The Coldest War (22 page)

Klaus sighed. He wanted to return to his books. But he knew this was inevitable. Marsh was obsessed with Gretel; naturally he'd use Klaus as his Rosetta stone. Klaus would never be his own person. He would always be, first and foremost, Gretel's brother. She wove her webs too tightly; the strands stuck fast, and nothing he did would ever scrape them clear. The watercolor obsession was a petty, pointless rebellion. Still, it was his. As long as he had it, he refused to despair. He had to start small.

Roger came in as they stepped out. He said to Marsh, “It's clear, boss.”

They startled a pair of starlings. The garden occupied the entire lot behind both houses. Ivy carpeted the brick wall around the garden. (Jade. Vermilion. How to create such colors?) Klaus knew the wall itself was topped with glass shards. A paving-stone walkway meandered past ferns and flower beds (yellow, blue, violet).

Marsh paused, his attention caught by a small maple tree in a wide clay planter. He touched the leaves, turning them gently with puckered knuckles. The waxy green leaves were a dull gray underneath, and mottled with brown. (Warm colors? Cool colors?) Marsh squatted beside the planter and touched the soil, rummaging through the thick layer of last autumn's leaves that had accumulated around the trunk. He pulled out a handful of crumbling leaves, and sifted through them on his palm.

“They need to transplant this,” he said to himself. “It'll die soon.”

Klaus remembered the way Marsh had been dressed when he'd first arrived at the Admiralty. In a boilersuit with mud on the knees. “You're a gardener?” he asked, surprised.

“Yes.” Marsh smiled to himself. Whether it was wry or rueful, Klaus couldn't tell.

“I thought you were a … government worker.” Klaus knew better than to use the word
spy
.

“I've been that, too.”

Marsh grimaced when he stood. He gave the tree's condition one last critical glance. He dropped the dead leaves, wiped his hands on his trousers. He sat on a wrought iron bench with cedar planking, in the shadow of a patinated armillary sundial. Klaus chose to stand.

Marsh said, “Thought you'd want to know we sent a team to the solicitor's office. Another to keep an eye on the flat you identified as Reinhardt's.”

Klaus didn't bother to hide his skepticism. “You've captured him?”

“There's no sign of him.”

Klaus sighed. It was too much to hope for.

“She warned him, didn't she?”

“I don't know.” Klaus shrugged. “Yes.”

“Our men had slightly better fortune with the solicitor. They spoke with a chap who remembers a man and woman matching your descriptions. Thus far, your story holds water.”

“I have told you the truth.”

“Apparently he remembered you quite vividly.”

“The wires,” said Klaus, absently fingering the bundle that dangled over his shoulder.

“Yes.” Marsh frowned, as if something had just occurred to him. More quietly, he said, “Are they painful?”

Klaus blinked. Nobody had ever asked him that before. Nobody had ever worried about his comfort. Who was this strange man? “No. Not any longer.”

Marsh nodded. “Your solicitor friend claims he received one letter, preaddressed, to be posted on the following day.”

Klaus nodded. “Gretel wrote two letters. The first she posted herself. The second she gave to the solicitor.”

“Our problem is that the second letter has already gone out.” Marsh's expression became very serious. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I need to know the contents of that letter, Klaus. What does your sister want Reinhardt to do?”

“I do not know.”

“Where did the second letter go? Where is he?”

“I do not know. It wasn't addressed to Reinhardt, but probably it was intended for him.”

“If you're holding something back,” said Marsh, his voice harder than the bricks that built their garden prison, “I'd advise you to rethink it.”

“I'll never help her again.” Frustration—buried for so long, it might have been fossilized—came surging back to the surface. Something else rode along with it. Something worse. He was alone in the world. He had no friends, no allies, nothing in which to take pride. The Götterelektron had made him insubstantial, but it was the circumstances of his life and his poor decisions that had rendered him a ghost.

But that was too much to admit to this stranger. “I'm ashamed of myself for trusting her as long as I did.”

Marsh mulled this over. Almost gently, he asked, “Your Reichsbehörde file describes you as fiercely protective of her. What changed?”

Klaus hadn't noticed it earlier, but Marsh pronounced the German flawlessly.
No, you're clearly more than a gardener,
thought Klaus.
You learned German just as we learned to speak English. The natural symmetry of enemies. But we aren't enemies now. We aren't friends. What are we?

Marsh pressed his point. “Why turn on her after all these years?”

Klaus ran a hand along the pitted bronze of the sundial. Such a lovely, subtle color. Why
did
he turn his back on Gretel? Even though he'd made his decision and knew he was right, it was an uncomfortable thing to articulate. Saying it aloud was an admission that he'd been a blind fool for most of his wasted life.

Klaus sat heavily on the bench, gazing at the space between his shoes. He was quiet for a long time. Marsh didn't interrupt his thoughts. When Klaus did speak again, the weakness in his voice surprised him.

“My sister is a terrible person. I've denied it for too long.”

Marsh matched his quiet tone. “But you must have known she had anticipated your rebellion.”

This was a question for which Klaus did have an answer, because he'd thought about it a great deal. “That doesn't free me from doing what I think is right.”

“Hmmm,” said Marsh. He looked thoughtful.

They sat on the bench without speaking, the ex-Nazi and the British spy. The starlings returned. Wind rustled the leaves of the dying maple tree.

“Why is she obsessed with me?” said Marsh.

“I don't know why she did what she did to your daughter.” Klaus hesitated, unsure of himself and where he stood with Marsh. “I've rarely learned her reasons for the things she does. And when I have, I sometimes find it was easier not knowing.” He shook his head, thinking again of poor Heike. Marsh raised an eyebrow at this, but Klaus didn't feel up to explaining that entire story.

“It's more than my daughter,” said Marsh. “It started before that. In Spain.” Klaus blinked. Marsh said, “We crossed paths in Barcelona, the three of us. And then again in France, Gretel and I. She wanted to be captured, didn't she?”

“She deserted us that night. You caught her?”

“Yes.” Again that little smile appeared on Marsh's face. Rueful, Klaus decided. “And I was there when you rescued her.”

Klaus remembered a long chase through the Admiralty cellar. But he also remembered the tables turned several months later. When he chased a man across the grounds of the Reichsbehörde, moonlit snow crunching underfoot, gunfire and explosions echoing around them. That was the night he inhaled the phosphorus smoke that scarred his sinuses.

“You were at the farm the night the doctor died.”

Marsh said, “Yes.” He watched Klaus warily.

“It was for the best,” Klaus admitted. “He was … as bad as my sister, in his own way.”

Spain. That felt like a lifetime ago. It was.

He shook his head at the perversity of the situation.

Gretel truly was obsessed with this man. The poor, poor bastard.

“I didn't realize her preoccupation ran so deeply. I do not envy you.”

What are we? Two unwilling chips in Gretel's game.

The door creaked open. Pembroke stepped into the garden. “There you are,” he said around the pipe clenched in his teeth. He removed the pipe and glanced at the sky. “I see why. Lovely day.”

Marsh turned to Klaus. Just loud enough to ensure that Pembroke would hear him, he said,
“Pass mal seinetwegen auf. Der glaubt das er Gretel versteht.”

Be careful around him. He believes he understands Gretel.

As Klaus suspected, Marsh's German was perfect.

Pembroke looked bemused. He said, in Russian better than Klaus's,