including most especially your lad Marsh (don't give me that look) will be giving himself to the Eidolons for safekeeping during the transition. And again on the way back. Assuming anybody comes back.” Will waited for his head to stop spinning. He summarized, “It's a bit like using a pride of lions to escort a zebra across the Serengeti. Bloody daft.”
“I think you're overstating things just a bit.”
“Overstating? Understating. Here's yet another consideration for you: the blood price. Nobody knows what this will cost. This is so far beyond the pale that the others won't even hazard a guess.”
“The prices haven't been a problem thus far. I don't see why this would be any different.”
Will tasted blood. He'd bitten a chunk out of the inside of his lip. The blood seeped across his tongue, chasing away the brandy.
Stephenson had an agreement with Hargreaves and the rest of the warlocks; he indulged their fanatical insistence upon keeping blood prices “in the family.” Anything that threatened to breach the connection between the negotiator and the price—such as appealing for outsiders' help in paying it—was dangerous and therefore strictly forbidden. But the old man knew damn well what was happening. The escalating prices had forced the warlocks to seek out new tools and new training; Stephenson had arranged for their demolitions training with the Special Operations Executive.
“You know nothing of these things.” It was all Will could say, and perhaps even that was too much. He stood. “Think about what I've said. Good evening, sir.”
Will paused in the doorway on his way out. “What I tell you twice I tell you true, sir. This will end badly.”
eleven
Sunrise was a dull glow peeking over Downing Street when Marsh entered St. James' Park. The sleet and snow of the past few days had tapered off after coating London with slush. But the clouds had remained, shrouding the sky like a wet wool blanket.
A pair of sentries stopped him at the checkpoint on the east side of the park, just across from the Old Admiralty building. They recognized him, no doubt, but they did their jobs just the same. One of the sentries, a thumb under six feet tall with a blotchy face, stepped in front of Marsh, rifle held across his chest.
“Can't let you through, sir. Password?”
Marsh said, “Habakkuk.” And to the other sentry, he spoke the second half of the password: “Rookery.”
The guards stepped aside, nodding their approval. “Have a good day, sir.” They didn't know about Milkweed, or what it hoped to achieve from this impromptu base camp.
The park was silent. An early hour, and anybody with a modicum of sense would catch as much sleep as possible before to night. Later, Marsh would go back inside and try to do the same. But not now.
Ice water drizzled from the camouflage netting as Marsh picked his way between the tents. It dripped into his hair, trickled down his neck, down his back. Throughout the staging area, tarpaulins and tent tops had bowed inward under the weight of water, occasionally dumping it all without warning in torrents that doused the unaware and muddied the earth.
He went to the largest tent, in the center of the staging area. Pain twinged in his knee, strong enough to evoke a grimace. Marsh felt, for a moment, like an old man. He gritted his teeth and shrugged off the pain. It receded to a dull throb. More water dripped on his head and neck when he limped inside the tent.
Two rows of chairs arranged in a semicircle faced a table, a lectern, and two blackboards. This was where they'd deliver the final briefing before to night's mission.
Wood-and-Bakelite mockups of a battery were arranged along the table next to the lectern. These were models of the battery they'd taken from Gretel. Snipers had been training with these models for weeks, taking target practice on dummies wearing battery harnesses.
The battery they'd captured bore no identifying marks, not even a manufacturer's stamp. That by itself didn't rule out the possibility that the batteries were constructed under special contract by one of the chemical corporations within the IG Farben conglomerate. Agfa, perhaps, or BASF. But it seemed plausible, based on what little they knew of von Westarp and the massive construction work carried out on his family farm in the late 1920s and early 1930s, that he kept every aspect of the fiefdom under his direct control. So there was a possibility that the batteries were constructed on-site—perhaps by engineers on loan from IG Farben—meaning Milkweed could destroy the Reichsbehorde's ability to make new batteries. Failing that, they'd eliminate the stores.
Rows of photographs had been affixed to one blackboard. The first was an enlarged version of the single photograph in von Westarp's dossier. The photo was thirty years out of date, but it was, Marsh hoped, better than nothing. Beneath the photo, somebody with a steady hand had printed DR. KARL HEINRICH VON WESTARP.
Only one photograph other than von Westarp's had a name printed beneath it: Gretel, the olive-skinned girl. Hers was the clearest of all the photos. They'd photographed her from every angle. It had taken an entire box of film just to map in detail all her surgical scars.
The remaining photos were grainy reproductions of still frames from the Tarragona filmstrip. There was a photograph for each person featured in the film. Each had a single question mark chalked beneath it in place of a name. Even under the shot of Gretel's rescuer. In a few places, a key word or two had been chalked in a different color: Flight? Speed? Fire? Invisibility?
A crust of snow crunched under Klaus's boots as he walked the perimeter of the grounds with Reinhardt, Buhler, Pabst, and Doctor von Westarp. The doctor called a halt every thirty or forty yards to consult a map of the grounds. The map contained annotations in Pabst's hand, based on intense debriefing sessions with Gretel.
“One ... two ... heave. One ... two ... heave ...”
They watched a handful of mundane troops struggle to erect klieg lights inside the forest at the edge of the complex. The block and tackle clattered while the men ratcheted upright the heavy mast supporting the lights. The cables sang in a rising wind that smelled of cold snow and diesel fuel.
“Put your backs into it!” yelled Pabst. “I want these lights installed and tested before sundown.”
Farther back in the trees, more soldiers were busy hiding the generator that would power the lights. The bulk of the generator rested below ground level, in a hole they'd excavated. A buried cable ran from there to the lights. They'd also landscaped a fake thicket to hide the exposed portion of the generator.
In daylight, Klaus mused, the mess of boot prints and trampled snow around the thicket might have been a giveaway. But at night, in the pandemonium of combat, it wouldn't matter at all. The lights would stay off until the attackers arrived. Then the lights would illuminate their landing sites and make it impossible to hide.
Installations like these were going up on the south, west, and east sides of the Reichsbehorde. Each surrounded what Gretel claimed would be a landing site.
Assuming she could be trusted. Klaus had severe reservations on that point, but he kept them to himself. He'd known for months, at least since she had maneuvered to get herself captured, that she acted according to her own interests and motivations, what ever those might be. But until the failed invasion, and maybe even after that, he'd clung to the belief that her personal motives more or less aligned with the interests of the Reichsbehorde and
