“Okay, I apologize for not sharing my doubts with you. What do you expect? I’m a lawyer. I’m trained not to trust people.”
“Especially the family of war criminals, right?”
Now it was Judge’s turn to get angry. “Look, you wanted an apology, you got it. I can’t change whose blood runs in your veins. Or that you almost married the guy I’m looking for. If you’re curious whether it makes me a little uncertain, you’re right, it does. You’re a smart woman. How would you react?”
To her credit, Ingrid pondered the question, vitriol replaced by deliberation. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she said, “I’m quite aware what you think of us. I’ve read the counts against my father. I’ve seen some of the testimony against him. You can’t know what it is like to learn that the man you’ve adored and admired your entire life is some kind of monster. Frankly, I still can’t quite comprehend it.”
“You didn’t know what went on in his factories? No idea at all?”
Ingrid shook her head slowly and he could see she was still answering her own charges. “I’m afraid armor plate and proximity fuses aren’t a particular interest of mine. I’ve hardly been out of the mountains for the past three years. But to answer your question, Major, no I wouldn’t have told you either. That doesn’t make your actions right, though. If I sound at all contrite, it’s because I wasn’t completely honest with you earlier when you asked if I’d had any contact with Erich.” She shrugged and did a fair imitation of his flat midtown drawl. “What do you expect? I’m a German. I’m trained not to trust Americans.”
Judge laughed and the tension between them was broken. He was careful not to push her to talk. If she had something to say, he’d give her own good time to say it.
“The day we met you told me Erich had escaped from a camp for war criminals. What had he done?”
Judge looked her up and down, admiring her willingness to stare truth in the face. “For one, he ordered the murder of a hundred unarmed American soldiers. They were prisoners. They’d given up their weapons. He herded them into a field and ordered his machine gunners to open up on them. When they were done, he walked the field himself. Anyone he found alive, he finished with his pistol. 17 December 1944. Malmedy, Belgium.”
Ingrid’s face remained passive, her sole conceit to the news a sudden twitching of the eyes that vanished as quickly as it had come. “So, then, it’s not because he killed an American officer in escaping that you want him so badly?”
“No,” said Judge, adding silently,it’s for a lot more than that.
Ingrid bowed her head and it sounded as if she were laughing at herself. Judge wondered how it must feel to learn that those closest to you, the men you’d hugged and missed — and in Seyss’s case — made love to, were devoid of conscience, that their every positive quality was stained by a hideous darkness.
“What will happen now?”
“Nothing’s changed,” he said, though, of course, everything had. “We’ll keep looking until we find him.”
Suddenly, Ingrid looked up, her eyes once again inquiring, full of fight. “And there’s no chance you might be mistaken?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Ingrid sighed. “No, I suppose not.” She composed herself for a moment, gathering in her knees and sitting straighter in her seat. When she talked, it was in a casual, unhurried manner. They might have been discussing a long lost mutual friend. “I kept track of Erich for a couple of years through Egon. The two had some dealings with each other during the early part of the war, and every now and then I’d hear a word about him. Erich was Himmler’s adjutant, helping the larger industrialkonzerns procure foreign contract labor.”
“You mean slave labor.”
“Yes. Slave labor.” The words were barely a whisper and she swallowed hard after saying them. “Erich worked with the Military Production Board, parceling out workers to the plants deemed most vital. I never really thought about what he was doing. It sounded so official, so routine. He was just a soldier carrying out his government’s instructions. Now I realize he was sending men and women from the camps in the east to our factories.”
“Yes, he was.”
“Earlier today when you asked if Erich and Egon had something in common, there was something I forgot to tell you. Actually, I only thought of it later, but by then I’d decided I didn’t like you, and you could go to hell. They were both SS men, our Egon and Erich.”
“But I thought Egon wasn’t a soldier.”
“He wasn’t, but he was a member of the Allgemeine SS. They were businessmen and politicians, bureaucrats, too, close to Himmler, all very much involved in its various campaigns.”
The Allgemeine SS. Judge shivered. Von Luck had mentioned the organization himself. Kameraden.
“He never came and visited me, though,” Ingrid went on. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I hadn’t seen him for six years. The last I heard, Egon said he’d been transferred to the East. That was in 1943, right after Stalingrad.”
Judge kept his eyes focused on the road, while his mind bore in on Seyss. Where had he gone after escaping from the armory? Had he been injured? Might he have given up his plan to go to Berlin? Finding no answers, Judge hashed out his own quandary, figuring how to proceed if he wanted to catch Seyss.
He considered contacting Mullins, but discounted the idea. It wasn’t Mullins he couldn’t trust, but the men around him, the countless staff officers who implemented his orders and had access to the information that crossed his desk. He’d have to go higher. He considered approaching Hadley Everett, Patton’s dapper G-2, head of intelligence for the Third Army, and, in principle, Sergeant Darren Honey’s commanding officer. He saw Everett’s signature ordering Seyss’s body to be cremated and decided against speaking to him. There was only one man whose military record placed him beyond reproach.
George Patton.
He would go to “Blood and Guts” himself.
In the passenger seat, Ingrid Bach was working to light a cigarette. Cupping the lighter in her hand, she flicked the flywheel, again and again. She wasn’t having such an easy go of it this time. Catching his gaze, she said, “Too windy.”
Judge wondered how it could be windier driving twenty-five miles an hour on a country road than sixty miles an hour on the autobahn. Instinctively, he extended a hand to check for the windscreen, but it was down. Someone had lowered it while they were inside the hospital. Having driven all day in the open air, wind buffeting him from right and left, he hadn’t noticed the soft breeze tickling his face.
The discovery that someone had tampered with his vehicle rekindled the suspicious buzz that had soured his gut since leaving Dachau this morning. Darting a glance over his shoulder, he spotted the Jeep full of nurses rounding a bend. Everything okay back there. But why wasn’t there any traffic approaching from the opposite direction? He should have checked the accident itself. And if traffic was officially diverted, why hadn’t an MP been directing traffic instead of a regular GI? Something else struck Judge as odd; something the soldier had said:No problem, Major. Have a good night. Judge’s rank insignia were covered by his windbreaker. There were no oak leaves pinned to the epaulets of his jacket. How could the man have known he was a major?
Judge leaned forward in his seat, squinting his eyes to make out the contours of the road beyond the headlight’s wash. The route had narrowed considerably. The canopy of leaves and branches hovered close above their heads, an impenetrable dark mass. He felt like Ichabod Crane galloping pell mell down Sleepy Hollow. The nose of the Jeep disappeared as the vehicle sped down a rolling dip. Judge’s stomach rose to his gullet. Ingrid let loose a yelp of surprise. The road flattened and in the instant before the Jeep passed between two massive oaks, he saw it. A sparkle of silver at eye level. The word “werewolf” bulleted through his mind. At the same instant he saw that no angle iron rose from the bumper, and it came to him that this was not his Jeep. He grabbed Ingrid’s head and shoved it into his lap, then fell on top of her. The whisper of razor sharp metal stung his ear. The Jeep veered right, its tires digging into the shingly verge. Forcing himself upright, he grasped the wheel and returned the Jeep to the center of the road.