Bitter Seeds

by Ian Tregillis

  Marsh threaded his way toward the reception desk through a maze of angular Bauhaus furniture and potted ferns. But he abandoned his intent to ring Krasnopolsky’s room when he caught sight of the lone figure sitting at the rear of the lobby, in the shadows of the staircase.

  The man perched on the edge of a chaise longue, smoking, with a suitcase next to him and a slim leather valise on his lap. He stamped out his cigarette and lit a new one with shaky hands. Judging by the number of cigarette butts in the ashtray next to the chaise, he’d been waiting there, in public, since well before noon.

  Marsh cringed. He’d marked Krasnopolsky instantly. The man was an idiot with no conception of tradecraft.

  He purchased a newspaper from the front desk, then took a seat in a high-backed leather chair next to Krasnopolsky’s nest. The other man looked at him, did a double take, and shifted his feet.

  MI6 had no photographs of Krasnopolsky; they’d had to produce the doctored passport based on the man’s description of himself. He’d overstated his looks. He was a tall fellow, even sitting down, and skeleton-thin with an aquiline nose and ears like sails. If he were to stand in the corner of a dark room, Marsh imagined, he might be mistaken for a coatrack.

  Marsh paged through the paper, thoroughly ignoring Krasnopolsky. He waited until it looked like the defector wasn’t quite so ready to flee.

  “Pardon me, sir,” said Marsh in Spanish, “but do you happen to know if the trains are running to Seville?”

  Krasnopolsky jumped. “Bitte?”

  Marsh repeated his question, more quietly, in German.

  “Oh. Who knows? They’re less reliable every day. The trains, I mean.”

  “Yes. But General Franco will fix that soon.”

  “Took you long enough,” Krasnopolsky whispered. “I’ve been waiting all morning.”

  Marsh responded in kind. “In that case, you’re a fool. You were supposed to wait in your room.”

  “Do you have my papers?”

  Marsh took a deep breath. “Look, friend.” He tried to clamp down on the irritation creeping into his voice. “Why don’t we go back to your room and talk privately. Hmmm?”

  Krasnopolsky lit another cigarette from the butt of the previous one. Italian issue. Marsh wondered how anyone could tolerate those acrid little monstrosities.

  “I’ve already checked out. I’m safer in public. I need those papers.”

  “What do you mean, safer in public?”

  Krasnopolsky drew on the cigarette, watching the crowd. Pale discolorations mottled the skin of his fingers.

  “Look, we’re not a sodding travel agency,” said Marsh. “You haven’t given me a reason to help you yet.”

  Krasnopolsky said nothing.

  “You’re wasting my time.” Marsh stood. “I’m leaving.”

  Krasnopolsky sighed. Plumes of gray smoke jetted from his nostrils. “Karl Heinrich von Westarp.”

  Marsh sat again, enveloped in a bluish cloud. “What?”

  “Not what. Who. Doctor von Westarp.”

  “He’s the reason you left?”

  “Not him. His children. Von Westarp’s children.”

  “His kids?”

  Krasnopolsky shook his head. He opened his mouth to elaborate just as a glass shattered in the bar. His mouth clacked shut. The skin on his knuckles turned pale as he tightened his grip on the valise.

  “What was that?”

  Dear God. This is hopeless. “You need to relax. Let’s get something to calm you down,” said Marsh, pointing to the side doorway that led to the bar. He pulled the man to his feet and marshaled him through the lobby.

  After getting Krasnopolsky settled at a corner table, Marsh went to the bar and ordered a glass of Spanish red. Then he thought better of it and ordered the entire bottle instead. The barman swept up the last of the broken glass, grumbling about having to retrieve the wine from the cellar.

  Marsh waited at the bar, keeping an eye on Krasnopolsky while eavesdropping on conversations. The question on everybody’s mind was how things would change once Franco was formally in power.

  The barman plunked a bottle in front of Marsh. Marsh was digging cash out of his pocket when he felt the surge of heat wash across his back. Somebody screamed.

  “Dios mío!”

  A cry went up: “Fuego! Fuego!”

  Marsh spun. The rear corner of the hotel bar, steeped in shadows just moments earlier, now shone in the light from flames racing up the walls. No! It can’t be—

  Marsh dodged the people fleeing the fire, fighting upstream like a salmon. But he stopped in his tracks when he saw the source of the flames.

  Krasnopolsky blazed at the center of the conflagration like a human salamander. New flames burst forth from everything he touched as he flailed around the room, wailing like a banshee. Air shimmered in waves around him; it seared the inside of Marsh’s nose. The metal snaps on Marsh’s overalls scorched his shirt, sizzled against his chest. The room stank of charred pork.

  The burning man collapsed in a heap of bone and ash. Marsh glimpsed a half-incinerated valise on the burning floor. He gritted his teeth and kicked it away. The rubber soles of his boots became tacky, squelching on the floor as he danced away from the fire. He tossed aside a fern and dumped the pot of soil on the valise to smother the flames.

  Then he snatched what little remained of Krasnopolsky’s valise and fled the burning hotel.

  3 February 1939

  Girona, Spain

  Artillery concussions boomed through the river valleys and almond orchards surrounding Girona. That’s the sound of one’s enemies caught between the hammer and the anvil, Klaus mused. With pride he added, And we are the anvil.

  The besieged stronghold was Franco’s final stop on his sweep through Catalonia. Once Girona fell, finishing the ground war would become a mere formality.

  “They would have sent fighters after me today, if they had any planes left. I’m sure of it.” Rudolf’s hair shone like copper in the sun as he chucked Klaus on the shoulder. “Can you imagine that? I wish they did have an air force left. That would look spectacular on film!”

  “T-t-t-t—,” said Kammler.

  “Rudolf running away again? I’ve already seen that in person. Why would I watch it on film?” Klaus laughed. “The doctor would prefer you actually confront our enemies. Like the rest of us do,” he added with a gesture that encompassed himself, Heike, and even drooling Kammler.

  Kammler again: “G-g-g—”

  “Up yours,” said Rudolf. “All of you.”

  They rode at the vanguard of a small caravan, bouncing along in silence but for the occasional outburst of stuttering nonsense from Kammler. His handler, Hauptsturmführer Buhler, had unbuckled the leash around Kammler’s neck, so now the muscle-bound imbecile had reverted to his harmless and somewhat pitiable state. Klaus wondered what the cameramen and technicians in the other trucks talked about in their off-time.

  The road back to their farmhouse wended through a vast olive plantation. Rows of trees marched all the way from the edge of the hills overlooking the town to within a dozen yards of the house. The hills themselves had turned brown in spots, owing to a dry winter. Overhead, a fingernail moon hung in a powder-blue sky. A cool, damp breeze gusted up from the river valley.

  The north and east sides of the plantation had been shattered by misaimed artillery. The ongoing siege slowly chewed up more of the plantation each time another shell went off course. A shame, thought Klaus. I like olives.

  They pulled up in front of a wide two-story farmhouse built in the style of a Roman villa. The family that had owned it must have been rather prosperous. When he had first arrived here, Klaus wondered if the family had also owned the almond groves that blanketed the surrounding hillsides. Not that it mattered. The Reichsbehörde had needed a base of operations from which to field-test Doctor von Westarp’s work, and so the family had disappeared.

  The others climbed out of the truck and filed into the house. Klaus paused a momen
t to scan the wide windows on the second floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of his sister. He worried about her when he was gone all day.

  He doffed the straw hat he wore and rubbed at his scalp with the stumps of his two missing fingers as he entered the house. He reached inside his shirt, undid the clasp, and disconnected the pencil-thick bundle of wires that extended from several points on his skull to the battery harness at his waist. The braided wires dangled over his shoulder like a Chinaman’s queue.

  They had left their crisp Schutzstaffel uniforms back at the Reichsbehörde when they came to Spain, opting instead for the locals’ more inconspicuous overalls, kerchiefs, and floppy wide-brimmed hats. If nothing else, their disguises conveniently hid the wires. But the coarse peasant apparel tended to snag the wires’ cloth insulation, sometimes catching painfully when Klaus moved quickly or unwisely.

  Klaus followed Rudolf past the makeshift darkroom—once a child’s bedroom—where the cameramen stacked the film canisters from the day’s work. One canister was larger and bulkier than the others; the technicians always dispensed with it first. Heike’s ability necessitated a special camera and special film to record her activities.

  The cameramen looked down as he approached. They unloaded an Agfa eight-millimeter reel with conspicuous silence and diligence. The defector had put them all on edge. Doctor Von Westarp was half-inclined to use the remaining cameramen for target practice, and they knew it.

  Klaus pushed through the crowded farmhouse, toward the laboratory and debriefing room, eager to remove his battery harness. Over the previous decade, the engineers had made great strides with the batteries, and they had outdone themselves with the lithium-ion design. But after a long day in the field, it still felt like he’d hung a lead brick on his belt. The sooner he handed over his harness, the sooner he could try to quell the spasms in his back.

  The technicians would gauge charge depletion in the batteries and reference that against the activity documented by the cameramen. Klaus would detail his exploits slipping through Republican fortifications and pushing land mines into the earth. Any information of military value he’d gleaned would be passed—after appropriate sanitization to obscure the nature of its source—to the Reich’s allies converging on Girona. The arrangement was a quid pro quo in return for Franco’s permission to operate in Spain.

  The door to the debriefing room swung open as Klaus lay his hand on the knob. He confronted a pair of eyes so pale and unfeeling, they might have been chiseled from ice. Reinhardt stepped into the corridor.

  Von Westarp was there, too. He wore a dark lab coat with a dusting of dandruff on the shoulders from his graying tonsure. “Excellent work,” said the doctor, reaching up to clasp Reinhardt’s shoulder. “Today, I feel pride.”

  Reinhardt smiled, his eyes glistening. Klaus and Rudolf saluted as Von Westarp brushed past. “Herr Doktor!”

  The doctor glanced at them through his fish-eye glasses. It felt like being stuck under a microscope. He spared nothing but a sniff of disdain for them as he entered the laboratory. Klaus glimpsed one of the Twins strapped to a table as the doctor slammed the door behind him.

  Klaus and Rudolf shared a look. Klaus shrugged.

  Rudolf turned toward Reinhardt. “Where the hell have you been the past few days?”

  “Serving the Reich. Carrying out my orders.”

  Rudolf stared.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Klaus.

  “Ask your sister.”

  The whine of a drill erupted from the makeshift laboratory. Simultaneously, a long, low moan emanated from a different room across the corridor. The moans became screams as the stink of hot bone wafted from the lab.

  The trio moved farther down the corridor in order to better hear each other.

  Rudolf shook his head. “Your mouth is full of shit. What orders?”

  Reinhardt shrugged nonchalantly, but his eyes still glistened with pride. “I was sent to plug a leak. The defector is no longer a problem.”

  “You? They sent you?” Rudolf tossed his hands in the air. “This is insanity. You have as much finesse as an incendiary bomb.”

  Reinhardt’s mission meant he was the first of von Westarp’s projects to be deemed complete, fully mature. Klaus had expected to garner that honor for himself. While he considered the consequences of Reinhardt’s de facto promotion, Heike sidled up the corridor, eyes on the floor and silent like a visible ghost.

  Reinhardt spread his arms. “Darling!”

  Klaus heard the intake of breath when Heike looked up. She blinked eyes of Prussian blue, then dropped her head again, hiding her face behind long corn silk tresses.

  “No welcome-back kiss?”

  She tried to pass. Reinhardt blocked her. “I think you missed me. Worried about me.” His fingers brushed the curve of her ear as he tucked back a lock of her hair. Heike shuddered.

  “Do you get cold at night?” he whispered in her ear. “I can fix that.”

  She looked up. Reinhardt leaned closer. She spat. His head snapped back.

  Klaus snorted with laughter. Heike slipped around Reinhardt and hurried toward the debriefing room.

  “You’d do well to show me a little kindness now and then, Liebling!” he shouted, flicking away the spittle under his eye.

  Rudolf shook his head again. “I cannot believe they chose you.”

  Since Heike had claimed the debriefing room, and since von Westarp and the technicians were preoccupied in the laboratory, Klaus would have to wait to turn in his battery. He went upstairs to find his sister.

  Gretel hadn’t moved since that morning, when she’d dragged a table under the picture window along the colonnaded verandah. The window afforded a view of olive groves, the Ter and Onyar rivers off in the distance, and plumes of smoke rising from the valley below. Although if she had chosen the window for the scenery, it didn’t show. Her attention to the book propped on her lap was absolute. Just as it had been when Klaus departed that morning.

  She sat with bare feet propped on the edge of another chair, wiggling her toes, the hem of a patchwork peasant dress draped across her bony ankles. A long braid of raven-black hair hung past each shoulder. Wires snaked down from her skull, twirled around her braids, and disappeared in the folds of her dress where the fabric occluded the bulge of a harness. The window silhouetted the profile of her face, the high cheekbones and hatchet nose. Within arm’s reach on the table stood a stack of books, teapot, cup, and saucer.

  “I’m back,” he said. “Did you have a good day?”

  Gretel turned a page. She didn’t say anything.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Her teacup clinked on its saucer as a massive artillery barrage, much closer than the last, shook the building. The saucer danced across the table. Gretel, still absorbed in the works of the modernist poets, reached out with one arm and absently caught it just before it tipped over the edge.

  When she moved, the frayed insulation on her wires snagged the collar of her dress.

  “Are you in pain? If the batteries are uncomfortable, you could talk to . . . The doctor is here. . . .”

  She ignored him. Gretel had become increasingly distant in the years since her ability had manifested itself with visions of the future. He left her to her poetry.

  Rudolf watched the exchange from the doorway, cloaked in a quivering rage. The news of Reinhardt’s promotion had gone down poorly. He shoulder-checked Klaus as he stomped to Gretel’s seat.

  “Is this how you spend your time? Reading?”

  Turning a page, she yawned.

  “Is this all you do while we’re out there”—he jabbed a finger at the window—“facing bullets and bombs?”

  From his vantage in the doorway, Klaus saw one corner of Gretel’s mouth twitch up in the hint of a smile. He frowned.

  Rudolf continued, “Years of work to harness your willpower, and to what end? So that you can study poetry? I can’t imagine why the doctor keeps you alive. Even the imbecile Kammler is more usef
ul than you. And your brother, at least he overcame that mongrel blood in your veins.”

  “Hey!” Klaus made to intercept Rudolf’s tirade, but Reinhardt caught his arm. He liked a good fight.

  Rudolf’s feet left the floor. Hovering next to her table, he said, “Look! He made us great.” He spread his arms and pirouetted above the floor. “He made us gods!” He landed. “But then there’s you. A disgusting waste.”

  Gretel noted the place in her book, set it on the table, then downed the rest of her tea. She scooted her chair back and stretched. Her back popped.

  “What,” Reinhardt muttered, “is your sister doing?”

  Klaus shook his head. But then Gretel dropped to all fours, and his unease became full-blown dread. Klaus fumbled for his wire. He plugged it into the battery on his waist and clicked the latch.

  Gretel crawled under the table.

  The scent of singed pine curled up from the floorboards beneath Reinhardt’s boots as he invoked his Willenskräfte, his willpower.

  Rudolf laughed. “That’s right! Crawl away, mongrel, crawl away to your dog house.”

  Gretel curled up, knees to chest, and clamped her hands over her ears.

  The taste of copper flooded Klaus’s mouth as he accepted the surge of electricity into his brain. The Götterelektron energized his Willenskräfte, turning him insubstantial at the same moment Reinhardt armored himself in a searing blue nimbus.

  Rudolf saw them and frowned. “What—?”

  WHUMP!

  The explosion sent shrapnel winging harmlessly through Klaus’s ghost-body. Debris from the errant mortar shell vaporized in Reinhardt’s corona. He defended himself with a burst of heat that ignited the wooden floorboards.

  The smoke drifted through the hole where the window and part of the roof had been. Klaus’s ears rang.

  He rematerialized. Then he realized it wasn’t ringing he heard, but screaming from throughout the farmhouse. A figure lay on the floor, streaked in blood and clothed in burnt tatters, hands clasping its face.