The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds (4 page)

It was livelier on the plaza. The handfuls of people he passed in the wide open space shuffled through their lives under a cloud of dread and anticipation. Strident Art Deco placards touted General Franco’s cause from every available surface.
(Unidad! Unidad! Unidad!)
The Nationalists’ propaganda machine had wasted no time.

The cathedral bells chimed sext: midday. Marsh quickened his pace. The plan was to make contact at noon.

Krasnopolsky, an ethnic Pole born in the German enclave of Danzig, had come to Spain attached to a unit of Fascist forces supporting the Nationalist cause. What ever his work entailed, he’d done it without protest for years. Until he decided, quite spontaneously, to defect. But the Nationalists’ victory was merely a matter of time, meaning that his new enemies had the country locked up tight. Betraying them so late in the game was a bloody stupid move.

Thus he had contacted the British consulate in Lisbon. In return for assistance leaving the country, he’d share his knowledge of a new technology the Schutzstaffel had deployed against the Republicans. Franco, moved by a fit of despotic largesse, had given the Third Reich carte blanche to use Spain as a military proving ground. In that manner, the Luftwaffe had debuted its carpet-bombing technique in Guernica. MI6 wanted to know about anything else the Jerries had developed over the past few years.

Which was why Marsh carried virtually enough money to purchase his own steamer, if it came to that. He’d stay at Krasnopolsky’s side all the way back to Great Britain.

The Hotel Alexandria was a narrow five-story building wedged between larger apartment blocks. Its balconies hung over the street in pairs jutting from the canary-yellow façade. The building had only the single entrance. Less than ideal.

The lobby was a mishmash of ugly modernist décor and Spanish imperialism. It looked like the result of a halfhearted make over. Clean, bare spots high on the yellowed plaster marked the places where paintings had hung, most likely of King Alfonso and his family. Through a doorway to the left, a handful of men and women talked quietly in what passed for the Alexandria’s bar.

Marsh threaded his way toward the reception desk through a maze of angular Bauhaus furniture and potted ferns. But he abandoned his intent to ring Krasnopolsky’s room when he caught sight of the lone figure sitting at the rear of the lobby, in the shadows of the staircase.

The man perched on the edge of a chaise longue, smoking, with a suitcase next to him and a slim leather valise on his lap. He stamped out his cigarette and lit a new one with shaky hands. Judging by the number of cigarette butts in the ashtray next to the chaise, he’d been waiting there, in
public
, since well before noon.

Marsh cringed. He’d marked Krasnopolsky instantly. The man was an idiot with no conception of tradecraft.

He purchased a newspaper from the front desk, then took a seat in a high-backed leather chair next to Krasnopolsky’s nest. The other man looked at him, did a double take, and shifted his feet.

MI6 had no photographs of Krasnopolsky; they’d had to produce the doctored passport based on the man’s description of himself. He’d overstated his looks. He was a tall fellow, even sitting down, and skeleton-thin with an aquiline nose and ears like sails. If he were to stand in the corner of a dark room, Marsh imagined, he might be mistaken for a coatrack.

Marsh paged through the paper, thoroughly ignoring Krasnopolsky. He waited until it looked like the defector wasn’t quite so ready to flee.

“Pardon me, sir,” said Marsh in Spanish, “but do you happen to know if the trains are running to Seville?”

Krasnopolsky jumped. “
Bitte
?”

Marsh repeated his question, more quietly, in German.

“Oh. Who knows? They’re less reliable every day. The trains, I mean.”

“Yes. But General Franco will fix that soon.”

“Took you long enough,” Krasnopolsky whispered. “I’ve been waiting all morning.”

Marsh responded in kind. “In that case, you’re a fool. You were supposed to wait in your room.”

“Do you have my papers?”

Marsh took a deep breath. “Look, friend.” He tried to clamp down on the irritation creeping into his voice. “Why don’t we go back to your room and talk privately. Hmmm?”

Krasnopolsky lit another cigarette from the butt of the previous one. Italian issue. Marsh wondered how anyone could tolerate those acrid little monstrosities.

“I’ve already checked out. I’m safer in public. I need those papers.”

“What do you mean, safer in public?”

Krasnopolsky drew on the cigarette, watching the crowd. Pale discolorations mottled the skin of his fingers.

“Look, we’re not a sodding travel agency,” said Marsh. “You haven’t given me a reason to help you yet.”

Krasnopolsky said nothing.

“You’re wasting my time.” Marsh stood. “I’m leaving.”

Krasnopolsky sighed. Plumes of gray smoke jetted from his nostrils. “Karl Heinrich von Westarp.”

Marsh sat again, enveloped in a bluish cloud. “What?”

“Not what. Who. Doctor von Westarp.”

“He’s the reason you left?”

“Not him. His children. Von Westarp’s children.”

“His kids?”

Krasnopolsky shook his head. He opened his mouth to elaborate
just as a glass shattered in the bar. His mouth clacked shut. The skin on his knuckles turned pale as he tightened his grip on the valise.

“What was that?”

Dear God. This is hopeless
. “You need to relax. Let’s get something to calm you down,” said Marsh, pointing to the side doorway that led to the bar. He pulled the man to his feet and marshaled him through the lobby.

After getting Krasnopolsky settled at a corner table, Marsh went to the bar and ordered a glass of Spanish red. Then he thought better of it and ordered the entire bottle instead. The barman swept up the last of the broken glass, grumbling about having to retrieve the wine from the cellar.

Marsh waited at the bar, keeping an eye on Krasnopolsky while eavesdropping on conversations. The question on everybody’s mind was how things would change once Franco was formally in power.

The barman plunked a bottle in front of Marsh. Marsh was digging cash out of his pocket when he felt the surge of heat wash across his back. Somebody screamed.

“Dios mío!
”

A cry went up: “
Fuego! Fuego
!”

Marsh spun. The rear corner of the hotel bar, steeped in shadows just moments earlier, now shone in the light from flames racing up the walls.
No! It can’t be
—

Marsh dodged the people fleeing the fire, fighting upstream like a salmon. But he stopped in his tracks when he saw the source of the flames.

Krasnopolsky blazed at the center of the conflagration like a human salamander. New flames burst forth from everything he touched as he flailed around the room, wailing like a banshee. Air shimmered in waves around him; it seared the inside of Marsh’s nose. The metal snaps on Marsh’s overalls scorched his shirt, sizzled against his chest. The room stank of charred pork.

The burning man collapsed in a heap of bone and ash. Marsh glimpsed a half-incinerated valise on the burning floor. He gritted his teeth and
kicked it away. The rubber soles of his boots became tacky, squelching on the floor as he danced away from the fire. He tossed aside a fern and dumped the pot of soil on the valise to smother the flames.

Then he snatched what little remained of Krasnopolsky’s valise and fled the burning hotel.

3 February 1939

Girona, Spain

A
rtillery concussions boomed through the river valleys and almond orchards surrounding Girona.
That’s the sound of one’s enemies caught between the hammer and the anvil
, Klaus mused. With pride he added,
And we are the anvil.

The besieged stronghold was Franco’s final stop on his sweep through Catalonia. Once Girona fell, finishing the ground war would become a mere formality.

“They would have sent fighters after me today, if they had any planes left. I’m sure of it.” Rudolf’s hair shone like copper in the sun as he chucked Klaus on the shoulder. “Can you imagine that? I wish they did have an air force left. That would look spectacular on film!”

“T-t-t-t—,” said Kammler.

“Rudolf running away again? I’ve already seen that in person. Why would I watch it on film?” Klaus laughed. “The doctor would prefer you actually confront our enemies. Like the rest of us do,” he added with a gesture that encompassed himself, Heike, and even drooling Kammler.

Kammler again: “G-g-g—”

“Up yours,” said Rudolf. “All of you.”

They rode at the vanguard of a small caravan, bouncing along in silence but for the occasional outburst of stuttering nonsense from Kammler. His handler, Hauptsturmführer Buhler, had unbuckled the leash around Kammler’s neck, so now the muscle-bound imbecile had reverted to his harmless and somewhat pitiable state. Klaus wondered what the cameramen and technicians in the other trucks talked about in their off-time.

The road back to their farmhouse wended through a vast olive plantation. Rows of trees marched all the way from the edge of the hills overlooking the town to within a dozen yards of the house. The hills themselves had turned brown in spots, owing to a dry winter. Overhead, a fingernail moon hung in a powder-blue sky. A cool, damp breeze gusted up from the river valley.

The north and east sides of the plantation had been shattered by misaimed artillery. The ongoing siege slowly chewed up more of the plantation each time another shell went off course.
A shame
, thought Klaus.
I like olives
.

They pulled up in front of a wide two-story farmhouse built in the style of a Roman villa. The family that had owned it must have been rather prosperous. When he had first arrived here, Klaus wondered if the family had also owned the almond groves that blanketed the surrounding hillsides. Not that it mattered. The Reichsbehörde had needed a base of operations from which to field-test Doctor von Westarp’s work, and so the family had disappeared.

The others climbed out of the truck and filed into the house. Klaus paused a moment to scan the wide windows on the second floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of his sister. He worried about her when he was gone all day.

He doffed the straw hat he wore and rubbed at his scalp with the stumps of his two missing fingers as he entered the house. He reached inside his shirt, undid the clasp, and disconnected the pencil-thick bundle of wires that extended from several points on his skull to the battery harness at his waist. The braided wires dangled over his shoulder like a Chinaman’s queue.

They had left their crisp Schutzstaffel uniforms back at the Reichsbehörde when they came to Spain, opting instead for the locals’ more inconspicuous overalls, kerchiefs, and floppy wide-brimmed hats. If nothing else, their disguises conveniently hid the wires. But the coarse peasant apparel tended to snag the wires’ cloth insulation, sometimes catching painfully when Klaus moved quickly or unwisely.

Klaus followed Rudolf past the makeshift darkroom—once a child’s
bedroom—where the cameramen stacked the film canisters from the day’s work. One canister was larger and bulkier than the others; the technicians always dispensed with it first. Heike’s ability necessitated a special camera and special film to record her activities.

The cameramen looked down as he approached. They unloaded an Agfa eight-millimeter reel with conspicuous silence and diligence. The defector had put them all on edge. Doctor Von Westarp was half-inclined to use the remaining cameramen for target practice, and they knew it.

Klaus pushed through the crowded farmhouse, toward the laboratory and debriefing room, eager to remove his battery harness. Over the previous decade, the engineers had made great strides with the batteries, and they had outdone themselves with the lithium-ion design. But after a long day in the field, it still felt like he’d hung a lead brick on his belt. The sooner he handed over his harness, the sooner he could try to quell the spasms in his back.

The technicians would gauge charge depletion in the batteries and reference that against the activity documented by the cameramen. Klaus would detail his exploits slipping through Republican fortifications and pushing land mines into the earth. Any information of military value he’d gleaned would be passed—after appropriate sanitization to obscure the nature of its source—to the Reich’s allies converging on Girona. The arrangement was a quid pro quo in return for Franco’s permission to operate in Spain.

The door to the debriefing room swung open as Klaus lay his hand on the knob. He confronted a pair of eyes so pale and unfeeling, they might have been chiseled from ice. Reinhardt stepped into the corridor.

Von Westarp was there, too. He wore a dark lab coat with a dusting of dandruff on the shoulders from his graying tonsure. “Excellent work,” said the doctor, reaching up to clasp Reinhardt’s shoulder. “Today, I feel pride.”

Reinhardt smiled, his eyes glistening. Klaus and Rudolf saluted as Von Westarp brushed past. “Herr Doktor!”

The doctor glanced at them through his fish-eye glasses. It felt like being stuck under a microscope. He spared nothing but a sniff of disdain
for them as he entered the laboratory. Klaus glimpsed one of the Twins strapped to a table as the doctor slammed the door behind him.