Necessary Evil (Milkweed Triptych) (48 page)

The Eidolons would take him apart. Study him. And steal the soul of a child yet to be born.

He pounded on his door. One of the sentries shot him a look. Will pressed his face to the glass. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he cried. His voice echoed in the cell, but the steel and glass surely filtered out all emotion.

Grafton paused. The line bunched up behind him. He turned, frowned at Will. Stark electric light glistened in the pockmarks that riddled his skin.

Will continued, “Listen to me. Please, don’t try this. The consequences will be far worse than you imagine.”

The lead sentries came back. Now the other warlocks stared at him, too.

“I know whereof I speak,” said Will.

“You know nothing,” said Grafton. He turned. The marines formed up again.

Will remembered what Marsh the Elder had told him about the time line he’d barely escaped. The Britons of that world had had a term for the hundreds of civilians who had died mysteriously, or disappeared, during the war. The Missing. Victims of a network of fifth columnists. A vast network, said the prevailing wisdom, yet it somehow evaporated without the tiniest bit of residue at war’s end.

Because nobody credible suspected Whitehall in the atrocities. Who could believe that?

“How many?” shouted Will. “How many must bleed to satisfy your masters?”

These marines guarded men who, they were told, held the survival of the country in their hands. But doing so would make them accessories to tonight’s atrocities. Young men who had joined up to serve their country, to protect it from all ills, would have to stand idly by while their charges merrily derailed trains, sank barges, set buildings afire.

Did they know what the evening held in store? It was blood magic. It was war. It was murder.

Will pounded on the door. “Marines! Listen to me! You don’t know what these men are planning!”

Hargreaves unbuttoned his collar. The burn scars twisted his flesh into grotesque shapes when he removed his necktie. He handed it to a marine.

“We shall wait while you gag Lord William,” he said.

The sentry posted beside Will’s cell unlocked the door. Two marines entered. Will backed away, saying, “Gentlemen, if you carry out tonight’s assignment, you will be guilty of treacheries that far outstrip my own. I promise you.”

They subdued him in seconds. They weren’t interested in what he had to say.

*

I am an Englishman.

At rest, my heart beats to the drip-drop patter of a gentle drizzle. Other times, it hammers in my chest with the relentless thrum of a summer thunderstorm. In dry weather, my heartbeat measures the interval between rain showers. I am intimate with rain. As are we all.

But also, in my time, I have been a gardener. I know down to the dirt beneath my nails that rain is alchemical. It coaxes seeds to life, blossoms to bursting. And, like the greenery for which our verdant island is famous, I am nourished by a good English rain.

That is how I felt when a dozen men emerged from the Admiralty Citadel. They stepped into bright daylight that shone in the midst of a bone-soaking shower. Clouds hovered above our piece of London like the Lord’s own barrage balloon. But they did not block the lowering sun, and so the rain that sheeted on Horse Guards Parade became a golden mist that enveloped the procession.

I’d been at my vigil so long that I gave out a little cry of relief at the sight of the warlocks and their marine escort. Even Gretel fell silent. I adjusted my binoculars, focusing over rooftops, past a forest of chimney pots, beyond the tents and Nissen huts that infested St. James’ like a profusion of toadstools. I could barely make the men out, so brilliantly did the rain shimmer in the sunlight.

Four older men in various states of decrepitude and ruin, surrounded by a bloody honor guard. Warlocks. Who else would these fellows be?

I’d spent day after miserable day cramped in the stuffy garret of a theater building on Regent Street. Thanks to the cordon around St. James’, it was the only perch from which I could watch the Citadel. Each day my spirits sunk in equal measure with the rising heat. It was enough to drive a man mad. More so, when forced to share his confinement with Gretel. I didn’t mind the rats.

How appropriate, this sunlit rain. A beginning and an ending, alpha and omega. My mission—that one that began in a Spanish hotel a quarter century ago, by the reckoning of my drip-drop heart—was coming to an end. With just a bit more work, and a touch of luck, I could have my rest.

The warlocks’ departure to commit their government-sanctioned blood prices opened my window of opportunity. I reviewed my plan while changing, for what I hoped would be the last time, into the uniform of Lieutenant-Commander Liddell-Stewart. First stop, the Admiralty. Then, off with the uniform, and with carpetbag in hand, I’d become a warlock again and infiltrate St. James’.

I could deal with the Twins and the warlocks in one go. I’d even devised a means of excluding my younger self from the mission to Africa. It was dead simple. No need to hobble him. To hell with Will’s theory of future echoes. I was forging my own history. And without Gretel to warn them of the impending attack, Klaus and Reinhardt didn’t stand much chance if Lorimer’s pixies worked.

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 fingers 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.”