Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (25 page)

“Marsh,” said Will. The commander missed a step, nearly tumbled to the pavement. But he caught his balance. Turned, slowly. A strange expression had crossed his face.

Will asked, “Where is he?”

Liddell-Stewart hesitated. He seemed unsure for a moment, almost relieved, as though he’d been expecting Will to ask a different question.

“I couldn’t begin to guess,” said the commander.

9 June 1940

Reichsbehörde für die Erweiterung germanischen Potenzials

The betrayal happened while Marsh was eating breakfast.

Buhler had just led Kammler away on his leash, leaving Marsh a few free minutes to tuck into his eggs. They were still warm; he was getting better with Kammler.

“Yes. That’s him.”

Gretel’s voice. Marsh looked up. She stood in the entryway of the mess hall, pointing at him. Pabst stood behind her. They were accompanied by an SS-hauptsturmführer whom Marsh didn’t recognize.

Elsewhere, the sound of a table sliding back. Marsh took a quick glance over his shoulder. Two mundane soldiers had circled behind him.

He looked again at the captain with Gretel. The patch on the bottom of his left sleeve differed from what Marsh had become accustomed to seeing at the farm. Two letters inside a black diamond:
SD
.

The officer was from the Sicherheitsdienst RFSS: the SS security service. Party intelligence.

Gretel looked straight at Marsh and said, “He’s a spy.”

The SD officer barked an order. “Bring him.”

The soldiers grabbed Marsh’s arms before he had time to realize what was happening. A little crowd gathered outside to watch while the SD man had him bound and dragged to a black Mercedes idling alongside the farmhouse.

Reinhardt paused in the middle of another training session. He watched with arms crossed. His mouth twisted into a smirk.

Buhler and a trio of technicians abandoned their conversation. Kammler saw Marsh. Clapped. Tried to say his name. “Mmm— muh— mmm.”

Von Westarp watched it all from the window of his study atop the farmhouse. The last thing Marsh saw, before the bag went over his head, was Gretel. Winking at him.

It was a long, dark ride to Berlin.

nine

9 June 1940

Walworth, London, England

“Haven’t you been a perfect stranger!” Liv threw her arms around Will and gave him a hug. Agonizingly brief. Yet long enough to convey the tickle of her hair, the milkiness her skin. He tried to overcome the twinges of envy toward Marsh. Tried, for the thousandth time, not to imagine the body beneath her dress.

He returned the hug as chastely as he could manage. “I’ve been out of town.” His voice cracked. “Traveling quite a bit, in fact.” He dared to look at her, truly look at her. “You are lovely as always, my dear.”

Liv blushed and looked away. “You’d say that if I were draped in sackcloth and ashes.”

“And it would be equally true.”

Liv gasped at the sight of his injured hand. She hadn’t seen him since before he’d lost the fingertip. “William, what have you done to yourself this time?”

The question didn’t register because Liv was touching his hand, and the waves of heat pulsing from the gentle contact softened his knees like candle wax. Her brows tugged together in a frown that creased her freckled skin, a rough and devastating thing that ripped the breath from his chest.

Will remembered himself before she caught him staring. He pulled his hand away, though he hated to do it.

“What, this old war wound? I think I’ve already told you, haven’t I? Bashed myself with a spade.”

Liv bit her lip, as though unsure of whether to laugh or frown. “Will, that was a month ago. This injury’s fresh.”

“Yes, well, we
are
at war. And Hitler still plans to do us in with gardening mishaps.”

She laughed because he wanted her to, and because they both knew it, and because hers was a kind heart. It was a selfish thing to do. But that laugh … He’d feel guilty later. Guiltier.

“You haven’t met our daughter yet.”

“She hadn’t arrived, last I saw you.” When last they’d seen each other, a month earlier, Liv had been in labor. Will had escorted her to the hospital because her husband the spy was in France at the time, though she believed he had gone to America. Will had hastily packed a bag for her.

“I’ve never thanked you properly for that,” said Liv. “You were my champion, Will.”

He followed her to the den, where a baby-shaped bundle of blankets rested in a bassinet. Liv bent over the bassinet; Will’s gaze lingered on her backside for a moment before he tore his attention away. Long enough to revive the memory of packing for her. Long enough to cause shameful speculation about the undergarments currently beneath her dress.

Will cleared his throat. “It was my pleasure.”

Liv cradled her daughter. The baby yawned, shifted. Quietly, Liv said, “This is Agnes. Say hello to your Uncle William, baby girl.”

Agnes was tiny, and fragile, and utterly foreign. Will couldn’t fancy himself a father. Couldn’t fancy himself a husband, for that matter. He supposed that nobody who knew him could imagine such a thing. And so he’d never had a Liv. Probably never would.

Will and Liv chatted, over watery tea, of matters small and large, profound and inconsequential. Less than a week after its conclusion, the Miracle at Dunkirk was still fresh on everybody’s minds and lips. Almost 340,000 British and French soldiers had made it off the beach. They had left most of their equipment behind, but that could be replaced. People couldn’t.

When the opportunity presented itself, Will asked, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, “And speaking of not seeing people in ages, where is your dashing husband? He’s been rather scarce these past few weeks.”

Liv fussed with Agnes while her lower lip trembled with the struggle to contain something. She took a shaky breath before answering him. And when her hazel eyes shimmered like puddles during a rainstorm, Will knew her smile was fragile as spun sugar. One tear would dissolve it.

It skewered him, this momentary glimpse at her sorrow.

“Off again to America. I tell you, I don’t know what the Foreign Office would do without him.”

Will inquired further, as gently and casually as he could manage. She confirmed her husband had departed late on the thirteenth. The night of the prisoner’s spectacular rescue from the Admiralty cellar. Coincidence or cause and effect? Either way, it was disconcerting.

He wished he could read Liv more effectively. Had Marsh lied to her, or was she lying for him?

“Well,” said Will, “at least he’s safely across the Atlantic. Seems as if the States are the only part of the world not stuck in this war.” Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America all were touched by the conflict, which promised to surpass the Great War in scope and suffering. “Aside from the Antarctic, I suppose.”

He had to make her smile again. “Now that I’m in London again it would be my pleasure to visit more regularly. I imagine it must be lonely without Pip making noise in the garden.”

The hesitation was so slight that Will thought he might have imagined it. “That would be brilliant. Cheers, Will.”

*

The garden gate had come unlatched, so when Will took his leave of Liv, she asked him to go out through the back and close the gate on his way. He was happy to oblige. It gave him a chance to duck into Marsh’s garden shed in the hopes of finding some clue as to where, and why, he had disappeared. But if some clue had indeed been hidden in the arrangement of tools and sacks of potting soil, it was lost on him. Certainly there was nothing so straightforward as a note. The gate gave off a tooth-shaking squeal when he pulled it closed, loud enough to scare off the Jerries.

Back at the Admiralty, Will reported to Stephenson.

“As you feared, Marsh departed late on the thirteenth, or very early the fourteenth. The night of the escape. According to Liv he’d been sent back to the States.”

“By whom?”

Will shrugged. “Foreign Office. The same cover he used when you sent him to France, yes?”

“He could be anywhere.”

“Yes.”

Stephenson said, “The observation team reported a visitor to his house late that night and some activity. I’d convinced myself he’d been snatched by the Jerries, Gretel and her rescuer.” He crushed a cigarette in the marble ashtray on his desk. Ashes drifted across the blotter. “But if he had time to tell his wife he was off again…”

“Yes.” Will shook his head. “I refuse to believe he’s turned on us.”

“I don’t know what to think.”

An alarming confession from the old man. He and Marsh were quite close. Will stood to leave, not wanting to intrude on Stephenson’s anxiety.

“Good work, Beauclerk. Go mind your ducklings.”

Will hesitated, debating whether he ought to tell Stephenson about the visit from Lieutenant-Commander Liddell-Stewart. “Something else?”

Will remembered Stephenson’s words from the previous day:
Let me worry about the blood.
And the commander’s words from earlier that morning:
It will be worse.

The commander might have been winding him up. And what reason was there to trust him? None. And yet the things that man knew … What if he were right about the blood prices? What if the doubt that chewed at Will every quiet night as he crisscrossed the country had been gnawing on the truth? Will decided to wait. Just for now.

To cover for his hesitation, Will said, “Any problems with the new recruits?”

“The day is young,” said Stephenson. “How long until they’re ready to contribute?”

“We must collate our individual lexicons and journals, to bring them into agreement. It could be rather perilous otherwise. Inconsistencies would play merry hob with the negotiations. Merry and deadly, I would wager.”

“How long?”

“Difficult work. A few weeks? Perhaps a month.”

“Damn,” said Stephenson. He bowed his head, rubbed his forehead. “Not as soon as I’d like.”

But in fact …

“Do you remember the day Pip returned from France?” Will asked. “I’d been on my way to find you.”

Stephenson looked up, his eyes bright for the first time since Will had returned to the city. “Yes! You said you’d been cooking up a way to find Marsh.”

Will had been worried Marsh might have been caught up in the invasion of France. He wanted to know if his friend had found himself on the wrong side of the front.

Will nodded. “Yes. It might not have worked, had we tried it then. But it should be straightforward now. The Eidolons have seen his blood.”

Not only that, but when they did see Marsh, the Eidolons gave him a name. Maybe Pendennis or Hargreaves or one of the others could make sense of that.

“Excellent. Make it happen as soon as you can. Come straight to me with any problems. I’ll ensure you get what you need.”

Will took his leave of the old man. What would it cost, this effort to find his missing friend? He’d see the price paid, if it meant an end to Liv’s misery. But would it be the beginning of the descent? Is this what the commander warned him about?
It will be worse.…

17 June 1940

Westminster, London, England

I’ve killed for my country. Oh, yes.

I once strangled a man with a garrote and my bare hands. Shot another in the temple the same afternoon. But it was war, and they were the enemy. A thin comfort when caught without a coat in a cold autumn rainstorm, or all the times I woke in the middle of the night to find Liv’s side of the bed cold and empty. But there it was. And I’ve never killed a countryman, though I suppose Cattermole’s shade might disagree. I’ve been many things, but never a murderer. But now, watching the people coming and going from the Savoy, I wondered if that was soon to change.

Age and ruin lay heavy over the man I’d been following. He walked with a peculiar shuffling gait, as though one leg bone had fused to his hip. His arm swung listlessly; I’d watched him long enough to suspect it was dead, or lame. I’d contrived to get a solid look at him earlier in the afternoon when he took his leisure in the Savoy’s tearoom. His good hand, the one that wasn’t shriveled inside a leather glove, was ribbed with fine white scars.

A doorman tipped his hat, opened a door for the warlock. I checked my watch, memorized the time, and tossed another handful of crumbs to the pigeons at my feet.

I wondered how he’d rated a room at the Savoy. He appeared to be one of the oldest warlocks. Perhaps they did things by seniority. That was consistent with what I remembered of Will’s interactions with them, and my own. Either way, for a reclusive misanthrope—and weren’t they all, these sorcerers?—he certainly seemed to be enjoying the accommodations. Probably had the others staying in hovels over in Limehouse, bloody hypocrite.

His name started with a P. He’d died of a heart attack in August of 1940. Killed by the strain of keeping the Jerries’ invasion fleet out of the English Channel. Will’s warlocks had been running round-the-clock negotiations that summer.

He was, in short, a bloody dangerous bastard. He knew Enochian; he could talk to the Eidolons. He carried knowledge that would one day destroy the world if it became the tool of Whitehall.

I didn’t
want
to kill my countrymen. Even twisted old codgers like these. But I wouldn’t have to kill them immediately, if Will fed me the information I needed to sabotage the negotiations. Stephenson would give up on the warlocks right quick if they failed to deliver results. They’d still be around in case of emergency.

Once my counterpart carried out his mission at von Westarp’s farm, the warlocks would become superfluous. The key was to ensure that Whitehall never embraced “Enochian realpolitik.” For now, I’d start by discrediting the warlocks. Later, after they had been cast out and were no longer worthy of Whitehall’s attention, I’d kill them.

Which is why I’d been tailing this warlock for the past four days. Like the warlock before him, and the warlocks I’d study after him. Learning his routine, seeing how he made his way to the Admiralty and back, picking out his protection. (Blue fedora, gray trousers, shoulder rig. Flat cap, coveralls, pistol tucked behind the breast panel.)