The Coldest War (6 page)

He remembered a place somber yet grand, a temple built of granite and brick and marble. Gothic buildings, baroque buildings, and others for which he lacked the vocabulary. Statues, monuments, and memorials. They had struck him as a decadent obsession with the past; an omen of Britain's inevitable downfall. What a naïf he'd been.

But what he saw as their train entered London shocked him. And the deeper they delved into the heart of the city, the more it saddened him.

Bits and pieces of the old city remained. Sometimes entire streets, but those were rare. Often the remnants were sandwiched between newer and utterly uninspired constructions. It was as though the city's character, its personality, had been scrubbed away. The Blitz had destroyed the city's soul—shattered it, charred it, tossed its ashes to the wind—and the hole had been patched with a cheap prosthetic. Functional but soulless.

“It's so different,” he whispered.

“Nothing lasts forever,” said Gretel from the seat beside him, concentrating on her newspaper. The chill, his constant companion since their final night at Arzamas, tingled at the unscratchable spot between his shoulder blades. As it often did when she spoke. The Luftwaffe's domination of the skies over Britain had unfolded largely because of her advice. She clicked the biro she'd snatched from a passing businessman and circled something in blue ink. She'd been scouring classified ads since they arrived in the country. Klaus hadn't known what classifieds were until she'd explained the idea to him.

It wasn't just the buildings that had changed. He'd been immersed in half a dozen languages since crossing the border. Predominantly French, but also Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, something he guessed was Basque … even some German. The languages of those who had found a way across the Channel before the Iron Curtain slammed shut.

Klaus had never perfected his English. He took comfort in knowing it didn't matter any longer.

Gretel and he had kept strictly to English since their midnight embarkation at Calais. Britain's border policy wasn't what it had been, no longer welcoming with open arms the huddled masses from the sliver of supposedly free Europe wedged between Paris and the coast. Draconian measures on both sides of the Channel had throttled the flow of refugees and immigrants to less than a trickle. Those without papers had little chance of staying in England. But Gretel, of course, had seen a way.

Ireland and Canada sounded like better destinations, but she had shrugged off the suggestions.

The screech of wheels on track reverberated through the train as it slowed to enter Waterloo Station. Klaus slid forward in his seat. He checked his fedora again. He didn't have a wig, so he'd have to make do with a hat and ill-fitting clothes to hide his wires. During his first trip to London, he'd worn a wig and a counterfeit naval officer's uniform. He yearned for that disguise now. Strutting around in public with exposed wires contradicted a lifetime of training.

Gretel didn't bother to hide her wires. They were twined, as always, through her braids. She had worn them that way back at the Reichsbehörde, too. Even then, the affectation had seemed overly young for her.

They filed off the train into a muggy heat on the platform. But it wasn't crowded, which made it bearable. At one end of the platform, a man with a roller brush and a putty knife scraped down placards announcing a lecture sponsored by a group of British Socialists. The speaker was a member of Parliament. The advertisements appeared to have been printed crudely and slapped up quickly.

Klaus said, “Where now?”

They had nothing but the clothes on their backs, the few remaining batteries concealed beneath, and the money Klaus had pulled out of a cash register at the port. “We need to find a place to stay.”

“That's easy.” She looked up at him. “You shouldn't worry so much, brother.”

“We'll also need money. We can't keep—” He paused, lowering his voice. “—stealing.”

“Pfff.” She waved away the concern with a petite hand.

“Well, then? What does your plan say? What do we do?”

Gretel folded the paper in thirds, then took his arm. “I'm in the mood for a rummage sale,” she said.

*   *   *

The taxi smelled of perfume from a previous passenger. It was a boxy, black hackney cab with suicide doors, like the only other London taxi Klaus had ridden in his life. That ride had ended with him killing the driver. He hoped this would be different.

Their driver was very young, and olive skinned, but not with the gypsy look of Klaus and Gretel. A Spaniard, judging from his accent, perhaps a refugee from the purges after “spontaneous” workers' uprisings had deposed Franco and put the puppet Juan de Borbón on the throne.

Their route took them past a swath of green space. A park. It surprised Klaus to see something so vibrant and colorful in the middle of the sterile urban jungle. The taxi stopped at a traffic light. Cross traffic thrummed past the windscreen; a stream of pedestrians filled the zebra crossing. Klaus watched the park.

A man and woman held hands while they strolled around the edges of a duck pond. Farther inside, a crying boy watched an adult—his father?—try to dislodge a shredded red kite from the boughs of an oak tree. Somebody else stood at an easel, painting a scene from the park.

The light changed; the taxi pulled away. But Klaus held tightly to those glimpses. There was something odd, something unusual, about the entire thing.

They pulled to a stop at a church. Their driver flipped a lever; the meter stopped with a
ding
. He put his arm across the front seat, craned his neck, and said something to Gretel. She handed him money. His face cracked into a smile when he counted the bills.

She'd given him the last of their money, but Klaus was too preoccupied to object. He had figured out what struck him as odd about the scene in the park: no guards.

The people in the park weren't the subjects in a vast experiment, weren't training for combat, weren't prisoners of war. They were doing things—painting, feeding ducks, flying kites—merely because they wanted to. It was a revelation, a color-blind man's first glimpse of a rainbow. He had never truly understood what freedom meant. Now he did. It made him want to grieve for himself.

Gretel interrupted his ruminations. “Coming?” She'd already exited the taxi. The driver glared at him. Klaus climbed out. The cab sped away, leaving them standing on the pavement in a cloud of exhaust.

They stood on a neatly trimmed lawn. The adjoining cemetery wasn't so well tended; irregular rows of crooked, cracked, and weather-stained gravestones dotted the grass inside a low, wrought iron fence. A few graves had fresh flowers upon them. Rows of folding metal tables had been arranged on the church lawn. The tables contained all manner of odds and ends: lamps, books, old radios, salt and pepper shakers, jigsaw puzzles, candy dishes, wooden toys, half-used tubes of wrapping paper, clothing, and shelves and boxes of the same. People milled in the aisles between the tables. Browsing, haggling, chatting about the weather. It was difficult to distinguish the vendors from the customers.

Klaus looked at Gretel. “What are we looking for?”

“You'll know when you find it.” She shooed him away. “Go have fun. I'll be nearby.” She wandered off into the sparse crowd.

He didn't move. There he was, recently escaped after two decades in captivity, on his first day in a free country, and what was he doing? Perusing a church fund-raiser without a penny to his name. Why? Because Gretel wanted it that way.

Still, without her, he never would have escaped.

Without her, he wouldn't have been captured in the first place.

Over by the cemetery, Gretel kicked off her shoes. She hiked up her dress, hopped the fence, and strolled barefoot through the graves.

Klaus sighed. He went up and down the aisles, studying the assembled goods for something significant. Reich memorabilia, perhaps? A photograph? Another piece of Heike? Nothing leapt out at him. It was all junk.

He turned the corner at the end of an aisle and almost bumped into another shopper.

“Pardon me,” said Klaus, making to move aside.

But the other fellow didn't move. His eyes widened. An icy blue gaze bored into Klaus, sharp as twinned icicles.… Klaus looked closer.

The stranger's scraggly beard hid his face. But when Klaus noticed the trilby hat, the long hair, and the high collar, he knew what lay beneath.

“Son of a bitch,” said Klaus. He took a half step backwards, dumbfounded.

The other man stared at him just as intensely.

Several moments passed while they gaped at each other, motionless like stones inside a stream of penny-ante commerce. Other shoppers stepped around the two men.

Klaus recovered first. “What are
you
doing here?”

“What the hell are
you
doing here?”

“I thought you were dead,” said Klaus.

“I thought
you
were dead,” said Reinhardt. “I thought I was the last of us.”

“Hello, Reinhardt,” said Gretel.

Reinhardt took one look at her and rolled his eyes. “I should have known.”

“Lovely to see you again.” She carried a handful of golden and lavender lilies. “These are for you.”

Raised voices caught Klaus's attention. Over by the church, a gray-haired lady spoke urgently with the vicar. She pointed at the cemetery, then at Gretel. The vicar looked upset.

Klaus said, “Maybe we should have this reunion somewhere else.”

Reinhardt saw the matron and the vicar walking in their direction. “I can't believe this,” he muttered. “Twenty years I've been living here. Twenty years. Quiet, unnoticed. You two show up, and inside two minutes, you've blown my goddamn cover. Why don't you go rot in hell?”

Gretel twirled a finger through one braid, pointedly tugging on a wire. “I think you've missed us. And I think you'll want to hear what we have to say.”

Reinhardt mulled this over. He looked from Gretel to Klaus to the vicar, and back to Gretel's wire.

“I have a car. Follow me.”

*   *   *

Reinhardt lived in a shithole.

It was a large, ugly housing development, gray and blocky. If anything, it reminded Klaus of Soviet architecture. Sarov was a rarity; much of the Union looked like this, and probably for the same reasons. Quickly built and utilitarian, with no attention to aesthetics.

A group of children playing football in a field adjacent to the car park stopped to stare as they pulled up. When Klaus and Gretel emerged from Reinhardt's car—a battered 1938 Vauxhall—one of the children called to the others, “Lookee this! Junkman got hisself some mates!”

The children took up a chant. “Junkman! Rubbish bin man!” Gretel seemed amused by this; she rewarded the kids with her little smile. She still carried the flowers.

“Ignore them,” said Reinhardt. He set off at a quick pace down the pavement, head low.

Klaus caught up to him. “Junkman?
That's
your cover?”

Reinhardt muttered something that Klaus didn't hear.

“What, Reinhardt?”

The other man wheeled on him. In a harsh whisper, he said, “Never call me that! I'm Richard now.”

“Oh, yes. Richard the Junkman.” Klaus couldn't resist.

“Eat. Shit.”

Behind them, Gretel sighed. “Poor Junkman.”

“Both of you.”

Reinhardt set off again, leading the siblings toward the lift. The lift had a mildewy smell, like damp carpet that never had a chance to air out properly.

When they got to Reinhardt's flat, it took no imagination to understand how he'd gained his nickname. Piles of junk filled the place almost to the ceiling in places; mostly electronics, from the look of it. It was dim, too; Reinhardt's collection obscured most of the windows. Insects scuttled in the shadows. A musty scent tickled his nose, though not so bad as that in the lift.

Reinhardt locked the door. He tossed his hat onto the back of a chair (the only chair, it seemed) and peeled off his wig. His wires, Klaus noticed, were badly frayed.

Gretel headed straight to the kitchen. She rummaged through Reinhardt's cabinets.

“Hey! Hands off my things, you crazy bitch.” Reinhardt took the chair.

Klaus looked around the flat again, and then at Reinhardt's wires. “What happened to you?”

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” said Reinhardt, slipping into German. “Skip the bullshit. After all these years, you assholes show up on my doorstep expecting me to take it in stride? Expecting a happy reunion? Mere coincidence?” He pointed at Gretel. “It hasn't been so long that I've forgotten there's no such thing with her. So what the hell are you doing here, and what the fuck do you want from me?”

Similar questions had been nagging at Klaus. Reinhardt had expressed their essence.

“Yes,” said Klaus. He turned to stare at Gretel, who had found an empty milk bottle. “Why
are
we here, Gretel?”

“Wait—you don't know either?” Reinhardt laughed. “Have you ever done anything she didn't tell you to do? They made a mistake when they put Kammler on a leash. It should have been you, lapdog.”

Klaus struggled to find a response. He failed. Reinhardt's barbs had struck true. They hit the bull's-eye of a target Klaus hadn't known existed. It deflated his anger as quickly as a burst balloon. Reinhardt's ridicule filled him with shame. Damn him, but the man was right.

“Kammler's dead,” said Gretel conversationally, while filling the bottle at the sink.

Reinhardt said, “I can't believe you expect me to—wait, what happened to Kammler?”

“Spalcke shot him,” she said. She set the churchyard lilies in the milk bottle. While arranging them, she added, “As per his orders, one must assume. So that the Communists couldn't take Kammler alive, to study him.” Gretel took a step back, cocked her head, then altered the flower arrangement. She made a little
hmph
sound of satisfaction. Carrying the makeshift vase to Reinhardt's table, she concluded, “But they did study his corpse.”