Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (12 page)

My dark-adapted eyes easily picked out the shed’s open door. He was already inside. I crossed the yard, knowing I’d be an easy shot for him when framed by moonlight in the doorway. I reached the entrance.

His voice came from somewhere in the darkness, past the familiar smells of mildew and potting loam. It brimmed with cold anger. “There’s a gun pointed at you,” he said. “Try anything, anything at all, and I’ll put a bullet in your gut.”

“No, you won’t.” I stepped inside, feeling as though I’d already had this conversation long ago.

I knew damn well he was bluffing. He’d jump me instead. Nobody could answer questions while dying in agony from a gut shot.

“Try me,” he said. “Who are you?”

“No,” I said. “The real question is do you intend to have this conversation in the dark, or will you let me close the door so we can turn on the bloody light?” He didn’t answer. “I’m going to turn around and pull the door shut. I’ll keep my back to you while you flip the light.”

“You don’t move unless I say you do.”

Christ, what a belligerent sod. I wondered if everybody found me so abrasive. I took a steadying breath, turned around. Over my shoulder I said, “If you do shoot me, try to aim for my head. I’d rather die cleanly.”

I closed the door, then raised my hands. There was a faint
click
and then weak, mustard-colored light filled the shed.

“Turn around,” he barked.

I did. We stared at each other for a long beat.

He said what I was thinking: “Son of a bitch.”

*

The intruder was older than Marsh expected. Perhaps around Stephenson’s age, or even a bit older, but it was hard to tell because one side of his face was a mass of scar tissue. The graying beard couldn’t hide it. The scars might have been war wounds; he appeared old enough to have fought in the Great War. His throat had been damaged, too, judging by the sound of his voice. Mustard gas? Phosgene?

He wore a naval uniform. Lieutenant-commander.

“My God. I know you.” The codger’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. Marsh continued, “You’re the bastard who jumped Will in the park.”

The stranger let out a long, shaky breath. Marsh might have sworn it was a sigh of relief. The duffer asked, “How is he?”

What?

“You nearly broke his jaw. I’m tempted to shoot you on his behalf.”

“Are you angry about his jaw, or feeling guilty about his finger?”

Only five people had been present for that. Marsh struggled to maintain an outward calm while his mind shuffled crisis scenarios. “How do you know about that?”

The stranger gave Marsh a long, hard look. “I know everything about you.” He nodded contemptuously at the revolver. “And do stop with the threats. We both know Stephenson trained you better than that.”

“Who the bloody hell are you?”

“As of right now, I’m your immediate superior,” said the stranger.

He reached into a pocket. Marsh kept the Enfield trained on him. But instead of a weapon, the stranger produced a folded paper. He tossed it on the bench.

“Transfer orders,” he said. “You work for me now.”

*

I recovered from the shock of thinking he’d truly recognized me by pushing to keep him off balance. Didn’t push too hard, however. I stared into the barrel of his revolver, reminding myself that he had a bit of a temper.

The Enfield didn’t waver an inch while my younger self unfolded the forged transfer orders with his free hand. His eyes scanned the page. I could see him mulling it over, trying to gauge the document’s authenticity.

“Liddell-Stewart,” he muttered to himself. “That’s you, I presume.” He came to a decision a few seconds later. I crossed my arms and leaned against the workbench. But my relief became rage when he crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. I balled my fists, simmering.

Stubborn ass.

But I knew the man before me, and I knew the transfer had snagged his attention. But he refused to admit it. I wanted to strangle him. It would have felt good to try. But I reckoned he had the advantage of age. I clamped down on my anger. And nearly gave it all away: I raised a hand to crack my knuckles against my jaw, as I often did when agitated, but caught myself at the last second and scratched my beard instead.

I nodded toward the wadded paper. “Perhaps you didn’t notice the Royal Arms. You might not like them, but your orders stand. So do your goddamned job.”

“Work for
you
?” He shook his head. “You helped them escape. That’s why you silenced Will.”

“Beauclerk would have thrown everything into a cocked hat. Witless toff. I couldn’t let him.”

My younger self sneered. “I can see why you never made it past lieutenant-commander. You’re an insult to that uniform.” He said, “It’ll be the gallows for you.”

Jesus. Was I always this self-righteous?

I thought about Stephenson, and tried to model my behavior on the old man. “You don’t understand a damn thing, lad.” He straightened, bristling at the condescension. But it was true. “I’m not working for the Jerries. The girl is working with
us.
”

For the moment, anyway. But I didn’t tell him that.

He hesitated. “Preposterous. I—”

“She
let
you capture her. And don’t pretend you haven’t suspected as much. By now you’ve already concluded it’s the only sensible explanation. Or you should have.

“That’s why I came to you. You’re supposed to be the clever one.”

*

It was eerie, and maddening, the way this bloke seemed to anticipate everything. Something about him … Had they interacted before? Marsh had a vague sense that they had, but surely he would have remembered that face.

Marsh said, “Have we met?”

The plug-ugly codger sneered at that. “You should get out of the intelligence trade if you can’t remember a face like mine.”

You weren’t born that way,
thought Marsh. But he turned his thoughts back to Gretel.

“She couldn’t have arranged her own capture,” he said. “Nobody knew where I would be on that morning. Not even me. I made a decision in the field to take a quick foray toward the invasion front. What you’re claiming is impossible.”

“Not for her,” said the stranger in his ruined voice. Amazing, how much emotion he could pack into that barren rasp. Sorrow, bitterness, anger. A man with heavy issues and heavier burdens.

Marsh asked, “What is she? What can she do?”

“Gretel is clairvoyant,” he said. “She knows the future.”

Of all the things Marsh expected to hear, this was not one of them. He reeled. The implications … If it were true, that girl was the most powerful of von Westarp’s creations. She would make the Third Reich unstoppable.

“That’s—”

“Unthinkable? Incomprehensible? More ridiculous than a man who walks through walls?” The stranger also had an infuriating tendency to finish Marsh’s sentences. Marsh balled his empty fists in frustration. “By now you’ve already realized it fits all the facts.”

Damn him. He was right.

Marsh asked, “Why would she help us?”

“It’s one thing to see the future. Quite another to like what you see.”

*

That finally shut him down. My younger self stared at me through narrowed eyes. But I knew he wasn’t seeing me. Liv and Will had always said they could tell when I was deep in thought. I finally understood what they meant.

He didn’t set down the Enfield, but he did glance at the crumpled transfer order.

Warily, he said, “Why have you come to me?”

Finally. I hadn’t won him over yet, but at least now he was willing to listen. Took long enough. Never in my life had I met anybody so bloody obstinate. I wondered if people still saw me that way.

I’d given much thought to how I would answer this question. It had taken careful effort to make inroads with him. I wasn’t about to piss it all away with a tale of the far future, cold wars, and time travel. He might just barely be able to accept that Gretel was an oracle. But only a madman would believe he was talking to an older copy of himself. He had seen a number of strange things over the past year or so, but when I was his age I still didn’t fully understand what the Eidolons were and what they could do.

So instead I played on his fears. Which, of course, I knew intimately. “Milkweed has been compromised. As amply demonstrated by tonight’s farce at the Admiralty. We don’t know how, but we do know the Schutzstaffel is well-informed about our efforts. They know we’re watching von Westarp.” I skated past the thinnest ice quickly.

“Isn’t this a bit baroque for an entrapment operation?”

“Playing prisoner was Gretel’s idea. She has a particular way of doing things.” Lord knew that was the truth. Now to salt it with another falsehood: “We knew that if Milkweed had been compromised, the SS would immediately send somebody to retrieve her. Which they did. His name is Klaus, by the way.”

“And you want me to root out the mole,” he said.

“No.” That caught him by surprise. “Milkweed is a lost cause.”

Again, he bristled. I’d always known I had a short fuse, but I don’t think I fully appreciated just how irritable I could be until I witnessed it firsthand. My younger self, I realized, was something of a thug. I hoped he could keep the anger in check, but knew he probably couldn’t.

He asked, “Did she tell you that?”

I ignored his objection and kept to my script. Kept spinning my lies. “Milkweed does, however, have value. As long as the mole is in place and funneling information back to Germany, the SS will be focused on Milkweed’s efforts to counter von Westarp’s brood. Meanwhile, you and I are going to run a second operation. The real operation.”

“How do you know I’m not the mole?”

“You aren’t.”

“You don’t think it’s Will, do you?”

“Beauclerk is a silly toff and an exasperating fool, but he’s no traitor.” I hoped I managed to keep the note of irony from my voice.

“Does Stephenson know about this?”

We’d be in seven shades of shit if he breathed even a hint of this to anybody. “Don’t be daft.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. But I could see that he had bought my story. His mind turned to business. “I’m only one man. What do you expect me to do?” But he answered his own question. He sighed. “You’re sending me to the Continent.”

“Yes.”

“I just returned! I’ve barely met my daughter!” He pounded the bench with his fist. Pieces of a half-built trellis tumbled to the floor.

“This is our only chance.”

“My wife will kill you for this.”

I said, “She’ll understand.”

“You don’t know Liv.”

I thought,
Better than you do, mate.
But I said, “If we don’t do this, and von Westarp is allowed to refine his techniques, Britain will be overrun with people like Klaus and the rest of those monsters on the Tarragona filmstrip. Or worse.” I remembered how quickly and easily Soviet sleeper agents from Arzamas-16 had reduced swaths of London to smoking rubble. The rest of the city, the rest of Britain, would have followed if not for the Eidolons … The ultimate case of a cure worse than the disease.

I laid out everything he had to do. It was a long list; he didn’t look happy. And I shared everything I remembered about the REGP and the Götterelektrongruppe. How they were organized, how they were run. Told him what I knew of von Westarp and the others. Names, powers, loyalties, petty rivalries. And like a sponge, he soaked it all up. He had an intense focus to him. Strange to say, but my younger self reminded me of a coiled spring.

When I finished, he looked at me as though I’d asked him to flap his wings and fly to the moon. Perhaps that wasn’t far off.

“This is impossible,” he said. “It can’t be done.”

“You’ll have help.”

“Gretel.”

I nodded. “Having access to her power will give you a tremendous advantage. Use it. As long as her interests align with yours, she will be an invaluable resource. But I want to make something very, very clear.” I moved closer. As close as I dared. “Never trust Gretel. Never. She’s the most powerful, and she’s by far the most dangerous. They’re all a little frightened of her, even if they don’t admit it. And they should be. Even von Westarp doesn’t understand what he created when he made her.”

“And yet you expect me to place my
life
in her safekeeping?”

“Gretel likes you.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

I told him the truth, of sorts: “Gretel and I have a complicated relationship.”

“Oh, that’s just bloody wonderful. Very reassuring.” He shook his head. “How do I contact her once I arrive?”

“No need.” I nodded to indicate the street beyond the hedge. “She’s waiting in the car.”

A pause while he processed this. Then: “You are fucking unbelievable, mate. Do you know that?”

“We need to move,” I said, glancing at my watch. “Say your good-byes. And bring me your Identity Card.” He wouldn’t need it in Germany. But, suitably altered, it might just save me from another night in the clink.

“Now?”

“There’s a U-boat in the Channel, waiting to take you to Bremerhaven.”

He shook his head again. “Fucking unbelievable.”

*

Marsh entered the kitchen on his way to break the bad news to Liv, his mind still wrestling with all the contradictions posed by the batty old duffer in the shed. There was something queer about him. But he seemed to know his business. He obviously knew Milkweed, and SIS. And he knew a damn sight more about von Westarp’s outfit than anybody else on this side of the Channel.

But Commander Liddell-Stewart had appeared virtually out of nowhere. Marsh had never heard of him. Milkweed’s autonomy meant Stephenson reported directly to the Prime Minister. Marsh would have sworn there was nobody in the chain between Stephenson and Churchill. Nor between Stephenson and Menzies, the head of MI6. Yet the stranger held such detailed knowledge … Who was he?

There weren’t many possibilities. Perhaps he was political, somebody in the confidence of Churchill, or Menzies, or both. But that would be a superb position for a double agent. Was he the mole?

Marsh sure as hell didn’t trust him. But he must have known that coming to Marsh in this fashion would earn suspicion. Hard to imagine a Jerry mole acting so brazenly. Meanwhile, everything the stranger said fit the facts. His claims about a mole meshed with the conclusions to which Marsh himself had been reluctantly drawn; his explanation of Gretel’s prescience was unexpected, but again, it was consistent with everything Marsh had seen.