Deal with the Devil

by J. Gunnar Grey

  He flipped the butt away and turned. In the car at the foot of the macadam lane, Norris sat in the back beside Mercer, Arnussen behind the wheel. Tanyon hunched in the cab of the lorry, bent over the radio. The other three clustered halfway down the slope, Bruckmann and Hackney still talking. Jennifer stared past them and watched him. As usual, his blood warmed to her living poetry. But this time he examined the sensation without passion, seeking beyond his earlier assumption that he’d fallen finally, truly in love. He found that somewhere between his lust and his liking lurked a desperate yearning, too shy to put itself forward. He’d never encountered it before. If this was love, at least, like Donne’s, it was a reasoning and patient love. When I am gone, dream me some happiness.

  Faust turned away and strode uphill to the lorry. No matter how beautiful she was, patient his love would have to be.

  He arrived as Tanyon returned the microphone to its stand, muttering.

  “Something wrong, sergeant?”

  Tanyon gave him a long, thoughtful look. “Carmichael’s not answering the radio.”

  “I thought you’d cured him.”

  “So did I.” Tanyon horsed himself from behind the wheel and closed the lorry’s door with a frustrated shove. “I’m going to check on him.” He nodded toward Hackney, Bruckmann, and Jennifer. “Let them know where I’ve gone, will you?”

  Faust leaned against the lorry, letting his aching muscles relax. Bed sounded attractive. “Sure.”

  The sergeant hiked up the slope to the Hall. A minute later, an engine started and the policemen’s car rolled onto the road, accelerating toward the Dark. Bruckmann and Jennifer approached along the macadam lane, Pym and Sloane trudging behind them. Reynolds swung the big gate closed and took a sentry’s stand before it.

  “Time to wrap this up.” Bruckmann hauled open the lorry’s door, fumbled about on the floorboard, and produced a Very gun, a flare ready up the spout. He aimed at the sky and pulled the trigger. The white phosphorus exploded, spraying brilliant sparks among the stars as if competing against them. Then he tossed the flare gun onto the seat and stepped back. “Sloane, put the lorry away then you’re off duty. Pym, wait here for the rest of the squad and then report to—” He broke off and glanced about, a puzzled line between his eyebrows.

  “He went up to the Hall.” No need to mention why. Tanyon would tell Bruckmann and Pym if he wanted them to know.

  The lieutenant’s face cleared. “Well, when the squad’s complete, find him and report, corporal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sloane slammed the driver’s door and the engine rumbled to life. Faust pushed himself erect, even if it did hurt like something foul, and the lorry crawled away, following the lane around the darkened Hall and vanishing beyond the glass. The rumbling died in the distance.

  When Faust turned up the hill, Bruckmann stepped into his path. The lieutenant’s usual sharp smugness had been wiped away, leaving a young man who looked several years older, more humble and more thoughtful.

  “Major Faust, thank you for your help tonight.”

  It wasn’t said quietly and Pym swiveled, watching them both as if again reassessing the situation. Jennifer’s face glowed in the moonlight. Faust’s breathing deepened and slowed despite the pounding pain. He hadn’t expected such a gesture from the lieutenant, which made it even more valuable.

  Then a report cracked through the night. Another. Faust stiffened, his sharpening stare meshing with Bruckmann’s and his pain fading into the background. Around them, the darkness seemed to crystallize. The silence was brittle as glass, as if the night would shatter if any of them moved. The sound had been muffled but not distant, sharp and echoing. A small-caliber weapon, probably a pistol. Fired inside Margeaux Hall.

  Where Carmichael hadn’t answered the radio.

  “Wait here.” Bruckmann galloped up the slope.

  “Lieutenant, no—” But Faust was too late and the racing figure didn’t stop, pounding footsteps diminishing up the slope. Moments later Bruckmann vanished through the vestibule door.

  “Was that a gunshot?” Pym asked.

  “Two of them.” Faust thought fast, the cool clarity of combat wiping him empty of all else. Bruckmann galloped headlong into an unknown and possibly dangerous situation, where Tanyon had already vanished. They needed to reconnoiter and they needed cover. But on this side of the Hall, if they wanted to observe undetected, the only cover was the slope of the hill; the spreading beeches were too distant to help. And he couldn’t leave Jennifer unprotected. “Come on. But please stay behind me.”

  No one argued. Faust circled about the hillside, pistol-shot distance from the Hall. Small sounds trailing his path gave away Pym’s presence; Jennifer, of course, was noiseless. The night held its breath, even his pain and the crickets falling silent, and the stars overhead shone frozen and pitiless.

  Part way around, the glass vestibule lit with a dim glow. Faust dropped to a crouch, his hand in the grass supporting his weight. A glance showed Pym and Jennifer huddled close behind him. She cradled the shotgun, and this time Pym held the Lee Enfield ready.

  The glow didn’t fill the vestibule but slanted through the door from the ballroom, the shadows distorted and moving. Faust circled further about the hillside, moving sideways in a slow crouching glide, until he peered up the slope, through the glass door, and through the ballroom doorway beyond.

  A tall, lean silhouette stood ten feet on the far side of that doorway, the light breaking about it and haloing Bruckmann’s white-blond hair in passing. A voice — no, two voices were audible, but muffled by the building into a wordless, unidentifiable jumble. With the lieutenant in the way, he couldn’t be certain. But the light seemed to come from Stoner’s open office door and someone had to be standing there, speaking with Bruckmann.

  “What’s going on?” Pym’s voice was barely a breath in Faust’s ear.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  From within the Hall, Bruckmann’s voice rose to a muffled shout. Another report cracked through the night. Bruckmann wobbled. Jennifer gasped, a small hand gripping Faust’s left shoulder, and a horrified shock shivered through him, reigniting his pain. Then the lieutenant crumpled onto the ballroom’s hardwood floor.

  Eduard Best stood revealed. In one hand he held an evil-looking revolver, in the other a sheaf of papers. His stare followed Bruckmann down, satisfied and as pitiless as the uncaring stars. Then he turned and vanished into Stoner’s office without a backward glance.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  night

  Margeaux Hall

  Faust took the shotgun from Jennifer’s unresisting fingers. Without a word, he scrambled up the slope toward the Hall.

  He wasn’t certain what to do, wasn’t even certain what to think — Best was German and Faust’s loyalties should be clear no matter how muddled his brain, so why he’d grabbed the shotgun, he didn’t totally understand. But instinct carried him beyond his pain, in a crouching run to the glass door. A final glance showed Bruckmann huddled and unmoving, far enough inside the ballroom to make a rescue hazardous, a dark pool spreading about his head. The light from the office held steady, not quivering with motion. Faust opened the vestibule door, slid noiselessly inside, held it open for Pym and Jennifer, then closed it behind them.

  Jennifer took one unthinking step toward Bruckmann. Faust grabbed her arm and tugged her into the shelter of the brick wall beside the ballroom doorway, his glance inviting Pym to follow.

  “You saw who it was?” Faust whispered as quietly as he could.

  They both nodded. Pym’s eyes were wider than Faust had ever seen them, his inexperience showing.

  “Who is there?” It was Best’s voice, calling from the ballroom.

  Jennifer froze, her back pressed against the bricks.

  Frag it, they must have made some noise. Faust touched his left index finger to his lips and waited until they both nodded a second time. He pointed at Pym, pointed up the black wrought-iron stai
rcase beside them, along the west-east axis of the military wing in an echo of the upstairs corridor, then down. Holding his hands upright, he slammed the palms toward each other without touching. Taking Best between them was workable, if Pym could use the upper hallway and the eastern stairs to reach the ballroom’s far side.

  Pym seemed to understand, or at least his tension eased. He nodded again and slipped up the stairs, vanishing into the blackout.

  “I know someone is there.” Cautious footsteps approached the doorway.

  The thought of Best’s pitiless face confronting Jennifer sent a shiver up Faust’s spine. He had to protect her. A long step brought him close enough to whisper near her cheek. “Stay here while I distract him, okay?”

  Her eyes focused on his lips, watching them as he spoke. But her expression showed no understanding. She stared at his mouth as if mesmerized, her own curving lips parted and quivering with unspoken words, and it could be the last opportunity he ever received to answer that question.

  Faust bent and caressed her lips with his. He was ready to move fast if she swung. But she returned the tender pressure and her weight leaned against his chest. For one surging moment he vanished into the kiss, the gentlest and yet the most intense he’d ever known.

  Then Best spoke again. “Ist es der Verräter?”

  Faust froze, the blood stopping in his veins. Jennifer drew back and the kiss died between them. He couldn’t breathe, that despicable word hanging over him like an axe. The world seemed to tumble about him, realigning itself in some manner he still couldn’t understand. Then her expression firmed. Her hands moved, clothing rustled, and he glanced down as she slid a stash of shotgun shells into each of his front patch pockets. She drew back into the shadows beneath the wrought-iron staircase, freeing him to fight.

  Another cautious footstep in the ballroom. They were out of time. Hopefully she’d listen to his request for prudence rather than her natural ferocity. He cradled the shotgun across his body and doubled about the doorjamb into the ballroom.

  Best jolted to a stop. He hadn’t moved far from Stoner’s office doorway. The light from the desk lamp spilled about him, silhouetted his slender frame, and glinted off the Colt revolver dangling in his hand. He lifted the pistol; Faust made sure he was just as quick with the shotgun, despite the slicing pain that convulsed along his arm. When Best paused, the revolver barrel not quite aligned for the shot, Faust paused as well, ensuring the standoff.

  “You called me a traitor.” He spoke in German. Best’s English had seemed reasonably fluent but he could risk no misunderstanding.

  Best eased back a step. Tension radiated from his taut muscles and backward-leaning, defensive stance. The light from Stoner’s desk lamp spilled about him.

  “You are here.”

  Faust stepped into the ballroom, circling right to avoid Bruckmann’s motionless form without glancing down. He could do nothing for the lieutenant, dead or alive. “So are you.”

  “I have made my choice.” Another step back. One more and Best would be close enough to duck into Stoner’s office. But he paused. His chin tilted. “Is it too late to change your mind?”

  The parody of Stoner’s most aggravating mannerism boiled inside Faust and their standoff set his teeth on edge. It wasn’t equal. If the pig jumped for cover, at this range the shotgun would pepper but not kill him, while a well-aimed shot from the revolver could be fatal. Faust needed to end this or find cover himself until Pym came down the eastern stairwell. The metal desks were somewhere to his right. They’d slow although not stop a bullet and were the best he had available. He eased further into the ballroom, feeling the extent of each step with his foot before following with his body. Within three steps, his toe scuffed cloth — the scatter rugs beneath the desks, protecting the hardwood floors. “Why don’t you speak plainly, for once?”

  “I’m returning to Germany.”

  Faust froze in mid-step.

  “If you like, you may come, too.”

  It was a lie. It had to be, he hadn’t managed more than fifteen or twenty miles during his best escape attempt, and if this wimp thought he’d get further than a real soldier, even an injured and aching one, well, it just showed how little he knew. But Faust’s pulse accelerated, belying his thoughts. “What?” His voice sounded breathless.

  Best paused, staring across the ballroom as if to read Faust’s desires through his skull. Then he uncoiled. He let the revolver drop to his side. “I’ve radioed and a plane is coming to pick me up. There will be room for two.” His voice softened. “Don’t you want to go home?”

  More than anything. Oh, by all the poets, more than anything he wanted to return to the life Erhard had ripped from him, to his career and books and abandoned Agfa camera. Perhaps Stoner was wrong, perhaps he wouldn’t lose his position as a staff officer, perhaps it would be as if this outrageous misadventure had never happened. He wanted to put it all behind him, forget all of it except Jennifer—

  —Jennifer, who stood in the vestibule and hadn’t slugged him when he’d kissed her. Best would have to walk past her to leave Margeaux Hall. He wouldn’t leave any living witnesses.

  Faust brought up the shotgun; he hadn’t realized he’d lowered it. Best backed away fast, the revolver swinging up and his face twisting into an ugly mask. At the far end of the ballroom, a door opened and someone moved, a gentle wash of moonlight spreading across the floor almost to Faust’s feet. It had to be Pym, it was past time he arrived, and Faust whirled and ducked behind the closest desk.

  But the report that chased him wasn’t deep enough for a Lee Enfield three aught three and the bullet crashed through the desk beside him, slicing an exit wound with jagged curling edges in the metal. That was someone shooting to kill and aiming at him. Faust hurled himself across the hardwood floor, rolled to his belly, and peered beneath the bottom of the desk, his breath rasping into his lungs.

  The old gardener stood in the open doorway at the end of the corridor. He held an equally ancient single-shot rifle in his hands, and he giggled as he jammed another round into the breech. When he looked up, his gaze traveled across the line of desks as if seeking Faust through the metal. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder and stepped into the ballroom.

  That door lead into the residential wing, where Glover stood guard for the people who lived here. He had to assume Glover was down, as well as Bruckmann, Carmichael, and probably Tanyon. These two were ripping through Stoner’s command without mercy. He also had to assume they’d rip through him, Pym, and Jennifer, if they got the chance.

  Which meant Best had probably lied about the plane, too. The pig had intended to trick him into lowering the shotgun — and he nearly had.

  Faust gritted his teeth, gathering his feet beneath him. He hid behind the row of metal desks closest to the vestibule, with another row between him and the two gunmen. The desks stretched across the short side of the long room, between Bruckmann’s huddled body and the floor-to-ceiling windows along the southern wall. The garnet swags were drawn together and that side of the ballroom lay in deep shadow. The distant light of Stoner’s desk lamp, halfway down the room, spilled through the open door and broke into a confused jumble among the desks. Moonlight glowed from the opened doors to the residential wing and the vestibule behind him. It didn’t reach his cover. Unlikely Best or the gardener could see him. But movement, especially in the open areas between the desks, could catch their eyes.

  He could make a break for the vestibule. But drawing their attention toward Jennifer didn’t appeal. Nor did the prospect of turning his back on these gunmen; if the gardener would willingly shoot at him without warning, he’d be just as willing to drill Faust from the rear. Besides, he’d be silhouetted by the moonlight while crossing through the doorway. No, the vestibule was out.

  Another option was to press the firefight. To do so, he’d have to get close enough for the shotgun to be effective. To engage the gardener, he’d have to charge across the open area to the sofas and chairs, avoiding
Best’s fire from Stoner’s office doorway, where he’d taken cover. For most of the advance, Faust would be hidden by the darkness, but he’d have to cross the area touched by the desk lamp, and again his motion would draw their eyes.

  Or he could keep them distracted until Pym arrived. But the lance corporal was already overdue and that worried him. No way of knowing how many of Stoner’s captives had escaped and found weapons. If Pym had run into more of them upstairs, possibly he was no longer coming at all. He could have been taken hostage or ambushed and sandbagged.

  Faust risked another glance. On the far side of the ballroom, the gardener disdained cover and stalked him openly, rifle to his shoulder. Rather than approach head-on, though, he angled his steps toward the windows, circling the ballroom’s outer edges. If Faust did nothing, they’d take him between them. Already the gardener controlled the far end of the sitting area.

  An infantry attack it would have to be.

  The glow of moonlight at the opposite ends of the ballroom faded, the random clouds working in his favor. He’d get no better opportunity. Faust ducked between desks, diving for the cover of the ones ahead. He flinched as both weapons fired.

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  night

  Margeaux Hall

  She couldn’t leave Faust again.

  Not after that kiss. Not after that exquisite moment that roiled her insides, sizzled all the nerves in her body, and clarified their situation in her soul. She’d found Stoner’s match. She wanted that man, and after the war she intended to have him. And if Eduard Best and Peter Owen thought otherwise, she’d have to convince them of her claim’s priority.

  How was the problem.

  Jennifer peered around the doorjamb and into the ballroom. The moon had vanished behind a small bank of clouds, hiding her in shadows, but in the glass vestibule she felt naked. If anything did happen to Faust — God forbid — she’d have no choice but to sneak upstairs to hide, and who knew what was going on up there.