The Coldest War (39 page)

And the boy needed to eat. It was probably past time for his dinner. Marsh tossed aside the covers, gathering his strength for a trip downstairs to see if Liv had left some food prepared for John before leaving for the evening.

He struggled to find his clothes in the darkened bedroom. He hadn't bothered to pull the blinds, but the illumination from the streetlamps merely cast a dim yellow rectangle on the ceiling. He'd managed to find his shirt but no trousers when the overhead light clicked on.

Liv stood in the doorway with a tray. They stared at each other in surprise. Marsh, wounded and indecent, felt surprised because the sun had set yet Liv was home; Liv looked harried and embarrassed, perhaps because he was wounded and indecent.

“You're home,” he blurted, at the same moment she said, “You're up.”

Another awkward silence. Liv broke it: “I made soup,” she said, indicating the tray. It held a bowl, a piece of black bread, and a spoon. She stepped into the room. Marsh sat on the edge of the bed. He felt self-conscious without his trousers, and then mournful that such would be his reaction to appearing undressed before his wife.

“You're home,” he repeated, because the surprise hadn't left him, and he didn't know what else to say.

She turned her head away, gave a halfhearted shrug. “I thought I'd stay in.”

He stared at her. Something had changed, but he didn't understand.

Liv hefted the tray again. “It's getting cold.” The timbre of embarrassment tarnished her silver voice.

“Oh. Right.” His stomach rumbled at the smell of food. Slowly, uncertainly, he pulled himself back into bed. She waited for him to pull the covers across himself, then set the tray on his lap.

“Thank you,” he said. And then he tucked in, because he discovered he was ravenous. Liv sat in the armchair beside the wardrobe and watched him eat.

John thumped more loudly. Marsh started to get up, but Liv raised a hand. “I fed him while you slept.”

Marsh nodded. He tore off a piece of bread and dunked it in the bowl. The soup was warm but not salty. It soothed the persistent ache in his throat. Salt was painful.

“You weren't home last night,” she said.

“Work,” he said around a mouthful of wet bread.

A thought struck him. Rumpled sheets. He realized that Liv had stayed home last night. But in a strange reversal,
he
had been gone all night, leaving her to wonder.

“Was Gretel there?”

So that was it. “She isn't my lover, Liv. If you believe anything, believe that.”

“I know it. I know. She explained things to me.”

He nearly dropped his spoon. “She did?”

“She said there was a lot of friction between you. That you should be warmer to her. But you're not, because of the pain.”

Marsh gritted his teeth. How long had they talked in the hospital? Gretel might have tested a hundred variations of the conversation, a thousand, foreseeing every variation, every outcome, until she knew how to educe the precise reactions she wanted from Liv.

“It's complicated,” he muttered.

“Why?”

He didn't answer. Instead, he concentrated on spooning the last drops of soup from the bowl. How could Marsh explain this? How could he tell her that Agnes had died in the past because Liv had confided to Gretel in the present? How could he condemn Liv to a life inside that impregnable grief?

Liv changed the subject. “Is she married?”

“What?”

“She mentioned a Klaus. I thought…”

The spoon rang against ceramic while he fished out the last piece of carrot. “Klaus isn't her husband,” he managed. “He's her brother.”

“Oh,” said Liv. She looked momentarily confused by that. “Do you think they would…” She trailed off again. “Maybe we could have dinner. The four of us.”

“What?” This time he did drop the spoon.

“I like Gretel. She's easy to talk to.”

Oh dear God. Marsh was at a loss for how to navigate this minefield. On the one hand, his estranged wife was telling him in so many words that she wanted to be around him, at least a little bit. And that hadn't happened in a very long time. It should have brought him happiness. But the joy and hope were corrupted, tainted with suspicion. This otherwise welcome change had come about because of Gretel. Even here, even now, the monster's fingerprints smudged his life. She cast her shadow even on the delicate private interactions of a strained marriage.

“Please don't ask this of me, Liv. Not Gretel.”

“I want to have friends again. Real friends.”

She had gone to Will's funeral. Will had been touched by that. The funeral and the interaction with Gretel had together left their marks on Liv. They'd forced her to confront a loneliness she'd buried long ago. And Marsh, seeing it so plain on his wife for the first time, felt a gentle connection to her because he carried the same burden. They were twins in sorrow and regret. Two halves of a sundered life.

“Me, too. But not Gretel. It's impossible.”

“What about her brother?”

“Klaus?” He was certainly the lesser of two evils. And to be fair, he'd been a fairly good bloke. But: “He's good. But he's gone. He isn't here any longer.”

“Oh,” said Liv. “How sad. Gretel must be lonely.” She stood and took the tray with its empty bowl.

“Thank you for the soup,” said Marsh. “I feel better.”

“Rest,” she said. He settled back under the covers. Liv turned off the light on her way out. But she stood in the corridor and watched him until he fell asleep.

11 June 1963
Milkweed Headquarters, London, England

The children hadn't recovered from their ordeal with the Twins by the time Milkweed received confirmation the Soviets were on the move. But Moscow had taken Marsh's bait, and thus it fell to Will to spring the trap.

Moscow believed the final warlock had been eliminated. And that without the power of the Eidolons on its side, Britain no longer had an effective deterrent against Soviet aggression. No way to defend the Empire, no hope of clinging to its holdings.

Naturally, the USSR went straight for the low-hanging fruit.

Just hours after the Twins' false message, Soviet forces spilled into Iran. The speed of the Kremlin's response surprised nobody. The troop buildup had been in place for weeks. They'd been waiting, poised for the moment the path opened to them. Armored columns plunged deep into the country in a socialist version of the blitzkrieg, ready to claim the rich Persian oil fields for the Great Soviet. So greedy was the Kremlin that they were committed to this path before they realized the Moscow Twin had disappeared. Once again, as SIS analysts had predicted.

Iranian and British forces together attempted to resist the incursion. Under normal conditions, they would have been able to hold out for a long time, because preparing for this eventuality had long been a key element of Britain's strategy in the region.

But this was not a normal conflict, because the attack also marked the world debut of an entirely new fighting force. Hundreds of Arzamas shock troops spearheaded the invasion.

Which meant they were concentrated and vulnerable to an Eidolonic counterattack.

It was all playing out according to Marsh's plan.

 

twelve

12 June 1963
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England

When dissimilar metals touch in the presence of a conductive medium, the result is a small but measurable voltage. The effect was discovered by Luigi Galvani in the late eighteenth century. It was rediscovered by Klaus on the morning of his first full day as a free man.

He'd arrived at his new flat by early afternoon. The package from Marsh contained the key and a lease already signed under Klaus's new identity, Hans Kannenberg. (He made a mental note to practice his new signature.) The flat was a corner unit over a greengrocer, with an oriel window that overlooked the grocer's awning at the intersection of two lanes lined with shops. The long wooden floorboards creaked with every footstep; the bedroom wainscoting had a prominent mouse hole; the kitchen had only one tiny cupboard for storage. It was, he supposed, quaint.

And luxurious compared to Klaus's expectations: the flat had a private bath. He'd taken it for granted he'd be given a room in a boarding house, forced to share a communal bathroom with a host of other residents.

Never in his entire life had Klaus enjoyed a private bathroom. It didn't matter if the rest of the building turned out to be a rattrap. At least it would be his private rattrap.

He spent most of that first afternoon pacing through the flat.
His
flat. A fact that defeated him. He didn't want to leave, didn't want to stop running his hands along the walls, for fear that it would all disappear if he did.

But as afternoon slid into evening, the hunger pangs reminded Klaus he hadn't eaten since the previous night. He ventured outside and caught the greengrocer as he was closing shop; Klaus spent some of the cash from Marsh's package in return for a tomato, a cucumber, a head of lettuce, and a surprised glance at his wires. Klaus spotted a butcher's shop down the road, just closed for the day. He knocked on the display window. The butcher unlocked the door; Klaus ducked in and managed to get another double take along with the last lamb chop. Neither shop had mint jelly on hand. He'd wondered at Will's dinner in Knightsbridge, the fresh smell of the mint and the bloody scent of rare lamb. Klaus hadn't eaten lamb since the days when he'd been the doctor's favorite.

He rejected the memory, ashamed of it, vowing never to revisit it. Ancient history. Life began anew today.

On the way back, Klaus passed a newspaper stand. A deliveryman stood on the back of a truck, carelessly tossing down bundles of the evening edition. Klaus jumped aside to avoid a flying bundle, toppling a pile of papers in the process. The seller apologetically gathered up Klaus's groceries while Klaus restacked the papers. Again, the sight of Klaus's wires evoked a small frown and shudder.

Klaus glimpsed the front page while self-consciously offering his own apologies. More coverage of the situation in Iran: the Soviet columns had made great progress toward the refineries of the south in an improbably short time, but stopped abruptly. Klaus couldn't stop himself from idle speculation; he couldn't help but wonder how many Arzamas troops rode at the vanguard of that incursion.

No further incidents interrupted his return home. Only later did he realize he hadn't instinctively reached for the Götterelektron during the near miss with the newspaper deliveryman. His training and his old life were fading into the distance. That pleased him greatly. For the first time, his future was what he made it. He would never become a junk man.

He entered the flat hungry and eager to cook his own meal in his own home. But as he set his groceries on the small countertop beside the refrigerator, he realized he had no dishes. No cutlery, no glasses, no pots, no pans. He ate the tomato like an apple, over the sink. The juice ran down his chin, sharp enough to sting a nascent cold sore at the corner of his lips. Klaus resolved to spend more of his Milkweed cash the next day, and to cook a real meal for himself the next evening. He would eventually have to find a job. But that could wait.

He spent the night on a bare mattress, but let himself sleep in. That was also something he'd rarely experienced. At both the Reichsbehörde and Arzamas-16, his daily regimen had been tightly controlled, any opportunities for sloth ruthlessly chopped out and tossed aside.

Klaus ran the hottest shower he could. As with so many other household necessities, he had no soap, no shampoo, no towel; the medicine cabinet was empty but for a rusty straight razor left behind by a previous resident. But that wasn't the point. This was
his
shower. He filled his lungs with steam and stood under the pounding hot rain until it became a cold drizzle.

The cracked gray tiles of the bathroom floor turned treacherously slick beneath his feet. Rivulets of water streamed out of his hair, pooling in the mildewed gaps between the tiles. Steam had condensed into a fine silvery mist across the mirror. Klaus wiped a hand along the cool glass, flicked the water into the sink.

Mirror and morning light together showed him the truth: He was a fiftyish man with nothing to show for all those years, turning softer with every passing day, and eternally defined by the wires embedded in his skull. He thought back to his brief shopping trip the previous evening. The greengrocer, the butcher, and the newspaper vendor hadn't seen Klaus the man so much as they'd seen a man with wires.

It had been surprisingly easy to overcome his own reluctance to venture into public without a disguise. But it wasn't enough. No amount of self-confidence, of forced goodwill, would ever put people at ease when faced with such ugliness. Gretel relied upon her manipulative charm.

The wires were a tether, forever chaining him to his old life. He'd seen it three times in the space of a quarter hour.

Klaus tested the straight razor with his thumb. The blade hadn't been properly stropped since long before it was abandoned. But close to the hinge it still retained a cutting edge. Not sharp, but perhaps good enough for sawing through strands of woven copper.

He used his fingernails to peel away several inches of insulation. Next, Klaus gripped the razor handle in one hand and flipped the blade backwards so that the dull side pressed against his knuckles. He clenched the wires in his free fist and pulled them taut enough to tug unpleasantly against the steel fasteners in his skull.

Klaus held that posture while he studied himself in the mirror. The wires had been a part of him—part of his physical space, his body image, the way he moved through the world—for most of his life. He was as unconsciously aware of his wires as he was of his own fingers and toes. Was this self-mutilation? Self-hatred? He erased all doubts by thinking of Reinhardt, who scoured church rummage sales in search of a lost godhood, who sought to revive something long dead from broken radios and bits of scrap.