Ian Tregillis - Bitter Seeds

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.

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 spilling 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.