The Coldest War (42 page)

“Are you certain?” said Gretel. “It would be the easiest thing in the world to know if you're right. People open up to me. Isn't that right, Raybould?”

“Leave Liv out of this,” Marsh growled.

Will frowned, knowing he'd missed something.

“I find Gwendolyn in the kitchen, while she fixes a salad for dinner.” Will paled as Gretel began to rattle off her nonchalant prophecy. “I begin by asking her to pass a—”

Marsh rapped his knuckles on the table. The needles jumped again. “That's enough.” To Will, who was visibly shaken, he said, “Don't let her get under your skin. She's toying with you. She's not wearing a battery.”

“Yes.” Will paused. He looked chagrined. “Of course.”

Marsh tried to swallow a growing ache, and winced. His injuries had become a caltrop lodged in his throat. He braced himself, then forced his words out, flogging them like cavalry crossing the no-man's-land of his broken voice.

“I think it was a mistake for us to wonder what you've been waiting for. Rather than concentrating on
what
you're doing, we should be asking ourselves
why
you're doing it.”

He leaned across the table. “You forget that I've seen behind your mask.”

At this, Gretel frowned.

“You present a front to the world, an air of imperturbable serenity. And you play it well, I'll give you that. So everybody accepts it. Even Klaus.”

Gretel said, “I hope Madeleine looks after him.”

Marsh ignored the deflection. “But it's all just an act, isn't it? You're not fearless. No. Because I know one thing that terrifies you. The Eidolons.”

Was there the tiniest shift in the set of her jaw? A minute hardening in the lines around her eyes? A stillness?

“Back in '40, when Will and I put you in front of that Eidolon—naïvely assuming the Reichsbehörde was a haven for Jerry warlocks—you clenched my arm tight enough to draw blood with your nails.” He gestured at her hands; she kept her nails short. “Gretel, pale and trembling. No longer an oracle. Just a girl again. That's what I remembered after all these years.”

Marsh rolled back his sleeve, peering at his forearm. There, faintly visible under the graying hair, were three pale crescent-shaped marks where Gretel's nails had bitten deep. “But I thought nothing of it in that moment. Because my blood ran freely, which of course meant the Eidolon could see me as well.”

“Ah, yes,” said Gretel. “Your mysterious
name
.”

Will sat up. “Do you know what it means?”

“Haven't your children translated it for you?”

The men shared a look. “They can't,” Will muttered. “Or won't.”

“Don't worry,” she said. She glanced at Will over her shoulder. “I'm sure you'll find it enlightening.”

Marsh pulled the conversation back on track. “I'd forgotten all about that incident until today.” Marsh nodded at Will. “Will tells me the Eidolons have gone halfway round the bend. Like somebody has lobbed a bloody great boulder into their quiet little duck pond.

“Now, who, I wonder, could do a thing like that?”

Gretel yawned. She made a show of stretching, arching her back like a young woman trying to catch a lad's attention. He realized she was doing exactly that, for his benefit. Marsh shuddered with revulsion. Gretel craned her neck to look at the clock ticking atop the empty bookcase.

“Well,” she said. “I've stalled you long enough.” She stood. “We must leave now.”

Marsh and Will shared another look. For his part, Will looked perplexed, and even a bit indignant. Which was more or less how Marsh felt.

“We're not done here,” said Marsh. He made his point by reaching under the table with one leg to kick Gretel's chair toward her.

“If we don't leave now, we'll have a terrible time making it to the Admiralty.” She nodded, as if to reassure him. “But you'll have my help, of course.”

Marsh frowned. It came as nausea, the sick dread that he'd been outmaneuvered again. This warred with the anger and loathing he always felt in Gretel's presence. Fever sweat made the world slippery. He couldn't grab it, couldn't wrestle it down, couldn't force it to make sense. “Oh, I see. So I'm taking you to the Admiralty now, am I?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said just as Roger burst breathlessly into the room, “it has fallen under attack.”

Roger said, “Boss! Just got a call on the blower. Sounds like half of Whitehall is up in flames.”

“What? When did this happen?” Marsh was already on his feet, clenching Gretel's elbow with one hand and beckoning to Will with the other.

“Just now! All at once! Coordinated attack.”

“By whom?” said Will, scrambling out of the chair.

“Dunno. Line went dead before I could get an answer.”

They moved into the corridor beyond the den, like a rugby scrum with Marsh at the center.

To Roger, Marsh said, “Stay here and man the wireless.” The house had a transmitter and receiver for communicating with other SIS outposts in cases of emergency. This qualified. “Arm yourself, do a head count, help Madeleine batten down the hatches.”

“She isn't here,” Roger said.

But Marsh was already moving on. To Will and Gretel, he said, “You two, with me.”

Will started to protest: “Gwendolyn—”

“Is safer here. But if this is the children's doing, I need you with me.”

They hurried across the entryway to the front door. Gwendolyn trotted halfway down the stairs behind them. “William? Where are you going?”

Will turned, dashed up the stairs. “I'll be back soon, love. Not to worry.”

“Such a commotion. Why?”

He kissed her, a peck on the cheek. “Stay away from the windows.” A look of deep concern crossed her face.

“We're going,
now,
” said Marsh. His gravelly voice made everything sound like a command. Which was useful at times. He pulled Gretel after him, down the stairs to the Morris parked on the street. He opened the passenger-side door and pushed her inside. Will hopped in back as Marsh started the engine.

And then they were off, driving toward the heart of London, where distant sirens echoed and the first plumes of smoke darkened the sky.

*   *   *

The wireless mounted beneath the fascia provided sporadic updates and panicked speculations during the drive. A Soviet invasion, said some. An uprising of fifth columnists, said others. But whatever was happening, it was killing witnesses and severing communication lines faster than they could provide reliable reports. And London wasn't the only place under attack. The list of besieged cities grew by the minute: Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Sheffield … All burned.

Gretel took it all in with prim satisfaction. She looked
proud
. She made a little sigh of triumph with each new report, or each time the situation worsened.

“What the hell have you done?” Marsh cranked the wheel. The car skidded through a roundabout, sending Gretel's braids flying.

She caught and smoothed them. “I've done nothing.”

He had to bite off his retort while he maneuvered the car around a bobby directing traffic past a collision.

A cacophony of alarms, shrieking sirens, popping gunfire, even the
chuff-chuff-chuff
of antiaircraft weapons engulfed them as they approached Westminster. The noise, the chaos, the smoke … Marsh could have sworn he was back in the Blitz again. Back before Luftwaffe bombs had cratered great swaths of the city, before rebuilding had turned London into a different place, broke its links with the past.

The city was burning. Dozens of fires. Rising spontaneously, spread across the heart of London. Flames engulfed office buildings, banks, hospitals, police stations, post offices. People fled the conflagrations, heads bent low beneath dark, billowing smoke, with shirts and scarves pressed to their mouths.

Bankers fled from falling debris, vainly shielding themselves with briefcases and umbrellas. And there was a lot of debris; whole buildings had been pulverized, seemingly at random.

Doctors and nurses herded their patients—those who could move—outside crushed and burning hospitals.

Office workers poured into the streets, snarling traffic in their haste to escape the smoke and heat.

Fire.
“Is this why you sent the blueprints to Reinhardt? So that he could start this?”

Gretel said, “Reinhardt has never been this effective. Even in his best form.”

No. If there was one thing they had learned from the debacle in Knightsbridge, it was that the Germans were no longer masters of the Willenskräfte. And the reports coming from other cities proved a single Reinhardt wasn't behind this attack. But that left just two possibilities, both far worse than a rampaging Reinhardt.

Marsh glanced into the rearview. “Are the children doing this?”

Will said, “I—”

Gretel shouted, “Stop!”

Marsh reacted without thinking and punched the brakes. The car screeched to a halt just as the masonry façade peeled away from the top floors of a burning six-story building. A rain of bricks and mortar pounded the street hard enough to shake the Morris. The car creaked on its suspension.

“How fortunate she's not wearing a battery,” Will muttered.

Gretel smirked. “Back up. Second left,” she said.

Marsh threw the car into reverse. Dust swirled around them, blown aloft on updrafts from the surrounding fires. How long before the fires coalesced into a single conflagration, a fire storm that turned London to ash?

Marsh repeated his question, though he feared he already knew the answer: “Will. Is it the children?”

“I think not. I don't see…” Will gasped just then, as Marsh swerved around the corner hard enough to throw Will crashing against his sore arm. Gretel clucked her tongue. “I said
second
left.”

Marsh shifted again and accelerated down a side street. His thoughts raced along with the overtaxed engine. No, it wasn't the children doing this. Marsh had seen the Eidolons at work when he'd traveled through frozen Germany near the end of the war. This was different.

“Ah, Pip?”

This felt like human malevolence. There was nothing supernatural about it. Which meant—

“Pip!”

Marsh almost missed the figure standing in the center of the road because she was cloaked in flames. Not the flames of the buildings burning to either side, nor the flames of the debris littering the street, but the flames she conjured from thin air. Marsh hit the brakes and again threw the car into reverse, but not before the woman in the street turned and noticed the car. A grin spread across her face as his shimmering nimbus disappeared.

“Shit!”

Marsh pressed his foot to the floor, but the car moved upward instead of backwards. The wheels spun uselessly over the asphalt as the Arzamas saboteur willed the car aloft. Marsh thought fleetingly of Kammler, whom he had personally witnessed in action at the Reichsbehörde. The Morris bounced a foot above the roadway, swaying back and forth as though the woman lifting them was checking her grip before giving the whole thing a great heave.

Will yelped. He rolled into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest. He didn't notice that Gretel seemed annoyed but otherwise unconcerned.

Marsh, knowing she would never let anything unfortunate befall herself, tried to relax.

A police van skidded to a halt behind the Arzamas agent. Two officers jumped out, pointed pistols at her. She turned to face them. The car fell. The impact wrenched Marsh's neck and the small of his back. The undercarriage echoed with ominous creaks.

The policemen's gunfire sounded like Christmas crackers from a distant party, improbably weak compared to the
whoosh
of fire and the groaning of the car's abused suspension.

Gretel glared at Marsh. “Second. Left.”

He hated the thought of following Gretel's directions. But he adhered to her advice for the rest of the drive. Without access to her prescience, traversing the war zone would have been impossible. The Soviet attack was concentrated here; the streets were thick with smoke, rubble, and combat. Meanwhile the Arzamas sleeper cells methodically eradicated the defenders and tore the city apart. Marsh and his passengers glimpsed more and more of the agents at work as they neared Whitehall.

Ivan tricked us. Outplayed us.

Iran was a diversion. We didn't eliminate their Arzamas troops in Iran. They've been here in Britain all along. Hundreds of sleeper agents, waiting patiently for their orders.

Marsh trembled with adrenaline and inconsolable rage. His greatest fear unfolded all around him, and the fever lent a surreal immediacy to the destruction of Britain. Made it hyperreal. Everything he'd ever fought for, destroyed in one afternoon. Every sacrifice he'd endured, rendered pointless. And the single fact that had kept him going through all the dark years—knowing that the things he'd done had kept Britain alive and free—was soon to be a quaint fantasy.

He'd let himself believe he was good at this. But in the end, he'd failed Britain, just as he'd failed at everything else. His most dire, most spectacular failure.

Gretel warned him just in time to avoid a trio of fire trucks headed toward Buckingham Palace. The center of the lead truck imploded spontaneously as if punched by an enormous, invisible fist. It slewed and tumbled down the Mall, like a rusted tin kicked by a schoolboy. The following trucks collided with the crumpled vehicle in a chain reaction. The wreckage blocked access to the north side of St. James' Park, closing off their shortest route to the Admiralty.

Wreckage brought about by Gretel's impenetrable machinations. By a tragedy she engineered. But why?

She directed him east, a few streets south of the park.