Mr. Churchill's Secretary (21 page)

Before he could stop it, his thoughts returned to the night that the British had burned down his house, killing his mother. He’d hidden in the shed and finally crept out and saw the Black and Tans beating his father to the
ground, then giving his lifeless form another savage kick before divesting him of his wedding ring and pocket watch.

As he hid behind the corner of the house to observe them go, eyes blank with shock, he heard one of the men. “Look, there’s a little one!”

The other men looked, ready for another fight. “Should we get him?” one asked, not eager to leave any witnesses behind.

“Nah, he’s not worth it, after all,” the first man said. “Here, lad. Catch!” And he threw the pocket watch through the air.

Without thinking, Murphy’s hand reached up into the air, and he caught it before hitting the dirt path, hard. The watch was solid and warm in his small hand.

“Something to remember your dear dad by,” the man said, cackling.

His companions laughed. “And us, too!” one shouted as they made their way off into the darkness.

Looping the last green, white, and orange wires around the pocket watch, he thought,
This is for you, Da
, and then he gave the screw a final twist.

The day went on—there were letters to write, dictation to take, filing to do. But still Maggie couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling that she had almost seen something. As though out of the corner of her eye.

Could it be?
she thought, reaching for the newspaper again.

No
.

No, no, no
.

Her hands found the paper, flipping it open again to the page with the advert. She couldn’t take her eyes from the stitching, the dots and dashes.

Nelson meowed, loud and long, and came over to her. He rubbed against her ankles, purring.

She ran her hands through her hair. “Nelson, quiet! I’m trying to think.”

Abwehr was the German intelligence agency—the counterpart to MI-5 and MI-6. It had three distinct types of spies operating in Britain. The first, known as the S-Chain, consisted of agents who entered the country with false British identities and engaged in spying. R-Chain agents were third-country nationals—neither British nor German—who entered Britain legally, collected intelligence, and reported their findings back to Hamburg or Berlin. Then there were the V-Chain agents—sleeper agents who melted seamlessly into English life, waiting to be contacted and activated.

Malcolm Pierce had been waiting for years.

In the bedroom of his apartment, he double-checked to make sure his blackout curtains were completely closed. Then he locked the bedroom door.

To the casual observer, the bedroom looked unremarkable. There was striped green paper on the walls, a mahogany four-poster bed, and gold-framed paintings of foxes and hounds. There were no personal mementos or photographs. A large bay window provided an excellent lookout onto the street below. And in the closet, hidden underneath piles and piles of merino and cashmere sweaters wrapped in tissue, was a suitcase radio.

Pierce had been living in London under an assumed name for almost a decade, but he still found himself longing for the strong black coffee and
baumkuchen
of his childhood. He shook off the thought and took down the suitcase, placing it next to the window for optimal reception. He opened the lid and switched it on.

Every week, on Monday nights at ten, he switched on the radio and listened for fifteen minutes. If the higher-ups in Berlin had orders for him, that’s how they’d contact him.

Every Monday night for ten years he’d opened his suitcase by the window and listened. Every Monday night he had pen, paper, and codebook ready, just in case. And nearly every Monday night, all he’d heard was this empty hiss of the airwaves. The communiqués he did receive were always short and sporadic.

Tonight, however, would be different. The message had been placed in the newspaper advert. Claire had clipped it and sent it to the contact in Norway, who’d posted it on to Berlin. And tonight he would receive his orders.

After what seemed like an interminable wait, the radio sputtered to life.

The operator in Hamburg typed out code, fast and staccato. Pierce wrote it down, then asked the operator to repeat the message, standard protocol. She did, and he acknowledged and signed off.

It took Pierce several more minutes with the codebook to decode the message.

When he did, he held it in shaking hands and stared at it in incredulity and wonder.

Bedienhandlung die Zuversicht
.

Translated, it read: Execute Operation Hope.

“John?”

John looked up from the pool of light from his green-glass banker’s lamp, which illuminated the neat stack of papers on his wooden desk in the private secretaries’ underground office.

There was a large black-and-white sign admonishing
Quiet, please
, propped up against a metal pipe. Next to it hung a gas mask. David’s desk, on the other side of the room, was a mess, covered with a paper proclaiming in large block-print letters,
For the love of GOD and COUNTRY, do NOT TOUCH
. A clock with a white face and black Roman numerals ticked off the seconds
loudly, while a tiny metal fan recirculated the stale, warm air.

“Yes?” he said, his angular face breaking into a smile.

Maggie looked down at the scrap of newspaper in her hand, then back at John’s desk. He had a cubby with shelves marked
The Prime Minister, Air Ministry, Secret, Most Secret
, and
The King
.

She looked back down at the clipping in her hand, ink coming off on her fingers.
A women’s fashion advertisement, no less. It’s preposterous
, she thought. She could just picture Snodgrass’s reaction.

“Maggie?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Just …”

“Yes?”

She turned back around and sighed. She trusted John—she did. He’d stuck up for her in front of Snodgrass, after all. She walked a few steps forward and handed him the newspaper clipping.

John’s eyebrows drew together. He had to remind himself to breathe naturally with her so close. “Are ladies’ skirts shorter this year?”

“No, no,” Maggie said impatiently. “Look at it. Really look.”

“I don’t—”

“Look!”

John did. “I see … I see a newspaper clipping. It’s a clipping of an advertisement for ladies’ fashion.” He looked closer. “I see … drawings of women in dresses and hats.”

“Ah!” Maggie said. “You’re getting closer now. Look more closely at those lines.”

John squinted. “The drawings are comprised of lines. Lines and crosshatching. And dots—”

“Yes!”
Ding, ding, ding! A Kewpie doll for the private secretary!

John shrugged. “It looks like any other newspaper advert.”

“But—don’t you see? Dots and dashes.”
Do I have to hit him over the head with it?
“It could be code!”

John gave a heavy sigh. “Look, Maggie, I appreciate your enthusiasm, I do. And I know you’ve been taking notes for the Boss and Mr. Frain, so it’s no wonder you’ve got spies on your mind. But I think this is a bit of a reach.”

Maggie set her jaw. “I’ll have you know, steganography is the practice of writing code in plain sight. The word comes from the Greek for ‘concealed writing.’ The first recorded example of its use is Herodotus in 440
B.C
., when Demaratus sent a warning about a proposed attack on Greece by writing it directly on the wooden back of a wax tablet before applying the beeswax.”

“Yes, but—”

“And Herodotus tells us about a warning about a Persian invasion of Greece tattooed on the head of a slave. The hair grew in so no one could see it—and then the Greeks got the message when they shaved the slave’s head.”

“Maggie, I—”

“There’s a grand historic tradition of messages hidden in ordinary places,” she said in clipped tones. “So you won’t mind if I have a go?”

“Suit yourself,” John said with an inscrutable look.

“I’ll need a Morse-code book.”

John got up, pulled one down from the shelf, and handed it to her.

She turned on her heel to leave.

“Maggie,” he called after her, gently, “why don’t you leave it here with me? I’ll take a look and then show it to Snodgrass.”

“No, no. I’ll keep it,” she shot back at him over her shoulder. “Thanks, anyway.”

“Maggie!” he called after her. She stopped and turned. “There’s a lecture tonight at LSE. Anthony Eden’s speaking. Tonight at seven. The Peacock Theatre on Portugal Street.”

“So?” Maggie said, still annoyed.

“Meet me there. We can talk.”

M
AGGIE WAS LATE
.

She ran through the cold mist for the Regent Street bus, getting to LSE after seven. John was waiting in the chilly, smoke-filled lobby, leaning against a magnolia-painted Ionic column, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets.

“Ah,” he said, his angular face softening for a moment. “There you are.” He looked tired and wan; his eyes had dark circles.

“Hello, John,” she said.
Well, at least the lecture’s starting—we don’t have to talk anymore
. “Then shall we go in?”

He gave a courtly bow. “After you.”

They found two seats together in the back of the crowded auditorium filled with chattering students who called to one another, smelling of smoke and wet wool, wrapped in their purple-and-yellow-striped school scarves. Maggie felt a sharp pang as she looked around at them all.
This is where I might have studied
, she thought.
At least Aunt Edith would approve of the evening’s outing. And it’s where my father once taught, after all
.

They sat together in what was growing to be an uncomfortable silence.

The lights in the auditorium soon dimmed, and
Anthony Eden walked onto the stage. Maggie recognized him from the office, medium build, with a thick black mustache, black eyes, and a square jaw. As his speech on the importance of keeping up morals while under attack came to an end, she shrugged back into her light coat.

John asked, “There’s a nice café nearby. Er, would you like to get a cup of coffee?”

“Are we going to discuss—that matter?”

“Of course.”

At the café they sat on rickety wooden chairs. John leaned down and put a matchbook under the marble-topped table to steady it. Maggie glanced around. The walls were papered with faded pink roses and blue hydrangea, and the waitresses looked tired and harried. Maggie and John ordered two cups of coffee.

Maggie stirred a splash of what was passing for milk into the thick, red ceramic mug to make the watery brown water drinkable. “Brownian motion,” she said, warming her hands on the cup. “When you stir in the milk it swirls around and disperses, but if you stir backward, it will never come together again. You can’t stir things apart.”

“God’s a Newtonian, then?”

“I believe in free will, actually.”

“But you’re a mathematician!”

“They’re not mutually exclusive concepts.” She took a sip. “I really do miss American coffee.”

He looked wounded. “British coffee’s good.”

“No, it’s not. Come on, you’re all so particular about your tea. Surely you could take the same care with coffee. It’s delicious when it’s done right—all dark and rich.”

He drew himself up. “Well, I’m sorry it’s not to your liking. There’s a war on, you know.”

“It’s fine, John.” They sat in strained silence for a while.
Obviously, this was a terrible idea
.

“You know, Americans can’t make proper tea.”

Oh, for God’s sake
. She stared, incredulous.

He looked vaguely flustered. “I just meant that the coffee …” Then, off her look, “This isn’t about coffee, it’s that you can’t go around criticizing other countries when you’re a guest there. Here.”

“John,” Maggie said. “Taste the coffee. I mean, really. It’s terrible. This is not about national pride. Bad coffee is bad coffee is bad coffee. Besides, not only am I a citizen, but I’m a homeowner. And a taxpayer. And I work for the
Prime Minister
.”

“Oh, forget it.” He took a big gulp of the muck and tried not to grimace. “So what did you think of Eden’s speech?”

All right, let’s try again
. “Interesting. But I have to admit I was still thinking about the … puzzle.”

His dark brows drew together.

She lowered her voice. “The code. You know, the one in the advert? I’ve been working on it all afternoon.”

“Right. And?”

She sighed. “And … well … nothing. Nothing yet, that is.”

“Maggie—do you actually think there’s a possibility …”

“Yes?”

“A possibility … well, that you’re seeing things that aren’t there? After all, there are censors—people trained to pick up that kind of information.”

“Oh, you mean the Oxbridge men?” she snorted. Then, “Look, I’m working on my own time, so I don’t see what business it is of yours.”

There was a long silence, and Maggie checked her watch. “Do you need to get back to the office?” she asked, finishing the last of her coffee and blotting her
lips with the napkin, leaving a faint red kiss. “Or do you have Saint Paul’s Watch tonight?”