As if on cue, the tarpaulin at the rear of the truck fell. Two men stood at either side of the bay. Seyss guessed the fat one waving was Rudy Lenz. Suddenly, a torrent of boxes tumbled onto the slick asphalt. Seyss picked up the closest to his feet and carried it into the brush. The word “ oleomargarine” was stenciled on the cardboard. He dropped it, then went back for another. The five men scrambled back and forth, slipping on the pavement, hoisting boxes, throwing them into the undergrowth, then advancing up the hill and doing it again. It was back breaking work and before the tail lamps of the last truck were out of sight, Bauer and Lenz were doubled over, gulping down air as if they’d been punched in the gut. Seyss ran all the harder for them. Corned beef, tinned milk, Hershey bars, lard, sardines, something called peanut butter, chicken, pickled herring, more corned beef, peaches, cherries, and flour. Finally, even he had to stop for breath.
He stood for a few seconds, hands resting on his knees, staring up the dark slope. In the pounding rain, the trail of boxes looked like stepping stones climbing a waterfall.
“It is straw,” Lenz had said, earlier. “And we will spin it into gold.”
Seyss gathered his breath and went after another carton. He didn’t need gold. Just a thousand dollars and a Russian GAZ.
Chapter 24
His name was Otto Kirch, but everyone knew him as “the Octopus”, said Hans-Christian Lenz, and he controlled the upper levels of the black market in the Frankfurt-Heidelberg corridor. He was a fat man, three hundred pounds if an ounce, bald as an egg with a schoolboy’s apple cheeks and a rattlesnake’s glassy eyes. Dangerous, Herr Major. Very dangerous. No one knew where he’d been or what he’d done during the war. Most guessed he’d laid up somewhere safe Vichy France, Portugal, maybe Denmark — waiting for the fighting to end.
Waiting for his time to begin, Seyss added silently.
The two men were driving south towards Mannheim in Rudy Lenz’s battered pre-war Citroën truck. The previous night’s haul was loaded in the back, concealed behind a pile of brick and masonry. The added weight slowed the truck to twenty miles an hour. It was good cover. The only Germans driving these days were those rebuilding their ravaged cities. Every few minutes an American Jeep or truck sped by, horn blaring. The victors owned the road along with everything else.
Traffic thinned as they entered the outskirts of Mannheim. Allied bombing had so completely destroyed the city that there were simply no more people living there. Lenz turned right off the main road and for the next forty minutes guided the truck onto a series of unpaved tracks, each bumpier than the last.
The Octopus ran his operation from the ruins of a turbine assembly plant in the center of town, a part of the city that looked to Seyss as if it had been hammered flat into a million tiny pieces. Where the plant had stood was a mystery, for nothing remained taller than five feet. Not a thing. It was a desert landscape, with miniature dunes of rubble and ash rising and falling as far as the eye could see. At eight o’ clock on a clear and breezy morning, not a soul was visible.
In the midst of this wasteland, Lenz cut the engine and announced that they had arrived.
“Where the hell is everybody?” asked Seyss, as he climbed from the cabin.
“Wait and see. Whoever says the German is not a resourceful animal is mistaken.”
Seyss walked to the rear of the truck, flipped down the tail, and began hoisting boxes to the ground. He couldn’t share his companion’s jovial mood until the transaction was completed and a thousand dollars or its equivalent in Reichsmarks lined his pockets.
“Don’t bother,” said Lenz, motioning at the boxes. “There’s plenty enough men for that. We’re Grosschiebers, you and I. Big-timers. We don’t do our own lifting.”
Seyss shook his head and kept hauling boxes from the truck. If nothing else, the activity helped relieve his tension. He had not slept well the night before, despite the success of their “midnight raid”. He was exposing himself too often. Walking too freely through cities rife with Americans and their lackeys, revealing his name to too many people. He had no right to such bravado. He wasn’t worried about Bauer or Biederman or Steiner, but now Lenz, too, knew his identity. Yes, Lenz was a Kamerad. Yes, he was doing him a great service by turning over the profits from his half of the take. But what about his brother, Rudy? It went without saying that he knew Seyss’s name too. Could he be trusted? The chain was growing longer. Sooner or later there would be a weak link.
A loud thump interrupted Seyss from his work. He put down the box in his hands and turned to see a line of men emerging from what looked like the maw of a coal mine, just fifteen feet away. The men approached the truck, several doffing their caps, and wordlessly took over the job from Seyss. A few minutes later the truck was empty and they’d disappeared back into the ground.
“I told you,” said Lenz. Standing with his arms crossed and his droopy mustache, he looked more than ever like an angry walrus. “It’s all underground here. Like the route to Hades.” Seyss smiled as he followed Lenz into the tunnel, but he was growing anxious. He didn’t like confined spaces, much less ones controlled by the enemy. For some reason, that’s where he had cubby-holed Mr Otto Kirch. Torches wired to shell-pocked walls lit the way. The place smelled of kerosene and tobacco, not cigarette smoke so much as the dusky scent of an old cigar. The ramp gave way to a large flat deck. Squinting in the half-light, Seyss saw that the area had once been a underground garage. The ceiling was awkwardly low, as if a bomb had landed on it dead center and not destroyed it, but by its sheer weight dropped it by five feet. Ahead, their boxes were visible, stacked neatly under a dim bulb.Electricity, mused Seyss.Somewhere there is a generator and the oil to run it. What else is down here?
Presently, a short, immensely obese man stepped from behind the boxes. He wore dark pants and a white shirt dotted with perspiration. A maroon beret sat atop his head like an egg cozy. Seyss needed no introduction. It was Otto Kirch. The Octopus.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” he called, his voice high pitched and nasal. “I was just completing my final tally. I commend you, Herr Lenz. An excellent take. Excellent!” He tucked his clipboard under a meaty arm and walked over to where his two visitors stood. “Come to my office. I don’t conduct business in the open.” He hooked an arm with Lenz and guided him toward a steel door cut into the nearest wall.
Seyss followed at a polite distance. No doubt Kirch was questioning Lenz as to his colleague’s identity. As much as Seyss did not like being here, Kirch must dislike his visiting. Each was a risk to the other’s security. Ducking his head, Seyss passed through the steel portal into a short tunnel, maybe five feet long. He emerged into an airy chamber, mercifully with a higher ceiling, something akin to the hold of an ocean-going freighter but three times the length. His first instinct was to search for exits. On both walls he found steel doors similar to the one he had just passed through. A dozen circular ducts holed the ceiling, providing a steady flow of fresh air. Kirch, it seemed, had created his own underground complex, blasting his way from garage to bomb shelter to storm drain. The route to Hades, indeed. Who knew how big a maze he had created?
Advancing into the lighter recesses of the shelter, Seyss made out a grouping of long tables peopled by no fewer than two hundred men and women. Their bowed heads and precise motions spoke of feverish work. Looking closer, he noted a corroded trough filled with brown twine running through the center of each table. At one table, the workers would deliver the leafy substance into the trough. At others, the workers plucked it out again.