The Coldest War (36 page)

Marsh offered his hand. Klaus took it. “Thank you,” he said. “Her wires have been damaged, but they'll hold.”

Klaus crouched beside the Twin. Switching back to German, he said, “You can trust this man. Soon you'll both be safe. I'm leaving now. Good-bye.”

Klaus climbed the ladder while Marsh introduced himself to the Twin, also in fluent German: “My name is Marsh. And I need your help.”

That was all Klaus heard, because then he emerged from the pavilion into the park. It was lovely. Peaceful. Moonlight limned all the greenery with silver. He could have almost imagined it was his own private preserve. But he didn't linger.

A lone taxi idled along the broad walk on the east side of the park. Klaus climbed in.

The SIS driver said, “Where to, mate?”

Klaus thought about this. “Anywhere,” he said.

 

eleven

11 June 1963
Mayfair, London, England

She didn't have a name. According to the records, von Westarp and his cronies in the SS had referred to them only as “1” and “2.” The Soviets had done likewise, prompted by the tattoos inside their left wrists. Marsh asked her how she referred to herself, but she struggled to convey that in writing. He gathered that the Twins shared a sense of identity altogether alien to what regular people could comprehend.

Which worked to Milkweed's advantage. The Twins wanted desperately to be together again. That was clear. Marsh hoped the promise of reunion was sufficient to earn their cooperation.

He struggled to stay awake while the doctor gave the Twin a cursory examination. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep since leaving the hospital. Lying down irritated his injuries and caused a tickle at the back of his throat. The tickle often grew into a cough severe enough to leave Marsh retching into the waste bin beside his cot.

The doctor declared the Twin fit for travel. She'd been knocked around quite violently during the extraction, but she was otherwise as fit as could be expected. That was a small mercy; things might have gone pear-shaped in any one of dozens of ways. More than anything, the woman was confused and skittish. Understandably.

Marsh had stuffed some of Liv's old clothes into a grocer's sack the previous evening. When he opened the sack, he discovered it smelled like his wife from the days when she had been young and beautiful. Odd, that something forgotten for so long could become so desperately valuable. But Marsh shoved aside the pangs of sorrow to concentrate on the job. The woman Klaus had fished from the embassy was taller than Liv, and a little thinner, but Marsh offered her the chance to change out of her sleeping clothes.

She'd begun to strip even before Marsh and Pethick could turn away. No sense of privacy or modesty. Marsh inadvertently glimpsed a smattering of scars and old surgical wounds. Another legacy of von Westarp's farm.

In minutes they were crossing dew-damp grass to a waiting van. Traffic had picked up a bit, but it was still early enough that they made it to the Admiralty in good time. Sunrise was little more than a salmon-colored smear on a charcoal horizon when they arrived.

The plan had been to send the counterfeit message from Pembroke's office. Location was immaterial to the Twin's ability to relay things to her sister. But doing it from the other logical choice, the basement, wasn't wise; there was a danger the Twins might report what they saw, possibly warning Ivan that the warlocks weren't extinct.

Always assume the enemy is smarter than you. Stephenson had taught him that.

But Pembroke's office was locked and dark. Pethick had to use his key. He and Marsh exchanged a look of concern—this didn't smell right—but they held their tongues. Marsh ushered the Twin into a chair. She declined with a small nod when Marsh offered to pour her a scotch from Pembroke's sideboard. He helped himself to a swallow of the single malt, but regretted it. It burned like lava on the way down.

Chalk tapped on the slate as the Twin wrote, in German,
Did Klaus tell the truth?
It was the first thing she'd said without prompting. Marsh hoped that was a good sign.

“You'll be together sooner than you think,” he said. “When do they come for you in the morning?”

When they feel like it,
she wrote.

That meant they still had time. The dull glow of sunrise had only just begun to penetrate the city. From Pethick's office window, Marsh saw streetlamps wink out along the edges of St. James' Park. Green Park lay somewhere in the gray beyond that. Where even now SIS crews labored inside tents and pavilions to fill the landing trench and erase any sign of its existence prior to the celebrations on Saturday.

Pethick used Pembroke's telephone to summon a boffin to give the Twin's wires a once-over. He arrived with a small toolbox, a soldering iron, a coil of copper wire, and a roll of electrical tape. He set to work turning Klaus's makeshift splice into a permanent repair.

Marsh beckoned Pethick into the corridor. He waited until they were out of the Twin's earshot before asking, “Where the hell is he?”

“I thought he'd be here by now,” said Pethick. “This isn't like Leslie.”

“Have you tried ringing him?”

Pethick nodded. “I have several telephone operators quite cross with me. No answer.”

“Something's wrong.”

“Yes.”

“Send somebody to his home,” said Marsh.

Pethick asked, “Do you think he's in trouble?”

“I think Gretel arranged this. So, yes.”

“What could she be doing?”

What point in speculation? Either they'd find out, or they wouldn't. He glanced at his watch. “We're running out of time. Let's do what we came here to do.”

Pethick went to his own office. From there he'd call around to dispatch somebody to Pembroke's house; he'd also monitor the listening stations. If Cherkashin discovered the Twin missing before Milkweed could set things into motion, he'd have no choice but to transmit an emergency broadcast to Moscow. The stations would attempt to jam that transmission, and ring Pethick immediately.

Marsh returned to Pembroke's office, where the technician put the finishing touches on the Twin's wire. He bit off a length of black electrical tape and deftly wrapped it around the repair. The sickly-sweet odor of solder flux mingled with the earth-and-fire taste of Pembroke's scotch.

Marsh sat beside her, in the second of the two armchairs arranged before Pembroke's desk. He asked, “Better now?”

She nodded.
No static,
she wrote.

“Excellent. Are you comfortable? Warm enough?”

Another nod.

As soon as the technician had departed and closed the door behind him, Marsh spoke in earnest. “Are you both ready?” How eerie to converse with two people sharing a single set of eyes and ears.

Another nod.

“You've both been extremely patient this morning. More than I would be were our roles reversed. Thank you.”

She shrugged. Most of their adult life had been spent waiting to send and receive messages. They were, to the people who owned them, a useful tool and nothing more.

Marsh took a deep breath and launched into his pitch: “We know Cherkashin is using the pair of you to report on a series of political assassinations. Elderly men, living in the countryside.”

The Twin nodded.

“What you might not know is that these killings have been carried out in preparation for an attack on Britain, or its holdings. But Cherkashin's masters back in Moscow have been waiting for one final report before putting their plan into motion.” It was too late to turn back; they'd hit that point when he punched the brakes on Half Moon Street. So he forged ahead. “But here's the thing of it: We want the attack to proceed.”

This surprised her.
Why?

He shook his head. “That's unimportant. What does matter is that you can put it in motion by making the Soviets believe that final report has arrived. We presume that since you've been the conduit for those reports, you know how they are phrased.”

The Twin looked past him. A distant look clouded her mismatched eyes while she conferred with her sister. Unsettling. Marsh had read the files, but that wasn't a patch on actually seeing the Twins in action.

She wore the chalk down to its final nub, writing,
We can do that. Then you'll reunite us?

Marsh handed her a fresh piece of chalk. “What about rotating code phrases? Are you certain you can deliver the appropriate message?”

We have the system committed to memory. It hasn't changed in years.

Which meant the Soviets had grown complacent. Utterly convinced that they were running rings around the feeble British Empire. Which, until recently, they had been. So much the better. But:

“Aren't they concerned you'll produce counterfeit messages of your own? Or corrupt real messages?”

We tried that once. To escape.

“And?”

The Twin shook her head.
Only once.
Marsh recalled the old wounds and scars. Perhaps they weren't all vestiges of von Westarp's experimentation. Impatiently, she erased the slate with the heel of her fist. Quickly she scrawled:
You'll reunite us after?

“Yes.”

He didn't tell them that Milkweed planned to pull the distant sister to England regardless of whether they cooperated in the subterfuge. In the end it didn't matter what message they sent. Because whether or not Ivan took the bait, the Twins were far too potent a resource for the enemy to possess. Milkweed wouldn't let that continue.

Ideally, they'd extract the second Twin from the USSR after Ivan had committed to his course of action, so that Milkweed could chop him off at the knees, breaking the Cold War's precarious stalemate. If Ivan didn't fall for it, pulling her out would tip their hand: Britain still had warlocks aplenty. Good-bye sterling opportunity. And the Cold War would continue as before: a long, grinding struggle, leading to the slow erosion of the British Empire.

How?
she wrote.

Marsh tried to give her a reassuring smile. His own scars probably didn't help. “You'll find out soon enough.” He looked outside. The Admiralty building cast a long shadow across St. James', where sunlight flowed like syrup. The sun had risen.

“We haven't much time. We must begin.”

We're summoning the others.

“Announcing an incoming message?” said Marsh.

She nodded.

Ten minutes passed, or perhaps a quarter hour. She raised a hand when he became impatient. A few moments later she wrote,
They're here. We're doing it now.
More waiting.

The Twins were two ends of an invisible tether, tying Marsh to his enemies. Could they sense him?

Marsh stood. He paced while, presumably, the Twins reported the death of Lord William Beauclerk. Sunlight like molten gold glinted on the lake in St. James'. “What are they saying? Do they believe you?”

She wrote quickly now. Marsh read over her shoulder:
They're suspicious. Long delay.

He tried to picture the scene in Moscow. How many people stood at the other end of this game of Chinese whispers? Were they party? Military? KGB? Representatives of Arzamas-16? All of the above?

Marsh and Pethick had consulted with a handful of SIS's top experts on the Soviet Union while preparing the script for this operation. But the best responses, they deduced, were common sense:

“Tell them their agent had to maintain a very low profile. That the British had laid a trap for him. He didn't dare move until he was certain he'd evaded them.” Just as his orders almost certainly dictated.

The response came quickly:
Trap?

“The British were lying in wait at the target's home.” The more truth a lie contains, the easier it goes down. Another lesson from the old man. It was the honey coating for this poisoned pill: “The British were very desperate to protect the target.”

There followed another long pause. Marsh stood at the window, too deep in concentration to see outside. He cracked his knuckles. The
tap-tap-tap
of chalk on slate pulled him back beside the Twin.

Arguing. Some want to move forward. Some think the mission was a failure.
The chalk snapped in half as she added,
Too public.

Cherkashin's bosses had seen the publicized reports of Will's death.

“Remind them the world believes the target died in a gas main explosion. The arson investigation concluded as much.” Because, of course, SIS had ensured it would. “Nothing has been compromised.”

The distant expression settled over the Twin's face again. Marsh held his breath. Forever passed.

She blinked, shook her head, and took up the chalk once more.
They're leaving. No decision. Still arguing.

Disappointing, but expected.

She wrote,
Now you'll do it?

Marsh said, “Very soon. But we have to wait in case they return for follow-up questions.” Her eyebrows pulled together in a deep frown. Did she think he'd lied to her? “Please be patient,” he pleaded.

If they waited too long, Cherkashin might raise the alarm and Moscow would abandon its attack plans. But the same would happen if Milkweed extracted the other Twin too quickly. Marsh glanced at his watch again.

Either way, they'd have their answer soon.

11 June 1963
Milkweed Headquarters, London, England

Roger fetched Will from the Croydon safe house just after dawn. Will rode to the Admiralty in the Morris with the darkened window glass.

He asked, “Well? What happened?”

“They got her,” said Roger, downshifting as the car leaned around a corner. “Bit of a miracle, if you ask me.”

Will yawned. “Bully for Pip.” He'd barely slept, for fear that today would be the day he violated a long-standing vow to himself. “He's always had a flair for the dramatic.”