him, he didn’t need a mirror to confirm the worst. His hair was two days greasy and curling like an untamed vine. His beard, all nettles and bramble. His fingernails were black with grime, but when he rubbed them along his pant leg, they came away white with a coating of fine dust. DDT sprayed to kill head and body lice. What a pair they made: the princess and the pauper.