The Coldest War (29 page)

A muffled
whump
shook the street. A thirty-foot geyser erupted from the shattered water main. Marsh braced himself against the curb, lifted the hydrant plate, and angled it into the plume. The torrent drenched the street with cold rain, engulfing the Soviet agent in a cloud of steam.

*   *   *

Artificial rain fell in sheets. Water sizzled on the asphalt beneath the van. It soaked Klaus intermittently as his battery coughed up the last of its current.

He pounded on the van. With the last of his breath he managed, “Go! While he's blind!”

The driver revved the engine before throwing the van into gear. It jumped forward, rematerialized, then lurched to a crawl. Klaus threw himself clear of the roiling steam before filling his tortured lungs.

Flaming tires churned through soft asphalt. For a moment it looked as though the van wouldn't break free. But it gained just enough traction to inch forward. It accelerated. Ruined tires
slap-slap-slapped
on the solid roadway. They'd be driving on the rims before they reached the end of the crescent.

The van wouldn't get them very far, but it would get them away.

*   *   *

Marsh scrambled inside the Triumph. He hadn't boosted many cars in his youth, having preferred motorbikes, but the principle was the same. Precious seconds ticked away while the steam dissipated and he fiddled under the steering column with arthritic fingers.

The car sputtered to life. Marsh slammed it into gear and stomped the gas pedal.

It was a gamble. A gamble that the assassin hadn't flown away. That he hadn't become a ghost. That he wouldn't quit until Will was dead.

Marsh aimed for the heart of the cloud.

Inferno.

Agony.

Impact.

Darkness.

 

interlude

… three days to vacate your flat.

They will come for you. Flee.

The wood-dry scent of burnt toast tickled Reinhardt's nose. He used a fork to flip the bread slice sizzling on his electric skillet. Toast and jam, twice a day; that was his diet since abandoning the council estate flat. He couldn't afford anything else. Most of his cash had gone into the pockets of a Jew landlord, in the form of a deposit on a flat in Whitechapel.

Reinhardt had abandoned most of his electronic supplies at the flat. In the course of a single frantic night, he'd lost the collection amassed over years—decades—of painstaking work. There had been barely enough room in his car for the essentials.

But he didn't need his entire collection. Not any longer. He hadn't yet reconciled the findings in his own journals with Gretel's blueprint fragments, but he could infer the extent of the missing information. It wasn't unlike piecing together a picture puzzle: he knew the shape of the hole, and it was small.

The bread blackened while he reread Gretel's letter.

Yes, they know you're here. And no, dear Reinhardt, I am not the one who betrays you. It is my brother. He means well, but he doesn't understand. He doesn't understand what you and I are accomplishing.

“You and I?”

Each time he reached that line, his fingers twitched with the urge to crumple the letter and toss it away. But he didn't, because—

We're close now. If only you could see what I do. It's glorious.

“Of course I am, you gypsy lunatic.”

He speared the bread and tossed it on a dinner plate. The Jew had threatened to evict him if he popped another fuse, so he took care to twist the hot plate control in the proper direction when turning it off. Reinhardt spread a spoonful of marmalade on the toast.

There is but one obstacle remaining. His name is Leslie Pembroke.…

From there she launched, finally, into more straightforward details. At least this time she didn't want things done yesterday.

He chewed, studying the photographs tacked on the wall. These he'd taken of his own accord, from the comfort of his own car, rather than from some miserable hiding spot in a rainy park. Pembroke leaving his house. Pembroke hailing a taxicab. Pembroke and his wife arriving at the theater.

Reinhardt didn't know who this man was, nor why he was so important to Gretel. He didn't care.

 

nine

2 June 1963
Croydon, London, England

“It's the children,” said Pethick. “They're acting strangely.”

Gwendolyn used the interruption as an excuse to sidestep another stillborn conversation. After Marsh had revealed Will's secret dealings with Cherkashin, it didn't seem possible Gwendolyn could have become any cooler, any more distant. He felt no warmth when her gaze touched him, read no affection in her body language. But she'd been forced to leave their home, by men she did not know. Will hadn't even been present for that. Another earthquake, widening the chasm between them.

Of course, they left it to him to tell her their house had been destroyed, along with most of their belongings. If before her demeanor had been cool, now it was frosty. Eye contact hurt like grabbing an iron railing on the coldest January night. Her body language had been rewritten in an indecipherable script. The chasm grew wider still.

The forced proximity made things so much worse. The crowded safe house didn't lend itself to the private, heartfelt conversations for which Will yearned; neither did it offer the physical separation that Gwendolyn needed. The closer he approached—physically, emotionally—the harder she pushed away. Like a pair of magnets, constantly repulsing one another.

And yet for all of that, she had adapted to the new circumstances with remarkable aplomb. Far better than Will had. She'd gone from weekly whist games and regular dinners with a duke to sharing a bathroom with the insane and somewhat disturbing product of a defunct Nazi experiment. Will knew his wife well enough to know the imperturbable grace was affected. But that was Gwendolyn. British to the very bottom of her soul.

Will watched as she retreated through the kitchen and out the back door to the garden. Klaus stood near the sundial with watercolors and an easel. Gwendolyn settled on a bench shaded by thick clumps of ivy carpeting the brick wall. A breeze rustled the ivy, teased her hair. Klaus nodded at her; she returned the greeting. Will wondered what they found in common, what point of conversational reference they shared.

Pethick cleared his throat. He had begun to run his tongue along the inside of his upper lip, looking bored. Will frowned at him.
Ah, yes. The children.
“And I'm to check on the poor demonic waifs. Is that so?”

This had been inevitable. He'd known that sooner or later Milkweed would make him their intermediary with the children in the Admiralty cellar. He'd known it from the moment Marsh had taken him downstairs.

“It would be a help. I'm headed there, to work with them a bit. We need your expert opinion.”

Will raised an eyebrow. “Work with them?” Pethick didn't elaborate. “Very well, I'll tag along and take a peek into your cabinet of horrors. Would this be Pip's idea? Another punishment for me?”

Pethick shook his head. “He hasn't awoken yet. Still touch and go, from what I've heard.”

That worried Will. For some reason unclear to him, he found he didn't want Raybould Marsh's name on the long list of people who had died because of him. He didn't even like Marsh, or the man he had become. But Will already had innocent British blood on his hands.

Will studied them. He flexed his fingers. Sometimes it amazed him that they should appear so clean. They ought to be mottled crimson, the nails caked and black. Stained down to the bone after all these years.

Out damned spot, and the rest.

And there was new blood as well, to Gwendolyn's point of view. Where he saw justice, she saw … Well, if not exactly murder, something equally reprehensible.

Will's memory of the escape was spotty. He'd been close to blacking out, unable to breathe while Klaus held the van insubstantial. The resulting headache, a low-level throb behind his eyeballs, had lingered for two days. Pembroke and Klaus had explained the details of his death after he had been reunited with Gwendolyn at the safe house. Will had read his own obituary in the previous morning's
Times.
It was longer than he'd expected, but generally favorable.

His funeral had been held that morning. Closed casket, of course, since the gas main explosion hadn't left a recognizable body. A pang of sorrow robbed him of breath; he wished he could see his brother again.

I'm sorry, Aubrey.

Forcing his thoughts back to Marsh, Will said, “He'll come around.”

Pethick said, “Hope so. He's prickly, but he's good. Haven't worked with anyone quite like him.”

“I'm quite certain that's true,” said Will. He scratched a sudden itch at the stump of his missing finger.
My God. They've given you a name.…

Will shivered. “You say they're acting strangely. How so?”

“Nurses say they're agitated. Excited,” said Pethick. “They've been unruly.”

What constituted normal for a ten-year-old warlock? The world hadn't seen such a thing in centuries. And doubtless was better for it.

“Children acting like children?” Will clucked his tongue. “Well, we certainly can't have that.”

Pethick glared at him. “I asked politely. I didn't—”

“I know, I know,” said Will. “It's not a request, and you didn't have to be polite about it. May I tell my wife I'm stepping out?”

“Of course.”

Gwendolyn still chatted with Klaus. She broke off when Will leaned out the door.

He smiled at Klaus. The man had, after all, saved his life. Klaus had even apologized for mistakenly taking Will to the wrong end of the townhouse crescent. Will thought that was very decent of him.

He said, “You'll be ready for your own exhibition soon.”

Klaus gave him a tired nod.

“Love, I'm stepping out for a bit. I'll return in an hour or two.” He glanced at Pethick, who nodded.

“As you must,” she said, each word limned in hoarfrost. And then resumed her conversation with Klaus.

Will wore green corduroy trousers and a teal shirt for the trip to the Admiralty. Partially because his entire wardrobe had been destroyed, and thus he had to avail himself of the limited selection at the Croydon house, but also because he had to dress as a different person in case anybody glimpsed him getting in or out of the car. He felt naked without his bowler. Strange, the things one misses.

Pethick drove. The Morris had darkened windows.

Before they entered the Admiralty basement, Pethick asked if Will were bleeding. (No.) Had he any unhealed wounds? Too many to count.

The arrangements were much as Will had expected, and no less terrible for it. Milkweed had strived for a veneer of normalcy in its mockery of a primary school classroom. The children's ages ranged more widely than he had expected. The oldest ones, perhaps in their late teens, might have been among the first to “graduate”; the youngest, the prodigies, were barely more than toddlers. Will's skin felt ready to crawl straight off his body, slink across the room, and shiver in a dark corner.

Shades of Dover,
Will thought. That trip to the coast with Stephenson, back in the summer of '40, was where the seeds of this loathsome practice had been sown. Where Will had reluctantly explained the historical relationship between children and Enochian to the old man.

Quibble as he might over the fates of Hargreaves and those other bastards, there was no denying that the responsibility for this scene lay squarely at Will's feet. This was abuse. The psychological mutilation of children. And it was his doing.

He wanted to vomit. Some things were never acceptable under any circumstances.

Unacceptable, under any circumstances. Gwendolyn had said the same thing to him.

Will pulled out a chair. He dropped into it.

“Oh, Gwendolyn,” he whispered.

Pethick said, “I beg your pardon?”

Will shook his head. “Unpleasant thought.”

At this, Pethick looked alarmed. He thought Will meant the children. “What?”

“Never mind.”

There was no excusing what had been done to these children. That was the bare, bald truth. And like a plunge into an icy river, the abrupt change of perspective stole his breath, constricted his chest. Will was no different from the men who had done this. No justification would ever acquit him of the things he'd done. He had to accept responsibility if he ever wanted to redeem himself and regain Gwendolyn's trust.

Will watched the children through a partition of one-way glass. They were a rambunctious lot. Running, yelling, playing. Even the oldest kids were part of the chaos, shouting and whirling, contributing to the controlled pandemonium of playtime. One could almost believe they were normal children, if not for the odd timbre to their voices. A layperson might have thought they were the victims of a rare degenerative disease, some strange illness that caused these children to speak with the ruined voices of haggard old men. But to Will's ears, the disturbing resonances revealed a first language that was not English. Not human.

A ghostly odor wafted through the viewing gallery just then. Hot sand; wet pasteboard; grapes left too long in the sun. A phantom mélange.

Pethick nodded at the children. “You see?”

“I see children playing. Deeply damaged children, but at least they're still able to play now and again.”

“This isn't normal. They're typically quiet.”

“Seen but not heard. That's how it should be, eh?”

Pethick leveled a hard stare at Will. “They do not,” he said,
“frolic.”

“I'm sorry to tell you this, but it appears they do,” said Will, pointing at the window. Pethick glanced at his wounded hand. Will hid it away in a pocket, feeling self-conscious. He continued, “Nobody has performed this barbarous experiment for hundreds of years. Because it
is
barbarous. But leaving that aside for the moment, there's no way for you to know what's normal for these children. There are no records. Only scant hearsay.”