Christopher Reich - The Runner

Ingrid was passing the front desk when Rossi caught up with her.

“Hey, sister, you want that letter to get to DeHaven, maybe I can help.”

She kept walking. “I doubt that.”

“A few of the guys are heading out to the Little White House tonight for a small shindig. Strictly on the QT. A little poker, some booze, anything to get out of Berlin. Maybe we’ll see old Chippie.”

Ingrid realized she had no choice but to take the offer seriously. Stopping, she turned to face him. “Are you asking me to come with you?”

“If you can stand an hour’s car ride with a classy guy like me, why not? We’re leaving from the Excelsior around seven. Come by for a drink first.”

“The Excelsior at seven. Deal.”

Suddenly Rossi frowned, stroking his whiskers. “There’s just one thing I gotta ask you.”

Ingrid eyed him dubiously. “What?”

“Serious now. This letter, it’s not gonna get me into any trouble?”

Ingrid smiled. “Mr Rossi, if you can get me to Potsdam, this letter of mine just might make for the biggest story of your career.”

Rossi shrugged, unimpressed. “Lady, if a dame like you goes out to a party with me, that’s the biggest story of my career.”

“The flag that we are to raise today over the capital of a defeated Germany has been raised in Rome, North Africa and Paris,” declared President Harry S. Truman from the steps of the Air Defense building. “It is the same flag that was flying over the White House when Pearl Harbor was bombed nearly four years ago, and one day, soon, it will fly over Tokyo. This flag symbolizes our nation’s hopes for a better world, a peaceful world, a world in which all people will have an opportunity to enjoy the good things in life and not just a few at the top.”

Seyss was only half-listening to the words. It was bad enough having to stomach your own country’s propaganda; just plain nauseating trying to swallow someone else’s. Inching forward through the crowd of American soldiers, he was more concerned with the men on the stairs than what they had to say. Truman was a particularly unimposing figure. Standing before the microphone, straw hat in hand, he wore a light summer suit, wire-rimmed spectacles and two-tone shoes that would do a salesman proud. Behind him and to his right stood Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and, finally, George Patton.A true friend of Germany, Egon had said. A regimental band was off to the left, brass horns held at the ready.

Seyss kept his chin raised, his eyes glazed over with that proper mix of rapture, respect, and naiveté that the Americans reserved for their President. A few hundred soldiers had assembled for the flag raising and together with Seyss they had bunched themselves into the modest courtyard. Look at their faces. Such hope. Such faith. Such trust. How was it that their war had taught them the opposite of his?

Step by step, ever so slowly, Seyss neared the President. He was careful not to jostle. Never did he push. If the men around him were aware of his movement, they didn’t mind it. A bead of sweat fell from the brim of his cap, stinging his eye. He glanced up. The sun was at its highest, not a cloud to deflect its powerful rays, the day hot and sticky. Still, it was more than the heat causing him to perspire.

Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he lifted his cap and wiped his brow. He had the itchy neck, the twitching muscles, the flighty stomach, that came with the proximity to action. Twenty feet away, Truman droned on and on. Standing on his tiptoes, Seyss sighted a clear line of fire. The .45 rode high against his hip. The Browning he’d taken from Egon scratched the small of his back. Were he to draw his pistol and fire, he’d get off three shots, four at most. He’d kill the President, and if he were lucky, Eisenhower. But then what? The Horsch was parked three blocks away. A cordon of military police surrounding the gathering and a dozen heroes-in-waiting tugged at his elbow. He wouldn’t get far.

“We are not fighting for conquest,” Truman was saying. “There is not one piece of territory or one thing of a monetary nature that we want out of this war. We want peace and prosperity for the world as a whole. We want to see the time come when we can do the things in peace that we have been able to do in war.”

Truman stepped from the microphone and the crowd of soldiers broke into an enthusiastic cheer. Behind them, a hundred Berliners had gathered. With dismay, Seyss noted that the locals were as fervent in their applause as the Americans. They’d clapped the same way when Hitler announced the re-taking of the Rhineland and the Anschluss with Austria. When Paris fell, they’d gone absolutely crazy.

The cheering grew and grew, causing Seyss to wince with discomfort. Now was the time to act. The noise of gunfire would be swallowed by the boisterous harangue. He’d have a second more to get off an extra shot or two. In the ensuring confusion, he might even escape.

Still, there remained the bigger question: would killing Truman, or even Eisenhower, “make the cauldron boil”, as Egon demanded? Would it spark a war between the Ivans and the Yanks — a conflict grave enough to bring in Germany on the allied side? Of course not. Egon had been right all along. A Russian must be seen to kill the President. A Russian must kill Churchill, too. A Principal for modern times; Berlin had replaced the Balkans as the powder keg of Europe.

Seyss’s own eyes had borne out the Circle of Fire’s most outrageous claims. Day after day, Germany was being stripped of her machinery, her industry, her very means of survival. Two weeks after the Russians had moved out of western Berlin, their barges still traveled the Havel and the Spree laden with disassembled machinery. The Americans were doing nothing to stop them. Hell, they were probably doing the same with their share of the pie.

In a few months, a few years, a decade at most, the Amis would be gone, leaving Stalin and his monstrous hordes poised from Danzig to the Danube. And when the Russians advanced, how was an agrarian state to stop them? With a commando force of Holsteins and heifers?

No, Seyss decided, he wouldn’t waste his life killing Truman alone. Why write a footnote to history, when he could write an entire chapter.

Just then the orchestra burst into the Star Spangled Banner and the crowd surged forward. All voices joined as one, heads tilted back as the flag was raised over the new headquarters of the United States Occupational Government of Berlin. God bless America!

Judge had lost Seyss. One second he had him, the next the crowd was driving forward and he was gone, one uniform among hundreds. Shoving his way through a mass of Germans, Judge neared the line of GIs meant to keep the citizens of Berlin a safe distance from their American masters. He shuffled to the right and stood on his toes, keeping his eyes pinned to the spot where, up until a moment ago, Seyss had been standing. A news camera set on an elevated tripod blocked his view. He shuffled to the left and met the fierce gaze of a military policeman. Damning his luck, Judge lowered his head and retreated into the recesses of the crowd.

It had been near impossible to keep up with Seyss on the way to the ceremony. A two-stroke motorbike was no match for a twelve-cylinder Horsch, and several times Judge had lost sight of him altogether. Only Seyss’s arrogance had saved him. The unmistakable black silhouette provided sharp contrast to the dull and ruined cityscape, standing out clearly from a quarter mile or more. And in those anxious seconds when the Horsch’s sleek profile was no longer in view, Judge steeled himself to act at the earliest instance.

Frantically, he’d asked himself what he could do. Shoot Seyss? He didn’t have a gun. Stab him? He didn’t have a knife. All he had was his bare hands and his will. But that, he determined, was enough. The sight of a filthy kraut grappling with an American officer would bring soldiers running in a hurry and give Judge ample opportunity to declare in his best Brooklyn accent that Seyss was an imposter, an escaped Nazi war criminal intent on harming the President of the United States. It was an accusation no one could lightly dismiss.