Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (54 page)

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Authors: Ian Tregillis

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“Sometimes,” he lied. Then he added, “This helped.” Which was somehow true, although the hurt was worse now than it had been in years.

“I wish you could stay.”

“Me, too. More than anything.”

She looked like she might cry. She looked like he felt. “I’d begun to wonder if I had imagined you.” She hugged herself. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome, Liv. Always.”

Then he put the car in gear and drove away. He didn’t have the strength to look back.

Author’s Note

The Milkweed books have always been, at heart, an attempt to tell an entertaining adventure tale. But no fiction could ever equal the true-life heroism, evil, and intrigue of the Second World War. Thus the story borrows heavily from real historical events and details, not only to lend (one hopes) a sense of verisimilitude, but also to identify the nooks and crannies of history where this story might have unfolded.

The following isn’t a complete list of research sources, but it does include the material consulted most frequently during the writing of this trilogy. Regardless of research, the speculative nature of the story required perpetrating a fair bit of violence to history. That lies at my feet and mine alone.

Churchill, Winston S.
The Second World War.
6 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, [1948–1953] 1985.

Dallas, Gregor.
1945: The War That Never Ended.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Dorril, Stephen.
MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

Gilbert, Martin.
The Second World War: A Complete History.
New York: Owl Books, [1989] 2004.

Höhne, Heinz.
The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS
. New York: Penguin, [1969] 2000.

Keegan, John.
The Second World War.
New York: Penguin, [1990] 2005.

Kynaston, David.
Austerity Britain: 1945–1951.
New York: Walker & Company, 2008.

Liddell Hart, B. H.
History of the Second World War.
New York: Da Capo Press, [1971] 1999.

Longmate, Norman.
How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War.
London: Pimlico, [1971] 2002.

Reitlinger, Gerald.
The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945.
New York: Da Capo Press, 1957.

Shirer, William L.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany.
New York: Simon & Schuster, [1959] 1990.

Trustees of the Imperial War Museum.
The Home Front: Documents relating to life in Britain, 1939–1945.
London: Imperial War Museum, 1987.

Trustees of the Imperial War Museum.
The Battle of Britain: Documents May to September 1940.
London: Imperial War Museum, 1990.

Weinberg, Gerhard L.
A World At Arms: A Global History of World War II.
New York: Cambridge University Press, [1994] 2006.

BBC WW2 People’s War Archive:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/

Also by Ian Tregillis

Bitter Seeds

The Coldest War

About the Author

Necessary Evil
is the third novel in Ian Tregillis’s alternate-history series, the first of which,
Bitter Seeds,
won such praise as “A combination of Alan Furst’s brand of historical espionage with the fantastical characters of graphic novelist Alan Moore”—
New Mexico Magazine.
Tregillis lives near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he works as a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In addition, he is a member of the George R. R. Martin Wild Cards writing collective. Visit him on the Web at
www.iantregillis.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

NECESSARY EVIL

Cover art by Chris McGrath A Tor Book