Bitter Seeds

twelve

21 April 1941

15 kilometers east of Stuttgart, Germany

The supply truck toppled over, accompanied by the groan of creaking axles and the smashing of unsecured crates. Mud fountained up where the truck crashed in the ditch. The swath of cotton duck stretched over the cargo bed created a spray of slush when it hit the earth.

“God damn you, idiot.” Hauptsturmfuhrer Spalcke, Buhler's replacement, yanked on Kammler's leash with both fists, hard enough to make the big man stumble. “You stupid, shit-eating retard! I despise you.”

“T-t-t-” Kammler looked back and forth between the truck, now sprawled alongside the winding road to Stuttgart, and Spalcke. He moved awkwardly. A round from a British sidearm had shattered his clavicle in December. Ostensibly it had healed—the doctors said he no longer needed to wear the sling—but Klaus suspected poor Kammler would suffer an aching collarbone for the rest of his life. Especially when the weather fluctuated so wildly; the stumps of Klaus's fingers ached.

“S-s-s-s ...” Kammler's face turned red.

“S-s-s-stupid,” said Spalcke. He savaged Kammler's leash again. “S-s-s-pathetic.”

Kammler's wide confused eyes flicked back and forth. His face was turning purple.

Klaus stepped in. “You're hurting him,” he said. “He doesn't understand.”

“Of course he doesn't understand! He's a worthless turd of a human being.”

“You're making it worse. Give me the leash,” Klaus said. His tone turned the suggestion into a de facto order, though the hauptsturmfuhrer technically outranked him.

Spalcke wheeled on Klaus, still enraged. “Have you forgotten your place?”

Klaus let his overcoat fall open, so that Spalcke could see clearly the wire plugged into his battery harness.

“No. You have.”

The two men faced each other for a long moment. Spalcke looked away. He dropped the leash and stomped back to the second supply truck.

He passed Reinhardt, who watched the proceedings from a stand of cherry trees a little farther up the road. The previous day's storm had glazed the white blossoms with ice, freezing trees in midbloom. The ice on the boughs above Reinhardt melted, dripping water that flashed into steam when it fell on him. Behind him sparkled the terraced vineyards of the Rems Valley.

Klaus loosened the choke collar squeezing Kammler's throat. Quietly, so that Spalcke and Reinhardt couldn't hear, he asked, “Are you hurt?”

Kammler rocked back and forth. He looked at Klaus. Normal coloration returned to his face. “B-buh-b-b—”

“He's gone, Kammler. You need to understand that.” Klaus kept his grip on the leash, but didn't pull on it. “Now. Can you help me move that truck?”

The mud in the ditch was exceptionally thick. All across central Europe, winter and spring were engaged in a battle of their own, vying for supremacy. The seasons were not turning so much as brawling. Just as soon as the earth thawed and new buds sprouted on the trees, an ice storm or blizzard would come howling out of nowhere. But then the temperature shot up thirty degrees, the landscape erupted with new greenery, and the cycle began anew.

But the weather wasn't the worst thing about this trip.

After several tries, murmuring a constant stream of monosyllabic encouragements into Kammler's ear, Klaus eventually managed to get the truck out of the ditch, turned upright, and set back on the road. It wasn't so difficult, with a bit of patience. That much was obvious to Klaus, who had watched Buhler and Kammler for years. He wondered how Spalcke had been chosen for the job.

“Good job, Kammler,” said Klaus. “Well done.”

He unbuckled the collar around Kammler's throat and checked the gauge on his battery harness. It was depleted. Klaus cursed to himself. It could have been dangerous, even deadly, had Kammler's battery died while he was levitating the truck. Lazy Spalcke wasn't keeping a close eye on his ward's battery. Klaus called to one of the regular troops in their entourage, an SS-Oberschutze who had trained as a rifleman with the LSSAH prior to his assignment at the REGP. The private jogged over, saluting.

“Tend to his battery,” said Klaus, motioning at Kammler with a nod of his head. “And see that he's fed.”

He left the rest of the troops assessing damage to the fallen truck. They climbed onto the cargo bed, tying down the crates, and under the carriage, checking for damage to the axles and drive train.

Klaus squelched across the road to join Reinhardt. A low sun cast long shadows down the valley; he had to shade his eyes to see the Aryan salamander.

“We're behind schedule,” he said. “The demonstrations will have to wait for tomorrow.” He tried to keep the relief out of his voice as he said it.

Reinhardt snorted. “I shouldn't worry if I were you. Surely your sister would have warned us if it were a problem.” He spoke quietly, as though Gretel were within earshot and he didn't want her to overhear the venom dripping from his words. Perhaps she could hear them; perhaps she'd listened to this conversation long ago.

Gretel could have saved Doctor von Westarp. She'd known all along what was coming, but had refrained from saying anything. The doctor had died simply because she wanted him to. Or because she couldn't be bothered to care.

The OKW was furious. The Fuhrer had raged for days on end upon receiving the news. Doctor von Westarp's genius had been the axle about which the Reich spun its plans for further conquests. But now he was gone, his body scattered to the winds, along with his plans for expanding the Reichsbehorde. Deprived of the second-generation Gotterelektrongruppe he'd promised, the Reich was scrambling to revamp its entire strategy for the war.

Gretel had put everything on precarious footing. Yet nobody confronted her. Nobody dared.

The simplest questions colored every interaction with the mad seer: Is this what she wants? Am I doing her bidding? Has she seen this moment? Anticipated it?

Will I upset her?

Now everybody feared Gretel the same way Klaus did, though he didn't hate her as the others did. How could he? She was his sister.

Reinhardt continued, “Anyway, who cares? I don't. This trip is a farce.”

“We have our orders,” said Klaus. He couldn't muster the energy to infuse the words with conviction. He hated this recruitment drive as much as Reinhardt did, though for utterly different reasons. We're all orphans again. So why does he still hold sway over us? “We have to finish the doctor's work.”

“We should be on the front, tearing our enemies apart.”

“Just the three of us? How long do you think we'd last, outnumbered ten thousand to three?”

Reinhardt spat into the mud. “I'm wasted here.”

“This is important work,” said Klaus. “Valuable work.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Klaus. Maybe you'll start to believe it.”

“The farm will need volunteers once the doctor's work has been reconstructed.” Klaus shuddered, remembering the new machines. Machines for disposing of failed subjects.

The LSSAH men deemed the toppled supply truck to be in suitable shape for driving. Klaus and Reinhardt rejoined the small convoy as the trucks growled back to life, belching black smoke and diesel exhaust.

As Reinhardt climbed back into the cab of his truck, he said, “We're all that's left, Klaus. We're all there will ever be.”

They entered Stuttgart at sunset. Klaus watched the glow of streetlamps move in a wave across the city as the setting sun plunged the valley into shadow. Handbills advertising the Gotterelektrongruppe's demonstrations had been pinned or pasted to every public notice board their small convoy passed.

The mundane troops joined the local Waffen-SS garrison for the night. Klaus, Reinhardt, Kammler, and Spalcke were hosted by the Lord Mayor of Stuttgart. Birdlike Herr Strogan received them as honored guests, plying them with food, drink, and an atmosphere of strained goodwill. Yet throughout their dinner—roast duck, trout from the nearby Neckar river, white asparagus, and sweet wine from the local vineyards—his eyes wandered to Klaus's missing fingers, or Reinhardt's self-igniting cigarettes, or the wine dribbling down Kammler's chin.

The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes grew tighter, too, as Reinhardt charmed the young Fraulein Strogan. The mayor couldn't mask the look of impotent despair on his face each time his daughter laughed at one of Reinhardt's jokes, or gasped at his wildly exaggerated war exploits. Klaus wondered what Lord Mayor Strogan had been told about these strangers from the little-known Gotterelektrongruppe.

That night, Klaus and Reinhardt slept in adjacent rooms. Klaus wrapped a pillow around his head to drown out Reinhardt's snoring and the fraulein's weeping.

There had been a time when he'd been accustomed to sleeping while others wept. What had changed? Reinhardt had grown more brazen with his appetites. That was it, Klaus lied to himself. The problem was Reinhardt.

When he did sleep, Klaus dreamed of blackbirds and a hay wagon.

They performed their first set of demonstrations in Stuttgart on the Schlossplatz, before the New Castle, the next morning. The Neue Schloss, the former residence of the kings of Wurttemburg, was an expansive construction of late baroque design. It was draped in so many flags that when the wind blew, it seemed the castle had been consumed in a red tide. Banners fluttered overhead (GREATNESS IS OUR DESTINY! YOU ARE THE FUTURE OF THE FATHERLAND!) while a gramophone blared the Deutschlandlied and the Horst Wessel song across the plaza. All this in the shadow of Concordia (the Roman goddess of unity, fittingly enough), whose statue watched from a perch high atop the marble Jubilee Column.

The morning smelled of fresh-baked bread from the nearby bakeries. Vendors sold fragrant Mandel-Halbmonde from pushcarts. Klaus tried to buy one, but received it free with the baker's compliments. Honey, sweet and sticky, coated his fingers.

The spectacle drew a large crowd. Mostly fathers and mothers too old or weak to be of use, or children too young. But here and there, interspersed throughout the throng, teenagers and preteens watched the show with undisguised adoration. The members of the local Hitler Youth had turned out, and they watched the proceedings with expressions of rapture.

The Lord Mayor watched from the wings. His daughter was not in attendance.

The spectators oohed and aahed appropriately as Kammler levitated an anvil, Klaus walked through it, Reinhardt reduced it to a puddle of slag. They embraced the suggestion that overcoming one's limitations was the province of all Germans. They clapped when the men from the Reichsbehorde demonstrated their immunity to small-arms fire, each in his own spectacular fashion. And they cheered the lie: how simple it was, how pleasant it was, to become more than human.

Klaus and the others took care to keep their wires hidden. They had learned in Munich that the prospect of brain surgery dampened people's enthusiasm.

Thirty-four men and women—some little more than boys and girls, others adults who had until now opted to support the war effort in civilian roles—lined up to sign the roster afterwards. They received armbands marking them as cadets of the Gotterelektrongruppe while parents smiled and a puddle of iron crackled. Parents and spouses received impressive stipends, plus the assurance that they were doing the Fatherland the greatest possible service.

Thirty-four. Back in the old days, Klaus knew, one or two of them might have survived the first round. He wondered how the reconstructed version of Doctor von Westarp's accelerated program would work, and if the survival rates would be any higher. But then he remembered the lime pits, and the ovens, and doubted it.

After all, if the procedure had been perfected, they wouldn't need to recruit civilians. Instead they'd take in trained soldiers. But only if it were reasonably quick, and the attrition rate low.

Spalcke took the roster of new volunteers. He signed it, stamped it, folded it, sealed it into an envelope, then stamped the envelope for special courier back to the Reichsbehorde. The REGP would arrange buses to collect the volunteers and distribute the stipends.

The crowd dispersed while the mundane troops disassembled the risers, pulled down the banners, and struggled with crowbars to pry up the iron slag. Klaus leaned against the base of the Jubilee Column, munching on another almond crescent. He felt disinclined to help speed along their next demonstration, which was scheduled across town at the Wilhelma botanical gardens that afternoon.

“Sir? Herr Officer?”

Klaus turned. A girl of perhaps fourteen or fifteen years stared up at him with wide blue eyes.

“Is it too late? I'd like to sign the roster.”

Klaus looked across the plaza. Spalcke was busy cursing out Kammler. He hadn't yet handed off the envelope containing the roster.

It would be a trivial matter for Klaus to pluck the roster from inside the sealed envelope, add a name, put it back. Doing so was his duty.

He looked back at the girl. She put him in mind of Heike, staring at nothing with her eyes of Prussian blue while Reinhardt had his way with her body.

“Go home,” he said.

“I want to do something wonderful,” she said. “To make my parents proud.”

“It's too late. We're full.”

“I'm a good German.”

He took another glance across the plaza. The others were busy, casting no attention in his direction. Klaus beckoned the girl into the shadow behind the massive marble column. There he opened his coat, kneeled beside her, and tilted his head down.

“Look at me,” he said. “This is what they'll do to you.” If you survive.

He watched the brass buckles on her red leather shoes, waiting for her eyes to trace the wires from his waist to his skull, waiting for the quiet gasp, waiting for the girl to stiffen and step back. She retreated again when Klaus climbed to his feet.

“Go home,” he repeated. “The Reichsbehorde is no place for you.” He rebuttoned his coat while she ran away.

Klaus rode with Spalcke and Kammler on the way to the afternoon rally. It took but a trickle of charge from his battery to pluck the roster from the sealed envelope while the hauptsturmfuhrer was distracted.

He destroyed the volunteer roster. Spalcke sent an empty envelope to the REGP.

8 May 1941

Milkweed Headquarters, London, England

High tide had come, long, long ago. It had flooded the beach and rose higher still, a deluge that destroyed everything in its path. Will couldn't outrun it; it swept him along with the rest of the flotsam. There was no ebb tide. Just a crashing surf that echoed in Enochian.

He'd been the only warlock to attend the December burials. He'd also been the only person from Milkweed to visit the widows, the sons and daughters, to deliver the news of their loss. It started with Lorimer—Will had met the Scot's family, once. After that, it seemed that every family deserved to put a human face on their tragedy. And Will deserved their scorn. Perhaps not so much as Marsh did, but there was plenty of blame to spread about.

Thirty men went to Germany, and he brought all thirty back. Four of them alive. Three of them sane.

Perhaps only two. He wasn't his old self these days.

And then there was the soulless child. That was entirely his doing.

He leaned against the wall, listening to the litany of his colleagues' entreaties and the Eidolons' prices. Will's facility with Enochian had progressed to the point where he no longer needed to consult the master lexicon. Even in his current state, he could hear the strained desperation in the warlocks' voices. Nuances that would have been lost on him merely a year ago: the undertones of a human throat within the screech of colliding stars; the slightest trace of a heartbeat, of wet biology, within the ripple of starlight through empty space.

Since late winter the warlocks had found only sporadic success in their negotiations with the Eidolons. The ice storms, blizzards, and paralyzing cold never lasted past a fortnight before the Eidolons withdrew and the world snapped back to normal.

The warlocks had blockaded the Channel for months straight during the worst part of the Blitz. Yet now they were lucky to control the weather for more than a week.

Exert your volition in this fashion, said the warlocks.

Give us more blood maps, said the Eidolons. More.

We won't, said the warlocks.

You will, said the Eidolons.

The stump of Will's finger throbbed when he glimpsed the bloodstained floorboards beneath Hargreaves's seat. Odd. He shouldn't have been able to feel anything.

It was here in this room, almost exactly a year ago, where Marsh had severed Will's finger. It was here where Will had pleaded with him to do so. Here Milkweed had repelled an invasion, destroyed a fleet. Today the air tasted like the stones at the bottom of a centuries-old well. The bones of the earth steeped in tainted water and the shells of dead snails.

The warlocks tried again. Bartering, wheedling, chipping away at the Eidolons' demands. One soul. Two. A token reduction. Never enough. Everything cost so damn much these days.

The atmosphere in the room changed. Will caught a whiff of birch wood shattered by the cold that inhabited the void between the stars. This was the lowest blood price the warlocks would see today: fourteen souls, dead by drowning. They'd accept it, see it paid, and hope the Eidolons would hasten the war's end.

Nothing happened. Silence ricocheted through the broken reality of the room.

Grafton snapped at him. “William!”

“Oh,” Will muttered. “Yes. Of course.”

Correction: He'd accept it. He'd see it paid.

It was his turn again. (Already?)

Will braced himself. He called up his Enochian and gave a short, perfunctory response. Agreement.

It made him an agent of the negotiation; the Eidolons noticed him. They inspected him, poured through the gaps between the atoms of his body, then withdrew, disinterested. They already had his blood map, already knew the trajectory of his particular stain on time and space.

But that was enough. He was part of it now. It wouldn't work unless he did his part.

The suffocating presence of the Eidolons evaporated. The room returned to normal.

“Get it done quickly,” said Hargreaves. “And take Shapley with you this time.”

Ah. He suspects. Well, it had always been just a matter of time. Nothing to do for it.

Will said, “I'll need some time to prepare.” He started to look at his watch, but stopped for worry that the others would notice his tremors. To Shapley, he said, “Give me a few hours.”

Shapley frowned. “What am I to do until then?”

“I don't care. Say a maritime prayer. Or learn one.”

“And what will you be doing?”

“Preparing,” said Will as he stepped into the corridor, eager to get away, eager to kill the ache in his finger. Why wasn't he numb?

His voice echoed. This wing of the Admiralty still belonged to Milkweed, though now much of it was empty. But for Marsh, they no longer had field agents. Just the warlocks, and a handful of technicians with nothing to do except tinker with pixies that would never see use.

He returned to his office and locked the door behind him. He didn't turn on the light. His chair, an ugly gunmetal-gray thing on squeaky casters, rumbled across the floorboards when he collapsed into the seat. The desk was bare but for a dog-eared, wire-bound copy of the master lexicon sitting on one corner. He'd spent much time here, hunched over that desk, compiling it from the disparate notebooks of the warlocks he'd recruited. It seemed eons ago; he hadn't cracked the lexicon since December.

Quietly, so as not to jangle the keys and announce his presence to passersby in the corridor, he fished the key ring from his vest pocket. He unlocked the bottommost desk drawer. The drawer where he kept his stolen morphine.

The syrette needles twinkled in the half light leaking through the gap under the door. Half-grain dosages of miracle opiate, ready for use on the battlefield, for snuffing the most incapacitating pain. Yet they didn't work so well as they had in the past.

Will counted half a dozen left unopened. He counted again. Surely he'd had more than this? They had to last until Aubrey sent him more cash. He couldn't remember how long that would be. Not long. Not if he asked.

One dose wouldn't be enough to get him through the night. Not if he and Shapley were to spend it extracting another blood price for the Eidolons. He fished out two syrettes, placed them on the desk, and closed the drawer.

He pulled the hood off the first syrette, pinched the wire loop, and pushed the needle back through the foil seal at the narrow end of the tube. Then he snapped off the loop, exposing the hollow needle.

Will opened his vest and the lowest button on his shirt, just above his waist. A small lump had formed beneath his skin at the spot where he'd been administering the injections. He'd started bleeding there, too, which tended to dilute the dose. An entire dose had been wasted that way. (Yesterday? Three days ago?) He picked a new spot, a few centimeters to the left.

The needle bit into his waist at a shallow angle. Will worked his thumb and forefinger up the flexible tube, dispensing every drop of the precious morphine tartrate into his bloodstream. The injection stung for a few seconds, but then he couldn't tell if it ached or not.

He tossed the empty syrette back in the drawer. A second dose followed the first. Warmth flowed through him like sunlight, like molten gold. Through his belly, across his chest, into his heart and out to the rest of his body. It washed away the pain in his finger, quelled his shivering. He could breathe again. Even here, underwater.

The second syrette slipped through his fingers. It hit the floor tube-first, bounced, and then plinked as the needle wedged itself between the floorboards.

There was something important he had to do.

Something about a barge on the Thames. Something about the Eidolons, about a price. Something about a war.

10 May 1941

Walworth, London, England

A gnes's first birthday.

Candles and Liv singing, cake and streamers and a delighted, bewildered little girl. That's what today was meant to be. Instead, it dawned to find Marsh standing just outside the door of what had been his home, a key in one hand and an envelope in the other.

His shirt stuck to his back and shoulders. It bunched up when he moved, like a bedsheet twisted during fevered sleep or frantic lovemaking. Covering the final mile on foot—lest the taxi wake Liv—had left his covered skin moist with sweat. Yet the clamminess of predawn had chilled the exposed skin of his hands and face. The end result was a cold sweat.

It had been early when he finally abandoned the pretense of sleep. He'd gone upstairs and rummaged through the many empty Milkweed offices until he'd found a fountain pen and stationery. At first he'd intended merely to post a letter to Liv. But the date brought a new rawness to Agnes's death, ripped the scabs from that half-healed wound, leaving him tender and unprotected. The reality of the empty offices caught him unaware, forcing him to accept the reality he'd disregarded for months.

The offices were empty because of him. Milkweed had been decimated because of his mistake. Because there was no reasoning with the inarticulate rage he felt.

The same rage that had become a hammer pounding on the grief wedged between himself and Liv, driving it until they'd been thrown apart. She couldn't live in the margins of his agony. She needed her own space to grieve.

Now he stood in a sterile gray sunrise in front of his home. (His home? Liv's home?) He looked from the key to the envelope and back again, unsure of what to do.

His stomach gurgled. He wondered idly if Liv would plant new tomatoes next summer. Marsh had considered taking a cot out to the garden shed, or even sleeping in the Anderson shelter, though only in passing. It was cruel to stay so near to Liv. He had become a mirror for her sorrow, a looking glass that framed her loss.

As always, the envelope contained most of his pay. He saved what he could for Liv; his expenses had been minimal since he'd started sleeping at the Admiralty, and Liv needed the money more than he. She had a mortgage to pay. She'd rejoined the WAAF—once, he'd seen her leaving the house in her uniform—but he knew doing one's part for the war effort didn't always pay the bills.

Extra cash wouldn't dispel the grief that had taken root inside her, nor would it smooth the harshness that had taken root in corners of her eyes. But it would ensure that she could feed and clothe herself, and that she could keep the house if she chose to do so. Though he couldn't understand how she'd stayed there as long as she had, surrounded by hints of a family life that might have been. Liv had always been the stronger of the two of them.

The envelope also contained a letter. The first he'd written since before the new year. His chicken-scratch handwriting was an unworthy vehicle for laying bare tumultuous thoughts and feelings. Unworthy of Liv, too; it felt disrespectful, somehow, to send her something so coarse. He wished he had Will's penmanship, the elegant hand that came naturally to moneyed people.

He dropped the key back in his pocket. The cold metal flap over the mail slot creaked when he lifted it. He pushed the envelope through the slot, listening for the pat-slap sound as it fell to the vestibule tiles. The flap clanked shut when he released it.

Marsh was back at the walk, his hand on the wooden gate that had replaced the wrought iron, when the door opened behind him.

“Raybould?” Liv's voice made everything a song, even when she was confused and tired.

He stopped, suddenly feeling anxious, ashamed, cowardly. Like he'd been caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. He was afraid to look at her, but hungry for it, too.

Marsh turned. Liv stood in the doorway, one hand on the door and the other clutching the belt of a flannel robe. Her hair was shorter than he remembered. Curlier.

“Liv,” he blurted. “It's early.”

“I couldn't sleep,” she said. “Today, it's ...”

He sighed. “Yeah.” He shifted his feet, unsure of whether he should release the gate and step forward in order to see her better. He hadn't intended to speak with her, but now that she stood before him, he didn't want to drive her back inside.

She looked thin. “Are you eating well enough?” he asked, nodding to the envelope at her feet.

The hem of her robe lifted slightly, revealing the bare ankles above her slippers as she shrugged. He'd kissed those ankles, long ago.

“The rationing,” she said.

“Yeah.” He couldn't meet her eyes.

A long hush fell between them. Birds twittered to each other. Somewhere, a lorry grinded its gears.

“I've miss—,” she said, at the same moment he said, “I'm sorr—” Another hush. Six years long.

Liv bit her lip. “Do you ...” She opened the door a little wider, unable or unwilling to voice the invitation.

His hand hovered on the rough wood of the gate. Stay or go? Stay or go?

The chasm between the gate and the house felt ten leagues wide, and his shoes full of lead shot.

Only when she had closed the door, and they were alone together, could he meet her lovely, lovely eyes.

“You're shivering,” she said.

“I ... I've made so many mistakes,” he said.

“I've missed you terribly.”

“You're my compass, Liv. I understand that now.”

“It's my fault. I shouldn't have sent her away.”

“Hush, love. We did it together. Hush.”

“I feel so useless.”

“I wanted so desperately to punish them. The people who killed her.”

“You can't. It was done by people we'll never know.”

“Well ...”

Liv's light touch, a fingertip on his lips.

“What?”

Quiet laughter, warmth in the dark. “You were talking in your sleep again, love.”

“I'm sorry, Liv.”

Her breath tickled his earlobe. “Don't be. I've missed it more than you know.” She laced her fingers through his.

“I'm glad I came back. I'm sorry it took so long.”

“So am I.”

That evening, Marsh studied the map of Europe tacked to Stephenson's wall. It bristled with more pins and flags than a hedgehog had spines.

He sipped from his tumbler. Brandy washed across his tongue and burned on the way down; it soothed his throat.

“I thought we'd decided this plan was dead,” he said in a voice made hoarse by daylong conversation with Liv.

“Not dead,” said Stephenson. “Moribund.”

The plan was to lure the Soviet Union into the fray. Break the Wehrmacht's back, use the Eidolons to freeze the German war machine to death, and let Stalin's predatory instincts do the rest.

The enemy of my enemy ...

Marsh cracked his knuckles. None of this speculation seemed to matter. He said so: “Isn't this all a bit academic? The warlocks can't deliver.”

They'd scrapped the plan because the warlocks had failed repeatedly to produce the necessary results.

Stephenson dragged on the cigarette dangling at the corner of his mouth. Marsh took a marble ashtray from the windowsill and handed it to him. Stephenson placed it on a stack of papers. Construction manifests and requisition orders for building supplies, by the look of them.

Stephenson snuffed out his cigarette. The hunter-green Lucky Strike box bobbed up and down as he shook out another. American tobacco was virtually impossible to get via legal means these days. But with position came privilege, and the old man had many contacts.

“Well. As it happens, that remains to be seen.” He skritched a match along the edge of his desk. It released the sharp and unpleasant smell of sulfur. “Had an interesting discussion with Hargreaves and Shapley yesterday. They've unearthed the root of the problem.”

Marsh returned to the mullioned windows behind Stephenson's desk. The base camp for the December raid had long since been dismantled. St. James' was a park once more, and a greening one. Sunset glinted off the lake, causing Marsh to squint. The same lake from which Milkweed had fished several bodies after the raid in Germany.

I'm sorry, Will. I should have listened to you.

He sighed. “It's Will.”

Behind him, Stephenson's chair creaked. “He's become a liability.”

Marsh turned. “What are you proposing?”

“Oh, relax, for God's sake. He's out of Milkweed, but we needn't do more than that,” said Stephenson. “Though of course, we'll have contingencies in place. If he talks, we'll destroy him.” Outside, robins serenaded one another.

Destroy him? We've already done that, haven't we?

“I'll tell him.”

“It's my job. But I thought you should know.”

Quietly, Marsh said, “I'm the one who brought him into this in the first place.” He shook his head again. “It's my responsibility.” I've made my amends with Liv. I owe Will at least as much.

Stephenson harrumphed his assent. “Very well. But see to it quickly.”

“Yes, sir. I will.” Marsh's voice cracked again. He drained the tumbler.

So. Milkweed would have at it yet again. Like a hound begging for a soup bone, getting kicked away time after time but still coming back for another try. He turned his attention back to the map.

Black pins and little swastika flags marked the known positions of Nazi army groups and divisions across the Continent. They weren't entirely static, but the overall pattern hadn't changed appreciably since the consolidation of forces in January and February. Pins moved most frequently in the region around the Balkans, where German and Italian forces dealt with the guerrilla tactics of Greek and Yugoslav partisans. Farther south, beyond the bottom edge of the map, the Afrikakorps had been much more dynamic. Britain had reluctantly written off North Africa as another casualty of the Dunkirk failure.

The locations of the red markers and hammer-and-sickle pennants on the eastern side of the map were a bit more speculative. Reliable intelligence regarding the distribution of Red Army forces was difficult to obtain.

Twin rows of blue map pins indicated corridors the warlocks would attempt to open in the weather by nudging the Eidolons aside, thus providing the Soviets with routes into Germany. Several of the corridors converged on Berlin. The weather would be peeled back as the Soviets advanced.

A single orange pin marked the location of the Reichsbehorde; there the Eidolonic weather would be strengthened into a bulwark that kept the invaders at bay.

It was a tricky balancing act. They needed the Red Army to strike deep into the heart of a paralyzed Reich, to deliver the killing blow that would end the war. But they also had to make damn certain von Westarp's farm didn't fall into the wrong hands. Which meant, given Britain didn't have an army on the ground with which to occupy it, the REGP couldn't fall into anybody's hands.

Hence the long-range bombers in southeast England. Britain's aircraft production was a pale shadow of what it had once been, but the RAF could scrape together enough bombers for one particular mission. The Luftwaffe was effectively grounded so long as the warlocks could keep the weather in place; Jerry's radar and antiaircraft measures would be similarly blind.

But it all came down to timing. It required lifting the barricade around the REGP just before the RAF arrived to carpet-bomb the grounds. It was imperative the Soviets found nothing of value if they sent forces there.

The strategy hadn't changed since early spring, just before the warlocks' first attempt to shut down the Continent with endless winter. On paper, it made a desperate kind of sense. Except ...

Marsh cleared his throat. The brandy hadn't flushed the roughness out of his voice. “The situation is more complicated now. We ought to reassess.”

Stephenson nodded, tapping his ashes into the tray. “The recruitment drive.”

“If the Reichsbehorde has gone public, we can be certain old Joe knows about it. The Kremlin likely knows all about von Westarp's research by now.” The Soviets were rumored to have an extensive and aggressive spy network operating inside Nazi Germany. The Jerries referred to it as the “Red Orchestra.”

“That's why,” said Stephenson, “you have to be ready.”

“Sir?”

“If our ploy succeeds, I want you in Germany the moment the Red Army starts to move.”

Pangs of guilt and irritation jabbed at Marsh. He couldn't leave Liv alone again. He'd only just found her. He'd forgotten her scent for so long, but now he could smell her hair on the collar of his shirt.

“Sir. I doubt I could achieve anything that an RAF bomber squadron couldn't. I'm just one man.” A feeble protest, and he knew it.

Smoke jetted from Stephenson's nostrils, signaling impatience. “I don't give a toss what you think. And you're the only man we have left because of your monumental cock-up in Germany. Your mess, you clean it up.” He dragged again on his cigarette. “Flattening the REGP is only part of the equation. If the Soviets take Berlin, they'll get the files. Unless we destroy them first.”

Marsh sighed. Stephenson was right. This wouldn't be over until somebody destroyed the Schutzstaffel records of von Westarp's program.

And at the end of the day, it was Marsh's fault that Milkweed had been reduced to a single field agent.

At least he'd get to say his good-bye to Liv in person. He hadn't done so prior to the raid in December; he knew now with utter conviction that if he'd died in Germany, that regret would have been his dying thought.

Eddies of cigarette smoke curled around Marsh when he headed for the door. “I'll start preparing.”

“There's one last thing.”

“Sir?”

“I'll need you to find new accommodations. Can't have you staying downstairs any longer.” Stephenson tapped the pile of papers beneath his ashtray. “We're planning a bit of work down there.”

“That won't be a problem.” I won't miss that cot.

“Good.”

Marsh cocked an eyebrow. “What sort of work?”

Stephenson picked up his telephone. Over the receiver, he said, “Let me know when you've spoken to Beauclerk.”

Marsh turned to leave, pondering the new plan. Something about it still bothered him, tickled the back of his mind. Eidolons weren't tactical weapons. Weather savage enough to shatter the Wehrmacht would also freeze earth and rivers solid, kill fish and spring plantings.

The invaders would meet little resistance. If anything, they'd be welcomed as saviors, when the Great Soviet brought bread to the starving masses.

Marsh paused with his hand on the door handle. He turned. “Question, sir?”

Stephenson paused in mid-dial. “What?”

“What will we do when Soviet France is parked on our doorstep?”

“One problem at a time. We're long overdue for some good fortune.

“And if fortune decides to kick us in the bollocks?”

“Then we'd better bloody well start things off on the right foot when we meet our new allies.”