Deal with the Devil

by J. Gunnar Grey

  For a moment he thought of Jennifer, sitting on Woodrow’s rear steps with a shotgun beside her, guarding against the German invader while her sister died in the forest barely a mile away. He wondered how closely he’d passed Harriet and her killer in the night, whether the girl had been dead or alive by then. If he hadn’t been confused and injured, he might have heard her cries; if Jennifer hadn’t been guarding against him, she might have gone looking sooner.

  “I see you watching everything over there,” Tanyon said. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  Faust shook off those thoughts. He couldn’t help Jennifer, any more than he could have helped Harriet. Instead, maybe he could allay Tanyon’s suspicions and earn an escape attempt later. Casually, he turned from the road to put Tanyon off guard. “Margeaux Hall is a beautiful building. How did Mr. Stoner get such a great headquarters? In Paris, we were in a hotel.”

  Okay, it wasn’t brilliant. It was a start.

  Tanyon’s eyes narrowed. His antagonism seemed so strong, Faust wondered if he’d answer.

  “We got lucky, in a sense,” he said finally. “The old squire had just died — liver failure, I think it was — and his son didn’t know what to do with the place. When we showed up, he seemed glad to see us.”

  “The owner lives on premises? In the main wing?”

  Tanyon shook his head. “He’s in the service. A young man.”

  “Just his sister.” Norris spoke for the first time.

  Faust glanced at him. Norris was tall, easily over six feet, and built wiry as a steel cable. In the vestibule he’d been just as frightened as the other kids, but the calm conversation and Tanyon’s steady presence seemed to be steadying him.

  Tanyon grunted. “She’s out of our league.”

  Faust gave him a wry glance. If the sergeant’s assessment was supposed to include him, he didn’t appreciate it. “You mean the blonde on horseback? She’s got a lot of legs, doesn’t she?”

  Norris snickered. Tanyon glanced at them both, one wrinkle between his dark eyes, and looked away.

  The lorry bumped on the road. Their three bodies swayed in unison.

  Norris leaned forward. “Is it bad?”

  Faust blinked. The kid’s hatchet face had lurched forward so suddenly he’d thought they were about to hit. “Do you mean my injury?”

  “Leave him alone, Norris.”

  “But he’s actually been there. And you know we’re gonna be.”

  And in a clear sudden rush Faust understood the fear and staring fascination he inspired within the kids. He had seen combat. He’d braved the front lines, been under fire, and survived; further, he’d been decorated for valor. It represented the sum of their fears as well as their hopes. He was what they longed to be.

  An enemy role model? He glanced aside into Tanyon’s impassivity, uncertain what to say. If he told Norris, and through him the rest of the young soldiers, the truth, well, it would scare the bejeebers out of them and strip their hearts right out. The Nazis would do it, and in the interest of winning the war they’d be right. But he couldn’t imagine any of the military gentlemen such as his hero, von Rundstedt, doing anything so crass. He had to follow his own role models and heart, and a pox on the Nazis.

  “I’ve been there, too, you know,” Tanyon said.

  “Yeah. But we lost. And you won’t talk about it.”

  “I don’t know if losing has anything to do with it.” Faust chose his words with care; to be misunderstood or come across as patronizing would be the same as Best’s browbeating. “The British Army was brave. I’ve rarely seen better soldiers.” He paused. “Do you play cards?”

  Norris’ eyes widened. “Of course.”

  “Well, that’s what combat is like.”

  “Like playing cards?” His skepticism was heavy.

  “This is why I don’t talk about it,” Tanyon said. “I don’t think you can.”

  “Okay.” He thought again. “You’ve been on a rifle range?”

  “Target shooting? Of course.”

  “It’s easy, isn’t it? You kneel, brace the butt of the rifle against your shoulder, align front and rear sights, squeeze the trigger. You might even hit what you’re aiming at.”

  Norris sniggered again. “Right.”

  “Well, that’s what it’s not like. That’s slow, careful, deliberate, and the enemy isn’t going to let you get away with it. On the front lines, you spot the enemy position and fire as close to it as you can, shooting around the corner in quick bursts, from behind whatever shelter you can find and showing as little of yourself as you can.”

  He shrugged. “We’ve trained for that.”

  “Good. The enemy is behind cover, too. That’s where chance comes into it. You hope he eases out for a shot or a look while you’re firing.”

  “I can do that.”

  “But of course, he’s doing the same thing.”

  Norris looked blank.

  “When you ease out for a shot, he’s going to be firing at you.”

  The kid leaned back, flexing his elbows over the edge of the truck bed. “Yeah. I can do it.”

  “See?” Tanyon said.

  He sighed, sending a lance of pain across his side, and tried one last time. “It’s always hot on a battlefield. It was even hot in Norway. You’re sweating, your eyes are stinging, and you’re shivering cold, all at the same time. There’s smoke drifting past. It’s hard to see. It’s noisy. The heavy guns are firing behind you and the shells howl as they pass overhead. The tanks are clanking, engines growling. There are planes bombing the enemy positions and sometimes your own. People are shouting and screaming. It’s hard to hear your sergeant. But you can hear the bullets. They smack when they hit flesh. They sing past your head. And it stinks. Blood has a particular odor; you never forget it once you smell it. You can also smell gunpowder, and burning, and vomit, and sometimes a soldier has a close call and soils his pants. You’re always afraid. I think fear’s a good thing. It keeps you looking in the right direction. It keeps you sharp. A good soldier learns to use his fear, so it’s just another tool, like your rifle or gas mask.”

  Somewhere during his soliloquy, something he said hit home through Norris’ cockiness. Faust sensed, if not true understanding, then at least recognition, in the young soldier’s eyes. For a moment the image he painted with words reflected off Norris and back to himself, and he wondered if the kid would try to tell the others about this conversation. Then the lorry swung left and braked, and Norris looked away.

  “You ever soil your pants, sergeant?”

  “Wouldn’t tell you if I did.” Tanyon threw up the canvas flap. “That’s personal, that is.” He jumped from the lorry. Norris and Faust followed more slowly. The little shock of hitting the pavement caused another spasm of pain to flash across his ribs and he held onto the lorry until it passed.

  The Patchbourne hospital was a four-story, unadorned white building with rows of windows rising to the flat roof. To the west was the village green and market, with railway tracks to the south. To the east, less than a half-mile away beyond a grain field, Faust saw long low metal buildings, complexes of brick ones, empty stretches of concrete, rows of parked Spitfires and Lancasters. The air above rippled in the hot afternoon sunlight. Halfway across the field, in the middle of the yellow grain, gaped a dark hole as if something large had made a hard landing and burned.

  “I don’t know how long this will take,” Tanyon said to Peckham. “You take the lorry back and make yourself useful. I’ll call when we’re ready.”

  “Right, sergeant.”

  Tanyon turned around. His dark eyes were speculative, uncertainty obvious even on his poker face. Faust faced him and kept his chin low.

  “I didn’t do it.” He kept his voice low, too; this was strictly between them. “I didn’t kill Mr. Stoner’s granddaughter.”

  The lorry backed from the lot and drove off, toward the market. Dust swirled about them on the hot pavement, stinging Faust’s eyes, then settled at their feet.
Tanyon didn’t blink. His speculation faded to his usual impassivity, and Faust relaxed. He’d passed muster.

  “Huh,” Tanyon finally said. “Let’s get moving.”

  Faust followed Norris into the hospital, those boots as usual clumping behind. He felt better already, sort of.

  Chapter Seventeen

  the same afternoon

  Patchbourne hospital

  The X-rays had been taken several hours ago. But Faust and his two guards still sat in the reception area outside the clinic on the fourth floor. To one side of him, Norris glanced through an illustrated magazine, lips moving, rifle propped beside him; on the other, Tanyon maintained his silence, still shooting an occasional glance sideways.

  Faust, supporting his injured arm, watched the other patients as one by one they vanished into the clinic’s inner recesses, where Dr. Harris and a surgeon held court. They re-emerged clutching jars, bottles, bandages. All of them stared at him, and his clearly German uniform, in passing, their expressions eloquent mixtures of loathing and rage. But none of them met his gaze for long when he stared back. Slowly the line whittled down — a grimy mechanic in R.A.F. blue with a bandage over one eye; a middle-aged man in a suit hobbling with a cane; a screaming child with burns over her face and arm. He didn’t return the mother’s glare and was relieved when they left.

  Finally only one woman and her two children remained, sitting on the opposite side of the room as far away as possible. The woman, tiny and delicate, knitted bright red yarn into a jumper. She looked nowhere near thirty, but her daughter was easily ten, so perhaps she just carried her age well. Her blonde hair was short and stylish, at odds with her flowered cotton dress, and her trim legs curved about her chair as if at a tea party.

  The two children, the boy no more than a sturdy two or three, played with little metal airplanes at her feet. Faust recognized the toys as a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt 109, their R.A.F. roundels and Luftwaffe crosses and swastikas clear against their bright silver paint. Repeatedly the daughter, with the Spitfire, shot down the German plane, always casting a sly glance in Faust’s direction as she imitated cannon fire through her monotonous coughing. And repeatedly her younger brother spiraled the Messerschmitt down to a grisly death on the tiled floor. Each time it happened, Faust closed his eyes as if in pain — which was true — listened to the giggles and grinned, too.

  But finally he turned to Tanyon. “You know, we haven’t had lunch — ”

  He cut off as a loud mechanical moaning began outside, building to an ululating howl within moments. He stiffened, his skin prickling; it was the most eerie noise he’d ever heard. The daughter froze in the middle of hacking and her mother jerked erect, staring into space.

  “Air raid.” Tanyon glanced at Faust, face deadpan, eyes sardonic. “Good timing.”

  The mother started up with a wordless cry, shooting Faust a look of pure loathing.

  He ignored her and strained his ears. Beneath the droning klaxon there was another drone, steadier and more uniform, not close yet but approaching.

  Norris rose, too, dropping his magazine on the floor. His color drained, leaving him grey, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.

  “Wait, Norris. Women and children first.”

  The clinic nurse, her cropped hair iron grey and her bosom generous beneath her starched white dress, darted from behind the counter, her arms piled with charts and files. “This way, Mrs. Oldfield. Flora, Thompson, down to the shelter.”

  They herded the children out as Cavanaugh, Dr. Harris, and the surgeon appeared from the clinic’s recesses, heaving cardboard cartons.

  “All right, Norris. Lead the way and don’t get too close to the Oldfields.” Tanyon looked at Faust. “You follow and no funny stuff. I’ll be right behind you.”

  The droning was getting closer fast. He glanced at the ceiling as if he could see through it to the approaching planes. He wasn’t certain just when he’d stood up, but he and Tanyon were both on their feet. “Okay, sergeant.”

  The others were gone. He obeyed Tanyon’s orders and kept his distance; he was just starting to establish a rapport with the sergeant and now was not the time to jeopardize his groundwork. But he couldn’t prevent an occasional glance up, just the same, and his pulse quickened through the pain lancing across his side.

  The corridor outside the clinic stretched the length of the long building. Ahead, the women and two children, near the end, turned right and vanish. The medical men followed, then Norris was gone, too, and he and Tanyon walked alone, a line of open windows on his left. He heeded his instincts and picked up the pace. The droning beneath the still-shrieking alarm grew steadily louder. Without turning his head, he knew Tanyon had one hand on his Webley. Considering what was approaching overhead, it seemed the lesser of two evils.

  They reached the stairwell and started down. Voices drifted up, clear and frightened. The droning seemed directly overhead and battled the howling klaxon. At the first report of ack-ack fire, Faust ducked and slipped on the stairs. Then a second gun fired and a third, the distant bangs merging into a continuous background rumble beneath the entire cacophony. He caught his balance and quickened again.

  “The hospital is marked?” he called over his shoulder.

  “Big red crosses on the roof,” Tanyon said. “I helped paint them.”

  Assuming the Luftwaffe could aim their destructive contraptions. “I feel so much better.” He moved faster.

  Four flights down, just below the entry to the basement, they overtook the others. The toddler’s short legs stumbled on the stairs and his delicate mother’s chivvying could not drive him faster. Her dress was rumpled, as if she’d tried to carry him down but couldn’t, and her net bag of yarn was abandoned on the landing. The surgeon was trying to offload his cardboard boxes into Dr. Harris’s long arms, but it was obvious it wouldn’t work.

  Faust slowed, matching the boy’s pace even though his heart was trying to escape from his chest. The racket overhead couldn’t possibly get louder. Mrs. Oldfield’s voice was a shrill wail.

  “Norris!” Tanyon yelled. “Get Thompson! Carry him!”

  But Norris threw one terrified glance over his shoulder. He shoved past Mrs. Oldfield and her brood, past the nurse and the three medical men trying to rearrange their burdens, and leapt down the last flight of stairs, hitting the ground running. His hands were empty, Faust realized, his rifle gone. Norris vanished within moments.

  A metallic scream joined its banshee voice to the relentless droning. Faust flinched. He’d called in air strikes, in Poland, Norway, France, and he knew the sound of a bomb dropping when he heard it, even through the building’s muffling. There was no one else to do it. He leapt the last few stairs, ignoring Tanyon’s shout and the sudden clawing pain in his side, and swept little Thompson into his arms.

  The walls convulsed. Plaster crashed and boiled. The lights flickered, brightened, went out, leaving them in utter blackness. Someone screamed. Little arms and legs wrapped about Faust, squeezing him in half, and small hot breaths panted on his neck in rhythm with the pounding of his pulse. Far ahead, a pale beam of light arched through the darkness, flashed about, fastened on them. Another metallic shriek stormed overhead. Faust wrapped his right arm about Mrs. Oldfield, who had a death-grip on Flora’s hand. His left arm supporting the petrified child, he half-dragged, half-ran for the light. The others pounded beside and behind him.

  The shrieking was unbearable. Would being underground protect them from a direct hit? He didn’t know. He couldn’t chance it. He swept Mrs. Oldfield and Flora against the wall and covered them with his body, still supporting Thompson. Tanyon was suddenly beside him, forcing the grey-haired nurse into the same embrace, twining his arm with Faust’s. Dr. Harris, the surgeon, and Cavanaugh joined on the other side.

  The explosion deafened him and rocked the very ground he stood upon. Debris cascaded down. Something heavy bounced off his shoulders. His knees buckled, piling him and Thompson atop Mrs. Oldfield. Only Tanyon’s gri
p kept him standing. Even the light at the end of the corridor vanished. The little body wrapped about his vibrated like a tuning fork. He counted the seconds — one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three — reaching nine before the rumbling diminished to a bearable level and twelve before the last debris clattered atop his shoulders. Then the light flashed again like a homing beacon. Tanyon pulled him up. They staggered through the unbearable racket, coughing in the boiling dust.

  The shelter door was open. The wielder of the flashlight, invisible and ghostly behind its beam, lit their way down a flight of steps. Faust stumbled in the Oldfields’ wake, Thompson still clutching him like a lamprey. Above them, someone closed the door and the sounds receded.

  “It’s okay now,” he whispered. “We’re safe.”

  “Daddy.” Thompson’s voice was less than a whimper. Faust barely heard him. He hugged the child tighter.

  He stopped at the bottom, cradling Thompson and murmuring to him, straining his ringing ears for the barely audible replies. The hospital basement stretched ahead, a broad open area with supporting columns, lit at regular and distant intervals by small bulbs on the walls. It created a dim shadowy refuge crowded with dim shadowy people. The subdued whispers, all the noise the refugees seemed willing to make, lent the whole an added touch of unreality, like an outer circle of Dante’s hell.

  His first sweeping glance turned up no one he recognized. It was as if Norris, the doctors, Cavanaugh, Mrs. Oldfield and Flora, even Tanyon had vanished into that realm in the time it took for him to stumble down the stairs.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s look for her, okay?”

  “Okay.”