Faust Amongst Equals Tom Holt

by Faust Amongst Equals (lit)

  Although his face did not betray the fact, the fugitive was impressed. It's not everyone who's cool enough to take the sudden materialisation of an escaped soul in torment so totally in his stride.

  `That's okay,' he replied. `No hurry.'

  Mr Van Appin finished annotating the document he had been studying, put it in his out tray, steepled his fingers and leant back in his chair.

  `Long time no see, George,' he said, `if you'll pardon the expression.'

  `Good of you to fit me in at such short notice,' the fugitive replied. `Look, I'm in a bit of a jam, I wondered if you could help me get it sorted out.'

  The cigar box on Mr Van Appin's desk floated across the room and opened itself under the fugitive's nose. He shook his head slightly.

  `I'll do my best,' Mr Van Appin said. `Tell me all about it.'

  The fugitive grinned. `Starting where, Pete?'

  Mr Van Appin considered. `Well,' he said. `I think we can take all the In-the-beginning-was-the-Word stuff as read and

  pick up the story where you'd sold your soul to the Very Bad Person and he'd taken delivery. To be honest with you, George, I took that as being a suitable juncture to close my file and send in my bill.' Mr Van Appin frowned. `Did you ever pay it, by the way?'

  `By return,' George replied. `Or rather, my executors did. I saw to that well in advance, believe me. I may have been facing eternal damnation, but I didn't want to get into real trouble.'

  `Ah yes.' Mr Van Appin's brow cleared. `I remember now. Anyway, to get back to what we were saying just now, I'd rather assumed that that was it, as far as you were concerned. Terribly sorry to lose you as a client and all that, but these things happen. In fact, the term "banged to rights" did float across my mind more than once in connection with your affairs. Nobody followed you here, did they?'

  `Unlikely,' said the fugitive. `As far as I can see they haven't the faintest idea when I am, let alone where. Listen, Peter, I want to fight this one.'

  Mr Van Appin raised an eyebrow. `Fight it, George?' `Yeah.' The fugitive nodded. `Call it a matter of principle.' Mr Van Appin frowned again. `That's expensive talk,

  George.'

  `I've got the money.'

  Mr Van Appin shrugged. `I don't doubt that you do. Even then, I can't really hold out much prospect of success. Those soul-and-purchase contracts are the nearest things you'll ever get to watertight.'

  The fugitive looked amused. `Are they really.'

  "Fraid so, George,' replied Mr Van Appin. `I drafted them myself. And,' he added, with a wisp of nostalgia, `I was good then. Just starting up, I was, anxious to make a name for myself. Landing a client like that, I wanted to make a good impression.'

  `So you don't think it's possible?'

  `I think it'll be very, very difficult,' Mr Van Appin replied.

  `Mind you, I'm looking at the worst possible scenario here, you understand.'

  `Playing devil's advocate, in fact.'

  Mr Van Appin smiled without amusement. `You could say that,' he said. `Actually, I don't act for them any more. All their work's done in-house these days.'

  `Really?'

  Mr Van Appin nodded. `Makes sense,' he said. `After all, they get their pick of the entire profession down there, sooner or later.'

  `Except you, Pete.'

  A faint pinkness experimented with crossing Mr Van Appin's cheeks. `Flattery will get you nowhere,' he said. `I'm not saying it's impossible, George. Nothing's impossible. I just can't see how, that's all. Maybe I'm getting old or something.' He stopped, tapped his teeth with a pencil, and considered for a moment. `That's a thought, actually,' he said. 'A hundred years ago I'd have accepted like a shot. Why don't you try-our office then?'

  (As a result of the unique nature of his practice, Mr Van Appin found it convenient to have a main branch office in every century, with sub-offices at thirty-year intervals to take over his practice each time he retired. Because of his equally unique skills, he had never been able to find a worthy partner or associate, with the result that he ran all his offices simultaneously, thereby taking the concept of overwork into a whole new dimension.)

  The fugitive shook his head. 'Nah,' he said. `I've got other business to attend to in this decade, Pete, I couldn't find the time.'

  There was a long silence.

  `It'll cost you, mind,' said Mr Van Appin.

  `Like I said,' the fugitive replied. `No worries.'

  Mr Van Appin grinned. `In that case,' he said, `I'll need a copy of the original agreement, a signed affidavit from the Holy Ghost and fifty billion guilders on account.'

  `I thought you'd say that,' replied the fugitive. He passed over the attache case he'd brought in with him. Mr Van Appin raised the lid and nodded.

  `Where can I call you?' he said. `I imagine you'll need to be hard to find for a while.'

  `I'll call you,' the fugitive replied. `Better that way.'

  When he'd gone, Mr Van Appin swivelled round in his chair a couple of times, chewing the end of his pencil and humming. Then he reached for the dictating machine.

  `Please open a new file, Miss Duisberg,' he said. `Client profile C, client name, Faust, that's F-A-U-S for sugar -T, George Michael. Re ...' He paused, wound the tape back, wound it forward again. `Re, dispute with Hell Holdings plc.'

  Faust wasn't, of course, his real name.

  Faust was just the German abbreviation of Faustus, which was the nickname he'd picked up as an undergraduate at Wittenberg. It means `Lucky'.

  Only goes to show how wrong you can be, doesn't it?

  Out of a particularly ill-fated year (his contemporaries included Martin Luther, Matthias Corvinus and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark) Lucky George was the student people remembered as having come to the most spectacularly sticky end. So devastating was the ensuing scandal that the university authorities promptly dropped Black Arts from the University curriculum; replacing it, seamlessly, with economics. A wave of hysteria swept across Europe, and for the next two centuries, witchcraft and sorcery remained (so to speak) a burning issue on the agenda of the known world. Even Lucky George's mother stopped talking about her son, the doctor, and transferred the picture of him in his matriculation robes from the mantelpiece to the coalshed.

  Lucky George was not, however, such a misnomer as all that. Nobody could deny that he had more luck than any other

  hundred people put together. It's just that luck comes in two varieties.

  Call them flavours, if it makes it any easier.

  The other scoop in George's cone, in his opinion at least, more than adequately made up for the slight downside effect he'd experienced over the soul business. All that had been a means to an end, and a very nice end it was, too. Make no mistake; Lucky George had got value for money.

  Ronnie Bosch sat in his studio, stared long and hard at his drawing board, and groaned.

  It was, they'd told him, all part of a concept which was definitely going to be The Future as far as Hell Holdings was concerned.

  For reasons he couldn't quite grasp, but which he couldn't help but find mildly flattering, they were going to call it EuroBosch.

  Visit, they had postulated, a land of wonder and enchantment. Meet your favourite characters from the repertoire of Europe's most imaginative artist face to ... Take a ride through spectacular landscapes to see sights you'll never see anywhere else.

  Sounded good, in theory; but Ronnie, faced with the prospect of creating seven hundred thousand different appropriate latex masks in time for the Grand Celebrity Opening, was asking himself whether they'd really thought it through properly before committing the funding.

  For a start, he muttered to himself, scowling at a recalcitrant design and then turning it upside down (much better that way), masks really weren't going to be enough, not for some of the more outre designs. We're talking body suits here, and quite probably bodies as well. Dammit, about forty per cent of his best work was anatomically impossible. Which meant starting from scratch.

  Yuk.

&nb
sp; A stray pellet of inspiration struck home, and he reached for a pencil.

  A mouse, he thought. A seven-foot, grinning, anthropomorphic mouse, with perky little front fangs and big hands which ...

  He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge the very idea. Broad-minded he most certainly was, but there are limits. The mere thought of it gave him the willies.

  What he'd really always wanted to do, of course, was design helicopters. And parachutes, and telescopes, and wonderful ships powered by paddles driven by treadmills turned by oxen. And siege engines, and washing machines, and refrigerators, and combination tin-openers and potato-peelers, and spacesaving compact disc racks, and ironing-boards that ingeniously fold away into nests of coffee tables. He would have been good at it, too. In fact, he'd invented the Swiss Army Knife before the Swiss even had an army.

  Unfortunately, he'd been too successful as a commercial artist and illustrator, at a time when what the public wanted was spare-part-surgery demons and hideously teeming eggshells. It was a bit like being a fashionable book-jacket artist, only not quite so well paid.

  And then it had started coming rather too easily. Even when he shut his eyes. Particularly when he shut his eyes. Like now, for example.

  How about an enormous mutant duck, with huge oval eyes and a beak the size of a tennis racket, and a hideous sort of hungry leer which made you think it was about to ... ?

  Quickly, he opened his eyes, rubbed them with the knuckles of his fists, and swallowed a heaped handful of librium.

  He started to draw a cow.

  Drawn-faced, travel-sore and ever so slightly out of his head with fatigue, Lundqvist pushed open the door of the American bookstore in Paris and leant both elbows heavily on the counter.

  `Goethe,' he said.

  `Pardon me?'

  `You deaf or something? I said Goethe.'

  The girl behind the counter adjusted her spectacles. `You

  want a book by Goethe?' she hazarded.

  `You got it.'

  The girl considered. `I think we've got one somewhere,' she

  said. `We used to have, anyway. I haven't been here long.' `Fetch.'

  The girl went away; shortly afterwards she came back. `You're sure the book you wanted was by Goethe?' `Yes.'

  `We've got this one.' She handed over a dusty paperback

  with the air of someone who's been asked for some pretty

  daffy things in their time but is still just occasionally capable

  of surprise. `Is this the ... ?'

  Lundqvist glanced down at the spine. Faust. Parts One and

  Two. Complete and unabridged. A Mentor Classic. `Yeah,'

  Lundqvist growled. `Marlowe.' .

  The girl took a look at his hard-worn trenchcoat and the

  bulge under his left arm. `That's your name, right?' `Christopher Marlowe,' replied Lundqvist, suggesting that

  his patience was not unlimited. `British sixteenth-century

  dramatist. Complete works. Move it.'

  The girl went away again, and again came back.

  `We've only got Volume One in the NEL edition,' she said.

  `I can order...'

  Lundqvist took the book, flipped it open at the list of

  contents and nodded. `That's fine,' he said. `No problem.

  Keep the change.'

  On a bench beside the Seine, Lundqvist ripped open the

  paper bag in which the girl had insisted on wrapping the

  books, selected the Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe,

  and began to read.

  He found it hard going. His usual reading matter tended to

  be terser and less flowery ('Step three; wire up the timing device to the detonator') and he knew for a fact that large parts of Marlowe's version were heavily embroidered, fanciful or just plain wrong.

  He wondered why. For a start, the jerk he'd known all these years had his faults, God knows, but even he didn't go around talking poetry all the time, like some goddamn faggot.

  Eventually, however, he found what he was looking for. Having underlined it heavily in yellow marker pen and noted down the page number in his notebook, he opened the Goethe version and, after a great deal of tedious slogging through, found the passage that corroborated exactly what he'd found out in the Marlowe. Fine.

  He stuck the books in his pocket and went off to buy a 55mm recoilless rifle.

  The Company Secretary looked up, his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver.

  `It's him,' he hissed. What do I do?'

  The Finance Director frowned. `I'll take the call,' he said. `You get Security to see if they can get a trace on the line.'

  He lifted the telephone in front of him, took a deep breath, and said, `Yes?'

  `Hi.'

  The Finance Director thought for a moment. `It's a terribly bad line,' he said. `You'll have to speak up.'

  `Listen,' replied the voice at the other end. `I'm giving you fair 'warning. No doubt you've got people on my trail. Call them off. Otherwise, you'll regret it. Got that?'

  The Finance Director smiled. `I think so,' he said. `You're saying that unless we leave you alone, something bad is going to happen to us.' He paused, for effect. `Hasn't it crossed your mind that every conceivable bad thing there is has probably happened to us already? Bearing in mind-'

  The line went dead.

  `No luck,' said Security. `Not enough time. Somewhere in Europe, probably late twentieth, early twenty-first century. Otherwise...'

  `It doesn't matter,' the Finance Director replied with a sigh. `The chances of him doing anything silly and giving himself away are a snowflake's chance in ... Anyway,' he went on, `at least we're in communication. Of a sort. We'll have him, don't you worry.'

  The Company Secretary stroked his chin, causing sparks. `Excuse me if I'm barking up the wrong tree here,' he said, but wasn't that a threat he just came out with? Otherwise, you'll regret it, something like that?'

  The Finance Director shrugged. `Bluster,' he said.

  `Ah,' replied the Company Secretary. `For a moment there I thought it was a threat.'

  `Same thing. Bluster is a threat you make when you're backed up against a wall facing certain death at the hands of overwhelmingly superior forces.'

  `Ah. Like, Bluster's last stand, sort of thing?'

  The Finance Director gave him a look, and he grinned sheepishly. They both knew what the Company Secretary had originally been sent down for; and it wasn't simony or stealing sheep. You'd have thought he'd have learnt his lesson by now.

  `Don't worry,' the Finance Director said. `There's no threat he can possibly pose to anyone. He's got nothing up his sleeve except his arm, take it from me.'

  CHAPTER THREE

  NOT long afterwards, Lucky George started his reign of terror. That's overstating the case somewhat. More a series of brisk showers of extreme aggravation.

  Historians have, after exhaustive research, pinpointed what you might term the Sarajevo or Harper's Ferry of Lucky George's war against humanity. It was half past six on a Friday; the place, the centre of Amiens. The victim, a young insurance salesman whose name is not recorded. As a result, the annual wreaths are laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, although soldier is probably pushing it a bit.

  The victim, hurrying to catch his bus, pauses for a moment outside a branch of the Credit Lyonnais. He fumbles in his wallet until he finds his cash dispenser card. He inserts it. He waits.

  After five seconds or so (which is a long time when you're standing out in the street, painfully conscious of the ebb and flow of the French provincial bus service passing you by) the cash dispenser makes a noise. Par for the course, sure; but this isn't part of its usual repertoire.

  It burps.

  The victim frowns. He presses the button marked Cancel

  Transaction, and waits.

  The lights flicker. The machine spells out a message.

  YOUR CARD HAS BEEN RETAINED

  it says. Then it flickers again.


  OR RATHER, EATEN

  The victim raises an eyebrow. Some last smear of the basic survival instinct spattered across the back of his mind prompts him to take a step back. The lights dance.

  RATHER SALTY, I THOUGHT

  This time, the victim can actually smell the danger, but it's too late. The machine is looking directly at him. In fact, it's smiling.

  AND YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BACK, SO THERE

  There is a fundamental and rather dangerous urge in all of us to try and cling to the jagged edge of normality, even when it's blindingly obvious that the longer you hold on, the further you're going to fall when your grip finally fails. The victim

  presses Cancel Transaction again. Bad move.

  LOOK, FOUR-EYES

  The victim tries to back away, but the machine is doing a very good mongoose impression. It seems to have a direct line to the victim's feet.

  NOBODY TRIES TO CANCEL ME AND GETS AWAY

  WITH IT. YOU GOT THAT?

  The victim's first thought is to apologise, but the dead hand of normality is gripping the scruff of his neck. You can't talk to these machines, he's thinking, they're just machines, they can't ...

  A stream of banknotes, glued together to form something disquietingly like a tongue, lashes out of the cash slot, flails horribly in the air, and lands on the victim's tie. Then it retracts.

  TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME, BUSTER

  Just as the victim's nose is pressed up against the perspex screen, his chin flattened against the diagram showing the Right Way Up, the tortured fibres of the tie give way, leaving the tongue wrapped round three inches of terylene, and the victim flat on his back in the gutter. But not for long.

  He scrambles to his feet. He runs. In his haste to get away, he fails to notice the patrolling gendarme and collides with him heavily. There's a short interlude, while the gendarme brushes the insurance salesman off his lapels.

  `Monsieur!' There's a wildness in his eyes that commands attention, and fair enough. When a Frenchman is palpably more afraid of something that he's recently seen than a gendarme he's just knocked over, there's got to be something badly the matter. `Monsieur, the bank just tried to kill me. It swallowed my card, and then it ate my tie.'