“Father’s sister’s second son. Just don’t call him Carroll. He positively hates that name.” And when she saw his continued skepticism, she shot him a nasty glance. “511 Fifth Avenue. Corner of 62nd. Just up from the Sherry. We used to visit when I was a little girl.”
She meant the Sherry Netherland hotel, of course. Suddenly he found her smug delivery overbearing. He knew why, even if he didn’t care to admit it. She was the rich girl lording it over her poor guest. Every bit as annoying as the Yalies who infested the US attorney’s office. “The Sherry” as if she owned the place. No doubt she’d crossed on the Hindenburg.
“Actually, I’m not here to see your father,” he said, sitting straighter to signal that the pleasantries were over. “I’m an investigator with the Third Army. That’s General Patton’s outfit. I came to speak with you.”
Ingrid Bach’s face lost its color. “Me? Whatever for? Shouldn’t you be chasing down my brother? I mean he’s the shit of the family. I’m just a nurse and widow.”
Judge had never seen a guiltier response. The shifting of focus off herself; the hands grappling at one another; the voice jumping half an octave. She was up to something. The only question was whether it was harboring a fugitive war criminal.
“We’re looking for a man who we have reason to believe may have visited you recently.”
Her glib tongue had suddenly grown tired. “Oh?”
“His name is Erich Seyss.”
“Erich Seyss?” For a moment longer she stared at him with wide eyes. Then, her shoulders dropped and she let go a sigh of relief. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve come all this way to ask me if I’ve seen Erich. Whatever for? I’m sorry to ruin your day but I’ve neither seen nor heard from him in ages.”
“When exactly did you see him last?”
“Twelfth October 1939,exactly. My twentieth birthday. He told me he couldn’t marry me. A lovely gift, wouldn’t you say? It beat the hell out of anything Papa gave me.”
She stubbed out her cigarette and pulled back a curtain to look over the lake. He could see that her mind was moving on to matters of greater importance. He was no longer a problem to be dealt with, just one to be dismissed.
“Has your father had any contact with Seyss?”
“Papa?” She kept her gaze fixed on the lake. “The only person Papa has contact with is me.”
It was evident to Judge that she was telling the truth about Seyss and about her father — but something compelled him to force the issue, maybe her brusque dismissal of his visit, maybe her unquestioned confidence, or maybe because after Ingrid, he didn’t have any place left to turn. “I’d still like to ask him myself.”
She jerked her head from the window, her attention once again where it should be. “Papa is very ill. He does things to himself. I’m afraid I cannot permit you to see him.”
But Judge was already rising from his chair and moving past her into the great hall. Nothing conveyed authority better than motion, even if he didn’t have any idea where old man Bach was laying up. “I’m sorry, but I can’t return to HQ without having questioned him about Seyss. Can you please show me to his room.” It was not a request.
She stood at his shoulder, glaring at him with undisguised contempt. “Follow me.” She led him across the hall and through a large kitchen.
A basket of wood sat next to a cast iron furnace. A half-plucked chicken lay splayed on a cutting board large enough for a slaughtered buck — which he realized was what it had been intended for. A bolt of silver fabric was draped across a chair, a needle and thread placed on a table nearby. Behind a glass partition, a wine rack ran from floor to ceiling. Only a few bottles remained. For such a wealthy family, the kitchen looked downright barren.
Ingrid walked ahead with a watchman’s deliberate pace, not saying a word. Her silence dug at him like a pick-axe. Part of him wished he hadn’t asked to see her father. He could tell her right now he’d decided it wasn’t necessary; he could apologize and go back to Bad Toelz. But each time he began to speak, the words died stillborn on his tongue. A stronger voice reminded himself that he was just doing his duty as a police officer. He wasn’t there to be her friend.
Alfred Bach lay asleep in a large bed in a sunlit room on the second floor of the lodge. A white comforter had been drawn up over his shoulders so that only his mottled face and wispy gray hair were visible.
Judge approached the bed, staring hard at the wrinkled countenance. Conducting his preliminary research into Goering’s wartime activities, he’d come across the Bach name time and time again. It had been May in New York and while everyone’s eyes and ears were tuned to the horror stories coming from Dachau and Auschwitz and Buchenwald, he’d been reading the testimonies of foreign laborers who had toiled in Alfred Bach’s myriad factories. Sixteen-hour work days on unheated factory floors with no breaks given for lunch or dinner. Failure to meet daily quotas punished with flagellation, pummeling, and withholding of meals. Questioning a command, the same. One Russian laborer who had failed to properly arm a bucket of fuses was made to hop the length of the concrete floor (over one hundred yards) on his knees. When a kneecap fractured and he could no longer move, he was beaten with a rifle butt, then removed to the infirmary, where he was given neither medical care, food, nor a bed. He died the next day. One Bach factory mandated a particularly creative form of torture to inspire their lethargic “employees”. The offender was placed in a wooden box two feet wide and four feet high while cold water was dripped onto his head. The punishment lasted between two and twelve hours. Pregnant women were not excluded. Such barbarous treatment was the rule, not the exception.
Conditions outside the factories were no better. Workers were housed in dog kennels or public urinals or made to sleep in open trenches in camps with no running water and
no medical attention. They received two meals daily, a thin soup with rancid vegetables in the morning and a chunk of bread with a slathering of jam at night. Five hundred calories maximum. The men who supervised the factories and camps, the brutes who carried out these punishments, were not generally members of the German military but employees of Bach Industries assigned to the company werkschutz or factory police. The average “work expectancy” of a newly arrived laborer was “three months until exhaustion”. Three months, then death. For each slave, Alfred Bach paid the Reich Labor Ministry four marks per day. Naturally, the workers received nothing.
There he lay, the man himself, Alfred Bach, eyes sunken, skin waxy, looking as harmless as any old man preparing to die. Stories abounded about his predilection for patrolling the factory floors, overseeing the smallest matters of production. While he’d never struck a man himself, he had known what went on inside his factories. He had condoned it. If nothing else, it had been his responsibility to contract with the SS or the Labor Ministry for adequate numbers of impressed foreign workers — read “slave labor” — to maintain his factories at maximum output. How else could he interpret his factory managers’ constant demand for additional workers? How else could anyone?
“Mr Bach, can you wake up for a few minutes?” Judge asked. “I’ d like to ask you some questions.”
The cannon king stirred. His eyes opened and he gazed first at Ingrid, then at Judge. “Good morning,” he said. His voice was strong.
“Good morning,” said Judge, heartened. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but it shouldn’t take very long. My name is Devlin Judge and I’d like to know if—”
“Good morning,” Alfred Bach repeated. He was smiling now.
“Yes, good morning, Mr Bach.” Judge looked across the bed to Ingrid, who stood with arms folded over her chest, her face vacant of any expression. “Now then, if I might ask you—”