The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds

by Ian Tregillis

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your companions,” said the stranger in a reedy voice. “Especially the thin fellow.” He wiggled his fingers, raising his arms as he did so to mimic a blazing fire. “Whoooosh! I’d be inclined to stick close to him, on a chilly evening like this.”

  “You wouldn’t, if you knew him.”

  The stranger looked surprised. “Oh. That’s a shame.” He gestured at the empty chair. “May I?”

  Klaus’s fork tinked against his dish when he set it on the table. “Do I know you?”

  “Nein. But I know you.” The other man untied the oyster blue muffler about his neck, unbuttoned his coat, and hung them on the hooks on the wall behind him. Under the coat he wore work boots, denim coveralls, and a flannel shirt over a thick white turtleneck sweater. “I saw you in Augsburg several weeks ago. And your impressive friends.”

  It was possible. That had been over a month ago, when the weather had still carried the potential for spring. They had drawn large crowds, large enough that Klaus wouldn’t have remembered individual faces, even if they hadn’t been on the road for so damnably long.

  The man sat. “Ernst Witt,” he said, hand extended.

  Klaus took it. “Klaus.”

  “A rare honor, Obersturmführer Klaus.”

  Klaus cocked his head in surprise. This man was dressed as a civilian laborer, yet he’d identified the insignia on Klaus’s collar. Few civilians knew the Waffen-SS well enough to correctly address an officer by his rank.

  “How—?”

  “I work for IG Farben. We do a lot of business with the Wehrmacht. . . . It’s my job to know the military.” Witt’s lips peeled back to reveal a gap-toothed smile.

  That’s one explanation, thought Klaus. But there are others.

  “So you saw us in Augsburg, and followed us here?”

  Witt laughed. “No. Like you, my work sends me on the road. I saw flyers advertising a visit from the elite Götterelektrongruppe when I arrived yesterday. I hoped I’d get to see you and your companions in action again. Perhaps even meet you. One doesn’t often meet such greatness.”

  Klaus nodded at the fawning man. “And why are you on the road?”

  “What we sell to the Wehrmacht, we also fix for the Wehrmacht. That is to say, I fix. And with weather like this, many things need fixing.”

  No, you’re following us, Klaus decided. “Is that so.”

  “Oh, yes. You’d be surprised how brittle certain alloys can become, under the right conditions.”

  “Really.” Are you keeping an eye on us for the Sicherheitshauptamt? If morale and discipline had declined at the Reichsbehörde after Doctor von Westarp’s death, the SD Hauptamt, the SS Security Department, would want to know.

  “Most people don’t realize that a well-cast metal is actually composed of tiny crystals,” said Witt, warming to his subject. He spoke of atoms and dislocations and still other things Klaus neither knew about nor cared for. His eyes never lingered on Klaus’s face, flicking instead to Klaus’s collar and scalp whenever Klaus turned his head.

  Witt trailed off. “I’ve bored you. I apologize.”

  “I lack your passion for science,” said Klaus.

  “But German science made you the man you are today,” said Witt.

  “I’m a soldier,” said Klaus, because it sounded true and needed no elaboration.

  “And quite a soldier at that. You must be, to have been among the first recruits for such an elite project,” said Witt. His inflection might have breathed a subtle implication into the words, or perhaps not.

  Klaus chose to let a heavy silence suffocate any implied questions. Witt didn’t offer up anything else to fill the growing pause in the conversation.

  “Things were different in the early days,” Klaus said, and left it at that.

  “Yes, I suppose they were. You’ll have raised an entire army soon! An army of men like you.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I’m sure you’ve inspired many eager recruits.” Again, it might have been a question, and it might not.

  “It varies from town to town. And with the weather.”

  Witt nodded. “I imagine so. You’ve been traveling for many weeks, it seems. Will you be returning home soon?”

  “Soon enough.” Klaus drained the last of his cider, which had gone cold. “And speaking of travel, I may be in for a long day tomorrow.” Witt again looked surprised. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll turn in early.” Klaus rose, shook Witt’s hand again, and donned his wool overcoat.

  As he buttoned it, he said, “A question, Herr Witt?”

  “Of course, my friend.”

  “You said you entered Bielefeld yesterday. Yet the roads have been closed for the past two days.”

  “I did? Well, then, I’m sure I meant Monday.”

  “That explains it.”

  “Yes. With weather like this, who can keep track of the days?”

  “Safe travels,” said Klaus.

  “Heil Hitler,” said Witt with a wave and another flash of his gap-toothed smile.

  The cobbled walkway along the street had been reduced to an iced footpath trampled into thigh-deep snow. Wind sliced through the buttonholes of Klaus’s coat and the seams of his shirt. It raked his skin, stippled him with gooseflesh. He hadn’t gone twenty meters before his chest muscles ached with the effort it took not to shiver. A gust eddied around the side of the inn. Klaus slipped, landing painfully on the ice.

  “To hell with this.” He stood, shook himself off, and embraced his Willenskräfte. The copper taste of the Götterelektron erased the last remnants of his drink, which was regrettable because he had enjoyed the hints of cinnamon in the cider. Armored in willpower, Klaus became a wraith untouched by the demon wind.

  The change in his surroundings, in his personal microclimate, was immediate. The twin bulbs of a glass streetlamp shattered. Window shutters wrenched free of their hinges and exploded into matchsticks on the frozen street. The boles of the gingko trees along the boulevard cracked open.

  The weather had been ferociously cold, but now it was nothing short of furious. By expressing his supreme volition, Klaus had enraged the elements.

  He stood at the center of a maelstrom that tried in vain to assail him. Nor could the ice underfoot make him slip if such contradicted his Willenskräfte. He ran through snowdrifts and crashing icicles, impervious to one and all.

  He ran because his invulnerability would last only so long as he could hold his breath. When he did rematerialize, just long enough to exhale and gulp down air, the arctic fury zeroed in on him. It savaged his throat, reached into his chest and attempted to freeze his lungs. He raced past the trucks parked outside, ghosted through the front windows of his inn, and released the Götterelektron before an ashen-faced desk clerk.

  Klaus ascended the narrow stairs to his room on the second floor. Static and the high-pitched warble of a radio came through the wall; their LSSAH radio operator had the adjacent room. This arrangement suited Klaus. Anything was better than sharing a wall with Reinhardt.

  When Klaus turned on the light over the washbasin, he discovered that his mouth and chin were caked with frozen blood. Inhaling the smoke from a British phosphorus grenade back in December had done minor but permanent damage to his sinuses. It left him susceptible to nosebleeds. Drawing a single breath from the blizzard outside had been more than enough to provoke one.

  The blood had begun to thaw, but he was too numb to feel it trickling down his neck. The image in the mirror was that of a ravenous beast, an insatiable carnivore. Not a man.

  He fell asleep in a chair, still in his uniform, holding a damp towel to his face.

  He woke some time later to a commotion outside his window. Familiar voices, shouting, down on the street below. Klaus’s hip twinged as he stumbled to the window; sleeping upright in a chair, with his battery harness still attached, had made for hours of awkward posture.

  Though the sun rose early this time of year, most o
f the light on the street came from the few streetlamps that hadn’t been destroyed during Klaus’s sprint home. The wind had receded for the time being, allowing fresh snow to fall placidly from a charcoal sky.

  It might have been a serene picture, if not for the echo of Spalcke’s nasal voice as he yelled, “Who are you? Who are you?” The hauptsturmführer stood behind the third truck of their convoy, hand on his sidearm. He was addressing somebody inside the cargo bed.

  Klaus suspected he knew who Spalcke had caught rummaging through the truck. He donned his coat in the corridor as he once again passed the hiss and warble of the radio operator’s room on his way back outside. Apparently Spalcke’s tirade had awakened most of the inn.

  Reinhardt had made it down first. When Klaus approached, he did a double take. “What happened to you?”

  Klaus checked himself in the driver’s side mirror. His skin was red and creased where he’d had the cloth pressed to it. Little black flecks of dried blood peppered his upper lip and part of his chin.

  “Forget it,” said Klaus. He jerked his chin at Spalcke. “Let’s take care of this so I can sleep.”

  By then, Spalcke had sent one of the LSSAH troops into the truck. The soldier emerged a moment later with the barrel of his rifle nudging the ribs of Ernst Witt. Witt climbed out of the truck and stood shivering on the street with his hands resting on his head.

  “Please,” he said. “This isn’t what you think.”

  “Oh? Because I think you’re a spy and a saboteur.” Spalcke unbuttoned the flap covering his Walther.

  “No, no!” Witt shook his head wildly. “I’m, I’m an admirer. I want to join you!”

  Reinhardt said, “By hiding away like a rat in our truck?”

  Witt turned. His eyes opened wider when he saw Reinhardt, and his face lost a little more color. But then he saw Klaus, and his features softened. “Klaus! Please, tell them! You know me.”

  Spalcke turned. “Is this true?”

  “I met him last night. At dinner. I don’t think he’s a saboteur. He told me he works for IG Farben. I think he’s—”

  “Hauptsturmführer! Hauptsturmführer!” More shouting cut short Klaus’s response. The radio operator, a twenty-year-old boy with jet-black hair and an ugly, crooked nose, came running from the inn.

  Witt took advantage of the distraction and tried to run. The soldier who had flushed him from the truck reacted calmly. He leveled his rifle and shot the fleeing man in the back. Witt landed facefirst on the street.

  “Are you out of your goddamned mind?” said Klaus. “You’ve just killed an SD officer.”

  The radio operator continued his clamoring. “Hauptsturmführer Spalcke!”

  Spalcke turned to him. “Quiet.” Then he turned to Klaus. “What did you say?”

  “I tried to warn you. I think he was from the Sicherheitshauptamt. Keeping an eye on us.”

  Spalcke turned pale. “Why do you say that?”

  “He kept asking about our work, the recruitment. Our training. My feelings about the program.”

  “Oh.” Spalcke slumped against the truck. “What do we do?”

  “We?” Reinhardt laughed. “This isn’t my problem. That poor defenseless man was shot on your orders. You’re the one who’ll hang.”

  Spalcke put his hands to his forehead. “Oh, Gott,” he moaned. “I knew this traveling circus was a bad idea. . . .”

  Klaus watched the steam rising from Witt’s blood as it seeped through his coat onto the snow. His muffler was a brilliant blue. Klaus felt a pang of sympathy for the artless, tragically overenthusiastic man.

  The radio operator tried again. “Please, Herr Hauptsturmführer, it’s urgent.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Reinhardt. “What?”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you. The Soviets are moving west.”

  “What?” Klaus and Spalcke said it simultaneously.

  “They have armored columns pushing through Poland. They’ve already engaged our remaining forces there.”

  Remaining? In the confusion of the moment, Klaus forgot about the weather. And then it sank in: Oh.

  Reinhardt sneered at Klaus as he stalked over to Witt’s body. “He wasn’t from the SD, you idiot.” He kicked the dead man in the ribs. “He was Red Orchestra.”

  22 May 1941

  Berlin, Germany

  Marsh was in the air before the advanced forces of the Red Army approached the Oder River, which, according to reports, was capped with four feet of ice. The warlocks moved the inclement weather as the Soviets advanced, opening a corridor straight to Berlin for Stalin’s troops. And, Marsh hoped, maintaining a bulwark to keep them the hell away from von Westarp’s farm.

  His second trip to Germany proceeded via slower and more mundane avenues than the first. Marsh flew from Scotland to Sweden in an RAF Mosquito; rode two hundred bumpy miles in the cargo bed of a fisherman’s truck, hidden under tubs of ripe cod; crossed the Baltic Sea to Denmark in a fishing boat cloaked by extremely heavy fog, courtesy of Milkweed; and finally entered Germany at Flensburg in the middle of the night. The Danish Underground had smuggled hundreds of Jews out of the country via much the same route in reverse.

  All told, the journey took twenty-one hours. Far too long. The Soviets were moving faster than anybody had thought possible. The supernatural winter had proved more destructive to the embedded German troops than even the warlocks had predicted. But now the plan was in motion, and the time for fine adjustments had passed.

  An avalanche goes where it will.

  Eidolons are not tactical weapons.

  In Flensburg, wearing the captain’s uniform of an SS-Hauptsturmführer, Marsh commandeered a car from the sleepy local Wehrmacht garrison. Officially, of course, his uniform didn’t give him that authority. But the Wehrmacht lieutenants knew better than to contradict an officer of the Waffen-SS. Particularly one with direct orders from Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler’s command staff.

  Marsh knew his best bet was to avoid dealing directly with the SS command structure for as long as he could. The experts in MI6 had done their best, but his papers wouldn’t fool the most experienced officers. God knew he had a slim chance of fooling Himmler’s staff, if anybody bothered to trace Marsh’s cover story back up the chain of command.

  Which was likely to become a problem. Himmler’s interest in von Westarp’s work extended from its earliest days, not long after his stint in the Thule Society twenty years ago. And Himmler, seeing the REGP as his own pet project, kept its records close at hand. Meaning the files Marsh sought to destroy were housed at 9 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse: headquarters of the SS.

  Thus, in addition to the counterfeit uniform, Marsh also wore Gretel’s battery on his belt. When the time came, he’d attach the wires to the minute pieces of adhesive tape hidden on his scalp. The hopes were twofold: first, that most people in the SS still hadn’t met a member of the Götterelektrongruppe in the flesh; second, that members of the Götterelektrongruppe received special consideration.

  At the Flensburg garrison, he also commandeered an extra coat, hat, and gloves. But the deeper he drove into Germany, the less effective they became. The warlocks had summoned a cold unlike anything Marsh had ever experienced. They had infused this weather with the Eidolons’ arcane hatred of man, creating a cunning and malicious entity. It slipped through every seam in his clothing. The rubber door moldings of his Mercedes lost their pliability, leaving gaps around the door through which entered the wind. His breath turned to frost where it touched the cold windshield glass.

  Each passing mile found it harder to keep the heavy staff car on the road. His journey might have been altogether impossible had the warlocks not opened a corridor for him as they were also doing for the Red Army. But it also helped that the impending invasion had sent the Reich into chaos and panic. Every available soldier was converging on Berlin to aid in the defense of the capital. Convoys of heavy transports packed down the snow, leaving the roads slick but navigable by the Mercedes. Yet i
n places the roads were impossible even for the transports; Wehr -macht engineering detachments labored to clear downed trees from the roads with bulldozers and, in some cases, flamethrowers.

  He made better time after falling in behind a panzer unit. The tanks’ treads crushed the snow flat enough that his Mercedes could clear it.

  Sunrise found Marsh entering Hamburg. He arrived not far behind two convoys awkwardly funneling themselves onto the city streets. The troop transports brimmed with soldiers trembling in their heaviest winter gear—those lucky enough to have such gear—as well as blankets and anything else they could find to ward off the chill. The convoys would pick up still more soldiers from the local garrisons before continuing to Berlin.

  The high concentrations of military personnel made Marsh nervous. His hands trembled on the steering wheel. Exhaustion, cold, and nerves took their toll on him.

  But, after thinking about it, Marsh decided to view the convoys as an opportunity. Protective camouflage. None of these men could peer through the fogged-up windows of his automobile and discern the spy within. No. His best course of action was to attach himself to one of the convoys as brazenly as possible. Which he did, sliding the Mercedes in a safe distance behind the final truck.

  It took longer to traverse the city, following the convoy, but it vaulted him above suspicion.

  Marsh was feeling a glimmer of optimism—This might work. I could make it to Berlin.— when two uniformed figures on the side of the road flagged him down. One kept to the shoulder, bundled in a heavy coat. The other stepped in front of Marsh’s car, waving his arms. He couldn’t discern any details of the two men without lowering the window, but he knew immediately from their coats and hats that they were SS.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  Stuck inching along behind the convoy, he had no choice but to stop. He pulled the parking brake with one hand as he loosened the holster of his Walther pistol with the other. Sweat trickled beneath his undershirt, defying the chill as it ran under his arms and down his ribs.