Bitter Seeds Read online

  Marsh’s fingers wrapped themselves around something solid, a brick or piece of masonry. Lift. Hurl. Crash.

  The hand on his shoulder moved to his elbow and tugged. “Why don’t you come with me. We’ll get you some food.”

  Marsh’s fist closed around the corner of a brick.

  “Come,” said the rescue man, standing up. “It’s over.”

  “Nobody fucking tells me to abandon my daughter.”

  “What’s that?” The rescue man leaned forward. “Why don’t you stop for a moment so I can hear you better?”

  Marsh launched to his feet as he spun. He put all his weight, all his rage, behind the thing in his fist.

  It connected with the corner of the rescue man’s mouth. Marsh felt something crack and give way. The man toppled backwards. His helmet clattered down a pile of debris. Marsh dropped the thing in his hand and leapt on him.

  “I said nobody—” His fist connected again. “—fucking tells me—” Now the other fist. “—to abandon my daughter!”

  A pair of arms wrapped around his waist and lifted. But Marsh’s rage had been uncorked. He thrashed. He threw his head back, connecting with something that made a soft crunch. The grip on his waist loosened, but then more hands grabbed him from behind. He stamped down on the third man’s instep and shoved his elbow back with as much force as he could muster, wrenching his shoulder as he did so.

  “Oof . . .” The third man grunted, but didn’t loosen his grip. He outweighed Marsh by a considerable margin, and so was able to pull him away.

  The pain in Marsh’s twisted shoulder and his lacerated hands became cracks in the dike restraining something immense and black. He didn’t want to feel it, but it flooded through his defenses.

  “Nobody . . . ,” he panted. He sat in the mud because the words were too heavy. “Tells me . . . Oh, God, Agnes. Where are you?” The last came out as a sob.

  He looked to the man he’d hit. He appeared to be in his mid-sixties. Spittle and blood trailed from his lips. His mouth was dark red. The pale fellow crouched beside him, helped him up with one hand as he pressed a handkerchief to his nose with the other.

  Mud seeped through Marsh’s trousers. Cold. Wet. He wished the cold would seep into his heart and numb him.

  “We sent her away,” said Liv.

  She was sitting on what had been the front stoop of somebody’s home. Marsh pulled himself up and joined her.

  The rescue men gathered up their fallen companion. The man with the bloodied nose took one arm over his shoulders, and the pudgy man took the other. They limped away, casting glares and curses in Marsh’s direction.

  “Why did we send her away?” asked Liv, shivering.

  Marsh draped an arm across her shoulders. She pulled away. They cried.

  Night fell. The stars came out. Liv shivered again.

  “You tried to send me away, too,” she said.

  ten

  3 November 1940

  Reichsbehörde für die Erweiterung germanischen Potenzials

  The machine shop was a loud place. Klaus worked alone in an isolated corner, far in the back. Building incubators he could handle; the rest of the new construction projects left him feeling ill. He hated to think about the ovens.

  He didn’t realize somebody had approached him until the tip of the spanner turned orange. Wisps of smoke spiraled up from the blackened pinewood beneath the bolt he’d been tightening. Klaus dropped the tool when heat came surging down the handle into his hand. It slapped the floor like a dollop of taffy.

  “Did I get your attention?”

  Klaus turned, sucking at the new blisters on his palm. Reinhardt stood behind him, looking slightly amused.

  “Haven’t they sent you to Africa yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  The stink of melted linoleum emanated from where Klaus had dropped the tool. It glowed a dark red-black color as it sank into the floor. Klaus grabbed a pair of tongs from an adjacent workbench and dumped the spanner into a water barrel, creating clouds of steam.

  “You could have yelled,” said Klaus. “Or tapped my shoulder.”

  “And risk startling you?” Reinhardt shook his head. “That could have been dangerous. You’re very jumpy.”

  “Dangerous to whom, me or you?”

  “I had your well-being in mind,” said Reinhardt. “Do try to be gracious about it.”

  Klaus fished the spanner from the barrel. The handle had warped, and the jaws had sagged out of true. Reinhardt’s stunt had reduced it to so much mangled steel.

  Klaus said, “You’ve ruined it.”

  “I’ll melt it down if they wish to recast it.”

  “What do you want? I’m busy.”

  “Pabst wants to see us,” said Reinhardt.

  “You and me? Now? Why?”

  “I presume he wants to discuss the doctor’s plan.”

  “What plan is this?” asked Klaus, sucking at the burns on his palm again.

  Reinhardt put on a wholly unconvincing show of forgetfulness. “Oh, of course, this is the first you’ve heard of it. The doctor mentioned it over breakfast.”

  You mean after breakfast, thought Klaus. Doctor von Westarp wouldn’t tolerate your chatter while he digested.

  “What ever this entails,” he said, “I hope it doesn’t delay your deployment. That would be a shame.” Klaus used a clean rag to wipe the metal-and-sweat smell from his hands. It ripped the blisters open.

  “No more a shame than after all these years, your best use is as a carpenter.”

  “Do I have time to wash?”

  “They’re waiting now.”

  “Of course they are,” said Klaus.

  He followed Reinhardt to the farmhouse. They passed Heike and Gretel, who were whispering in the niche beneath the stairs. What ever Gretel’s grudge against the statuesque blond woman might have been, it seemed to have passed.

  Reinhardt leaned over the balustrade to blow a kiss at Heike. She turned her back to him, shuddering.

  Klaus caught a snippet of the conversation as he followed Reinhardt up the stairs. “ . . . disappointment is terribly profound,” Gretel said.

  Heike said, “But my training. I’ve improved so much.”

  “Perhaps. But in their eyes, it is not enough. They see only failure.” Gretel laid a hand on Heike’s forearm. “It is unfair.”

  “What will I do?” Heike moaned.

  The little he heard of this exchange surprised and startled Klaus. He’d gathered that Pabst and the doctor were quite pleased with Heike’s recent breakthroughs. He made a mental note to check on her later.

  The second floor housed the rooms where Klaus and the others slept. It was emptier these days. The Twins were gone, and Kammler was off with the wolf packs, peeling apart the hulls of American merchant marine ships and their escorts. The staircase at the front of the building, for the doctor’s official visitors, was wide and grandiose. But Klaus and Reinhardt took the former servants’ stair instead.

  The parlor hadn’t changed since Klaus’s last breakfast there, prior to Gretel’s failure to warn the fleet. The gaps amidst leather-bound volumes on the shelves had moved around, and now a new set of scribbles covered the doctor’s blackboard, but otherwise it was the same. The doctor’s sanctorum, his workspace. Where his intellect reigned.

  Pabst and von Westarp stood at the observation window, again speaking in hushed, urgent tones. Pabst turned when they entered. They saluted. He took a seat at the doctor’s long dining table. Klaus and Reinhardt followed suit. The doctor remained at the window in his threadbare dressing gown, gazing outside with his arms crossed behind the small of his back.

  Pabst spoke. “The two of you await new deployments.”

  “I’m ready at any time,” Reinhardt said.

  “So am I,” Klaus added. “I proved myself in England.”

  Reinhardt laughed. “I proved myself long before that.”

  “You torched a hotel in a fallen city. Any imbecile with a box of matches c
ould do that. Kammler could do that. I went straight to the enemy’s heart and brought Gretel back alive. It wasn’t so simple.”

  “You went straight to the enemy’s heart and went sightseeing! I would have known enough to strike while I was there. A killing blow, too, had it been me. I—”

  “Enough!” shouted Pabst. “Your deployments have been postponed. We need your combined talents here.”

  Klaus looked at Reinhardt. Please don’t make us partners. He wondered, not for the first time, if in a fight he could squeeze Reinhardt’s heart, or scramble his brain, before Reinhardt burned him to death.

  Reinhardt was watching him, too. Probably doing a similar calculation in his own head.

  Pabst said, “There are two issues.”

  “What issues?” Klaus asked.

  “The first comes from your sister. She has foreseen an assault upon the Reichsbehörde.”

  Reinhardt objected. “Herr Standartenführer. One must point out that neither the threat nor the source are particularly credible. It’s hard to believe that anybody would be foolish enough to attack this place. But if they are? Let them,” he said. “And Klaus’s lunatic sister is untrustworthy. To the point of treason, if I may say so.”

  “She’s done more to advance the Reich’s war effort than any other single person,” Klaus said.

  “Is that so? Remind me. How many men died during the attempted invasion?”

  Pabst slapped the table with his open palm. “Quiet.” The doctor’s tea service rattled on its platter. “You are here to listen.”

  He collected himself. “Regardless of Gretel’s recent performance,” Pabst continued, “we will take her warning seriously. You will stay here until the threat has passed. Kammler has been recalled from the North Atlantic.”

  Reinhardt muttered his assent. Klaus acknowledged the order.

  “After that, the doctor has special plans for the pair of you.” The significance of the standartenführer’s wording wasn’t lost on Klaus, and he doubted Reinhardt missed it, either. As the head of the REGP, Doctor von Westarp outranked Pabst. If the doctor chose to exert his opinion on military matters, there was little Pabst could do.

  The doctor spoke. “The Reichsbehörde,” he said, “is overdue for a recruitment drive.”

  Klaus kept his expression neutral. He’d been expecting this, of course. The incubators and the new monstrosities meant the doctor expected a wave of test subjects in the near future. It was an open secret.

  Pabst said, “The doctor envisions a second generation of the Götterelektrongruppe.”

  “My work has grown stagnant,” said the doctor at the window. “I wish to circumvent my previous mistakes.”

  This, however, caught Klaus by surprise. He wondered what that meant.

  “Forgive me, Herr Doctor,” Reinhardt said. “The war will be over many years before new subjects could be ready to join the Götterelektrongruppe. It will take too long.”

  Von Westarp grew still. A moment passed before he said in a flat, angry voice, “That remains to be seen.”

  So many incubators. How do you plan to fill your crematorium, Doctor?

  Pabst cleared his throat. “The doctor believes”—again, that phrasing, distancing himself from this decision—“that loyal families will gladly give up their sons and daughters when they see your magnificence on display.”

  Ah. No more foundling homes, then.

  Klaus barely remembered how he’d first arrived at Doctor von Westarp’s orphanage. He had one hazy, dreamlike memory of riding in a horse-drawn hay wagon. He wondered if they truly had been orphans, or if a mother and father had given Klaus and Gretel to the doctor.

  The meeting devolved into a planning session. Pabst discussed preparations for the attack Gretel claimed to have foreseen. After that, the doctor explained in great detail a touring recruitment effort. The sun was low in the sky by the time Klaus and Reinhardt were dismissed.

  Reinhardt followed Klaus down the narrow stairs. He asked, “He’s not planning to replace us, is he?”

  “I suppose that also remains to be seen.”

  Heike’s room abutted the stairwell on the second floor. Klaus heard sobs coming through the wall. So did Reinhardt.

  He knocked on her door. “Liebling, are you well?” No response. Only sniffling. “I stand ready to comfort you.”

  “Leave her alone,” said Klaus.

  “Call when you need me,” said Reinhardt to the closed door. The sobbing resumed as they went downstairs.

  Klaus took a simple dinner of stew and black bread while mulling the doctor’s recruitment plan. He couldn’t understand the expectation that parents would willingly give up their children to Doctor von Westarp. He and Reinhardt might have been strong arguments for greatness, but the wires attached to their skulls were bound to alarm parents and volunteers. Klaus’s thoughts kept returning to the hay wagon. How had the doctor obtained his subjects the first time around?

  He resolved to discuss these things with Reinhardt. The salamander was an arrogant ass, but he was no fool. And if he remembered how he’d come to be at the REGP, Klaus would want to hear that story. He didn’t consider asking Gretel; no matter how much she knew, it would turn into a waste of time.

  That night, Klaus dreamed of the hay wagon and a sickly tow-haired boy.

  Reinhardt proved difficult to find the next morning. He wasn’t on the training ground. Nor was he in the mess, the machine shop, the library, the ice house, the gymnasium, the laboratories, the briefing rooms. And it wasn’t Sunday, meaning Reinhardt wasn’t breakfasting with the doctor.

  Klaus returned to the farmhouse to check Reinhardt’s room again. He found Gretel sitting on the stairs above the second-floor landing.

  “Have you seen Reinhardt?” Klaus asked.

  “He’s in there,” she said, nodding at Heike’s door.

  “Really?”

  “Truly.”

  “How long has he been in there?”

  “Thirty-seven minutes.” She paused. “Thirty-eight.”

  Klaus lifted his hand to knock, but Gretel said, “I wouldn’t.” He looked at her. “He’ll be out momentarily.”

  And he was. Reinhardt emerged from Heike’s room, smiling to himself as he buckled his belt. The smile disappeared when he saw Klaus and his sister waiting outside. His pale eyes widened in alarm. But he straightened his uniform, regained his composure, and went downstairs without saying a word.

  Gretel called after him. “Reinhardt.”

  Reinhardt paused between the first and second floors, his back to them.

  “Happy birthday,” she said.

  Reinhardt trotted down the stairs.

  Happy . . . ?

  Reinhardt had left Heike’s door ajar. Klaus knocked. “Heike? Are you all right?” No answer. He knocked harder. The door swung open.

  Heike lay sprawled on the bed, naked from the waist down. Her skin had a bluish tint. She stared at the ceiling, unblinking. She’d been dead for hours.

  15 November 1940

  Milkweed Headquarters, London, England

  We have the power to annihilate the Jerries today,” said Marsh. “So why are we pissing about with defensive measures when we could be grinding them into paste?”

  Floorboards squeaked underfoot as he paced. He looked around the table, glaring at each person in turn. Six people had been summoned for this meeting in Stephenson’s office. In addition to Marsh and the old man himself, Lorimer was there, as were Will, Hargreaves, and Webber.

  Nobody met his eyes. Not even Stephenson. Marsh knew that his passion made them uneasy, as though they were made witness to things better left private. They treated him like a ghost. Like something that shouldn’t be seen. It had been that way since Agnes . . .

  Meaningful glances ricocheted through the trio of warlocks. They were a secretive lot. Even Will kept his own counsel more often than not these days.

  All eyes turned to the warlocks. Seated together side by side, they looked like an illustrati
on of the Riddle of the Sphinx. Will, with the dark bags beneath his bloodshot eyes, was morning’s infant. Webber’s eyes had long ago sunk into his skull; along the way one of them had become a colorless marble. He was the middle-aged man of noon. And Hargreaves, who’d lost more than an eye when fire ruined the left side of his face, was the old man of evening. It was like gazing upon a capsule summary of one man’s life.

  Marsh cracked his knuckles while waiting for a response. The bristles of a beard tickled the backs of his fingers when he pressed them to his jaw. It surprised him. He tried to remember how long it had been since he’d last shaved, but couldn’t.

  Will opened his mouth as if to speak, hesitantly, but didn’t say anything until Hargreaves gave him the nod.

  “It’s more complicated than that, Pip.”

  “Complicated? We’re at war. Defeating the enemy is our one and only job,” Marsh said. “I fail to see why this is so difficult for you to comprehend.”

  Lorimer said, “Moment ago you said ‘annihilate.’ Grinding them into paste isn’t the same as defeating them.”

  “They’re annihilating us!” Marsh kicked his empty chair aside to stand over the Scot. His reflection in the polished cherrywood tabletop was that of a bellowing madman. Perhaps he was just that.

  Stephenson pointed at Marsh. “You. Sit.”

  Marsh tossed the chair upright. “This isn’t bloody advanced maths,” he muttered, taking his seat again.

  Stephenson looked at Will and the other warlocks. “You three. The man has a point.”

  Will waited for another nod before answering again. Ever since he had taken it upon himself to recruit the others, he’d been something of a liaison for them. But Marsh had never seen him act so deferentially to them. “There are rules that limit what we can do. Certain actions that must never be undertaken.”

  “Such as using the Eidolons to kill,” said Webber. The sound of his voice was surprising, almost alarming, in its normality. Marsh had never before heard the man speak English. Only Enochian. He wondered if warlocks ever spoke Enochian to each other, rather than to the Eidolons.

  “What kind of shite is this?” said Lorimer. “You lot did exactly that in the Channel.”