Christopher Reich - The Runner

In the hallway, a new pair of footsteps approached, steady as a drumbeat, then stopped abruptly. A firm hand rapped on his door.

“Come in,” called Judge in a bluff voice that made his head throb.

The door opened and a patch of salt and pepper hair peaked around it. Next came the water blue eyes and the sharp nose. “The lad awakes,” chimed Spanner Mullins, as he walked into the room. “You’ve been asleep since they brought you in here. Sixteen hours by my count. Let me have a look at you, then.”

Judge offered a weak smile. Not counting his ex-wife, Mullins was the closest thing to a relative he had. How was that for a sad thought? “I’m okay,” he said. “Just cuts and bruises.”

Mullins looked him up and down as if eyeing Friday’s piece of fish. “Not bad considering the plunge you took onto an asphalt deck.”

Judge didn’t want a shoulder to cry on. Only one issue concerned him. “Did we get him?”

Mullins ignored the question, pointing to Judge’s cheek and grimacing. “ Are you in much pain?”

Judge sat up straighter. For a second, his head swelled and the pounding trebled. Just as quickly it died off. He could move, but only slowly. “ Did we get him? ”

Mullins laid a meaty hand on his shoulder and gave a kindly squeeze. “We did, lad. Gone to his maker has Mr Seyss, along with two of his closest friends. May they dance in hell with the devil himself.”

Judge asked Mullins for a glass of water and took a short drink. As the water trickled down his throat and into his stomach, he waited for it to ignite some flame of jubilation, some rush of relief and joy coupled with an adrenaline-fuelled arrogance that once again he’d succeeded. But those emotions were nowhere present. Seyss’s death was a hollow victory, late in coming and paid for dearly.

“He hadthree men with him last night. Which one made it through?”

“Bauer, the fat one,” said Mullins. “He managed to drag himself out before the grenades went off.”

Bauer was the factory worker in whose home Seyss had shacked up. Judge could still hear Seyss yelling his name and, a moment later, exposing himself to a withering fire in an effort to save him. There had to be some bond between the two men. What might link a factory worker and a field grade officer, though, he didn’t know. “How bad is he?”

“Ruptured eardrums and soiled nappies. He’s in the prisoner’s ward downstairs.”

“Anyone talk to him yet?”

“About what?” Mullins sounded genuinely surprised, but then his practiced ignorance had always been a source of pride. Judge set down the glass of water, too tired to push him on it. “Just tell me one thing: who turned on the kliegs? I never gave the command.”

“It was an accident. One of our boys heard the voices. He thought Rizzo was in trouble. Got excited. You know how these things happen.”

Yeah, Judge said, he knew, but in fact he wasn’t so sure. Flipping on those lights wasn’t like pulling a trigger. A nervous finger wouldn’t do it. No, by God, you had to take hold of that switch in your fist and tug it from ten o’clock to two o’clock. And what idiot tossed in the grenades? Everyone knew that the armory was chock full of ammunition. Rizzo had made a point of it before agreeing to go in, joking that no one had better toss a lit cigarette his way. Judge didn’t want to think about who had taken a couple shots at him. Something about three strikes.

“Whoever it was, I hope you court-martial the dumb son of a bitch.”

Mullins dropped his head. “That won’t be necessary. Only the Lord can punish him now. The same explosion that knocked you off the roof killed four of our MPs. Six more were badly hurt. And that’s not counting the two Seyss took care of.”

“What?” Judge felt a stone tumble onto his chest. He opened his mouth, but could only gasp in disbelief. Seven men killed, six injured just to bring in one man. Counting Seyss and his ill-fated crew, it was a regular massacre.

“And Honey? Where did he get to?”

“Docs didn’t know when you’d come round so he headed back to Toelz this morning. He told me to give you his congratulations.” Mullins’ voice cracked. “Blessed be Mary, but the whole place went up like a keg of powder.”

“Dammit, Spanner, it was a keg of powder!”

Judge let his head fall to the pillow. He had only himself to blame for the debacle. He should have killed Seyss when he had the chance. Suddenly, his beliefs in the sanctity of the law and a prescribed moral order were an embarrassment somewhere between thinking the earth flat and that a man came from Adam and Eve. Closing his eyes, he offered a brief prayer to his brother, asking for forgiveness. Yet even as this thought left him, something caught in his mind, not a word, but an image — a picture of a bare slab of concrete, vacant and unremarkable, except for a smudge of blood and a black Luger. And off in the distance, blinking like a miner’s helmet in an abandoned shaft, a single point of light. Short. Long. Short.Dot. Dash. Dot. SOS. A crude signal for Seyss to get the hell out of there.

“Did you recover Seyss’s body?” he asked Mullins.

“What’s left of it.”

“What do you mean ‘what’s left of it’?”

Mullins drew himself to attention, mindful of the suspicious note in Judge’s voice. “I mean the whole place went up. Mr Seyss left behind a nasty corpse.”

“You’re sure it’s him?”

“Bauer identified the body. Altman confirmed it, too.”

“What the hell does Altman know?”

Mullins’ cheeks flushed scarlet at Judge’s contemptuous tone. Moving to the foot of the bed, he directed an angry finger in his former detective’s direction. “Now, you listen to me, Devlin Judge. No one else came out of that armory alive. We had the building surrounded. I was at one exit, Honey the other. You positioned us there. So don’t go getting any crazy ideas.”

“Fine,” Judge replied calmly. You didn’t argue with Mullins. “But I’d like to see the body.”

“I spent all morning in that bloody morgue identifying those kids. I’ve seen worse, but not much, and not often, thank the good Lord.” Mullins ran a hand across his mouth and Judge could see that he was very upset. “If it’ll make you sleep better, you can go check the body, yourself. Altman will give you the tour. He’s down there now.”

The morgue was located in the basement of the hospital. It was a large antiseptic room with green linoleum flooring and white tile walls. Like morgues everywhere, it smelled strongly of formaldehyde and disinfectant. A row of gurneys bearing the remains of the men killed the previous night in Wiesbaden was parked against one wall. One, two, three…Judge stopped counting the crisp white sheets. A dull ache took the place of his heart.

Altman burst through the swinging doors at the far side of the room, the same leering smile plastered to his lips. “Congratulations, Major. I’m delighted to see you in one piece.”

“Thank you, Herr Altman.” Judge could see the Gestapo man expected a pat on the back for having tracked down the White Lion. With Seyss dead, he’d have his promotion. That was enough. “I understand you’ve identified Erich Seyss.”

“Actually, it was Herr Bauer who identified the body. I simply confirmed his opinion.” Altman scurried to the third gurney in line against the wall. “I trust you have a strong stomach.”

Judge was dressed in a hospital bathrobe and pajamas. If he got sick, at least he wouldn’t be puking on his own clothes. “Strong enough. Let me see it.”

Altman pulled back the sheet.

Judge glanced at the disfigured body, clenching his jaw to arrest a flight of bile. Seyss’s face resembled a crushed pomegranate. “Excuse me, Mr Altman, but half of this man’s skull is missing. How do you know with any certainty that it is Erich Seyss?”