The Coldest War (19 page)

“Doctor?” said Will, confused.

She hustled toward him, keeping herself between Will and the stranger. “Let's get you back into bed before you put yourself in an early grave.”

“Grave?”

She took him by the shoulders, ready to march him upstairs. But their visitor stepped into the vacated entryway before she could spin Will around.

The shock of recognition hit him like a brickbat, launched a frisson of panic bounding through his body. The newcomer was a demon from a distant and unlamented past. A harbinger of sorrow. Or was he an opium nightmare, a mirage forged from the heat of Will's fevered imagination?

What if Gwendolyn was nothing but a fantasy, while the real Will Beauclerk still lay sprawled on the floor of a Limehouse tenement with a needle in his arm?

Yet this demon was subject to the passage of time. It had aged just as a real person would have. Even at their most vivid, Will's drug hallucinations had never been meticulous.

Will swallowed. “Pip?”

Marsh said, “Will.”

And Gwendolyn sighed. “Damn.”

*   *   *

Gwendolyn didn't offer Marsh anything to eat or drink. Or even a place to sit. But he looked as though he wouldn't have accepted either of the former, and he certainly didn't wait for an invitation before taking a seat in the parlor. He perched on the edge of a green baize chair, his fedora balanced on the armrest.

Age hadn't dampened Marsh's intensity. His body looked softer in places; his belly a smidge wider; his hair thinner; his face craggier than it had been when they last saw each other. But those caramel-colored eyes still scanned every room like it was a riddle to be solved. He still carried that air of a man who couldn't stand an unsolved problem. But what unsolved problem did William Beauclerk represent? What crisis precipitated this end to decades of estrangement? Marsh vibrated like an overstretched piano wire.

All Marsh ever did was destroy things. His sudden reappearance, now of all times, filled Will with a nauseating dread. He tried to cover with banter, hoping beyond all reason Marsh wasn't there to talk about Cherkashin. Gwendolyn could see his agitation, but naturally she would have been looking for it. She knew all about the past Marsh and Will shared. Every awful thing they'd done for King and Country.

Every train he had derailed. Every barge he'd sunk. Every pub he'd bombed.

For his part, Marsh seemed to regard Gwendolyn as though she were just another piece of the problem at hand. And he deflected every attempt at small talk with curt answers to Will's questions:

“I see you've met my darling wife.”

“Yes.”

“And how is Olivia?”

“Older.”

The grandmother clock on the mantel
tick-tock
ed loudly in the awkward silence. To his wife, standing beside his chair, Will said, “You would like Olivia. I think you two would get on famously. Quite sharp, that one.”

Gwendolyn responded with a noncommittal, “Hmm.” Marsh was the focus of her attention, as Will was the focus of his.

Marsh's deflections were insulting; his aggressive demeanor the basest sort of rudeness. Maddening. Here Will was the gentleman, making an overture of friendship to the man who had stood aside and watched while Will destroyed himself. Marsh hadn't lifted a single finger to help when Will needed it. He'd talked Will into diving headlong into the meat grinder they called Milkweed, and then turned his back when Will came out the other side an unrecognizable mess. Somehow, through undeserved good fortune and the intervention of an angel named Gwendolyn, Will had overcome those dark days. But now Marsh had returned to ruin him all over again. And he clearly wasn't leaving until he'd had his say.
Damn the man
.

“Look,” said Will, running a thumb across his moist forehead. “Just what is this about, Pip? This clearly isn't a social call. Not after all these years. I do recall you're able to fake social niceties when you must. But you can't be bothered to do so today.”

“He's come to take you back,” said Gwendolyn. “They need you for something.”

Marsh shot her a hard look. Will knew she was right; he saw the gears turning as Marsh reassessed her.

“I will never, never go back to that life, Pip.” Will tried and failed to keep the tremor from his voice. Gwendolyn put a hand on his shoulder. “I would rather die.”

“Just who do you think you are?” Gwendolyn demanded. “Swanning into William's life after all this time. Did you expect to take him by the wrist and drag him back into the shadows? Never once have you checked on him since you tossed him aside.” She emphasized her words with an unladylike finger. “Never once. Not even for the sake of basic human decency.”

Marsh ignored her. He turned to Will. “We need to speak privately.”

Will considered this.
Maybe he's not here about Cherkashin. Perhaps it's something else.

“Gwendolyn knows everything about the old days. There are no secrets between us.”
Except one …

Marsh studied them both. “Is that so?”

“I know about Milkweed, Mr. Marsh.” So icy was Gwendolyn's tone that Will half expected to see hoarfrost creeping across Marsh's body.

Marsh had worked Will into a corner, double damn him. There was nothing to do now but bull forward. If Marsh hadn't come to discuss Cherkashin, this encounter could only strengthen Will's connection with his wife. And if Marsh was here because of Will's recent interactions with the Soviets, then he was already doomed.

“Whatever it is you've come to say, say it to us both.”

“If you insist,” said Marsh. One hand tugged at something in his breast pocket. “But remember I offered you the courtesy of privacy, as a nod to our previous friendship.” His voice dripped with venom. “And you refused it. A stupid bloody fool to the last.”

He tossed an envelope at Will's feet. A handful of photographs spilled out, their glossy colors dull against the deep crimson and turquoise of the Turkish rug. Will gathered them.

Your countrymen would never hang the brother of a duke,
he saw Cherkashin saying.

Panic clutched Will's heart with red-hot talons. He thought he might hyperventilate. He didn't want to breathe, didn't want to exhale forever the last wisps of his contented and perfect life.

Oh, God, what have I lost? I ought to have known. The man destroys everything.

Somewhere nearby, the clamor of church bells announced a wedding, or a funeral, or the end of a war.

“William? You've gone pale as snow.” Gwendolyn crouched beside his chair, hand on his wrist, eyes on his face. “What is it?”

“Your husband,” said Marsh, “is struggling to explain why he committed high treason.”

“What do you mean?” She faltered. “William, what is he talking about?” She leaned over Will, glancing at the photographs that tumbled through his fingers.

A long, painful moment stretched between the three of them. When Gwendolyn found her voice again, it was high and reedy, the faintest thread of its usual self. “William. Why were you visiting with that dreadful Cherkashin?”

Will stood, scattering the photos and evoking a throb of protest from his wounded arm as he leapt to her side. “It's not as it appears,” he insisted. “I swear it's not what you're thinking.”

“Oh?” said Marsh. “Because it appears as though you've been selling state secrets to the Soviet Union.”

“Dear Lord,” whispered Gwendolyn, looking stricken. She staggered backwards as though she had been. Casters squeaked beneath the ottoman when she dropped on it. “What have you done, William?”

“I wasn't selling them,” Will spat over his shoulder at Marsh. To Gwendolyn he said, as softly as he could manage, “You have to understand, love. Those men, those horrid men, they did so many terrible things, committed so many evil acts, and when it was over the government treated them as heroes. They never faced justice.”

Marsh said, “They saved the country.”

“They're war criminals!”

“Criminals,” whispered Gwendolyn. Will knew she understood about whom he spoke; only she knew how deeply the wounds went. She would understand why he did it, why he had to do it. Wouldn't she? She had to.

“Milkweed's warlocks,” said Marsh. “Your husband has been passing information about them to Soviet agents. Who have in turn systematically murdered them.”

Gwendolyn moaned. “Oh, William.”

Marsh and his pretensions of righteousness could go hang, for all Will cared. But Gwendolyn had to understand. He clutched her hand as though she were his parachute, his lifeline. As she had been, once upon a time. The pressure to make his point, the white-hot urgency to argue the justice of what he'd done, forced out tears that trickled down his face.

“You know, Gwendolyn, you know what they did to me. You know what they forced me to do,” Will sobbed. “How many innocent citizens did I slaughter for those goddamned blood prices?” The tears came steadier, searing hot rivulets trickling along his cheeks. “It was the only way to get justice, Gwendolyn.”

Marsh said, “This isn't justice. It's treason.”

“It
is
justice.” Will swept up that morning's copy of the
Times
from the end table where it sat atop a pile of novels. It was folded in quarters to a half-finished crossword puzzle. He flung the paper at Marsh. “Justice for the Missing.”

The Missing: the term had emerged near the war's end, to describe the vast numbers of British civilians who had died or disappeared under strange circumstances. Victims of domestic insurgencies, Nazi saboteurs, and fifth columnists; a vast cryptofascist conspiracy in the British countryside that evaporated without a trace when the Reich crumbled. So said the received wisdom. Few people knew the truth, that the Missing were victims of their own government. Chosen entirely at random by Milkweed's warlocks to satisfy the Eidolons' blood prices. A necessary evil for defending the nation. And Will couldn't live with that.

“You sicken me.” Marsh batted the newspaper aside. His voice trembled with rage. “You deserve to be shot. I ought to do it myself.” He stood. “I lost everything that ever meant a damn to me, all for the sake of this country. My daughter, my marriage! But I endured because my sacrifice had meant something. We'd saved the Empire. Or so I'd thought until I discovered everything I've worked for has been flushed down the loo. You've handed this country to our enemies on a silver platter, all because you were too weak to live without a pristine conscience.”

Marsh reined himself in with a visible effort. He assumed a more reasoned, analytical mode. A problem solver to the last. “You're going to tell us everything about your interactions with Cherkashin. When this started. How you arrange meetings. Where you meet, and how frequently.”

“It won't do you any good,” said Will. “I'm finished with Cherkashin.” He looked at his wife. A tear fell from his chin. “He is a wretched person, Gwendolyn. You've always been right about that.”

Marsh frowned. “What do you mean, ‘finished'?”

Will sighed. He saw no point in holding anything back. Not now. “I've had my final meeting with Cherkashin. I've given him everything I know. About every warlock who ever worked for Milkweed.”

Gwendolyn and Marsh looked at each other. Something passed between them, something beyond the currents of mutual distrust. “Will,” said Marsh. As if noticing the injury for the first time, he asked, “What happened to your arm?”

Will looked at his arm cradled in the sling. It still ached, but not nearly so badly as when he'd lost his finger. But what did this have to do with anything? Marsh had come back and in the space of half an hour he'd ripped Will's happy life to shreds, like a brat at the beach kicking apart another child's sand castle. Only now, with the damage irrevocable, when Will's life once again hung in bloody tatters, did he feign even a modicum of concern. Harbinger of sorrow, indeed.

“Automobile accident,” said Will.

“Oh, William,” said Gwendolyn, her voice heavy with sorrow. “You daft, daft darling.”

Marsh shook his head. He ran his hands through his thinning hair. “You truly are a fool.”

“What?”

Gwendolyn said, “Don't you see, William? The Soviets haven't finished yet. There's one final warlock.”

“They saved you for last,” said Marsh.

 

six

17 May 1963
Milkweed Headquarters, London, England

Marsh refused Will the luxury of an overnight bag. It had to look, for the benefit of any Soviet agents keeping tabs on the Beauclerks' house—a terraced redbrick Queen Anne revival—that Will was merely stepping out for a few hours. This need to maintain appearances was the only thing that made Marsh accede to Will's request for time to change out of his dressing gown and into a suit. Left to his own methods, Marsh would have marched him outside naked.

Gwendolyn stayed behind. To her credit, she accepted the separation gracefully. What on earth could she possibly see in Will?

Nice bit of acting. Both of them. But Marsh wasn't ready to conclude Will had acted alone.

He had taken a Morris Minor from the SIS motor pool on his trip to Will's home in Knightsbridge. He'd chosen the car in case Will became recalcitrant; it had been modified with an iron ring in the floor behind the passenger seat, to which Marsh was prepared to fasten shackles if Will became too much of a problem. But he didn't, and that was for the best, again from the standpoint of not broadcasting the situation to enemy watchers. But it was disappointing all the same. He'd have liked to bloody Will up, just a bit.

Will blinked at the ring. “Planning to haul me back in chains, were you?”

“Hoping you'll give me a reason,” said Marsh.