The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds (45 page)

Marsh stood inside Schutzstaffel headquarters feeling like Daniel in the lions’ den. Yet nobody stopped him; nobody paid him any attention
at all. It was as though the battery harness had rendered him invisible, like the blond woman in the Tarragona filmstrip. He wondered, fleetingly, where she was, and if she had participated in the decimation of Milkweed’s strike teams back in December.

Wherever she was, the Reich had a fearsome assassin at its call. Perhaps, if his ploy worked and he obtained the Reichsbehörde’s operational records, he could learn more about her. Although she wasn’t his main interest.

Marsh followed a line of men returning from the trucks outside to a bank of elevators at the edge of the lobby. He and nine others stuffed themselves into an elevator. It was paneled with rosewood and lined with a brass rail at waist height, little remainders of the building’s previous life. The men spoke little as it descended to the basement, instead taking the opportunity to catch their breaths where the air wasn’t so cold. Some of the men had an unpleasant rasp in their chests, probably from working in chilly weather that had lifted only within the past day. They saluted Marsh as appropriate, and more than a few eyes widened in alarm when they glimpsed his wires.

The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and they poured into the basement. In times past, it had housed the laundry and other services. Now it served as an archive for SS records, a clearing house for all information Reichsführer Himmler wanted to keep at hand.

That the operational records of the Reichsbehörde qualified as such was beyond question. The only issue was whether they had already been moved to a safe location, and whether Marsh would find them before his ruse fell apart.

Shelves had been installed in the former laundry, and the corridors were dense with filing cabinets nearly identical to those back at Milkweed Headquarters. Stacks of crates, empty but otherwise like the ones Marsh had seen loaded on the trucks outside, occupied every spare inch of floor space. The shelves held boxes of files, which the men systematically loaded into the numbered crates for loading onto hand trucks.

The total amount of paperwork stored in the bowels of the former hotel was staggering. It seemed Jerry couldn’t do anything without first
completing a form in triplicate. And then again when the task was finished.

Marsh examined a random shelf. Some boxes were indexed with keywords and numbers, while others had dates printed neatly on their spines. But there was nothing to explain their contents.

He found the officer overseeing the packing procedure in a cavernous room carved directly from the bedrock beneath the building. Lightbulbs hung from cables affixed to the ceiling overhead, tossing harsh shadows between the vaulted brick archways and casting the deepest niches into shadow. The hotel had once boasted an extensive wine cellar, but the casks and wine bottles had been replaced with row upon row of filing cabinets and metal shelving. Approximately two-thirds of the shelves were bare; many of the cabinets stood with their drawers open and empty. Doubtless the wine had long ago disappeared into the personal collections of high-ranking SS officers.

The officer was tall, much taller than Marsh, perhaps even taller than Will. His long, thin face and large round eyeglasses made him look more like a librarian than like a soldier. Which might not have been far from the truth, Marsh realized.

He carried a clipboard upon which two high metal loops impaled a sheaf of papers. He walked among the empty crates, inspecting the shelves and cabinets that hadn’t been packed yet, pausing to compare each label with something in his papers. He’d nod, make a note on his clipboard, and jot a six-digit number on the box or cabinet drawer with a grease pencil. The numbers corresponded to crates, showing the packing men which files went in which containers.

The archivist saw Marsh. He scowled. “Don’t stand there,” he said. “Grab a crate”—he pointed to a stack in one of the shadowy niches—“and get to work. But be certain to label your crate with the proper catalog numbers,” he added, pointing to the numbers on the file boxes. His attention turned back to his work.

Marsh cleared his throat. He stepped closer to the other man. He tried to keep his fake battery harness in plain view, but the shelves, low
ceilings, and archways cast irregular shadows in all directions. “I’m here for the Reichsbehörde files. Have they been moved yet?”

The other man shrugged, still studying his clipboard. “Everything’s getting moved today.”

“I don’t care about everything else,” said Marsh. He stepped closer still. “My orders are to escort the Reichsbehörde records. Where are they?”

The other man looked up, frowning. His eyebrows pulled together in puzzlement. “I wasn’t informed about this.”

“Of course not.” Marsh rested his hand on the battery at his waist, silently praying it would again make his point for him. “The Reichsführer and the Führer themselves have a deep personal interest in our work. I’m here to escort the records. It’s a special task, not something entrusted to merely anybody.”

“Still—” The archivist paused when he saw Marsh’s battery. “Oh, I see.” His gaze darted from the battery to the wires snaking up Marsh’s neck. When it reached the collar of Marsh’s uniform, his brows came together, and his mouth formed another frown. The sweat dampening Marsh’s shirt felt clammy.

He studied Marsh’s face. “You’re from the Götterelektrongruppe, then?”

“Yes, and I’ve told you why I’m here. Now, have the records been moved or not?”

“Let me check.” The archivist flipped through several pages on his clipboard until he found the one he sought. He tapped the page with one slender finger and looked up again. He took another look at Marsh’s battery, then another at the polished
siegrunen
on his collar. Again, the furrowed brow.

Marsh didn’t like the way this fellow was studying his uniform. He appeared to be looking for something, a patch or insigne that wasn’t present. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” said the archivist distantly. But then his demeanor brightened, and he tapped the clipboard again. He said, “You’re in luck. They’re still
here.” He ushered Marsh deeper into the cellar, toward shelves that hadn’t yet been packed. “That way.”

Marsh motioned the other man ahead of him. “Show me.”

The archivist hesitated for the briefest moment, then cocked his head in a halfhearted nod. Marsh reached into his pocket as soon as his guide turned his back. He pulled out the garrote a second before the man reached for his pistol. With wrists crossed and arms outstretched, Marsh leapt forward to get the wire over the taller man’s head. It caught briefly on the tip of the archivist’s nose as he pitched forward, giving him time to drop the clipboard and get one hand up to protect his throat as Marsh frantically flipped the wire loop under his jaw and around his neck.

Marsh yanked backwards as hard as he could, straining until his shoulders groaned. His opponent made a wheezing, gurgling sound as his head was pulled back. But air still trickled into his throat because he’d gotten a few fingers under the garrote. And shorter Marsh couldn’t get the leverage he needed to close off the man’s trachea.

He backed into Marsh, using his greater weight to shove him bodily against a brick archway. The wire bundle taped to Marsh’s scalp came loose. Pain ripped up his side. His ribs ached, but he kept pulling until it felt he’d sever the man’s fingers.

Blood trickled from the wire-thin cut on the man’s neck, making the garrote slippery. The wire and the blood together mingled into a hot, metallic, salty smell.

The man pitched forward again, lifting Marsh off the ground. They brushed a lightbulb. It swung wildly, casting kaleidoscopic shadows that danced around them. The archivist launched himself backwards, landing heavily atop Marsh. Air whooshed out of Marsh’s lungs, leaving his chest painfully hollow. His ribs creaked almost to the point of snapping. A dark tunnel consumed his field of vision; he struggled to force air back into his lungs, but the weight of the larger man atop him made it difficult. The tension in the garrote loosened.

The man’s gurgling, Marsh’s gasping, and the hammering of Marsh’s heartbeat together sounded loud enough to alert the entire building. He
could hear the scuffing of boots, the rattle of hand trucks, and men talking in another part of the cellar not far away.

As the man atop him thrashed, Marsh worked one knee up against the base of the taller man’s leg and dug his opposite elbow into the man’s lower back, near the kidney. Then he flexed his body, using those two contact points like fulcra. His opponent arched his back, scrabbling at his throat with his free hand. The gurgling trailed off. Marsh, quivering with too much adrenaline to loosen his grip on the wooden handles of the garrote, struggled to roll the archivist off him.

He kneeled over the man he’d just killed, panting as though he’d run a steeplechase. It couldn’t have lasted beyond a minute, but the fight felt as though it had gone for hours. Marsh’s ribs ached, and his hands shook violently. He wrinkled his nose at the mélange of sweat, blood, and panic.

Different parts of his mind followed disparate threads of thought as he struggled to get his body under control.
Hide the body. Watch out for blood. Something’s wrong with my disguise. Find the clipboard.

First things first. Marsh reaffixed the loose wires to the tape under his hair. It took two tries because his hands trembled so badly and his scalp was damp with sweat from his exertion. But he managed to repair the gravest damage to his imperfect disguise.

Marsh heaved the dead man over his shoulder, careful not to smear blood on his uniform. The man was thin but tall, and a damn sight heavier than he looked. Marsh staggered into an abandoned wing of the cellar, where the shelves stood empty and where, he hoped, nobody would have reason to venture. He propped the body in a niche behind one of the brickwork arches, where the light didn’t reach. He retrieved the garrote in case he needed it again. The wire made a wet slicing sound as Marsh pulled it out of the thin gash in the dead man’s throat. After coiling the wire and putting it back in his pocket, he wiped his hands clean on the archivist’s uniform. He listened for several long moments, to see if anybody in the cellar had heard the struggle. No shouts; no alarms.

The archivist had dropped the clipboard where Marsh jumped him.
Marsh retrieved it. He scanned through half the pages before he found a sequence of entries marked “REGP.” The Reichsbehörde records comprised a sequence of thirteen consecutive catalog numbers. He tore the sheet from the clipboard and folded the catalog page in his pocket. It took another fifteen minutes of searching the cellar before he found the cabinets marked with the same catalog numbers. They were empty, meaning the records in question had already been loaded on one of the trucks.

He rushed back outside, but was relieved to find the trucks still queued up. Marsh again scanned the supervising officers’ cargo manifest—their replacements had arrived, while Marsh was inside—and traced his quarry to the fourth truck from the end of the queue. The lieutenant behind the wheel saluted when Marsh climbed in.

Marsh said, “I’ll be escorting our cargo to its new destination.”

The driver acknowledged this but otherwise said nothing. They passed the next half hour in silence broken only by shouts of the men loading the trucks. It took an effort of will not to fidget, not to inspect himself in the mirrors. The truck occasionally bobbed up and down on its suspension as more crates were loaded on the cargo bed. It rocked Marsh into half sleep; the adrenaline rush evaporated, leaving him wearier than before. But fear that the dead archivist would be discovered too soon kept him jolting back to wakefulness.

Eventually, the stream of men filing in and out of the SS Haus slowed to a trickle. One of the supervisors walked down the line of trucks, loudly pounding his fist on each. One by one the trucks belched exhaust. Marsh’s driver turned the ignition, and their own truck grumbled to life.

When the driver reached for the gearshift, Marsh said, “Wait.” Marsh watched the trucks in front pull away, and checked the side mirror until the trucks in the rear had pulled around them. When they had fallen to the end of the line, he said, “Now. Proceed, slowly.”

The lieutenant obeyed him without question. He didn’t object when Marsh directed him to take turns that separated them from the rest of the convoy. They wove through Berlin, heading roughly west.

Marsh waited until they were well outside the city before ordering his driver to pull to the side of the road.

“Roll down your window, Obersturmführer.”

The driver hesitated. “Sir?”

“Lower your window,” said Marsh. “That’s an order.”

Cold weather had left the window crank stiff and unresponsive. The driver struggled with it, but managed to lower the window glass.

Marsh pulled out his sidearm, pressed the barrel to the driver’s temple, and pulled the trigger. Blood, bone, and brain matter exploded through the open window.

He dumped the driver’s body under an ash tree, in a shallow grave of snow.

He parked the truck on a disused back road kilometers from the nearest town. The lingering glow of a late springtime sunset paled the sky while Marsh, working by the light of an electric torch, rearranged the cargo bed to free up the crates he sought.

His ploy had worked. Marsh had stolen the operational records of the REGP stretching back at least to the early 1930s. As he’d suspected, the project had used the Spanish Civil War as a playground for field-testing and training Doctor von Westarp’s subjects.