Read The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds for Free Online Page B

Street, Marsh gauged. Stephenson’s window didn’t afford a grand view, mostly just the buildings across Broadway, but from here on the fifth floor of SISheadquarters, it was possible to glimpse the late-winter sun on the trees of St. James’ Park several streets over.
    “Hmmm.”
    Marsh looked back to his mentor. Stephenson opened a side drawer and produced a jeweler’s loupe, a holdover from his days as a photo recon analyst during the Great War. He examined a random sampling of film scraps with quiet concentration. One by one he held them up toward the window in his single hand, squinting through the magnifying lens. Marsh scooted aside so as not to block what little natural light the window provided.
    Marsh sighed. He pressed the backs of his fingers to his neck and cracked his knuckles against his jaw. Stephenson cleared his throat; Marsh dropped his hands.
    Years of polishing had imbued the wood-paneled walls with a satiny finish that reflected the soft glow of lamplight. The walls matched the bookcases, and Stephenson’s desk. Above the wainscoting hung maps; photographs of a young, two-armed Stephenson in flying leathers; and a few of his wife, Corrie’s, watercolors.
    Stephenson had married a Yank from Tennessee. She tended to paint landscapes and nature studies from memory, evoking the rolling hills of her home. Marsh’s mentor derived a strange amusement from decorating his office with images of plants foreign to a country of gardeners.
    “Well,” said Stephenson at last, still squinting at the film scraps, “I’m quite impressed. When you cock something up, you do it good and proper.”
    “Sir?”
    “I sent you to Spain to run a simple errand.”
    “Sir—”
    “Somebody just swans in and torches your contact and where are you, hmmm? Off getting pissed in the pub.”
    “Sir, it’s not as if some pikey came traipsing along with a bucket of kerosene—”
    “Hmm. This is interesting.” Stephenson held up one of the scraps. “What do you make of this one?”
    Marsh took the film in one hand and the loupe in the other. The fragment contained less than a dozen frames, several of which had been darkened by heat damage. A sequence of eight or nine frames—a fraction of a second—showed a woman standing in front of a brick wall, and then just the brick wall, with no transition from one frame to the next. She was nude except for the belt at her waist connected to her head by what appeared to be wires.
    “Looks like they stopped the camera.” He handed the items back to Stephenson. “Or perhaps this was spliced together from various sources.” He pointed at the film scrap. “Those things in her head. That’s what I saw in Barcelona. Different woman, though.” He shrugged. “It’s not the only oddity in the film, sir.”
    Stephenson waved him toward a chair upholstered in button-tufted chintz. As Marsh took the load off his feet, the old man opened another desk drawer and pulled out a bottle and two glasses.
    “Brandy?”
    “Please.” Marsh sank farther into the chair.
    “I imagine you could use it.”
    A knock sounded at the door while Stephenson poured. He called, “Yes, Marjorie.”
    His secretary peeked inside. “Sir, Commander Pryce from the Admiralty wants—Oh! You’re back.”
    Marsh nodded at her. “Hi, Margie.” She seemed pleased to see him. But she was a married woman, and that caused a pang of loneliness.
    “What ever it is, he’ll have to wait,” said Stephenson.
    “Sir, he said—”
    “Not now. I’ll call him back.”
    She nodded and withdrew.
    As the head of circulating section T (short for “technological surprise”), Stephenson was responsible for gathering intelligence pertaining to military technologies under development within Nazi Germany. Although the section itself was only a few years old, it descended from the historical roots of the organization prior to the Great War, when foreign espionage was the purview of the Admiralty, focused primarily