The Coldest War

by Ian Tregillis

And then—so suddenly, it seemed impossible—an overpowering mixture of scents filled the air. Watermelon. Bile. An old man’s sweat. A foul taste coated Marsh’s mouth. His stomach convulsed, as though he’d swallowed mothballs.

  They’ve soundproofed the hell out of things, thought Marsh. And they’re worried about blood.

  Motivated by instinct and old memories, Marsh looked at his watch. It had stopped.

  The Eidolons have been here. What is this place?

  The soundproofing even muted the jangling of Pembroke’s key ring. He fished around for a few moments, then unlocked a door. They entered a standard observation room, the kind used during interrogations and debriefings. A row of chairs and a narrow table faced a single pane of glass that stretched nearly from wall to wall. The chamber was dimly lit, suggesting the glass was a one-way mirror. A lone microphone stood on the table; the wall above the mirror had a speaker grille.

  Marsh had expected something like this. The whole environment here in the bowels of the Admiralty had been designed for keeping people in deep isolation. But he hadn’t expected the scene on the other side of the looking glass.

  It was a primary school classroom.

  The place had been done up in bright colors, reds and blues and yellows. On one wall hung a green chalkboard smudged with childish scrawls, snippets of an unknowable language in colored chalks. Above it, a series of placards ran the length of the chalkboard, where a parade of merry zoo animals frolicked among the letters of the alphabet and the digits naught through nine. Cubbyholes filled with stuffed toys and picture books lined another wall, beneath a bright mural of children playing happily on the outline of the United Kingdom. Oddly, the wall directly across from the mirror was papered with maps of the world. Many of the maps focused on Europe and the Soviet Union. The maps were dotted with pushpins.

  Roughly a dozen children of both sexes sat at tables or sprawled on cushions or stood off by themselves in ones, twos, and threes. The older ones read. The younger ones played with dolls, wooden blocks, toy trucks, stuffed animals. They ranged in age from perhaps five or six years all the way to their late teens. And they were silent. Each and every one of them.

  “These,” said Pembroke, “are our warlocks.”

  Dear God in Heaven, thought Marsh. What have you done? “They’re just children.”

  “Not just any children. These children speak Enochian. Indeed, you might say it’s their first language. They’re more proficient with it than any warlock in centuries,” Pembroke said. “Which is why we haven’t felt a need to keep tabs on the fellows from your days. They’re outdated. No offense, of course.”

  Marsh pointed at the children. “How?”

  “Enochian is the ur-language. Some people have speculated that it’s the language of creation, or the music of the spheres.” Pembroke shrugged. “We have found that if you raise a child in complete isolation from all human language, insulated from any exposure to it, they naturally revert to Enochian.”

  “That’s barbaric.” You twisted bastards.

  “It’s realpolitik. It’s the world we live in. It’s the price of a free nation.”

  Marsh watched the children. “Are they prisoners?”

  Pembroke became indignant. “I should say not.” He hesitated. “That is, not in principle. But they seem to prefer it here. They prefer the silence. They’ve never indicated a desire to leave.”

  “Have you asked them?”

  “Yes.”

  “They speak English, too?”

  “Of course they do. We end each child’s isolation the moment they demonstrate fluency in Enochian,” said Pembroke. “Around age four or five, typically. After that we provide them with a superb education. Easily the equal of anything they’d receive in public school.”

  Marsh couldn’t stop watching the children. Pointing through the glass with a jerk of his chin, he asked, “How often do you use them?”

  “Just enough to tweak Ivan’s nose once in a while. Nothing drastic, mind you. No doubt they suspect Milkweed. And that’s the point. To let them know we’re here. But their information, whatever its source, is far, far out of date. They don’t know who the active warlocks are.”

  “They didn’t until you brought Gretel down here.”

  “Her cell is so far away, past so many layers of soundproofing, that I could light a stick of dynamite here and she wouldn’t be any wiser,” said Pembroke.

  Marsh shook his head, too disgusted and too weary to argue the point. “What about blood prices? You don’t force them to—”

  Pembroke snorted. “Please. We’re not barbarians. Sam handles the prices. He has men for it.” He tugged absently at one ear. “Incidentally, and for the most part, the prices are lower than they were in your day. A benefit of the children’s natural fluency, you see.”

  “How low?”

  “Acceptably low,” said Pembroke. “After a bit of a rocky start,” he admitted.

  He unlocked a door beside the mirror, which opened on the classroom. “Let’s meet them.” When Marsh hesitated, he said, “It’s entirely safe.”

  Marsh stared at the children. “Insulated.”

  “What is it?”

  “You don’t have children of your own,” said Marsh.

  “Your point?”

  “My wife and I have taken a newborn home from the hospital on two separate occasions. If there’s one thing parents do, it’s talk to their children.”

  Pembroke looked uncomfortable. “These children were orphans. Abandoned.”

  The flippant explanation didn’t begin to address the issue. But before Marsh could dissect the transparent evasion, Pembroke opened the door and stepped through. The children ignored him, and Marsh as well when he followed a few seconds later.

  “But in order to completely isolate them—”

  “Believe me when I tell you, Marsh, that they’ve been treated extremely well.”

  As one, the children stopped, straightened, and turned to face the adults. There was something unnerving about the way they moved in unison. Something feral. No—insectile. Alien. Something just a bit like John.

  One of the older boys stepped forward. He looked at Marsh, squinting. They all did.

  “You are Marsh,” he croaked. “The man Marsh.”

  Instant gooseflesh stippled Marsh’s arms and nape. It tingled unpleasantly.

  The boy’s voice sounded wrong. Deeply wrong. It wasn’t just that the boy had the hoarse, gravelly voice of an old man. The ruined voice of an old warlock.

  These children, Marsh realized, spoke English with an Enochian accent. If that were somehow possible.

  “Yes, I am.” Marsh bent, ignoring the constriction of his boilersuit and the crawling of his skin to put himself at equal height with the boy. His knee throbbed. Cheerfully as he could manage, he said, “And who are you?”

  But his question was lost under the urgent murmuring of decrepit yet childish voices repeating his name. They said it over and over again, in a variety of speeds and intonations.

  “Marsh. Marsh. Marsh. Marsh.”

  Soon they converged on a single tempo and a single inflection. When they switched to Enochian, it happened instantaneously, in midchant.

  Marsh found himself inside a maelstrom of gurgles, shrieks, howls, and rumbles. In the chanting he heard the death of stars and the birth of planets. Inhuman noises from tiny human vessels.

  The minute part of him that could still think under that onslaught realized, This is why they’re worried about blood. These children could summon an Eidolon at the drop of a hat.

  He clasped his hands over his ears. So did Pembroke.

  And somewhere, somewhen, somebody said, My God. They’ve given you a name.

  interlude

  Gretel’s first set of instructions arrived in the post not two hours after she and her spineless brother moved out. Reinhardt wasn’t sorry to see the last of those parasites. The bitch took special enjoyment out of his failed attempts to steal their batteries. Every
time Klaus caught him, Gretel was there, watching over his shoulder with that infuriating half-cocked smile of hers.

  Reinhardt would scorch that smile away. Someday.

  He’d worried that her instructions would be nonsensical. Like everything else about her. But the letter was straightforward and detailed. The first part of her task came with a tight schedule; perhaps she had put her riddles aside to guarantee Reinhardt would finish on time.

  Which was how he ended up hurrying out of the flat only to spend hours shivering under a hedge in Kew Gardens, guarding his camera from the incessant rain. She’d provided a description of the men he would photograph, their bench beneath the walnut tree on the Broad Walk, even the angle from which he’d take the photo. The last bit being how he found his hiding place. The only thing she hadn’t nailed down for him—probably because she enjoyed the thought of Reinhardt shivering in the rain—was the precise time of the meeting.

  Of course, she didn’t bother to explain who the men were, or why Reinhardt had to photograph them. But he didn’t care about any of that. Gretel could play all the games she wanted as long as he got what he wanted.

  Have you forgotten how in the past I delivered your heart’s darkest desire?

  Once the men had gone their separate ways, Reinhardt did as she said and took one final photograph, this time of the front page of that morning’s Times. To establish the date, he presumed.

  After leaving Kew Gardens, Reinhardt drove until he found a chemist’s shop thirty miles from his council estate. It would have been better to develop the film himself, but Reinhardt didn’t have access to a darkroom. Nor did he know how to develop film in the first place; the Reichsbehörde had used specialists for menial tasks.

  He bribed the chemist to ensure the photos would be ready in a day. Nowhere in her letter did Gretel offer to cover Reinhardt’s out-of-pocket expenses.

  Gretel was just as specific about the next step as she had been about the mechanics of the photographs: he was to send the package of photos to a particular address on a particular day. But Reinhardt knew better than to use a post office near his home. It stood to reason that the recipient of these photos would be surprised and probably displeased by them. He’d photographed a secret exchange—that much was obvious—and the address Gretel provided was in Westminster. That meant this was political. The recipients would take a long, hard look at the postmark on Reinhardt’s package.

  So he again drove across London, west this time, to post the package from an office he selected at random. Large enough that he would blend into the crowd, and far enough from his flat to throw any investigators off the trail. For the return address, Reinhardt selected something out of the telephone directory, again at random.

  The fat postie behind the counter took Reinhardt’s package, and his cash, and then did a double take when he saw the fake return address.

  Reinhardt said, “Is there a problem?”

  The fat man shook his head. “Ain’t that the oddest thing. Just got a package for you in this morning’s batch.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Reinhardt, although he knew it wasn’t. Not for Gretel. “I’m new to the neighborhood.”

  “I figured as much,” said the postman. “I remember your name because I didn’t recognize it when the package came through. Reckoned it had to be a mistake. Now how do you fancy that?”

  Reinhardt waited until he was safely home to open the package. It contained more fragments of the battery blueprint, and a second letter. He tossed the letter aside, trembling with excitement as he dug out his research journals and the fragments that had arrived with her first letter.

  One battery. That’s all. Just one was all he needed to slip the leash she’d put around his neck.

  The blueprint fragments didn’t match up. Gretel had sent the edges of the diagram, but not the center. Typical Gretel. But the addition pointed Reinhardt in the right direction, and he knew that in time he’d fill the gaps via his own investigations.

  Exhausted from a long day spent hunched over his desk, he finally turned his attention to Gretel’s second letter.

  My Dear Reinhardt, it began. From the time you receive this letter, you have three days to vacate your flat.

  five

  16 May 1963

  Walworth, London, England

  Within two days of his first meeting with Pembroke, Marsh had a salary and an office in the Admiralty building. He told Liv he had an offer to return to work at the Foreign Office, which had been his cover during the war. She expressed no excitement for the improbable resuscitation of his career, only for the prospect of a higher and steadier income. But when he told her that his new situation brought with it long days, she refused to rearrange her own life to accommodate the change. Liv made it clear that somebody had to stay with John in the evenings, and that somebody would be Marsh.

  In short, the Milkweed job enlivened their home life. It gave them something new to fight about, rather than rehashing the arguments they’d played out countless times.

  “And what about Fitch’s garden?” Liv pulled open a drawer, searching for a peeler. Rummaging through the utensils, she added, “You promised him you’d have that done ages ago.” She found the peeler and leaned heavily against the drawer; it scraped shut. Marsh hadn’t wanted to spend precious cash on new rollers from the local ironmongers. “We’re fortunate he tolerates you as much as he does.”

  Marsh crossed his arms. “Fitch can stuff it,” he said.

  “Did you tell him that?” She channeled her irritation into the carrots she peeled. A flurry of thin orange strips pelted the sink. “Fat lot of good that’ll do us when you cock up this new job and then have to go crawling back to him.”

  Her utter confidence that he’d make a wreck of things flayed him as surely as if she had scraped the peeler down his bare arms. This wasn’t about the new job. It was about finding new ways to hurt each other. Marsh was the symbol for everything Liv hated about her life. Her target. But whom did he blame for how wrong it all went? Liv? John? Himself?

  It hadn’t always been like this. They’d loved each other so much.… There had been a time when his heart beat harder when she entered the room. When she made him feel energized, more alive, willing to fight the world just to win her smile. But now her company was a weight that bent his spine, slumped his shoulders. The fighting made him so damn weary.

  Liv pulled her hair back. From his spot leaning against the refrigerator, Marsh could see the flush rising up through the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. It happened when she was passionate about something. Strangely, at that moment, it reminded him of the first time they’d made love, and how afterwards they’d lain nestled together like two spoons on the mattress in Liv’s garret at her boarding house. He’d watched the way the blush rose and fell along her neck like tides pulled by his breath.

  The memory, so vivid and unsolicited, moved him. He reached for her. In a more civil tone, he said, “This is a good thing. We’ll have more money.”

  She swatted his hand away. Upstairs, John launched into a new round of keening. A breeze rustled threadbare, sun-bleached curtains over the sink. It carried the compost scent of Marsh’s garden and the residual ozone tang of that afternoon’s storm.

  “We won’t have more money,” she said. “You’ll have more money to drink away at the pub. While I’m imprisoned here with him,” she said, pointing at the ceiling with the peeler. “Nothing will change.”

  Why did this have to become yet another battle in their long, pointless war? Somehow, improbably, he had his old job back. Maybe that meant there was a chance to reconnect with Liv. A chance for détente.

  He said, “It won’t be like that this time. I promise.” She sniffed. He sighed.

  The faucet broke for what seemed the thousandth time when she went to fill the teapot. Handing Liv a dish towel, Marsh said, “Things will be different. Better.”

  “For you. But you’re not abandoning me to deal with John every hour of the day and
night. I have a life outside these walls, Raybould. And I won’t sacrifice that.”

  A life. Is that what you call it? Cuckolding me? My work is more important than your affairs, you tart.

  Marsh’s jaw ached with the effort to hold his tongue. He forced himself to release the pressure on his teeth before he ground them to powder. A dull throb took root behind his eyeballs.

  He wondered, not for the first time, about Liv’s lover. It occurred to him that now he was back with SIS, finding the man (men?) would be a trivial task. But then what? A confrontation? Marsh feared it would be even more emasculating to know his identity. Liv deserved what happiness she could make for herself, even if it was at his expense. They’d caused each other enough grief. One of them should be happy.

  Marsh shook his head. “They need me.”

  “The Foreign Office needs a pudgy, half-pissed, out-of-shape ex-bureaucrat who hasn’t held a steady job in ten years? God save the Queen.”

  Marsh slammed the door. Again. John’s crying receded into the general noise of the city after two streets; Marsh’s flaring temper burned itself down to glowing coals after a dozen.

  The streets smelled like rain and pub food. The refuse behind a shabby Spanish restaurant stank of ripe seafood. The neighborhood didn’t appear quite as threatening in the early-afternoon sun as it had when the storm clouds rolled through that morning, low and black. Torrents of rain had washed the pavement clean of newspapers and waxed paper chip wrappers. But nothing could wash away the feeling of being watched, of eyes peering out from every dark corner.

  Part of him still yearned to work the anger out through his fists. At the mouth of a narrow alleyway, he stopped to contemplate a detour. Faintly, from the shadows behind the rubbish bins, where rainwater still dripped from rusted gutters, the telltale scuffle of shoe leather on pavement reached his ears. That was the sound of somebody sitting up, taking attention, surveying a mark. Marsh cracked his knuckles. But he stopped himself before entering the alley and committing himself to what at best would be a scrap and at worst would be a mugging, a stabbing, a murder.