The Coldest War (16 page)

One of the older boys stepped forward. He looked at Marsh, squinting. They all did.

“You are Marsh,” he croaked. “The man Marsh.”

Instant gooseflesh stippled Marsh's arms and nape. It tingled unpleasantly.

The boy's voice sounded wrong. Deeply wrong. It wasn't just that the boy had the hoarse, gravelly voice of an old man. The ruined voice of an old warlock.

These children, Marsh realized, spoke English with an Enochian accent. If that were somehow possible.

“Yes, I am.” Marsh bent, ignoring the constriction of his boilersuit and the crawling of his skin to put himself at equal height with the boy. His knee throbbed. Cheerfully as he could manage, he said, “And who are you?”

But his question was lost under the urgent murmuring of decrepit yet childish voices repeating his name. They said it over and over again, in a variety of speeds and intonations.

“Marsh. Marsh. Marsh. Marsh.”

Soon they converged on a single tempo and a single inflection. When they switched to Enochian, it happened instantaneously, in midchant.

Marsh found himself inside a maelstrom of gurgles, shrieks, howls, and rumbles. In the chanting he heard the death of stars and the birth of planets. Inhuman noises from tiny human vessels.

The minute part of him that could still think under that onslaught realized,
This is why they're worried about blood. These children could summon an Eidolon at the drop of a hat.

He clasped his hands over his ears. So did Pembroke.

And somewhere, somewhen, somebody said,
My God. They've given you a name.

 

interlude

Gretel's first set of instructions arrived in the post not two hours after she and her spineless brother moved out. Reinhardt wasn't sorry to see the last of those parasites. The bitch took special enjoyment out of his failed attempts to steal their batteries. Every time Klaus caught him, Gretel was there, watching over his shoulder with that infuriating half-cocked smile of hers.

Reinhardt would scorch that smile away. Someday.

He'd worried that her instructions would be nonsensical. Like everything else about her. But the letter was straightforward and detailed. The first part of her task came with a tight schedule; perhaps she had put her riddles aside to guarantee Reinhardt would finish on time.

Which was how he ended up hurrying out of the flat only to spend hours shivering under a hedge in Kew Gardens, guarding his camera from the incessant rain. She'd provided a description of the men he would photograph, their bench beneath the walnut tree on the Broad Walk, even the angle from which he'd take the photo. The last bit being how he found his hiding place. The only thing she hadn't nailed down for him—probably because she enjoyed the thought of Reinhardt shivering in the rain—was the precise time of the meeting.

Of course, she didn't bother to explain who the men were, or why Reinhardt had to photograph them. But he didn't care about any of that. Gretel could play all the games she wanted as long as he got what he wanted.

Have you forgotten how in the past I delivered your heart's darkest desire?

Once the men had gone their separate ways, Reinhardt did as she said and took one final photograph, this time of the front page of that morning's
Times
. To establish the date, he presumed.

After leaving Kew Gardens, Reinhardt drove until he found a chemist's shop thirty miles from his council estate. It would have been better to develop the film himself, but Reinhardt didn't have access to a darkroom. Nor did he know how to develop film in the first place; the Reichsbehörde had used specialists for menial tasks.

He bribed the chemist to ensure the photos would be ready in a day. Nowhere in her letter did Gretel offer to cover Reinhardt's out-of-pocket expenses.

Gretel was just as specific about the next step as she had been about the mechanics of the photographs: he was to send the package of photos to a particular address on a particular day. But Reinhardt knew better than to use a post office near his home. It stood to reason that the recipient of these photos would be surprised and probably displeased by them. He'd photographed a secret exchange—that much was obvious—and the address Gretel provided was in Westminster. That meant this was political. The recipients would take a long, hard look at the postmark on Reinhardt's package.

So he again drove across London, west this time, to post the package from an office he selected at random. Large enough that he would blend into the crowd, and far enough from his flat to throw any investigators off the trail. For the return address, Reinhardt selected something out of the telephone directory, again at random.

The fat postie behind the counter took Reinhardt's package, and his cash, and then did a double take when he saw the fake return address.

Reinhardt said, “Is there a problem?”

The fat man shook his head. “Ain't that the oddest thing. Just got a package for you in this morning's batch.”

“That's impossible,” said Reinhardt, although he knew it wasn't. Not for Gretel. “I'm new to the neighborhood.”

“I figured as much,” said the postman. “I remember your name because I didn't recognize it when the package came through. Reckoned it had to be a mistake. Now how do you fancy that?”

Reinhardt waited until he was safely home to open the package. It contained more fragments of the battery blueprint, and a second letter. He tossed the letter aside, trembling with excitement as he dug out his research journals and the fragments that had arrived with her first letter.

One battery. That's all. Just one was all he needed to slip the leash she'd put around his neck.

The blueprint fragments didn't match up. Gretel had sent the edges of the diagram, but not the center. Typical Gretel. But the addition pointed Reinhardt in the right direction, and he knew that in time he'd fill the gaps via his own investigations.

Exhausted from a long day spent hunched over his desk, he finally turned his attention to Gretel's second letter.

My Dear Reinhardt,
it began.
From the time you receive this letter, you have three days to vacate your flat.

 

five

16 May 1963
Walworth, London, England

Within two days of his first meeting with Pembroke, Marsh had a salary and an office in the Admiralty building. He told Liv he had an offer to return to work at the Foreign Office, which had been his cover during the war. She expressed no excitement for the improbable resuscitation of his career, only for the prospect of a higher and steadier income. But when he told her that his new situation brought with it long days, she refused to rearrange her own life to accommodate the change. Liv made it clear that somebody had to stay with John in the evenings, and that somebody would be Marsh.

In short, the Milkweed job enlivened their home life. It gave them something new to fight about, rather than rehashing the arguments they'd played out countless times.

“And what about Fitch's garden?” Liv pulled open a drawer, searching for a peeler. Rummaging through the utensils, she added, “You promised him you'd have that done ages ago.” She found the peeler and leaned heavily against the drawer; it scraped shut. Marsh hadn't wanted to spend precious cash on new rollers from the local ironmongers. “We're fortunate he tolerates you as much as he does.”

Marsh crossed his arms. “Fitch can stuff it,” he said.

“Did you tell him that?” She channeled her irritation into the carrots she peeled. A flurry of thin orange strips pelted the sink. “Fat lot of good that'll do us when you cock up this new job and then have to go crawling back to him.”

Her utter confidence that he'd make a wreck of things flayed him as surely as if she had scraped the peeler down his bare arms. This wasn't about the new job. It was about finding new ways to hurt each other. Marsh was the symbol for everything Liv hated about her life. Her target. But whom did he blame for how wrong it all went? Liv? John? Himself?

It hadn't always been like this. They'd loved each other so much.… There had been a time when his heart beat harder when she entered the room. When she made him feel energized, more alive, willing to fight the world just to win her smile. But now her company was a weight that bent his spine, slumped his shoulders. The fighting made him so damn weary.

Liv pulled her hair back. From his spot leaning against the refrigerator, Marsh could see the flush rising up through the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. It happened when she was passionate about something. Strangely, at that moment, it reminded him of the first time they'd made love, and how afterwards they'd lain nestled together like two spoons on the mattress in Liv's garret at her boarding house. He'd watched the way the blush rose and fell along her neck like tides pulled by his breath.

The memory, so vivid and unsolicited, moved him. He reached for her. In a more civil tone, he said, “This is a good thing. We'll have more money.”

She swatted his hand away. Upstairs, John launched into a new round of keening. A breeze rustled threadbare, sun-bleached curtains over the sink. It carried the compost scent of Marsh's garden and the residual ozone tang of that afternoon's storm.

“We won't have more money,” she said. “You'll have more money to drink away at the pub. While I'm imprisoned here with him,” she said, pointing at the ceiling with the peeler. “Nothing will change.”

Why did this have to become yet another battle in their long, pointless war? Somehow, improbably, he had his old job back. Maybe that meant there was a chance to reconnect with Liv. A chance for détente.

He said, “It won't be like that this time. I promise.” She sniffed. He sighed.

The faucet broke for what seemed the thousandth time when she went to fill the teapot. Handing Liv a dish towel, Marsh said, “Things will be different. Better.”

“For you. But you're not abandoning me to deal with John every hour of the day and night. I have a life outside these walls, Raybould. And I won't sacrifice that.”

A life. Is that what you call it? Cuckolding me? My work is more important than your affairs, you tart.

Marsh's jaw ached with the effort to hold his tongue. He forced himself to release the pressure on his teeth before he ground them to powder. A dull throb took root behind his eyeballs.

He wondered, not for the first time, about Liv's lover. It occurred to him that now he was back with SIS, finding the man (men?) would be a trivial task. But then what? A confrontation? Marsh feared it would be even more emasculating to know his identity. Liv deserved what happiness she could make for herself, even if it was at his expense. They'd caused each other enough grief. One of them should be happy.

Marsh shook his head. “They need me.”

“The Foreign Office needs a pudgy, half-pissed, out-of-shape ex-bureaucrat who hasn't held a steady job in ten years? God save the Queen.”

Marsh slammed the door. Again. John's crying receded into the general noise of the city after two streets; Marsh's flaring temper burned itself down to glowing coals after a dozen.

The streets smelled like rain and pub food. The refuse behind a shabby Spanish restaurant stank of ripe seafood. The neighborhood didn't appear quite as threatening in the early-afternoon sun as it had when the storm clouds rolled through that morning, low and black. Torrents of rain had washed the pavement clean of newspapers and waxed paper chip wrappers. But nothing could wash away the feeling of being watched, of eyes peering out from every dark corner.

Part of him still yearned to work the anger out through his fists. At the mouth of a narrow alleyway, he stopped to contemplate a detour. Faintly, from the shadows behind the rubbish bins, where rainwater still dripped from rusted gutters, the telltale scuffle of shoe leather on pavement reached his ears. That was the sound of somebody sitting up, taking attention, surveying a mark. Marsh cracked his knuckles. But he stopped himself before entering the alley and committing himself to what at best would be a scrap and at worst would be a mugging, a stabbing, a murder.

He had a job now. The only job he'd ever been good for. And turning his back on that meant never knowing why Gretel had killed Agnes.

Marsh took the Tube to Charing Cross.

His office in the Admiralty building overlooked Horse Guards Parade. The Royal Horse Guards were practicing maneuvers when Marsh flopped into the wobbly office chair behind his particleboard desk. He opened the window and spent a few peaceful moments listening to the Yorkshire bark of a regimental commander, the clop of hooves on cobbles, and the jingle of harnesses. The drills continued while Marsh dived into the mounds of folders and papers that had appeared on his desk, as if by magic, since the previous evening. Pembroke had wasted no time getting Marsh plugged into the loop.

The topmost file was a status report on the debriefing of the two “defectors.” They'd been questioned separately, and so far their story held. No progress, in other words. But Pembroke had agreed with Marsh's suggestion they be moved to a safe house outside the city center; that had happened this morning, during the storm.

The next batch of paperwork was everything Milkweed had on the old warlocks: names, aliases, wartime achievements, movements, last known whereabouts. Most of the files became quite sparse after the mid-1950s. Marsh guessed the first batch of warlock children had come to fruition then.

Working through its parent organization, SIS, Milkweed had begun the laborious process of corroborating Gretel's claims. But the warlocks were hard men to find, and so it was likely to take weeks before solid conclusions could be drawn. One file did note that the recent fire in the Forest of Dean appeared to have begun in a small cottage deep in the forest. This was consistent with the prewar living arrangement of one of the warlocks. Shapley. Marsh remembered him.