Deal with the Devil

by J. Gunnar Grey

  Though that long-ago friendship hadn’t meant much even then, it hurt like another blow. “Cezanne and Cecily. Their father was in the House of Lords. They used to play tennis with you and Brownell on Saturdays.”

  For a brief moment, suspicion flared in Clarke’s eyes. It was almost funny. “You do remember them.”

  He wanted to ignore the implied question and let the sod wonder. But such behavior would hurt more than Clarke. Resentment was bad enough; deliberate ugliness wasn’t acceptable, even now. “When you and Brownell played singles, sometimes Cezanne would sit and talk with me. Clarke, did you marry both of them? You still haven’t told me your wife’s name.” Although part of him already knew the answer.

  A flash of irritation across Clarke’s face said the omission had been deliberate. If Clarke thought him any sort of competition, that was funnier. “Brownell married Cecily.”

  “And you got Cezanne.” It seemed, not right, but logical. She’d always been kind to him but never more, saving her vivacity and fun for the Englishmen on campus, and he’d always known she would marry well. But it still stung; frag it, he was as good as any of them. “Congratulations, Clarke. I always thought her a beautiful woman.”

  An image of Jennifer, ferocious and tender, invaded Faust’s thoughts in her usual abrupt manner. He’d lied to himself; there was only one woman he’d ever want to marry, and it hadn’t been Cezanne Clarke, née Somerville.

  “Thank you.” Clarke’s voice and face were stiff, which made that the funniest thing he’d said so far. But then he produced a pack of DuMaurier cigarettes from his inner pocket, shook one halfway out, and offered it, and all of Faust’s turbulent emotions solidified into a desperate yearning for nicotine. “Do you use these things?”

  Some intonation or emphasis lay behind Clarke’s facetious words. Faust paused. But he couldn’t think through the longing. He took the cigarette, accepted a light, and inhaled hard. “Thank you.”

  Clarke lit a companionable cigarette with him. Behind the desk, Stoner produced his silver case and did the same.

  For the first time, Faust noticed a manila file folder on the desk corner closest to his chair. It wasn’t part of Stoner’s usual ensemble and seemed jarringly out of place, like a filthy word in a Spenserian sonnet. But before Faust could consider it, Clarke spoke again.

  “That’s what you said to me at the Aa Canal, you know.”

  “About the cigarette?” He didn’t want to talk about that, either, and hid behind another hard drag. “I don’t remember it well.”

  “I remember it all.” Clarke glanced down. Faust followed the gaze to Clarke’s left hand, flexed up from the blue padding of the chair arm. The cork-tipped cigarette was gripped so tightly between Clarke’s manicured index and middle fingers, the edges were crimping. The textured wool of his khaki uniform sleeve didn’t bunch at his elbow and was too finely tailored to ride up his wrist as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “I remember what you said, how you said it, and how you appeared when you did.” He paused, a trickle of smoke drifting from his parted lips. “You seemed so collected.”

  “It was a lie.” The DuMaurier tasted wonderful, smooth and elegant as the two Englishmen. But the nicotine didn’t seem to be soothing him, no matter how delightful the flavor.

  Clarke shook his head. “It might have been affected, but it wasn’t a lie. You were prepared.” He tapped ash. “There at the end, I tried to ask you a question but I didn’t phrase it particularly well. Do you remember?”

  Surely nothing said so long ago could matter now. Faust shook his head.

  “I asked, why are you doing this.”

  And in a flood, he did remember — dust in the shadows, the shallow valley pouring from their hiding place, the intermixed scents of warm leaves and hot oil, the ugly insult of not being remembered. “That was a crazy question, Clarke. I never hated you — ”

  Clarke shook his head. “As I said, my meaning wasn’t clear. See, I wasn’t trying to ask why are you doing this, as in why are you saving my life. I tried to ask why are you doing this, as in why are you doing this rather than something else.”

  The unanticipated meaning fell between them with the force of an artillery shell. Faust froze, hovering on the edge of an unpoetical, philosophical cliff. It felt like a trap. But no guile showed on Clarke’s face, merely honest curiosity. Faust dragged again, glancing at Stoner. The old man remained complaisant, as if they still discussed long-ago Oxford days, but the undisguisable fire behind his eyes belied his intense interest in the subject. This, then, would be at the heart of his attack when it came, and Clarke had merely been encouraged to re-ask his question. Although he knew the score, it wasn’t his game.

  “Why didn’t you go to Greis’s commanding officer and report him?” Clarke paused, a gentle crease between his eyebrows. “I don’t know what the term would be in German, but all armies have a police force and legal officers, a provost marshal, with the authority to bring criminals to trial. Why didn’t you report Greis and have charges brought? Surely an accusation of murder would force his removal from the field and prevent him from doing it again?”

  A chill climbed Faust’s spine, forced higher with each logical word and leaving a trail of uneasy guilt behind, as if he rather than Greis had done something despicable. His own cigarette balanced gingerly between fingers with calluses and cracked nails. Splotchy stains of ground-in soil stiffened the grey wool of his uniform sleeve. In comparison to the Englishmen’s tailored and groomed elegance, he had to look a fright. Faust breathed harder. He hadn’t expected such insights from Clarke, but the man’s mind had never been stodgy and perhaps he should.

  “I’m a lawyer, you know.” Clarke sounded apologetic. “It’s the sort of thing that occurs to me. I couldn’t understand why you would do something so dangerous when there were other options.”

  He shouldn’t answer at all. In essence, Clarke’s candid request differed from Stoner’s shrewd game only in its end goal. But while Stoner sought military intelligence, Clarke — although at Stoner’s instigation — merely wanted a reckoning for his troubled conscience. Likely it wouldn’t matter in the long run. And Faust had to admit an inner voice urged him to justify his actions, an imperative pressure building beside his other emotions.

  “Faust?” A definite note of surprise colored Clarke’s voice. “You did have other options, didn’t you?”

  “I did go to his commanding officer.” Faust took another drag and glanced at Stoner. The old man sat with negligent ease, but his cigarette burned untouched and the fire behind his eyes smoldered with hesitant glee. Not a sight calculated to cheer him. “He told me I wasn’t a true staff officer, not yet, and I should mind my own business until that happy day arrived.”

  Clarke’s jaw clenched, anger tinged with disbelief.

  “So I went up the chain of command to the next level. But he refused to take action, too, although he made some noise and whirled about his office in a tizzy.” He paused to tap ash. He wanted to stop there; if he went any further in his explanation he’d be giving Stoner more ammunition; but if he did stop there, the blame would not be placed where it should. And again, in the long run this was merely military trivia and therefore unimportant. “I told you Greis and his soldiers were Waffen SS, not German Army. No one in the command staff was certain where they stood, whether Army orders outside of combat or maneuvers carried any authority. I needed to report this at Army Group headquarters to find someone with the command weight to stop Greis, and at that time I hadn’t yet been posted there and had no time for the trip and the ensuing explanations.” He shrugged. He’d been as helpless and trapped then as he was now. “So I did what I had to.”

  “Waffen SS.” From the way Clarke said it, from the steady concentration in his expression, he didn’t know what it meant. His stare focused even harder on Faust as if to drag a definition from him. “Yes, I remember you using that term. We knew they were something different, some new sort of unit, but no more. Can you exp
lain further?”

  “They’re not just a different type of unit. Greis’s brigade is honestly not part of the German Army, and so,” Faust stubbed out his cigarette with angry jerks, “some of our officers were hesitant to enforce their authority.”

  Clarke paused in his turn. Understanding spread across his face, sharpening his gaze. “Are you saying this Waffen SS is a separate and distinct organization? A separate army?” His cigarette had gone out, burned unnoticed to the cork tip; he didn’t glance down as he placed it in the ashtray.

  Behind the desk, Stoner was motionless as a stalking cat. He’d camouflaged his glee, but his intensity remained.

  “Something like that, yes.” And let the old geezer make what he liked of it. “The Waffen SS don’t have a command staff and of course they can’t operate independently, so their brigade was embedded within the front line under the Army command. There are other such Waffen SS units out there, although I don’t think they’re quite as isolated from their own as Greis’s.”

  Clarke shook his head. “Why does Germany need two armies?”

  Faust froze. He’d never considered the question before. Something uncomfortable wriggled in his stomach, telling him — no, reminding him, he didn’t want to consider it and never had.

  But Clarke returned his stare, awaiting an answer. Faust’s feet shifted as heat grew in his face. Clarke’s head might look like a cabbage with a well-groomed mustache, but a fine mind resided therein. Beyond the French window, new buds touched the rose bushes with splotches of pink and yellow, replacing the blowsy flowers ripped apart by the night’s storm. The ancient gardener worked in the closest formal bed, not far from the glass, plying pruning shears to the dead flowers’ remains with plodding care. If Faust hadn’t fought his way into the technical university, he could have wound up doing just such a job. The heat in his face intensified. He shrugged.

  Clarke paused. “Do the Nazis not believe the German Army can do the job they’ve set it? Or that they won’t do it?”

  His squirming stomach twisted harder; this was almost as bad as arguing with Stoner, which still lay ahead of him. He shrugged again.

  “Or is it a matter of trust?”

  Something snapped. The heat in his face began to fade. He didn’t have to take anything for the Nazis. “Clarke, I don’t know.” The wriggling in his gut said all three of those suggestions were possibilities. But he still didn’t want to consider it.

  Judging from Clarke’s furrowed forehead, that wasn’t an answer he wanted to accept. But after another long mutual stare, he settled back. “So the Waffen SS have different standards of behavior and seemingly some political clout, if they’re exempt from homicide charges. Are you saying we can expect more murders of this sort? Or something even worse?”

  “I don’t know.” It was probably the only intelligent thing he’d said all day. A lightheaded coldness moved in behind the last of the mortified heat and the sitting room faded around him. Cripes, as usual he’d said too much. He should have left the sods wondering; he didn’t owe them anything, either, not even an explanation.

  Clarke still stared at him, a gentle crease between his eyebrows although his new understanding remained and strengthened. “I didn’t shoot him, you know.”

  Greis, he meant. A chill invaded the room from nowhere and Faust shivered. If Greis survived, he could be the source of Oberst von Maacht’s suspicions. He’d thought he could depend on Clarke’s rage to handle that problem. At least he had enough sense not to blurt that out before Stoner. “We didn’t find his body, so I wasn’t sure what to think.”

  “I brought him back with us.”

  Faust jerked back, startled. “You — ”

  “I’m an attorney,” Clarke said again, his voice soft. “After the war, Greis will stand trial for murder. There may be some arguments over jurisdiction and problems finding witnesses, but they’ll be worked out. And then I’ll have the pleasure of witnessing his legal execution.”

  After the war. Of course Clarke and the British Army staff were aware of the retaliation issue. Faust should have thought of it long ago.

  “Would you be willing to testify against him?” Clarke asked.

  Faust froze. Another invitation to collaborate and get himself killed, as if Stoner needed any more ammunition. Cripes, all he’d done was sit there and react as Clarke hit him with one unexpected line after another, as if he were a verbal boxer flailing against the ropes. It was frustrating.

  “After the war, I mean. Will you think about it?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Yes. I will think about it.”

  Clarke again produced the DuMaurier pack and the matches, and set them on the table beside the ashtray. “I envied you that day, you know.”

  He couldn’t have heard that right. But still Clarke’s face showed no guile. “I’m not fishing for a compliment, or at least I don’t think I am, but why?”

  Color rose into Clarke’s face. He didn’t look aside. “Ever since school, I’ve concentrated on establishing my career. I’ve neglected the things that truly matter — my honor, behavior, ethics. My wife and son.”

  He picked up his hat and rose, setting off a social chain reaction. Faust stood beside him and wondered what on earth to say. But Clarke continued before he could think of anything appropriate.

  “Perhaps I should have read more poetry, or paid more attention to what little I did read.” He glanced down at the cigarettes on the table and then turned away, leaving his to-be-burned offerings behind. “I wish I had your courage. But I doubt I ever will.” Clarke nodded to Stoner and left.

  Faust watched him walk away, an elegant and self-tortured martyr to his privileged youth. In a way, the image was a satisfying one; no one had expected that outcome during their Oxford days. At least his own resentment had faded, leaving an internal emptiness touched with a desperate yearning that made no sense.

  Then the office door closed and Clarke was gone.

  Leaving him alone with Stoner.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  afternoon

  Margeaux Hall

  Faust didn’t want to turn, didn’t want to face Stoner and measure the depth of his intensity. It would only be a camouflage for his satisfaction and it would be ruddy awful. But such behavior was cowardly — ironic, considering Clarke’s parting shot. He prepared for the worst and turned.

  But Stoner’s lined ascetic face was impassive and grave, devoid of either glee or pity, and his eyes were almost gentle. He waited patiently, standing behind his desk with his fingertips resting atop his spotless blotter. His old-fashioned service dress uniform, well tailored although not to Clarke’s pricey standard, sported a gleaming Sam Browne belt and service ribbons providing a brave splash of color on his left breast. His only insignia were his Intelligence Corps badge, on his collar, and his majors’ crowns, one on each shoulder tab. Faust found himself staring at those crowns; something was wrong there and he should have realized it sooner.

  “Major Stoner.” His voice still sounded rough. He cleared his throat again. “I know we have — well, probably a ferocious fight ahead of us. But may I ask a question first?”

  Stoner’s gravity didn’t shift. “Of course.”

  Faust chose his words with care; if his guess was right, this could be a sensitive subject. “A few days ago, you told me how you were injured and captured in nineteen-fifteen.”

  “Yes.”

  “You said you were a major then.”

  Only a slight stiffening of his shoulders and thinning of his lips escaped Stoner’s iron control. But they sufficiently illustrated lingering anger. “Yes.”

  Twenty-five years without a single promotion. No army treated so capable an officer in such a manner without a reason. A small hollow space formed inside Faust. “Do you believe it was being taken prisoner that interrupted your career?”

  For a moment longer Stoner held his gaze, his expression taut and forbidding. Then the old man glanced aside. The tension within the sitting room, b
uilt to a pitch during Clarke’s visit, shattered at his sigh. Without speaking, he gestured to the wingback chair, waiting until Faust resumed his seat before sitting himself. His eyes remained grave, but his shoulders and face relaxed.

  “Remember, Herr Major, the military was never intended as my career.” Stoner entwined his fingers and leaned his elbows on the desktop, like a professor lecturing a pupil. Again Faust warmed to the old man. “However, to answer what I believe to be your true question, when I returned from captivity in late nineteen-seventeen, I was not reassigned to my unit but transferred sideways to a service position of equal responsibility.”

  For a field officer, it was a good working definition of one of Dante’s outer circles. The tiny vacuum within Faust expanded. “You mean an administrative position.”

  “Training.” The correction was gentle. “I learned it was official governmental policy that if an officer had once been captured and successfully escaped, he would not be returned to front-line duty as a protection against possible recapture.”

  There it was, the retaliation issue again. Faust scowled at the fireplace, but paused when his gaze crossed that manila folder on the corner of the desk. It seemed out of place, set casually and temptingly near. It had to be part of the old warrior’s counterattack-to-be and no way he’d oblige.

  Perhaps Stoner misinterpreted his silence, for he leaned onto the blotter. “I do not pretend to know whether such a policy exists within the German Army. My experience cannot necessarily be compared with your own.”

  Faust glanced up, surprised. Stoner’s earnest expression didn't contradict his gentle eyes. It was one of those honest statements which transcended their desktop battlefield, and as such could only be meant to reassure him.

  “Thank you. That’s kind.” Clarke’s cigarettes were at his elbow and Faust nearly reached for them. No, he’d suffered through life sans nicotine and he refused to blow through this second pack of relief so quickly. Instead he drew a deep breath and prepared for combat without the crutch. “Well, where do we go from here?”