Deal with the Devil Page 7

  The Red Cross had been notified of the recovery of the bodies and of plans for their interment, et cetera.

  Again she separated, collated, stapled, punched, stamped, and distributed. Again she held her breath until Maggie Wainwright resumed typing. And again she caught Norris staring and huffed before returning to the ballroom. If he wasn’t going to be honest enough to let her stare him down, she’d communicate her displeasure in another manner.

  Bruckmann covered the receiver. “He’s waiting. Do you mind?”

  Jennifer smiled, grabbed both reports, and crossed the ballroom to Stoner’s door. She knocked and slipped inside.

  A scramble of papers covered the desk. Stoner glanced up, at first blankly, as if he couldn’t remember who she was. Then he propped his chin on one fist, on top of the carnage, and smiled impishly at her. “And you’re bringing me even more.”

  She could never help smiling back at him. Oh, if only she could find a man like him — cultured, intelligent, witty, and brave. A man, please, not a boy. “I wouldn’t except Jack said you were waiting for this. It’s his airplane report.”

  “Oh, good.” He sat up straight. “Another piece for the puzzle.”

  She gave him his copies, then slid behind his desk and dropped to the floor by his chair, facing the secretarial station. The shelf beneath held a row of binders, and she tugged out the second one and inserted the other set of copies into its innards, chronologically by date and time.

  The report just ahead was one Bruckmann had typed, discussing some preliminary results from their Wildflower operation. The four turned enemy spies they handled, it seemed, were accepted by the German intelligence bureau without question, and on at least one occasion the Luftwaffe had initiated a bombing raid based upon the bogus information they’d submitted. Well, that had to be good news.

  “My dear, did you type this?” Stoner gestured with the aircraft report.

  She closed the binder and hefted it back onto the shelf. “You don’t have to be so protective of me. I’m made of sterner stuff than that implies.”

  “I don’t — ”

  “And don’t scold Jack.” It didn’t take much effort to keep her voice level; she could never become angry at her grandfather. “He’s as overworked as the rest of us and looking for help wherever he can find it. I mean, don’t you use Homer Owen to relay messages for you?” They’d received a call from the Abbey Arms pub earlier, alerting them of Stoner’s return.

  He sighed. “And the poor man has taken to keeping a pad and pencil beneath the bar. You’re right, of course. I’m sorry you had to see such things, just the same.”

  She scrambled up. “Jack has convinced a dragon lady in Brighton to send us copies of those officers’ reports, and he’s tracking Faust’s two friends now.” She shook out her twisted skirt. “Instead of going to evening service.”

  Stoner placed the airplane report atop one of the stacks scattered across his desk. He didn’t answer. Jennifer supposed there was nothing he could say, and the vicar could think of them as he pleased.

  “Dad.”

  He glanced up. His eyes, his face, his entire mien seemed tired.

  But her mouth and mind would not produce the question which terrified her. Instead, she blurted out, “Where is Harriet?”

  “If she’s gotten herself married, I assure you, it shall be annulled.” His eyes were gentle.

  Her smile would not be repressed. “Consummated or otherwise?”

  This time he didn’t smile in return. “Precisely.”

  So he knew she was being cowardly, which would never do. She found air from somewhere and forced out the question which controlled all their futures. “Are the Germans coming?”

  His expression softened. “I don’t know.” He reached up and took her hand. “It took their Panzers, with Faust assisting, a mere six weeks to conquer France, utterly decimate the combined British and French armies, and drive their remnants into the North Sea. I cannot imagine what could possibly stop them from repeating that procedure on this side of the Channel.” He smiled thinly. “Certainly not Harry Oldfield’s Home Guard troop. Nor you and I with our little shotguns.”

  Strangely, his brutal assessment calmed her. She breathed more easily. “Does Faust know about it? Or how to stop them?”

  “He may. Perhaps he even assisted drawing up their battle plans. And if he doesn’t know the actual date of their invasion, as a staff officer for a major German combat unit, it’s possible he knows much of the means intended.”

  “Then he’s just got to tell us, that’s all.” She kissed his cheek and lingered over it — he did like it so — before heading for the door. Surely there was more she could do to assist.

  Chapter Eight

  early morning, Monday, 26 August 1940

  Margeaux Hall

  Stoner called Bruckmann and Jennifer to his office for a final briefing the next morning. Mrs. Alcock insisted on serving their coffee, rather than entrusting the errand to Sally, and after an examination of their tired faces she poured the first cup for Stoner.

  “Oh, lovely,” he said. “There’s milk.” Not much, of course. Wartime rationing gave priority to soldiers and children, leaving little for stodgy retired professors playing intelligence games. But he’d be justified using enough to lighten the color in his cup by two shades. After all, Bruckmann preferred his coffee straight and he only had to share with Jennifer.

  Tiredness dragged at him in a weighty undertow. But above it his body seemed light, his confidence buoyed by their intense preparations. Unless Faust proved to be more sophisticated in intelligence-related matters than the captured Germans Stoner had previously met, their detailed plan of attack had good chance of bearing much fruit.

  Mrs. Alcock tilted her grizzled head as she poured for Bruckmann. “Any word on Miss Harriet, now?”

  Stoner sighed, his heart instantly heavier. Constable Mercer had rung the previous evening to report in a dispirited voice. He heard the same emotion in his own as he said, “Nothing.”

  “Well.” She poured for Jennifer, set the pot on the tray atop the desk, and stared at them again, her hands folded beneath her apron. Her eyes were tired, as if she too had analyzed data, sorted reports, and typed notes half the night. “Well, she’ll show up when she’s good and ready, I suppose.”

  Stoner waited until the door closed behind her before turning to Bruckmann, sitting beside Jennifer in the two wing chairs before his desk. “Do you have anything new for me?”

  “Yes, sir, but I’m not certain what to make of it.” Bruckmann held his cup beneath his nose and inhaled, as if the aroma was sufficient to arouse him, but then he set it down untasted. He looked at the tray, his cup, the floor — anywhere except into Stoner’s eyes.

  Stoner straightened. His old heart picked up speed and set his cup down.

  “Go ahead, Jack.”

  “It’s those two friends of Faust’s.” Bruckmann picked up his cup again and this time sipped. “I didn’t contact them, not after I realized — ” He stopped short. Down went the cup again and this time the saucer rattled.

  Jennifer’s eyes widened.

  When Stoner spoke, he kept his voice quiet. “Tell me of Peter Munting.”

  “Major Munting is attached to MI5 in London.”

  Jennifer gasped, coffee sloshing. “He’s one of us.”

  “Is he?” Bruckmann’s voice was surprisingly sharp.

  She started to speak again. But Stoner held up a hand.

  “And the Viscount Godwin?” he asked.

  “ — is a Spitfire squadron leader stationed at RAF Patchbourne.” Finally Bruckmann looked up. He wet his lips. “I was thinking, if Faust had come to England to gather information for the German invasion, well — ”

  Stoner maintained his calm and finished the thought Bruckmann couldn’t. “ — he could contact his old friend, the squadron leader, who is stationed a half mile from where Faust’s parachute touched down. The squadron leader, in turn, could get all the inf
ormation required from their mutual friend, the military intelligence officer in London. Assuming, of course, neither gentleman minds committing treason.”

  “Exactly.”

  It made a horrible sort of sense. In the quiet, broken only by the ticking of the carriage clock on the mantel, Stoner stared into his coffee cup and his heart gave a strange sort of double jump. If this was tea, now, he could read the leaves and tell Faust’s fortune, perhaps learn what that enigmatic young man was up to. He rubbed his eyes and wished again Brigadier Marone had sent Faust to the London Cage, where all other captured German officers were interrogated and where the staff were much more experienced at this sort of thing than he and his tired, brave, overworked team.

  But then his mind took the next step and his heart chilled. If Brigadier Marone suspected one of his staff of duplicity, he’d want Faust kept far from there. After all, an officer attached to MI5 would have easy access to a prisoner at the Cage.

  These suspicions he’d keep to himself. If they had stumbled into something big and ugly, intended to tumble and defeat England from within, he had the relative comfort of knowing the most cold-blooded intelligence general available was monitoring the situation.

  “You did well, Jack,” he said.

  There was a knock on the door and Tanyon leaned into the office sitting room. “The sleeper’s awake, sir. I’ll have him down for you in an hour.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Sir.” He exited, closing the door behind him.

  “Dad, what do we do?” Jennifer’s voice trembled.

  For a moment, Stoner only allowed himself to consider how much he loved her. When he smiled, letting all his love show, she managed a shaky one in return.

  “Nothing has changed, my dear. We must break Faust.”

  “Do you think we have a chance?” Bruckmann asked.

  “Oh, yes, I do at that.” He sipped his coffee. Their carefully laid plan still seemed sound. It was too late for nerves; battle was about to be joined, and he had a nation and family to defend. “Now, if you lovely young people will allow me thirty minutes, I shall scratch out a few more notes for Brigadier Marone. Jennifer, I hope you won’t mind typing them for me?”

  Chapter Nine

  the same morning

  Margeaux Hall

  His batman forgot to wake him again. Faust stirred, the sheet coarse against his skin, sunlight warming his face, and knew he was late without opening his eyes: a staff officer, even one in training, should never sleep past dawn. His throat was dry and sore, with a sour and dirty taste as if he’d drunk way too much, but without his usual morning-after headache. Left-handed, he scrubbed the grit from his eyes and scratched his chin. Astonishment flooded him at the stubble. Just what had happened last night? And why couldn’t he remember any of it? He was a heavy sleeper, but this empty memory and scratchy face seemed excessive.

  He opened his eyes to a small and unfamiliar bedroom, containing the bare minimum to qualify for the term — bed, small table, wooden chair, low dresser, bars on the closed window, no drapes, and not one single ornament. It was stark. It couldn’t be a new billet; it was far too bare and drab for a staff officer’s room; he’d been sleeping in a swank hotel in Paris. Besides, Brandt might forget to wake him once or twice — for which he would now be boiled in vitriol and returned to his previous duties — but he’d at least set out a shaving kit and Ritzi’s picture, Faust’s books and Agfa camera. So this wasn’t a billet, new or otherwise, but he still couldn’t remember it.

  Erhard; he’d driven to Le Havre to see Erhard. An image of the flightline, lumbering Heinkel bombers trundling toward takeoff, shimmering in a haze of petrol and heat, seemed to be the last one in his memory. So he must have spent the night and this was a Luftwaffe billet, borrowed for the occasion, which would explain why Brandt wasn’t handy. But it had been a stupid thing to do, after Oberst von Maacht had ordered him to remain near headquarters, and he could only imagine how drunk he must have been for Erhard to suggest it and for him to agree. He had to telephone Paris and explain.

  Faust pushed himself erect.

  Pain sliced from his right triceps into his shoulder and all the way to his fingers, sudden and excruciating. His arm collapsed beneath him. He fell back onto the pillow, reeling, and cradled his arm as a flood of memories poured in behind the pain: falling, an explosion, stumbling through the unnerving English night. A woman’s ferocious and intriguing face over a capably-held but unpoetical shotgun. Searched; guarded; questioned. Captured.

  It was too much to take lying down. He fought through the shock and the memories, rolled onto his left arm, and pushed himself upright. The cold wooden floor beneath his feet and the chill air on his naked limbs woke him further, but fuzz and fog still clouded his head. Pain chewed at his triceps, nipped across his shoulder blade, and something burned, deep and insistent, among the ribs beneath his arm.

  It was true. It was all true. Our en’mies now are masters of the walls, and even now he couldn’t stop himself from playing his favorite stupid game and finding a line of poetry to fit his circumstances. But even Surrey couldn’t help him out of Erhard’s mess.

  Vaguely he recalled an infirmary, white and comfortingly warm, where a doctor had removed bits of shrapnel from his back and right arm then stitched him up; where a male nurse, slender and kind, applied bandages and teased some liquid down his throat. He’d been drugged. How long had he slept? That was oblique sunlight; it was the following morning or another, even later one. At least a full day, then.

  Three campaigns — Poland, Norway, western Europe — and never a scratch, barely a serious scare. One frigging joyride over the English Channel and here he sat, taking stock of shrapnel damage while liquid warmth dampened his undervest beneath his arm. He’d told everybody who’d listen the English weren’t going to be pushovers, no matter how poorly prepared the B.E.F. had seemed in France. He just hadn’t intended to prove it himself.

  Come on, Erhard had said, come for a ride with papa. We’ll be back before dawn. No one will ever know.

  Bugger you, Erhard, whether you’re in heaven or hell. And Faust had his own theory regarding that particular current address.

  Although it was August, the air was uncomfortably cool against his bare skin. He’d last seen his uniform as his English captors pawed it. It wasn’t anywhere he could see. He leaned over and, left-handed, opened each dresser drawer far enough for a glance. But they were empty. His uniform, like his cigarettes and Soldbuch and wallet, could be gone for good. The old geezer, Stoner, hadn’t left anything unravaged, despite his cultured charm.

  He shouldn’t have thought of those cigarettes.

  He shook out the faded patchwork quilt and slung it one-handed about his shoulders. He’d worn a blanket when first captured, too, in the sitting room of the farmhouse — Woodrow, Stoner had called it. But it didn’t seem likely he was still there; he’d have been taken someplace more secure than a simple, unfenced farmhouse. There had been a manor on the hill rising beside Woodrow, with a high mortared-stone wall about it. The depths of his consciousness released another vague memory of a postern gate in a wall and a path across a lawn to a glass-fronted vestibule — yes, it had been before the infirmary — but then he drew another blank. Had he staggered upstairs, or was that only part of some exhausted nightmare?

  He took the two steps to the window. Yes, there was the wall, encircling a lawn at least three stories below and extending not quite half a mile distant. Lines of apple trees on the wall’s far side rested ancient branches atop it and draped them over like a skirt. Beyond the apple trees stood a Georgian farmhouse that could be Woodrow, eaves and spiraling chimneys and grey slate roof peering through the branches which dipped to a few feet above the ground. A man could probably lean out of the upper windows and pick breakfast from the trees, which sounded like a silly line from Marlowe’s Passionate Shepherd.

  Beyond the farmhouse loomed another dark mass of trees — the oaks, beeches, and birches he
’d traveled that nerve-wracking night, so close they seemed to beckon. If only he’d heeded his instincts and stopped in their shelter before dawn, rather than trying to fight it out for another mile.

  The view to the right was blocked by another wing of the building he was in, great worked blocks of the famous Oxfordshire honey-hued stone forming what seemed to be a massively built, English baroque mansion with mullioned windows. The wall encircled it. Below, the lawn was bisected by a single macadam lane, likely a wartime construction considering its disregard of aesthetics, slicing without mercy between formal beds of roses where a grizzled gardener knelt, hands busy. Other than the atrocious road, it was such an English vista, exactly the sort he loved, like the Oxford quads when he’d stayed overlong at the Bodleian or the Bird and Baby with Barrington and Munting, and ran for a lecture with his gown flapping. Faust smiled; those had been the best of times.

  And with apologies to Dickens, these promised to be the worst. He collapsed onto the chair beside the table, clutching the blanket about his body as if it could contain his rising nerves. Vividly he remembered those defeated English officers, sitting in the scuffed French turf, encircled by Waffen SS soldiers with machine guns trained — the sick fear in their eyes, their hunched shoulders, the collapse which almost stank. If this bedroom contained a mirror, he might see such an expression in his own eyes.

  Keys rattled outside the door. Faust jerked around, his muscles tightening. Pain spasmed across his right side. The walls seemed to tighten around him and he yearned to scramble for cover. The lock groaned then snapped. He rose to his feet — he couldn’t help it, he wanted to seem cool and collected but his body wasn’t listening — and the door opened.