The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds Read online

Three men came up the stairs as Klaus reached the top. Two wore naval uniforms, the third a tweed suit. Klaus squeezed past them as they gained the landing. Relieved at having found the cellar, he forgot himself and momentarily disregarded the bars on the oldest man’s shoulders.

  “I say!” said the younger of the two officers.

  The older—a commander, and therefore superior to Klaus’s counterfeit rank—cleared his throat. He grabbed Klaus’s shoulder and spun him around.

  “Stop him!”

  The brawler came barreling around the corner. The three men on the staircase turned at the commotion.

  “Stop that man! He’s a Jerry spy!”

  Klaus dropped through the stairwell.

  A hue and cry spread through the building. News of the intruder spread faster than Will could race through the corridors raising the alarm himself. It was like touching a match to dry tinder: after that initial spark, it assumed a life of its own. Most of the occupants of the Old Admiralty didn’t know about Milkweed, or its purpose, but that was immaterial. There was a spy on the premises.

  But none of the outsiders knew what to expect.

  Will banged on the door to Lorimer’s makeshift darkroom. “Lorimer! Open up!”

  It opened a few moments later, after much cursing, banging, and sloshing came from inside. Lorimer poked his head out, blinking widely as his eyes adjusted to the bright light of the hallway. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I need to borrow you for a bit.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Change of plans.” Will grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him outside. “It’s an emergency,” he added.

  Lorimer slammed the door. “Don’t bleed on me.”

  Will leaned close. “We have an intruder. One of them.” He answered the question in Lorimer’s eyes with a whisper: “I think he’s here for the girl.”

  Lorimer exhaled. “Christ on a bloody camel.”

  “Marsh has gone after the fellow—tall chap, about my height, darkish skin like the girl, dressed like an officer. So have a number of others, but they won’t be expecting any, ah, tricks. Go help Marsh. He was headed for the cellar.”

  “Wonderful.” The Scot muttered to himself as he ran off. “We’ll all burn to death like Hindu widows. . . .”

  A trio of matelots stampeded down the hall after Lorimer. Will pressed himself against the wall so as not to get flattened. He still bumped shoulders with one of the men as they charged past, evoking a renewed agony from his finger. Rather than join the commotion and chaos, Will opted for a different tactic.

  The mob of pursuers expected to trap and catch the fellow indoors. But if he truly was one of von Westarp’s kiddies, there was every chance he might disappear from sight, or burn through the walls, or cause them to fly apart, or Lord knew what. And if he joined forces with that strange woman and the store of knowledge in her head? They’d have little trouble getting away.

  Will headed for a side door. Imagining how Marsh might have tackled the problem prompted him to approach Horse Guards’ Road, along the park. If it were me on the run, I’d come out this way, rather than risk drawing more attention to myself right there on Whitehall.

  Dusk had fallen. If there hadn’t been a blackout in effect, the gas lamps in the park would have shone in little halos of mist left over from the day’s long drizzle. Instead the only illumination came from the moon as it peeked through receding clouds overhead and a misty fog on the ground. The result was a pale diffuse light that bleached the color from the world. Quiet, too, but for the traffic humming around Trafalgar.

  Will crossed the road and entered the park. It smelled humid with new spring growth; the soil squelched underfoot. Looking back at the Admiralty, he could just pick out the row of windows apportioned to Milkweed. Blackout curtains rendered every window opaque. Nighttime in the city had been a romantic yet ofttimes lonely affair since September.

  Rather than stand out in the open like a proper fool, he pushed into the park, where the shadows were even deeper. In better times, it would have been possible to glimpse Buckingham Palace at the far end of the Mall. He stepped carefully, lest he take a tumble in one of the trenches dug for the sake of filling sandbags. Many of the parks had been turned over to gardening and home defense.

  He crouched behind a mulberry tree, peering across to the Admiralty. A mallard called, down by the lake. Tires screeched and a horn blared somewhere nearby. Even in war time, daily life in the wider world went on.

  Mist seeped through the fine-spun cotton of Will’s shirt. The damp Savile Row fabric cooled his skin where it had been warm with the perspiration of fear and excitement. At first it felt refreshing, then bracing. But it turned into clamminess as the minutes dragged on with nary a sign of activity across the street.

  Did I expect to find somebody out here, or did I just run away from danger?

  Though he was loath to sacrifice his hard-earned night vision, shivering and boredom prompted him to abandon his hiding spot. It wasn’t until he had crossed the road again that he noticed the silhouette of somebody crouched alongside the building. The lurker darted around the corner of the Admiralty building.

  Aha! You may be the smartest fellow in the room, Pip, but I’m no slouch either.

  “Stop! You there, stop!” Will gave chase, following the shabby-looking fellow around the corner.

  The man spun. He reared back, regarding Will with the wide unblinking eyes of a madman. Late middle-aged, Will guessed, with a slight paunch. Perhaps dismissing the fellow as a madman was uncharitable; he might have been a shell-shocked Tommy from the previous war. The chap’s scar supported that notion. A long pink wrinkle stretched from the corner of his left eye down around his jaw and across his neck through an otherwise full beard.

  “Will?”

  Will stopped. He didn’t recognize this fellow, nor did he recognize the gravel-and-whiskey voice. His voice, his footsteps, his breaths, even the rasp of his beard across the collar of his shirt echoed as if coming from the bottom of a deep well. It was hollow and hyperreal at once.

  “Do I know you?” asked Will.

  The man’s eyes glimmered, as if with tears. “I wish—”

  And then, between one beat of Will’s heart and the next, the man disappeared. He didn’t scamper away, didn’t hide in the shadows, but disappeared.

  “Shit.” Will’s knees gave out. He slumped against rough bricks of Admiralty House. “Shit.” Part of him wished, at that particular moment, that he carried a flask.

  Phantom visions, indeed.

  Ooomf.

  Klaus rematerialized a split second before landing in the cellar. He tucked in and exhaled, exactly as he’d been trained. His knees and shoulder absorbed most of the momentum as he rolled on a hard concrete floor. He leapt to his feet at the intersection of two long brick corridors lined with vaulted arches, like catacombs. Rows of identical steel doorways receded in both directions.

  Why couldn’t she draw a map?

  Upstairs: “What in the Lord’s name just happened?”

  “Dear God.”

  “Out of my way!”

  “Good heavens, I—”

  “Step aside! Get out of my way!”

  The brawler charged down the stairs. He must have shoved through the knot of officers on the landing. An ensign and the commander that Klaus had neglected to salute came tumbling down the stairs after him, like boulders in a rockslide.

  He yelled again as he caught sight of Klaus. “You! Stop! There’s only one way out of here.”

  Klaus picked a direction at random. “Gretel! Where are you?”

  Shouts and footsteps echoed throughout the cellar as his pursuers split up to trap him.

  It went against his training, not to mention his better judgment, to go so long without checking the gauge on his battery harness. But the harness was concealed beneath his uniform, and he couldn’t easily dispense with it while being pursued. Plus, the disguise would be essential to their journey back to the s
hore.

  Luckily for Klaus, most of the doors were suited with tiny windows, so he didn’t have to waste the charge on his battery by peeking into each room. Several of the rooms were dark, however, so he’d had to reach inside to trip with light switches. Gretel wasn’t to be found in any of these rooms, nor did she respond when he called her name, if she was nearby.

  He zigzagged through the cellar with the civilian who had first recognized him relentlessly on his heels.

  The German bastard was fast, and clever. Each time Marsh or somebody else got within arm’s reach, or dived for him, he’d jump through a wall, or through the men themselves. Marsh managed to stay with him, though it meant running an obstacle course created by the other men.

  The dodging and bumping, twisting and jumping, revived the ache in Marsh’s knee. It pulsed hot, threatening to give out at any moment. Not now. Not now.

  There was a bulge under his quarry’s shirt, near his waist. Much like the woman. Marsh noticed the way he kept reaching for it, almost as if out of habit, every time he pulled his little trick.

  The prisoner’s battery had a gauge on it.

  You want to check your battery. . . . Marsh stumbled, wrapped in his own thoughts. “Ooof.” He crashed against a brick wall as the Jerry clipped through another corner. The battery is your weakness.

  Marsh played the hunch. When another knot of pursuers neared the intruder, he yelled, “His wire! Go for the wire!”

  The German raised a hand to the back of his head, reflexively protecting himself even though it was unnecessary. He slipped through the crowd and disappeared around another corner.

  Aha, thought Marsh. Gotcha.

  At last.

  Klaus spied his sister lying on a cot inside a small storeroom. “Gretel!” He ghosted through the door. It clanged a few seconds later as his pursuer pounded on it.

  Gretel blinked her eyes, yawned, and stretched.

  “Gretel, get up. Are you hurt?”

  “I was having the loveliest dream.” She sat up. Over the banging on the door, she added, “You interrupted it, brother.”

  Klaus took advantage of his pursuer’s delay to swap out his battery. In his haste, he fumbled with the buttons on his uniform, unable to grip them properly with his mangled hand. Gretel undid the buttons and pulled his shirt. She grabbed a spare battery from his harness, strapped it into the empty spot on her own harness, and plugged in. Klaus pulled the wire from his depleted pack and reconnected it to the other spare.

  A k-chink from the door lock announced that his pursuer had found the key to Gretel’s cell. Klaus grabbed his sister’s hand.

  “You must not release my hand until I tell you. And hold your breath. Do you understand?”

  She patted his cheek. “So serious.”

  That was the closest he’d get to a yes.

  The Götterelektron coursed into his mind as the door groaned open on rusty hinges. Klaus imagined himself an overflowing vessel, imagined the Götterelektron spilling over into Gretel, carrying his Willenskräfte along with it.

  If they went out through the wall of her cell, they’d come out underground. They had to get back up to ground level first. Klaus pulled his sister through the doorway and the bruiser standing in it to block them. The man jumped back in shock and tumbled to the floor, though to his credit he didn’t unleash a girlish scream as Obergruppenführer Greifelt had.

  They rematerialized again once they passed him, to conserve the battery. This one would drain even faster, because two bodies drew from it now.

  Gretel blew a kiss over her shoulder. “Farewell, my darling, until we meet again.”

  Marsh flinched. He couldn’t help it.

  The intruder charged him as soon as he wrenched the door open. Marsh had been braced for a fight, but when the bloke came at him, he tensed for a collision because his body took over and reacted on the basis of prior life experience. Even though he knew damn well what this fellow had in mind.

  Face to face, eye to eye, and then—just for a blink—they occupied the same space.

  It had been different with the Eidolon. That thing existed in the gaps between everywhere and between everywhen, sidling through the mortar of the universe. To say that he and the Eidolon had occupied the same space was imprecise, like saying that the bricks of a retaining wall and the mortar within it were one and the same.

  The memory alone left Marsh feeling naked, skinless, formless, and insignificant.

  The Nazi passed through him without evoking any sensation. Not even an itch. Like he truly wasn’t there.

  He and his girlfriend—Gretel, he called her Gretel— were just people. Damned unusual people, perhaps, but in the end they were people. Will was right. The Eidolons had nothing to do with this. Marsh saw that with the benefit of his inside-out view during the instant when the intruder and prisoner ghosted through him.

  He still jumped, though. He couldn’t help it.

  On instinct, he tried to spin about and grab the girl’s wire, but his hand breezed through her neck. It surprised him, tipped him off balance. He sprawled on the floor.

  Gretel glanced over her shoulder. She blew a kiss, announcing, “Farewell, my darling, until we meet again.”

  Marsh jumped to his feet and gave chase. But unlike the escaping duo, he had to dodge the others trying to block, grab, and tackle them. The fugitives acknowledged no obstacles in their dash for the stairs.

  “Clear out! Clear the corridor!”

  He closed the gap on the long straightaway to the bottom flight. A number of others—Marsh glimpsed Lorimer there—planned to take the fugitives on the stairs, and so this stretch of corridor was empty.

  Sprinting to catch up to the pair, he became aware of a new sound amidst the pandemonium.

  Panting.

  If Marsh had needed a further assurance that the figures he chased were merely a man and a woman, and not supernatural entities, this would have cinched it.

  Running just a pace behind them, striving to bridge the last few feet and snag the girl while the pair was momentarily substantial, he could see the flush on their faces, hear their breath.

  Of course! You can’t breathe when you’re a ghost.

  “Clear the bloody stairs!”

  Marsh barged through the crowd on the stairwell, but far slower than those he chased. The fugitives reached the top and made their exit through the wall. He came up short, slamming against the same wall. His mind raced along with his heartbeat as he crouched with hands to knees, catching his own breath.

  Now I understand the rules.

  Klaus couldn’t evade pursuit quite so nimbly with his sister in tow. They breezed through the men and their outstretched arms like ghosts in a haunted forest.

  Smaller Gretel couldn’t match his strides. He half pulled, half lifted her up the stairwell as they bounded up to the ground floor. Once up top, he pulled her through the outer wall. They passed into cool, moist air. After the noise and chaos inside, Klaus found nightfall in London disarmingly sedate.

  It became more difficult to pull Gretel along once they rematerialized. As a ghost, she offered no resistance to his tugs. But as a physical entity with a physical body, she could not, or simply would not, match his sense of urgency. She stumbled along behind him as he led her across a street to an open green space.

  “Stop! You there, stop!”

  Klaus halted, spun. The challenge had emanated from across the street, back from where they had come, but he couldn’t see anybody in the mist and moonlight. It seemed to have originated from around the corner of the building they’d just escaped. Klaus sighed.

  “I don’t think that was meant for us,” he said, eyes still scanning the street. “Let’s go while we still can.”

  Klaus turned. And found Gretel face-to-face with a stranger.

  “It’s you.” Gretel smiled. “You came for me.”

  “It’s you,” said the stranger. His gravelly voice betrayed no joy as he said it. One side of his face had been badly burned;
his beard hid the worst of it, but a puckered furrow ran from the corner of his left eye to the edge of his jaw and across his throat.

  In a strange way, the man reminded Klaus of his sister. The constant shadow behind Gretel’s eyes, the madness there, was a vestige of things seen and known, things not meant for either. Klaus recognized the same look, the same shadow, behind this man’s eyes. This was a man who had seen things. A man burdened by knowledge.

  Klaus took her wrist again, tried to pull her away from this madman. “Gretel, do you know him? Who—?”

  Between one word and the next, the man disappeared. Much as Heike might have done. Klaus spun, searching for the mystery man, or an ambush. But the park was quiet.

  A ghost?

  Klaus shook his head, sighed. England was a strange place. He’d had enough of it.

  Gretel still stared at the spot where the apparition had disappeared. He tugged on her wrist.

  “We need to keep moving,” said Klaus.

  She smiled. Beamed. “It’s going to work.”

  “What’s going to work?”

  But she wouldn’t say.

  After that, evading capture was a tedious but trivial affair. It took most of the night, but Gretel guided them back to the southern seashore without incident. They waited for their rendezvous, shivering in the dark amongst nets, green-glass net floats, traps, and fishing boats. Smooth round pebbles covered the beach, and they tinkled like glass beads underfoot. A rowboat came for them just before dawn. It ferried them to the shape looming out of the water like a shark fin in the predawn light. Brother and sister descended the hatch into dark, cramped Unterseeboot-115 as the sun rose over the English Channel.

  seven

  14 May 1940

  Milkweed Headquarters, London, England

  Stephenson had already worked himself into something just short of a foam-flecked tirade by the time Will arrived. Will glanced over at Lorimer and Marsh for a show of solidarity, knowing he was in for the brunt of it. They stood silent and motionless. Stephenson let loose as soon as Will closed the office door behind him.

  “How the hell did he know where to find her?”