The Coldest War (15 page)

Marsh's jaw ached when he ground his molars together. His fingernails dug into his palms; he stopped just short of drawing blood. The effort not to leap across the desk and throttle Pembroke left him physically trembling.

“My son is not on the table for discussion,” he managed. His voice trembled with the same effort.

Pembroke looked up, wide-eyed as if surprised to find Marsh upset. “Of course he isn't.” The file made a soft clapping sound when he flipped it shut. “Look. I don't raise these issues because I think I can strong-arm you into returning. I know that wouldn't work with you. I'm merely trying to suggest that you might be happier if you returned to the service. Leaving SIS was your great mistake, Marsh.”

“It wasn't a mistake,” said Marsh. Just as he'd told himself countless times over the years. Perhaps it was even true. Things had been bright, even rosy, when he'd left. He'd yearned to get out, to start over with Liv. His row with the old man at war's end had been the opportunity he'd needed to turn his back on the life of the spy. Jumping at that opportunity was the smart thing. He would have been a fool not to do it.

No. Leaving the service hadn't been a mistake. Marsh's great regret was not coming back. But he'd never admit that to Pembroke.

“Steady pay,” said Pembroke. “We'll put you in at what your salary would have been today, had you stayed and continued your record of exemplary service. And, of course, we can have the more colorful incidents expunged from your police record.” He pulled the pipe from his breast pocket, gestured vaguely with the stem. “The usual caveats continue to apply. Official Secrets Act and the rest.”

Marsh didn't want to acknowledge the thrill he felt. A chance to make up for the failures of the past twenty years … “And what would my assignment be?”

“I've already told you.” Pembroke produced a tobacco pouch from his desk. Tamping the bowl of his pipe, he said, “Suss out Gretel's intentions. You'd have complete latitude to do so however you see fit. You are the best man for that job.”

“I'd be reporting to you, then.”

“Yes.”

Arthritis flared when Marsh pressed his fingers to his jaw, thinking. Pembroke misinterpreted the gesture.

“You're wondering about me.”

“Ever been in combat?”

“No. I was sixteen when the war ended.”

“Your predecessor lost an arm in the First World War.”

As if it would somehow justify himself, Pembroke said, “My father fought in Egypt.”

But Marsh ignored that, instead asking, “And how did you end up here?”

Pembroke, it turned out, was a Cambridge man, recruited into the service directly out of university. He'd taken a starred first in Russian literature, another first in European history, and then went to work analyzing Soviet military tech for MI6. Pencil-and-paper war games. From there, it was but a lateral move into Milkweed.

“In other words,” said Marsh, “you're a pencil pusher.”

Pembroke sighed. “I think we're starting off on the wrong foot here. If Gretel's right, you're a part of this.”

“If Gretel's right, and she always is, you've pissed away Milkweed's reason for existence. Your incompetence has broken the impasse of the past twenty years. The Eidolons were our trump card, the only thing keeping the Soviets at bay. But now, thanks to your bungling, the Eidolons are closed off from us.”

“Because I've been twiddling my thumbs.”

“Yes.”

“If I could convince you the situation isn't quite so dire,” Pembroke said, “would you consider returning?”

Consider it? Returning to Milkweed was the single bright spot on the dreary horizon of Marsh's life. He'd left the service after realizing he could either build a life with Liv, or build a career around a futile and poisonous quest for justice. He'd chosen Liv. But their attempts at creating a family had been spectacular failures. And today their marriage was nothing but a lie. He had chosen poorly.

Coming back to SIS wouldn't fix any of that. But it meant a steady income. It meant having a purpose in life. It meant a legitimate excuse to avoid Liv's resentment without enduring tossers like Fitch. And it meant Marsh would be there when Gretel slipped. Everyone slips, eventually.

Marsh hadn't realized how much he'd missed the service until today. “I'll consider it,” he said.

“Excellent,” said Pembroke, standing. He set the unlit pipe on his desk. “I'd like to show you something.”

The Old Admiralty was much as Marsh remembered; only the names on the doors had changed. He noticed that many of the rooms that had belonged to Milkweed in its brief heyday were now storerooms, crammed with old desks, chairs, rolls of carpet, filing cabinets, and the other office detritus that accumulates over the years.

But then they descended a stairwell to a heavy door that looked like the entrance to a bank vault, and the sense of familiarity vanished. This was new.

Pembroke spun the wheel in the center of the door. It moved silently. Even the bolts made barely a whisper when they withdrew. He started to pull the door open, but then he snapped his fingers and stopped. He turned to Marsh.

“I ought to have asked earlier. You're not bleeding anywhere, are you?”

“Bleeding? No.”

“You're quite certain?” Pembroke eyed the bruise on Marsh's face. “Your wounds have healed?”

Marsh glanced at the scratches on his hands. “Yes.”

“No open cuts? No ulcers?”

“No.”

“Very good, then.”

The vault door was the first of a pair. They were connected such that the inner door could be opened only when the outer door was locked, and vice versa. Like a castle's sally port, or the air lock on a submersible.

When they emerged in the cellar, Marsh found he didn't recognize anything. The space had been radically altered since last he was down here. The cellar Marsh remembered had been a warren of brick barrel vault passageways. It had been lit by bare lightbulbs hung from wires overhead, and lined with the gray, rivet-studded steel doors of storerooms and bomb shelters. Water stains had mottled the ceiling and cold concrete floor.

It was impossible to know if any of that remained. Thick carpet covered the floor, ceiling, and walls; the walls were studded with angular baffles carved from black plastic foam. Marsh understood at once, by virtue of having spent so much time struggling to perfect John's room. This was soundproofing done right, at the Crown's expense.

Walking was a bit difficult. The thick beige carpet underfoot yielded a good inch beneath every footstep. The storerooms had been replaced with vaults much like the ones they'd passed through on their entrance to the cellar. These were also soundproofed.

Pembroke pointed at two adjacent doors. “Gretel and her brother are in there, and there,” he said. Marsh had to listen carefully in order to hear him over the sound of his own beating heart and the blood rushing through his ears. “Do speak freely, however. They can't hear anything that transpires out here, short of mortar fire.”

Marsh wondered if Gretel had foreseen this place, this future version of the cellar, during her short incarceration here in 1940. Probably.

He followed Pembroke to the end of a long corridor, around the corner, and down another. The Admiralty cellar adjoined tunnels that ran far past the footprint of the building itself; Marsh guessed they had passed beneath St. James' Park. The world was silent except for footfalls and heartbeats. The carpeted soundproofing changed patterns here and there, from stripes to dots to triangular tilings. Marsh suspected the deepest reaches of this warren had been built earliest, out of scrap materials. Some of this carpeting predated the war.

And then—so suddenly, it seemed impossible—an overpowering mixture of scents filled the air. Watermelon. Bile. An old man's sweat. A foul taste coated Marsh's mouth. His stomach convulsed, as though he'd swallowed mothballs.

They've soundproofed the hell out of things,
thought Marsh.
And they're worried about blood.

Motivated by instinct and old memories, Marsh looked at his watch. It had stopped.

The Eidolons have been here. What is this place?

The soundproofing even muted the jangling of Pembroke's key ring. He fished around for a few moments, then unlocked a door. They entered a standard observation room, the kind used during interrogations and debriefings. A row of chairs and a narrow table faced a single pane of glass that stretched nearly from wall to wall. The chamber was dimly lit, suggesting the glass was a one-way mirror. A lone microphone stood on the table; the wall above the mirror had a speaker grille.

Marsh had expected something like this. The whole environment here in the bowels of the Admiralty had been designed for keeping people in deep isolation. But he hadn't expected the scene on the other side of the looking glass.

It was a primary school classroom.

The place had been done up in bright colors, reds and blues and yellows. On one wall hung a green chalkboard smudged with childish scrawls, snippets of an unknowable language in colored chalks. Above it, a series of placards ran the length of the chalkboard, where a parade of merry zoo animals frolicked among the letters of the alphabet and the digits naught through nine. Cubbyholes filled with stuffed toys and picture books lined another wall, beneath a bright mural of children playing happily on the outline of the United Kingdom. Oddly, the wall directly across from the mirror was papered with maps of the world. Many of the maps focused on Europe and the Soviet Union. The maps were dotted with pushpins.

Roughly a dozen children of both sexes sat at tables or sprawled on cushions or stood off by themselves in ones, twos, and threes. The older ones read. The younger ones played with dolls, wooden blocks, toy trucks, stuffed animals. They ranged in age from perhaps five or six years all the way to their late teens. And they were silent. Each and every one of them.

“These,” said Pembroke, “are our warlocks.”

Dear God in Heaven,
thought Marsh.
What have you done?
“They're just children.”

“Not just any children. These children speak Enochian. Indeed, you might say it's their first language. They're more proficient with it than any warlock in centuries,” Pembroke said. “Which is why we haven't felt a need to keep tabs on the fellows from your days. They're outdated. No offense, of course.”

Marsh pointed at the children. “How?”

“Enochian is the ur-language. Some people have speculated that it's the language of creation, or the music of the spheres.” Pembroke shrugged. “We have found that if you raise a child in complete isolation from all human language, insulated from any exposure to it, they naturally revert to Enochian.”

“That's barbaric.”
You twisted bastards
.

“It's realpolitik. It's the world we live in. It's the price of a free nation.”

Marsh watched the children. “Are they prisoners?”

Pembroke became indignant. “I should say not.” He hesitated. “That is, not in principle. But they seem to prefer it here. They prefer the silence. They've never indicated a desire to leave.”

“Have you asked them?”

“Yes.”

“They speak English, too?”

“Of course they do. We end each child's isolation the moment they demonstrate fluency in Enochian,” said Pembroke. “Around age four or five, typically. After that we provide them with a superb education. Easily the equal of anything they'd receive in public school.”

Marsh couldn't stop watching the children. Pointing through the glass with a jerk of his chin, he asked, “How often do you use them?”

“Just enough to tweak Ivan's nose once in a while. Nothing drastic, mind you. No doubt they suspect Milkweed. And that's the point. To let them know we're here. But their information, whatever its source, is far, far out of date. They don't know who the active warlocks are.”

“They didn't until you brought Gretel down here.”

“Her cell is so far away, past so many layers of soundproofing, that I could light a stick of dynamite here and she wouldn't be any wiser,” said Pembroke.

Marsh shook his head, too disgusted and too weary to argue the point. “What about blood prices? You don't force them to—”

Pembroke snorted. “Please. We're not barbarians. Sam handles the prices. He has men for it.” He tugged absently at one ear. “Incidentally, and for the most part, the prices are lower than they were in your day. A benefit of the children's natural fluency, you see.”

“How low?”

“Acceptably low,” said Pembroke. “After a bit of a rocky start,” he admitted.

He unlocked a door beside the mirror, which opened on the classroom. “Let's meet them.” When Marsh hesitated, he said, “It's entirely safe.”

Marsh stared at the children. “Insulated.”

“What is it?”

“You don't have children of your own,” said Marsh.

“Your point?”

“My wife and I have taken a newborn home from the hospital on two separate occasions. If there's one thing parents do, it's talk to their children.”

Pembroke looked uncomfortable. “These children were orphans. Abandoned.”

The flippant explanation didn't begin to address the issue. But before Marsh could dissect the transparent evasion, Pembroke opened the door and stepped through. The children ignored him, and Marsh as well when he followed a few seconds later.

“But in order to
completely
isolate them—”

“Believe me when I tell you, Marsh, that they've been treated extremely well.”

As one, the children stopped, straightened, and turned to face the adults. There was something unnerving about the way they moved in unison. Something feral. No—insectile. Alien. Something just a bit like John.