Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (13 page)

If the stranger were part of Jerry’s infiltration of Milkweed, sending Marsh to Germany was a rather byzantine double cross. On the other hand, it would put him safely out of the way. What did the stranger have planned while Marsh was out of the picture?

Marsh let the stairs creak when he returned upstairs. He’d have to wake Liv, one way or another. Part of him loathed himself for doing this to her so soon after he’d returned. What kind of husband did this make him? What kind of father? A damn poor one.

He stopped at Agnes’s crib again, and this time he took his sleeping daughter into his arms. Her yawn turned into a mewl. He rocked her against his shoulder, kissed the fine silken hair atop her head, inhaled her scent.

Would his baby girl grow up hearing stories about her absent father who hadn’t been there for her birth and then abandoned her again a few days later? What if he never made it back? Would she grow up bitter and resentful? That thought frightened him more than infiltrating the REGP. It made him want to sick up.

“Papa loves you,” he whispered. “He’ll protect you.”

And that was the crux of it. More than anything else, he’d been swayed by the stranger’s warning about what would happen if von Westarp’s work continued unimpeded. The stranger had precisely reiterated Marsh’s own deep-seated fears. The stranger might have been feeding him a line, but he also offered the chance to take down the REGP. And Marsh had to act on that. For Agnes’s sake, and Liv’s.

Just two of von Westarp’s people had made a mockery of MI-5, MI-6, and the Admiralty. What could twenty accomplish? Two thousand? The commander offered perhaps the only chance to stop this.

Liv shuffled in behind him. She slipped an arm around his waist and rested her head against his free shoulder. “Are you protecting her from sleep?”

Marsh kissed his daughter again, then laid her gently back in the crib. He pulled the pink elephant blanket over her. Marsh took Liv’s hand, led her out of Agnes’s room to where light from a bedside lamp spilled into the hall. He found it difficult to meet her eyes. She noticed.

Liv said, “What is it?”

Marsh took her free hand. He squeezed both, staring at the floor and wishing he didn’t have to do this. Wishing he didn’t have to leave, wishing life didn’t demand he wound her so deeply. She pulled away.

“Raybould, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

“I have to go. They’re sending me off again.”

Confusion flashed across her face, followed by disbelief. “Now?”

“They’ve sent a car. It’s waiting.”

“Tell them you can’t go.” Her voice cracked. “You’ve only just returned.”

He shook his head. “I can’t do that. They need me.”

“In the middle of the night?” Now Liv’s voice dripped with disdain for the Foreign Office. “Don’t they know you have a baby at home? And a wife?”

“They do. But they don’t care. They…” He faltered. There was nothing he could say to make this right. “… need me,” he repeated.

“Your family needs you, too.” She drew her robe tighter and glared at him. “Is this how it will be? Agnes growing up without any idea of her father?”

That hurt. Liv’s dart flew true and landed where he felt most sensitive, most guilty. She knew him so well. But he took what she hurled at him. He deserved it, and so much worse. He felt like shit.

“No. Of course not. But the war…”

“You said you wouldn’t leave again!”

The outburst woke Agnes. She began to wail.

Marsh would have taken to his knees if he thought it would help. He hated the war, but he hated Liddell-Stewart far more at that moment. “I meant every word, Liv. Every word. I can’t read the bloody future. How was I to know…” He trailed off, waving vaguely toward the street. He wished, for the hundredth time if not the first, that Stephenson had allowed him to share the truth with Liv when they’d first married. “It’s an extraordinary situation,” he said. “I swear to you.”

That, at least, was true.

She frowned. This had cut deeply. He could see it in her stance, the sense of betrayal. Betrayal by her own government, which owed her time with her husband. But in the end, she was a British housewife in time of war. She had a duty, too.

Liv threw her arms around him and kissed him fiercely. Though he couldn’t afford it, he waited while she took up Agnes. “We’ll make a cup of tea for you while you pack,” she said. “Your kidnappers can wait a few more minutes.”

More awkwardness. Liv picked up on it at once. Marsh could feel the cracks zigzagging across the thin ice of his cover story. “I’m not packing,” he said.

“No?” Up went the eyebrow.
Crack, crack.
“Well, isn’t the Foreign Office a truly fascinating place.”

Marsh started to object, but she waved it off. After that, he retrieved his Identity Card, and then it was time to leave. Liv, with Agnes on her shoulder, led him toward the front door. He shook his head. “Garden.”

He kissed Agnes. “Be good to your mother. Remember Papa loves you.”

Liv kissed him twice, on the lips and on the ear. “Go. Go save the world,” she whispered.

*

It was a relief when my younger self went inside, and I found Gretel and her brother hadn’t left us behind. I waited in the shadows outside the gate, where I could see both the garden and the car. The second car hadn’t moved while I argued with myself in the shed. It was too dark to see the occupants, if it had any.

Again, I wrestled with the temptation to find out. Probably would have in my youth. But I’d learned a small bit of discretion over the years.

“You said you wouldn’t leave again!” Liv’s voice, equal parts anguish and anger, carried to me in the garden. I could hear Agnes crying, too.

Agnes’s cries ripped my heart out. But, I’m ashamed to say, the sense of betrayal in Liv’s voice filled me with guilty, greedy hope. The Jerries have a word for what I felt: schadenfreude. He didn’t deserve her more than I did.

After that they fell silent again. He emerged from the house. Liv stood in the door to watch him go, and pity the poor ARP warden who might have tried to shut her back inside. I tried not to stare. But the kitchen light silhouetted her robed figure in the doorway, and I would have recognized that body even if it wore a ghillie suit. I’d never forgotten how beautiful she was.

Liv held our daughter. I recognized the blanket.

Like me, he knew how to open the garden gate silently. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I truly thought I’d picked that up later.

He held out his Identity Card. “I’ll need this when I return, you know.”

“It’ll be waiting for you.” I reached for it, but he yanked it away.

“Why do you need this?”

I nodded toward the house. My house. “It’s for them,” I lied. “If anything unfortunate should happen. They’ll be looked after.”

But this wasn’t his first time into the field. He knew better. “That’s not how—”

I grabbed his elbow and used my leverage to force his weight onto his weak knee. He stumbled into the hedge. A bit unfair of me, and unwise if he decided to tussle, but I had to distract him quickly before the doubts ate through the thin sheen of plausibility in the story I’d spun.

“This is deep cover,” I hissed. “Not poncing about on a Spanish milk run.” He hadn’t yet been on a deep cover mission. I had.

He shoved back. He was stronger. I retreated.

“This is a farce. You’re sending me off without a cover identity and putting my life in the hands of that German bint. The one you warned me not to trust.”

“Your identity is Raybould Phillip Marsh,” I said. “And the bint
is
your cover.”

I could see him weighing it over one last time. But I’d offered him a chance to infiltrate the greatest threat to his family and his country, plus an unbeatable advantage in doing so. He came round. Though it took a moment, the stubborn bastard.

He handed over the Card. He thought for a moment, then emptied his pockets. So I also took his billfold, spare change, and keys. Anything that could be used to identify him. Anything that would peg him as a Briton, should he get separated from Gretel’s aegis.

We walked to the car together. Klaus had woken. Gretel watched our approach, though I could not see her eyes. She leaned forward in the open window.

“Hello, Raybould. I did say we’d meet again.”

“Fucking unbelievable,” he muttered.

“I know him,” said Klaus, still in German. “He chased us tonight. What is this about, Gretel?”

“All in good time, brother.” She winked at me.

I asked my younger self, “Remember the protocols?”

“Yes.”

I wanted confirmation when he arrived in Germany. Finding an unattended transmitter at the farm would be child’s play with Gretel at his side. I knew, roughly, when to expect his arrival confirmation signal; I could arrange to be in a pub, near a wireless, for that.

I squinted at the other car, trying to make out its occupants. Something about this didn’t feel right. To Gretel, I whispered, “Our friends up the street haven’t moved.”

“Of course not. They’re here to watch over Olivia.”

“I had Stephenson put a team watching the house,” said the younger me, sotto voce. He gave Gretel a hard look. “As a precaution against
them.
”

Oh, bloody wonderful. I’d forgotten all about that. The old man’s watchers had already seen suspicious activity at the home of Raybould Marsh: a strange visit in the middle of the night followed by a sudden departure. This wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t yet a catastrophe—the young agent Marsh’s disappearance wouldn’t be secret after he failed to appear at the Admiralty tomorrow morning. What worried me was the possibility the watchers might identify the visitors. If Stephenson learned his fair-haired boy had entertained two Jerry agents …

Our only saving grace was the blackout, which made it damn near impossible to count and identify the occupants of a car parked halfway up the street. I couldn’t see the watchers, but they couldn’t see our faces either. They’d only seen my silhouette coming and going, and I doubted they knew if there was anybody else in my car. So it seemed likely they hadn’t yet made Gretel and Klaus.

My counterpart climbed in, taking the driver’s seat that I had vacated earlier. “Good luck.” I offered my hand through the open window. We shook. I had a strong grip.

“Don’t worry,” Gretel said while he reached for the loose ignition wires. She handed me the briefcase. “I’ll look after him.”

“You might have a shadow,” I said, tilting my head toward the car up the street. “Best if you lose them quickly.” He rolled his eyes. Then he started the stolen car, more skillfully than I had, and they were off. As they pulled away, I heard Gretel saying, “Three streets, then turn right…”

They disappeared into the night, that strange trio. I limped through a sleeping city and wondered what fate held in store for us.

*

Apparently Stephenson’s watchers sensed something big afoot, because they pulled out before Marsh could get too far ahead. They ran without any lights at all, not even a slitted headlamp. That meant either careless drunks or trained professionals: driving in the blackout was bloody dangerous even with headlamps. The SIS men must have been confident in their decision: if they returned empty-handed after abandoning their post, they’d be chewed out good and proper. And probably spend the rest of the war scrubbing the loos at Fort Monckton.

Marsh reviewed his mental map of the neighborhood. Losing the tail at high speed wasn’t wise; it was likely to attract more attention than it lost. At least one ARP warden was sure to witness the chase.

“Three streets,” said Gretel, “then turn right.”

The commander said she could see the future. Was she doing that now?

Marsh cornered sharply after the third street, just slowly enough not to screech the tires. The SIS car followed. It kept a discreet distance, hanging as far back as possible without running the risk of losing their quarry in the darkness.

“Now what?”

Gretel said nothing. He risked a momentary glance in her direction. Her moonlit silhouette sat with head tipped back as though dozing, or concentrating.

Marsh slalomed through another right, and a left, and a spin through a roundabout that tossed a cursing Klaus across the rear seat. But the SIS car kept a steady distance throughout. Marsh wondered if he knew the men in that car. He wondered how he came to be colluding with two enemy agents to elude his own colleagues. He wondered how he came to be abandoning his wife and newborn daughter. And for how long.

“At least tell me where we’re headed,” he said.

Gretel said, “Hush.” And pinched the bridge of her nose, either squinting or scowling. In the darkness they were one and the same.

Marsh addressed the vague form of Klaus in the rearview. “If you want to make your rendezvous,” he said, downshifting, “then give me a bloody destination.”

The engine noise of their stolen car hit a higher pitch. Their followers’ motor followed suit a moment later, as though harmonizing. Marsh pressed on the gas.

Klaus was a sullen shadow. He rubbed his shoulder. Was he waiting for a yea or nay from Gretel? A strange pair, these Jerries. But Klaus reciprocated Marsh’s utter unwillingness to trust them. That, at least, Marsh could understand.

He chanced another glimpse at the woman. Quietly, and without opening her eyes, Gretel said, “Eyes on the road, Raybould.”

Marsh flicked his gaze back to the windscreen, just in time to suss out a shadow crossing the road between two unlit Belisha beacons. Marsh swore, wrenched the wheel. This time the tires did sing as the car skidded through the empty oncoming lane. He missed the warden by a whisker’s breadth, close enough to hear the other man’s fright and feel the crack of finger bones shattering against the side panels.

Behind them, a horn blared. Marsh struggled to right their fishtailing car without sideswiping a post pillar.

Sod this for a game of soldiers,
thought Marsh.

“Klaus!” he said. “Destination! Now.”

Klaus rubbed his scalp with the knuckle joint of a missing finger. In German, he said, “We’re supposed to meet the boat—”