Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (44 page)

He dialed a single number. An internal line. “Dickie. John here. Send up a pair of sailors, won’t you?”

They tossed Marsh into a cell in the citadel.

5 December 1940

Admiralty Citadel, London, England

The bladder gurgled gently in its hiding place at the crook of Will’s elbow. It wasn’t audible over the whirr of the ventilation system, the bang of slammed doors, the echo of footsteps, and the clatter of a Teletype. Sound ricocheted along the citadel’s bare concrete corridors as easily as shell shrapnel through aspic.

He handed his identification papers to a sentry. The marine was a stocky fellow who, judging from the time he took to study Will and his papers, took his responsibilities seriously. Will feigned boredom and poise, meanwhile wondered which, if any, of the doors he’d seen on the way down held Marsh the Younger.

The marine waved Will along. Will passed through a sally port to the deepest, darkest heart of the citadel. The air here scraped rather than flowed across Will’s skin. The Eidolons’ displeasure had imbued it with the moist sandpaper texture of a cat’s tongue.

Tonight’s rotation put White in charge of the negotiation, with Grafton as his second, and Webber on map and Teletype duty. Will and the others were to stand by and join in as necessary, depending on the flow of the negotiation. But Will had volunteered to spell Grafton, who had vomited blood and broken snail shells in the aftermath of the Eidolons’ burst of displeasure last time around.

The Teletype clattered. Paper tape spooled from the machine. Webber moved map pins in accordance with what he read on the tape.

Will took his place alongside White. The older warlock launched into Enochian, cutting himself as he did so. Will provided the expected chants at the appropriate times, like a parishioner attending a demonic High Church service.

The vial in White’s lap contained several thermometers’ worth of mercury. Will had been among those who painstakingly recovered the liquid metal, one tiny silvery bead at a time, from the previous negotiation attempts. It made more sense than continually destroying thermometers and barometers. Otherwise, by springtime, at the rate Will was sabotaging negotiations, the Met Office wouldn’t have anything left for forecasting the weather.

Will nudged the stopcock hidden beneath his wristwatch. He feigned the motion of cutting his palm, simultaneously using a gentle squeeze of the elbow to squirt a trace of pig’s blood into the cup of his hand. He flicked his tainted contribution into the circle.

A hand clamped on his wrist.

Will tried to pull away, but Hargreaves twisted his arm to expose the rubber tube still dribbling animal blood.

“I knew it,” he said.

Sweat instantly dampened the undersides of Will’s arms. His forehead, too. This was the very thing he’d feared. They executed traitors.

Will blurted, “Listen, this isn’t what you think. I’m not a traitor.” But of course it was. And, technically, he was.

Webber abandoned the Teletype and smoothly took Will’s place in the circle. The negotiation continued without interruption while Hargreaves forced Will from the room.

Stephenson was waiting in the corridor. He shook his head as though weighing a personal tragedy.

“You were right,” said Hargreaves. He used his own pocketknife to slice open Will’s shirtsleeve. Stephenson grabbed Will’s arm to inspect the bladder.

He said, “Why, Beauclerk?”

Will didn’t know what to say. His racing mind couldn’t find the magic incantation that would release him. There wasn’t one. He repeated, “This isn’t what you think.”

“I believe it’s exactly what I think,” said Stephenson.

Together, Stephenson and Hargreaves frog-marched Will away from the negotiation chamber. They brought him to a steel door. Hargreaves tied Will’s hands behind his back while Stephenson produced a brass key. He twisted it in the lock; the corridor lights glinted on the lustrous finish of the brass.

Stephenson heaved on the door, using his body weight to lever it open. He beckoned into the shadows. Marsh stepped out, blinking and shielding his eyes from the bright light of the corridor.

“Your story checks out,” said Stephenson.

Marsh stared at him. Then he noticed Hargreaves, looking triumphant, and Will, who stood with shoulders slumped with his hands behind his back. “Will?”

“Pip! You—”

—
must trust the commander,
he wanted to say. But Stephenson clapped his hand over his mouth.

The old man said, “Gag him.”

Hargreaves removed his own necktie. The warlock shoved it between Will’s teeth and tied the loose ends behind his head. It tasted of the starch in Hargreaves’s collar. The salt from stale neck sweat stung the corners of Will’s mouth, where the skin had split open. The old warlock tasted of rancid strawberries.

Stephenson shoved him into the cell just vacated by Marsh. Marsh asked, “What happened?”

“Liddell-Stewart was right after all,” said Stephenson. “We’ve found his Jerry infiltrator.”

“Trust the commander,” Will tried to say. But it came out as muffled gibberish. When the reverberating clang of the cell door finally died away, he could hear the rush of blood through his ears and the whisper of his breath through the silk of Hargreaves’s necktie.

29 December 1940

Bermondsey, London, England

Central London burned while I paced the ruins of yet another warehouse. Jerry’s raids had come less frequently as December weather settled in, but old Göring wouldn’t let the year end quietly. Seemed like they’d doubled up on incendiaries this time around. The worst fires were a few miles to my west, near the center of London. They cast an infernal glow on low passing clouds and the smoke smudges of antiaircraft flak.

Smoke wafted from the barrel where I’d started a smaller fire of my own. It rode a cold wind through gaping holes in the ceiling and the jumble of crumpled beams at the far end of the bay. The cold made me shiver; the smoke burned my eyes. I wrapped myself in an army surplus blanket from the Great War. It stank of motor oil. I tossed the last of von Westarp’s journals into the flames.

Embers of the burning city spiraled up into the night like departed souls, following the paths slashed into the darkness by the sway of searchlights. I wondered what would be left of the city, come morning. The Blitz had made it damn difficult to find undamaged properties near the docks. My original hiding spot had long ago succumbed to the raids. I’d moved twice since then.

Somewhere, deep beneath the wail and warble of sirens, deeper even than the crump of distant explosions, I imagined the chthonic rumble of Enochian echoing through tonight’s conflict. Somewhere, in a citadel near the center of the furnace, the warlocks had convened. Had they succeeded? Would they blunt the sharpest edges of this attack?

“Are they using the Eidolons tonight?”

Gretel didn’t answer. During a momentary lull in the wind and the ack-acks, I heard a faint
tink-slap
when she flipped another coin.

“What happens tomorrow?”

Gretel ignored my taunt. She sat a few feet away, behind the glass partition of the foreman’s office. The braids were gone, replaced with wild, tangled snarls. Sometimes she woke up screaming.

Her battery had to be dead by now. Couldn’t get her to part with it, though. I tried to remove it while she napped, but the crazy bint looked ready to scratch my eyes out when she caught me.

I didn’t bother with her bandages. They were her problem. Will couldn’t fault me if she died writhing in pain from an infection. It was better than she deserved.

Tink. Slap.
She never looked at the coins. Just flipped them.

I could have watched her for hours. Sometimes I did. It was perfectly delicious, her slide into ruin. I savored it as another man might savor fine red wine and the darkest Belgian chocolate.

And therein lay my mistake. I’d been so busy gloating over Gretel’s disintegration that I hadn’t paid much mind for the first couple of days after Will disappeared. Only after I started watching his flat did I realize he hadn’t been home in days. And he wouldn’t have toddled off to Bestwood without alerting me. Which left one conclusion.

Will’s capture changed things. I had no access to the warlocks. They were safe and snug in their armored citadel. Where, if I knew Stephenson, they’d also be keeping Will. If they’d kept him in the Admiralty cellar, as in the old days, I might have had a chance. But I didn’t. I couldn’t get near them. And without Will spiking their efforts, the warlocks were now free to wreak their unnatural influence on the war. How long before they became permanently entrenched in my country’s defense?

All my efforts would amount to nothing if I couldn’t get to the warlocks.

I spent weeks pacing the warehouse like a caged animal, my repeated thoughts eroding channels in the pathways of my mind. There had to be something I could do. I twined a bloody cloth around my fingers, wondering if I’d ever have a chance to use it.

Another brace of explosions rattled joists in the warehouse roof. I paused, listening for the grating moan of tortured metal on metal. But the roof didn’t collapse on us. The thrum of wind through the loose rafters matched the tension vibrating through my aching muscles.

After everything I’d done, everything I’d endured, I’d come so close to fulfilling my mission only to have it all fall apart. But I knew better than to blame Will. This had happened because I’d laid too much responsibility on him. He wasn’t trained for subterfuge. Wasn’t built for it. Thanks to me, he was now in great danger, but I couldn’t help him.

I thought long and hard about approaching my younger self. My advice had steered him right; von Westarp’s farm was no more. Surely I might parlay that into a bit of trust? How would he take it if I revealed my true name and purpose to him?

But it was moot. For by now Stephenson hadn’t merely confirmed my doppelgänger’s tale about the devastation of the REGP. He’d also verified there was no Liddell-Stewart associated with the service—nobody who matched my description, however remotely. “Lieutenant-Commander Liddell-Stewart” was, doubtless, a person of extremely high interest to MI6. Already twice I’d barely escaped their net. Just as with the warlocks, I couldn’t get anywhere near my younger self. Or Liv. And while my younger self might have entertained my warning about the danger posed by the warlocks, his superiors wouldn’t. If they caught me, it was all over.

So now I was stuck in the cold, with no foreseeable end, a fugitive from my own government, harboring a useless Nazi ex-precog who could barely bathe herself. The woman I loved had been reunited with her husband; my long-lost daughter reunited with her father. Yet I couldn’t even take solace in the belief my little girl would have a long happy life, because every day Milkweed’s warlocks pushed the world a little bit closer to that screaming oblivion I still heard in my dreams. And there was nothing I could do about it except hide and watch all my efforts crumble.

God forgive me, but I found myself wishing Gretel would weigh in with her advice. Perhaps she sensed it. She looked at me, and started weeping again.

interlude: gretel
Olivia cannot be alive. She can’t be alive. She can’t be alive. She can’t be alive. Can’t be alive. Can’t be can’t be can’t be can’t be can’t why is Raybould’s tart whore still alive when it’s impossible? Impossible things don’t happen therefore it didn’t because William is lying yes he’s lying because she saw William say
I don’t know how to tell you this
I’ve kept you
I’m sorry, Pip, so very sorry
long enough
to have to tell you
go home
they went to Coventry
to your wife
where they thought they’d be safe, we all did
and daughter
but we were terribly wrong
no no no that’s not what he said she had it all planned and then he didn’t say what she saw him say she saw him deliver the news and Raybould
screamed and
said are you sure everything is all right
crumpled with grief there on the floor of William’s flat
yes of course now go home and say hello to Olivia
and she held him while he cried and he tried to knock her away
thanks for this Will
but she forgave him because he was overcome with sorrow and
I’ll see you soon
she’s been hit before and knows how to shrug it aside
.

She sent the planes to
Williton
Coventry that happened because she remembers it.

Why wasn’t that tart whore killed in Coventry? Why isn’t Olivia dead with her freckles and her forehead and her hair and her smell and baby and nose that ran in the cipher future in the corridor outside Raybould’s hospital room where she wept over lost opportunities and the death of love and they talked about the wedding in a garden and Olivia still carried the evacuation tag but why isn’t she dead like her future love for Raybould and she is impolite and selfish and she should be dead and its very very rude that she’s not.

Her legs hurt under the bandages and and she can’t remember how the blisters got there and they hurt very much but she never hurt before even when they tried to control her with the hurt did the doctor and Pabst and others in the cipher future at a place called Arzamas but she went somewhere else somewhere else in her head where they couldn’t follow and they failed always they failed.

Raybould tries to take her battery she doesn’t let him she needs it needs it to see the coin shining
heads tails
spinning
tails
up
heads
up
tails
up
heads
spinning
heads
tails
shining
heads
down
tails
down
heads
down
tails
heads
tails
she will not look no she’s not wrong she just won’t look and then she won’t be wrong and everything will be the way she planned it once Olivia is dead the coins will be right and everything will be back to the proper path but the fog hides the coins hides both sides and makes them blurry.