The Coldest War

by Ian Tregillis

“Angela, I’m stepping out for a bit.” He handed the initialed schedule to his secretary. She acknowledged this, but otherwise said nothing as he gathered his coat, umbrella, and bowler once more. By now she must have been accustomed to his comings and goings.

  Will entered the Tube at South Kensington, and rode the District line to Kew Gardens. He wandered through the magnificent Palm House, that great Victorian cathedral of glass and iron. Not far away, placards announced the imminent rebuilding of the Waterlily House, which had been destroyed during the Blitz.

  The rains kept the gardens nearly deserted. If not for Cherkashin—perched on a bench under the boughs of a walnut tree on the Broad Walk, puffing on a cigarette, looking rather soggy—Will might have had the gardens to himself. He tried to shove the guilt aside.

  I am sorry, Gwendolyn. But this must be done. I owe it to the Missing. We all do.

  Will checked his surroundings again, saw nobody, and sat. A long, tall shrubbery hid the bench from casual passersby. “I thought we’d agreed that I would contact you.”

  Cherkashin flicked his cigarette butt to the ground. It hissed on the wet pavement. He crushed it under the toe of his shoe.

  And a rather expensive shoe it is, Will noticed. He knew every shop on Savile Row. If Gwendolyn were here, she’d have something to say about that. Thinking of his wife evoked another pang of guilt. He countered it by reminding himself of the evil things the warlocks had done to his countrymen and to him. They had turned him into a murderer. A man who bombed pubs. Derailed trains. Sank barges. All without fear of retribution or punishment.

  “We agreed,” said Cherkashin, “that you would help us.”

  “I can’t do that hanging from the gallows, can I?”

  Cherkashin looked amused. “You needn’t worry about that. We can protect you.”

  “Move to Moscow, shall I?” They rehashed this same argument every time they met. Will found it tedious, but Cherkashin never tired of trying to persuade him to leave Britain. “If you think that’s even remotely a possibility, you don’t know my wife.”

  “She’d come with you. Even the most principled people will change their stances, when it’s that or die.”

  “You don’t know Gwendolyn. For that matter, neither do you know me.”

  A gust of wind swirled misty raindrops down Will’s collar like a spectral caress. He shivered.

  Cherkashin waved off the objection. “You’re getting upset over nothing, my friend. It’s clear to me that you would never be in any such danger. Your countrymen would never hang the brother of a duke. For you? Merely life in prison.” He produced a slim metal case from his raincoat. Will declined the proffered cigarette. Cherkashin shrugged.

  “It’s one of the benefits of your caste system,” he said. The orange flash from his lighter shone on his face. “For those at the top.”

  Will stood. “I think we’re done here.”

  “Relax, relax.” Cherkashin patted the bench. “I apologize. My proud socialist upbringing occasionally gets the better of me.”

  “I consider it a small mercy,” said Will, “that our arrangement comes to an end today.” He turned, inspected the surrounding grounds again. Satisfied the gardens were still deserted, and that they could conclude their meeting without witnesses, he sat again. “I won’t miss this.”

  Will produced the documents he’d retrieved from his safe, held them out to Cherkashin, and turned his head. For some reason, he always looked away during the actual handoff; he didn’t know why.

  “You have heroically fulfilled the tasks of the Motherland,” said Cherkashin. The documents disappeared into his coat as quickly as they’d appeared from Will’s. “I still can’t understand why you refuse compensation. We would be very generous.”

  “It’s not about that.” Will stood. “You could never understand.”

  “As you wish.”

  Will turned for the Palm House. But he paused before leaving. “The others. They’ve been brought to justice?”

  Cherkashin smirked. “If you prefer to call it that.”

  Satisfaction wrestled with nausea as Will made his way out of the gardens.

  14 May 1963

  St. Pancras, London, England

  Marsh unclenched his jaw just enough to say, “Yes, sir.”

  “For the Queen’s sake,” said Mr. Fitch, “you’re not a young man any longer, Raybould.”

  “No, sir.” Marsh’s fingers ached from squeezing the handle of a spade. It took a conscious effort to loosen his grip. He managed it by imagining a loop of piano wire digging into Fitch’s fat neck.

  “I’m not without sympathies.” Fitch hooked his thumbs into his belt. “You know, I was a bit rough, too, in my youth,” he said, hiking his trousers over his paunch. “But, by God, man, I left that behind in my twenties.”

  Marsh and Fitch were nearly the same age. The difference was that Fitch didn’t show up to his job with a black eye. He worked in a bank. Marsh was his gardener.

  Thunder echoed. A cool gust blew the scent of Fitch’s aftershave across the garden. The breeze soothed the dull heat of Marsh’s bruised face. He looked up at the leaden sky, wondering if Fitch planned to lecture him until the deluge started.

  Probably. He was a religious man.

  Fitch continued, “When the war started, I had to put that sort of rubbish behind me. We all did, if we were going to beat the Jerries. Did you fight in the war?”

  “No, sir,” Marsh lied. His hold on the spade tightened enough to flush the blood from his fingers.

  “Ah. Well, there it is, then.” Fitch pursed his lips, as though the secrets of the universe had been laid open to him. He paced back and forth a bit. “You’ve never had to learn discipline. Never had to take the measure of your own mettle,” he said. “That’s what sets a man aright.”

  “No doubt, sir.”

  Nodding, trying to look earnest, trying to ignore the anger and humiliation: these might have been some of the most difficult things Marsh had ever done. As if Liv didn’t cut him down quite enough at home, Marsh also had to endure abuse from the likes of Fitch. But he couldn’t afford to lose another job. Liv had made it clear; she’d leave if it happened again. If she did, he didn’t know how he’d care for John by himself. Nurses were out of the question. One, he couldn’t afford them, and two, none of John’s nannies had ever lasted more than a few weeks. Even when he was a tot.

  “When we fought the Jerries, my men knew they could count on me. And I knew the same of them. And that,” Fitch proclaimed, “is how we defeated Hitler.”

  Benjamin Fitch had been a mechanic at a POOL petrol depot in Birmingham. Marsh had looked him up.

  Nevertheless, Fitch’s attitude—that Britain had engaged the Third Reich in combat, and triumphed—was a common fiction. It was the Great National Lie.

  “Not everyone can be a war hero, Raybould. But you can still be a responsible man. When I hire you for a task, I need to know I can count on you to do it. That you’ll be here when I expect you to be here.”

  More thunder. Marsh felt a raindrop, then another, through his thinning hair. He decided to work through the rain. Perhaps Fitch would look on that as an acceptable penance. Miserable, cold, muddy … still better than staying at home, frostbitten by Liv’s icy hatred.

  “Don’t worry, sir. You can depend on me,” he said. He tried to ignore the ache in his fingers, adding, “I’ll be here when you need me.”

  “Not if you’re jailed for brawling.”

  “I understand, Mr. Fitch.”

  Fitch harrumphed. “Very well, then.” Reluctantly accepting that his point had been made and received, he headed inside. Marsh wondered what sort of work he did at the bank. You sad little man with your sad little job, badgering the gardener for a bit of excitement.

  Marsh donned his tweed flat cap and set about unloading the pallets of shrubs from the bed of his truck. The Fitches had hired him to rip out a bramble around their garden and replace it with a hedgerow. Warning twinges flared thr
ough his back and his problem knee when he hefted the first pallet. A smarter, safer, thing would have been to unload the plants individually. But that wouldn’t have challenged him, wouldn’t have vented his anger and shame through sheer physical exertion.

  The Fitches lived in an expansive neo-Georgian with blistered mustard trim. The gutters, Marsh noticed, had pulled away from one corner of the roof. They neglected their house as much as they neglected their garden. One by one, Marsh lugged the pallets behind the house. All under Fitch’s disapproving stare, who monitored his progress from a second-floor window.

  Rain dripped from the brim of Marsh’s hat and seeped into his sweat-soaked shirt. His knuckles ached in the damp chill. The first hints of arthritis, he knew, brought on by a lifetime spent cracking his knuckles.

  Moving the new plants was the easiest bit. Hacking out the old plantings offered a more violent release. The thorny, overgrown bramble became a surrogate for the world, his life, himself. Marsh tore it all to pieces with spade, and shears, and ax. He tossed the remnants into piles, then collected the piles into bundles. The bundles he tied off with lengths of twine cut with his pocketknife. The twine felt scratchy against his skin. Thorns punctured his fingers and scratched his palms, but the rain washed away his blood. The scent of wet earth permeated everything.

  The rain sluiced mud and leaves into the holes he dug. It soaked the denim of his boilersuit, too, causing it to constrict against his legs when he kneeled in the muck. Cold mud seeped into his shins and knees. His bad knee throbbed again, worse.

  “That’s him, down there,” said Fitch’s voice. Marsh turned. Fitch stood behind the house with two men. He pointed at Marsh from under his umbrella. His prim little smile was a study in self-satisfaction. I knew it, it said. I knew Raybould Marsh was no good.

  The men appeared to thank him, then crossed the lawn. Marsh kept a trowel in one hand, and leaned on the spade to stand. His heart thumped; the pain in his knee and fingers receded. Adrenaline.

  Old training took over, a relic from years long past. Marsh wiped the rain from his eyes. Two men, younger than he. The first was a bit taller than Marsh, the second roughly his own height. Both wore suits, not uniforms. Not coppers, then. Friends of the man he’d slugged in the pub? Perhaps. Armed? Perhaps. The fellow on the left could be wearing a shoulder rig.

  Fitch followed the newcomers at a discreet distance. Close enough to overhear, however.

  Marsh sidled closer to solid ground, away from the muddy ditch created by his efforts to remove the bramble. The men stopped outside the range of his spade.

  The taller one said, “Mr. Marsh?”

  “I am.” Marsh kept an eye on both men. But they stayed together rather than flanking him.

  “Raybould Marsh?”

  “Yes. Now, who the hell are you?” No, they weren’t coppers. He almost wished they were. Solicitors? Had they come to serve him papers? Had Liv hired them? Had the neighbors filed another round of complaints about John?

  “Sorry if we’ve caused you alarm,” said the first man. He raised his hands, palm out. “We’ve been in a mad hurry to find you, Mr. Marsh. We’ve come to ask for your help.”

  The look on Fitch’s face was pure confusion. He’d been expecting a tussle, physical or otherwise. Confirmation that Marsh was well beneath him.

  Marsh leaned on the spade, studying the newcomers. A taut silence stretched between Marsh, the newcomers, and nosy Fitch, punctuated only by the pattering rain.

  Help? No, not solicitors, then. But the way they carried themselves … Government men. Which raised another possibility.

  Finally, Marsh said, “It’s Milkweed, isn’t it?”

  And he knew he was right, because the quiet man, the one who hadn’t yet spoken, glanced nervously over his shoulder at Fitch. Milkweed: the dirtiest of Whitehall’s dirty little secrets. Milkweed: the real reason Britain survived the war. Milkweed: the org for whom Marsh had faced demons and supermen; the org for whose secret war he’d lost his only daughter; the org that had spit him out when he was no longer useful.

  “If you’ll come with us, sir.”

  Marsh turned his back on the government men and returned to digging holes in the mud. Over his shoulder he spat, “I don’t do that work any longer.”

  “She said you’d say that.”

  Marsh froze. Rainwater trickled down his face. Quietly, carefully, he said, “What?”

  “The woman who asked for you. She said you’d say that. Also told us to remind you she once said you’d meet again.”

  The government man was being circumspect in front of Fitch. But it didn’t matter. They shared a secret language, Marsh and these agents, and Marsh knew exactly what they were telling him: the woman who had killed his daughter was here, in England, and asking to see him.

  Cold rage stabbed through Marsh, like an icicle in the gut. But this was bloody Christmas, wasn’t it? He couldn’t fix the wreckage of his life. Couldn’t mend his shattered marriage. But he could still avenge Agnes. Finally, finally, his rage could have an outlet.

  He fingered the knife in his pocket.

  He turned. “Take me to her.”

  four

  14 May 1963

  Knightsbridge, London, England

  At first, knowing he’d finally finished the task he set for himself left Will feeling exhausted. He’d obsessed over bringing the warlocks to justice, fantasized about punishing them for so long that when it was done he found himself unmoored. A low-level anxiety, a worry that he’d never see it finished, had been his constant companion. What would replace it? Or was his life bereft of purpose? Did it need a purpose?

  But he woke the next morning with a profound sense of closure. It was done. He had made amends. He’d finally banished that dark chapter of his life to the past, left it forever and completely behind him. And this was a bigger thing than he realized; it took a full night’s sleep to process it completely. The knowledge he’d endured the last of his secret meetings with Cherkashin was no small relief as well.

  The closure became ebullience over the course of the morning. It grew, like an air bubble released from the stygian depths of the ocean rising sunward. It was time to confess to Gwendolyn. She would see the change upon him, the joy of a weight lifted, the relief of reparations paid, and she would understand. She had to understand.

  Flowers, he decided, were too perfunctory a gift for such an occasion. Likewise chocolates. A painting was too cumbersome. He lacked an eye for vases and porcelains. Gwendolyn deserved something profound, brilliant, unexpected, beautiful, extravagant and eternal. But not a bribe, he insisted to himself. A thank-you gift. An I-love-you gift. Not a token to soften her anger when she learned of what he’d done. No. Not that.

  In the end, after three hours of browsing—with an increasingly hostile taxi driver—he settled on a diamond pendant on a silver necklace. A simple thing, but Gwendolyn’s tastes tended toward understatement. He envisioned the pendant sparkling like moonlit dew in the pale hollow of her throat. But what he would say when she asked what had compelled him to do this?

  Because, my dear. Thanks to you, I’ve lived long enough to see the men I loathe utterly destroyed.

  No. Perhaps not.

  Will was too busy composing his answer to notice anything wrong until the last moment, when the driver’s yell snapped him out of his reverie. But by then, the lorry had already careered through the traffic light. It barreled across the intersection and clipped the taxi.

  Metal crunched. The car spun. Glass shattered. Fragments pattered against Will’s face like sharp hailstones as the impact flung him against the door. Pain erupted in his left arm. He dropped Gwendolyn’s gift. He caught a surreal glimpse of shocked bystanders, and the alarmed faces of drivers in the cars behind him braking hard to avoid the accident. It unfolded like a dream, one instant stretching on and on and on while tires screeched and the taxi spun. The taxi crunched to a halt against a lamppost, tossing Will across the seat again.

  Ears ri
nging, head spinning, Will struggled to think. “Let me off here,” he slurred. The driver didn’t respond.

  Will tugged on the door handle, but it didn’t budge. He had been sitting on the passenger’s side, in the rear. The truck had blasted through the intersection to hit the taxi on the driver’s side, near the front, crumpling the frame and the driver’s door. Will’s door was dented where the taxi pressed against the post. He was wedged in.

  Slowly, the outside world came into focus. Bystanders pointed, yelled, called for help. A woman in a yellow mackintosh ran toward a police box down the road. She lost a sandal and stumbled. A man’s face appeared where the window had been, saying something Will couldn’t understand. Will focused on the man’s lips, trying to make sense of the noises he made, something about an accident and doctors and could Will move, but it didn’t make any sense. The ringing in his ears became a siren.

  He smelled burnt tires, petrol, smoke, and blood.

  Smoke. Blood.

  For a moment Will was back in the war, trying to negotiate another price while German bombs rained and the Eidolons ground him down with their implacable demands. What price was this? What service have we purchased? It had started small, in the beginning, with auto accidents and the occasional fire.

  Rain drizzled through the ruined windows. Something glittered on the floor. Glass. And lying open at Will’s feet, a red velvet box. Pendant. Will sifted through the debris, searching for a diamond amongst the pulverized glass until blood coated his fingertips.

  Two bobbies arrived to pry the mangled taxi apart. They offered him a stretcher, but Will waved them off and wobbled to his feet. They ushered him to an ambulance.

  Fare.

  He pulled the billfold from his breast pocket, struggled to make his hands work enough to pull out a ten-pound note. The policemen frowned.

  “Fare,” he managed. Will turned to point at the taxi but lost his balance. Somebody caught him.

  “Easy, sir. He’s collected his last fare, poor sod.”

  The fog in Will’s head slowly dissipated during the ambulance ride. He spent another three-quarters of an hour at the hospital while a nurse tweezed bits of glass from his face. More surprising was the amount that had gone down his collar. It seemed like half the windscreen tinkled to the linoleum floor when he removed his jacket, and again when he gingerly removed his shirt.