Bitter Seeds

four

9-10 May 1940

Ardennes Forest, Belgium

The Gotterelektrongruppe sped through a moonlit forest in a six-wheeled Panzerspahwagen. Klaus rode in the back, along with a massive store of replacement batteries. The road swerved around hills and dipped through gullies. The armored scout car had minimal suspension; every bump in the road jostled the occupants as they sped along.

A two-hundred-meter-wide swath of old-growth forest and underbrush disappeared in their wake, flattened and incinerated in an orgy of willpower. On the left, impenetrable stands of beech and spruce disappeared behind the bulwark of blue fire racing alongside the truck. On the right, centuries-old oaks and sapling firs disintegrated as though ripped apart by a giant thresher.

The car was designed for a crew of five; they numbered six. Reinhardt and Kammler sat in front, crammed next to their driver. Buhler huddled behind Kammler, in the gunner's seat. His leg jounced up and down as he yanked on the imbecile's leash. Gretel was in the rear, next to Klaus, where the radio operator normally sat. She sat with her head tipped back, eyes closed but looking ahead.

Reinhardt and Kammler drained their packs with wild, amphetamine-fueled abandon. Klaus relayed new batteries up front as his comrades swapped out the depleted packs. At first they had stopped every few kilometers to change the batteries. After a while they had found a rhythm, though, and now they moved like clockwork.

They were the tip of the spear. By morning, the three Panzerkorps of German Army Group A would barrel through the newly opened forest, circumventing the Maginot Line and tearing into France's soft, undefended interior.

Their leaders called it Operation Sichelschnitt: the cut of the sickle.

The engine rumble made a contrabass counterpoint to the white noise whoosh of fire and imploding wood stock. Outside, the night smelled like the workshop of an overzealous carpenter, singed sawdust and pulped lumber. It stank inside the car. Kammler had crapped himself.

“Crush. Crush. Crush,” Buhler rasped. Hours of screaming, then chanting, the same mantra had given his voice the texture of sandpaper.

At some point during the night, they crossed from Belgium into France, though even with a map it was impossible to tell when or where.

Gretel sat up. She said, “Fortification, two minutes ahead. Sentries will hear us forty seconds from now.” Klaus shifted his weight as their driver, a combat driving specialist reassigned from the elite LSSAH unit of the Waffen-SS, applied the brakes. “Seventy seconds from now. Ninety.” The truck puttered to a stop. “The sentries will not hear us,” Gretel concluded.

She turned, smirking. “But Hauptsturmfuhrer Buhler will fall in a thistle when he goes to piss in the woods.”

“Crazy bitch. You say that every time we stop. You're trying to make me hold it all night.”

She shrugged.

Everyone climbed out. Buhler handed Kammler's leash over to the driver, who wrinkled his nose. The crackle of underbrush receded as Buhler strode off to relieve himself. Reinhardt leaned against the cab. He lifted a cigarette to his mouth with trembling hands. The amphetamines had him wound so tightly, he almost vibrated. Moonlight shone in the whites of his eyes. A tiny orange flame momentarily engulfed the tip of the cigarette. Klaus knew that the cigarette wouldn't mask the taste in Reinhardt's mouth.

The heavy fortifications—the grands ouvrages—of the Maginot Line didn't extend through the Ardennes. The forest had long been considered impassable with heavy armor. And so it had been, until to night.

But the French had sprinkled smaller fortifications—petits ouvrages—through the portion of forest that extended across the border. These, too, had to be destroyed to ensure the flawless rollout of the Blitzkrieg. Klaus's ability was useless for clearing timberland. But he had no equal for clearing fortifications.

Klaus hefted a pack from the overloaded car. He checked the contents. Thirty kilograms of PETN were sufficient to tear open the heaviest ouvrage like a tin can. But when detonated inside the steel-plated walls, it would turn the fort into a meat grinder.

Gretel joined him as he double-checked the gauge on his battery harness. She pointed. “That way. Follow the gully until you reach the clearing. You'll find the fort in the crook between two hills.”

“How are you feeling?” Klaus asked. “Do you need a new battery yet?” She didn't say anything.

Klaus had advocated a plan where Gretel stayed behind, away from the battlefront, relaying her directions via the Twins. But in order to plumb the next twelve hours and shepherd them safely to the other side, she first had to twine her future with their own. Or so she insisted.

Twined futures hadn't helped Rudolf.

“Why don't you stay with the truck? It'll be safer than—”

She raised a hand, cutting him off. She cocked her head. A moment later the rustle of underbrush and a muffled “Damn it!” drifted out of the silent forest.

“Thistle,” she said. Klaus sighed.

A stream of invective preceded Buhler all the way back to the truck. “Crazy fucking mongrel whore,” it concluded.

They regrouped. Reinhardt crushed out his cigarette. Buhler took Kammler's leash again. “Stay here,” he ordered the driver. The pale-faced zealot saluted.

They tromped off along the gully that Gretel had pointed out. Klaus led with his sister at his side. Behind them followed Reinhardt, Buhler, and Kammler. Runoff from recent spring rains splashed beneath their boots. They pushed through a thicket the hard way—Reinhardt and Kammler were too wound up on amphetamines to perform subtleties of Willenskrafte.

They crawled on their stomachs just under the lip of the ravine as the underbrush gave way to a tiny clearing. An ouvrage loomed before them in the shadows. It looked like an inverted breadbox pimpled along the top with retractable machine gun turrets.

Klaus adjusted the straps over his shoulders. He reached for the clasp on his battery harness.

“Wait,” Gretel whispered. “Let the sentries pass.”

She patted him on the side. He looked at her. Occasionally, when meeting her gaze, he saw something coiled up in her madness, steely and cold. But to night the moonlight stilled the depths behind her eyes. She smiled. A real smile, with even a hint of warmth.

Her hand lingered. “Go now, brother.”

Klaus took a deep breath and plugged in. The taste of copper flooded his mouth. He crested the streambed and headed for the fort. Nine inches of steel and concrete ghosted through his eyeballs, his bones, his thumping heart. The French fortifications presented as much resistance to Klaus as an open window presented the wind.

Smaller forts like this could house a few hundred fighting men, depending on the internal configuration. This one was shaped like a T. A subterranean garrison at the long end of the central tunnel probably held two hundred men or more. But it was the middle of the night, and most of the troops slept through Klaus's silent infiltration. He entered at the top of the T, between the two gun turrets.

He set the first demolition charge at the mouth of the tunnel sloping down to the barracks. He set the timer for one minute before moving toward the far end of the fort.

The pair of yawning soldiers up in the turret didn't notice him until they heard the thump as he dropped another bundle of explosives at their feet. This one Klaus set on a fifteen-second delay.

The gunners jumped down. At first they stared at him, bleary-eyed and confused. Comprehension slowly dawned as they took in his uniform.

“Intruder! Intruder!” One raised an alarm while the other tried to shoot Klaus. The bullets passed through him and pinged off the wall.

Klaus ignored them. He returned the way he had come, and was just passing the tunnel entrance when an explosion ripped through the turret behind him. The concussion reverberated throughout the building. The quickest soldiers came up from the garrison just in time to meet the shock wave from the shaped charge that Klaus had planted. Smoke filled the passageways.

Klaus dropped the rest of his ordnance under the second turret before exiting through the wall. The third blast shook the earth as he rematerialized outside.

Gasping fresh air into his lungs, he called the all clear.

Reinhardt, Buhler, and Kammler came charging up.

“I said, all clear. What's going on?”

Reinhardt said, “Gretel said you needed help.”

“What?”

“Said you screwed up. Again.”

“I did no such thing. Look! It's done.” Plumes of oily smoke roiled out of the view slots in the turrets at either end of the casemate.

When they returned to their hiding spot in the streambed, it was empty.

Klaus looked around. “Where's my sister?”

“Must be waiting back at the truck.”

But Gretel wasn't there. Only the driver, who jumped to attention upon their return. Buhler flew into a rage.

Oh, Gretel, what have you done? She'd run away, and now she was alone in what would soon be a war zone.

Klaus wondered what would become of him. Doctor von Westarp and Standartenfuhrer Pabst would naturally assume he had been complicit in his sister's defection. The night's first twinges of fear squeezed his chest.

But even more than fear, he felt resentment. Gretel had wandered off, probably chasing her own amusement, unconcerned by the situation it created for him.

He slumped against the side of the truck, hands crammed into his pockets. Paper crinkled where there had been none before. He unfolded the note.

His eyes traced the loops and swirls of Gretel's spidery copperplate. Dear Brother, it began.

10 May 1940

Soho, London, England

Oh, damn.”

Will tried to set down the telephone hand piece but instead tossed it on the desk when it slipped out of his hand. It clattered against the Bakelite cradle and set the bells inside to humming. The gauze bandage wrapped around his hand made him awkward; the cotton packed against his palm made it difficult to grip things. Especially with sweaty fingertips.

Opening the window had admitted no end of traffic noise, the rumble of omnibuses and taxis, but not the slightest hint of breeze. It did, however, give the tobacco smoke somewhere to go after it seeped up through the loose floorboards from the Hart and Hearth down below. The biggest gaps bordered the broad stonework chimney that extended from the pub's hearth through the second story and up to the roof above. The chimney, a welcome source of heat in winter, imposed itself on the broom-closet office like a tidal wave of stone frozen in the moment before breaking.

He'd frittered the day away working for his brother's charity, as he did several times per week. The work put a public face on his support of the war effort, at a time when most able-bodied men his age had joined up. They'd been able to lease the space over the pub cheaply because Will was the only person willing to brave the creaking staircase and endure an afternoon in the hotbox, as Will tended to think of it. Still, he preferred the space above the pub to working out of the home, or from the club. It offered seclusion when Will chose to pursue his own little project for the war effort.

Most of a year had passed since they'd screened that damnable film for him. And they'd made very little progress since then. Von Westarp's methods remained opaque as ever, the whereabouts of his “children” unknown.

But Will felt confident, and proud, that he could change that. Soon after joining the Milkweed effort—a grandiose name for four men with nothing to do—Will had returned home to Bestwood. He'd stayed there just long enough to collect a few of his grandfather's papers before returning to London.

Will's language skills, once rusty through years of neglect, had improved in the past nine months. And now he felt ready to propose his idea to Marsh, when the fellow returned from France.

Today, however, he'd spent doing real work for the charity rather than poring over grandfather's lexicons. Aubrey thought it might be wise to devote fund-raising toward the victory garden program. Will had promised to get a few heavy hitters on board, give the whole thing a higher profile. And so he'd spent hours on the telephone.

Or would have. A strange day all around. Half the time, the lines were jammed. The other half of the time, it seemed nobody could be bothered to answer the telephone. Like the entire city had nipped out for a moment and never came back. He hadn't heard any laughter or snippets of conversation drifting up from the pub, either, as he usually did. Even the traffic was more subdued today, as though burdened with a peculiar self-consciousness.

The telephone rang. Finally, Will thought.

“Good afternoon.”

“Will?” said a tentative voice with a common accent.

“Olivia! This is a surprise. What can I do for you, my dear?”

“I'm rather embarrassed to have to ask this of you, but Raybould isn't home yet. I rang the neighbors and even John and Corrie, but I'm afraid nobody's home.” She sounded nervous. That made Will nervous.

“Let me assure you it is impossible to impose upon me. So have at it.”

“I think—” She paused, sucked in a breath. “—I'm having the baby. Could you ride to the hospital with me?”

“Oh.” Liv's words sank in. “Oh!” He jumped out of his chair, knocking it over. “I'll be there at once!”

She must have heard the commotion, because she let loose with her musical laugh. The laugh he admired so much.

“Relax, Will. It's not happening this instant. But do get here soon, please?”

“Quick as I'm able.”

“Cheers.”

Two thoughts tumbled through Will's mind as he gathered up his bowler and briefcase. A baby! I'll be an uncle, in spirit if not in fact. But then, on the heels of that excitement, an itch of concern at the back of his mind. Why aren't you home yet, Pip? Why would you miss this? You were supposed to be back this morning.

Down on the street he hurried in the direction of Piccadilly, where he'd be sure to hail a cab if he couldn't find one sooner. A vigorous constitutional was the balm for an unsettled mind. Or so his grandfather used to say, the miserable old bastard. Pain twinged through Will's hand.

He passed the Queen's Theatre and turned right on Shaftesbury. The usual West End hustle-bustle, the press of too many people and too little sidewalk, didn't materialize as he ventured through the theater district. It was too early in the day for the shows, and hence for the taxis.

Quite a few men were across the Channel right now, of course. The few people he did pass shuffled around him shrouded in nervous energy, clutching newspapers or looking at him without seeing him. He passed the marquees of the Apollo and the Lyric, garish adverts in a long expanse of somber brick. Calendulas lined flower boxes on the sills of upper stories, fiery eruptions of red and yellow in a gray marble canyon.

He found the missing crowds when he reached Piccadilly. Men and women mobbed a newsstand three-deep. The stand was a tiny thing wedged between a jeweler's and a tobacconist, facing the Shaftesbury Memorial in the center of the circus. The fountain itself stood un-adorned, the statue of Anteros having been removed to safety in the countryside soon after the outbreak of war the previous autumn.

Will nudged his way to the front of the crowd swarming the newsstand.

“Hi, hi, paper man.” Coins jingled in his palm. “Give us a—hell.”

Will dropped a shilling's worth of change atop the vendor's stack of papers. Several pence rolled off and tinkled underfoot. The Times's headline told him why it had been such an odd day, why such a pall hung over the streets, and why Marsh hadn't made it home: the Jerries had invaded France. The Phony War was over.

He hopped from the curb into the traffic whirling around the circus. Brakes screeched. To the colorful invective of a cabbie he replied with a fiver and an address in Walworth, south of the river. Will absorbed the salient details from the paper during the ride: blitzkrieg; French forces in disarray; PM Chamberlain stepping down.

Marsh had gone to France a little over a week ago on business for MI6. But as far as his wife knew, he'd gone to America with a delegation from the Foreign Secretary's Office, in hopes of procuring more support from the Yanks. A perfectly safe, if somewhat hopeless, mission.

Will left the paper in the taxi. He thrust another handful of bills at the driver, and told him to wait. He bounded through the front gate of a two-and-a-half-story mock Tudor house. Rapraprap. He rapped again. Raprapraprap.

Liv answered. The frown tugging at her mouth and eyes disappeared when she saw him. Pregnancy in its final stages had rounded out her face, put a flush into creamy skin.

“Hi, Will. Thanks for coming.”

“Liv, my dear, terribly sorry to be so late, beastly of me, I know, particularly in your time of need, had something of a bother finding a cab.” It came out more rushed than he'd intended. He took a breath.

She ushered him inside. He squeezed past the bulge of her belly straining at the blue wool of her WAAF uniform.

“Goodness. Don't tell me they still have you chained to a switchboard all day?”

“It's better than sitting here, waiting.”

Will wasn't surprised that Liv had held her situation as long as she had. Liv was a force of nature when she wanted to be. And, of course, her husband's employer had connections. Typically, WAAFs, Wrens, and other women who found themselves PWP—pregnant without permission—got sent home for the duration. It happened commonly: “Up with a lark, to bed with a Wren,” as the saying went.

“Nobody would fault you if you chose to evacuate. Pip least of all.”

Liv shook her head, hands resting on her stomach. “Not until he gets to meet our baby.”

Our baby. You and Pip. But if life had turned out differently ... Will shoved the pang of envy aside, sobered by thoughts of France. It may be your baby from now on, Liv.

He closed the door for her, nudging it past an end table with his bandaged hand. A bowl of water and a folded wool blanket sat on the table, for covering the door in case of gas attacks.

“Oh, my. What happened to your hand, Will?”

“This?” He flexed his hand, checked that blood hadn't seeped through the new bandages. “Bashed it with a spade,” he lied. “Aubrey's gone on a tear about the victory gardens right now. Bloody sharp, those things.” He tapped the side of his nose. “It's Hitler's master plan, you know. Do us all in with gardening mishaps.”

“Hmm.” She looked upstairs, her hand still on her stomach. “I haven't finished packing. My suitcase is in the—” She teetered for a moment.—”oof ...” Will jumped to her side. “In the bedroom,” she finished.

Will led her to a chair in the den. “You rest. I'll pack your things. Think of me as your Passepartout.”

He dashed up the stairs and found the bedroom immediately. It was a small house. A suitcase sat open on the bed. It felt a bit voyeuristic rummaging through Liv's and Marsh's things, but he tried not to dwell on that. Especially while he packed her undergarments. Will made something of a mess as he tried to be quick without leaving anything obvious behind. He grabbed a toothbrush from the bathroom on the way back down, hoping it was Liv's.

Back downstairs, he found Liv composing a note for her husband. She smiled as she wrote it.

Will took several careful breaths so that he could put as much nonchalance into his voice as he could muster. “Heard from Pip, have you?”

She shook her head, signing the note.

“Still in America, getting the Yanks to lend a hand?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Well.” He hefted the case again. “Your carriage awaits,” he said, offering his arm.

“I'm not infirm, Will.” Color crept down the curve of her neck, where a few strands of auburn hair had pulled free of her bun.

“No, but you're walking for two.”

Back in the cab, the newspaper reinforced Will's concern that Liv was about to give birth unaware that her husband was trapped in a war zone. The neighborhood blurred past them. Getting Liv to the hospital had become a matter of personal honor for the driver.

Liv said, “Did we remember to lock the door?”

“I'm quite certain we did. Trust your Passepartout. Speaking of which, will you have enough around the house? With the little one to feed? Do you need extra ration books? It's no trouble. My brother—”

“I'm not going to cheat, Will.”

“No, no. Of course not. But you'll let me know if you need anything, won't you?”

She patted her stomach. “We'll be fine.”

But what if it's just the two of you from now on?

The conversation ranged to baby names (Will suggested Malcolm, for a boy), mutual acquaintances, and whether America would enter the war.

They pulled up at a hospital in the shadow of London Bridge. As the driver carried Liv's case to the entrance, Will helped her out of the cab: “Please remember, Liv. If you're ever in need of anything, don't hesitate to say. Leaning on His Grace is my God-given talent.”

She looked at him with suspicion in her eyes. But then another contraction hit, and the issue was dropped.

10 May 1940

Mezieres, France

Stealing a motorbike turned out to be a bit like riding one. The skill came back quickly, Marsh found.

A violet spark leapt between two strands of copper as Marsh touched them together. It made the alley smell of ozone. He spat out bits of rubber, tasting blood; he'd stripped the wires with his teeth. The BMW sputtered once, then died. He tweaked the throttle on the second try. The sputtering relaxed into the regular brum-pum-pum-pum of a four-stroke.

He inched out of the alleyway into chaos. Cars, trucks, carts, bicycles, and pedestrians glutted the narrow cobbled street. Word of the invasion had spread, and like the orders from a field commander, it had mobilized an army of refugees. An opening appeared ahead of a truck. Marsh gunned the throttle. He darted past the truck and spun the bike around. Gravel kicked up by his U-turn rained on the refugees and their vehicles. In return he received the blare of horns and a few gestures.

The more panic gripped France, the harder it would be for Marsh to get an accurate picture of what had happened. On the other hand, the chaos made it easy to steal a motorbike without attracting notice.

Getting out of Mezieres required driving against the flow of traffic. The avenues were little more than glorified cow paths, best used for guiding livestock. They predated motorcars and weren't conducive to a spontaneous evacuation. Marsh treated the traffic like an obstacle course. After one close call with the steaming grille of an overheated farm truck, he made the outskirts of the hamlet.

Good thing Liv didn't see that. He imagined the way her fingers danced along her belly when she was startled, the way she used his first name when she was upset.

Once on the open road, he opened the throttle as far as it would go. He sped east, toward the Ardennes Forest, and the advancing German armor.

Probably best she doesn't know about any of this.

Another invasion front had also opened up to the north, in the low countries of Belgium and the Netherlands, but that came as no great surprise. France and Britain had put such an offensive at the center of their strategy for dealing with the inevitable German invasion. The British Expeditionary Forces and their French counterparts were positioned for exactly this contingency. But it was the penetration of the supposedly impassable Ardennes—in large numbers and with heavy armor, by some accounts—that had caught the French off guard. And thus interested Marsh.

The French had taken the impenetrability of the forest for granted. So much so that they'd incorporated it into the Maginot Line, treating it like a natural extension of their defenses. Cutting through the Ardennes enabled the Jerry panzers to circumvent the fortifications and press into France against a paltry armed resistance.

Marsh's stomach lurched. Both wheels left the road for an instant as he topped a swell in the road. The BMW flexed under his weight as it touched down at the bottom of the rise. He fought to keep it upright on a track made soft by a week of late spring rains.

The rains of recent days had coaxed a quiet exuberance from the land. Beech and oak trees had shrugged off their lethargy and erupted into new foliage. The woods smelled of new life, a clean start. Marsh blew through patches of sunlight and shadow on the sun-dappled road so quickly that his eyes couldn't adjust. He squinted, but it didn't help him see into the shadows along the roadsides.

It occurred to him he had no idea how far west the Jerries had advanced. The shadows might have hidden anything. He wrenched the throttle again.

The road skirted a field. A farmer directing a horse-drawn plow waved at him.

The sleepiest and most isolated outposts hadn't received the news yet. They'd find out soon enough. Perhaps when they woke up under a swastika.

It was only by accident that Marsh himself had heard the account that piqued his interest.

Outwardly, the Low Countries maintained a policy of strict neutrality. They refused to prepare openly for a German invasion, for fear of provoking one. Secretly, however, they had been negotiating with the Anglo-French Entente for over eight months. Some of these talks took place in small, unremarkable villages throughout the countryside in order to preserve their privacy. Stephenson had tapped Marsh for liaison duty during the latest round of arrangements between the various intelligence services.

It wasn't part of T-section's duties. But the old man had exercised his clout to get Marsh put on the job, on the slim chance their colleagues from other nations had information about von Westarp or the Reichsbehorde. Marsh knew it was a desperation move, because Milkweed was starved for information. Nine months was far too long to go without new developments.

Still, Stephenson's decision was little appreciated by Marsh. It meant leaving his wife, lying to her, days before their first child's birth. It meant listening to French blustering and Belgian dithering when instead he could have been waiting on Liv, serenading her, making her laugh.

But then the reports had come. Marsh had been sitting next to his French counterpart when a breathless gendarme burst in the room. Everyone knew what it meant.

The gendarme had hurried across the room, kneeled between Marsh and his counterpart, and whispered more loudly than was prudent, owing perhaps to fear or adrenaline. His report bleached the color from the other man's face.

Then Marsh's counterpart had stood, announcing through the thick brush of his handlebar mustache: “Gentlemen. The Germans are moving.”

But the gendarme had phrased it differently. The Germans have burned through Ardennes.

Perhaps it was a colloquialism.

Perhaps not.

But something unusual had happened.

More refugees glutted the road as Marsh neared another village. He eased off the throttle. A single maniac racing toward the front was bound to raise eyebrows. They watched him as he passed. In their eyes he saw uncertainty and fear braided together.

He turned down a street filled with the warm-yeast smell of fresh bread. Marsh's stomach gurgled. Some people chose not to run. Where could they run? The German war machine was just a few hours away, and moving fast. Invasion or no, people still had to eat.

The bike jittered over irregular paving stones, needling his irritation. In and out. A quick look around, then back to Liv. That's all. The quicker, the better.

As he crested into the valley on the far side of the village, he caught a whiff of something swampy. The Meuse, farther down the valley. If the Germans stopped to regroup, the river would be a likely place to do so. If he wanted to see the Ardennes firsthand, he'd have to find a way around.

He sped up again. The road descended into a wide green basin quilted with checkerboard fields and hedges, torn down the middle by the dark, sinuous Meuse. Farther down, the steeples and clock towers of Sedan shone in the sun. The chiming of a carillon echoed across the valley.

The morning's meeting had disbanded immediately after the gendarme delivered his news. But before fleeing to the Channel, Marsh had paused just long enough to send a report.

Two words, fired into the ether with a machine gun burst of dots and dashes: “Crowing monarch.”

The first word flagged the message for Stephenson.

The second implied a connection to Milkweed.

The association with that morning's invasion would, Marsh hoped, be self-evident.

After that he struck the transmitter and vacated his room at the inn, intent on getting back to Britain. But then he saw the motorbike leaning against the alley fence. Free for the taking.

The petrol gauge reported the tank three-quarters empty. Enough to reach the Ardennes, but not enough margin to get out again, too. He slowed once again as he entered Sedan, eyes peeled for a chance to refuel the bike. If he were fleeing the invasion, he'd make damn sure his truck had a spare petrol canister.

The world had become steadily more surreal as he sped toward the Ardennes. Sedan was no exception. News of the invasion must have reached a town of this size. Yet for every person hurrying out of town, somebody else clung to daily routine. Aproned shop keep ers swept the sidewalks outside their establishments while people assembled for morning Mass. Quite a few people, in fact.

Their eyes and bodies radiated anxiety. They moved quickly, skittishly, like songbirds expecting a house cat to leap out of the bushes at any moment. And they studied their surroundings intensely. The passage of a stranger drew a great deal of attention. Wary gazes followed him as he threaded the town.

Marsh stopped at the first alley he could find, a lane wedged between an apothecary and a tailor. It was so narrow that he had to dismount before entering.

A woman sat by herself at the cafe across the street, reading a book. The fog of panic settling on Sedan didn't touch her. It wasn't even clear if the cafe was open for business; either way, she looked serene, unmoved. She glanced up as Marsh hopped off the motorbike. She looked down again when he noticed her, hiding her face behind long hair and the fringe of her kerchief. Marsh pushed the bike into the alley. He stowed it behind a rubbish bin.

He peered around the corner before emerging. People on the street paid him no attention, intent as they were either on fleeing the Germans or clinging to the comfort of routine. The woman at the cafe twirled a finger through one black braid while she read.

The lightheaded feeling of deja vu swirled through him, made him dizzy. Marsh watched himself watching this same woman, as if he'd done it before. Something about the hair, the kerchief—

Wires.

He'd seen her before. In Spain. At first he hadn't recognized her, she'd been so badly beaten previously. Which had caught his attention the first time around. The ferocity of her bruises had made her stand out amongst all the other refugees at the port.

And, of course, she had the wires in her head. Just like the subjects of the Tarragona film.

Am I losing my mind? How is this possible? What the hell is she doing here?

She looked up again. Marsh ducked back in the shadows, thinking. He abandoned his attempt to visit the Ardennes.

A windblown newspaper rustled down the alley. Marsh tucked it under his arm. He waited until more refugees passed down the street in front of the cafe. When a Peugeot piled high with a family's belongings shielded him from her view, he darted out of the alley and into the apothecary.

The apothecary filled his order with quaking hands. His attention almost never touched on Marsh, hovering instead on the steady stream of traffic past his shop.

Marsh tried to keep the slow traffic between himself and the cafe as he worked his way up the street. He circled the building and crossed the street out of sight from the cafe. He sidled up the avenue with the newspaper draped over his Enfield revolver.

A short baroque wrought-iron fence ringed the cafe. Marsh stepped over it rather than risk a creaky gate. He wove around tables set with glass vases and spring daisies that shone white and yellow in the late-morning sun. He approached the woman's table from behind.

The corner of her mouth quirked up when he sat down.

In French, he whispered, “There's a gun pointed at you under this table. Try anything, anything at all, and I'll put a bullet in your gut.”

She turned a page, not looking up. “No, you won't.”

She spoke English tinged with a German accent. Her voice was throatier than he'd expected from one so petite.

“Try me,” he said. “Who are you?”

“No.” She shook her head, smirking. “The real question is who are you, Raybould Marsh?”

Shit. He fumbled the revolver, nearly shot her in the leg before he regained himself. His liaison work for the Entente had been under a false name. Even Krasnopolsky hadn't known his name, back in Spain over a year ago.

Before he could gather his wits to press further, she dog-eared the page and set the book down. It was a collection of poems by T. S. Eliot: Prufrock and Other Observations.

“I suppose you'll want to drug me now.” She nodded at the pocket where he'd placed the vial and cloth from the apothecary. She had large dark eyes.

What the hell is going on? Who is this girl? She carried herself with a supreme confidence that shook him.

Marsh struggled to keep the unease from his voice. “We're leaving now. Together.” To make his point, he gave her a glimpse of the gun. She stuck her tongue at him.

He stood. He took her arm as though helping her up.

“Wait.” She grabbed the daisy from the vase on her table. “For later,” she said.

Marsh escorted her from the cafe, his arm around her waist. She sighed, as if content. He pulled her into an alley, expecting a struggle. But she didn't fight him. Nor did she resist when he rolled the newspaper, stuffed it with cotton from the apothecary, and applied the diethyl ether he'd purchased. He'd prepared to do it all one-handed while restraining her.

Instead she waited placidly for him to apply the ether cone over her mouth and nose. She winked at him before slumping into his arms. Her head rolled sideways, revealing a wire taped to her neck. It extended under her blouse.

He carried her to the street. He flagged down a passing car. “Help! Help, please. My wife is very ill.”

Keeping her unconscious during the relay race back to Britain was a challenge. People frowned upon a man who drugged his wife. But he'd anticipated this, so he'd also purchased chloral hydrate. Slipping it into her water—”Drink up, dear, you're not feeling well”—worked best. People always plied the ill with fluids. Things got easier after he met a regiment from the BEF and could abandon the artifice. Still, he watched her for the entire journey.

Who was she? She knew him. She had waited for him.

Had they been watching him since Spain? He fought the urge to hunch his shoulders, to gouge away the target etched between his shoulder blades. Then he thought of Jerry spies staking out his life. Perhaps they were watching Liv this very moment. He clenched his jaw until he felt a headache coming on. Anger and frustration made his face feel hot.

They crossed the Channel in the cargo hold of a Dutch merchant ship running supplies for the BEF. As soon as he had privacy, he untied the kerchief over her hair. He traced the wire bundle from a bulge at her waist—probably a belt like those in the film—up her back, neck, and into her scalp. At the back of her head it split into four smaller wires, each connected directly to a different location on her skull. When he sifted through the hair on her scalp, thick black locks that smelled of sweat and dirt and wood smoke, he found her skull riddled with a monstrous assortment of surgical scars.

What was she?

He needed a closer look at her belt, too, but couldn't achieve that without stripping her naked. It would have to wait until he got her to Milkweed.

The mysterious woman woke again during the passage across the Channel, perhaps roused by the choppy waves knocking on the hull beneath them. Marsh reached out to dose her with more ether.

“Wait.” She grabbed his wrist.

His skin tingled under the intense warmth of her fingertips.

She fished in the folds of her dress for the cafe daisy. “Congratulations.” She handed it to him, adding, “It's a girl.”

Then she pulled his hand to her face and passed out again.