The Runner Read Online Free PDF Page A

condition confiscated. Hereafter, he continued his advance with the main element of the attack group and left the area.
    “Major Erich Seyss, now in command, ordered all American soldiers into the adjoining field where they were disarmed and searched for items of intelligence value. Forty-six pairs of winter boots and eighty heavy jackets were remanded to field quartermaster Sergeant Steiner. Seyss then ordered Panthers 107, 111, 83, and 254 and Tigers 54 and 58 brought alongside the field. All guns were trained on the prisoners. At 14:05 hours, he commanded gunners and rearguard infantry to fire on the Americans. The shooting lasted seven minutes. Exactly two thousand two hundred forty-four rounds were expended. Afterward Seyss entered the field along with Sergeant Richard Biedermann and administered the coup de grace as necessary.”
    Judge put down the paper. There it was, then. Everything he’d searched for. Everything he needed to secure a conviction. Seyss was already in an American lockup somewhere. As an SS officer, he’d been subject to automatic arrest when he was captured. It was just a matter of time, then, until he was brought to trial. But if Judge had been expecting a few pangs of gratification, he was disappointed. No surge of adrenaline warmed his neck. No flush of victory colored his cheeks. All he had was a name, some papers, and the knowledge that in a year or so, somewhere in Germany, the floor would fall from beneath a gallows and Seyss would die. The law had never felt so sterile.
    “I suppose this will nail it,” he said, trying hard to add a cheerful lilt to his voice. “We won’t even need to bring in any of our eyewitnesses. Seyss’s comrades signed his death warrant. It’ll be the hangman for sure.”
    Storey nodded curtly. “There are some pictures, too.”
    Judge grimaced involuntarily and the corrosive drip in his belly started all over again. “Oh? Whose are they?”
    “German. They’re rough, so don’t feel you have to look. I thought it my responsibility to inform you. Naturally, they’ll form part of the prosecutorial record.”
    Good news and bad news,
he’d said.
    Storey handed him a sheaf of photographs an inch thick. Eight-by-tens. Judge mumbled “Thanks,” then began shuffling through them. He could feel his heart beating faster, his throat tightening involuntarily. It was the way he felt in court when his lead witness impeached his testimony under cross-examination. The first few showed sixty or seventy GIs scattered across a plowed field. Some of the soldiers were stripped down to their skivvies, others fully clothed. All of them were dead. The photographer abandoned landscapes for portraits. Judge stared at the faces of a dozen murdered GIs. One still arrested his eye.
    An American soldier lay naked from the waist up in the snow, a string of perfect holes diagonally traversing his torso from right to left. One arm was outstretched, as if waving good-bye. A crater crusted the open palm. Quite a shot. The face was frozen in surprise and terror, mouth ajar, eyes opened their widest. Still, he was easy to recognize. The thick black hair, the cleft chin, the inquiring nose—a snooper’s nose, Judge had called it—the scar above the eyebrow, and of course, the eyes—wide and accusing. Even in death Francis Xavier Judge was taking his younger brother’s measure.
    Seyss ordered all machine gunners to open fire on the prisoners . . . 2,244 rounds were expended.
    Judge stood perfectly still, the text of the after-action report echoing in his head. Silently he yelled for Francis to run, to fall to the ground. He saw his brother raising his hands in the air, could hear the prayer issuing from his lips,
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
He witnessed the look of worry turn to fear, then horror, as the first shots cracked the winter cold.
Damn you, Francis. Hit the