The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds (28 page)

Chaos. Sirens echoed across the city while the thunder of ack-ack guns rattled windowpanes up and down the street.
Chuffchuffchuff. Chuffchuffchuffchuff.
A fireball illuminated the skyline to the north. The ground rippled. Paving stones clattered beneath Will’s feet.

He took the first cross street, eager to put at least one street between himself and the pub. He tried to pick a direction that took him away from the heaviest concentration of bombing, but it was all around him.

The blackout had become a jumble of flickering shadows. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, blazing through the smoke and occasionally flashing across a barrage balloon. When that happened, the reflected glare shone on the streets below like a few seconds of full moon. Meanwhile, a flurry of tracer rounds from a nearby battery cast shadows that slithered underfoot. The sky glowed orange with fire.

Will ran. The gin bottle knocked against his hip. The earth shook again, rattling the bones of London. When the bomb he’d planted became just another element of the pandemonium, he was several streets away and bounding down the stairs of the Tottenham Court Tube station. Several of the people taking shelter there looked up in surprise when they saw him. Clearly, said the looks on their faces, this latecomer was a madman.

How right they were.

Early the next morning, while the Hart and Hearth still burned, and while an invasion fleet sailed within sight of British soil, the Eidolons returned to the Channel.

12 September 1940

Reichsbehörde für die Erweiterung germanischen Potenzials

I
f you can spare a moment, Herr Doctor,” said Klaus, “there’s an issue with the new incubators.”

Von Westarp paced the length of the debriefing room. The breeze from his passage elicited a papery rustle from the dried wildflowers arranged in milk bottles on the sill.

He paused at the window long enough to glance outside again. “She did this to humiliate me,” he said before launching into another circuit of the room. “Where are they?” he asked nobody in particular.

The doctor had put his dressing gown aside long enough to squeeze back into his SS-Oberführer uniform. It didn’t fit as it once had; the past year had been good to him. Klaus made a point not to look at the paunch straining at the doctor’s belt and buttons.

“There is confusion regarding the equipment,” continued Klaus. “I gave specific instructions to the machinists. Still, they’ve wasted time and resources requisitioning unnecessary supplies.”

Von Westarp reversed his circuit of the room. His boots pulverized a handful of wild rose petals that had fluttered to the floor. The air became sweeter and oilier as his continued pacing crushed blossoms knocked loose from Gretel’s improvised drying racks.

Nobody had objected when she’d decided to use a corner of the debriefing room for her craft project. Her advice had led the Luftwaffe to dominate the skies over Britain; tolerating her eccentricities was the price for access to her precognition. For much of the summer, the ground floor of the farmhouse had smelled like a perfumery.

Reinhardt insisted it smelled like a Spanish whore house. He would know.

Klaus said, “I confronted them. They claim to be working to your specifications.”

At the window again: “I’ve been too lenient with her. Far too lenient.”

“But I’m certain,” Klaus concluded over the doctor’s muttering, “that a few words from you would clear this matter up immediately.”

The doctor squinted at him. “What are you babbling about?”

“They’ve ordered the wrong equipment.”

“They’ve done no such thing! Why must you and your sister turn everything into an ordeal? Second-guessing my every instruction.”

The door opened. Standartenführer Pabst entered, pulling Gretel along with a strong grip at her elbow. Pabst shoved her toward a chair before joining the doctor at the window. They spoke in urgent whispers. Pabst and the doctor had been conferring much lately, though it seemed they agreed on little.

Her damp hair had left a trail of dark moisture spots down the back of her smock. Watertight plugs made from rubber and ceramic had been fitted over the connectors at the ends of her wires. A trail of white salt rime dusted the edges of her face, tracing a line along her forehead, across her ears, and under her jaw.

Pabst must have pulled her from the sensory deprivation tank without giving her time to wash. He and Doctor von Westarp had long since conceded, however reluctantly, that physical violence was of no use in controlling her. They’d resorted to more experimental punishments.

She’d been in the tank for over thirty hours. Von Westarp had locked her inside minutes after learning of the invasion fleet’s destruction.

Klaus took the seat next to her at the conference table. Under his breath, he asked, “How are you?”

“Well rested. Have you solved your matériel problem?”

He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her while Pabst and von Westarp argued. He motioned at the edges of his face. She licked an edge of the handkerchief, then dabbed it along her forehead. The tank used concentrated magnesium salts in the water to increase buoyancy and thus mimic the sensation of weightlessness.

Left to his own devices, von Westarp would have left her in the tank much longer. Perhaps even a week, though she’d have succumbed to dehydration before that; rage made him careless. But General Keitel had called an emergency inquiry into her failure to warn the OKW of Operation Sea Lion’s doom.

“What will you tell them, Gretel?”

She said something in response to his question, but Klaus couldn’t hear it. Von Westarp announced, “They’re here.” Klaus glanced out the window to where a black Mercedes approached the farmhouse.

Von Westarp stood at one end of the conference table, Pabst at his right. “Answer their questions and do as they say,” said the doctor. “I will not be made a fool again.”

Gretel’s disobedience used to be a private matter. A family affair. Such as when Rudolf had died. But now the Götterelektrongruppe was plugged into the vast apparatus of the Reich’s war machine; privacy in failure and success did not exist. Gretel’s failure was the doctor’s failure.

Three men stomped into the room. General Field Marshal Keitel, the Führer’s chief of staff on the OKW, was a silver-haired bull of a man. Klaus had never met the second man, but he wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht Heer generalleutnant. The toady man at Keitel’s elbow, Major Schmid, was an opportunistic lickspittle, and grossly unqualified to head Luftwaffe Intelligence.

Also grossly outranked by his two companions,
thought Klaus.
How did he weasel his way into this meeting?
Schmid was utterly dependent—almost pathetically so—upon Gretel for information. Who knew what might have happened had Schmid been forced to go it alone? If not for Gretel, Göring would still command the Luftwaffe.
Oh. He wants to know what will happen to him if my sister is out of the picture.

What have you done, Gretel?

Keitel launched the inquiry as soon as he was seated. “At 0500 yesterday morning, an invasion fleet launched from embarkation zones across coastal France, bound across clear seas for the south coast of England.” He stared, unblinking, at von Westarp while he recited these facts. “At 0620, the advance forces sighted the coast. Spotters reported sudden heavy fog in the Channel at 0625. Contact with the fleet was lost at 0641.

“As of noon, all ships and barges remain missing. They are presumed lost with all hands.

“The combined losses to the Wehrmacht are incalculable.” He turned to face Gretel. “I am here, as the Führer’s representative, to know why this happened.”

Gretel watched the general with wide, innocent eyes. She said nothing.

“I demand to know why the OKW received no warnings.”

Gretel stayed silent. The corner of her mouth quirked up. Keitel went quite motionless, like a coiled spring. He didn’t blink; he didn’t breathe. He stared at her.

Oh, Gretel. What ever you’re doing, you have to stop. This is bigger than you and me.
Klaus wished she could hear his thoughts.
These men think you’re a traitor. These men will kill you. Even the doctor can’t stop that.

Keitel’s face assumed ever darker shades of red as the silence stretched on.

Finally, Gretel spoke. “In other words, you’re wondering why I didn’t save you from your own incompetence.”

The room was silent. The only sound came from the doctor, who made gurgling noises.

“What?” Keitel spoke so quietly that Klaus had to strain to hear him over the thudding of his own heart and the rush of blood through his ears. Klaus could see the general’s pulse throbbing in the hollow of his throat.

“I can see the future,” she said in a conversational tone, “but I can’t perform miracles.”

Oh my God. They’ll kill us all now, just for spite.
Klaus risked a surreptitious glance at the gauge on his battery harness. It was low, but not so low he couldn’t grab her and yank her through the wall if Keitel pulled his sidearm. He plugged in, careful to keep his movements hidden under the table.

Keitel stood. Klaus prepared to draw upon the Götterelektron. Von Westarp stood as well, imploring the general to, “Wait!” and Klaus to, “Make her behave!”

Gretel continued as though nothing had happened. “Some things are inevitable, even to me. The destruction of the Reich doesn’t have to be one of them.”

“The Ninth and Sixteenth Armies.
GONE
!”
Wham.
Keitel punctuated his statement with a fist to the table. “Eleven divisions.
GONE
!”
Wham.
The floor shook under Keitel’s rage. “Half a million tons of shipping.
GONE
!”
Wham.
Across the room, on the windowsill, flower stems rattled inside milk bottles. “Tanks. Artillery. Munitions.
GONE
!
GONE
!
GONE
!”
Wham. Wham. Wham.

“And as I’ve told you,” said Gretel, meeting Keitel’s fury with ice, “it couldn’t be helped.”

“Your duty was to warn us,” bellowed the Wehrmacht generalleutnant.

“What would you have done, had I warned you? I’ll tell you, because I’ve seen it: You’d have postponed the invasion for another day. And still it would have failed. But the long-term implications would have been far worse than they are now. Today it is a loss, yes, but not our destruction.”

Keitel sat again. “That’s twice you’ve mentioned destruction.” A simple statement, testing the waters.

“Something is coming,” said Gretel.

“What
is coming?” It was more an order than a question. Again, a simple statement, testing the waters.

“Our doom,” she said. The others fell silent while this prophecy sank in.

“The warlocks. This is their doing?” asked Pabst.

“Yes. They will destroy us all.” She shuddered, adding, “I’ve seen it.”

“If this threat you describe is real,” said Keitel, “what can be done about it?”

“There is a village in southwest England. Williton.” Shadows flickered behind her eyes when she uttered the name. “You must destroy it if you wish to avert our fate.”

Schmid said, “I’ve never heard of any such village.” To his superiors, he said, “It’s not listed on the strategic bombing survey. I’d know.”

Gretel acknowledged his presence for the first time since he entered. “Oh, yes, Major Schmid’s famous survey. You did such a fine job, identifying so many high-value targets all by yourself.” Gretel cocked an eyebrow. “One wonders how a former clerk achieved such brilliance.”

Keitel shook his head, still flushed with fury. “You did nothing to
prevent the greatest defeat of this war. And now you insist we focus our efforts on an obscure, insignificant village. This is a waste of time.”

Gretel said, “Williton is the key. Demolish it, leave nothing standing.”

Keitel stood again. “We’re finished here.” He headed for the door, the others in tow.

Klaus exhaled. They weren’t, it appeared, going to kill her outright. But the doctor might, when all was said and done.

“Wait!” von Westarp followed them.

“Her madness is too far advanced,” said Keitel. “She can’t be trusted. You should put her down.”

While they argued, Gretel walked to the window. She pulled a few sprigs of the most well-preserved flowers from each bottle. She arranged the collection into a little bouquet of primrose and aster.

“Herr General Keitel,” she called. “Your wife enjoys dried wildflowers, no?”

Keitel turned in the doorway, looking alarmed and impatient. “What?”

Gretel said, “Your wife.” She held the flowers up. “When you go home this evening, give these to her. Tell her all will be well again.” She crossed the room to place the bundle in Keitel’s hand. He towered over her. “Reassure her,” she said. “It wasn’t her fault.”

He stared at her over the dried blossoms, as though taking the measure of her. Could he see the shadows behind her eyes as easily as Klaus?

“What do you know of Lisa?” he asked.

“All will be well again,” Gretel repeated. “She will recover.”