The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds

by Ian Tregillis

  The heavy fortifications—the grands ouvrages—of the Maginot Line didn’t extend through the Ardennes. The forest had long been considered impassable with heavy armor. And so it had been, until to night.

  But the French had sprinkled smaller fortifications—petits ouvrages—through the portion of forest that extended across the border. These, too, had to be destroyed to ensure the flawless rollout of the Blitzkrieg. Klaus’s ability was useless for clearing timberland. But he had no equal for clearing fortifications.

  Klaus hefted a pack from the overloaded car. He checked the contents. Thirty kilograms of PETN were sufficient to tear open the heaviest ouvrage like a tin can. But when detonated inside the steel-plated walls, it would turn the fort into a meat grinder.

  Gretel joined him as he double-checked the gauge on his battery harness. She pointed. “That way. Follow the gully until you reach the clearing. You’ll find the fort in the crook between two hills.”

  “How are you feeling?” Klaus asked. “Do you need a new battery yet?” She didn’t say anything.

  Klaus had advocated a plan where Gretel stayed behind, away from the battlefront, relaying her directions via the Twins. But in order to plumb the next twelve hours and shepherd them safely to the other side, she first had to twine her future with their own. Or so she insisted.

  Twined futures hadn’t helped Rudolf.

  “Why don’t you stay with the truck? It’ll be safer than—”

  She raised a hand, cutting him off. She cocked her head. A moment later the rustle of underbrush and a muffled “Damn it!” drifted out of the silent forest.

  “Thistle,” she said. Klaus sighed.

  A stream of invective preceded Buhler all the way back to the truck. “Crazy fucking mongrel whore,” it concluded.

  They regrouped. Reinhardt crushed out his cigarette. Buhler took Kammler’s leash again. “Stay here,” he ordered the driver. The pale-faced zealot saluted.

  They tromped off along the gully that Gretel had pointed out. Klaus led with his sister at his side. Behind them followed Reinhardt, Buhler, and Kammler. Runoff from recent spring rains splashed beneath their boots. They pushed through a thicket the hard way—Reinhardt and Kammler were too wound up on amphetamines to perform subtleties of Willenskräfte.

  They crawled on their stomachs just under the lip of the ravine as the underbrush gave way to a tiny clearing. An ouvrage loomed before them in the shadows. It looked like an inverted breadbox pimpled along the top with retractable machine gun turrets.

  Klaus adjusted the straps over his shoulders. He reached for the clasp on his battery harness.

  “Wait,” Gretel whispered. “Let the sentries pass.”

  She patted him on the side. He looked at her. Occasionally, when meeting her gaze, he saw something coiled up in her madness, steely and cold. But to night the moonlight stilled the depths behind her eyes. She smiled. A real smile, with even a hint of warmth.

  Her hand lingered. “Go now, brother.”

  Klaus took a deep breath and plugged in. The taste of copper flooded his mouth. He crested the streambed and headed for the fort. Nine inches of steel and concrete ghosted through his eyeballs, his bones, his thumping heart. The French fortifications presented as much resistance to Klaus as an open window presented the wind.

  Smaller forts like this could house a few hundred fighting men, depending on the internal configuration. This one was shaped like a T. A subterranean garrison at the long end of the central tunnel probably held two hundred men or more. But it was the middle of the night, and most of the troops slept through Klaus’s silent infiltration. He entered at the top of the T, between the two gun turrets.

  He set the first demolition charge at the mouth of the tunnel sloping down to the barracks. He set the timer for one minute before moving toward the far end of the fort.

  The pair of yawning soldiers up in the turret didn’t notice him until they heard the thump as he dropped another bundle of explosives at their feet. This one Klaus set on a fifteen-second delay.

  The gunners jumped down. At first they stared at him, bleary-eyed and confused. Comprehension slowly dawned as they took in his uniform.

  “Intruder! Intruder!” One raised an alarm while the other tried to shoot Klaus. The bullets passed through him and pinged off the wall.

  Klaus ignored them. He returned the way he had come, and was just passing the tunnel entrance when an explosion ripped through the turret behind him. The concussion reverberated throughout the building. The quickest soldiers came up from the garrison just in time to meet the shock wave from the shaped charge that Klaus had planted. Smoke filled the passageways.

  Klaus dropped the rest of his ordnance under the second turret before exiting through the wall. The third blast shook the earth as he rematerialized outside.

  Gasping fresh air into his lungs, he called the all clear.

  Reinhardt, Buhler, and Kammler came charging up.

  “I said, all clear. What’s going on?”

  Reinhardt said, “Gretel said you needed help.”

  “What?”

  “Said you screwed up. Again.”

  “I did no such thing. Look! It’s done.” Plumes of oily smoke roiled out of the view slots in the turrets at either end of the casemate.

  When they returned to their hiding spot in the streambed, it was empty.

  Klaus looked around. “Where’s my sister?”

  “Must be waiting back at the truck.”

  But Gretel wasn’t there. Only the driver, who jumped to attention upon their return. Buhler flew into a rage.

  Oh, Gretel, what have you done? She’d run away, and now she was alone in what would soon be a war zone.

  Klaus wondered what would become of him. Doctor von Westarp and Standartenführer Pabst would naturally assume he had been complicit in his sister’s defection. The night’s first twinges of fear squeezed his chest.

  But even more than fear, he felt resentment. Gretel had wandered off, probably chasing her own amusement, unconcerned by the situation it created for him.

  He slumped against the side of the truck, hands crammed into his pockets. Paper crinkled where there had been none before. He unfolded the note.

  His eyes traced the loops and swirls of Gretel’s spidery copperplate. Dear Brother, it began.

  10 May 1940

  Soho, London, England

  Oh, damn.”

  Will tried to set down the telephone hand piece but instead tossed it on the desk when it slipped out of his hand. It clattered against the Bakelite cradle and set the bells inside to humming. The gauze bandage wrapped around his hand made him awkward; the cotton packed against his palm made it difficult to grip things. Especially with sweaty fingertips.

  Opening the window had admitted no end of traffic noise, the rumble of omnibuses and taxis, but not the slightest hint of breeze. It did, however, give the tobacco smoke somewhere to go after it seeped up through the loose floorboards from the Hart and Hearth down below. The biggest gaps bordered the broad stonework chimney that extended from the pub’s hearth through the second story and up to the roof above. The chimney, a welcome source of heat in winter, imposed itself on the broom-closet office like a tidal wave of stone frozen in the moment before breaking.

  He’d frittered the day away working for his brother’s charity, as he did several times per week. The work put a public face on his support of the war effort, at a time when most able-bodied men his age had joined up. They’d been able to lease the space over the pub cheaply because Will was the only person willing to brave the creaking staircase and endure an afternoon in the hotbox, as Will tended to think of it. Still, he preferred the space above the pub to working out of the home, or from the club. It offered seclusion when Will chose to pursue his own little project for the war effort.

  Most of a year had passed since they’d screened that damnable film for him. And they’d made very little progress since then. Von Westarp’s methods remained opaque as ever, the whereab
outs of his “children” unknown.

  But Will felt confident, and proud, that he could change that. Soon after joining the Milkweed effort—a grandiose name for four men with nothing to do—Will had returned home to Bestwood. He’d stayed there just long enough to collect a few of his grandfather’s papers before returning to London.

  Will’s language skills, once rusty through years of neglect, had improved in the past nine months. And now he felt ready to propose his idea to Marsh, when the fellow returned from France.

  Today, however, he’d spent doing real work for the charity rather than poring over grandfather’s lexicons. Aubrey thought it might be wise to devote fund-raising toward the victory garden program. Will had promised to get a few heavy hitters on board, give the whole thing a higher profile. And so he’d spent hours on the telephone.

  Or would have. A strange day all around. Half the time, the lines were jammed. The other half of the time, it seemed nobody could be bothered to answer the telephone. Like the entire city had nipped out for a moment and never came back. He hadn’t heard any laughter or snippets of conversation drifting up from the pub, either, as he usually did. Even the traffic was more subdued today, as though burdened with a peculiar self-consciousness.

  The telephone rang. Finally, Will thought.

  “Good afternoon.”

  “Will?” said a tentative voice with a common accent.

  “Olivia! This is a surprise. What can I do for you, my dear?”

  “I’m rather embarrassed to have to ask this of you, but Raybould isn’t home yet. I rang the neighbors and even John and Corrie, but I’m afraid nobody’s home.” She sounded nervous. That made Will nervous.

  “Let me assure you it is impossible to impose upon me. So have at it.”

  “I think—” She paused, sucked in a breath. “—I’m having the baby. Could you ride to the hospital with me?”

  “Oh.” Liv’s words sank in. “Oh!” He jumped out of his chair, knocking it over. “I’ll be there at once!”

  She must have heard the commotion, because she let loose with her musical laugh. The laugh he admired so much.

  “Relax, Will. It’s not happening this instant. But do get here soon, please?”

  “Quick as I’m able.”

  “Cheers.”

  Two thoughts tumbled through Will’s mind as he gathered up his bowler and briefcase. A baby! I’ll be an uncle, in spirit if not in fact. But then, on the heels of that excitement, an itch of concern at the back of his mind. Why aren’t you home yet, Pip? Why would you miss this? You were supposed to be back this morning.

  Down on the street he hurried in the direction of Piccadilly, where he’d be sure to hail a cab if he couldn’t find one sooner. A vigorous constitutional was the balm for an unsettled mind. Or so his grandfather used to say, the miserable old bastard. Pain twinged through Will’s hand.

  He passed the Queen’s Theatre and turned right on Shaftesbury. The usual West End hustle-bustle, the press of too many people and too little sidewalk, didn’t materialize as he ventured through the theater district. It was too early in the day for the shows, and hence for the taxis.

  Quite a few men were across the Channel right now, of course. The few people he did pass shuffled around him shrouded in nervous energy, clutching newspapers or looking at him without seeing him. He passed the marquees of the Apollo and the Lyric, garish adverts in a long expanse of somber brick. Calendulas lined flower boxes on the sills of upper stories, fiery eruptions of red and yellow in a gray marble canyon.

  He found the missing crowds when he reached Piccadilly. Men and women mobbed a newsstand three-deep. The stand was a tiny thing wedged between a jeweler’s and a tobacconist, facing the Shaftesbury Memorial in the center of the circus. The fountain itself stood un-adorned, the statue of Anteros having been removed to safety in the countryside soon after the outbreak of war the previous autumn.

  Will nudged his way to the front of the crowd swarming the newsstand.

  “Hi, hi, paper man.” Coins jingled in his palm. “Give us a—hell.”

  Will dropped a shilling’s worth of change atop the vendor’s stack of papers. Several pence rolled off and tinkled underfoot. The Times’s headline told him why it had been such an odd day, why such a pall hung over the streets, and why Marsh hadn’t made it home: the Jerries had invaded France. The Phony War was over.

  He hopped from the curb into the traffic whirling around the circus. Brakes screeched. To the colorful invective of a cabbie he replied with a fiver and an address in Walworth, south of the river. Will absorbed the salient details from the paper during the ride: blitzkrieg; French forces in disarray; PM Chamberlain stepping down.

  Marsh had gone to France a little over a week ago on business for MI6. But as far as his wife knew, he’d gone to America with a delegation from the Foreign Secretary’s Office, in hopes of procuring more support from the Yanks. A perfectly safe, if somewhat hopeless, mission.

  Will left the paper in the taxi. He thrust another handful of bills at the driver, and told him to wait. He bounded through the front gate of a two-and-a-half-story mock Tudor house. Rapraprap. He rapped again. Raprapraprap.

  Liv answered. The frown tugging at her mouth and eyes disappeared when she saw him. Pregnancy in its final stages had rounded out her face, put a flush into creamy skin.

  “Hi, Will. Thanks for coming.”

  “Liv, my dear, terribly sorry to be so late, beastly of me, I know, particularly in your time of need, had something of a bother finding a cab.” It came out more rushed than he’d intended. He took a breath.

  She ushered him inside. He squeezed past the bulge of her belly straining at the blue wool of her WAAF uniform.

  “Goodness. Don’t tell me they still have you chained to a switchboard all day?”

  “It’s better than sitting here, waiting.”

  Will wasn’t surprised that Liv had held her situation as long as she had. Liv was a force of nature when she wanted to be. And, of course, her husband’s employer had connections. Typically, WAAFs, Wrens, and other women who found themselves PWP—pregnant without permission—got sent home for the duration. It happened commonly: “Up with a lark, to bed with a Wren,” as the saying went.

  “Nobody would fault you if you chose to evacuate. Pip least of all.”

  Liv shook her head, hands resting on her stomach. “Not until he gets to meet our baby.”

  Our baby. You and Pip. But if life had turned out differently . . . Will shoved the pang of envy aside, sobered by thoughts of France. It may be your baby from now on, Liv.

  He closed the door for her, nudging it past an end table with his bandaged hand. A bowl of water and a folded wool blanket sat on the table, for covering the door in case of gas attacks.

  “Oh, my. What happened to your hand, Will?”

  “This?” He flexed his hand, checked that blood hadn’t seeped through the new bandages. “Bashed it with a spade,” he lied. “Aubrey’s gone on a tear about the victory gardens right now. Bloody sharp, those things.” He tapped the side of his nose. “It’s Hitler’s master plan, you know. Do us all in with gardening mishaps.”

  “Hmm.” She looked upstairs, her hand still on her stomach. “I haven’t finished packing. My suitcase is in the—” She teetered for a moment.—“oof . . .” Will jumped to her side. “In the bedroom,” she finished.

  Will led her to a chair in the den. “You rest. I’ll pack your things. Think of me as your Passepartout.”

  He dashed up the stairs and found the bedroom immediately. It was a small house. A suitcase sat open on the bed. It felt a bit voyeuristic rummaging through Liv’s and Marsh’s things, but he tried not to dwell on that. Especially while he packed her undergarments. Will made something of a mess as he tried to be quick without leaving anything obvious behind. He grabbed a toothbrush from the bathroom on the way back down, hoping it was Liv’s.

  Back downstairs, he found Liv composing a note for her husband. She smiled as she wrote it.r />
  Will took several careful breaths so that he could put as much nonchalance into his voice as he could muster. “Heard from Pip, have you?”

  She shook her head, signing the note.

  “Still in America, getting the Yanks to lend a hand?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Well.” He hefted the case again. “Your carriage awaits,” he said, offering his arm.

  “I’m not infirm, Will.” Color crept down the curve of her neck, where a few strands of auburn hair had pulled free of her bun.

  “No, but you’re walking for two.”

  Back in the cab, the newspaper reinforced Will’s concern that Liv was about to give birth unaware that her husband was trapped in a war zone. The neighborhood blurred past them. Getting Liv to the hospital had become a matter of personal honor for the driver.

  Liv said, “Did we remember to lock the door?”

  “I’m quite certain we did. Trust your Passepartout. Speaking of which, will you have enough around the house? With the little one to feed? Do you need extra ration books? It’s no trouble. My brother—”

  “I’m not going to cheat, Will.”

  “No, no. Of course not. But you’ll let me know if you need anything, won’t you?”

  She patted her stomach. “We’ll be fine.”

  But what if it’s just the two of you from now on?

  The conversation ranged to baby names (Will suggested Malcolm, for a boy), mutual acquaintances, and whether America would enter the war.

  They pulled up at a hospital in the shadow of London Bridge. As the driver carried Liv’s case to the entrance, Will helped her out of the cab: “Please remember, Liv. If you’re ever in need of anything, don’t hesitate to say. Leaning on His Grace is my God-given talent.”

  She looked at him with suspicion in her eyes. But then another contraction hit, and the issue was dropped.

  10 May 1940

  Mézières, France