Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (18 page)

“And you will welcome us when we come to your country?”

“Yes, I will.” He tried, but Marsh couldn’t force the reluctance from his voice, the signs of a perfunctory performance. Could they hear it, too? “Not only me. There are others like me. Others who wish for National Socialism to come to Britain.” Sadly true. May they rot in hell for all eternity.

One of the others said, “Maybe you will introduce us to your friends.”

“And your women, too,” said another.

“Ja,”
said the ringleader. The boy leered. “Maybe you have a nice fräulein at home? Maybe you’ll share her with us?” He shared a laugh with his mates.

A pair of hands gave Marsh a solid push to the shoulder blades. He stumbled into the ringleader. The boy shoved him back. Marsh concentrated on his hands, on keeping them from curling into fists while he bounced back and forth like a badminton shuttlecock.

Don’t lose your temper. Don’t lose your temper.

The ringleader said, “I’ll let the others watch when I take your fräulein. I hear the English whores are—”

Marsh’s fist caught him square under the jaw, hard enough to slam his teeth together with an audible
click.
The boy squealed, doubled over, and spat out a piece of his tongue. Long streamers of blood and spittle dangled from his mouth. The blood kept flowing.

Shit.

A pair of submariners grabbed Marsh. He struggled, even managed to free one arm, but in the end it didn’t matter. His resistance faltered with the realization that it was better to submit to the beating than to fight it; let the Jerries feel they’d come out on top. So they held him while the boy and a few others lined up for their chance to take a few swings at the Englishman. They had to work quickly: there was no privacy on a U-boat. They’d be severely punished for the breach of discipline.

A wide red streak trailed down the chin of the boy whom he’d hit. He looked slightly green behind the rage, as though sickened from a stomach full of his own blood. He brandished a pipe wrench.

Marsh struggled to free himself, tried to brace himself for the dreadful
crack
of shattered ribs. Wondered if it would puncture a lung. Closed his eyes. Tensed.

Somewhere, the
stompstomp-stomp
of a pair of boots rattled the decking.

The others backed away to give the boy more room to swing. As much as could be had on the crowded boat.

… stompstompstompstomp.

Clank.

Marsh flinched. Nothing happened. He opened his eyes.

The wrench lay on the floor. Marsh’s attackers gaped at a section of hull. They backed off when Klaus emerged, ghosting from the cold dark space between the pressure hull and outer hull with the ringleader in tow. They rematerialized. Klaus released the boy. His victim dropped to the deck shivering and sopping wet.

It took a moment, struggling through the fog of pain, before Marsh realized what had happened. Klaus had dunked Marsh’s assailant in the sea. Marsh saw that Klaus’s forearms were wet, too.

“Dismissed,” said Klaus. The Kriegsmarine ratings fell over themselves to salute the SS-Obersturmführer and make themselves scarce.

Marsh turned to Klaus. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’ll wish I had let them finish you, if my sister changes her mind.” He strode away.

Marsh slumped against the cold hull. Beads of condensation, like the sweat of an iron leviathan, trickled down the plates to land in his hair and collar. He shivered. He sat there for a while, trying to get up the strength to find his cot, but his rubbery legs wouldn’t hold him.
Close call.

A new pair of boots sauntered across the deck. He didn’t look up; he knew from the stride that they encased boney ankles.

“See?” said Gretel. “You’re safe with me.”

“You might have sent him sooner.”

“It wouldn’t have had the same effect. The men fear you now, because they fear brother.”

16 May 1940

Bremerhaven, Germany

The mood on the boat was subdued during the approach and docking at Bremerhaven. Nobody gave Marsh any further trouble. Thus validating Gretel’s cruel calculus.

Exiting the U-boat meant climbing a ladder up to the hatch, then descending on a series of rungs welded to the outer hull. The beating made this difficult. Marsh found himself standing on a jetty within the U-boat pen, an immense shelter of reinforced concrete.

If France fell, French ports would give Kriegsmarine U-boats direct access to the Atlantic. But for now, Bremerhaven was Germany’s main base for U-boat operations in the North Sea and North Atlantic. As such, it had been designed to withstand direct hits from English bombers.

Marsh blinked, shielded his eyes. The klieg lights felt mercilessly bright after the shadows of U-115. The proximity of open ocean helped to flush the lingering odor of diesel from his nose. The ferroconcrete cavern shook with the rumble of idling engines and the clatter of heavy equipment. It echoed with the bark of orders and the harbor master’s announcements over the PA system.

He followed the siblings through the bustle. The Reichsbehörde had sent a car to retrieve Gretel and Klaus. The driver balked when he saw Marsh, but the scene unfolded much as it had at the beach. Gretel got her way.

The captain of their submarine called after them as Gretel climbed into the Mercedes. “Your cargo is taking up valuable space!”

Cargo? Something didn’t add up. The easy rendezvous, for starters.

She called back, “It stays where it is. I’ll retrieve it when I need it.”

Once they were settled in the car, Marsh asked, “What did he mean by
your
cargo?”

“Spare batteries,” she said. “My instructions were quite specific.”

Instructions?
A mole hadn’t arranged Gretel’s escape from the Admiralty. She’d arranged it herself.

“That miserable bastard lied to me.”

“Yes. But you’re here now. It’s all that matters.”

Liddell-Stewart was going to have a bad day when Marsh returned to England.

Traffic around the port was light during the first few hours of the new day. Soon they were on the open road, headed toward Weimar. Klaus snored through most of the drive. Marsh tried to sleep. But he couldn’t put his mind at rest, nor could he ignore the butterflies in his stomach. Each mile took him closer to the REGP. And then what?

Getting to von Westarp’s farm was the easiest part of this mission. Marsh could imagine—if he indulged in Will’s brand of naïve, wide-eyed optimism—that he’d find a way to destroy the farm. Gretel might help with that.

But destroying the farm wouldn’t be worth a tinker’s cuss if the paperwork didn’t disappear, too. It seemed to Marsh that Liddell-Stewart wanted the Reichsbehörde not just destroyed but
erased.
And the commander was quite certain the Schutzstaffel had a separate store of operational records pertaining to the REGP, and that those records were stored in the cellar of 9 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.

SS HQ. In Berlin.

But even if the SS accepted Marsh’s cover story as a British defector, it would keep a very close eye on him. It seemed rather unlikely he’d have the latitude to pop over to Berlin for a long weekend. Even less so that he’d be able to swan in to SS Haus and pinch their goodies.

Indeed. If he ever found himself on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, inside the deepest heart of the Third Reich, it almost certainly meant something had gone very, very wrong.

Gretel caught him staring at her. “Try to sleep. You have quite a day ahead of you.”

The sky faded from black to gray to blue as they neared Weimar. According to Stephenson’s dossier on von Westarp, the family farm stood roughly a dozen kilometers southwest of the town. Sunrise found them in a forest. The first light of day pierced dark stands of oak and ash, winter-naked boughs covered in a delicate fringe of greenery.

The road itself was tarmacadam. An odd thing for what must have been an old farm track. Somebody had replaced the original roadway with something more suitable for important visitors. Perhaps Himmler didn’t fancy bouncing along through ruts and mud.

When they emerged from the forest, the ring of tires on tarmac became the clatter of crushed gravel. The roadway of chalk white pebbles blazed in the sunrise like a silver ribbon. It crossed a wide clearing dotted with clumps of spring wildflowers. A wooden sign arced over the lane. It confirmed these were the grounds of the Reichsbehörde für die Erweiterung germanischen Potenzials: the Reich’s Authority for the Advancement of German Potential.

One could tell quite a bit about the narcissistic mastermind behind the REGP just from observing the layout. There, in the center, stood the farmhouse itself. Marsh recognized it from the half-burnt photograph he’d salvaged from Krasnopolsky’s valise in Tarragona. But it was larger than shown in the photo; it had grown along with the doctor’s stature within the Reich. The three-story farmhouse was the tallest building in a complex that comprised dozens of other structures. Wide windows adorned the farmhouse’s top floor. They enabled von Westarp to lord over his domain, figuratively if not literally.

The arrangement of the other buildings put Marsh in mind of ducklings huddled near their mother. Buildings that housed the REGP’s most important functions were situated closest to the farmhouse and, by extension, the doctor’s shadow. These included laboratories and a warehouse (battery storage or manufacture, Marsh surmised). The next set, a bit farther from von Westarp’s house, included an armory and barracks. The buildings that von Westarp deemed inconsequential—such as the pump house, icehouse, mess hall, and the infirmary for mundane soldiers—were relegated to the fringes of the compound.

The ground shook. Thunder boomed across the clearing. Small artillery.

As the Mercedes slowed along the final curve on the approach to the farmhouse, Marsh glimpsed an extensive training field through the gaps between the buildings. The overall layout was that of a large U. The farmhouse formed the base, the other buildings formed the arms, and the field filled the center. The top of the U abutted the forest.

Once again, Commander Liddell-Stewart’s intelligence proved spot on. Just who
was
that plug-ugly codger?

Marsh counted dozens of support staff members and mundane soldiers. If the commander’s intel held, he’d find the soldiers had been assigned to the REGP from the LSSAH, the elite SS unit spawned from Hitler’s personal guard.

They pulled up alongside the farmhouse. Klaus stretched and yawned; the artillery had awoken him. Their driver pulled the parking brake, then waited for the trio of passengers to emerge from the idling car.

Marsh gritted his teeth before following Gretel out of the car. His bruises were tender, and the long cramped ride and mounting anxiety had caused his knee to stiffen. He’d been too long without sleep. That, along with dehydration, had put a persistent dull throb behind his left temple. His eyes felt as though they’d been lubricated with a slurry of axle grease and sand. No amount of swallowing could wash away the bitter taste in his mouth. He knew that taste. It was fear.

The car clunked into gear and pulled away as soon as they were clear. In moments it passed again beneath the arch and continued into the surrounding forest.

Gretel took Marsh’s arm. She knew damn well that he didn’t dare shove her aside. Not here in her home territory. “So many introductions,” she said, looking up.

Three men—two in uniforms, the other in a dressing gown—peered down at them from a third-floor window. The man in the dressing gown was considerably older than he’d been in the single photograph Milkweed had been able to scrounge up. One of the uniformed men looked distinctly unhappy. A shimmer enveloped Klaus for the briefest of moments. Marsh thought he felt a flush of heat, but it dissipated too quickly to be certain.

Klaus muttered, “Swine fucker.” He entered the house.

Marsh followed, Gretel’s arm still linked in his. The soles of their boots clicked against pink marble. Sunlight glinted from the gilded balustrades of a wide staircase. The stairs adjoined a wraparound balcony. A rosette stained-glass window illuminated the landing at the top of the first flight. The window depicted a man in a white lab coat catching a lightning bolt. The swastikas didn’t match the style; later additions, obviously. Marsh suspected the original farmhouse had been more humble than this.

He followed the siblings past the grandiose stairwell. They passed a kitchen where a half-dozen women dressed a pair of game hens, sliced tomatoes, slathered marmalade on toast. Marsh caught a whiff of bitter coffee and eggs frying in bacon grease. His stomach did a somersault. He hadn’t known a breakfast like that since before the rationing. It didn’t surprise him that the doctor ate well. He wondered if the hens were for lunch or dinner.

He salivated at the prospect of eating meat more than once per week. But then he thought of Liv, and felt selfish.

The corridor beyond the kitchen was dusty, with a faint odor of formaldehyde. A window in one wall looked into what appeared to be a surgical ward. Shackles and straps dangled from the operating table, alongside a rack bristling with saws, drills, retractors, scalpels, and forceps. A neck brace and round clamp dotted with set screws topped one end of the table. Nearby stood an electrical console the size of a large armoire. A looped bundle of wires similar to those affixed to Klaus and Gretel hung from a hook on the console. It was tipped with a sharp wire probe.

Marsh had inspected Gretel’s wires after dosing her with ether on the passage from France to England. Her scalp, he remembered, was riddled with surgical scars.

She said, “This is the doctor’s personal laboratory. The original.”

A series of doors lined the corridor across from the laboratory. Marsh tried one, but it was locked.

“What’s in here?”

“Incubators,” said Klaus.

The servants’ stair was narrow and dark. No marble, no stained glass, no gilded balusters. They had to wait at the bottom while a woman descended. Her porcelain-pale skin made her look like a phantom compared to Klaus and Gretel’s darker complexions. The newcomer mouthed something to Klaus as she jogged down the final few stairs.