The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis Read Free Book Online Page A

But before Marsh could get the spoon in, his son began to wail: a single, unbroken note that lasted as long as the air in his lungs.
    He did it again. And again. And again.

 
    two
    9 May 1963
Lambeth, London, England
    Modern London wasn’t a patch on its former self. The smells, the sounds, the architecture … little remained of the city Klaus remembered.
    He’d been here once before, briefly, on a rescue mission after Gretel had handed herself to a British agent. From time to time during the long years at Arzamas-16, his thoughts had drifted back to London. Britain had survived the war; to Klaus, that made it a shining place.
    He was a different man now. More enlightened. No longer the devoted, unquestioning tool he’d been a lifetime ago. But London had changed even more than he.
    He remembered a place somber yet grand, a temple built of granite and brick and marble. Gothic buildings, baroque buildings, and others for which he lacked the vocabulary. Statues, monuments, and memorials. They had struck him as a decadent obsession with the past; an omen of Britain’s inevitable downfall. What a naïf he’d been.
    But what he saw as their train entered London shocked him. And the deeper they delved into the heart of the city, the more it saddened him.
    Bits and pieces of the old city remained. Sometimes entire streets, but those were rare. Often the remnants were sandwiched between newer and utterly uninspired constructions. It was as though the city’s character, its personality, had been scrubbed away. The Blitz had destroyed the city’s soul—shattered it, charred it, tossed its ashes to the wind—and the hole had been patched with a cheap prosthetic. Functional but soulless.
    â€œIt’s so different,” he whispered.
    â€œNothing lasts forever,” said Gretel from the seat beside him, concentrating on her newspaper. The chill, his constant companion since their final night at Arzamas, tingled at the unscratchable spot between his shoulder blades. As it often did when she spoke. The Luftwaffe’s domination of the skies over Britain had unfolded largely because of her advice. She clicked the biro she’d snatched from a passing businessman and circled something in blue ink. She’d been scouring classified ads since they arrived in the country. Klaus hadn’t known what classifieds were until she’d explained the idea to him.
    It wasn’t just the buildings that had changed. He’d been immersed in half a dozen languages since crossing the border. Predominantly French, but also Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, something he guessed was Basque … even some German. The languages of those who had found a way across the Channel before the Iron Curtain slammed shut.
    Klaus had never perfected his English. He took comfort in knowing it didn’t matter any longer.
    Gretel and he had kept strictly to English since their midnight embarkation at Calais. Britain’s border policy wasn’t what it had been, no longer welcoming with open arms the huddled masses from the sliver of supposedly free Europe wedged between Paris and the coast. Draconian measures on both sides of the Channel had throttled the flow of refugees and immigrants to less than a trickle. Those without papers had little chance of staying in England. But Gretel, of course, had seen a way.
    Ireland and Canada sounded like better destinations, but she had shrugged off the suggestions.
    The screech of wheels on track reverberated through the train as it slowed to enter Waterloo Station. Klaus slid forward in his seat. He checked his fedora again. He didn’t have a wig, so he’d have to make do with a hat and ill-fitting clothes to hide his wires. During his first trip to London, he’d worn a wig and a counterfeit naval officer’s uniform. He yearned for that disguise now. Strutting around in public with exposed wires contradicted a lifetime of