The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds Read online

  As he tied off the cord, Marsh said, “I’m sorry about what I said yesterday.”

  “No apology necessary.” Just for a moment, the impish glint returned to Will’s eyes. “But if we’re doing apologies, then this is as good a time as any to confess that I rather fancy your wife.”

  Marsh smiled. “I know, Will.”

  “But I give you my solemn word I’d never do anything to hurt either of you.”

  “I know that, too, Will.”

  Marsh tested the knot. It held. He put his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Are you absolutely certain about this? We can find another way.”

  “I’m certain. And no, we can’t. Just please do it quickly. Please.”

  “I promise.” Marsh handed over the wooden bit.

  Will stuck it in his mouth. He closed his eyes, set his hand on the floor toward Marsh, and turned away.

  Marsh crouched so as to put his weight on the shears and make the cut as quickly as possible. The metal blades reflected the angry orange light of the embers. He centered Will’s fingertip between the blades, made certain they would land above the tourniquet.

  He counted. One. Two—

  Three things happened at once. The blades crunched together at the center of Will’s finger. Will screamed. And the blood trickling down Marsh’s arm, where the prisoner had gripped him, caught the Eidolon’s attention. It noticed Marsh again.

  This time, it took a closer look.

  Marsh’s ego crumbled under the scrutiny of a boundless intellect. It fixated on his blood. It looked at him, in him, through him, from within the very space he occupied. He smelled the iron in Will’s blood; saw those same atoms forged deep in the heart of a dying star; felt the pressure of starlight on him; heard the quiet patter of a fingertip hitting the floor, Will’s sobs, and the popping of novae. It studied the trajectory of Marsh’s life, peered into every dark corner. . . .

  The Eidolon withdrew. The fire spoke again.

  Will clutched the mangled hand to his chest and coughed out the bit. It dropped past his slack lips, trailing threads of spittle. Will gaped at Marsh, trembling and looking paler than anybody should.

  “My God,” he said. “They’ve given you a name.”

  “Will? Are you—?”

  Will waved him off. He pushed himself upright. Now his speech didn’t sound quite so impossible as it did before, riddled as it was with utterly human sobbing and trembling. But he managed to respond to the Eidolon, and held up the bloodied handkerchief with his undamaged hand.

  The suffocating presence focused on the handkerchief, and then oozed across the room to the prisoner. She trembled. The sense of malice loomed over Marsh while the Eidolon inspected her.

  The back-and-forth between Will and the Eidolon continued for moments or perhaps millennia. Marsh didn’t bother to look at his watch.

  Will reverted to English. “No!”

  The presence receded from the room. In the eternity between one heartbeat and the next, it was gone. The room returned to normal, but for the blood misted on the floorboards alongside Will’s fingertip.

  Marsh crouched next to Will again. He took his friend by the shoulders. “Will, we have to get you to a doctor.”

  Stephenson came forward. “What happened? What did it tell you?”

  “He’s going into shock,” said Lorimer, who entered carrying a bottle of brandy, though no ice.

  Stephenson held him back. “First things first. What did you learn?”

  Will struggled to enunciate through his chattering teeth. “Nothing.”

  “It failed? Don’t tell me this was all for naught.”

  “No . . . it worked. But . . . the Jerries . . . what ever they’re doing, the Eidolons have no part in it. It isn’t magic. I don’t know what it is.” His eyes rolled back in his head. He passed out.

  The prisoner let loose with a self-satisfied, “Hmmmph.”

  Stephenson motioned at Marsh. “Get her out of here! Lorimer, help me with Beauclerk.”

  “Get up.” Marsh took the girl by the elbow as Lorimer and Stephenson draped Will’s arms over their shoulders and carried him out of the room.

  What a fiasco. Will had lost a finger, and for what? They hadn’t learned a damn thing about what the Jerries were doing at von Westarp’s farm.

  She paused, staring into the room where earlier Marsh had adjusted the blackout curtains. Now the room was properly shadowed. Though it felt like the negotiation had gone for days, it had lasted only long enough for the sun to set. A blackout violation was the last thing they needed.

  Marsh pulled the prisoner aside and double-checked the curtains. He took her elbow again.

  “Hmmm,” she said, looking pensive.

  Marsh frowned. “What?”

  “It hasn’t worked yet,” she said, almost to herself. “But I understand now.”

  Marsh pried, but she said nothing more while he escorted her back to her cell.

  six

  13 May 1940

  Whitehall, London, England

  Klaus arrived in London at Victoria Station, and from there took the Underground.

  His counterfeit lieutenant-commander uniform enabled him to slip through crowds as easily as the Götterelektron enabled him to slip through a French fortress. It rendered him a ghost, or perhaps invisible like Heike. People saw the uniform, not the man within.

  Perhaps that meant they didn’t notice Klaus’s reluctance to speak, or the wig that was entirely too light for the color of this skin. Instead they might have noticed the unusual tailoring around the collar, or the way his uniform rode high across the shoulders as though he were caught in the middle of a prolonged shrug.

  The wig and the strange tailoring were, of course, necessary for hiding his wires. But it still felt buffoonish. The wig itched, and caused him to sweat, not just from heat but also for fear it drew attention to him.

  Although, in the frenzy of the past few days, there hadn’t been time to procure one that looked halfway real. The Royal Navy uniform had been a lucky break, one of the few suitable uniforms available on short notice and which would fit Klaus after several rapid alterations.

  Demolishing forest pillboxes in the middle of the night was one thing. But walking through throngs of the enemy while they pointed and laughed? This was different. If the crowds turned on him—and they would, if he revealed himself—his batteries wouldn’t last long enough for him to evade capture forever.

  Presumably, Gretel had anticipated these difficulties. Presumably, she cared, insofar as they interfered with her own designs. What ever those were.

  The Underground screeched to a halt at Charing Cross. When Klaus emerged on the platform, he saw a placard had been pasted to the tiled wall beside the ticket window. SPOT ON SIGHT, it read. ENEMY UNIFORMS. Beneath this, on the left, a color sketch depicted a Reich parachutist accurately down to the soles of his boots. The depiction of the Wehrmacht infantryman on the right was similarly detailed.

  A strange, eerie feeling came over Klaus. It was an odd thing to see something so familiar in such a hostile place. But he also felt energized by it. Here he was, walking undetected among the enemy. Reinhardt wasn’t the only one fit for his own missions.

  Klaus evaded the crowds on the platform and jogged up the stairs to the street above. Until less than two years ago, Klaus had never set foot outside the Fatherland. Now he stood in the heart of the enemy capital.

  A short walk took him to a roundabout with a tall column in the center. He used the time to study the city and its inhabitants. London was a dank city, full of dour-looking people plodding along under a colorless sky. Today a per sis tent drizzle had blown in from the Atlantic; the sky had been pissing down rain ever since Klaus boarded the train in Eastbourne early that morning. Mist shrouded everything, branding marble edifices and granite façades with dark blotches. It dripped from cornices and quoins, parapets and posts. Statues wept tears of condensed fog.

  Rainwater hissed under the wheels of passing vehicles, amplify
ing the traffic noise and filling the streets with a per sis tent static thrum. Each auto, he noticed, had been outfitted with a blackout grille over the headlamps. The water penetrated everything; even the sidewalk smelled of damp stone. A cool rivulet trickled under Klaus’s collar.

  Chest-high stacks of mud-colored sandbags flanked the entrances to buildings. Businessmen carried gleaming metal helmets along with their attaché cases and newspapers. A girl selling flowers from a stand on the corner kept the haversack of a gas mask slung over her shoulder. Most people carried such a bag. Even schoolchildren.

  This was a nation doggedly clinging to normalcy while it prepared for the worst. Klaus sensed an atmosphere of grim determination, of shared destiny, when he stood among these people.

  A man hailed a taxicab across the street. The taxis here were ugly, boxy things. They looked like hearses. Klaus understood the idea, though he’d never ridden a taxi before. He imitated the man across the street, raising an arm and whistling as another of the black cabs sped past. It chuddered to a halt.

  Klaus climbed in, weighing his words carefully. He opted for the shortest possible conversation. “Admiralty,” he said.

  The driver glanced over the seat, white eyebrows cocked high on his forehead. A tangle of spidery red capillaries etched his gin-blossom nose. “Beg pardon, sir?”

  Klaus enunciated every letter: “Admiralty.”

  The driver cast a glance over the seat. “You all right, sir? You don’t sound well.”

  Scheisse.

  Unlike Reinhardt, Klaus hadn’t perfected his English.

  Klaus glared at the driver and gestured through the windshield. “Go,” he commanded.

  The driver shrugged. He put the car in gear. “Very good, sir. Next stop, the Admiralty.”

  Though he had long since committed the contents to memory, Klaus took advantage of the ride to review his sister’s note once more. He unfolded the paper, leaning against the acceleration as the cab sped around a corner.

  . . . Come for me on the thirteenth of May—

  The cab stopped. “There we go,” said the driver over the clunk of the parking brake.

  Klaus looked up. “—What?” He barely caught himself in time, and phrased the question in English.

  “We’re here, sir. The Admiralty, like you asked.”

  “Already?” The word slipped out before he could stop, before he could concentrate on pronouncing it like a Briton.

  The driver’s face creased in confusion. “Yes, sir.”

  And indeed, they idled across the street from the front gate of a U-shaped brick building. A taller addition farther down the road was a jumble of white stone and dark red brick. The complex was larger than he’d expected.

  The entire ride hadn’t taken two minutes. Yet in that time Klaus had branded himself as a stranger who spoke with an accent and as a sailor who didn’t know the location of the Admiralty. He’d made more work for himself. But it couldn’t be carried out right here.

  Klaus pointed down the street. “Please let me off there, around the corner,” he said. He didn’t obsess over his accent.

  The driver looked confused, but didn’t object. “As you wish, sir.” The car lurched to another stop a few moments later, this time out of sight of the Admiralty complex.

  Klaus pretended to go through the motions of pulling out a billfold. He counted bills, stalling until the driver turned forward again. When he did, Klaus reached through the seat to squeeze the man’s heart still. Klaus leaned the body against the door so it wouldn’t topple forward and bump the horn.

  Fuck Reinhardt, anyway.

  He climbed out and closed the door, trying but failing to spit the taste of electrified metal from his mouth.

  The drizzle had seeped into his uniform by the time he crossed the street and hurried back to the Admiralty on foot. The taxi had saved him neither time nor discomfort.

  A sentry saluted as Klaus passed through the gate. Klaus traversed a courtyard toward what appeared to be the main entrance. After returning another salute to the sentries flanking a sandbag revetment, he entered the Admiralty unchallenged. Nobody asked for his identity card; they took the uniform at face value. That wouldn’t have happened at a Schutzstaffel building.

  Britain was a stupid, backward place.

  . . . Find me in the cellar. They will keep me locked in a storage room. . . .

  Klaus strode the corridors, searching for a stairwell. But if the Admiralty complex had seemed large and imposing from the outside, it was far more confusing inside. It gave the sense of having come together organically, without any overarching plan. Narrow corridors kinked with senseless doglegs meandered through the building; some were lined with doors down both sides, while others sported none. Some of the panels in the walls looked like doors, but were not. And there were doors that didn’t look like doors at all, and which caught Klaus by surprise when they opened suddenly to discharge sailors and bureaucrats.

  The need to pretend he belonged here, that he knew where he was going, hindered Klaus’s search. A man with a single lieutenant’s bar on each shoulder saluted as Klaus passed. Klaus returned the salute, a moment late and not nearly so crisply. The younger officer didn’t react; perhaps he was accustomed to contempt from his superiors.

  The first stairwell Klaus found went up, to the floor above, but not down to the cellar.

  Gretel had this all planned out because she’d foreseen it. Naturally, she hadn’t bothered to draw a map or give him specific directions.

  Klaus considered forgoing stairs altogether, instead dropping straight through the floor into the cellar below. Assuming there was a cellar directly beneath him. If he was wrong, there was a very real chance he’d end up falling through the earth. He’d use up his one lungful of breath long before he popped out in some other part of the globe. He’d suffocate, die, rematerialize, and perhaps fossilize deep underground, a puzzle for future archaeologists.

  He abandoned the notion. The search resumed amid mounting frustration.

  “ . . . You don’t get it, Pip. The Eidolons don’t do that. It’s quite unheard of.”

  “They must have names for things, Will.”

  Two men—civilians, by their dress—turned the corner at the far end of the corridor. The taller and better-dressed one, a pale fellow with red hair like Rudolf, wore a gauze ban dage wrapped about one of his fingers. Seepage had stained the pristine white cotton with blotches of rust. The sight elicited a sympathetic throb from the phantom ache in Klaus’s missing fingers.

  The shorter one was a coarse fellow, judging by his face. A pugilist, perhaps. He looked up momentarily as Klaus passed. Klaus nodded at him, hoping it would pass for a companionable gesture between countrymen. The man turned to his injured companion, listening to his response.

  “Names for things, concepts, yes. But not for people. That’s akin to naming the individual ants in an anthill.”

  “Who was that bloke? Did he look familiar to you?”

  Klaus called up his Willenskräfte to chance a shortcut.

  “New recruit, perhaps. Look, getting back to the point, I can’t impress upon you enough how peculiar . . .”

  Klaus released his breath when he rematerialized around the corner.

  “I’m not inclined,” said Marsh, “to put stock in the pronouncements of something so malevolent. Just look at how it toyed with you.” He frowned. “Sorry, Will, but it did.”

  Nausea and lightheadedness welled up again when Will nodded. Merely blunting the worst edge of the pain in his hand had required filling his stomach with aspirin. Any more, and he was bound to sick up. The naval medic had wanted to ply Will with something stronger, but Will had insisted that the troops needed every ampule far more than he did.

  “Your distrust is well-placed. But there was no price associated with the name. The Eidolon stated it as fact, rather than as a ploy. And that’s what makes it notable.”

  “What does it mean? The name, I mean?”

  “I haven�
�t a clue.” Will shrugged, instantly regretting it. The pain redoubled its efforts, lancing from the missing tip of his finger all the way up his arm. “There’s nothing similar in Grandad’s lexicon.”

  Marsh stopped. His eyes widened. “Bloody hell.”

  Will added, “Relax. That by itself isn’t cause for alarm. Even the best lexicons are notoriously incomplete—”

  Marsh spun, looking back up the corridor from where they had come. “How could I be so dim?”

  “What?”

  “Of course he looked familiar. I’ve seen him in the sodding film!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s one of them. They’re here.”

  Will whirled around to look, but the corridor was empty. He staggered. His knees still felt soft, watery from the previous day’s ordeal. “Are you certain? Perhaps it’s just a residual oddity, a phantom leftover from our little experiment yesterday.” Will didn’t believe it either as the words came out of his mouth. He wished he did. The Jerries on that film were downright terrifying customers.

  Marsh dashed down the corridor, toward where the intruder had been heading. Over his shoulder he yelled, “Raise the alarm, Will!”

  Klaus pressed deeper into the Admiralty. If he still had his bearings correct, he was working toward the rear of the building. The place was a goddamned maze. Perhaps that’s why the British made excellent sailors. They had to be navigational geniuses just to get around on land.

  . . . They will keep me locked in a storage room. I will be granted a cot, however, and so will be cheerful and well-rested upon your arrival. . . .

  The soft scrape of enamel on enamel vibrated through Klaus’s jaw as his teeth ground together. Why do you do this to me, Gretel? he wondered. Your comfort won’t matter at all if I can’t find you.

  Fewer people walked these corridors. Some of the rooms were empty, looking like they had recently been vacated. Thick black folds of opaque fabric covered the windows. One room turned out to be a landing where a wooden balustrade spiraled up from the floor below. Finally.