But all of this had to come, of course, after I subdued Gretel. That evil, barmy bitch would never again be the mistress of her own destiny. Much less the world’s. From my carpetbag I produced the ropes and belts with which we’d tied her to Will’s bed. She might have enjoyed it, the twisted bint, if she hadn’t been passed out from pain. I glanced into the corner but, like me, she’d vacated her nest. I sought her among painted flats and costume racks. My footsteps sent coins bouncing between the floorboards.
“We don’t have time to mess about,” I said. “So be a good little Nazi while I finish the task you brought me here to do.”
But she wasn’t sleeping on the pile of theatrical costumes she used for a mattress. And she hadn’t taken station at one of the dormer windows, as she often did, to watch the inscrutable world spin along without her guidance. The door to the rear stairwell hung open.
Bloody fuck.
How long ago had she fallen silent? I dashed back to the window and cranked it open as wide as possible. Leaning out, I used the binoculars to scan the street below.
There she was. Striding up Regent toward Piccadilly. Gretel set a brisk pace, but even in the rain her steps were light and purposeful: she glided through London as though she owned the place. She’d found a purpose. And, just like the old Gretel, she knew exactly what she was doing.
The Tube stop at Piccadilly was in the opposite direction from my destination. Catching her, if I could even get to her before she boarded the Underground, meant a long delay. She had seized this moment to scamper off, knowing damn well I couldn’t afford to chase after her. The fucking demon.
Should have let the younger me strangle her during his visit to the warehouse. God knows he’d wanted to.
I had to leave. My window of opportunity was good only as long as the warlocks were occupied elsewhere.
I’d just emerged onto Regent, fuming and cursing and probably scarlet with rage, when intuition struck me like a mortar shell. I knew what Gretel intended.
Somehow, even after all this time, I still underestimated her.
I went numb. And then I broke into a dead run.
*
Silence had enveloped Milkweed’s wing of the Admiralty. Most everybody was in the park, or resting up for the evening’s adventure. I had to step carefully; my younger self would be taking a nap somewhere nearby. Similarly for the other troops slated for the mission. Lorimer would be in St. James’, putting the final touches on his pixies.
That left Stephenson. But if I knew my mentor, he’d be chasing down updates about the Halfaya encampment. Where Klaus and Reinhardt were.
The old man had locked his office. But I’d long ago made a copy of my doppelgänger’s keys; he’d handed them over on the night he departed for Germany. I slipped inside, closed the door, and went straight to his desk. The items I sought wouldn’t be in the vault. Stephenson would have collected them quietly. Surreptitiously.
My quarry was something I’d never known about at the time. But the Will of 1963 had deduced its existence long after the fact. John Stephenson had carefully laid the groundwork for Milkweed’s role in postwar foreign policy.
My sprint from Regent Street had left me sodden, shaky, and breathless. Fucking Gretel. I rummaged through Stephenson’s desk, doing my best not to drip on anything important. If I’d had the time I would have looked for anything that might have been a veiled reference to children, orphanages, anything of the sort. But I didn’t have time. And if I read my altered history correctly, Stephenson wouldn’t have progressed that far into his planning. These were early days.
I found what I sought in the bottom drawer where he kept his brandy. The old man had stashed a cigar box inside a false backing at the rear of the drawer.
At first glance, the box contained nothing but flotsam. Shavings from a wooden floorboard. The corner torn from a map. A stiff leather tourniquet.
Each stained with blood. Each labeled with a name: Webber. Grafton. Beauclerk. Shapley.…
Every negotiation with the Eidolons began when the warlocks cut themselves. Bloodshed was the lubricant that made the process work. The warlocks’ blood, in particular, was part of the process for contacting the Eidolons. So of course Stephenson would have collected it. Carefully, when nobody was looking, he’d tear the corner from a bloodstained map, or perhaps he snuck back later and scraped up a piece of flooring with his letter opener.
I removed Will’s tourniquet, then tossed the cigar box into my carpetbag. After locking Stephenson’s office behind me, I ducked into the loo. There I changed out of my uniform, and flushed the tourniquet.
*
Gretel had a good twenty minutes on me. And I had to get into St. James’ Park before the warlocks returned and the place became a circus. I had one hope of intercepting her. But I’d made no preparations to enter the Citadel. Many of my current problems sprang from my inability to do just that. So now I had to wing it.
“Back already, sir?”
The sentry took me for Hargreaves. I saw the look of consternation cross his face a second later. He’d focused on the burns and nothing else, but now he realized a second late that Hargreaves was a hideous but clean-shaven man. At least he caught his mistake.
His eyes slid away from mine. “Sorry, sir. Thought you were somebody else.”
“Have my colleagues already departed?”
This I asked in my normal speaking voice. The fire damage to my throat could easily be mistaken for Enochian tissue damage. I looked the part. I sounded the part. I even carried a carpetbag. My only hope was that the sentries not directly attached to Milkweed found the others like me too unpleasant to watch closely. But if they knew the mysterious old men from SIS numbered four and only four … well, then I was truly buggered.
“Yes, sir. ’Bout half an hour ago.”
“Damnation,” I said. Inwardly, I screamed at myself to hurry, screamed at this mental deficient to get out of my goddamned way, screamed with inchoate rage at the entire world. But I held it in check, just barely, and kept to my script. “Did they ask after me?”
He frowned. Shook his head. “No. No, sir.”
“Bloody typical, isn’t it.”
“If you say so, sir.”
“Didn’t bother to leave a message, I expect.”
“No, sir.”
I handed him my forged Identity Card. He spent a good moment on it. Had another Raybould Marsh come through recently? Apparently not, because he waved me through.
Finding Will was another delay I couldn’t afford. I reckoned they’d have thrown him into the deepest, darkest hole they had, and I was right. They’d posted a guard outside his cell, thank the Lord. The sentry didn’t move, but turned his head at the sound of my footsteps. My impatience got the better of me.
“I need to talk to the prisoner. Now,” I said.
“Sir?”
Will’s face appeared in the window of the cell. His eyes widened in surprise.
“Why is he gagged?”
“Mr. Hargreaves’s orders, sir.”
“Well, that won’t do at all. How can he answer my questions with a necktie stuffed in his mouth?”
Overplayed my hand with that. The touch of confusion tugging the sentry’s eyebrows together turned into outright suspicion. He held out a hand. “Papers, sir.”
His other hand went to the revolver at his belt. I took out my Identity Card. He unsnapped the holster. “Your other papers, sir.”
So I jumped him. Managed to tackle him before he brought the Enfield to bear. The shot ricocheted from the concrete and went pinging through a Continuity-of-Government conduit. Will yelped.
The boy was younger and stronger. But by now the frustration and anxiety had my rage going at a good simmer. Landing atop him, I slammed my forehead against his nose. Hurt like hell. He responded with a knee to the groin and a fierce jab to my jaw when I reared back again. He tried to bring the gun up. I slammed his arm down. His thumb sought my eye socket. I twisted away. His stiffened finger
s glanced off the ridge between the orbit and bridge of my nose. Kept my eye, but lost my grip on his forearm. He lifted the revolver. I laid my left hand over his right, as though trying to wrest the gun out of his grip, but instead used my leverage to push his hand back and expose his wrist. His free fist snapped my mouth shut with enough force to crack a molar. Pain like a white-hot needle shot through my jaw. I put most of my weight into a punch at his overextended wrist. Something clicked inside his forearm. He grunted through clenched teeth. The gun hung limply in his fingers. His hand flopped around like a beached fish. My next punch slammed his head against the floor.
When I was a younger man, I probably wouldn’t have stopped until I’d pulped the sentry’s skull. But he was out of commission now, so I reined in my rage just enough to fish out his keys, unlock the cell, and untie Will.
Will looked faintly ill as he eyed the fellow in the floor. “Relax,” I said. “He isn’t dead.”
I didn’t like doing it. Poor lad was just doing his job. But so was I. And mine was far more important.
“Help me get him inside.” We dragged the half-conscious sentry into the cell. There was nothing we could do about the blood smears. I pushed Will into the corridor, then slammed and locked the cell behind us.
“You shouldn’t have done this, Pip. They—”
But I was already headed for the exit. “Get to my house, as quickly as you can,” I said. We jogged up a flight of stairs.
Will panted along behind me. “What’s happened?”
“Gretel’s gone. Slipped away the instant I couldn’t spare the time to stop her.” We reached the top. I slowed to a rapid walk, lest our haste draw undue attention from the sentry posted outside.
“And you think she’s headed to Walworth?”
“Try to think like Gretel for a moment. Who would she blame for the failure of her power?”
Will inhaled. “Oh, no.”
We emerged from the citadel. Sunset shimmered on recent puddles scattered around Horse Guards Parade. I drew fresh rain-scrubbed air into my lungs. The sentry nodded at me. I ignored him.
I laid a hand on Will’s shoulder, as though I could physically propel him across the river. “Don’t let Liv out of your sight. Go!”
And off he went. Gretel had been to our house just once, in the dark. But twenty years from now, in a future that didn’t exist, Liv had shown her Agnes’s evacuation tag. It had our home address on it. I knew how Gretel worked; that was all she needed. But her ghastly wires and German accent would raise suspicions. She would have to traverse the city with care, while Will could go directly to the house. I hoped it was enough.
The puddles splashed the cuffs of my trousers. I crossed the road toward the checkpoint at St. James’. Two sentries manned the gate. They eyed my scars and carpetbag.
One of the men stepped into my path, rifle held across his chest. “Can’t let you through, sir. Password?”
“Habakkuk,” I told him. And to his companion: “Rookery.” They stepped aside.
Funny how the big things change, yet the little things stay the same.
Once through the checkpoint, I had the run of the place. The warlocks hadn’t returned from their deadly errands, and my younger self still napped in the Admiralty. The others wouldn’t start filing in until evening.
Milkweed’s staging area differed from what I remembered of a cold December night in a nonexistent history. I had to search around a bit before I found the hut from which the warlocks would carry out the negotiation. The Dingo came as a surprise. So, too, did the bulkiness of the pixies. I remembered them being light enough for two men to carry.
A workbench sat in the middle of the hut. The bench held a piece of Portland limestone. Just as I remembered, an iron chisel had been driven into the stone, at the center of a bloody handprint. A sledgehammer rested on the bench, ready to finish the job of cleaving the stone.
But I didn’t care about any of that. The object I sought was hidden under the bench: a box of blood samples. The Eidolons had to perceive the men to move them. The box contained a sample from each of the soldiers, plus one for the unlucky warlock who had to initiate the return trip.
Everything I’d worked for boiled down to the contents of this box. A few additions, one subtraction, and then I’d have to sit and wait for the aftermath.
To the box of blood samples I added the rag my doppelgänger had lifted from Germany, and the contents of the cigar box from Stephenson’s office. The warlocks would get a bloody great surprise when they teleported the strike teams to Africa. That had been my epiphany: rather than agonize over how to breach the warlocks’ protection, the solution was to get them to do my work for me.
Next, I sifted through the soldiers’ samples. One of these belonged to my younger self. I could exclude him from the transit to Africa simply by removing his sample from the group. No need to shoot him in the knee …
Or so I thought. But the soldiers’ samples weren’t labeled.
I shook with the effort not to bellow with rage.
I’d already known I couldn’t leave the park. Couldn’t race to Liv’s side, couldn’t join up with Will to intercept Gretel. Because I had to stay here, prepared to ambush any surviving warlocks who returned from the accidental jaunt to North Africa.
But I also couldn’t remove my counterpart’s blood sample from the roster of travelers. Stephenson could, but the old man would do so only if his protégé were incapacitated. Raybould Marsh had to be badly wounded, and Stephenson had to see it.
All of which meant I had no choice but to hobble him if I wanted to prevent the birth of another soulless child. Little things stay the same … God damn it. Because I also wanted to send my younger self to Walworth, to protect our wife. The anxiety had me grinding my teeth and flinching when pain lanced from my broken molar.
But I had to trust Will. He’d once confessed to me the depths of his affection for Liv. He wouldn’t let Gretel near her.
So I had no choice but to retreat to a mulberry grove in a distant corner of the enclosed parkland. There I massaged my aching knee and waited for my doppelgänger to arrive.
*
The staging ground came to life as evening fell. Three teams converged on three separate Nissen huts. A pair of snipers passed Marsh’s tent, Enfield rifles slung over the shoulders of their ghillie suits. The spotters carried submachine guns. Every man had rubbed his face with burnt cork, even the drivers for the Dingos. Every man wore a sticking plaster over a small scratch on the back of his left hand.
Marsh couldn’t make out the snipers’ banter as they receded into the shadows—the balaclavas muffled their voices—but he recognized the tone of false bravado. Each man banished the collywobbles in his own way. Most sought camaraderie. Marsh had chosen to be alone in the final minutes before the negotiation began.
Ding. A bell chimed. The five minute mark, calling teams into their final positions.
He double-checked his kit. The ritual enabled him to overcome the growing pain in his bad knee. He chewed another aspirin tablet and focused on counting his gear: One combat knife, six-inch blade. Six Mills bombs. Four white phosphorus grenades. One Enfield double-action revolver (No. 2, Mk. I). Five six-round cylinders for same. One Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle (No. 4, Mk. I). Five ten-round magazines for same. One electric torch. One garrote. One Very pistol with three magnesium flares. One compass. One medkit. One canteen.
Marsh shrugged into the shoulder straps of the haversack. Then he stuffed a few extra cylinders and magazines into the webbing pockets of his belt, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and stepped from the tent into shadows and humidity. Blackout on a summer night.
Ding. Ding. Three minutes.
Footsteps whispered through grass nearby as other team members scrambled for their final positions. A breeze rustled the cattails along the water’s edge. Ripples lapped gently against the shoreline. The cloy of spilled petrol from a fueling mishap involving one of the Dingos overlaid the earthier scents of mud an
d water.
Marsh turned for the Nissen hut where Stephenson, Lorimer, and the warlocks had converged. A figure emerged from the shadows behind the tent. The newcomer blocked Marsh’s path.
Marsh said, “It’s starting. Get to your team.”
The silhouette replied, in a familiar rasp, “We need to talk.”
“How the hell did you get in here?”
“You should talk to the old man about changing his password protocols.”
“Your sense of timing is one for the books, mate. Have you any idea what’s about to happen?”
“Better than you.” Starlight glinted on the barrel of a pistol in the commander’s hand. “You mustn’t go.”
Marsh froze in the act of reaching for his own sidearm. “You’re barmier than Gretel if you think I’ll sit this out. After everything I went through? After what you and she put me through? We’re within a hairsbreadth of finishing this. And now you want me to step aside?”
A door creaked. A brief flash of light tore the darkness. The shrieks and rumbles of Enochian leaked out with the light. The old man’s voice bellowed across the park. “Raybould! For God’s sake, get your arse in here!”
Liddell-Stewart cocked the revolver. “Cry out. Stephenson must believe you’re injured. He has to eject you from the team.”
Marsh said, “You wouldn’t dare.” He raised his voice. “On my way, sir!”
“Damn it,” said the commander. “There’s no time for explanation. But I’m trying to help you, you stubborn git.”
Stephenson again called into the darkness. “We can’t wait any longer. We have to do it now. Hurry!”
Then the door creaked again, and yellow light fell briefly upon the trampled grass of St. James’ as Stephenson went inside. The Enochian call-and-response hit a crescendo. The door slammed. Darkness rippled.
Marsh prepared to dash around the commander, but Liddell-Stewart raised the revolver. He aimed at Marsh’s knee. “You’ll thank me for this later,” he said.
The hairs on Marsh’s arms crackled with ghostly static. The air turned icy cold, bubbling with greasy unreality and malign disdain. The Eidolons had seen him.
Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) Page 38
