“What was that?” Tall Man slammed his hand on the steel table. The sound of it reverberated through the small room.
His voice dripped from his mouth like acid as he loomed over Faust, who slouched in a tatty office chair.
“What was that?” Faust studied his fingernails, instead of the angry man in front of him. “That was overexuberance, and hubris on my part. It’s something I have always been prone to. Ma Faust used to try to beat it out of me, but she never succeeded.”
“That stunt at the soccer field cost me forty men,” Tall Man snarled.
“That little stunt of mine cost me a million dollars.”
“I don’t give a damn about your money.”
“Oh, really?” Faust raised an eyebrow. “Then perhaps I should stop paying you.”
Tall Man frowned, a deep crease between his bladed eyebrows. “If you stop paying my men I will kill you.”
Faust smiled widely, exposing nearly all the teeth in his head. He spun in his chair, and put both feet on the floor, then leaned toward the tall man.
“Do you know the mistake of all great leaders throughout time?” he asked. “Their most common failure is that, eventually, no matter how powerful they are, they forget that they have men of power underneath them. Men of authority, enforcing their rule of law. They become secure in their power, viewing the men who help them hold it as mere extensions of themselves, instead of men with ambitions and desires of their very own. Most empires fall from within. Most kings topple at their right hand. No matter how many great men come before them, they fail to see the pattern.”
Faust stood. “Now, do you think someone as meticulous as I am, with all of the dangerous things in my toy box, would be so foolish as to not learn that lesson?”
“That sounds an awful lot like a threat.”
“Oh no, no, no, no, not a threat. Instead think of it as an illustration, an illumination, without which there is no way for us to continue this association of ours. I would never threaten you.” Faust held his slender hands out, palms up. “Understand first, I’m not some fool. I recognize that, to your military mind, I look as solid as ice cream in the summer heat. However, the process to my chaos simply isn’t your process.
“For one thing,” he continued, “you suffer under the illusion that I do not have all of my bases covered. I mean, I wouldn’t at any point—” Faust opened his jacket and Tall Man tensed. “—be caught unprepared for any and all circumstances.”
Then Tall Man gaped.
Under Faust’s jacket was a canvas vest. Long, thin rectangles of plastic explosive circled his torso in three rows. Fine, multi-colored wires looped from rectangle to rectangle. Wire leaders ran from the vest ending in flat white electrodes that stuck to Faust’s collar, ran down under his shirt, and trailed up, over, and into his sleeve. Tall Man recognized it from his time in the sandbox.
It was a suicide vest with a dead man’s switch.
“I’m taking a cue from the man who put me in motion,” Faust said. “If I go, this is enough of my homebrew to make sure even the best sniper would go too.” He dropped his jacket lapel, letting it close over the suicide vest. “So would anyone unlucky enough to be caught nearby.”
Tall Man felt hot and cold at the same time, sweating underneath his clothes, freezing along the tops of his bones. This man is insane, he thought, but I have taken his money. What have I done?
He was a mercenary—had been one since leaving the military. He worked with mercenaries, guided them. They were his men. Mercenaries were in the business of making money, and he wasn’t always particular about how he did it. He had done—and had led his men to do—criminal acts. He preferred working with criminals because their money was far better than contract work. Bank heists, security for transports of all manner of illegal merchandise, from drugs to weapons, even providing armed support for human traffickers. All doing bad things for bad men for money.
Faust was in an entirely different league.
Faust was a terrorist without an ideology.
It was one thing to walk beside the abyss, it was another thing to try to cross it. He felt as if he were falling.
Faust walked around the table.
“My dear friend and employee,” he said, “no need to worry so much. I learned my lesson from the last outing. No more exposing ourselves again that way. This game should be played from a distance. I apologize that I got ahead of myself.”
Tall Man tried to regain control. “No more reckless actions.”
Faust held his hand up in the Scout’s Honor position. “As an apology, I extend a bonus to the family of any man that we lost.” He studied Tall Man’s face. “I see you doubting, my friend. I promise you that I have a plan, and next time you and your men simply have to provide security for me. They won’t be involved in any conflict.
“Trust me,” Faust added. “It’s all about the long play now.”