Deal with the Devil

by J. Gunnar Grey

  Stoner’s earnestness seeped away. For a moment he seemed sad. But then an implacability entered his expression, that of a warrior taking aim at his chosen target. He leaned back in his chair, examining Faust as if to divine his thoughts through his skull, and his chin tilted.

  Faust braced himself.

  “I thought we might discuss Plato.”

  Straight from outer space, it was. “Plato?”

  Stoner’s smile this time did not reach his eyes, shrewd and no longer gentle. “All schoolboys learn Plato, do they not?”

  “For this schoolboy it’s been a few years.” He had no idea where this tack could be going. A chill climbed his spine; bad enough knowing in advance he was going to lose, but it was worse not being able to figure out how he’d be trapped.

  “Then perhaps only Part Two of the Apology.” Stoner waited, eyebrows up.

  “The sentencing of Socrates.” It sounded ominous. Faust stared back, considering. He shouldn’t respond; it would only set him up for more grief; but frag if he wasn’t interested despite himself. “The prosecution called for the death penalty. Socrates could have bargained for exile or life in prison, promising to keep his mouth shut — ” just as he should be doing himself “ — but he refused because he believed the unexamined life — ”

  It hit him just before he said it. His tongue staggered to a halt.

  “Socrates believed,” Stoner said, his voice quiet and measured, “the unexamined life is not worth living. Viewed from another perspective, it could be said an individual so misguided as not to become intimately aware of his own motivations, relationships, and circumstances has little value, to his native community or to any other.”

  Fury flashed like an explosion. Faust erupted from the wingback chair, leaned over the desk, froze. Stoner didn’t flinch, his gaze as level and penetrating as before. Without looking, Faust knew Tanyon had drawn his Webley. But he didn’t care.

  Because it didn’t matter. Stoner was an old man. Physical aggression remained unthinkable. Even now.

  Faust brushed past the file folder on the corner of the desk — whatever it contained, whatever role it played in the old man’s attack, he would not touch it — and stalked to the cold fireplace with its navy blue mantelpiece. The carriage clock ticked away, the little hand advancing in abrupt jerks. “You sod.”

  “Indeed.” Stoner’s voice sounded more tired than outraged. “Perhaps, as philosophy has served us so ill, we should turn our attention to literature, specifically your eponymous mythical counterpart.”

  Another breath, and Faust trusted his temper enough to glance over his shoulder. The motion sent a stab of pain from his biceps to his fingertips. “Major Stoner, if you’re going to tell me to belly up and do a deal with this devil, you can save your breath to cool your porridge. I will not betray my homeland.”

  Stoner hadn’t moved. He leaned back in his chair, hands in his lap, chin tilted. His eyes were hooded; the old warrior’s battle was well and truly joined.

  “You misunderstand me.” His voice dropped in pitch and volume. “I intended to point out that you have already done a deal, as you phrased it, with the Nazi devil. This is your opportunity to repent of such black magic and return to the ranks of civilization, as Goethe’s Faust did in the second part of his tragedy.”

  Yeah, but Goethe’s Faust wasn’t his favorite. “No matter how you phrase it, this is treason and I will not do it.” He returned to the wingback chair, past the stupid, irritating folder that just begged him to reach out and pick it up — could Stoner even see it, with the broad-based lamp in the way? The manila was the same shade as the oak desk and its camouflage was flawless. Whatever lay inside it had to be central to Stoner’s argument or it wouldn’t be there to tempt him.

  Faust sat down again. “Plain speaking, then. You English can’t risk putting me on trial and executing me for espionage; the Nazis would retaliate against British officers taken captive in France. All I have to worry about is what treatment I’ll receive from the other Germans in the prisoner of war camp.” He drew a breath and awaited Stoner’s return fire.

  Stoner’s eyebrows hiked halfway up his forehead. He steepled his fingers just beneath his chin. Although his lips widened across his face, it couldn’t be called a smile. “Your logic is flawless.”

  Unexpected but gratifying. “Thank you.”

  And then the chin tilted. Faust tensed.

  “As far as it goes.”

  He managed not to swear aloud.

  Stoner tapped one index finger with the other. “Firstly, the Nazis can only retaliate against actions of which they are aware. The trial before a secret military tribunal of an enemy officer not reported as captured would be unlikely to attract their notice.”

  The bottom dropped from Faust’s stomach. Bile dirtied the back of his throat and the sitting room faded, leaving him dangling in mid-air. Stoner’s cold blue eyes targeted him like a rifleman taking aim across a battlefield.

  Inexorably, Stoner’s gnarled finger drifted down and tapped his opposite middle finger. “Secondly, even if you are not put on trial or executed, there is no law stating you must be placed within a prisoner of war camp. Your status as an honorable officer has not been ascertained, the circumstances of your capture remain dubious, and my government would be justified in confining you incommunicado within the Tower of London for the duration of the war.”

  “You didn’t report my capture?” His voice shook.

  Stoner dropped his hands to his lap. “The International Red Cross provides belligerent nations with postcards for captured enemy officers to send home, notifying their families or commanding officers of their situation. Have you mailed such a postcard, Herr Major?”

  He was at the mercy of the English government. “This is outrageous.”

  “In the case of suspected espionage agents, those postcards are conspicuously absent. As I’m certain you have noticed.”

  Faust steadied himself. He shouldn’t ask, he seriously shouldn’t ask. But he needed to understand all the elements of Stoner’s trap and besides, the old geezer seemed willing to talk plainly. “Don’t take this to mean I’ll make a deal, because I won’t. But what exactly is it you want to learn from me?”

  Stoner still didn’t move. But behind their partially lowered lids, his eyes gleamed. “My government desires the details of the invasion, most specifically the scheduled date.”

  It was too near the truth to be a lucky guess. Faust swallowed and mentally kicked himself when Stoner’s glance darted to his throat. “What makes you think I know such classified information? And if I did, what makes you think they’d let me out after dark?”

  Stoner scoffed. “On Monday you described your week of misery as a clerk typist, during which Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt and his senior staff worked eighteen to twenty hours per day. Would you now have me believe they were not drafting the invasion plan?” He tilted his chin. “How many times did you type the plan, Herr Major? How well do you know it?” He paused. “What were the questions and concerns you attempted to discuss with Oberst von Maacht, the issues he spurned as inconsequential?”

  The sitting room wavered around him. He’d been hoisted again, trapped by his own words and naiveté, and the cage of logic the old man had constructed about him fit too tightly for comfort. There was nothing left for him to do but surrender to the inevitable checkmate. But every defeated nerve within him rebelled at the thought.

  He couldn’t wrap his brain around it. The outcome he considered least likely, those farcical espionage charges, appeared to be the one Stoner was determined to pursue. Faust wanted to fight back, say something, do something besides throw up all over the frigging manila folder. But the trap offered no cracks and he had no leverage. No one escaped from the Tower of London, not even kings or poets. Across the desktop battlefield, Stoner’s hooded eyes could not conceal their discreet gleam.

  “Major Stoner.” Yikes, his voice sounded like he felt. He cleared his throat. “The other
night, you told me the not-knowing was worse than any possible knowing.”

  Stoner froze. His gleam vanished.

  Faust hauled in all the air he could hold. “Well, there’s something I need to know. Are you English shooting captured spies these days, or hanging them?”

  Ten years passed across Stoner’s face within seconds. His fire and color drained, leaving him wan and grey, tingeing his lips with blue rouge. The lines deepened beside his eyes and lips, and his jaw slackened, creating wattles on his neck where none had been before. So he didn’t like that response; he’d hoped to take a complete victory to his lousy boss. Good; let him feel what it was like to be trapped without an escape. If the old warrior hadn’t experienced this defeat since his own capture, it was time for a refresher course.

  After a moment Stoner rolled his lips together. “Herr Major—”

  “Please.”

  A long and empty moment slunk by. Finally Stoner lifted his chin. It seemed to require an effort. “I believe military officers are being given the honor.”

  A firing squad, then. He’d faced gunfire before. It wouldn’t be nearly as bad as standing still while a noose dropped over his head, tucked behind his ear, the manila rope tightening and scratching his neck, a crowd of witnesses standing by—

  He shook himself. “Thank you.”

  “Is this your final answer, then?”

  Manila.

  He couldn’t stand it.

  “Oh, all right.” Faust grabbed the folder from the desk’s corner and waved it in the air. “You knew I couldn’t resist, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  Stoner actually gaped. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You knew, sooner or later, I’d have to look.” He propped the thick file in his lap and opened it, revealing a sizeable stack of photos and papers. “You knew — oh jeez.”

  The top photo was a crisp black-and-white of a dead teenaged girl. She sprawled naked on her back atop a narrow bed, her legs splayed and her eyes staring at nothing from the battered remains of her face. Where her chest should have been was a pockmarked battlefield of savage holes, a glint of white bone visible through the dark gore.

  “Herr Major?”

  Beneath that one was another of a slightly older girl, also dead. She huddled in a muddy pasture at the base of a dry stone wall, rainwater puddling in the pounded ravages of her chest. The next, darker photo had been snapped under low-light conditions, and the shadows of trees loomed in the background. But the horrific details were otherwise the same, and the sharp focus revealed the marbling in her face, showing she’d been so for some time.

  The turbulence within Faust solidified into cold rage, impossible to control.

  “Do you call this civilized?” He scrambled to his feet and slammed the open folder atop the spotless desk. “How dare you speak of German atrocities, outrages, murders. How dare you accuse us?”

  Somehow Stoner was on his feet as well, taut and still, his gaze fastened on the top photo. Faust knew at a glance the old man had never seen it before; this wasn’t another trap. Stoner touched the photo with a gentle hand, took it by the corner, lifted it. He didn’t seem able to look away.

  “I did not say all atrocities were committed by Germans. As obviously they are not.” His voice remained calm and unhurried.

  Tanyon and his Webley be blowed. Faust leaned into Stoner’s face and jabbed a finger at the photo, stabbing at the image of the slaughtered girl’s brutalized chest. “Are you saying Greis is any worse than the butcher who did this? That English crimes are different for some reason, or if Germany is stopped things like this won’t matter?”

  “Don’t be a fool.” Stoner’s voice sounded tired and sad, belying his words. His eyes grieved. Faust’s breath caught in his throat. The old man had known her, perhaps had mourned with her family. “The nationality of a killer makes little difference to the victim, none at any practical level. The difference lies in the societal response to the crimes.” He flipped to the second photo. His breathing rasped, became louder; she had been the housemaid at Margeaux Hall and he’d certainly known her. “Our victims will be given justice.” He glanced up. His face, white with rage, held underlying notes of contempt. “Can the same be said for your victims?”

  “Mine?” It was a specific and personal insult. Faust lurched back, his fists clenching. “I don’t—”

  “You are an accomplice.” Stoner shouted him down, leaned forward as if chasing him back across the desktop. His hands splayed on either side of the photos, his elbows braced. “The Nazis could not commit their crimes without the German Army’s complicity. Sneaking around to foil one atrocity is tantamount to ducking responsibility for the situation as a whole. You are as guilty as they are.”

  It cut like a whip. Faust opened his mouth. But no words formed. Stoner leaned atop the desk, arms vibrating beneath his weight, glaring. As Faust’s shock and shame deepened, the old man’s enraged satisfaction mounted, and this time he didn’t bother to camouflage it.

  Faust closed his mouth. He’d sensed a strange sort of guilt when speaking with Clarke, as if he’d been caught in the act, not Greis. Now it made sense.

  Stoner turned away with contempt. His fingers moved to the corner of the photo and lifted it.

  Cold whispery zephyrs sighed across Faust’s skin, his soul, his thoughts. He wanted to shout a warning. And then he didn’t.

  The next photo showed Stoner’s granddaughter, Harriet.

  And the sod deserved to know precisely what had been done to her.

  No matter what it did to him.

  The understanding flared and the decision coalesced within a heartbeat. Faust waited, anticipated, watched, as Stoner flipped over the photo to view the one below. He heard the old man’s breathing stop and his satisfaction was savage.

  Let him die.

  He watched Stoner examine the third awful photograph, watched as the light dimmed and went out within his eyes. They faded to dullest glass as his lips morphed to a startlingly vivid blue. His breathing did not resume. He stood swaying, a parodied mannequin of his previous shrewd and vibrant self. Then he collapsed into his chair. It clattered and rolled a few inches back.

  The noise woke Faust, as if from a nightmare. He couldn’t speak. He could only stare.

  This was his doing and his fault. If the old warrior died, then he’d be a murderer. He’d be as guilty as Greis, and Stoner’s point would be proven.

  Bruckmann’s pencil paused. But ever the efficient secretary, he didn’t glance up.

  Faust found his voice. “Is he breathing?”

  “No.” Tanyon’s single word, harsh and too loud, echoed in the quiet room.

  Bruckmann jerked erect and turned.

  Faust and Tanyon moved at the same moment. They rounded the desk, one on each side. Faust untangled his right arm from the sling. He couldn’t think. He didn’t want to think. He just had to do what was right.

  They reached him together. As a team, without the need for words, they hoisted him from the chair. Photos and papers rustled, spilled, cascaded to the floor.

  Bruckmann stumbled to his feet but stood frozen, gaping. They pushed past him and settled Stoner’s motionless form on the floor in the pool of brilliant light from the French window. He felt, looked, handled like a corpse.

  “Get the medics,” Tanyon said, his voice still harsh. He glanced at Faust. “I never learned it.”

  Faust nodded. The pulling pain in his right arm mounted. It didn’t matter. Stoner had to live and nothing else mattered.

  “Hold his head where I place it.” He yanked open Stoner’s uniform tie, unbuttoned his shirt and coat, adjusted his head to clear his air passage. Tanyon slid across the hardwood floor and gripped Stoner’s head with his knees.

  He didn’t allow himself to stop and consider what he was doing. Stoner had to live. Faust crouched over the motionless figure, opened its mouth and pinched its nostrils shut, and kissed his enemy, blowing two full breaths into the unresponsive body.

&nbs
p; “His chest is moving,” Tanyon said. “It’s working.”

  Faust sat up. His head spun. He clasped his right hand atop his left, planted them together on Stoner’s chest between his breasts, and pushed.

  His arm ripped. Pain sliced from his biceps to his fingers and all the way to his spine. He ignored it and pushed again. In the background, Bruckmann’s voice hammered without intelligible words, panicky and urgent. Faust ignored it, gasped for air, pushed again, and then again.

  “Help me count.”

  “That’s four,” Tanyon said.

  One more push. Faust grabbed Stoner’s nose, kissed him again, blew hard twice more. The sitting room wobbled about him. Wet warmth trickled down his arm. None of it mattered. He straightened, found the motionless chest, clasped and planted his hands, and pushed again.

  Tanyon counted aloud. “One. Two. Three.” Too slow, Faust knew it was too slow, but his body wouldn’t answer his urgent demand for more speed. “Four. Five.”

  He lifted his hands from the khaki shirt. A red smeary palm print remained behind, evidence of his guilt for Hackney to find. He nearly fell across Stoner’s face. Something banged behind him and footsteps pounded across the room. Stoner’s eyes remained glassy, unresponsive. Faust kissed him again, breathed twice more, pushed himself erect.

  Cavanaugh crashed to his knees beside them, clasped his hands, leaned over Stoner, pushed and counted aloud. “One, two—” his voice rose to a shout “—three—”

  Faust gasped in all the air that would fit in his lungs, planted his lips atop Stoner’s, waited.

  “—four, five.” Another shout.

  As soon as Cavanaugh paused, Faust breathed twice into Stoner’s mouth. He sat back and Cavanaugh pounced again. “One—”

  “Don’t die.” Faust gasped for oxygen, couldn’t find it.

  “—two—”

  “Please don’t die.”