Ian Tregillis - Bitter Seeds

The barman plunked a bottle in front of Marsh. Marsh was digging cash out of his pocket when he felt the surge of heat wash across his back. Somebody screamed.

“Dios mio! ”

A cry went up: “ Fuego! Fuego !”

Marsh spun. The rear corner of the hotel bar, steeped in shadows just moments earlier, now shone in the light from flames racing up the walls. No! It can't be —

Marsh dodged the people fleeing the fire, fighting upstream like a salmon. But he stopped in his tracks when he saw the source of the flames.

Krasnopolsky blazed at the center of the conflagration like a human salamander. New flames burst forth from everything he touched as he flailed around the room, wailing like a banshee. Air shimmered in waves around him; it seared the inside of Marsh's nose. The metal snaps on Marsh's overalls scorched his shirt, sizzled against his chest. The room stank of charred pork.

The burning man collapsed in a heap of bone and ash. Marsh glimpsed a half-incinerated valise on the burning floor. He gritted his teeth and kicked it away. The rubber soles of his boots became tacky, squelching on the floor as he danced away from the fire. He tossed aside a fern and dumped the pot of soil on the valise to smother the flames.

Then he snatched what little remained of Krasnopolsky's valise and fled the burning hotel.

3 February 1939

Girona, Spain

Artillery concussions boomed through the river valleys and almond orchards surrounding Girona. That's the sound of one's enemies caught between the hammer and the anvil , Klaus mused. With pride he added, And we are the anvil.

The besieged stronghold was Franco's final stop on his sweep through Catalonia. Once Girona fell, finishing the ground war would become a mere formality.

“They would have sent fighters after me today, if they had any planes left. I'm sure of it.” Rudolf's hair shone like copper in the sun as he chucked Klaus on the shoulder. “Can you imagine that? I wish they did have an air force left. That would look spectacular on film!”

“T-t-t-t—,” said Kammler.

“Rudolf running away again? I've already seen that in person. Why would I watch it on film?” Klaus laughed. “The doctor would prefer you actually confront our enemies. Like the rest of us do,” he added with a gesture that encompassed himself, Heike, and even drooling Kammler.

Kammler again: “G-g-g—”

“Up yours,” said Rudolf. “All of you.”

They rode at the vanguard of a small caravan, bouncing along in silence but for the occasional outburst of stuttering nonsense from Kammler. His handler, Hauptsturmfuhrer Buhler, had unbuckled the leash around Kammler's neck, so now the muscle-bound imbecile had reverted to his harmless and somewhat pitiable state. Klaus wondered what the cameramen and technicians in the other trucks talked about in their off-time.

The road back to their farmhouse wended through a vast olive plantation. Rows of trees marched all the way from the edge of the hills overlooking the town to within a dozen yards of the house. The hills themselves had turned brown in spots, owing to a dry winter. Overhead, a fingernail moon hung in a powder-blue sky. A cool, damp breeze gusted up from the river valley.

The north and east sides of the plantation had been shattered by misaimed artillery. The ongoing siege slowly chewed up more of the plantation each time another shell went off course. A shame , thought Klaus. I like olives .

They pulled up in front of a wide two-story farmhouse built in the style of a Roman villa. The family that had owned it must have been rather prosperous. When he had first arrived here, Klaus wondered if the family had also owned the almond groves that blanketed the surrounding hillsides. Not that it mattered. The Reichsbehorde had needed a base of operations from which to field-test Doctor von Westarp's work, and so the family had disappeared.

The others climbed out of the truck and filed into the house. Klaus paused a moment to scan the wide windows on the second floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of his sister. He worried about her when he was gone all day.

He doffed the straw hat he wore and rubbed at his scalp with the stumps of his two missing fingers as he entered the house. He reached inside his shirt, undid the clasp, and disconnected the pencil-thick bundle of wires that extended from several points on his skull to the battery harness at his waist. The braided wires dangled over his shoulder like a Chinaman's queue.

They had left their crisp Schutzstaffel uniforms back at the Reichsbehorde when they came to Spain, opting instead for the locals' more inconspicuous overalls, kerchiefs, and floppy wide-brimmed hats. If nothing else, their disguises conveniently hid the wires. But the coarse peasant apparel tended to snag the wires' cloth insulation, sometimes catching painfully when Klaus moved quickly or unwisely.

Klaus followed Rudolf past the makeshift darkroom—once a child's bedroom—where the cameramen stacked the film canisters from the day's work. One canister was larger and bulkier than the others; the technicians always dispensed with it first. Heike's ability necessitated a special camera and special film to record her activities.

The cameramen looked down as he approached. They unloaded an Agfa eight-millimeter reel with conspicuous silence and diligence. The defector had put them all on edge. Doctor Von Westarp was half-inclined to use the remaining cameramen for target practice, and they knew it.

Klaus pushed through the crowded farmhouse, toward the laboratory and debriefing room, eager to remove his battery harness. Over the previous decade, the engineers had made great strides with the batteries, and they had outdone themselves with the lithium-ion design. But after a long day in the field, it still felt like he'd hung a lead brick on his belt. The sooner he handed over his harness, the sooner he could try to quell the spasms in his back.

The technicians would gauge charge depletion in the batteries and reference that against the activity documented by the cameramen. Klaus would detail his exploits slipping through Republican fortifications and pushing land mines into the earth. Any information of military value he'd gleaned would be passed—after appropriate sanitization to obscure the nature of its source—to the Reich's allies converging on Girona. The arrangement was a quid pro quo in return for Franco's permission to operate in Spain.

The door to the debriefing room swung open as Klaus lay his hand on the knob. He confronted a pair of eyes so pale and unfeeling, they might have been chiseled from ice. Reinhardt stepped into the corridor.

Von Westarp was there, too. He wore a dark lab coat with a dusting of dandruff on the shoulders from his graying tonsure. “Excellent work,” said the doctor, reaching up to clasp Reinhardt's shoulder. “Today, I feel pride.”

Reinhardt smiled, his eyes glistening. Klaus and Rudolf saluted as Von Westarp brushed past. “Herr Doktor!”

The doctor glanced at them through his fish-eye glasses. It felt like being stuck under a microscope. He spared nothing but a sniff of disdain for them as he entered the laboratory. Klaus glimpsed one of the Twins strapped to a table as the doctor slammed the door behind him.

Klaus and Rudolf shared a look. Klaus shrugged.

Rudolf turned toward Reinhardt. “Where the hell have you been the past few days?”

“Serving the Reich. Carrying out my orders.”

Rudolf stared.

“I don't believe you,” said Klaus.

“Ask your sister.”

The whine of a drill erupted from the makeshift laboratory. Simultaneously, a long, low moan emanated from a different room across the corridor. The moans became screams as the stink of hot bone wafted from the lab.