“Dunno. Line went dead before I could get an answer.”
They moved into the corridor beyond the den, like a rugby scrum with Marsh at the center.
To Roger, Marsh said, “Stay here and man the wireless.” The house had a transmitter and receiver for communicating with other SIS outposts in cases of emergency. This qualified. “Arm yourself, do a head count, help Madeleine batten down the hatches.”
“She isn’t here,” Roger said.
But Marsh was already moving on. To Will and Gretel, he said, “You two, with me.”
Will started to protest: “Gwendolyn—”
“Is safer here. But if this is the children’s doing, I need you with me.”
They hurried across the entryway to the front door. Gwendolyn trotted halfway down the stairs behind them. “William? Where are you going?”
Will turned, dashed up the stairs. “I’ll be back soon, love. Not to worry.”
“Such a commotion. Why?”
He kissed her, a peck on the cheek. “Stay away from the windows.” A look of deep concern crossed her face.
“We’re going, now,” said Marsh. His gravelly voice made everything sound like a command. Which was useful at times. He pulled Gretel after him, down the stairs to the Morris parked on the street. He opened the passenger-side door and pushed her inside. Will hopped in back as Marsh started the engine.
And then they were off, driving toward the heart of London, where distant sirens echoed and the first plumes of smoke darkened the sky.
* * *
The wireless mounted beneath the fascia provided sporadic updates and panicked speculations during the drive. A Soviet invasion, said some. An uprising of fifth columnists, said others. But whatever was happening, it was killing witnesses and severing communication lines faster than they could provide reliable reports. And London wasn’t the only place under attack. The list of besieged cities grew by the minute: Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Sheffield … All burned.
Gretel took it all in with prim satisfaction. She looked proud. She made a little sigh of triumph with each new report, or each time the situation worsened.
“What the hell have you done?” Marsh cranked the wheel. The car skidded through a roundabout, sending Gretel’s braids flying.
She caught and smoothed them. “I’ve done nothing.”
He had to bite off his retort while he maneuvered the car around a bobby directing traffic past a collision.
A cacophony of alarms, shrieking sirens, popping gunfire, even the chuff-chuff-chuff of antiaircraft weapons engulfed them as they approached Westminster. The noise, the chaos, the smoke … Marsh could have sworn he was back in the Blitz again. Back before Luftwaffe bombs had cratered great swaths of the city, before rebuilding had turned London into a different place, broke its links with the past.
The city was burning. Dozens of fires. Rising spontaneously, spread across the heart of London. Flames engulfed office buildings, banks, hospitals, police stations, post offices. People fled the conflagrations, heads bent low beneath dark, billowing smoke, with shirts and scarves pressed to their mouths.
Bankers fled from falling debris, vainly shielding themselves with briefcases and umbrellas. And there was a lot of debris; whole buildings had been pulverized, seemingly at random.
Doctors and nurses herded their patients—those who could move—outside crushed and burning hospitals.
Office workers poured into the streets, snarling traffic in their haste to escape the smoke and heat.
Fire. “Is this why you sent the blueprints to Reinhardt? So that he could start this?”
Gretel said, “Reinhardt has never been this effective. Even in his best form.”
No. If there was one thing they had learned from the debacle in Knightsbridge, it was that the Germans were no longer masters of the Willenskräfte. And the reports coming from other cities proved a single Reinhardt wasn’t behind this attack. But that left just two possibilities, both far worse than a rampaging Reinhardt.
Marsh glanced into the rearview. “Are the children doing this?”
Will said, “I—”
Gretel shouted, “Stop!”
Marsh reacted without thinking and punched the brakes. The car screeched to a halt just as the masonry façade peeled away from the top floors of a burning six-story building. A rain of bricks and mortar pounded the street hard enough to shake the Morris. The car creaked on its suspension.
“How fortunate she’s not wearing a battery,” Will muttered.
Gretel smirked. “Back up. Second left,” she said.
Marsh threw the car into reverse. Dust swirled around them, blown aloft on updrafts from the surrounding fires. How long before the fires coalesced into a single conflagration, a fire storm that turned London to ash?
Marsh repeated his question, though he feared he already knew the answer: “Will. Is it the children?”
“I think not. I don’t see…” Will gasped just then, as Marsh swerved around the corner hard enough to throw Will crashing against his sore arm. Gretel clucked her tongue. “I said second left.”
Marsh shifted again and accelerated down a side street. His thoughts raced along with the overtaxed engine. No, it wasn’t the children doing this. Marsh had seen the Eidolons at work when he’d traveled through frozen Germany near the end of the war. This was different.
“Ah, Pip?”
This felt like human malevolence. There was nothing supernatural about it. Which meant—
“Pip!”
Marsh almost missed the figure standing in the center of the road because she was cloaked in flames. Not the flames of the buildings burning to either side, nor the flames of the debris littering the street, but the flames she conjured from thin air. Marsh hit the brakes and again threw the car into reverse, but not before the woman in the street turned and noticed the car. A grin spread across her face as his shimmering nimbus disappeared.
“Shit!”
Marsh pressed his foot to the floor, but the car moved upward instead of backwards. The wheels spun uselessly over the asphalt as the Arzamas saboteur willed the car aloft. Marsh thought fleetingly of Kammler, whom he had personally witnessed in action at the Reichsbehörde. The Morris bounced a foot above the roadway, swaying back and forth as though the woman lifting them was checking her grip before giving the whole thing a great heave.
Will yelped. He rolled into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest. He didn’t notice that Gretel seemed annoyed but otherwise unconcerned.
Marsh, knowing she would never let anything unfortunate befall herself, tried to relax.
A police van skidded to a halt behind the Arzamas agent. Two officers jumped out, pointed pistols at her. She turned to face them. The car fell. The impact wrenched Marsh’s neck and the small of his back. The undercarriage echoed with ominous creaks.
The policemen’s gunfire sounded like Christmas crackers from a distant party, improbably weak compared to the whoosh of fire and the groaning of the car’s abused suspension.
Gretel glared at Marsh. “Second. Left.”
He hated the thought of following Gretel’s directions. But he adhered to her advice for the rest of the drive. Without access to her prescience, traversing the war zone would have been impossible. The Soviet attack was concentrated here; the streets were thick with smoke, rubble, and combat. Meanwhile the Arzamas sleeper cells methodically eradicated the defenders and tore the city apart. Marsh and his passengers glimpsed more and more of the agents at work as they neared Whitehall.
Ivan tricked us. Outplayed us.
Iran was a diversion. We didn’t eliminate their Arzamas troops in Iran. They’ve been here in Britain all along. Hundreds of sleeper agents, waiting patiently for their orders.
Marsh trembled with adrenaline and inconsolable rage. His greatest fear unfolded all around him, and the fever lent a surreal immediacy to the destruction of Britain. Made it hyperreal. Everything he’d ever fought for, destroyed in one afte
rnoon. Every sacrifice he’d endured, rendered pointless. And the single fact that had kept him going through all the dark years—knowing that the things he’d done had kept Britain alive and free—was soon to be a quaint fantasy.
He’d let himself believe he was good at this. But in the end, he’d failed Britain, just as he’d failed at everything else. His most dire, most spectacular failure.
Gretel warned him just in time to avoid a trio of fire trucks headed toward Buckingham Palace. The center of the lead truck imploded spontaneously as if punched by an enormous, invisible fist. It slewed and tumbled down the Mall, like a rusted tin kicked by a schoolboy. The following trucks collided with the crumpled vehicle in a chain reaction. The wreckage blocked access to the north side of St. James’ Park, closing off their shortest route to the Admiralty.
Wreckage brought about by Gretel’s impenetrable machinations. By a tragedy she engineered. But why?
She directed him east, a few streets south of the park.
Marsh wanted to lash out at her. Strangle her, smash her head against the windshield glass until she explained herself. But driving required more and more of his attention. And most infuriating of all was the fact they wouldn’t make it a quarter mile without her guidance. He needed her help. She had made him dependent upon her. And nothing would ever scrape away the rancid, oily feeling.
These bastards will obliterate everything that has ever meant a damn. Everything that has ever lent any meaning and purpose to my life. Every halfhearted reason I could muster for enduring my awful life is getting ripped away.
Gretel had planned the trip carefully. She took them straight through the epicenter of the destruction. Getting to the Old Admiralty building meant threading a needle.
They sped past the pineapple finial on the west end of the mangled Lambeth Bridge. The bridge’s steel center span lay twisted in the Thames. Farther downstream, the current lapped against the shattered ruins of Westminster Bridge. Veering north up Millbank, Marsh watched flames engulf Westminster Abbey on their left and the Houses of Parliament to the right.
A pair of figures spiraled up through the air around the Perpendicular Gothic filigrees of Victoria Tower. They tossed explosives. Gouts of white-hot flame followed in their wake, blowing out the mullioned windows and cracking the stone.
Of course they would single out Victoria Tower; it held five centuries of parliamentary records. Britain’s heritage of governance. Erased in a few seconds.
Britain was dying.
Murdered before Marsh’s eyes.
Will witnessed the spectacle, too. “And they can fly.”
Which explained the antiaircraft fire.
“Rudolf could fly.” Gretel nodded, as if confiding something. “He died before you could meet him,” she added, sounding not entirely sad about it.
As they approached Parliament Square, Marsh remembered following this same route with Stephenson long, long ago. He had just returned from Spain with fragments of a charred filmstrip and no idea where the puzzle would lead. The two of them had created Milkweed that very afternoon. And as he had ridden in the old man’s Rolls-Royce, watching Victoria Tower glide past them wreathed in fog and lamplight, he’d never imagined how much the world could change within a single lifetime. Surely Britain would always stand, so long as men like Marsh did the work to make it so.
And he would. He had the power to stop this.
He swung the Morris around the square. They made a short jaunt west toward St. James’ while Gretel called a string of warnings (“Veer left!” “Right!” “Slower!” “Faster!”) to evade the attacks of Willenskräfte hurled at them. More screeching came from the abused undercarriage as Marsh sent the car banging over the curb and scraping around the iron partition at the south end of Horse Guards Road, and then it was a dead run past the smoldering crater where Downing Street had been to the parade ground behind the Old Admiralty.
Marine sentries had taken positions on the ground, forming a thin defensive perimeter. But there had been no time for sandbags and revetments. They stood in the open, looking confused but determined, useless rifles held at the ready. Pethick oversaw several pairs of marines, who were erecting pixies. The devices looked little different from Lorimer’s original design.
The Arzamas attackers were eliminating their targets in order of priority. Milkweed had to be on that list.
Two sentries tracked the approaching car with their rifle barrels. Marsh leapt out of the car with the motor still running. The sentries recognized him and waved him through without a word. He half shoved, half dragged Will and Gretel into the building.
Pethick’s office door stood wide open. He’d left in a hurry, as evidenced by the phone hanging off the cradle. The vault also stood open; the pixies had come from there.
But Pethick was immaterial. Marsh was the old man now. With Pembroke dead, it all fell on his shoulders. He’d returned to Milkweed with the job of untangling Gretel’s web. But that hardly mattered now.
It was Marsh’s job to fix this problem. And he would.
Marsh bounded down the stairs two at a time. Gretel and Will followed him to the Admiralty cellar. Will threw himself against the door as Marsh unlocked it.
14 June 1963
Milkweed Headquarters, London, England
Will said, “The children haven’t done this. I think that much is clear.”
He disliked the children, but they were innocent in this. They didn’t deserve to get gunned down because of a misunderstanding.
“I know,” said Marsh. Rage blazed in his unfocused eyes, beneath a cryogenic sheen of icy determination. Sweat glistened on his pale forehead. Will shuddered with apprehension. The look on Marsh’s face … the man would do anything to stop the tragedy unfolding outside. Anything at all, and damn the consequences. He was too angry to think clearly.
Quietly, he asked, “Why are we here, Pip?”
“Get out of my way.”
Will raised his hands, palm out. Unthreatening. “Just tell me what you intend. So I can help you.”
Marsh pointed upstairs with one hand while with the other he twisted the wheel that released the lock mechanism. “We have to end this.”
“Yes. We do.” Will focused on keeping an even tone. The last thing he wanted was to turn Marsh against him, or to make Marsh think he wasn’t a willing ally. “But how do we manage that?”
Marsh didn’t answer. The cellar door sprang open with the clack of great steel bolts. Will stumbled to keep his footing when the heavy door bumped against him.
He took Gretel by the arm. “What will he do?”
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “He’ll do what he must to protect his country.”
The look in her eyes was worse than that in Marsh’s. She knew exactly what Marsh intended, because she had been nudging events in this direction since the beginning.
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
Marsh had already set off toward the children. Will bounded after him, his footing unsteady on the thick carpet. The soundproofing made his protests sound thin, ineffectual.
“Please, Pip. I am begging you. Do not do this.”
But Marsh didn’t drop a stride. “Those bastards outside stand to do more damage to London in one afternoon than the Luftwaffe did in one year. Either we do something this instant, or by sunrise Britain will cease to exist.” He brushed Will aside. Fury burned through the sheen of self-control. “I will not let that happen!”
“You can’t just wipe them out.”
“If you haven’t noticed, we’re embroiled in a rather one-sided shooting war. People die. There’s nothing criminal about defending ourselves.”
Will grabbed Marsh’s arm, pulled him around. “Damn it, man! I’m not talking about the moral implications. There is a single sacrosanct rule by which all warlocks are bound. You know this! Yet you’re a hairsbreadth from making those children violate it. And they’ll do it because they don’t know any better and because they think you’re some
sort of mythic figure.”
Marsh yanked free of Will’s grasp. They reached the door to the observation room. Will jumped in front of Marsh. “I have told you again, and again, and again, since the earliest days of Milkweed. Since you first consulted me. What is the one thing I’ve always warned you against? One must never, ever use the Eidolons to kill.”
He lowered his voice, trying to sound like a counselor rather than an adversary. “We couldn’t end the war in one stroke. And we can’t end this so easily.”
“We’ll see about that,” Marsh growled.
Will knew that appealing to logic was merely grasping at straws. But he tried again. “How are you going to seek them out? You don’t have blood maps for the Soviets.”
“Don’t need ’em.”
That took Will aback. “What?”
Marsh pointed at Gretel. “She’s terrified of the Eidolons. Why? The Eidolons went berserk when the Twins communicated with each other. Why? Because, Will. Here’s another thing you’re always prattling on about: ‘The Eidolons are beings of pure volition.’ Pure willpower. You’ve said it countless times. How do Gretel and the others do what they do? Von Westarp called it die Willenskräfte. That’s ‘willpower’ to you and me.”
My God, thought Will. The Reichsbehörde technology poked the Eidolons right where they lived.
“And right now there’s no end of willpower getting flung about. Enough to level London,” Marsh said.
“The Soviets call it ,” said Gretel. She smiled, as though this might be helpful.
“We don’t need blood maps,” Marsh concluded. “The Eidolons can’t help but see the Arzamas agents. They must blaze like magnesium flares to the Eidolons.”
Oh, hell. Marsh was right.
Gretel said, “He’s very, very good. Isn’t he?”
Will braced himself against the door. “I still can’t let you do this.”
Marsh pulled his sidearm. “Get out of the way, Will. I won’t ask again.”
Will knew he meant it. He swallowed and shook his head, wishing he had taken time for a longer good-bye with Gwendolyn. Wishing she could see him doing the right thing, finally, at the bitter end. He hoped she understood how much he loved her. “You’ll have to shoot me dead. Because that’s the only way I’ll let this happen.”
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