Judge eased up on the throttle, stealing glances at the august homes lining the road. Number 16. Number 18. The bike sped round a corner and suddenly, he was there — 24. A blue and white plaque screwed onto a moss-drenched gatepost showed the numeral in a quaint curlicued script. A car was pulling out of the driveway, a sleek black roadster, and it braked as its front tires crept onto the main road. Judge caught only a glimpse of the driver. Khaki jacket, tanned face, dark hair.
Wearing the uniform of an officer in the United States Army was Erich Siegfried Seyss.
Chapter 48
The lobby of the Bristol Hotel was an oasis of shade and calm. Ivory linoleum floor, black marble counters, and a ceiling fan spinning fast enough to rustle the leaves of the Egyptian palms that stood in every corner. Ingrid presented herself to the concierge and asked if any of the reporters covering the conference in Potsdam were guests of the hotel, and if so, where she might find them. The question was hardly a shot in the dark. Only two hotels were open for business in the American sector, the Bristol and the Excelsior. Judge had promised her the reporters would be at one of them. The concierge directed a hand toward the dining room. “ A few are presently lunching, Madam.”
Ingrid thanked him and walked in the direction he had pointed. Instead of entering the dining room, however, she continued to the women’s loo. Her hair was mussed, her face sweaty, her shoes speckled with dust. Standing in front of the mirror, she tried to repair the damage, but her palsied hands only made it worse. Sit down, she ordered herself.Relax. She smiled, and the smile was like the first crack in a pane of glass. She could feel the fissure splintering inside of her, its veins shooting off in every direction. It was only a matter of time until she shattered.
The trip to the hotel had left her a wreck. She’d seen plenty of bombed-out houses, streets cratered from one end to the other, even entire city blocks razed to the ground. But nothing compared to the marsh of ruins through which she now walked. It was a bog of char and decay and rubble. Block after block blackened and leveled. Streets buckled open. Torn sewers spitting effluent. She’d felt as if she were descending into a nightmare one step at a time. And everywhere, people: old men hauling wheelbarrows loaded with wood and pipe; women carrying buckets of water; mothers pushing perambulators crammed with their worldly possessions, leading their children by the hand; other children — whole packs of them — wandering on their own. All of them gaunt, dirty and forlorn. A festival of the damned.
Stranger still — what really drove her batty — was the quiet. Berlin was nothing if not noisy: an exuberant symphony of horns and bells and shouts and squawks. Where had it gone? The silence that accompanied the squalor was unnatural. Walking, she would lift herself onto the balls of her feet, as if straining to catch a remark. All she heard was the tap-tap-tap of the Trümmerfrauen: forlorn women chipping away a lifetime of mortar from an eternity of brick.
But all of it was bearable until she came upon the horse.
It was on the Ku’damm, just past Kranzler’s. A bulldozer had been by to clear the boulevard, plowing drifts of mortar and stone onto the sidewalks. Every twenty meters someone had carved a passageway to cross the street and it was through one of these crumbling couloirs that she’d spotted it. The animal lay still on the ground, surrounded by a small crowd. A wagon loaded with brick rested a few feet behind. The horse was terribly thin, stained black by its own sweat. Its fetlocks were tapered yet muscular, more jumper than draught horse. A lovingly braided mane hung limply on its neck. Obviously, the beauty had dropped from exhaustion.
Ingrid’s first instinct was to rush toward it, though she knew she could do little to aid the poor creature. Before she could reach the circle of onlookers, a man cried “Achtung!” and she heard a ghastly whinny as something heavy and not quite sharp struck the horse. Another blow cut short the animal’s cry.
There followed another thwack, and another. And a moment later, the horse’s rear haunch was handed through the crowd, passing from one person to the next, before being laid atop the wagon. A stream of blood curled between her feet, beckoning to her like an accusing finger.
“Saw!” cried the brusque voice, and she’d fled.
Brushing an errant strand of hair from her face, Ingrid leaned close to the mirror as if proximity to her reflection would help her sort out her feelings. She decided she’d been foolish to accompany Devlin Judge to Berlin. To abandon her children to join in another man’s crusade. Already, she’d forgotten why she’d come. Was it to redeem her inaction during the war? Or to satisfy her long-simmering and silently fought feud with Erich Seyss. No one left Ingrid Bach until she said so! Was it this then — her desire to be loved, to be attended to, to be found attractive — that had hastened her departure? Or robbed of a man’s presence for so long, had she mistaken Judge’s attention for something more lasting?
The arrival of Judge onto her mental stage softened her damning tirade and for a few moments she comforted herself with memories of their night together. But soon, her unsated guilt demanded that Judge, too, be accounted for and dismissed. What could he feel for her? She, the daughter of a war criminal, the lover of the man who had killed his brother? She was a whore who showed her breasts for a few days’ meals, a harlot who danced on a general’s arm to win his good favor. She still didn’t know what might have happened had she not seen Judge Saturday night at Jake’s Joint. It was a question she refused to answer.
Whatever her intentions, she knew her motivations were ultimately selfish. By accompanying Judge, she’d cast herself as victim — of love, of war, it didn’t really matter — and again absolved herself of her responsibilities. To her country, her family, and ultimately, to her herself.
When would she finally summon the courage to stand alone?
The reporters were easy to spot. They sat gathered round a long table, six restless men in civilian garb among a placid sea of olive and khaki. They eyed her like starving dogs spotting the day’s only meal. Why shouldn’t they? She was the only woman in the room.
Ingrid decided that it was too crowded to approach them immediately. She didn’t want to attract more notice than she had already. She asked the maître d’hôtel for a table and was shown to a banquette in the rear of the restaurant where she ordered canned ham with tomatoes and a Coca-Cola. She was very hungry. A breakfast of a hard roll and Hershey bar didn’t carry one far. Her meal arrived and she ate quickly, aware that all eyes were on her. Several times she heard hoots of laughter and looked over to see the newsmen observing her unabashedly. They’d finished eating before she’d arrived and looked to have settled into a long afternoon of drink. She waited until the room had cleared then, with some trepidation, rose and crossed the floor to speak with them.
Six eager faces turned up to her in welcome.
“I was wondering if I might ask a favor of you gentlemen,” she began. “I was thinking the same thing myself,” one of them shot back. He was a sweaty little man with a salt and pepper goatee and the name “Rossi” on his press pass.
Ingrid smiled and let go an easy laugh that let them know she could take a joke. Oddly, the chubby man’s rude remarks relaxed her. She had, after all, grown up with four brothers.
“It concerns one of the President’s associates,” she went on. “He’s my cousin, in fact. Chip DeHaven. Are any of you acquainted with him?”