“Be that as it may, we need to talk.”
“No time, Emmett. My battery’s running low.”
“Not to worry, Harry, we can talk about it over coffee. Say in five minutes, in the hospital cafeteria.” Middleton looked left, right, overhead. On the phone Kalmbach laughed nastily. “On your left,” he said. “Across the street.”
Middleton peered into the darkness and a pair of headlights of a Bureau-issued car winked once, twice at him. Emmett Kalmbach was still laughing. “Cream and two sugars for me, Harry.”
In his suite at the Harbor Court Hotel, the man known as Faust answered the muted beep of a cell phone. The voice on the other end was faraway and old. Faust listened intently, and a small, satisfied smile played on his lips. “Well done, Signor Abe,” he said.
Faust put his phone down and looked across the sitting room, into the smaller of the suite’s two bedrooms. A splash of light fell across the king-sized bed, and in it he could see Kaminski’s pale face on the pillow, and a spray of blond hair.
“Charming,” he said again, to no one in particular.
Chapter Twelve
Ralph Pezzullo
There was something about Fells Point that put Harold Middleton in a foul mood. Maybe it had to do with the fight at The Horse You Came In Saloon that got him booted out of West Point. Maybe it related to the scar on his left temple left by a bar stool — the one that still throbbed whenever the thermometer dipped below 40.
This dank place changed my life, he thought, entering the fog that clung like bad luck to Baltimore’s Thames Street.
Charley’s miscarriage; his ex-wife Sylvia’s violent death; the mayhem and destruction that trailed him since the meeting in Krakow: Now he was determined to right all that, coming on like St. George to slay the dragon as in the richly colored depiction by Raphael Sanzio he admired, even if Faust had chosen Kali’s Court in some sort of a sick cosmic joke. He smiled to himself. Wasn’t Kali the Hindu goddess of annihilation?
As he peered through the fog, Middleton reminded himself to focus. The forces aligned against him were vile and dark. The equation he followed was simple. He had come to slay evil, which had manifested in numbing complexity.
Nora Tesla’s voice squawked in his earpiece. “Target’s in. Alone.”
That’s strange, he thought, marching over the same cobblestones he’d been tossed to like trash so many years ago. “Kaminski isn’t with him?”
“I said, ‘Alone.’”
So you did. Middleton pushed his shoulders back, fixed the collar of his coat and entered the restaurant. A hostess with a frosted smile stopped him with hard blue eyes. “You have a reservation?”
“I’m meeting someone. A man. Mid-thirties, long dark hair, slicked back, tall. Just arrived…”
“I know him. Yes.” Suddenly flummoxed, she managed to smile and frown at the same time. “He said he was dining alone.”
“Not tonight, my dear.”
Middleton’s Dover Saddlery riding boots reverberated confidently across the walnut floor past Tesla and Lespasse in a nearby booth, along with an FBI agent and another man, ambiguously titled, but one whose job became clearer if you knew his phone number was an exchange near Crystal City, Virginia, the home of the Pentagon.
Outside, in a control van, were some other distinguished visitors: Emmett Kalmbach and Homeland Security’s Richard Chambers.
Such seniority at a surveillance operation was unusual. But Faust was such a wild card, and the recent shootings so troubling, that both the major agencies responsible for tracking foreign threats within the U.S. wanted direct involvement. Middleton knew Kalmbach. The man could be spineless but Middleton didn’t care; all the easier to get what he wanted from the feebies on Ninth Street. As for Dick Chambers, the regional director wouldn’t have much personal interest in Faust. The politics of the Balkans hadn’t intrigued him. He’d made one trip to the region during the conflicts, apparently deemed it solvable by underlings and headed off for the Middle East — where he saw more of a threat to the U.S., about which he was right, of course.
But Chambers’s presence here could be explained by a simpler reason: The DHS, the organization that brought us the color-coded threat levels and was charged with protecting our borders, had screwed up big time and, focused on people whose last names began with al-, had missed Vukasin, a known war criminal, and an unknown number of his goons sneaking into the country on phony papers.
Which wasn’t necessarily bad news for Middleton. It meant that Chambers needed to protect his image and could bring resources to bear in a big way. Middleton was confident that all the pieces were in place for checkmate.
Spotting thick black eyebrows protruding over the top of the Racing Form, Middleton stopped and lowered his chin. “Good evening, Faust,” he said deeply, placing the edge of his briefcase on the table. His heart was beating fast, palms moist. The man he’d been tracking for years was now in front of him. He seemed diminished, much smaller than Middleton expected, though he knew the physical details of the war criminal better than he knew his own.
“I rather liked Patty’s Special in the eighth running ten to one,” came the reply. Faust set down the paper and smoothed it carefully. “Colonel Harold Middleton.”
The swarthy-skinned man with the lopsided grin looked up briefly, then snapped his fingers at the nervous waiter with the puff of blond hair. “Bring a glass for my friend.” Then to Middleton, he said, “I hope you don’t mind Beaujolais.”
The American beamed at his quarry’s attempt at gamesmanship. “I have you, Faust,” he said as he pulled out a chair and sat. “We can do this anyway you want.”
Faust folded the paper and fixed him with intense black eyes. “‘Unhappy master, who unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster, till his songs the burden bore; till the dirges of his hope, the melancholy burden bore of Nevermore, of Nevermore.’”
“I deplore people who play with other people’s lives.”
“So do I.”
“It’s over.”
“Let’s hope not, Colonel.” The man took a bite of food, which he seemed to relish. He then said, “One thing I’ve never thanked you for. My name.”
“Your name?”
“That was your creation. I believe you found some documents in a volume of Goethe’s masterpiece, and dubbed me after the hero.”
“You think Faust was a hero?”
“Protagonist then.” He raised his glass. “So here’s to selling our souls to the devil.”
Middleton let his wine glass sit, untouched.
They confronted each other’s stare. Middleton wanted nothing more than to reach over and wring the younger man’s neck.
Faust said, “The great Edgar Allen Poe died at Church Hospital, very close to here. Few grieved. The poor mad genius was placed in an unmarked grave. His last words: ‘Lord help my soul.’”
“It seems you identify with him.”
Faust shook his head. “I was thinking he was more like you. Condemned to walk the earth as a marked man. Walking down the avenue of life stalked by demons. Using his will to bend his torment into art.”
Middleton drank down his wine then slammed his fist onto the table. “You’re a criminal! A fiend! I still dream about the slaughtered children of Kosovo and Racak.”
Faust laughed into his fist, adding fire to Middleton’s anger. Then he held up his hand. “Easy, my friend. Why it is that you Americans always assume that everything is black and white?”
“In this case, it is.”