Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (14 page)

Gretel’s eyes snapped open. “Stop!” she yelled.

Marsh punched the brakes. Their skid echoed up and down the lane.

“Back up,” she said. “Second left.”

The transmission clanked. Marsh craned his neck, trying to see through the rear window. Klaus crouched.

“Perhaps you’ve noticed we’re being followed,” said Marsh, squinting. “By a black car running with no lights in the middle of a bloody—”

There. The MI-6 car loomed in the darkness, a blur limned by the faint glow of moonlight on matte paint. He cranked the wheel again, hoping to hell the other driver swerved accordingly, and braced for impact.

Metal screeched against metal. A flurry of sparks lit the night. Their side mirror shattered.

And then the SIS car was before them.

“—blackout!”

Marsh exhaled. He floored the accelerator, and threw the car—still in reverse—around the next corner. Klaus tumbled across the rear seat again. “Damn it!”

Gretel unplugged her battery. She clucked her tongue. “I said
second
left.”

“How careless of me.”

The car creaked on its suspension when Marsh hit the brakes again. His foot slipped off the clutch. They lurched forward again amidst the grinding of gears and the faint stink of hot oil. They fishtailed around the corner. Gretel’s wires swung wildly to tap against Marsh’s arm.

The MI-6 car resumed the chase, this time in reverse while Marsh drove forward. Gretel’s precious second left was a tight squeeze, barely wider than the car.

It was also a dead end.

Knows the future, does she? Ha.

“Oh, that’s just bloody wonderful.” He caught a blur in the rearview as the SIS men rolled to a halt, blocking their only egress. “Now that we’ve rogered the pooch so nicely, any further suggestions?”

“Yes,” said Gretel. She tossed her battery over the seat. It surprised Klaus but he caught it. She slid across the seat, rubbing her feverish body against Marsh. He suppressed a shudder. She arched her shoulders against the seat and pinned Marsh’s foot beneath her outstretched heel.

“Drive faster,” she said.

The alley’s end loomed in the dim glow of slitted headlamps. Marsh tried to knock her aside, but she was persistent.

“Look, you madwoman!”

But even the sharp jab of Marsh’s elbow to her shoulder couldn’t dent that damnable sangfroid. Gretel said, “Brother. If you don’t mind?”

Klaus righted himself in the rear seat. He peered through the windscreen at a rapidly approaching wall of masonry. He swore.

“Scheisse!”

The faint click of his battery connector sounded like a gunshot.

Marsh flinched again. He tried to object. “No—”

But then he couldn’t speak, for he was a ghostly man in a ghostly car, and the traces of ephemeral air in his lungs could push no sound. That didn’t stop him from screaming. Brick and mortar ghosted through his pounding heart, along with lath and plaster and iron and glass. They breezed through obstructions like so much wind. It was far worse than when Klaus had run straight through him with ghostly Gretel in tow just a few hours earlier in the Admiralty.

Marsh’s lungs ached. And still they drove. Through a parlor; through a den; through a foyer.

The ache in his chest became a tingle. A burn.

They emerged onto an unobstructed lane. Klaus did something—rather, stopped doing something—that felt like an inaudible
twang,
as though the car and everything in it were a violin string plucked in an impossible direction. The car rematerialized. Its occupants gasped for air in unison.

Marsh eased the car to a stop, still panting. “Never,” he said, “fucking do that again without advance warning.”

He writhed with the need to scratch an itch. But the phantom itch skittered along the inside of his bones, through the inner surfaces of his skull, where a house had been moments earlier. He slapped the steering wheel until his knuckles cracked and his palms stung. Just to feel something solid. To know his body was tangible again. When next he slept, Marsh knew he’d dream of being buried alive.

“They won’t follow us now,” said Gretel.

six

14 May 1940

On the Sussex coast, England

They arrived at the coast just as the sky was fading from charcoal black to wet wool gray. Compared to the excitement of ditching the SIS shadow, the remainder of the night had been quiet except for the occasional navigational adjustment from Gretel. Marsh still rankled at playing chauffeur to a pair of Jerries. She’d directed them to an isolated stretch of shingle beach between Eastbourne and Hastings.

He set the parking brake and made to disengage the splice job that Liddell-Stewart had used to pinch the car. (A bit odd, that. Keeping an ultra-low profile was one thing, but no access to a motor pool? Stolen cars drew attention.) It wasn’t a bad job, as such things went; Marsh appraised the work with a practiced eye. The commander knew his work.

Gretel laid a fingertip on Marsh’s arm. He flinched away from her feverish touch.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Flash the headlamps, twice.”

He did, wondering how far the light from the slitted lamps would carry. But moments later an answering flash came from somewhere in the darkness of the Channel, a few hundred yards past the tide line.

“I’ll be damned,” he said to himself. It took a gutsy U-boat crew to chance the Channel.

Gretel removed her shoes, then stepped out of the car. She ambled among a handful of old fishing nets, green glass floats, and other flotsam scattered along the beach. Pebbles tinkled like chimes beneath her bare feet, creating an atonal counterpoint to the hiss and thrum of breaking waves. A cool breeze carried the tang of salt and foam from the sea and the faintest odor of fish from the nets. The breeze ruffled Gretel’s braids. It pressed the hem of her skirt to her ankles.

Marsh emerged from the stolen car, making sure that Gretel didn’t disappear into the predawn shadows. He didn’t trust her any more than Klaus trusted him. Marsh stretched his legs, cracked his knuckles. Good idea to stretch while he could; it would be bloody cramped on the U-boat. Stretching helped keep the collywobbles under control, too. He’d done more than his share of reckless, dangerous things in his life. But this …

Klaus was the last out of the car. He draped the jacket of his fake naval uniform over Gretel’s shoulders. She turned and smiled at Marsh. The whispering wind carried their conversation to his ears, just audible above the static hiss of breaking surf.

Klaus asked, “Who is he?”

“The future of the farm.”

He said, “I don’t trust him.”

She said, “Do you trust me?”

He didn’t answer.
That makes two of us,
thought Marsh.

He strained to hear the rest of their conversation, but either they’d fallen silent or the surf grew louder. It wasn’t long before the first blushes of pink tinted the eastern sky when Marsh picked out the faint creak of oarlocks. A rowboat coalesced from the shadows to ride one last wave and crunch against the shingle.

A Kriegsmarine petty officer vaulted over the prow. His boots splashed sea foam over Gretel’s toes. She appeared not to notice. He carried an electric torch, its lamp entirely covered with heavy paper except for a narrow slit, much like the headlamps on the stolen car.

The submariner’s eyes flinched away from Gretel’s wires. Klaus’s, too. “You’re late,” he said.

Gretel said, “No, we aren’t. Your orders were to wait until we arrived. We have now arrived.”

Marsh recognized a pissing contest when he saw one. Perhaps the Kriegsmarine sailors had heard rumors of the Götterelektrongruppe. Certainly they had been ordered to defer to its members. But they had never seen Klaus or Gretel in action, which naturally left them wondering why these obvious examples of non-Teutonic stock were calling the shots. So there was friction, and Marsh was about to land in the middle of it.

The petty officer frowned. He pointed across the water, to where the shark fin silhouette of a conning tower was just visible against the brightening sky.

“A few more minutes and you’d have been stuck until nightfall. It’s already too bright. Let’s go.”

Marsh trudged down the pebbled beach to join the others at the waterline, each footstep crunching loudly on the shingle. He tried to swallow away the sour taste bubbling up from his stomach.
What am I doing here?

“Who is that?”

Gretel twirled a finger through one braid, so that he and the other submariners couldn’t help but see her wires.

“He’s with us,” she said.

The sailors ferried their passengers into the Channel with swift German efficiency. Every stroke of the oars took Marsh farther from Britain, farther from Liv and Agnes. And with every stroke his heart beat more desperately, like a prisoner rattling his cage. He kept his wife and daughter at the forefront of his mind; it kept the panic at bay, knowing he did this for them.

Marsh followed Klaus and Gretel through the hatch into dark, cramped Unterseeboot-115 as the sun rose over the English Channel.

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 at Lorimer for a show of solidarity, knowing he was in for the brunt of it. Marsh hadn’t yet arrived, but Stephenson let loose as soon as Will closed the office door behind him.

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

Cigarette ash swirled around Stephenson as he paced. He used the cigarette like a baton, gesturing at his troops like a displeased commandant. Little white flakes settled on his suit and tie like dandruff.

He turned on Will. “And
you
! What in God’s name were you thinking? You insisted the prisoner wouldn’t see anything she hadn’t already seen. And then you bollixed everything up by
tipping our hand to the enemy.
”

Will stammered. It was hard to talk; his assailant in the park had given him a terrible bruise on his jaw. “She—I mean, I—it was the only thing that made—”

But Stephenson had built up a full head of steam. His tirade continued, ricocheting from one source of irritation to another: “And where the hell is Marsh?”

Lorimer and Will looked at each other, shrugged. “Haven’t seen him all day. Thought he’d be here already,” said the Scot. Will nodded.

But Stephenson turned his flinty gaze upon Will again. Will flinched. The accidental motion evoked another wave of agony from the bandaged stump where his finger had been. It felt like the lost finger itself was in pain; the doctor called it phantom limb syndrome.

If the old man’s voice been any colder, it might have frosted the windows. “Where is he, Beauclerk? You two have been thick as thieves since university.”

Will steeled himself to meet the old man’s eyes. What he saw there put the lie to Stephenson’s weary irritation. He was concerned. Concerned for Marsh, and concerned because they’d been infiltrated by an enemy agent.

“I truly don’t know where Pip might be,” said Will. The swelling along his jaw rendered his pronunciation mushy. He had to concentrate to make himself understood. “I expected to find him here. Though it pains me to contradict you, he doesn’t, in fact, keep me apprised of his moment-by-moment activities.”

“The man does have a newborn at home,” said Lorimer. “Probably running late.”

“Ah, well, that explains it, doesn’t it?” said Stephenson. Tobacco breath puffed across Will’s face as the old man continued, “I’ll just ask the Jerries that when next they intend to catch us with our knickers down, they kindly do it on a schedule more convenient to Commander Marsh, shall I? Better yet, I’ll send cables to Hitler and Mussolini, explaining the situation. No doubt they’ll conduct their war with more consideration for the commander’s home life!”

“Knickers?” Lorimer’s face twisted in indignation. “How the hell were we supposed to catch that minger? Can’t fight against something like that.”

Stephenson went very still, as though frozen in place with a veneer of ice. He approached Lorimer until the two men stood almost nose to nose. “Allow me to remind you gentlemen that our mandate, as handed directly to me by the Prime Minister himself, is to do exactly that.”

Lorimer shouted, “Did you promise him the moon while you were at it? There are only four of us! What does he expect us to do, pull a battalion from our arses?”

Yesterday’s debacle had demonstrated just how badly Milkweed was outclassed by its adversaries, and now these men who were accustomed to being very good at what they did felt helpless. Tempers were running high.

Stephenson inched forward until the two men were almost thumping their chests together. “Four? I count three men in this room, one of whom is soon to be—”

Will insinuated himself between Stephenson and Lorimer before their anger led to something truly daft. He used his hands to wedge the men apart. The Scot had a solid build; nudging him put enough pressure on Will’s bandages to rip his breath away.

“Gentlemen,” he gasped. “This is pointless. Let’s save it for Jerry, what?” The pain made his voice thin and thready. He tried to get it under control as he turned to Stephenson. “Pip will get here when he gets here. He knows this is important, and no doubt his tardiness will have an excellent explanation. In the meantime, let’s make do without him, shall we?” To Lorimer, he said, “I’m certain our esteemed paterfamilias is aware of the difficulties presented by our personnel shortages. So why don’t we discuss the situation like civilized men, rather than a trio of raving savages?”

Will stood back, feeling faintly pleased with himself. Stephenson shot Lorimer another glare, but then stalked around his desk to take his seat, still simmering with anger. Lorimer did likewise, taking one of the chairs facing the old man’s desk. Stephenson had moved his old office in the Broadway Buildings, including some of the furniture and most of the watercolors, into the Old Admiralty. The old man had parlayed all of his political capital into the oversight of an obscure four-man operation.