Deal with the Devil

by J. Gunnar Grey

  It was the sergeant from the morning of his capture, the one conspicuous by his competent silence. Black hair framed a face which probably came in handy while playing cards, for the dark eyes, measuring and assessing, gave nothing away. He was solid and barrel-chested without being stout and would require more than one punch to go down, filling the doorway with his body as he filled Faust’s vision with his stare. “Guten morgen.”

  Hah. A weakness. His accent was lousy. Not that it would help.

  “Good morning,” Faust said.

  “Sit down.”

  At least he said it politely, sort of. Faust sat, the quilt blooming about him on the chair. Suddenly he felt ridiculous, a welcome flush of anger trailing behind. Of all the crazy things that had happened in his life, this had to be the worst.

  The sergeant stepped back from the doorway. His place was taken by a slim kid in uniform — maybe one of those in the background at his capture, although Faust hadn’t paid enough attention to remember their faces. This one had drab, dark blond hair, cut so close to his bullet head he looked shorn at first glance, and his blue eyes seemed to be focused upon some inner space, which refused admittance to the rest of the world. He set a tray on the table and left again. Faust smelled cereal and realized he was famished.

  The sergeant reappeared. “You feeling suicidal this morning?”

  There were slices of tomato and apple as well as a bowl of oatmeal, and what looked like strong tea as well as a tin of warm water. But the question was even more intriguing. “What?”

  The sergeant’s lips thinned, the first sign of emotion he’d yet displayed. “It’s a simple question. Do you feel like slitting your wrists this morning?”

  “Not while breakfast is getting cold.”

  “It’s a cold breakfast,” the sergeant said.

  He would either learn to like this man, or find out how many punches it did take to put him down. There wasn’t going to be any middle ground here.

  “Snap to it, Ellington,” the sergeant said over his shoulder. “It’s going to be a busy day even without your lollygagging.”

  Ellington returned, shaking his head with his lips parted. He draped Faust’s uniform across the foot of the bed and dropped his boots on the floor. He then produced a safety razor, a tiny square of unmounted mirror, a ragged sponge, and a small cake of soap from his pocket, set them on the tray by the tin of water, and left.

  “I’ll be back in forty minutes. Be ready.” The sergeant closed the door.

  The lock snapped home with a thud which climbed Faust’s spine. He didn’t like that sound. He didn’t like being ordered around, he didn’t like being a prisoner, and he didn’t like that rude, bossy sergeant. Especially since he was pretty certain Stoner, perfidious Albion personified, awaited him at the end of those forty minutes.

  The oatmeal was cold, but a tiny dollop of molasses made it palatable and the fresh stuff was great. The tea was black and lukewarm but stronger than a mule’s kick. He ate everything, yearned again for a cigarette, then washed and shaved left-handed, only cutting himself once. Pointedly, he avoided examining his expression in the mirror. He’d take Clarke’s defiance as his example, not the whipped ones who’d sat in the turf and stared at nothing.

  But when he wriggled into his trousers, he realized his suspenders and brown gunbelt weren’t there. It made him pause. The only reason the English had for withholding anything was to prevent him from using it. As it didn’t make sense for them to want his pants to fall down, maybe they did expect him to be suicidal and hang himself with his braces. Or maybe they were worried he might use them as a rope, to tie up a guard or escape out a window. Maybe there was a window without bars. Something to watch for.

  He would have to think further about escaping, as soon as he figured out how to keep his pants up during the process. And as soon as he knew how badly he was injured.

  His mouse-grey shirt was unmended and unwashed, ripped across the back shoulder and sliced through at the arm, dark stains spreading from the collar to the waist and from the spine to the right cuff. The size of the tears and the extent of the stain made him pause; perhaps his injury was more serious than he’d realized. His undervest, he knew, had to look the same, although his neck was too swollen to button his collar and he couldn’t twist his head far enough to see his back. Great; now he needed new clothes, too, and had no idea where they’d come from. Surely the English had higher priorities than a prisoner’s wardrobe.

  Wriggling into his shirt and tunic without moving his right arm from his side was a challenge, but he twisted like a Bavarian pretzel rather than wait for help. He had to pull his heel into his crotch to tie his ankle boots, so at least he had one thrill to look forward to until his arm healed. Thankfully he hadn’t worn his high field boots; he could never have pulled those on one-handed.

  Every nerve in his body screamed for a cigarette. If he was taken to Stoner, he’d ask. Pride had its limits.

  He was lacing his second boot when keys rattled outside the door.

  “I told you to be ready,” the sergeant said.

  He didn’t glance up, just kept lacing. “I left my watch at home.”

  “I’m not lending you mine.”

  He tied the last lace. Wait — his hair. “Do you have a comb?”

  “Not for you.”

  Jerk. Faust dampened his hair with the sponge and dirty water, and fingered it back from his face. It would have to do. “Okay. Ready.”

  The sergeant, his lips thinned, stepped back from the door. “Come on, then.”

  The hall he stepped into was dim despite its pale walls and molding. A soft glow from the eastern end was overpowered by a blaze from the western one, and by the uneven light he counted more than a dozen closed doors alternating along its length, the ones on the northern wall bolted; his own door was one of those. Another youngster in uniform, one with such a lousy haircut Faust was certain he hadn’t seen this one before, stood waiting partly along the eastern end of the hallway; when Faust exited the room, the kid turned and walked toward the far end, his khaki uniform a dark silhouette against the dim glow. As the sergeant blocked the brighter western end, Faust had no choice but to turn left and follow, cradling his right arm at his waist.

  At the end of the hall opened a stairwell, lit by a skylight in the roof above. The soldier led him down two narrow flights, the sergeant’s footsteps clumping behind.

  The ground floor opened on the right into a grand ballroom, now a combination sitting room and typists’ pool. On the near end crowded several mismatched sofas and a half-dozen assorted armchairs, arranged around coffee tables littered with ash trays, magazines, and tattered decks of cards. Garnet swags were drawn from the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows stretching along the southern-facing wall. A large old-fashioned console radio droned a gardening show for the lone teenaged soldier smoking in splendid isolation.

  They’d probably notice if Faust ran over and yanked the cigarette from the kid’s hand. Just his luck.

  At the other end of the ballroom were a half-dozen scuffed metal desks, two facing rows with room in between. At three of them, typists plied their trade: a wispy-thin man between thirty and forty, a sullen-faced lady of the same age, and Jennifer Stoner. His feet stumbled to a stop when he saw her — she truly was plain, even the auburn hair he remembered so vividly wasn’t all that great — but she merely glanced up for a brief, distracted moment and her fingers never stopped flying. He reddened. That woman was murder on a man’s ego, and nothing like Campaspe. Her name suited, after all.

  The north side of the long ballroom, opposite the windows, was paneled in oak. The young soldier led Faust past an open door — a billiard and darts room, he learned in passing — past a closed one, and knocked on the last door. Beyond, at the corridor’s end, a final door stood partly open, a wash of daylight spilling through. It had to be the entryway. Guarded, surely, but again, something to remember.

  The soldier opened the door and leaned in. “The new one,
sir.”

  From within, a professorial voice answered. “Thank you, Carmichael.”

  That voice he had no trouble remembering.

  Carmichael’s dark curly hair was cut so unevenly, his ears seemed lopsided. He gestured Faust forward. Faust straightened his shoulders and entered the lists. Saint George awaited.

  Chapter Ten

  the same morning

  Margeaux Hall

  At first glance, Faust’s heart sank to somewhere near his boots.

  Stoner stood behind an unbearably tidy desk, his aged frame straight as a soldier’s. He wore a soft dove grey suit, white shirt, regimental tie, and he returned Faust’s stare without blinking. The edges of Stoner’s thin lips turned up and those keen blue eyes were gentle. But it was the sort of look a delighted dog gave a morsel of steak before snapping it up, and Faust just knew he was about to be eaten alive.

  Without thinking he brought his heels together when he halted before the desk, giving Stoner the same heel-click he’d give to a senior German officer. When Stoner’s eyes crinkled at the corners, Faust gritted his teeth. The way this was going, Stoner might not even bother to chew first.

  “Guten Morgen, Herr Major.” Stoner didn’t stumble over the German syllables. His voice was gentle as his gaze and just as encouraging. “I hope you slept well?”

  “Thank you.” Faust matched his tone to Stoner’s. He could at least show grace while going down. “I seem to have slept for a long time?”

  Stoner gestured toward the two wing chairs positioned before the desk, an occasional table between them. Faust chose the nearest one, on the left, and sat cradling his injured arm in his lap. The sergeant took up a silent post behind him and to the right, out of reach and with one of the French windows, rather than Stoner, in the line of fire. The old man settled behind the desk.

  Stoner’s inner sanctum was a sweeping, airy sitting room. Shades of blue dominated. Pastel on the walls was interspersed with stretches of pine paneling that lanced up to the high wainscoted ceiling. The mantelpiece, trellis rug, and the drapes drawn back from the French windows were navy, and the two sofas and additional wing chairs arranged on the left side of the room were darkest delft. This sitting area faced a white-brick hearth and was bordered by a low sideboard holding crystal decanters and overturned glasses. The desk and secretarial station near the wall, between the French windows, and the cot in the corner seemed afterthoughts among the décor.

  “You’ve slept for just over a day, which seems to be Dr. Harris’ favorite remedy for whatever ails one.” In the gentle morning light, the lines of the old man’s face congregated about the corners of his eyes and lips, the skin beneath his eyes and chin barely beginning to sag. He didn’t seem quite as old as Faust had originally thought, perhaps sixty at most. “When I first brought my family here from Oxford, Jennifer had the unfortunate idea of cleaning the outside of her bedroom windows from the bough of the nearest apple tree.”

  Faust couldn’t restrain a wince. “I sense an ouch coming.”

  “Yes, one window would not open as the branches were in the way, but unfortunately the other would and out she climbed. But bruises only, and frankly, I believe her dignity suffered far worse than her anatomy. Nevertheless, Dr. Harris poured the same anodyne concoction down her throat, she slept for the prescribed twenty-four hours, and was fine the next day.”

  Behind Faust, the door opened. He swiveled. The young blond lieutenant entered, natty in his well-cut walking-out uniform. He crossed the room, past the silent sergeant, and placed an unopened ten-pack of Players Navy Cut and a book of matches on the table beside Faust. “These are for you.”

  He hadn’t even had to ask. Maybe this wasn’t going to be the complete disaster he expected. “That’s what I call real kindness. Thank you.” Very much. His first cigarette of the day was long overdue. He tore into the pack. “You know, with your coloring, you could be a poster boy for the Nazis.”

  “Thanks loads.” The lieutenant’s tone was conversational. He settled at the oak secretary’s desk behind Stoner’s and grabbed a sharpened pencil. A notepad was already set out, blank and ready.

  Stoner cleared his throat. “You remember my assistant, Lieutenant Bruckmann?”

  “How could I forget.” He held up the Players. “May I?”

  “Certainly.”

  He lit up like a starving man, inhaled as deeply as his injured side permitted, held it until he choked, exhaled slowly. The sudden nicotine surge was exquisite, like an old friend he hadn’t seen for too long, and worth the brief spin the room took about him. He closed his eyes, feeling his muscles relax and the pain in his arm and side diminish. At such a moment, it was easy to believe the world was at peace, too, and full of magic and poetry. Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, that time may cease and midnight never come…

  But when he opened his eyes, Stoner was right there, hands folded on the blotter, his small smile still in place. He didn’t seem quite as carnivorous as he had a moment ago, and Faust smiled back.

  “Herr Major, are you ready?”

  His smile twisted into something wry. Here he was, holding up the entire war for a moment with Marlowe and a cigarette. Granted, he needed it badly. “Thank you for your patience, Mr. Stoner. Yes, I’m ready.”

  “Then I must ask you what series of events brought you to these shores.”

  At the secretarial station, Bruckmann began writing.

  Faust glanced down at the glowing tip of his cigarette. His muscles had relaxed until his body curved back into the chair and the pain receded to a distant murmur, like voices whispering in another room. Everything felt better. He inhaled until his injured side fired a warning salvo across his ribs. Oxygen joined the nicotine, soaking through his system, and he was as prepared for battle as he was going to be. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stoner, but I can’t discuss this with you.”

  Stoner tilted his chin. Foreboding shot through Faust; he didn’t trust that tilt.

  “Are you saying there is a military reason for your presence here?”

  He dragged again, hard. “I didn’t say anything of the sort.”

  “It’s implied in your statement. After all, we’ve been sitting here pleasantly discussing various topics of general interest. Presumably, therefore, it’s only military matters which you are unwilling to discuss.”

  Another drag, and he wondered how long the pack had to last him. Still, there were worse forms of interrogation than chatting with an old man, albeit a deucedly clever one. “No, there is no military reason for my presence here. However, that series of events touches on several military topics and I’m not comfortable discussing those with you. As you have just proven for the second time in our acquaintance, you are far too adept at drawing inferences from whatever I do say for me to feel comfortable discussing anything more sensitive than the weather.”

  Stoner withdrew his silver cigarette case from his breast pocket and lit up, too, leaving the case open on the desk. “Well. Let us review your situation, shall we? First, you have readily admitted you serve in the Wehrmacht, not the Luftwaffe.”

  Faust paused, uncertain where Stoner was leading him. “That’s right.”

  Stoner again tilted his head. “I was not aware German Army officers crewed Air Force warplanes.”

  He winced. Should he try to bluff something here? No, the intelligence lectures he had mostly slept through had repeatedly emphasized never lie to an interrogator, and although he couldn’t recall why, there had to be a good reason. “We don’t.”

  “So we have immediately established you are not here for a legitimate military purpose, which leaves two possibilities. Either you are here as the result of an accident — ”

  “Which is the case.”

  “ — or you are here for an illegitimate purpose.”

  “An illegitimate purpose?” He dragged again, thinking through the implications of that phrase. “You mean espionage?”

  “Indeed.”

  He let smoke drift fro
m his mouth. Him as a spy — now there was a novel concept. “You know, Mr. Stoner, I was starting to like you — ”

  “I’m touched.” The irony was light.

  “ — but you play rough.”

  Stoner tapped ash and continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Your German military intelligence service, the Abwehr, has experienced difficulty obtaining information regarding our defenses in these islands.”

  He took a long last drag and stubbed the quarter-inch butt out in the glass ashtray on the table at his elbow. “I didn’t know that.”

  “The Royal Air Force, on the other hand, has had remarkable success against Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft, which has denied the Abwehr aerial photographs of those defenses.”

  “I didn’t know that, either.”

  “As it would be criminal folly for the German high command to attempt an invasion without first fully analyzing the defenses of their intended target, the Abwehr has little option but to infiltrate agents within England.”

  Faust cradled his injured arm against his side. He could see where the conversation was going now and Stoner’s relentless logic left him cold. Oh, if he’d brought his camera along for the ride, that would have given Stoner solid reason for suspicion.

  “Herr Major, if the Abwehr selected an agent to infiltrate the Oxford area, it would be someone with your precise qualifications.”

  Even knowing it was coming, the blow was a knockout. “You mean, I know the area — ”

  “ — and you speak the language flawlessly, although with more of an American accent than an English one. You are a clever and resourceful field officer and therefore know what information would be of value and what would be dross. You have the social skills to fit into all but the highest levels of society, and perhaps you even know people who would not be averse to supplying you with the information you would require. Finally, I believe you earned an engineering degree from Munich’s technical university, which would also qualify you to learn the fine art of sabotage prior to your exportation by the Abwehr.”