The Coldest War (26 page)

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Klaus hesitated, choosing his words carefully. But he knew that only full candor would suffice. “When this is over, I want to have a normal life.”

Marsh scoffed at that. “Normal.”

Klaus touched his wires, self-consciously aware of the irony. “As normal as possible for somebody in my position.”

“You want SIS to furnish you with a cover identity, so that you may live quietly forevermore in the countryside. Is that it?”

“Yes,” said Klaus. “A quiet life by myself.” He looked at the ground between his feet. “Far away from Gretel. Will you help me have that? In exchange for my aid? I'll never have that quiet future if this country falls.”

Marsh cracked his knuckles, wincing as he did so. It seemed to be an unconscious habit. He peered at Klaus through eyes narrowed in thought. “Tell me more about this aid you're offering.”

“Every ability requires specialized training. I can't tell you what the man you seek will be able to do. But I can tell you that he'll have been trained to fight against firearms, explosives, mortars, tanks, airplanes, knives, mines, mundane soldiers.” Klaus looked at Marsh, to emphasize his point. “I am familiar with the training he'll have received.”

“You were part of it.”

“Yes.”

A notable number of the fatalities at Doctor von Westarp's farm happened in the first weeks, or hours, or moments of a subject's first tentative embrace of the Willenskräfte. The boy who had slightly preceded Klaus in developing the ability to pass through solid objects died soon after its first manifestation, before everybody understood the implications of the ability. He dematerialized, fell through the earth, and presumably suffocated somewhere deep underground. Nobody, not even the doctor, had considered that transparency to matter required careful attention to gravity as well.

The technicians never succeeded in recovering the boy's body. Klaus remembered his name was Oskar.

The men and women who ran Arzamas-16 had made it very clear to Klaus that it was in his best interests to foresee any such mishaps, to warn the technicians and subjects.

Marsh said, “And?”

“He won't have been trained to fight his comrades. He won't know how to fight somebody like me.”

Marsh looked skeptical. “And you do?”

“I don't know how much you understand about the atmosphere at the Reichsbehörde. It was not a convivial place. There was much friction between us. All of us.”

It felt so wrong, discussing such personal issues with this former enemy. The details of his formative years, the influences that molded his psyche, his relationship to the Götterelektron … these were the most intimate details of Klaus's life. The flames in which he had been forged. Telling Madeleine about his sex life—from the prescribed couplings at the farm to the institutionalized prostitution at Arzamas and every shameful fantasy he'd ever entertained in between—would have been less uncomfortable. Less soul baring.

Yet he'd never become the man he wanted to be, living the life he wanted to have, if he continued to guard himself so rabidly. Klaus forced himself to endure the self-humiliation. Extending this trust to Marsh was the price for escaping Gretel.

A potential reward well worth the effort. So he plunged forward.

“And when I was young, when I believed in Doctor von Westarp without reservation, I was determined to rise to the top. I spent much time devising tactics for battling with Reinhardt, Rudolf, Kammler, and the rest. So that I would be prepared, if and when the moment came.

“Everybody did it. We evaluated each other, measured each other. Thought about how to fight one another, how to kill one another.

“Except my sister. There's no fighting her.”

At this, Marsh bristled. “Nobody is invincible.”

Perhaps your understanding of Gretel doesn't run as deeply as I had thought.

A flash of chestnut caught Klaus's eye. Madeleine stood at the kitchen window, her attention focused on the sink. She looked up and treated him to a moment's smile before returning to her task. He thought he smelled dish soap. She spoke with a woman Klaus didn't recognize.

Klaus said, “Have I once again made a fool of myself? Or will you help me?”

“I'll never believe your sister hasn't arranged this.”

“Whether she has or not is irrelevant,” said Klaus. “I'm not doing this for her. I'm doing this in spite of her.”

A raven perched on the sundial, cawing loudly. Its talons scraped along the pitted bronze. The sight of the raven dislodged a dreamy image from the recesses of Klaus's memory. Something about a hay wagon, in a forest.

It gave him a sense of what he wanted to capture in watercolor. Not the image, yet, but the feeling. Something foreboding. Portentous. He couldn't quite articulate it to himself, but he knew it would come in time.

“How can I know you won't run off the moment we return your battery?”

“You can't.”

Marsh thought about this. Then he said, “I can't promise anything, Klaus.”

“I know.”

“In that case,” said Marsh, “I accept your offer. Thank you.”

He extended his hand. They shook.

28 May 1963
Knightsbridge, London, England

It amounted to house arrest, the interminable wait for Will's murderer to arrive.

Echoes and shadows filled the hole left by Gwendolyn's absence. The house, once modest by the standards of Will's peers, now felt cavernous. Cold. Empty. Sepulchral. Like a mausoleum waiting for its unruly resident to settle down.

All this in spite of the handful of workers who passed through the passage that had been cut through the west wall of the dining room, to the adjoining residence. The neighbors on that side, the Ashton-Clarkes, had been quietly evacuated before sunrise. As had the rest of the crescent, on the pretense of a gas leak. Will had given the same explanation to Mrs. Toomre when he sent her home.

By late afternoon, it looked as though Will and Gwendolyn had hired Genghis Khan to remodel the house. Milkweed men tore into every wall to dig out the electrical mains. The silk wallpaper, carefully chosen by Gwendolyn, hung in tatters. Fine tufts of green and silver thread bobbed on imperceptible drafts. Plaster dust caked the floors like wheat flour in the kitchen of a hyperactive baker; it crunched underfoot, ground itself into the rugs. Even the pantry had suffered. Long, rippled gouges revealed the pale heart of oaken floorboards, tracing the path where the Milkweed boffins had dragged their crates into place. The crates contained coils, wires, and electrical equipment with names and purposes unknown to Will. Equipment they assembled and spliced into the exposed electrical mains. Where once the house had carried the earthy scent of Gwendolyn's potting clay, now it stank of sawdust and plaster.

And the physical destruction of their home was a bellwether for the condition of their marriage. Every broken floorboard symbolized the broken trust; every grenade a manifestation of the bomb he'd dropped by not confessing to Gwendolyn. Yes, Marsh's chums had destroyed the house, but Will himself had gutted the marriage.

He sat in the shadows of a reading alcove, hugging his knees in the recess of a bay window that overlooked the green space enclosed by the crescent. It was the only spot in the house where he didn't have to dance aside, or offer apologies every few moments. Gwendolyn had selected thick, French-pleated curtains for this window. They did an excellent job hiding the dismantlement of their home.

He remembered the pixies Lorimer had built. Presumably, the gutting of Will's house served a similar purpose.

Who, Will wondered, would pay to rehabilitate the house after Marsh caught his man? To whom did the house belong? Would Milkweed allow his wife to keep it, or had the title been requisitioned for purposes of national security?

Will's tea had gone lukewarm beneath a faint dusting of plaster. He drank it anyway. The plaster made it chalky. The cup rattled against the saucer when he set it down, like a burst of Morse code telegraphing his anxiety to the world.

The workmen cleared out near sunset, hastily disappearing back through their hole like the March Hare. The last two maneuvered a teakwood credenza into place behind them, hiding their escape route. Three men stayed behind: Marsh, of course; a Milkweed agent named Anthony, a large man with acne scars on his face; and, most surprisingly, Klaus.

“What happens now?”

“You keep to your bloody routine,” said Marsh from the shadows of the dining room. “Eat as you normally do, when you normally do, and retire likewise.”

“You want me to eat dinner and put myself to bed?”

“Yes. Cherkashin's man will be watching your windows, watching the lights come on and off as you move through the house. Been doing it for days or even weeks, if he's good.”

Will suppressed a shiver. How many times had this phantom killer watched Gwendolyn come and go?

“He may come to the front door, posing as a visitor,” said another voice from the shadows. This voice carried a German accent.

Will said, “Roped you into joining the fun, did he, Klaus?”

“Don't worry about him,” Marsh snapped. “Be thankful he wants to see the end of this as badly as we do.”

Will dined alone. His dinner consisted of marinated lamb shank with mint jelly, green beans with almond slivers, and a sweet potato soufflé. Mrs. Toomre had planned two such servings before the faux evacuation sent her home to Swansea for the foreseeable future. If he didn't die in his sleep tonight, Will would eat Gwendolyn's portion tomorrow.

Marsh and Anthony staked out different rooms downstairs, while Klaus took a seat in a corner of Will's bedroom. The idea being, apparently, that Klaus would pull Will to safety at the first hint of trouble.

Will didn't like the sound of that.

Occasionally one of the others would come upstairs to check in with Klaus. Will found he could distinguish the men from their breathing and how they trod the stairs. Anthony fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, eliciting creaks from the floorboards. Klaus made the slightest of rasps when he inhaled. Only Marsh was perfectly silent, a shadow brooding in the darkness.

The drowsy part of Will's mind marveled at the twisted set of circumstances. Klaus was one of the reasons Milkweed had been created; a formidable enemy, whose existence had goaded Marsh and the old man to extreme measures. Klaus's spectacular foray into the Admiralty building to free Gretel had prompted Will to track down and recruit Britain's warlocks for the war effort. Those had been frightening days; time's passage hadn't blunted Will's memory. It wasn't so different from now, the sweaty anxiety, the dodgy sensation of teetering on the razor edge of panic. The impotent worry that any moment they'd be overrun by dozens of Klauses, and all the others on the Tarragona filmstrip.

Yet now Will found he much preferred to have this former enemy looking after his well-being rather than his former friend and ally. Part of him secretly feared that Marsh might succumb to rage and slit Will's throat in the middle of the night. If nothing else, the Nazis knew discipline.

Will whispered, “Why are you doing this, Klaus? How terribly did Marsh twist your arm?”

“He didn't,” said Klaus. But he didn't elaborate.

Later, Will caught a snippet of whispered conversation.

“I recognize you. From the safe house.”

“I reckon so.”

“You played cards with my sister. For hours.”

This was followed by a chuckle and what might have been the susurration of fabric, like corduroy. “Commander Marsh's orders. Wanted us to test her limits a bit. Glad it weren't for real quid, though.”

Sometime past midnight, the play of headlights shone through the drapes and danced along the ceiling of the bedroom as a lone car rounded the crescent. Will, who had been sleeping lightly if at all, sat bolt upright.

Klaus's radio squawked to life. Will recognized Pembroke's voice. “Stand by.”

The quiet somehow became more complete, more oppressive, as every person in the house held his breath. Klaus plugged in; the
click
ricocheted through the pregnant silence. The Milkweed men covertly monitoring the street gave a running commentary on the passing car. Sweat trickled down Will's arms.

“Two occupants … A man and a woman … They're slowing.… They've stopped before number twenty-three.… They're consulting a map, looks like they're having a row.… They're pulling out.… Stand down. Stand down.”

The adrenaline surge kept Will awake most of the rest of the night. But he did doze off, eventually, and woke the next morning slightly surprised to find himself still alive.

*   *   *

Will even snored like a toff. Marsh made this observation when he went upstairs to relieve Klaus. Sunrise peeked through the blinds of Will's bedroom. It had been a long, frustrating night.

“Knock off for a few, Klaus. Sleep it off if you're able. We'll rest in shifts.”

Klaus stood. It sounded like every joint in his arms and legs cracked. He yawned, rubbed his eyes.

“Have you budged from that spot this entire night?”

“No,” said Klaus.

Well,
thought Marsh.
That's Nazi discipline for you.

“You can rack out on the couch downstairs,” he said. Klaus nodded, yawned again, and tromped down the stairs. Marsh tapped Will's shoulder. “Oy. Get up.”

Will mumbled. Marsh poked him harder. “Get up.”

Will blinked at him blearily. “Pip?” He took a moment to survey his surroundings. In a raspy voice he said, “I still live, I see.”

“For the moment.”

“Well. Thank heavens for quiet nights, then.”

Marsh waited outside the master bath while Will showered and shaved. Surveying the bedroom, he realized that Will slept with silk sheets on his king-sized, four-poster bed. That single set probably cost more than all the sheets and towels in Marsh's house, combined.