I suggest listening to It's A Good Day by Peggy Lee for the 1st part, The Zookeeper's Wife OST - The Bombings for the beginning of the 2nd part, and The Imitation Game OST - Alan for the 3rd and final part.
CHAPTER ONE
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
This much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
—Edgar Allen Poe—
But now I see you:
wind, woods, and water,
roaring at the rim of Christendom—
you, land,
to be left in darkness.
—Rilke—
June 7th, 1941, English countryside.
The powder-blue convertible stopped abruptly, and the driver threw her into reverse, backing up to inspect a small signpost at the corner of a country lane. The female driver, an attractive woman with coiled black curls pinned up neatly beneath her hunter-green fedora, pulled down her sunglasses, revealing wide blue eyes that set off her flawless features and dark hair wonderfully. Susan Pevensie inspected the sign and then smiled, setting her foot to the gas and turning down the dirt road.
She left the signpost behind.
It read: Lark Cottage, 1 mile.
Gravel spit beneath the convertible's tires as Susan turned onto a private drive, and she smelled the scent of the Professor's rose garden on the breeze. A fond smile came to her crimson lips as she parked and exited her convertible, walking down a stone path around the back of the house to the lawn.
"Going, going, sold— to the woman in blue!"
Susan moved down the path running parallel to the house, the edge of her skirt catching on a little breeze. A rose branch draped down into the path, and she heard it snag lightly against her hose, but it didn't tear—she'd have known if it had, so she went on her way.
An auction was in process for the Lark Cottage, property of the late, former professor of English Renaissance history and linguistics at Oxford, Digory Kirke. He would be missed by friends and family, certainly. But he hadn't left any will whatsoever, and, because there was no will, his possessions in life were being sold to whoever desired to put out the money to pay for them—what artifacts or treasures he had collected over his time as a professor were going to be donated to Oxford. His house was scheduled be auctioned after all the belongings had gone—or after all had gone that people felt they needed—but then a lawyer had swooped in some weeks before and purchased the estate and grounds outright, so the house was no longer included in the auction. It had upset the auctioneer for a bit, before he was paid handsomely for his troubles.
Two dozen or so white folding chairs were set out on the clipped lawn of Lark Cottage, and lemonade was offered at a small table set up on a stone terrace overlooking the small pond and the rose garden below.
Susan took a moment to observe the view of it; the professor had always been so proud of his roses, she recalled fondly. They looked a bit overgrown from her vantage point, she noticed. But Edmund would set everything right when he came out to stay in August. It was his house now, after all, she thought, and her smile returned, the frown straightening out on her lovely features.
EE||ƎƎ
June 7th, 1941, near the docks, London, England
The windowless manager's office in the dark, abandoned warehouse made for an ideal interrogation room.
Hiding the June sunlight, it was spacious enough that an interrogator could pace comfortably without looking too much like a caged lion in a zoo.
The pigeon-hole desk had been shoved against the far wall, along with the file cabinets and trash basket to make space, and a chair had been set beneath the broken light fixture in the center of the room. But the ceiling fan was broken—its blades torn off by some wayward vandal or scrapper who had broken in in the days before the war—so there wasn't much by way of air movement.
The latest occupant of the center-stage chair bent double over his lap, head between his knees, vomiting everything he didn't have in his stomach onto the floorboards.
"Tell me what you know about Die Weltenbaum! Sag mir, was du weisst! Die Weltenbaum! Schnell!"
The man in shirtsleeves, his tie filthy, lifted his head and looked at his interrogator, broken nose running.
"Geh zur Hölle, Engländer." The corners of the German's grey eyes crinkled as he smiled, showing bloody teeth, and his gravelly laughter wheezed from him like air from a broken accordion until he began coughing.
The interrogator, Benjamin Henleigh, better known as Agent X among his coworkers, slapped a thick grey file down onto the old desk and increased his pacing at the edge of the pool of light the bulbs cast on the wooden floor.
"You want me to kill you." Agent X stepped up to his captive and grasped the back of the chair he'd tied the German to, tilting it on its back legs some four inches. Dead grey eyes—like a shark's eyes—bored into livid, rich brown eyes.
"Ja, das wäre nett. Beende dies," the spy muttered with a swollen tongue, nodding pragmatically.
Agent X let the chair thud back to the floor, rocking the German sharply, and hissed with disgust. "If only I could kill you. You've no idea how much I wish I could." He sneered at the other man. "Pity I can't." Agent X set his hand down on the dossier he'd left on the desk, splaying his fingers across the front. "I need information, Gorben; this childish belligerence won't help you."
The German glared at the shadowy place the other man stood in. "Ich weish nichts über Die Weltenbaum!"
A harsh bang resonated within the abandoned office following the German's frustrated shout. Agent X struck his hand against one of the filing cabinets he'd opened to retrieve a second file, slamming the drawer closed.
He came back, dragging a second chair along the floor and set it up in front of the German, slapping down an open file onto the seat.
"Now, you're going to look at those pictures, and look at them well, Max Gorben, and then try to tell me you don't know about Die Weltenbaum."Benjamin walked toward the left, then clapped his hand on the back of the German's neck and leaned down, pointing toward the open file laden with black and white pictures stapled to the papers.
The German didn't lower his gaze from staring blanking at the wall across from him, and as Benjamin came back around, he noticed this. "You're not looking, Gorben!"
"Ja, Ich kenne," the Abwehr agent said softly. "I know," he repeated in English, hardly audible. But then his eyes strayed downward.
He looked, studied the pictures, nodded once, and then quietly Agent X shuffled forward and lifted the file, taking a seat in the chair and dropping the dossier on the floor. He folded his hands, knees open and elbows resting on his thighs. His shoulders hunched and he looked at the German special agent. "We," he gestured from himself and back again, "are in a similar field. I will kill you if I must, but I do not like killing good men; and you seem a good man. Not like others I've shot in the head."
With a sigh, Benjamin stood and went to the desk, pulling two glasses and a small bottle from three of the pigeon holes. Messily he poured the drink into each glass, and came back. He set one glass on the second chair, and from the other, he drank, savoring the flavor.
He glanced down at the German's back. "I imagine you would like to go home."
"Mein-my daughter... ist to be zwölf, das year..."
"Twelve. My, what a big girl. She must miss her Papa." Benjamin came back around, standing profile. He stared off blankly, then looked down before tossing back the rest of his water.
"Ja."
"I would like to go home, too." He came back, picked up the second glass, and held it to the German's lips.
The two men traded glances, the German wary, the Englishman soft. Cautiously, the German drank. Agent X's eyes were kind and warm, despite the situation. Then, he took the drink back.
"But are you not... home... already?" Gorben looked up, his brows snarling together as he puzzled through what he had been told.
Benjamin stood at the desk, pouring more water. He looked up, tilted his head slightly over his shoulder, raven black hair brushing his collar. "No, I am not." For a moment his accent was not English.
EE||ƎƎ
"Pretty, miss."
A smooth, deep-toned masculine voice came at Susan's left elbow, and she turned, her hands still braced against the black iron of the fence on the wind came across her face, brushing and gently soft. It rustled the shade oaks overhead. She looked into a man's was tall, perhaps seven inches over six feet, and his hair was brown near the roots, paling out into a waving, honey-golden blond. But none of this made him noticeable. In fact, he was altogether rather unremarkable, save for his eyes. They were a swirling nebulae of greens and blues and silvery-gold, and they did not match with his dark hair.
She smiled at him. "Yes, the gardens are very pretty—I came here once, as a girl. Before the war."
Behind them, faintly, the auctioneer kept of a raucous bid now for a pair of bookends, his voice mesmerizing and quick.
The auction was a buzz added to the background symphony of the out-of-doors, and kept Susan mindful of why she had come.
The man shook his head, coming up around her right, as if he'd been meaning to leave, but had paused to speak with her. "No, I meant you, miss." He looked at her and smiled; again his eyes captured her attention before he touched the brim of his brown fedora and turned, striding down the path she had taken to get here, his shoes making a soft tapping against the flagstones as he went.
For a moment, Susan watched him go, then turned back to her quest, walking across the grass to where a pair of expansive white curtains had been strung up on cords to form a corner, blocking off a large section of back patio near a set of open french doors.
Susan ducked behind the billowing white curtains and approached a smallish man with thinning hair dyed black and combed across his balding head. He wore round spectacles, and reminded her of a mouse as he scurried among the valuables set out on tables and crates, waiting to be carried out to the patio for the auctioneer to sell off. He paused at a narrow opening where the left curtain stopped at six steps leading up to the higher patio the auctioneer was using to serve as his stage, and looked at his watch, pulling it from a pocket in his stripped vest.
"Excuse me?" Susan smiled and focused on the little man as two broad workmen, their shirtsleeves rolled up, carried a desk out of the house.
The mousy man turned to her, his eyes like lively brown marbles behind his glasses. "Oh yes? What? Miss, you shouldn't be back here, the property is to be auctioned, and I simply cannot make another deal on something valuable. Alistair will not be pleased," he sputtered unhappily with a deal of helplessness, reaching up a hand to touch the top of his head; but then his hand flinched away from the action, as if suddenly remembering he hadn't hair enough to run his fingers through.
Susan caught onto his words quickly, and a frown turned down her lovely face. "Another deal?" she asked. Worry stirred in her chest, but she quickly put it down and instead attempted to use her beauty to appeal to the anxious little man.
His eyes darted across her and then swept back out to the patio, but then finally they came back, and he nodded. "Yes, a gentleman came, bought something. And I-i, well," he shrugged his shoulders and smiled sheepishly, "I sold it to him. The offer was handsome, more than any of these country people would give." As he said 'country people' he poked his head out between the curtains where they met to form a corner and glanced at those who had congregated on the shaded lawn. He shook his head disapprovingly. "I told Alistair we should take everything back to London," he muttered to himself. "Better audience for this sort of business."
Susan came toward him and touched his arm and then pulled back. "What did you sell? Pray, not a little box of rings? Ten of them? Green and gold?" She clutched at his arm, tightly now. "Oh, please tell me you didn't!"
The little man shook his head and sort of slunk his gaze away, embarrassed. He nodded at last. "I did. For twenty pounds."
Susan gave a small sound of dismay.
He looked up at her regretfully, blinked. "They were such small things, not valuable—not gold or expensive. And twenty pounds, that is a good deal... A great deal compared to what Alistair would have got."
Susan nodded, and turned to go away. But then, suddenly, hopefulness lept into her heart, and she came back, her blue eyes bright. "What did this man look like? Tell me what you can and perhaps I might find him." She nodded eagerly.
The man frowned, reached up to touch the nose-piece of his glasses. He shook his head for a moment, frowning hard. "Hmm, no, no..." Then he looked at her. "His eyes, they were striking, his brows were dark, as if his hair was dyed. I only noticed it because I dye my own and so I was wondering—"
"Yes, yes, thank you!" Susan hurriedly interrupting, taking the man's hand in quick thanks. She was nearly out the curtain when something the man said stopped her. "What?" She turned back.
"Old marks. German marks, I only noticed because he paid me with them at first, and his accent, for a moment... But... Oh, it's hopeless. I have an overactive imagination. Spies, in the countryside. Ridiculous! Nothing they could want out here." The little man shook his head and motioned with his hands before bending to inspect a clock with a small face that looked like a smiling full moon.
But to Susan, the moon leered eerily. A frightening grimace foretelling what was to come in the days ahead.
A German, with eyes like stars.
And a smooth voice, a handsome face, and honey-golden hair that curled across his forehead in a thick wing.
"Pretty miss."
Susan clutched her handbag tighter, and it bobbed against her leg as she hurried back to her convertible. She slid in and slammed the door, throwing her handbag into the passenger seat. The engine lept to life as Susan spun the steering wheel and turned back down the drive, gravel crunching beneath her tires as she took the turn from the private drive back onto the narrow country road. The wind rushed up against her windshield and blew across her face, and Susan glanced over at the spilled contents of her purse, and the handgun peeking its barrel out at her.
Edmund had been right.
Peter had warned her.
There is a Nazi German spy in England, and he is looking for anything rumored to be even remotely magical to bring to one of Hitler's top-secret research divisions.
He will kill anyone who gets in his way. We must stop him, before he steals Digory's rings.
Susan gripped the wheel, and her expression turned deadly. She set her chin, and her eyes glittered hard as chips of ice. She had seen him, and she had let him go.
She wouldn't let that happen again.
Next time, she would kill him.
A/N:
Review, it keeps me inspired!
The German in this chapter follows along these lines: The Abwehr agent is being asked what he knows about a certain mission, he says he doesn't know anything. Agent X then proves he does by supplying photographs of him meeting with a lead Nazi spy involved in a covert operation called "The World Tree" (Die Weltenbaum). There is also a moment when the German says "go to hell, Englishman" and also "yes, that would be nice. Finish this." in response to Agent X asking "you want me to kill you?"
Aside: Yes, I am back! I plan on being back for awhile. I have several fanfics that I need to finish, and still more that I need to update.
If you loved The Chronicles of Narnia, then you'll love the first book in a new fantasy series: So Sang The Dawn by AnnMarie Pavese! Coming out soon is my crossover fanfic between Ms. Pavese's fantasy universe and Marvel Cinematic Universe's Loki from Thor (2011) called Frostheim!
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