Man With Two Faces

by Don Swaim

  “This is really beginning to smart, you bastard. I’m starting to lose blood.”

  “Then all is well, which is the idea. Have you ever seen a body drained of blood? In life, through the skin, the veins appear as blue, but once the blood empties, turning red, the flesh becomes white, waxen, shrunken. That’s what’s happening to you even as we chat.”

  “I always knew you were bloodless, Janus, but at least I speak figuratively.”

  “I had intended to interrogate you on behalf of my friends in the Gestapo, imposing the most intense agony required to force you to spill your guts. But now I’m indifferent to what, if anything, you might reveal. My singular goal is to make you suffer dearly, in the process draining your corpse, a secondary pleasure.

  “I’d thank you if it wasn’t for the honor.”

  “Still cracking jokes, eh, Tokol. But before I crank the winch again, I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

  With his two faces, he simultaneously smiled and glowered in that familiar way I always knew.

  “This isn’t the time, Janus. I’m not dressed for visitors.”

  “Oh, you’ll want to make an exception in this case.”

  “Are you talking about Diana? If you’ve done anything—”

  “I’m speaking of my lovely wife. My dear,” he called, “will you please honor us?”

  From a screened off-area that I took to be the mosque’s mihrab, in stepped…

  Gazala.

  I can’t say I was surprised, although when she had mentioned her husband at the Hayreddin Barbarossa Hotel I never quite imagined he would be The Man With Two Faces—but everything was now clear to me.

  She said, “Dear husband, is this really necessary? Couldn’t you have let the Gestapo handle it? I thought that was our arrangement.”

  “The Gestapo was intruding. You know how they are. So pushy, crude, and ultimately stupid. I wanted Tokol in this place, on my own terms, and subject to my own methods.”

  “Your methods are cruel. I’ve watched you torture men in that awful chair creation of yours again and again. Often for sport. How many times have you made me empty the pan containing their blood?”

  “Not entirely for sport, my dear. I needed to experiment to determine that the chair worked as I planned. It does. As for cruelty, it’s something Tokol imposed on me, and now I’m repaying him.”

  He again tightened the winch, which resulted in such immense pain that I, normally stoic, except in bed, screamed. In time the needles would strike my vital arteries.

  “Let him go, my dearest. Each of you has misused the other, and now both of you have too much pent up anger. I remember how close you were, how we all were. It is time to call it quits, agree that your lives turned in different directions, that you both behaved badly, and go your separate ways.”

  “Gazala, my dear, it’s too late for all that. I’m enjoying myself too much. You know, I’m tempted to uncork another bottle of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Montrachet. Ah, Tokol, I observe that you’re bleeding freely now.” He chuckled. “Your entire body is turning into a sieve.”

  Gazala said, “Janus, you must stop.”

  His shoulders stiffening, The Man With Two Faces said, “I am your husband, my dear. You may not tell me what to do. It is not your place. Particularly in Algeria.”

  “You think not?”

  From behind her back she pulled a dainty jewel-encrusted, silver-plated revolver and pointed it at Janus’s head.

  He said, “Ah, you’re holding that adorable ladies model Charter .32 Magnum caliber revolver I gave you for your birthday. It’s about time you got some use out of it.” He crossed his arms, a gesture that emanated a certain masculine intimidation. “Do you realize what you’re doing by aiming it at me?”

  “Fully.”

  “You leave me little choice, my dear. I shall have to punish you.”

  “You’ve punished me enough, Janus. I never wanted to learn chess. You’ve even threatened me with your torture chair.”

  “More than a threat, I’m afraid. Don’t be surprised to find yourself sitting in it like our friend Tokoloshe here.”

  “You whipped me the other night for returning late from Mahjong.”

  “Of course. I shall not permit your disobedience. Or tardiness.”

  “You deprived me of my dinner and sent me to my room.”

  “Insubordination is not to be tolerated.”

  “Then, dear husband, now you will never again concern yourself with insubordination from anyone.”

  She fired a bullet into his brain.

  Janus did not die an instant death. Before succumbing he said, “It’s clear to me now. It was Tokol you always loved.”

  As he fell to the floor, the eyes of both of his faces flashed red on and off like those of a railroad’s crossing signals before going black. Janus had underestimated her resolve even as he overestimated her love.

  I was reasonably certain that this time he would not persevere in a state of suspended animation.

  Gazala unchained me from the Janus chair, helped to staunch the bleeding from the uncountable number of pinholes in my flesh—it took a lot of styptic pencils—and got me dressed.

  “You’ll live, Tokol. Now leave. And get a tetanus shot. Maybe two.”

  “I must help you dispose of—”

  “I will handle it. Go. And never return to Algiers.”

  When I last saw her, she was pouring my blood from the trough into a hole in the floor.

  I felt a little weak, but having donated blood to the Red Cross, I knew it would pass.

  My flight in the Navy Boeing 314 Clipper to London the following morning was uneventful, no ack-ack, no deviations, and despite the daily bombardments of the city by the Luftwaffe we landed safely on the Thames.

  Diana and I had an exuberant reunion in her suite at Claridge’s Hotel in Mayfair. She was in London to help the British war effort, in part schlepping kids from the city to the countryside to spare them from the Blitz.

  “How’s Kyle?” I asked.

  “When I left, he was happily swallowing a gerbil. Poor baby must be lonely without me. Even king cobras need companionship. Tokee, darling, look what I brought you from the States.”

  Theatrically, she whipped the wraps from an advance experimental model Zenith Trans-Oceanic shortwave radio, with an auxiliary transmitter and microphone.

  “Now you’ll be able to get the scores from home,” she said, “and talk to your cronies in Algiers.”

  Which would prove to be prophetic.

  We disrobed, and as we collapsed on the sheets she ran her hand over my flesh.

  “My god, Tokee, your body feels like an empty pincushion. There are tiny scabs everywhere. What happened to you?”

  “Trust me, dollface, you don’t want to know. The important thing is that I’m back with you.”

  Discreet, as always, Diana asked no more questions.

  Pincushion aside, our lovemaking left us famished. Wartime conditions severely limited our customary dining habits, and the food in London was rationed, except bread and vegetables, with restaurant meals capped at five shillings. However, the COI saw that we received the requisite ration books, and Claridge’s dining room did its best, often supplementing its pedestrian fare with caviar, lobsters, and oysters, which went unregulated.

  More important, there was no ceiling on the consumption of gin, many bottles of which we drained in the company of Diana’s Columbia network friend, Edward R. Murrow, who was never fazed no matter how many liters of spiritus frumenti went down his hallowed throat.

  Aside from a few broken windows in our suite, like the stiff-lipped Brits we coped with the Blitz. When we heard the air raid sirens we often decamped for Claridge’s basement with the other hotel guests, including Holland’s Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Bernhard, and the kings of Norway, Greece, and Yugoslavia. Sometimes, however, we preferred to watch the deadly fireworks from the roof.

  One night, I tuned in the Zenith to reach Henr
y Hyde.

  He hemmed and hawed, but finally revealed that the gendarmes had fished the body of a woman from the Bay of Algiers.

  “The victim has been identified as the wife of a missing German industrialist who had residences in Frankfort and Algiers,” he said. “She’d been shot in the back of the head. There have been no arrests. Sorry, Tokol. I think you knew her as Gazala Lazaar.”

  My heart sank. But only for a moment. I had a knack for recalibrating wretched news. Clearly, by giving me a warning about the Gestapo, Gazala had risked her life. But by killing her husband, The Man With Two Faces, she sealed her doom. I didn’t share this unfortunate news with Diana, not that she wouldn’t understand. But Gazala was part of my past, and better to leave it that way.

  When we weren’t actually observing the war from Claridge’s rooftop, Diana and I got the latest via the Zenith, and not many of the headlines were good.

  On clear, Sunday nights, when blessed by the gods of the ionosphere, we tuned in the shortwave transmission of the Blue Network in New York to listen to the familiar voice of…

  Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press.

  Flash! The Japanese Imperial Army has invaded French Indochina, currently governed by the Vichy. In China, the Nipponese overran Shanghai and Nanking, and have set up a puppet state in Manchuria. It’s going to take more than American Lend-Lease to bail out the Chinese. Now that Tokyo has signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, how long will it be before the Japs move into Burma and the Philippines? Some observers believe Japan has Hawaii in its sights, but this observer says nuts to that. The Nips wouldn’t have the guts.

  Flash! Speaking of guts, this reporter’s Certain Acquaintance has gone missing. I’ve learned that C.A., who was on a secret mission overseas, reportedly in Algiers, was planning to turn his attention to the Japs, perhaps even going to Tokyo itself to cause mischief. When he reappears you will hear it here first. Meanwhile, dear friend, may those who cursed you be cursed, and those who blessed you be blessed.

  …For Jergens Lotion, this is Walter Winchell wishing you lotions of love.

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  MEMORANDUM

  To: J. EDGAR HOOVER, Director

  From: MIKE LITVAK, Special Agent

  Date: October 31, 1942

  Re: Tokoloshe and Son Cleansing Services

  Regarding the disappearance of Mr. Tokol Tokoloshe and his companion Miss Diana Dryad, there have been new findings, although they do not adequately solve the conundrum.

  First, it is known by examining hotel records in London, that Tokoloshe and Dryad late last year checked out of Claridge’s in Mayfair, and, apparently in disguise, left England for North America on either an American troop ship or a merchant vessel. Quite possibly on an aircraft chartered by the COI, although its agents deny it.

  Sometime in February of this year, Dryad terminated her lease at Floyd Bennett Field in Marine Park, Brooklyn, where she stored her plane, a Fairchild Model 45, and flew it to parts unknown. At no time did Dryad file a flight plan.

  sIt should be noted that Dryad’s pet king cobra Kyle is currently lodged in the Central Park Zoo, and has struck up a relationship with an emerald tree boa.

  The pair turned up in Mexico City, where they stayed in the Coyoacán district at La Casa Azul, the home of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who reconciled after their divorce. Their residence has long been under surveillance. You may be interested to know that the Russian exile Leon Trotsky lived in that house, where he had an affair with Frida, prior to his assassination in 1940. It is not known how long Tokol and Dryad remained in Mexico before they flew to the Asian-Pacific region.

  While it is complicated, we have determined through various airport records and intelligence reports that Dyad’s plane touched down in Cochin, China, as well as Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, and Rangoon, but she always escaped to safety one step ahead of the Japanese invaders. We can only speculate that she and Tokoloshe journeyed from one crisis point to another in order to independently assist in crippling the Axis war machine.

  But here is where it becomes murky.

  The wreckage of Dryad’s Fairchild was discovered by a band of tribal natives led by a shaman on the small Aleutian island of Oaxun, the nearest and most obscure of the archipelago to Attu, which, as you know, was seized by Japanese raiders on June 7 of this year, the first time ever a foreign enemy has occupied American soil. According to the Aleuts, who consider Oaxun sacred land, the plane was badly damaged and appeared to have bullet holes in the fuselage. However, it is possible that Tokoloshe and Dryad survived the crash as no bodies were found. They may have been trying to reach Attu for the purpose of staging an act of sabotage against the Japanese garrison.

  It is conceivable the two were taken into captivity by the Japanese troops bivouacked on Attu. This cannot be confirmed until American forces expel the Nipponese from the island, which may not ensue until sometime next year.

  I am afraid, sir, I must end this report inconclusively, but our special task force will remain fully alert until the mystery of Tokol Tokoloshe and Diana Dryad is entirely resolved or you retire from the FBI, not that any of us wishes to see you go.

  Respectfully,

  Mike Litvak, Special Agent

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With grateful recognition to my fellow scribes in the esteemed Bucks County Writers Workshop for their dedication to the written word while in pursuit of literary excellence. Especial thanks to Parisian-born Daniel Dorian for his knowledge of Algiers, and to my sibling, Steve, a connoisseur of pipeline valves.

  AUTHOR

  Don Swaim is the author of The Assassination of Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story (Hippocampus Press), The H.L. Mencken Murder Case (St. Martins Press), and other titles and tales. A Kansan by birth, Ohioan by education, Manhattanite by inclination, and Pennsylvanian by preference, Don is curator of the Internet’s definitive Ambrose Bierce Site, founder of the venerable Bucks County Writers Workshop, and voice of CBS Radio’s “Book Beat.”

  Table of Contents

  CoverImage

  Advance praise

  By Don Swaim

  Title page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Memorandum

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  Memorandum

  Acknowledgements

  Author