The Coldest War (35 page)

He felt excited by the prospect, but to his surprise, it also saddened him. Not because he'd soon see the last of her, but because in the end she hadn't been the sister he'd thought she was.

Klaus knocked on her door a few hours before leaving with Marsh. He'd nap until just before they departed. He didn't need to pack; they'd come to England with a few batteries, a handful of money, and the clothes on their backs. He was sorry he couldn't take the books and painting supplies Madeleine had kindly provided, but he wasn't about to take keepsakes on a mission.

Klaus smiled to himself. The very suggestion would have caused Standartenführer Pabst to choke on indignation. Strange. He hadn't thought about Pabst in many, many years.

Gretel said, “Come in, Klaus.”

How rare for her to address him by name. She knew why he'd come.

Opening the door released a whiff of attar into the corridor. She'd decorated her room with flowers from the garden. She sat cross-legged on her bed. Her blossoms stood in milk bottles and hung skewed from tacks in the walls. Spindly stems poked from books, like wax paper sandwiches pressed between volumes of T. S. Eliot.

“I came to say good-bye,” he said.

She watched him. She didn't move, or speak, or blink.

He sighed and turned away.

“Wait,” she said.

He faced her again. “Well?”

Gretel stood. She said, “I'm remembering this. Remembering you as you are at this moment. For the past.”

“Good-bye, Gretel.”

She did something he didn't expect: She hugged him. Tightly. And kissed him on the cheek.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Warmth? Humanity? Hints of a soul? Where had Gretel hidden it all these years? Damn her.

Klaus knew, much as he tried to convince himself otherwise, that he'd miss her. Even though he'd stopped loving her, part of him would still miss her. But he'd made his choice. Nothing to do now but move forward.

He passed Madeleine's door on the way downstairs. He hesitated, considered saying good-bye to her, too. No. Starting over meant a clean break.

Marsh woke him an hour past midnight. Klaus made one final test of his equipment before climbing into the Morris parked on the street outside the safe house. He sat in the rear, on the passenger side. He buckled his lap belt, knowing he'd need it. The tight pressure on his stomach worsened the anxiety.

The early hour made for a quick drive into the heart of the city. London was deep in its slumber. Streetlights illuminated a city devoid of human activity. It wasn't difficult to imagine it had been emptied by evacuation, or plague. The few cars they passed might have been ghosts roaming through a silent cityscape.

“We're almost there,” said Marsh. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” Klaus's stomach was so full of butterflies that he half expected one to escape when he opened his mouth.

Buckingham Palace loomed over them as they zipped past the gate. Klaus glimpsed gold and iron gleaming in the light of electric torches. Marsh took the car through a roundabout surrounding an immense piece of statuary; Klaus guessed it was a memorial to a past monarch.

They skirted St. James' Park for a few heartbeats.
Strange,
thought Klaus. That park was like a lodestone, drawing him back again and again. Marsh wrenched the wheel, and they plunged into the jumble of London streets.

He brought the car to a halt a few minutes later. They idled at the curb. Marsh lifted the handset of the two-way wireless mounted under the fascia. He announced, “In position.” Then he hung the handset back on its cradle.

“Remember. Three seconds,” Marsh said.

“I remember,” said Klaus. But he checked the wristwatch just the same. “Do you remember your part?”

“Yes.”

“And our agreement?”

Marsh opened the glove compartment. He pulled out a thin valise of burgundy leather. “Cash, identity papers, and the lease for a flat in Aylesbury. Just remember it'll take me a few minutes to ditch the car and get back to the park.” He returned the valise to the glove compartment.

The radio squawked to life. “One, clear.” It meant traffic was clear on Half Moon Street. A moment later a different voice said, “Two, clear.” Nothing coming down Piccadilly, either.

A third voice said, “Go.” And Marsh did.

He slammed the car into gear, hard enough to shove Klaus back into his seat. The underpowered Morris engine whined in protest. Klaus concentrated on his breathing, trying not to let the butterflies overwhelm him as the car finally picked up speed and careered around the corner onto Half Moon. The maneuver would have sent him sliding across the seat—and out of alignment—if he hadn't fastened the belt.

They passed the first traffic barrel set out by the impostor road crews. It was an acceleration marker. But Marsh didn't break off, meaning he had the car up to speed.

The embassy appeared through the windshield. It grew larger by the moment.

They flew past the second barrel. Marsh didn't waver.

The engine hum rose in pitch as they climbed the subtle incline left behind by the SIS road work. This was the final alignment. Klaus laid a finger on his wristwatch.

The embassy looked much larger than Klaus had imagined. It dwarfed all the arguments he'd used to convince himself this was a good idea. It wasn't a good idea. It was a terrible idea. It was insane. As the building loomed closer, he looked up, just for a moment, and saw what might have been a television antenna. Antenna?

He remembered the Arzamas fail-safes.

Klaus said, “How do we know—?”

But then they were crossing the mark the road crew had painted on the street. Marsh swerved. He hit the brakes and bellowed,
“Now!”

Klaus pressed the stem of his watch at the same instant he embraced his Willenskräfte, and then he was flying toward the Soviet Embassy on a ballistic trajectory. The tall iron fence around the embassy blurred past him at over forty miles per hour.

He unfurled the fine mesh net on a towline behind him. Like him, it was insubstantial, meaning there was no wind to force it open. Klaus opened it with a flick of his wrists while coasting through what might have been a kitchen.

Three seconds after he pressed the stem, his watch vibrated. A regular alarm would have been useless, because it couldn't have made a sound in its ghostly form. But Klaus could feel it shaking on his ghostly wrist.

He willed himself and the net to flicker, ever so briefly, at the apex of his trajectory. He slowed; the net wasn't empty now.

And then he was out of the embassy, gliding across Piccadilly on the descent into Green Park. He tipped sideways to avoid the edge of the trench. The net resisted him. He'd snagged something on this fishing expedition.

He rematerialized just before hitting the first layer of air bags hidden beneath one of the pavilions. They burst, slowing him.
Fwump.
He dematerialized again to let the net and its contents pass through him. He glimpsed an arm, a leg, pieces of a cot, and half a cinder block.

Then he was substantial again, bumping and rolling to a stop along the trench floor while a second and third set of air bags ruptured.
Fwump. Fwump.

Twelve seconds had passed since Marsh applied the brakes. But Klaus wasn't done, and he had to work quickly.

Dizzy, disoriented, he gained his feet. He followed the dim light of an electric torch to the end of the trench. Trapped in the net, beneath a jumble of bedding and concrete, a woman flailed.

Frantically, spasmodically. Because she was terrified. How could she not be?

Klaus peeled the net away. “You're safe,” he said in German. He repeated it over and over while tossing aside the debris. Miraculously, she hadn't broken any limbs; he could tell from the flailing. But fresh cuts and bruises bloomed on her porcelain-pale skin owing to the violence of her extraction.

Her mouth opened in a silent scream. She was mute. As was her twin sister.

Klaus put his hands to the sides of her face, gently brushing aside the bundle of wires dangling from her scalp. Marsh was right: she wore a battery harness even in her sleep. Because Moscow might decide to send an urgent message at any time of the day or night.

“You're safe. It's me, Klaus. Do you remember me?”

The Twin writhed in his grasp. She stared. Confused, uncomprehending.

“Klaus! From the farm!”

She frowned, pulling away.

“I've rescued you,” he said. Which was true, more or less. He hoped. “I'm sorry it had to be so sudden. We couldn't get a warning to you.”

Her brow furrowed; her struggles flagged.

Klaus?
she mouthed. She looked no less confused. And perhaps even more frightened. The last time he'd had any meaningful interaction with either of the Twins, it was before the war, when he and Reinhardt had vied for the doctor's favor. He'd been young and arrogant. A killer. How could she know he was a different man now?

“Yes. It's me.” Klaus put an arm around her, helping her to sit up. She flinched away from his touch. He'd forgotten the sisters' eyes were two different colors. One blue, one brown. A side effect of the doctor's experiments.

They darted left, right, down, and up. She took in the earthen walls of the trench and the crude oak timbers.
Where? How?
she mouthed.

“You must listen to me. We have very little time.” He looked first into the brown eye, and then the blue. “Am I speaking to both of you?”

She frowned again, eyes narrowed in concentration. Her head shook slowly. Concentration became disbelief, then a new fear. She trembled.

Klaus had never worked with the Twins, but her reaction was easy to interpret. She'd lost contact with her sister, and now she was panicking because she was too confused to think properly.

Poor girl
. Klaus leaned forward; she flinched again.

“I'm not going to touch you. I want to inspect your wires and your harness.”

The hunch in her shoulders dropped by a fraction of an inch. Klaus inspected her battery. It wasn't a Reichsbehörde design, but rather a hybrid between the original technology and the assassin's implants. The Soviets had upgraded the Twins' equipment for better durability and longevity in the field. Klaus had received no such upgrades, since they had intended for him to spend the rest of his life at Arzamas-16. And, of course, their captors had never dared to make even the smallest alterations to Gretel's equipment. She was too valuable.

The gauge showed two thirds of the charge remaining. The three-pronged banana plug from her wires (this, too, differed from his own) sat firmly in the connector, with the safety latch snapped over it. Klaus traced the wires to her head; halfway back he found a sharp kink where fine strands of copper poked through the insulation. That, too, had been replaced by the Soviets. Probably many times. A small spasm racked the Twin when he brushed the frayed strands with his finger.

“Sorry.”

His own battery had begun to fail, sputtering out the last remnants of its charge. He disconnected it. Then he carefully peeled the insulation away from the kink with his fingernails, just enough to let him unwrap the insulation around the break. Naked copper gleamed in the torchlight. Rolling the segment of bare wire between his thumb and forefinger rebraided the strands enough to restore the flow of current. It would need solder and a proper splice later, but the repair would hold for now.

He'd done this to his own wires countless times. They all had.

“Better? Am I speaking to both of you now?”

She tried again. The panic became trembling relief. She nodded.

That was one problem solved. But how had her sister reacted to all of this? Had she already raised the alarm back in Moscow?

“Listen. This is urgent. I'm working with people who can reunite you. You can be free. Both of you.”

A look of shock passed across her face. And, he imagined, across an identical face thousands of miles away. It dissolved into disbelief, and then hope so earnest, it hurt to behold.

“I know what it's like,” he confessed. He couldn't help it. The look on her face … “I was held at Arzamas.”

We know,
she mouthed.

“I know you have no reason to trust me. I promise you can be together again, and soon. But for this to work, you mustn't let the Soviets know what has happened.” He studied her eyes again, wishing he could see the other Twin. “Do you understand? The Soviets mustn't know what has happened until they find you missing.”

The Twin's multicolored gaze lost its focus while she mulled things over with her sister. She nodded emphatically.

“Good.” Klaus tried to give her a reassuring smile. “They'll be here soon.”

She shivered. Though it was June, it was also the middle of the night, and the ground was damp. She'd been sleeping when he snatched her out of bed. Most of her blanket had made the transit with her. Klaus gathered it up and covered her.

They waited. Somewhere, a cricket chirped.

“Reinhardt is here in England,” he said. “As is my sister. Try to avoid them both if you can.”

Confusion twisted the Twin's face.

“Long story,” he said.

The cricket, and a post-adrenaline crash, lulled Klaus into drowsiness. More time passed. Finally, a ladder propped at the far end of the trench creaked beneath a set of work boots. Marsh joined them a few moments later, followed closely by Pethick and a third man whom Klaus didn't recognize.

Marsh sighed with relief when he saw the Twin.
“Guten Morgen,”
he said. He carried a writing slate, a paper bag, and the valise from the car.

He handed the valise to Klaus. “Thank you. And good luck,” said Marsh. Klaus checked the contents. Marsh had kept his word. In return, Klaus removed the dead battery from his harness and handed it to Marsh.

It was a weight off his shoulders, literally and figuratively. The last time he'd ever wear a battery. But no pangs of sentimentality accompanied the realization. Klaus had earned this. He wouldn't miss the coppery taste of von Westarp's legacy.