Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (40 page)

Alone.

Dear God, was he frightened. He had abandoned his family. The why of it didn’t matter, here in the Blitz-ravaged ruins of the city. The grand strategies of covert warfare meant nothing to widows and fatherless babes. He may have been a decent soldier, a faithful defender of the realm, but he was a failure of a man.

What would Liv do when she saw him? Was their relationship dead? How big was Agnes? Restless tendrils of anxiety squirmed through his gut like a nest of asps. Sweat soaked the underarms of his shirt.

Had Liv moved on? Had she assumed the worst?

Will had wanted to deliver a warning. Anything he might have said was delayed indefinitely by the rush to apply first aid to Gretel. They couldn’t risk taking her to the hospital, but the girl was damn lucky. If there was one thing any warlock always had on hand, it was a supply of clean bandages. She’d recover, though she’d carry the scars for the rest of her life.

Marsh had noticed the cracks in Gretel’s imperturbable façade as soon as he returned from Berlin. The woman no longer affected her air of perfect sangfroid. She was edgy.

The scene in Will’s kitchen was no mere crack. It was complete disintegration.

But then his house came into view, and all he could think about was holding his baby daughter again. He paid the driver with cash borrowed from Will. It emptied his pockets of everything but a few shillings and a bloody rag. No ID, no billfold, no house key. Nothing to anchor him in his home country; no means of walking in and surprising Liv. He’d have to knock on the door like a common salesman. And hope to hell she didn’t slam the door in his face.

Flowers. Should he have brought flowers? No. Not if he didn’t want to be insulting. No gesture could atone for his absence. To suggest it might would only make things worse.

The house sat proud and silent, outwardly untouched by the surrounding devastation. He knocked. Waited. Knocked again, harder. Marsh tried to peer through the front windows, but it was still morning and Liv hadn’t yet pulled the blackout curtains aside. No answer.

He went up the street, cut through an alley, and came around behind the house. The garden gate creaked; for once, he welcomed the racket, in hopes that Liv might be feeding Agnes in the kitchen, where she could hear it. Though if that were the case she’d have heard him knocking, too.

Surely Liv wasn’t … sleeping elsewhere. Surely there was a simple explanation. Perhaps Agnes had been crying, crying for her morning feeding, and Liv hadn’t heard the door. Or couldn’t get to it.

He’d expected to find the garden in a shambles: untended, choked with winter-brown weeds. But Liv had done a fine job with it. The plot was neat, the soil clear of weeds and ready for next spring. It appeared she’d even grown things atop the Anderson. Clever. She’d done quite well without him. Marsh tried not to take that as an omen.

The kitchen door rattled under the blows from his fist.

“She isn’t home,” said a gravel-and-whiskey rasp.

Liddell-Stewart emerged from the garden shed, looking just as wretched as he had on the night he’d spun the lie that convinced Marsh to undergo his mission in Germany. He carried a bundle wrapped in a handkerchief. They shook hands. Strong grip, the commander.

“Welcome back.” He handed the bundle to Marsh.

It contained Marsh’s National Registration Identity Card, billfold, and keys. He hoped the relief wasn’t too evident as he filled his pockets. He went to unlock the kitchen door.

“First things first,” said the commander, nodding toward the shed. “Let’s have a chat.”

Marsh said, “I haven’t been home in over six months, mate. Just try to stop me.”

The scents of home washed over him when he opened the door. A dusting of Agnes’s baby powder, on the table. The last slivers from a cake of hand soap at the kitchen sink. Watery tea, long steeped in a pot beside the stove.

The commander waited at the kitchen table. Marsh went through each room, pulling back the blackout curtains as he went. Agnes’s baby blanket lay on the floor of the den, alongside her bassinet. Upstairs, he found the bed unmade on Liv’s side. She had taken a wedding photograph from the mantel downstairs and set it on the bedside table. It faced her side of the bed, so she could stare at it while she lay on her side. Stephenson’s wife had taken it on the day of their wedding. House dust coated the wooden frame.

But where was Liv?

Back in the kitchen, Marsh laid a hand on the teapot alongside the stove. It was cool to the touch. She’d boiled the water at least a couple of hours ago.

Had they evacuated? Relief and disappointment tore through him like shrapnel. Knee-sagging relief at the thought that his wife and daughter were safely away from the bombing. Heart-pinching disappointment, after waiting so damn long to be with his family again to miss them by just a few hours.

No note, though. That wasn’t like Liv.

Liddell-Stewart said, “Are you quite finished?”

“Where—”

“She’s safe. We debrief before we play.”

“I haven’t seen my family in half a year, mate. Where do you get off telling me to wait longer?”

“Where do you get off putting your personal issues before the safety of the country?”

Christ, what a bastard.
But Marsh joined him at the kitchen table.

“It’s done,” he said.

“Tell me everything. Omit nothing.”

“I’ve a better idea,” said Marsh. Maybe it was better Liv wasn’t here for this. “Let’s start with your tale about the mole in Milkweed. Spun from whole cloth, wasn’t it?”

The commander looked ready to burst. “What did Gretel tell you?”

“Nothing. But once I got on that wretched U-boat it became clear she’d arranged the rescue herself.”

The commander sighed. “Yes. It was a lie.”

“You fucking unbelievable bastard.”

“We had a narrow window. I had to get you on that boat. Believe me, this was the best way. I know you better than you think. You would have argued all night long.”

“The best way? Your lie put me in a Schutzstaffel prison cell for months! You’ve no idea what it was like. I spent months savoring thoughts of how I’d mess you about.”

The commander matched Marsh’s fury. “I’m not sorry. You have no idea how terrible things might be right now if you hadn’t gone to Germany. So stop acting a bloody martyr and tell me what happened.”

It took two hours. Marsh started his story at the moment he drove off with Gretel and Klaus. He detailed their voyage in the U-boat, his arrival at the farm, his interactions with members of the Götterelektrongruppe. He described the menial work of cleaning and feeding Kammler. He explained how Gretel arranged the long detour in Berlin. Spoke of the long, dark months in prison. Described his interactions with Himmler. Related the Eidolons’ role in his escape and the destruction of the files. (The commander picked through this part of the story with exasperating diligence.) He drank two glasses of water before moving on to his reunion with Gretel, the death of von Westarp, their use of Kammler, and finally the battle at the farm.

Marsh said, “Got some souvenirs for you. Bit early, but Merry Christmas.” He reached into his pocket, then tossed the bloodstained rag to the commander. “Menstrual blood, from one of the Twins.”

Liddell-Stewart tucked it away. “Well done.”

“That’s just part of it.” Marsh opened the haversack and set von Westarp’s journals on the kitchen table. “Voilà.”

The commander flipped through the top journal. “What the hell are these?”

“The personal journals of Herr Doktor von Westarp. His every secret and discovery. Decades of his brilliance. All rendered in the master’s own hand.”

“I didn’t say anything about bringing these back.”

“I improvised.”

“You went off mission.”

“The mission was spectacularly flawed.”

“Your instructions were—” The commander drew a deep breath. With visible effort, he reined back his temper. “Very well. I’ll see these are properly cared for.”

He truly was a bastard, the commander. Demanding. Rude. Impertinent. Marsh tried to look past it. “The rag is for the Eidolons, isn’t it? You intend to use them as bloodhounds, to track down the Twins.”

“They’re the last loose end. They’re all that’s left of the Reichsbehörde.”

“Not quite. Those two, plus Gretel.”

“You let her
live
?” The commander slammed a fist on the table. The veneer broke apart in a long, jagged crack. An empty saltcellar bounced across the table. He stood. “That’s the worst bloody thing you could have done!”

“Perhaps you missed the part of my story where the SS had every goose-stepper and hausfrau in the Thousand-Year Reich watching for me. Without her help, I’d never have made it off the Continent. And have you forgotten her little quirk? How on earth do you kill a woman who knows the future? It’s impossible, which you’d know if you ever tried.”

The commander squeezed his eyes tight, pinched the bridge of his nose. He rasped, “And where is she now?”

His wreck of a voice trembled with such hatred that he reminded Marsh of an Eidolon. It brought flashbacks to the archives of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, where shadows slithered and men screamed away their sanity. He shook his head, but the waking nightmare clung to him like dusty cobwebs.

“Will’s flat,” Marsh said. “He agreed to watch her for a few days.”

“Are you mad? Beauclerk can’t handle Gretel.”

“I’m not so sure. She’s … changed. And besides which, she won’t be walking anywhere soon.”

The commander fixed him with a narrow gaze. He crossed his arms across his chest. “Tell me.”

“The change was subtle at first, and you know she’s fucking inscrutable at the best of times. But I’d swear she’s … less confident. Tentative. We had a miserable time getting off the Continent. It should’ve been easy for her.”

This sparked something in the commander. His eyes took on a predatory gleam.

Marsh continued, “But that’s not the interesting part. On the night I returned to the farm, Gretel was in consultation with, get this, none other than Hermann Göring. They were discussing—”

“Coventry.” The commander didn’t make it a question.

Marsh blinked. “Yes. That’s right. But when I pressed her about it Gretel said she had ‘finally solved a long-standing problem.’ That’s a quote, by the way.”

“How did you interpret that?”

“I couldn’t. Not at the time. But I think I have a good idea now.” Marsh related the incident with the teakettle at Will’s flat.

“It’s only a guess, but I suspect—”

“—Gretel is losing her ability.” The scars and beard couldn’t diminish the glee, the sheer naked malice in the commander’s expression. It made Marsh shudder.

The commander said, “It’s almost too much to hope for.”

The clock on the mantel in the den chimed noon. Marsh frowned. Liv still hadn’t returned. This wasn’t right.

“Right. We’re done here.” Marsh went to the vestibule. He lifted the telephone. “Now if you’ll kindly sod off, I’m going to find my wife and daughter.”

The commander coughed. “That might be a bit of a job.”

Marsh dropped the phone. “Out with it.”

“Li— Olivia was taken by SIS several days ago.” He raised a hand, quickly, as though fending off an attack. Which he was. “She’s safe. Agnes, too. But they’re holding her for questioning.”

“What? Why on God’s earth would they do that?”

“Because,” said the commander, “they’re looking for me.”

Marsh jumped him.

fourteen

2 December 1940

Westminster, London, England

“You want Liddell-Stewart? I’ll give him to you, right now, trussed up like a goose on a Christmas platter.”

The man sitting across the desk from Marsh made a note in his ledger. The nib of his fountain pen skritched across the paper. His haste kicked out errant droplets of ink to stain his fingertips. “I see. Now, is that Stewart spelled with a
w,
or Stuart spelled with a
u
?”

“Ask him yourself, what?”

The reedy man from MI6 adjusted his reading glasses. The placard on his office door said H
ARRISON
. “And you say he’s a commissioned naval officer?”

“I said he calls himself a lieutenant-commander.”

They sat in an office overlooking Broadway. Stephenson had had an office in this building, in the days before Milkweed. Marsh had delivered the Tarragona filmstrip here.

But this was his first visit to SIS HQ since the move to the Old Admiralty building. It hadn’t taken long after he announced himself at the Secret Intelligence Service to get whisked into the office of a man familiar with the case. They had, after all, been watching his house for seven months. And at Marsh’s own request, more or less.

After France, when Gretel had flaunted detailed knowledge of Marsh’s home life, he’d asked Stephenson to put watchers on the house. But that had been when Milkweed was an obscure group with four members. So the old man, acting in his capacity as a section leader, had arranged the surveillance through other channels in SIS.

Marsh had forgotten all this. He’d had other things on his mind since then.

He’d extracted the rest of the story from Liddell-Stewart, who’d filled in the gaps with educated guesswork. Somewhere along the line, the crew running the observation on Marsh’s house had learned that the Security Service, MI5, sought a man who matched the description of a fellow who’d been seen visiting Liv since early summer.

Naturally, they were curious. So they took her.

By the time Marsh made it to the Broadway Buildings, his anger had cooled just enough that he could converse coherently. The fight with Liddell-Stewart had been short and savage. A rib had given way under the bandage. He’d have to see a proper quack after this was sorted.

“And you subdued him when you found him in your home?”
Skritch, skritch.
Harrison leaned forward, smudging his weskit with ink. “Is that how you received the…” He gestured at his own face.

“Oh, Jesus sodding Christ on a sodding camel. Look! These cuts aren’t fresh, mate. Brilliant observational powers here in the rest of SIS. We ought to pack it in, you lot have it all sussed out, don’t you.”