Necessary Evil (Milkweed) by Ian Tregillis

Author:Ian Tregillis [Tregillis, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2013-04-30T06:00:00+00:00

7 September 1940

Berlin, Germany

Marsh’s captors finally came for him a month and a half after the Eidolonic visitation. He’d tried to convince himself that it had been a nightmare. Why would Milkweed locate him, then leave him to rot? It didn’t make sense. If they didn’t intend to set him free, Stephenson’s only alternative would have been to silence him. But that hadn’t happened either, though Marsh had prayed for it.

At first he thought the scrape and rattle of a key in the lock was also an echo from some deep corner of his imagination. But then light flooded into his cell, painful as railroad spikes to the eyes. Strong arms hauled him to his feet, but Marsh could stand on his own. They’d fed him regularly. Marsh reckoned that was Gretel’s doing.

A hard shove sent him stumbling into the corridor. The light here was even worse, painful even through his eyelids. He lowered his head. Long, greasy strands of hair fell over his eyes, helped to shield them from the glare.

“Shit, he reeks,” somebody said. “How long has he been down here?”

“A few months.”

Marsh couldn’t smell anything. He’d become inured to the smell of the privy bucket.

“We can’t put him in front of the Reichsführer like this. He won’t tolerate it.”

“He won’t care. He’s seen worse.”

“He hasn’t smelled worse. Not in his own office.”

Marsh swallowed. They were taking him to Himmler. This had to be why Gretel sent him here. She wanted Marsh to be in Himmler’s presence on this day. Why? What was he supposed to do? Why didn’t she tell him? And what would happen if he got it wrong?

“Well, let’s hose him down. Quickly.”

They pushed him along the corridor into a room that echoed, as though it were a large empty space with walls of brick or concrete. Stripped him. Sprayed him with frigid water, hard enough to leave welts. It pounded at every aching part of his body, all the bruises caused by sleeping and exercising on bare concrete. The chill penetrated to the marrow in his bones. His breath came in gasps.

Marsh had rolled into a ball on the floor before they finished. He clutched his knees, teeth chattering.

By the time the guards had wrestled him into clothes that weren’t crusted with grime, his eyes had remembered how to filter out the worst of the light. He could crack them open without overwhelming pain. His first glimpse of SS Haus showed nothing but a slotted drain in the center of a slick gray concrete floor. Water trickled through the stubble of his beard, dripped to his feet. The too-small shoes pressed painfully against his overgrown toenails.

They pulled his arms behind him and cuffed them at the wrists. From the shower they led him through a series of doors in what appeared to have been a laundry at one time but which was now filled with filing cabinets. Marsh also spied a cavernous room carved into the bedrock beneath the hotel. It had the look of a wine cellar, though this, too, was filled with row upon row of shelves and files.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.