Christopher Reich - The Runner

“Patton?”

“Who else?”

“So this is Judge? He doesn’t look like such a mean sonuvabitch to me. Show him in, damn it. Show him in!”

General of the army George S. Patton, Jr. strode across the room with the energy of an untamed stallion. Resplendent in tan breeches and black riding boots, pearl-handled revolver at his side and cigar clenched in his teeth, he was the personification of American victory: brash, arrogant, and with a shower of stars on his uniform — Judge counted twenty-four in all — more than a little overwhelming.

“Got here in a hurry, I see,” he said. “I admire a man with a fire under his ass.”

Judge was sure to give the extended hand a firm shake. “It’s an honor, sir.”

Patton patted him on the arm while shooting Mullins a questioning glance. “Sure this is the right man, Colonel? I’m not certain he’s quite the ferocious bastard you advertised.”

Mullins smiled broadly, locking his arms behind his back. “That he is, General. Just give him a little prodding. Believe me, he’s tougher than a bulldog and at least half as smart.”

Patton roared, and kicked the white bull terrier sleeping at his feet. “Hear that, Willie, you yellow bastard?”

“Willie” for William the Conqueror, Judge remembered. The dog whimpered and buried his head under his paws. The three men were standing in the center of Patton’s palatial office. At the far end of the room sat a broad pine desk framed by the Stars and Stripes and the colors of the United States Third Army. Behind the desk, a French window rose from the polished wooden floor to the molded ceiling, which itself was a masterwork. Painted in the center of the ceiling was a trompe l’oeil watercolor of Apollo in his golden chariot parting the clouds and casting a bolt of lightning from what appeared a height of a hundred feet, but was only about fifteen. The twin runes of the SS “flashes” they were called — adorned the collar of his tunic.

It was a suitably pagan image, thought Judge, but by then Patton was talking again.

“I appreciate you stepping away from your duty in Luxembourg and giving us a hand. The war crimes trials are an important event. A soldier finds his glory on the battlefield. The place for a lawyer is a court room. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision. If you want out, say so now. I don’t want you quitting midstream.”

“No, sir,” said Judge loudly, responding to Patton’s infectious bravado. “My only regret is that the transfer is temporary. I’ll be with you for seven days. I hope that proves to be enough time.”

“Hell, Major, in thirty-six hours, I turned the entire Third Army on its axis and motored a hundred miles through the shittiest piece of weather you’d ever laid eyes on to relieve my good friend, General McAuliffe, at Bastogne. If I could keep forty thousand men moving for three days in a blizzard while under enemy fire, you can find one lousy German in seven.”

“Yessir.” There it was again. The booming voice. The willful nod. Give him a machine gun, point the way, and he’d be over the top in a second, screaming like a banshee as he stormed an enemy pillbox. Patton had that strong an effect on a man.

The general looked older in person than he did in his photographs. He was a tall man, bald save a crust of white hair. His face was ruddy, possessed of a wind-kissed hue that spoke of hours spent outdoors. His eyes were a hard agate blue, measuring their range of fire from concrete gun slits. His mouth was cast in permanent disapproval. The first words you’d expect to see it utter were “fuck” or “shit” or “piss”, and you wouldn’t be disappointed. Older, Judge thought, but damned fit for a man of sixty.

Clamping the cigar in the corner of his mouth, Patton wrapped an arm around Judge’s shoulder and guided him to the side of the room. “Mullins tells me this is a personal matter between you and Major Seyss?”

“Seyss was the scene commander at Malmedy. He issued the order to open fire.”

“And your brother, the priest, he was there?”

“Francis Xavier. He should never have been at the front.”

But Patton didn’t appear to hear. Eyes wrinkled in distaste, he stared at the floor, slowly shaking his head. “Hard to believe a man of Seyss’s caliber could do such a thing. He ran for his country in the thirty-six Olympics, you know. The Boche called him ‘the White Lion’. He was a national hero.”

Judge wasn’t sure if Patton was appalled by Seyss’s behavior or trying to defend it. Patton was an Olympian, too.

He’d represented the United States in the modern pentathlon in the 1912 games in Stockholm. Maybe that explained the note of pride in his voice.

Patton shook off his reverie with a grunt, and strode to the center of the room. The time for intimacy was over, his buoyant manner restored. “I take it you know the details of Seyss’s escape. Frankly, I’m livid. We can’t have the German people getting the idea that they can kill our boys and get away with it. An officer, no less. I won’t have it, understand?”

He began a slow march toward the door, one hand patting Judge’s back. “Need anything, call me. Don’t worry about going through proper channels. That’s all bullshit. If there’s a problem, I want to hear from you directly. And if you can’t find me, talk to Mullins. Is that clear?”

Judge said yes.

Patton spun to face Mullins, jabbing the cigar at his beefy chest. “And Colonel, remember what the order from Ike said. Be sure to extend Major Judge our every courtesy and convenience.”

“Yes, General.” Judge caught a sarcastic glance passing between them and the thought came to him that despite their alacrity, these two proud men might be peeved at having an investigator from outside their ranks foisted upon them. Patton’s encouraging hand and enthusiastic voice erased the idea as quickly as it had appeared.

“Now, Major,” he barked, “draw a weapon from the armory and get the hell out of here. I don’t want to hear a goddam word from you until you’ve found Seyss.”

Judge got the message loud and clear. Patton was there if needed, but only in the strictest of emergencies. Firing off a salute, he followed Mullins from the room.

“Just one more thing, Major,” Patton called from behind his desk.

Judge froze, craning his head through the door. “Yes, sir?”

“Don’t bring me the sonuvabitch. Just kill him.”

Back in Mullins’s office, Judge collapsed into a chair opposite his new commanding officer’s desk. Taking a moment to polish his reading specs, he gave the office a quick once over. Parquet floors, battered desk, American flag in one corner, regimental flag in the other, and in the center of it all, flashing his leprechaun’s smile, Stanley “Spanner” Mullins. The words to a favorite Gershwin tune played in his head: “Seems like old times just got new again.”

Opening his satchel, he withdrew the UNWCC dossier and slid it across the desk. “You seen the file on this guy?”

Mullins brought it toward him, admiring its heft. “Looks as if Herr Seyss has been attracting the eye of our colleagues in Washington for some time.”

“Yeah, too long.”

Setting an elbow on the desk, Judge went over the file’s contents. Seyss had first appeared on Allied radar in the fall of 1942, he explained, as a junior officer attached to Einsatzgruppe B, operating out of Kiev on the Russian front. The Einsatzgruppe, or “ action commandos”, were the bad boys. Professional murderers. Following in the wake of the German army’s advance, they methodically rounded up Jews, gypsies, communists — just about any minority deemed unsuitable for the incorporation into the Thousand Year Reich — and killed them. He turned up a second time in Poland in the spring of 1943, just in time to lead a company of storm troopers on a raid into the Warsaw Ghetto. Eighteen months later, his shadow fell across Frankie’s path in the Ardennes. Looking back, there wasn’t much question of the outcome. Francis didn’t stand a chance.