Waging War (21 page)

They were beating the kid again.

Karl was taking it because standing up to
the bullies was a sure way to get stabbed in his bunk. I was
halfway down the stairs on my way back to the planning room, away
from the grunts the tough guys made as they punched the kid in all
the places the bruises wouldn’t show, when I heard it.

The whimper.

If Karl had kept his mouth shut, if he’d
taken the beating like a man, I could have left them to it. They
were Bestien – beasts – all of them, and they’d made their little
Nazi beds with perfect corners and blankets you could bounce a mark
off of. They’d drunk the Kool-Aid and swallowed their Aryan master
race bollocks hook, line, and sinker. And when they turned on each
other like sharks, I didn’t get in their way. Let them take each
other out. It would save me the trouble.

But the whimper had come from a piece of
humanity that somehow survived the brainwashing. It was weakness in
a world where the weak were exterminated, and suddenly it was the
only thing worth a damn in the whole place.

I turned and went back up the stairs.

“Hört sofort auf!” My German was good enough
to communicate with the bullies, but the tone of my voice would
have sufficed on its own. “Stop it. Right now.”

They froze and stared at me. The smaller,
weasel-faced sniper had been about to punch the kid in the kidney,
and he braved a question. “Why?”

“Because I said so.” I was already bored and
regretting my brief, altruistic impulse.

The sniper dropped his arm and shared a look
with his fellow Bestien. There were five of them, because of course
five on one was sporting, and I could almost hear them wondering if
they could take me.

I smiled.

They left.

I was that terrifying.

A reputation can be a useful thing in war,
and mine was becoming the sort from which legends are made. At
first it was just playing the odds – Germany was going to lose this
war, so if I threw in my lot with them, somewhere along the way a
bomb or a tank would take me out. I was counting on that.

At first, they weren’t sure what to do with
me, an apparently traitorous Englishman. They tried to shoot me as
a spy a few times, which didn’t work, obviously. Then, when they
realized my skills might be handy, they put me to use, though they
kept me pretty far away from any of the senior Nazi officials,
because, well … I’m hard to explain. Then the Crimea happened.

The regular German army was taking its
cannon fodder to Russia, and since I preferred to kill Russians
rather than Englishmen, I signed up. I also knew the Russians were
going to wipe the floor with the Germans, so naturally, that’s
where I wanted to go. The Germans’ view of me changed the night I
cut through a swath of the Red Army with a sword. A Soviet officer
intended to run me through and I was tired of smelling like my own
blood, so I took his ceremonial blade from him and added his to the
mix instead. His comrades started shooting, and that pissed me off
because … more blood, so I removed them, one by one. In the end, I
stood alone in the middle of a Soviet command camp, surrounded by
the bodies I’d hacked to pieces, and covered in … yes, blood. The
smell of it sickened me, even as I craved it. My reputation as a
killer to be feared was born.

It wasn’t really how I’d planned things, but
since then I’d made it work my advantage. I got myself attached to
the Werwölfe, who got the jobs no one else wanted because the body
count on both sides was always so high.

But they were bullies. I didn’t care about
them, and the way Karl was looking at me, like I was his personal
savior, made me want to kill the bastard myself.

I was no one’s savior.

“Thank you.” He had to clear his throat of
weakness to make his voice work.

I glared at him. “They’ll be back. You
should go.”

He looked stricken. “I can’t leave the
Werwölfe. My mother would cry if I dishonored my family.”

I shrugged. “She’ll cry when they beat you
to death, too.”

I left him there, on top of the tower of a
commandeered estate just outside Limoges where the Werwölfe had
come to quell recent resistance activity from the French terrorists
known as the Maquis. My boots were silent on the stone steps, and
my entrance into the study startled Diekmann, the SS
Sturmbahnführer in command of our small terrorist unit. He wasn’t
afraid of me, which made him dangerous, and he carefully schooled
his expression to betray nothing. I didn’t like him – I didn’t like
any of them, and Diekmann was most likely insane – but he was also
meticulous, thorough, and he left nothing to chance.

“Take Karl off my team,” I said in
German.

“No. He’s a useful navigator. You need him.”
Diekmann studied a map of the villages around Limoges as he spoke
so he didn’t have to meet my eyes. “You are also fluent in French,
are you not?”

I stared at him. “Yes,” I said
carefully.

“You speak it without accent.”

“I speak it with a French accent. What’s
your point?”

Diekmann ground his teeth together. “SS
Brigadeführer Lammerding has requested that the Werwölfe infiltrate
the local resistance so that we may discover their weapons caches.
They have been entirely too active in this area recently, and
Lammerding suspects a bigger plot.”

I stared at him. “You can do with the rest
of them what you like. I’m only here in France waiting for the
quickest way to London.”

Diekmann faced me properly, and there was
madness in his eyes. I actually wondered if he would attack me, and
part of me wouldn’t have minded. “You do not have a say in the
matter, Werwolf. Did you not wonder why Berlin would send you to
England via France? This mission is your first priority. The
English mission was merely the carrot they dangled to get you
here.”

I glared at Diekmann. “They don’t intend to
go forward with London?”

He waved a dismissive hand. “Of course they
do, but they don’t need you to do it. Your interest in the London
mission is obviously personal. We’ve decided to exploit that.” His
gaze turned sharp. “Find the Maquis weapons, or you will be removed
from the English mission.”

I growled furiously. “Remove me and the
mission will collapse.”

Surprisingly, he growled back. “Locate the
resistance headquarters, slay some terrorists, and I’ll send Karl
home.”

Bastard.

Finally, I grit my teeth. “Send him home
now. Oskar and Johann will kill him while I’m gone.”

“Get me French weapons information and I’ll
put him on a train myself. Until then, I’ll send Oskar and Johann
into the woods to hunt. God knows we could use the fresh meat.”

Those two were trained snipers, so it was
logical to send them out for food. If I was lucky, maybe they’d
manage to get themselves murdered by the French terrorists so I
wouldn’t have to do it. “When does my transport leave for
London?”

“You’re set to depart on June 12th.”
Diekmann could sense he was gaining ground with me.

“The inside man is expecting me?” After the
Crimea, the Werwölfe had recruited me for the mission in London.
But the inside man was the reason I took the job.

“He’s expecting an English art broker, which
means, yes, he’s expecting you.” Diekmann’s tone was
dismissive.

“The man’s a thief. What makes you think a
man who betrays one country won’t betray another?” I allowed
contempt to lace my voice.

Diekmann snorted, no doubt thinking it was
ironic to hear that from an Englishman in the German army, then he
ground out the words. “George Walters contacted us regarding this
gift to the Führer, and he will be paid very well for his services.
Additionally, we have his wife and his brother in our custody.”

“That presupposes he cares about their
well-being,” I said.

Diekmann scoffed. “Only a monster would
willfully cause the death of his family.”

What he didn’t know was that George Walters
was
a monster.

George Walters was my great-grandfather.

Bletchley Park – June, 1944

Never mind the Clocking, I almost puked from
disorientation. It was pitch black in the hidden library room, and
Ringo’s clutch on my arm was the only thing that proved I wasn’t
trapped in the nothingness of
between
.

“Is ‘e ‘ere?” Ringo struggled to keep his
voice low.

I quickly stifled my relief at the sound of
his voice. A tiny, niggling part of my brain had wondered if he
would actually make it to 1944 with me, or if he would be kicked
through to a date he didn’t already occupy. It begged the question
of why Ringo wasn’t already here, considering it was still within a
natural lifespan, but it wasn’t a question I wanted to ask, and
certainly not out loud.

But since I could barely find my voice
anyway, I had to whisper. “I don’t think he’s here. I didn’t focus
on the time, only the date. So it’s probably the same time as it
was when we left.”

“After midnight, then. Right. Can ye sense
any Mongers in the library beyond the wall?”

I’d been getting better at sending my spidey
sense, as Archer called it, out beyond me. It was actually more
like my Cougar sensing predators in her vicinity, because it was
particularly effective with Mongers, but I could often sense
regular people too.

“No Mongers.”

“That’s somethin’, at least.”

Ringo set his satchel down against the wall
and I did the same. Before we left Archer, we had handed over
everything that didn’t fit 1944, including my phone, which would
have been dead in about eight hours anyway. I kept a Maglite and my
daggers, and then changed into the wartime clothes Ringo and Sanda
had scrounged from the closets at Elian Manor. Archer had admired
the wool wide-legged trousers and suit jacket I wore, and I had to
admit, I felt a little like Katherine Hepburn in the outfit.
Apparently, women in Britain had taken to wearing their husbands’
clothes to work because of rationing, and to save their dresses for
special occasions, so according to Archer, my preference for
practical clothes would finally blend into the period.

“I’m goin’ out to find my own place. Are ye
stayin’ in, or will ye go find ‘im?”

“You’re not going to sleep here?”

I couldn’t miss the scowl in his voice. “I
wouldn’t take kindly to another man where my woman slept, and I’ve
no idea ‘ow long it’s been since ‘e’s seen me. I’m not willin’ to
risk it, thank ye very much.”

Ringo slid his hand along the wall until he
found the hidden latch. He flipped it and then waited a breath
before allowing the door to open a crack. The library beyond was
dark, but the moonlight shining in was like daylight in comparison
to the pitch-blackness of the tiny room hidden behind the fireplace
wall. There were desks set up near the windows, and I realized that
any room without curtains would be dark because of the general
blackout restrictions throughout England that were put in place
during the Blitz. That’s why Archer had managed to hide his secret
room’s existence – no one worked in the library at night.

I followed Ringo out and he closed the door
behind us.

“I’ll walk ye to H Block,” Ringo whispered
in my ear.

I nodded, and we slipped out of the library
and down the hall to the front door. The front of the mansion had
the biggest windows, so it seemed safe to expect it to remain
unused at night. The air outside was crisp and remarkably silent,
and we walked quickly down the drive toward the blocks. They were
also dark and silent, but we could see that those windows had
blackout drapes, and the occasional seam of light spoke of night
shifts working inside.

Ringo checked the war-era watch on his
wrist. “A tenner says they’ll be breakin’ for tea in five
minutes.”

“Then we better be in H Block by then.” Four
minutes later we had made it to the outer door.

Ringo put an arm out to stop me from
entering. “Wait. Tuck back against the wall for a minute. Let’s let
‘em leave first.”

As if by some alarm bell we couldn’t hear,
the doors to various blocks opened at once, and Wrens emerged
chattering in whispered voices to each other like wind rustling
through trees. Then, a minute after that, the men emerged. Some
wore suits, and some wore khaki pants with their shirtsleeves
rolled up. Their voices were low but carried further on the night
air, and from their conversation, I gathered these were the
engineers and mathematicians.

My heartbeat slammed in my throat, and I
realized I was terrified to see Archer.

Ringo gripped my hand for an instant and
whispered in my ear. “Go on. ‘E didn’t come out.”

“Come with me?” Nerves made my voice
shake.

“I’ll be behind ye for back-up, but ye can
do this just fine.”

I took a deep breath, then stepped around
the open door and almost ran into a girl about my age and nearly my
height just pulling on a uniform jacket as she ran out.