The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds

by Ian Tregillis

  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 Mézières 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 Reichsbehörde. 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 swe
pt 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 café across the street, reading a book. The fog of panic settling on Sedan didn’t touch her. It wasn’t even clear if the café 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 café twirled a finger through one black braid while she read.

  The lightheaded feeling of déjà 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 café. 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 café as he worked his way up the street. He circled the building and crossed the street out of sight from the café. He sidled up the avenue with the newspaper draped over his Enfield revolver.

  A short baroque wrought-iron fence ringed the café. 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 café, 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 café daisy. “Congratulations.” She handed it to him, adding, “It’s a girl.”

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

  five

  11 May 1940

  Walworth, London, England

  Marsh arrived home before sunrise. But for the chatter of songbirds ushering in the dawn, the city was quiet in this hour when the distinction between night and morning lost its meaning. The blackout kept the streets dark.

  Though Liv had been sleeping fitfully in the past few weeks, he didn’t want to ring the bell and risk waking her. He fumbled through his pockets, seeking his house key. Several moments passed, during which he envisioned the key jostling out of his pocket during his motorcycle ride (had that been just yesterday morning?), his encounter with the girl, or during the bumpy Channel crossing. He even started to wonder if the girl had picked his pocket, but then his fingers brushed the cold metal.

  The door swung open, sending bright light spill
ing down the steps and into the street, when he pushed the key into the lock.

  The door was unlocked. It hadn’t been latched. And the lights were still on.

  Exhaustion resisted him as he forced his mind into focus again. Too many hours on constant alert had frayed his nerves, but a single thought burned through the fog in his mind. Just hours ago he’d been speculating about Jerry spies watching him and Liv.

  A setup. Oh, God, how did I miss this for so long?

  Marsh slammed the door behind him. “Liv? Liv!” His voice echoed through a quiet house. He trotted from room to room. She wasn’t in the den; she wasn’t in the kitchen. He went to the garden, hoping that perhaps there’d been an air raid alert and she’d simply fallen asleep in the Anderson shelter. But she wasn’t there, either.

  Back inside, he bounded up the narrow stairs two at a time. The bedroom was a scene of disarray: the drawers of Liv’s wardrobe stood open, and her clothes were strewn across the bed and floor.

  Scenarios, event sequences, spooled out in his head. He captured the girl in France . . . her handlers contacted assets in London . . . they snatched Liv in retaliation.

  No, no, no, no. It made no sense.

  But if the girl knew him, she probably knew something about this, too.

  I’ll yank those goddamn wires from her head one by one.

  Marsh had the telephone in hand, ringing Stephenson, when he found the note: Darling—Labor started. Have gone to hospital with Will. Love, Liv. xx P.S. Stop worrying, you lovely fool!

  She’d taken the time to leave a message, knowing how terribly he’d fret if he came home to an empty house.

  The sudden release of tension left his knees weak. Marsh slumped against the wall, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. He did a little of both.

  Hailing a cab at this hour was out of the question. Marsh covered the first two miles to the hospital on foot. He would have run the rest of the way, too, but for an alert ARP warden just coming off his watch at dawn when he heard the echo of Marsh’s footsteps down the street.