Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (49 page)

I didn’t like doing it. Poor lad was just doing his job. But so was I. And mine was far more important.

“Help me get him inside.” We dragged the half-conscious sentry into the cell. There was nothing we could do about the blood smears. I pushed Will into the corridor, then slammed and locked the cell behind us.

“You shouldn’t have done this, Pip. They—”

But I was already headed for the exit. “Get to my house, as quickly as you can,” I said. We jogged up a flight of stairs.

Will panted along behind me. “What’s happened?”

“Gretel’s gone. Slipped away the instant I couldn’t spare the time to stop her.” We reached the top. I slowed to a rapid walk, lest our haste draw undue attention from the sentry posted outside.

“And you think she’s headed to Walworth?”

“Try to think like Gretel for a moment. Who would she blame for the failure of her power?”

Will inhaled. “Oh, no.”

We emerged from the citadel. Sunset shimmered on recent puddles scattered around Horse Guards Parade. I drew fresh rain-scrubbed air into my lungs. The sentry nodded at me. I ignored him.

I laid a hand on Will’s shoulder, as though I could physically propel him across the river. “Don’t let Liv out of your sight. Go!”

And off he went. Gretel had been to our house just once, in the dark. But twenty years from now, in a future that didn’t exist, Liv had shown her Agnes’s evacuation tag. It had our home address on it. I knew how Gretel worked; that was all she needed. But her ghastly wires and German accent would raise suspicions. She would have to traverse the city with care, while Will could go directly to the house. I hoped it was enough.

The puddles splashed the cuffs of my trousers. I crossed the road toward the checkpoint at St. James’. Two sentries manned the gate. They eyed my scars and carpetbag.

One of the men stepped into my path, rifle held across his chest. “Can’t let you through, sir. Password?”

“Habakkuk,” I told him. And to his companion: “Rookery.” They stepped aside.

Funny how the big things change, yet the little things stay the same.

Once through the checkpoint, I had the run of the place. The warlocks hadn’t returned from their deadly errands, and my younger self still napped in the Admiralty. The others wouldn’t start filing in until evening.

Milkweed’s staging area differed from what I remembered of a cold December night in a nonexistent history. I had to search around a bit before I found the hut from which the warlocks would carry out the negotiation. The Dingo came as a surprise. So, too, did the bulkiness of the pixies. I remembered them being light enough for two men to carry.

A workbench sat in the middle of the hut. The bench held a piece of Portland limestone. Just as I remembered, an iron chisel had been driven into the stone, at the center of a bloody handprint. A sledgehammer rested on the bench, ready to finish the job of cleaving the stone.

But I didn’t care about any of that. The object I sought was hidden under the bench: a box of blood samples. The Eidolons had to perceive the men to move them. The box contained a sample from each of the soldiers, plus one for the unlucky warlock who had to initiate the return trip.

Everything I’d worked for boiled down to the contents of this box. A few additions, one subtraction, and then I’d have to sit and wait for the aftermath.

To the box of blood samples I added the rag my doppelgänger had lifted from Germany, and the contents of the cigar box from Stephenson’s office. The warlocks would get a bloody great surprise when they teleported the strike teams to Africa. That had been my epiphany: rather than agonize over how to breach the warlocks’ protection, the solution was to get them to do my work for me.

Next, I sifted through the soldiers’ samples. One of these belonged to my younger self. I could exclude him from the transit to Africa simply by removing his sample from the group. No need to shoot him in the knee …

Or so I thought. But the soldiers’ samples weren’t labeled.

I shook with the effort not to bellow with rage.

I’d already known I couldn’t leave the park. Couldn’t race to Liv’s side, couldn’t join up with Will to intercept Gretel. Because I had to stay here, prepared to ambush any surviving warlocks who returned from the accidental jaunt to North Africa.

But I also couldn’t remove my counterpart’s blood sample from the roster of travelers. Stephenson could, but the old man would do so only if his protégé were incapacitated. Raybould Marsh had to be badly wounded, and Stephenson had to see it.

All of which meant I had no choice but to hobble him if I wanted to prevent the birth of another soulless child. Little things stay the same … God damn it. Because I also wanted to send my younger self to Walworth, to protect our wife. The anxiety had me grinding my teeth and flinching when pain lanced from my broken molar.

But I had to trust Will. He’d once confessed to me the depths of his affection for Liv. He wouldn’t let Gretel near her.

So I had no choice but to retreat to a mulberry grove in a distant corner of the enclosed parkland. There I massaged my aching knee and waited for my doppelgänger to arrive.

*

The staging ground came to life as evening fell. Three teams converged on three separate Nissen huts. A pair of snipers passed Marsh’s tent, Enfield rifles slung over the shoulders of their ghillie suits. The spotters carried submachine guns. Every man had rubbed his face with burnt cork, even the drivers for the Dingos. Every man wore a sticking plaster over a small scratch on the back of his left hand.

Marsh couldn’t make out the snipers’ banter as they receded into the shadows—the balaclavas muffled their voices—but he recognized the tone of false bravado. Each man banished the collywobbles in his own way. Most sought camaraderie. Marsh had chosen to be alone in the final minutes before the negotiation began.

Ding.
A bell chimed. The five minute mark, calling teams into their final positions.

He double-checked his kit. The ritual enabled him to overcome the growing pain in his bad knee. He chewed another aspirin tablet and focused on counting his gear: One combat knife, six-inch blade. Six Mills bombs. Four white phosphorus grenades. One Enfield double-action revolver (No. 2, Mk. I). Five six-round cylinders for same. One Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle (No. 4, Mk. I). Five ten-round magazines for same. One electric torch. One garrote. One Very pistol with three magnesium flares. One compass. One medkit. One canteen.

Marsh shrugged into the shoulder straps of the haversack. Then he stuffed a few extra cylinders and magazines into the webbing pockets of his belt, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and stepped from the tent into shadows and humidity. Blackout on a summer night.

Ding. Ding.
Three minutes.

Footsteps whispered through grass nearby as other team members scrambled for their final positions. A breeze rustled the cattails along the water’s edge. Ripples lapped gently against the shoreline. The cloy of spilled petrol from a fueling mishap involving one of the Dingos overlaid the earthier scents of mud and water.

Marsh turned for the Nissen hut where Stephenson, Lorimer, and the warlocks had converged. A figure emerged from the shadows behind the tent. The newcomer blocked Marsh’s path.

Marsh said, “It’s starting. Get to your team.”

The silhouette replied, in a familiar rasp, “We need to talk.”

“How the hell did you get in here?”

“You should talk to the old man about changing his password protocols.”

“Your sense of timing is one for the books, mate. Have you any idea what’s about to happen?”

“Better than you.” Starlight glinted on the barrel of a pistol in the commander’s hand. “You mustn’t go.”

Marsh froze in the act of reaching for his own sidearm. “You’re barmier than Gretel if you think I’ll sit this out. After everything I went through? After what you and she
put
me through? We’re within a hairsbreadth of finishing this. And now you want me to step aside?”

A door creaked. A brief flash of light tore the darkness. The shrieks and rumbles of Enochian leaked out with the light. The old man’s voice bellowed across the park. “Raybould! For God’s sake, get your arse in here!”

Liddell-Stewart cocked the revolver. “Cry out. Stephenson must believe you’re injured. He has to eject you from the team.”

Marsh said, “You wouldn’t dare.” He raised his voice. “On my way, sir!”

“Damn it,” said the commander. “There’s no time for explanation. But I’m trying to help you, you stubborn git.”

Stephenson again called into the darkness. “We can’t wait any longer. We have to do it now. Hurry!”

Then the door creaked again, and yellow light fell briefly upon the trampled grass of St. James’ as Stephenson went inside. The Enochian call-and-response hit a crescendo. The door slammed. Darkness rippled.

Marsh prepared to dash around the commander, but Liddell-Stewart raised the revolver. He aimed at Marsh’s knee. “You’ll thank me for this later,” he said.

The hairs on Marsh’s arms crackled with ghostly static. The air turned icy cold, bubbling with greasy unreality and malign disdain. The Eidolons had seen him.

The commander’s eyes widened in surprise. He felt it, too. “No! Blood—”

He pulled the trigger at the same instant the Eidolons sheared the here-and-now from Marsh’s body. He was a hole in space, an impossible bifurcation slithering through the mortar of the universe. He tried to brace himself, but he was—

*

Will sprinted along the Mall, away from the Citadel and toward the strongpoint erected in Admiralty Arch. Trafalgar Square, just a few seconds beyond the arch for a man running full tilt, was his best bet of finding a taxi.

He wouldn’t let Marsh down. He couldn’t fail Liv—she’d called him her champion. After everything they’d been through, together and separately, fates intertwined through the bonds of braided fate and historical paradox …
Just one more time,
thought Will,
let me be her champion again.

Rain puddles splashed his trousers. Every stride squelched water from the sodden leather of his shoes. He hadn’t run since university; the stitch in his side felt like a nail in his kidney. Or was that his appendix?

He couldn’t bear the thought of harm befalling Olivia. Just once, he wanted her to look on him not with bemusement and sisterly affection, but something else.

Will drew odd glances from the bored Home Guard volunteers manning the strongpoint’s machine gun. The Führer had indefinitely postponed preparations for Sea Lion last autumn, but most of London’s invasion preparations remained in place. So the HG men had nothing better to do than to lounge on the sandbag revetments and watch the gangly fellow in the mud-splashed bespoke suit.

One called, “Where’s the fire, guv?”

The last rays of sunset illuminated Nelson’s Column. Will panted up to the first taxi he saw, opened the suicide door, collapsed into the rear seat. He had to catch his breath before he could recite Liv’s address for the driver. His throat felt like sandpaper. “I’ll pay double if you get me there in ten.”

“You’re on.” The driver wheeled his taxi around the Trafalgar, boomeranging back toward the river.

Will sank back, closed his eyes. He felt for his billfold. But, of course, his pockets were empty. They’d been empty since the night Hargreaves had caught him out.

“Ah,” said Will. “Ha. Oh, my. Hi, hi, driver. This is embarrassing. I’m afraid I’ve misplaced my billfold.”

The car skidded to a crooked halt on the pavement just short of Waterloo. The screech of tires drew an angry glance from a bobby standing on Victoria Embankment.

“Sorry,” said the driver. He killed the engine. “Can’t help you.”

“I assure you I’m good for it.”

“Not right now you isn’t.”

“This is a matter of life and death, man!”

“That’s life in wartime, mate.”

“Look, I’ll give you my name and my address—”

“Oh, I know your type. Too rich to pay for a taxi ride. The war makes a good excuse for shorting the help, don’t it? I’m surprised you’re in the city at all. Probably got a nice funk hole out in the country.”

Will said, “Sir, I understand your frustration. I promise you that my brother—”

“Out,” said the driver. “Out now, or I call that copper over here.”

“Did I say double? Triple! Please.”

The driver rolled down his window. He waved at the bobby. “Oy! Over here.”

Will sighed. Not only was he without his billfold, he didn’t have his Identity Card on him, either. He’d never get to Liv’s house in time if the police questioned him.

“Very well, very well. I’m off. See? I’m stepping out now.”

The taxi pulled away, probably to return to the taxi stand at Trafalgar. Will approached the iron girders of the temporary replacement for the demolished Waterloo Bridge. “Temporary” being a relative term; the original Waterloo had been closed for years before Will entered university.

He’d find another taxi. He hated to do it, but he’d have to wait to discover his billfold missing until after he’d already arrived at Liv’s.

Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. Will turned.

The bobby said, “Sir. A moment, please.”

*

—too late, I was real again.

That made the fourth time I’d been disassembled and then reassembled by the Eidolons, but the first time it had happened by accident. The journey from ’63 still topped the list in terms of residual misery, but accidental teleportation came damn close.

I stumbled. The ground crunched underfoot. The soft grass of St. James’ Park had become a precarious scree of sandy gravel mixed with large jagged stones. I scraped my hand open when I reached out to catch myself. My tumble kicked up plumes of dust that coated my eyeballs with grit. I exhaled the last traces of humid, verdant parkland, and inhaled the smell of dry desolation. The air was cool, but the stony earth reradiated the day’s surplus of sunlight.

The Eidolons had deposited us into the talus at the base of a towering escarpment. Dim starlight and the setting half moon showed the craggy cliffs to be riddled with narrow ravines. The mouth of Halfaya Pass leered at us like a gap-toothed hag. The escarpment formed a natural border, and barrier, between the Egyptian coastal lowlands—where the roads were—and the Libyan plateau, which stood hundreds of feet higher. Halfaya was the only means near the coast of driving heavy armor from Egypt to Libya. Other routes meant long diversions to the south.