Marsh leapt to his feet and charged across the smoldering sand. It was like running across a sticky frying pan. He had to reach Reinhardt before the bastard switched batteries. Sand jammed the bolt of his rifle. He flipped it around and gripped the barrel like a club.
Reinhardt’s right arm hung uselessly at his side. His flesh sizzled against the bubbling sand. He tried to scream in agony, but it came out as a desiccated gurgle. The furnace heat had scorched his throat and lungs.
Yet still his left hand clawed at the battery latch. Indomitable willpower, to the very end.
Marsh rammed the butt of his rifle into Reinhardt’s temple. “Just!” Slam. “Bloody!” Slam. “Die!” Slam. The salamander’s head yielded with a mushy crunch.
It hurt to breathe. The air scalded Marsh’s nose and mouth. He retreated from the slag. He staggered to where a dead Afrika Corpsman clutched an MP 38. Wrestling the machine pistol from the dead solder, he realized he recognized the man’s face. He’d been one of the LSSAH troops assigned to the farm.
The magazine was almost empty. But not quite. Though he’d already pulped Reinhardt’s skull with the Enfield, Marsh finished the job by unloading a half-dozen rounds into the Overman’s brain.
Around him, the sounds of combat had dwindled to a few desultory pops scattered through the remains of the camp. The commander trotted from the ravine. In the firelight, he looked even worse than normal. He looked like Marsh felt. Marsh beckoned to him.
The older man pointed back toward the ravine with his thumb. Marsh pointed at Reinhardt’s body.
“Klaus is dead,” said the commander, at the same moment Marsh said, “Reinhardt is dead.”
They fell into an awkward silence.
*
“I feel a bit silly,” said Will, “barging in as I did.”
Liv touched his hand. She said, “Nonsense. You were brilliant, Will.”
She looked so lovely, with her freckles and her disheveled auburn hair. Will forced himself to look away. He drained the last of his tea.
“Forgive me for saying so, but the beard doesn’t suit you.”
“Agreed. I had little choice in the matter, I’m afraid.”
They were seated at the kitchen table. Gretel hadn’t moved. Will kept an eye on her, just in case. Long snarls of raven-black hair hid her eyes, but that was probably for the better. She rocked back and forth, murmuring to herself and fingering the copper connecter at the end of her wires.
He hadn’t yet decided what to tell Liv. Marsh hadn’t left instructions for this scenario. Will didn’t know how to approach the subject. Liv was running out of patience with his evasions.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” said Liv. “Who is this Jerry bint, and how does she know my husband?”
“Ah. Well. That’s a bit of a story, you see. Perhaps it would be best to let him explain.”
“Raybould isn’t here at the moment. So I’ll have to make do with your explanation.”
“Right. Of course. Well…”
Outside, on the street, a car screeched to a halt. It was followed by heavy footsteps and a persistent knocking on the front door.
“Mrs. Marsh?” said a muffled voice.
Liv glanced at the clock over the stove. “Who would call at this hour?”
“Ah,” said Will. “I suspect that’s the police. I took a detour to warn them of your plight.”
Liv smiled. “You really are a champion.” She kissed him on the cheek, soft as a feather. He blushed.
The door rattled again. “Mrs. Marsh, are you home?”
“Well,” said Liv, “I’d better let them in before they break down the door.” She stood, turned, and walked into the den.
Gretel leapt to her feet. She held her cranial wires taut between her fists.
“Olivia!”
Will lunged from his seat. His hands caught Liv in the small of the back and pushed her out of Gretel’s reach. Liv stumbled over Agnes’s bassinet. She turned, scowling.
Will wanted to apologize, to warn her, to ask if she were hurt, but the wires snapped tight around his throat. His fingers fumbled at the wire, but it dug so deeply he could find no purchase.
The scowl on Liv’s face became pale wide-eyed alarm. “Will!”
Will fell on Gretel but it didn’t loosen her grip. Liv stood over them, yanking on Gretel’s fists, but the wire only cut deeper. A dark tunnel contracted around Will’s vision, framing Liv’s face and tears and disheveled auburn hair. Distantly, he remembered a freckled coquette he’d once met in a pub. Somewhere very far away, somebody pounded on a door.
Liv ran for help as the world faded to black.
*
Lorimer gathered the other Milkweed survivors. They swept through the encampment, flushing out the last of the Jerries and finishing off the battery tent. They had it under control. My counterpart and I watched.
He said, “Rommel will reoccupy this camp within a day or two. Not much of a victory.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But he no longer has Klaus and Reinhardt. We’ve destroyed the last of von Westarp’s technology. That was our war. And it’s over now.”
The eastern sky, far across the Egyptian coastal plain, blushed at the approach of sunrise. Desert heat would follow the rising sun. It was a long way to Sidi Barrâni.
I was glad to see that the battle had spared the tall mast of an antenna. The camp had a radio, of course. We’d use it to contact the Western Desert Force. England was still many days away, though my thoughts were firmly in Walworth with Liv and Will and Gretel.
I said, “The warlocks are dead. We’ll have to take the long way home.”
“I suppose so,” said my counterpart. “But perhaps it’s for the best. I imagine you have a long story to tell.”
We sat in silence for a while. Flames crackled in the canyon. Lorimer barked orders to his men. The sun rose. We retreated to the cooler shadows of Halfaya. My counterpart took a long draw from his canteen. He handed it to me. I washed from my throat the taste of smoke and grit, of battles lost and won.
“It started in Spain,” I said.
seventeen
1 September 1941
Shetland Islands, Scotland
The fisherman kept his distance from the strange trio who had hired his services just after sunrise. That suited the government men perfectly well. They kept to themselves. But quiet errands like this weren’t unusual in the Shetlands. If the fisherman had bothered to ask, the men would have carefully given him the impression they were connected to the group of Norwegians hiding out at Lunna and Scalloway.
The third member of their party, the small one wrapped in the long cloak, never made a sound.
The fisherman cut the engine. His boat glided through the last few yards of foamy gray sea. The prow crunched gently over the shingle.
The older one, the one who looked and sounded like he’d lost a tussle with Old Scratch, flipped a coin to the fisherman. “Sit tight,” he rasped. Then he tossed his carpetbag to the shingle beach, lifted the person in the cloak, and handed him over the gunwale to the one named Marsh. If he had watched the handoff carefully, the fisherman might have glimpsed a flash of bony ankle under scarred olive skin.
This particular island didn’t have a name. Many maps ignored it entirely. One needed local knowledge to find it. Windswept, low to the sea, measuring less than twenty yards at its widest point, it offered nothing to reward anybody who did make the trek. Even lichenologists gave it a pass.
The island was a rocky shelf, kept barren by sea winds constantly scrabbling across the thin soil. (Far too thin for a flower garden.) Tufts of grass here and there provided bits of green to relieve the monotonous zigzag cross-bedding of the Old Red Sandstone, but the sheep kept the grass trimmed short. Blotches of moss and lichen ranged in color from ash white to bruise purple.
Until today its only occupants were the occasional passing seabirds, such as puffins and petrels, and a few sheep. The hut was a recent addition.
The me
n tromped across the beach with the prisoner held between them. The smooth round stones tinkled like glass beads beneath their boots. The tintinnabulation stood out amongst the constant thrum and whoosh of ocean waves, the hiss of wind, the screech of seabirds.
Once inside the hut, Marsh checked the cabinets. The supplies had arrived. Sacks of flour and rice. Several dozen packages of dehydrated egg. Potatoes, onions, root vegetables that would keep. Somebody had thoughtfully provided a fishing rod. Several cords of firewood for the stove had been stacked outside. Installing the rain catchers and water cisterns had been the most difficult job. There was one cot, one chair, and a table. The wind made an eerie keening sound in the stovepipe.
Used judiciously, the supplies would last one person six months. Until the next delivery.
Gretel whimpered when Marsh removed her cloak. She took one look at her surroundings, and started to cry again. “Please, Raybould. Please don’t do this.”
The commander sighed.
Commander. They’d made a tacit agreement to adhere to this fiction. It kept things simple.
“Why are you so cruel? After all we’ve endured together. You still don’t understand what I did for you. For us! We’re connected, you and I.”
He set his carpetbag on the table. Then he jerked a thumb in the general direction of the boat, their only means off the island. “She’s likely to scream. Think he’ll hear us?”
Marsh glanced out the window. It was hard to hear anything over the cacophonous static of wind and sea. But the island was damn small. “Better not risk it.”
Gretel didn’t struggle when they gagged her. She did try to squirm free of Marsh’s arms when the commander approached with the razor. Long black tresses fluttered to the floor like raven feathers as he shaved her scalp. Marsh released her. She fell to her knees, gathered handfuls of her hair, and pressed them to her tears.
“You should keep those,” said the commander. “Maybe you can learn to weave. Winters here are long, cold, dark, and damp.”
Her façade of docility disappeared when the commander produced the garden shears. Marsh had to pin her to the floor. He straddled her waist, facing her feet, and clamped his hands around her ankles. Her skin was cold to the touch. The commander knelt on her wrists.
He was right. She screamed bloody murder.
Seizures racked her body when the blades bit into her wires. They resulted from stray electrical currents induced by the contact between dissimilar metals; Lorimer had warned Marsh to expect this. Behind him, the shears clicked together. Gretel’s body went limp.
Marsh continued to hold her down while the commander dealt with the rivets in her skull. Removing them would require a surgeon’s skill, but mangling the stubs beyond usefulness required only strong hands and good pliers.
They removed the gag and prepared to leave.
She lurched to her feet when the commander opened the door. She addressed them both, but focused on the commander. Marsh supposed that made sense. He didn’t feel particularly jealous.
“Raybould! Please! Don’t leave me here.”
“It’s better than you deserve,” said Marsh.
“You killed my daughter,” said the commander. “You killed—” But a sob bubbled up through the ruin of his voice, choking off his words. His head hung low.
“If you endure a thousand years on this godforsaken rock,” Marsh finished for him, “it will still be too good after what you did.”
She said, “We have a connection, you and I. Don’t you remember? I found you before we ever met; you were there in so many time lines, again and again, and sometimes we’re lovers and sometimes enemies, but I knew you were special, so special they named you, because you were meant to come to me, and you did, you came back and you saved me and together we fixed the world and, and, and I remember things, I still remember things, things about the future, things I’ll share with you, dreadful wonderful ugly beautiful things, things I’ll share if you take me with you.” They stared at her. She moaned, fingers scrabbling across the stubble of her scalp. Her next words alternated with chest-heaving sobs: “Please … don’t … leave … me … Raybould. Please.”
The commander said, “Isn’t this what you wanted? This is the future you sought. The future you worked so hard to create. The only time line where the Eidolons never find you.” He took one last look around. “A girl can’t have everything.”
“Let’s leave,” said Marsh.
They stepped outside.
Gretel’s voice was weak and small. Smaller even than her tiny island. She asked, “Where is Klaus?”
“Your brother is dead,” they said in unison.
Marsh shut the door before her wailing could scare away the fisherman.
*
They arrived on the mainland in late afternoon. They retrieved their car in Thurso, and drove south. Miles of heather moorland passed without either man saying a word. Each was lost deep in his own thoughts.
Apropos of nothing but a need to break the silence, Marsh said, “I think we’ll move. After the war.”
“Oh?”
“Liv doesn’t want to stay in the Walworth house. Not after Will…”
“No. I suppose she wouldn’t. Neither would I.”
The men sighed in unison. First the commander, then Marsh, wiped his eyes.
“I wish I could have been there,” said the commander, referring to the funeral service. It had been a high-profile affair, given Will’s station and the grisly manner of his death. He had served the Crown; they gave him a hero’s burial. “I was a wretched excuse for a friend. I failed him at every turn straight to the accursed end.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Marsh, even though he felt much the same about himself. “Most of that never happened.”
“It happened in my memories.” The commander gave a rueful chuckle. “In the other … From where I came, he actually read his own obituaries at one point. I think he rather enjoyed that.”
Marsh said, “That sounds like Will.” They shared a laugh in memory of their friend.
The commander changed the subject. “The war could go for years yet,” he said. “Probably will. Nobody knows how it will turn out. Not any longer.”
“That’s as it should be.”
“Yes.”
“Still think we ought to have killed her,” said Marsh. “She was a monster, right down the line.”
“Trust me,” said the commander. “I’ve known her longer.” Marsh shrugged aside the frisson of discomfort that arose whenever the commander talked like this. He hadn’t fully come to terms with the situation. Never would.
“I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve imagined killing her with my bare hands. I spent decades on those revenge fantasies. But this is better. She suffers the most this way.”
“In that case,” said Marsh, “I hope she lives a very long time.”
“This is the worst possible punishment for Gretel.” The commander cracked his knuckles against his jaw; Marsh tried not to flinch. “Forced to live out her years like a regular human being? Merely mortal? She used to be a goddess. Gretel will never stop pining for the power she lost. Meanwhile, she’s forced to live from one day to the next like the rest of us. Will it be cold tomorrow? Will the sun come out? Will it rain?”
Marsh said, “It’s the bloody Shetlands. Of course it’ll rain.”
“Even so.”
“Yes.” Now it was Marsh’s turn to crack his knuckles. “Stephenson won’t pass up the chance to question her every so often. He holds out hope we might shake loose a few useful crumbs of information about the future.”
The commander shook his head. “You won’t. Not about the real future.”
“I know.”
“She might remember bits and pieces of the other, but even those are likely growing hazy.”
Now Marsh changed the subject. “How’s the knee?”
“Never better. I should have tried to shoot you a long time ago. Yours?”
“Th
e same. Still don’t understand it.”
“Will could have ventured a decent guess.”
They lapsed into thoughtful silence again. Later, after Marsh turned west, the commander said, “You’ve missed the turn. This isn’t the road to Edinburgh.”
“We aren’t headed to Edinburgh. Well, I am. But not you. Look in the glove box.”
The commander reached inside the fascia. He found a slim leather valise. It was similar to one he’d retrieved from Spain long, long ago. Marsh knew, because he’d been there.
The commander caught the resemblance. He frowned.
“Look inside.”
He did. He pulled out a fake passport, a train ticket to Dublin, a voucher for a berth on an Irish ferry, and one thousand pounds sterling.
“Oh, very droll,” said the commander.
“Thought you’d get a laugh out of it.” Marsh paused, checking his blind spot before passing a slow-moving truck. “No joke, though. The travel documents are real,” he said.
“I sussed that out, thanks.”
“You can’t stay in England,” said Marsh. “You’re wanted for the deaths of Shapley and Pendennis, and the assault of a marine sentry in the citadel.”
The commander shook his head, sadly. “Necessary evils.”
“Stephenson won’t stop looking for you. Likewise SIS and the Security Service.”
The commander yawned, pinched the bridge of his nose. The boredom was an act, of course. Marsh knew he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving. He wouldn’t have been able to, had their roles been reversed.
The commander tucked the documents inside his jacket. “Speaking of the old man, what are you lot going to do? I’ve a feeling Milkweed isn’t long for this world.”
Marsh said, “Stephenson is casting about for a new mission. But I think we’ll ride out the war, probably stick around in one form or another for a while after that. We’ll be watching, in case somebody tries to revive von Westarp’s program. Red Orchestra has agents all over Germany.”
“They won’t find anything,” said the commander.
Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) Page 41
