The Runner Read online

Hanging from the crossbeam, Judge answered, “Forget about me. Go get that sonuvabitch. Now!”

  The sound of Honey’s boots thumping up the stairs was his only response.

  Gasping for breath, he dug his nails into the soft wood and attempted to swing his legs up to the beam. A thousand needles jabbed his abdomen, stopping his motion midway and threatening his grip on the beam. Grunting, he dropped his legs and adjusted his hands, interlocking his fingers. His muscles quickly caught fire. A glance below provided little reassurance. He had been wrong about its being twenty feet to the basement floor. It was twenty-five at least. He’d be lucky to survive with two broken legs.

  And the thought of the failure to capture Seyss, a defeat crowned not only by his own incompetence but by his death or injury, spurred in Judge a sudden, tireless fury. Crying out, he gave his legs a mighty swing and brought an ankle over the beam. Another grunt and he’d pulled himself flat onto the spar.

  Honey appeared at the top of the steps a moment later. Seeing Judge, he ran down the stairs and helped him off the beam and into the foyer.

  “He’s gone. Dropped out the back window.”

  Judge eyed him through a veil of frustration and self-loathing. “Why didn’t you go after him?”

  “Didn’t think I could catch him, if you want to know.” Honey shot him a downcast look, as if disappointed at Judge’s lack of gratitude. “Besides, you take care of your own first. There’ll be another day.”

  “Yes, there will.”

  Judge limped out the front door of Lindenstrasse 21, staring into the blue German sky. A spasm fired in his back, and, grimacing, he swore to do everything within his power to haul in Erich Siegfried Seyss.

  CHAPTER

  11

  INGRID BACH WOKE TO THE SHARP report of rifle fire cascading down the valley. Opening her eyes, she stared at the ceiling and waited for the next shot. Crack! She flinched. There passed a comma of silence, raw and empty, then the gun’s echo whistled over the treetops and departed the meadow. Damn the Americans, she thought to herself. Will they ever stop hunting my precious chamois? The question dissolved like a wisp of smoke. They would stop when they left the country. Not before.

  Ingrid lay still for a few seconds longer, treasuring the last calm she would have until late that evening, then rose from her bed and padded to the window. Last night’s forecast had called for cloudy skies and showers. People used to joke that the only thing more inaccurate than the weather forecast was a bulletin from the front. Drawing the curtains, she peered from the window. The sky was frosted blue, without a single cloud. Forecasting hadn’t improved, but at least the war was over.

  Opening the window, she thrust her head into the morning sun. The air was crisp and breezy, a tinge of warmth hiding deep in its folds. The hooded peaks of the Furka and the Wasserhorn loomed close above her shoulder, silently guarding the entrance to a narrow valley that in summer exploded in a palette of greens and in winter hid under a blanket of snow. One hundred yards from her window curved the shore of a crystal blue lake, its surface scalloped by a freshening wind. Her perfectionist’s eye caught a streak of exposed wood on the gazebo in Agnes’ Meadow where she had been married. She would dig up a can of paint in the garage and touch up the eaves, first thing.

  Having thus begun her list of items to accomplish during the day, Ingrid closed the window and walked purposefully to her bathroom where she made her toilette. A hundred strokes of her mother’s sterling hairbrush, a cold-water rinse for her face and neck, then a few dabs of makeup. She was disappointed to see her favorite lipstick, Guerlain’s Passion de la Nuit, was nearly exhausted. The rouge and mascara her husband had spirited from Paris had run out months ago.

  Once the lodge had been full of luxuries from all corners of the ever-expanding Reich: Russian furs, Danish hams, Polish vodka, and, of course, French fashions—dresses, scarves, cosmetics. All of it had gone to keep the household running.

  Finished applying her lipstick, she moved closer to the mirror to give herself a final looking over. As usual, she was overwhelmed by her plain appearance. Her eyes were a common blue, neither pale nor particularly colorful. Her nose was a shade long, dignified with a barely perceptible cleft at its tip. “Patrician,” her father had called it and it was his greatest compliment. The summer sun had sprinkled her cheeks with freckles. Her one mystery and sole asset were her lips, which were full and well formed and naturally crimson. Not at all typical for a woman of Aryan extraction, she’d been informed by a professor of eugenics from Humboldt University, just before he tried to kiss her. What was it, then, that men had found so attractive? Certainly not her hair. Cut to drape her brow and fall to her shoulders, it was as thick and straight as a sheaf of summer wheat, but unfortunately hardly its color. Once kept a striking platinum blond by Munich’s finest coiffeurs, it had gone a tepid yellow, her horrid brown roots all too apparent. One day soon she would muster her courage and do battle with the bottle of peroxide in the medicine cabinet.

  Ingrid dressed quickly, slipping into a black wool dress that had belonged to one of the maids. She would have preferred beige slacks, a burgundy cashmere sweater, and a silk foulard at her neck, but grease, paint, and sweat did little to enhance the creations of Chanel and Ballenciaga. Leaving her bedroom, she descended the main staircase to the great hall. The vast chamber was as quiet as the grave, her every footstep echoing lugubriously off the vaulted ceiling and paneled walls.

  In better times, Sonnenbrücke had boasted a staff of ten housemaids and four manservants, not including the chef. Ingrid could see them now: Sophie dusting the family portraits; Genevieve polishing the silver; Herr Liebgott working his magic in the kitchen. All but one had left when the war ended. The Bachs were pariahs. Living reminders of Germany’s bloody fall from grace. Only Herbert, the family’s longest-serving retainer and majordomo, remained. At eighty, he had nowhere else to go. These days, Ingrid relied on herself to keep Sonnenbrücke in order.

  Reaching the ground floor, she continued across the hall and passed through the butler’s panty into the kitchen. Three months ago, she would have found it abuzz with activity, even at this early hour—a smoked stag hanging from a curing hook; copper kettles boiling with freshly made spätzle; mountains of red cabbage piled on the cutting board. This morning, the cavernous room was empty save for an elderly man, head in hand, seated on a stool next to the sink.

  “Herbert?” she called. “What is the matter?”

  The leonine gray head lifted. “Kein mehr Brot,” responded Herbert Kretschmar. “No more bread.” Despite the Bach family’s precipitous change in circumstance, he still wore the traditional black frock coat and striped flannel trousers of a professional butler. “What will we serve Master Pauli for breakfast?”

  Ingrid rushed to the bread larder. A smattering of crumbs dusted the cutting board. “But the ration was for three loaves.”

  “Last week we received only two. We are four mouths, even if your father does not eat so much. I should have foreseen the circumstances. Forgive me.”

  Ingrid touched his shoulder. “No, Herbert, it’s my fault. I should have traded for more. We only have two days until we can draw our next rations. We will make do.” She injected a cheery lilt into her voice. “Come, let’s fry our little angel a sausage for breakfast. We’ll tell him it’s a special treat.”

  Opening the meat locker, she found a last sausage dangling from a small hook. She laid it on the counter and cut it into six slices. From the vegetable nook, she retrieved a potato and set it in a pot of water to boil. A half cup of homemade blackberry jam remained. There was still some flour, a bowl of cherries and a few apples. They would have enough for today. But what about tomorrow? What if the rations continued to come up short? They couldn’t go on eating potatoes forever. Throwing a dash of salt into the pot, she felt her hands cramp with fear.

  Keep moving, an urgent voice counseled. Keep moving and your problems will stay behind you.

  Heeding the advice, she concer
ned herself with putting breakfast on the table. But even the busiest hands couldn’t divert her mind from its persistent nagging. Providing for the house had been Papa’s province, then her husband’s. She’d had little experience handling such things. With embarrassing acuity, she remembered her last trip to their banker, Herr Notnagel in Munich. “I’m so sorry, Frau Gräfin,” he had said with suffocating kindness, “but neither you nor your father any longer possesses the least right to your family accounts. Everything has been placed in your brother’s name.” The Lex Bach. A decree from the Führer deeding all assets of Bach Industries to her only surviving brother, Egon. Effective August 2, 1944. Egon’s reward for informing Adolf Hitler about her father’s vocal dissatisfaction with the continued prosecution of the war.

  She’d been left with Sonnenbrücke, the family’s hunting lodge tucked away in the southeastern corner of the country, where she’d lived since Allied bombers had begun encroaching on the Reich’s frontiers. It was more hotel than home: twenty guest suites and ten bedrooms all with private baths, two dining halls, a grand ballroom, winter garden, countless salons, six staircases, a free standing smokehouse and seven dumb waiters. All of it done up to look like one of mad King Ludwig’s ridiculous castles.

  She drained the copper pot and cut the potato in two, enough for Herbert and Pauli. She was not hungry. Setting the table, she inventoried what remained within the lodge that she might trade for black market goods. She’d sold the last of the Gobelin tapestries months ago. A dealer in Munich had offered two thousand reichsmarks, knowing it was worth ten times that. She’d accepted. To cover the staff’s salaries, she’d been forced to part with several prized oils, portraits from the family gallery that had been painted by the famed British artist John Singer Sargent. Only one thing of value remained: her father’s wine cellar. At last count, four hundred sixty-six bottles of vintage French wine lay in the damp tomb beneath the kitchen. Petrus, Lafite-Rothschild, Haut-Brion—les vins nobles de Bordeaux. She would not consider the glass displays full of her precious Meissen figurines and vases. The delicate blue-and-white porcelain was her single vice. Collected since childhood, each piece held a treasured memory. It was Pauli’s sole birthright.

  It would be the wine, then.

  She informed Herbert of her decision, then hastened from the kitchen and mounted the servants’ stairs to the first floor. Checking her watch, she saw that it was nearly eight o’clock. Time to wake her son.

  Pauli was already out of bed, sitting on the floor running a miniature tank back and forth across the carpet. He was a sturdy child with tangled blond hair falling short of determined blue eyes. Since the war had ended, he’d been plagued by nightmares. A rumor had circulated at school that the Red Army was crossing Czechoslovakia to invade southern Germany, roasting German-born children on spits, then feeding them to its troops. She had told him such stories were ridiculous, but like any six-year-old boy he had an energetic imagination.

  Kneeling, she gave Pauli his morning kiss and asked him how he had slept. “Fine,” he said cheerfully. “Next year I will join the Pimpfen and then I can fight the dirty reds. The Führer will be proud of me.”

  The Pimpfen was the entry level of Hitler Youth. A boy joined when he was ten and stayed until he was fourteen. The Pimpfen, the Hitler Youth, the Volksturm—children were taught to fight before they could read. Killing had been deemed a virtue instead of a sin.

  Running a hand through his ivory locks, she explained again that the war was over. There would be no more Pimpfen, no more Hitler Youth. For a child who had never known peace, the concept was difficult to comprehend.

  “If the war is over, why isn’t Daddy home?”

  Ingrid lifted his chin until he met her gaze. It was frightening how he resembled his father. “Don’t you remember what I told you, sweetheart? Daddy isn’t coming home.”

  Pauli threw his eyes to the floor, grabbing his tank and running it furiously up and down his leg. She let him play like this for a few moments, then escorted him to the bathroom and helped him brush his teeth and wash his face. She picked out an outfit for him, and as he dressed she heard him singing the words to an anthem she knew too well.

  Die Fahne hoch, die Reihen fest geschlossen,

  S.A. marschiert in ruhig festen Schritt.

  Kameraden die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen . . .

  He went on, the words to the Horst Wessel song, the Nazi’s sacred anthem, spilling as effortlessly from his lips as the Lord’s Prayer used to spill from hers. When would he finally take to heart that the war was over and his daddy wasn’t coming home?

  Shuddering involuntarily, she ushered him out of the room and downstairs to the kitchen.

  BREAKFAST WAS A ROUSING SUCCESS. Pauli screamed with delight at the steaming plate of sausage and potatoes accompanied by a glass of fresh milk. Herbert sat beside him, entertaining the master of the house with stories of hunting parties of old. Ingrid studied them both, nibbling a fingernail, worrying.

  For six years, she had managed to outrun the privations imposed by the war. She was rich. She had powerful friends. She was a Bach. Finding and paying for goods on the black market was not a problem. But six months after Egon stole the family business, a new reality imposed itself. The upkeep of Sonnenbrücke—food, electricity, staff, medicine—was devastatingly expensive. By January, she was broke.

  She’d visited Egon at the Villa Ludwig soon afterward to ask for more money and it seemed he’d been waiting for the request. Yes, he’d smiled cloyingly, he’d be happy to lend her some money. Say, five thousand marks, should she accompany a visiting dignitary to dinner and ensure he had an enjoyable evening? “Whatever’s necessary, Ingrid. I’m sure you and Field Marshal Scherner will get along famously. After all, ‘it is what you do best.’ And to underscore his meaning, or knowing Egon, just to be rude, he’d pinched her rump and blown her a harlot’s kiss. Furious and utterly humiliated, she’d slapped him across the face and sworn never to speak with him again.

  But the sight of Pauli wolfing down his meager meal made her question whether she’d been rash, if pride had taken precedence over necessity. Momentarily she was paralyzed with fear. What would happen when she could no longer barter for fresh butter and chickens and red cabbage on the black market? The wine would only take her so far. One month, perhaps two. Then how would she feed Pauli? With more sausage stuffed with sawdust? Bread leavened with sand?

  She stood so abruptly that Pauli let go a frightened cry.

  Keep moving, a fevered voice inside her commanded. Don’t look behind you!

  Forcing a smile to her face, she told him she must look in on Grandpapa and fled the room. She ran up the back staircase, loosening the serving apron from her neck. Reaching the first-floor landing, she rested her head against the wall. Deep breaths did little to ease her anxiety. It wasn’t fair that she should be expected to support the household—to do the cooking, the cleaning, the mending, and the caring for her father and her child. She was a Bach, dammit! There were others to do those jobs.

  Keep moving! responded the voice, but now it sounded as scared as she.

  I can’t, she whimpered. I don’t want to. Then came the scariest rejoinder of all, the one that haunted her more as each day passed and her family’s circumstances worsened. Why? If there’s nothing to look forward to, why?

  Frightened by her dark thoughts, she drew herself upright and wiped at her eyes. Somehow her tears eased her anxiety and when she reached the door to her father’s bedroom, she had regained not only her composure but her confidence. She rested for a few seconds, gathering her breath and finding her courage. Her fingers danced through her hair, guiding stray locks to their place as if by intuition. Closing her eyes, she offered a brief prayer that today would be a good one for her father. Then she knocked and opened the door.

  The room was dark. The labored huff and sigh of her father’s breathing rose from the bed. Alfred Bach was still asleep. She drew the curtains, then rolled up the blinds and thre
w open a window. Sunlight burst into the room as a gust of wind invigorated the still air.

  “Good morning, Papa,” she said, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

  The old man’s eyes fluttered, then opened. “Good morning.”

  Ingrid smiled. He said good morning no matter what time of day one greeted him. “How was your sleep? Did you see Mama in your dreams?”

  “Good morning,” he said again.

  Ingrid kept her smile in place, but her heart sank. Illness had shrunk him. The outline of his frame hardly showed under the duvet. “Good morning,” she whispered.

  Every so often her father had moments of clarity. “Aufhellungen,” the doctor called them. The term denoted a clearing of the clouds. On those days, Papa would be himself again, barking orders left and right, complaining about his arthritis, cursing that nincompoop Hitler’s decision to delay the invasion of Russia so that he could take a vacation in the Balkans. She had hoped today might be one of those occasions.

  Alfred Bach lurched forward and Ingrid’s hands dropped to the sturdy restraints hanging from the bedside. “Ingrid, my darling daughter,” he said, “how I love you.”

  She released the ties. “I love you, too, Papa.”

  “How is Bobby?”

  Always the questions about her husband. “He’s fine.”

  “Is he coming to the party?”

  Ingrid smiled coyly. Lately, her father had gotten it into his head that every day was his birthday. “I’m so sorry, Papa, but Bobby cannot come. His squadron is stationed in the East. He’s probably flying right—”

  “No, no,” interrupted Alfred Bach. “He must be on his estate. He’s a graf, after all. Don’t forget that. His responsibility is to his land. A man must keep his eye on things.”

  Alfred Bach loved his son-in-law’s vast tracts of land in eastern Pomerania almost as much as the title that had accompanied them. Graf Robert Friedrich von und zu Wilimovsky. And, of course, she was the gräfin, though her claim to the title was dubious now that the Red Army had seized her husband’s estates.