Princess Elizabeth's Spy (28 page)

“We’re partners, Maggie. And friends. And … more. I’d do anything to help you.”

“I know.”

Prime Minister Winston Churchill was in his large Victorian bathtub in the Annexe when his butler, Mr. Inches, showed in Peter Frain.

The P.M., plump, rosy, and naked as a cherub, was immersed in steaming water, smoking a cigar, glass tumbler of brandy and soda balanced on the edge of the tub.

“Prime Minister,” Frain said.

“Take a seat,” Churchill growled. Then he shouted to Mrs. Tinsley, seated outside the bathroom door with her noiseless typewriter propped on her lap. “We’re done, Mrs. T.! Go away!”

“Yes, sir,” she said serenely, picking up the typewriter and her papers and making her way downstairs.

Frain sat down on the wooden chair placed in Churchill’s bathroom specifically for meetings. He tried not to stare at the large, pink form. “Sir.”

The P.M. splashed like a child, then a shadow passed over his face. “Inches!” he bellowed.

The beleaguered butler appeared in the doorway. “Sir?”

“I believe the temperature of my bath has dropped below one hundred and four degrees, Inches. Check. Now.”

The butler entered the bathroom and went to the tub. He knelt, rolled up one sleeve and reached into the water, pulling up a thermometer that was attached by a thin chain to the faucet.

“Well?” the P.M. demanded, chewing on the end of his cigar.

“Ninety-nine degrees, sir. Shall I add more hot water?”

“Damn it, yes! Do I need to tell you everything?”

“No, sir,” Inches said mildly as he turned on the hot water tap.

Frain permitted himself a small smile, thinking of the rest of Britons with their five-inch water mark and limited supplies of hot water. Rules just never seemed to apply to Winston Churchill.

As the tub filled, the P.M.’s lip jutted forward in a pout. “Now get out!”

“Yes, sir.” Inches took his leave.

Churchill rested his cigar in a cut-glass ashtray, then sank beneath the waterline and blew bubbles. Rising to the surface, he stared up at the ceiling, floating. “I was thinking about our meeting at MI-Five today.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It occurs to me that, with Miss Hope’s connections, we have an in.”

“The thought has occurred to me, too, sir. Miss Hope did well at Windsor. She’s in much better physical shape now, stronger, with more endurance. I think with some additional training up in Scotland, we’ll have her ready to go in a few months.”

Churchill blew a few blue smoke rings. “War’s a nasty business, my friend.”

“It is, indeed, sir.”

“And when we see an advantage, we must press—no matter what the personal cost.”

“If that’s your decision, sir.”

The P.M. took a swig of brandy and soda. “It is.” He waved Frain away. “Tell Mrs. T. to invite Miss Hope to Number Ten this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was strange for Maggie to return to No. 10 Downing Street after so many months and so much that had happened. She remembered how nervous she’d been when she’d first knocked on that dignified front door, so plain and black and unpretentious. She was met by Richard Snodgrass, her former nemesis, now her colleague and friend.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Snodgrass,” she said, extending her hand.

He shook it. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss Hope. Follow me, please.”

She followed Mr. Snodgrass through the dignified hallways of No. 10, past the main entrance with its grand cantilever staircase, and through several carpeted hallways. They reached a small conference room, where a projector and screen were set up. A cut-crystal bowl of apples—green Bramleys, bright red Bismarcks, and mottled Pippins—was set in the middle of the polished wood table.

“Hello, David,” Maggie said, surprised, as David rose to greet her.

“I just found out about all of this myself, Maggie.”

“All of what?” she asked as Mr. Snodgrass left them.

“You’ll see.”

The door opened and in came Frain and another man, short and round, where Frain was tall and slim. In his late fifties, with a beaky nose and a shiny pate. “Hello, Maggie, David,” Frain began. “I’d like to introduce Sir Frank Nelson, head of the so-called Baker Street Irregulars.”

“Sir Frank,” Maggie said, extending her hand. “How do you do?”

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Hope.”

Maggie’s mind was racing. “Baker Street Irregulars?” She’d heard rumors of a secret spy organization, but had always assumed they were just that—rumors. “How very Holmesian.”

“Nickname for the Special Operations Executive, or S.O.E.,” David said, pleased, for once, to know something she didn’t. “Also known as Churchill’s Secret Army, Churchill’s Toyshop, or the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”

“We’re a bit off the grid, Miss Hope. Our mission is to coordinate espionage and sabotage. All hush-hush, of course,” Sir Frank said.

Maggie shot David a look. “Of course.”

They all sat down at the conference table, waiting. Finally, the door burst open. It was the Prime Minister. “You’re all here? Good, good,” Churchill rumbled, taking a seat. He waved his already-lit cigar. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

Frain began. “Maggie, what can you tell me about your mother?”

My mother? Will it never end?
“Not very much,” Maggie replied. “As you know, I was raised by my Aunt Edith Hope, outside of Boston, Massachusetts. She didn’t talk about my parents much, and I never pushed her to.” She shrugged. “Until this very morning, I thought that my mother was a typical English housewife, who’d died far too young in an automobile accident. I knew that she played the piano, loved books. In my mind, in the past that I constructed, she was a loving mother and an adoring wife.” She gave a sharp laugh. “Well, that was the fantasy, anyway.”

“Your father sent you one of her books.”

“Yes, he sent it to me at Windsor. The Princess Elizabeth spilled tea on some of the pages, and—well, you know the rest.”

“You found code contained in that book, code to a Sektion agent. The code contained the names of three MI-Five agents who were to be assassinated.”

“Yes,” Maggie said, her heart pierced with sadness as she thought of Hugh’s father and the other agents killed.

“You believed your father was the double agent. But today, you found out it was your mother who was the Sektion agent.”

“Yes.” Then, “Look, what’s this all about? Why, with a war going on, are we talking about something that happened over twenty years ago?”

“Because, Miss Hope,” Sir Frank said, “your mother is, indeed, still quite relevant to us in this war, right now.” He motioned to David. “Mr. Greene, would you turn on the projector?”

David turned off the overhead lights and then flipped the switch on the projector, the incandescent light bulb glowing and the fan whining. Mr. Stevens turned off the overhead lights.

Maggie was bewildered. First she was told it was her mother, not her father, who was a double agent responsible for murdering five British officers. Now she was back at No. 10, asked to watch—a slide show?

David dropped a slide in the projector. The black-and-white slide was old; still, the lovely woman photographed was obviously Maggie’s mother, at approximately Maggie’s current age.

Sir Frank took a deep breath. “This is Claudia Hess, better known to you as Clara Hope. In 1912, she was recruited to Sektion by Special Agent Albrecht Kortig.”

Maggie stiffened.

Stevens paused but pressed on. “She was given a mission. She was to pose as a British woman, a student at the London School of Economics. She was to make the acquaintance of a British agent, Edmund Hope. She was to make him fall in love with her, to become his confidante.”

“And to murder three MI-Five agents,” Maggie managed.

“Yes,” Sir Frank replied, evenly. “And then, she faked her own death in a car accident, and made her way back to Germany. Next slide, please.” David hit a button. The picture was now of an older woman, with the same thick hair and fine features. Her eyes were inscrutable.

If Maggie hadn’t already been sitting down, her legs would have buckled under her.
What more can they throw at me?
“Is that her? But that’s a recent picture! Surely that’s not possible?”

“Clara Hess, the woman known in Britain as Clara Hope, returned to Germany,” Stevens said, ignoring Maggie’s questions. “Ultimately, became the agent known as Commandant Hess, along with Walther Shellenberg, one of the most dangerous figures in the Abwehr. The figure behind the attempt to assassinate the King and kidnap the Princess.”

“
She’s
Commandant Hess?” Maggie breathed.

David turned the overhead light back on.

Winston Churchill studied her, with eyes blue and cold. “You’ve proven yourself to be mentally, emotionally, and physically capable of being an S.O.E. agent. How would you like to go to Berlin?” He glanced at Frain. “We have a few things that need doing over there—including a few that have to do with Clara Hess. We thought, after all your hard work, that you’d like to do the honors.”

Maggie, in her room at David’s flat, was packing the last of her things in a valise. She was going for three months of intensive training at an S.O.E. camp in Scotland, and then, when ready, a nighttime parachute drop into Germany.

Edmund Hope stood at the doorway, coat still on, twisting his hat in his hands. “Maggie, I don’t want you to go.”

“Dad, this is my job now. I must.” Finding an armload of socks and stockings, she dropped them into her open bag. “She’s a German spy, one who nearly succeeded in running a mission to kill the King and kidnap the Princess. One who’s plotting God knows what else as we speak. That doesn’t bother you?”

“Of course it does,” he snapped, “but it doesn’t need to be
you
!”

“Mr. Churchill asked me.” She went to her closet.

“Forget Churchill! It’s too dangerous.”

“I would disagree,” Maggie said, taking a few dresses off hangers. “And the Prime Minister and Mr. Frain think otherwise, too.”

“Look, she’s a despicable human being, a sociopath. Do you really think you can just walk up to her and say, ‘Hello, Mother’?”

Maggie gave a tight smile as she folded the dresses and placed them in her suitcase. “That’s not in the mission plan.”

“And even if you do have a moment where you can reconnect, it doesn’t change what she did!”

She turned back to the closet, rummaging for sweaters on a high shelf. “Dad, I know. Hugh is—one of my best friends. How could I possibly forget what she did to his father, the pain he still carries? And that she did the same thing to nineteen other families?”

“Do you expect her to say, ‘Oh, my dear darling daughter, how I’ve missed you all these years? Let’s go shopping and then have tea?’”

“N-no. No! Of course not!” Maggie took down a few sweaters, then turned and looked Edmund in the eye. “There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about, though.”

“Yes?”

“When I went to what I thought were your graves at Highgate Cemetery—which turned out to be only her grave—there were fresh white roses by the headstone. I remember the gardener said a man came regularly, to leave them. Is that you? Were you—are you—leaving flowers on her grave?”

Edmund lowered his eyes. “Yes,” he said finally.

“But why? She betrayed you—betrayed us. She’s not even there, not even dead! Why?”

“I loved her,” Edmund answered. “Or at least the person I thought she was.”

“I see,” Maggie said, not seeing at all. She placed the sweaters in the suitcase.

After a few moments passed, Edmund rubbed at his eyes with his fist, then said, “And, what, exactly, is your mission?”

“I’m afraid, Dad,” she said, closing the valise and tightening the leather buckle, “that it’s classified.”

They both heard voices in the flat. “Maggie? Maggie?”

“Coming!” she called. Then, to her father, “they’re giving me a little party before I leave.” There was an awkward pause. “Would you like to stay?”

Edmund tugged at his collar. “I have to get back to the office, actually. I’m off the Bletchley case now. Getting a new assignment.”

“I’ll walk you out, then,” Maggie told him.

People had already begun to arrive. David put a Fred Astaire record on the phonograph and she could hear him in the kitchen, using a pick to make ice chips for shaking cocktails. As “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” began to play, he came in with a tray of glasses full of amber liquid.

“Sure you won’t stay?” she asked.

“Afraid not,” he said. “Good luck, Maggie.”

“Thank you. To you too.” She let him kiss her cheek before he left.

After the door closed, the party began in earnest. David was there, as was Hugh, talking to Sarah, perched on the windowsill. And there were a few dancers from the ballet and people from No. 10, including Richard Snodgrass.

“Don’t suppose you can tell us what you’re up to next, Miss Hope?” Richard asked as Hugh handed her a martini.

“It’s terribly boring,” Maggie said as she accepted the glass. “Up to Scotland, to do goodness knows what sort of paperwork.”

“That’s your official story, then?” Richard asked.

“I’m afraid so.” She smiled. “And I’m standing by it.”

Hugh raised his glass. “To Maggie,” he said. “Wherever her travels may lead. Although, I must say, I hope they ultimately lead her back to me.”

“Thank you, Hugh,” she said, blushing.

“To Maggie,” the rest chorused.

She was momentarily speechless, then pulled herself together. “Thank you,” she said. “But I must toast to you, all of you—it’s a horrible war we’re in, but it’s had a strange way of bringing people together—and helping us all achieve much more than what we think we’re capable of. To us, then.”

“To us! Cheers!”

And they drank and danced long into the night.

The pilot had survived, but barely.

He’d survived first by burying his parachute. He’d survived by limping, then finally crawling, though fields and woods until he found a barn. He’d survived by drinking rainwater from a pig trough and eating their scraps. He’d survived by hiding his identity disks and ripping out any British labels in his clothes. And he’d survived by staying in the barn’s hayloft during the day, afraid to move a muscle or make a sound.

Still, with the internal organ damage he sustained, he wouldn’t be able to survive much longer, at least without proper medical care. Which was why, finally, he gave himself up to the farmer and his wife, Herr and Frau Schäfer.

They did not turn him into the local police.

Instead, they put him to bed in a room with fresh white sheets and fed him brown bread soaked in milk. When he had slept for hours and hours, he awoke to see Frau Schäfer sitting at his bedside, knitting a heavy wool sweater with hand-spun yarn.

“It’s all right,” she said in German, her gnarled fingers moving like lightning. “We know who you are, and you’re safe here.”

“Thank you,” he replied. He wished he had studied more German in school. Still, he tried his best. “I appreciate everything you and your husband are doing.”

“You’re very lucky,” she said, pointing a knitting needle at him.

“Lucky,” he repeated, and gave a sour laugh. In some ways he was—lucky to be alive, lucky to be picked up by sympathetic Germans—and in some ways he wasn’t—injured in enemy territory, mostly ignorant of the language.… 

“You
are
lucky,” she insisted. “God was looking out for you.”

He was a pro-forma Anglican, who attended church services at holidays only, and then mostly for the music. “I’m not sure if God had much to do with it.”

Herr Schäfer heard them talking and came in, his bulk blocking most of the doorframe. “God has everything to do with everything. Now make the poor man some breakfast, Maria. I’ve brought in the eggs.”

What saved him from despair was the courage of Maria and Hans Schäfer. He had no idea what the price would be for harboring an enemy soldier, but it had to be bad.

The Schäfers knew he had flown over their land, dropping bombs, and yet they fed him white asparagus with butter, golden fried potatoes, coarse sausages, and plum cake. They would not take any of his marks, which all RAF pilots flying over Germany were given in case of an emergency, to help out with the added food ration. “We live on a farm,” they said to him. “What is one more mouth to feed?”

In return, he held hanks of coarse, greasy yarn between two upraised hands while he lay in bed, while Frau Schäfer wound it into balls. Often they would sit together in silence. Sometimes she would speak to him, and he would try to keep up as best he could. And sometimes she would pray, her eyes closed, her hands still wrapping strands of yarn around the ball. This was his favorite time. Whatever happened—and he knew that anything could happen, at any moment—this was peace.

They knew they couldn’t take him to a hospital, but they called their veterinarian, to take a look at the Briton’s injuries.

The veterinarian, Dr. Lang, a stooped-over man with scraggly white eyebrows, examined his injuries with cool, gentle hands. His ken was pigs and sheep and chickens—not humans. Certainly not humans this damaged. “Wait here,” he said to young man, as if he were in any condition to get up from the bed, and then went to talk to the Schäfers.

“It’s beyond what I can do,” Dr. Lang said, sitting down at the table to a cup of coffee and
Brötchen
with sweet butter and gooseberry preserves. “The boy needs a hospital.”

The Schäfers looked at one another. They had been married for more than thirty years, raised three daughters who lived nearby with their own families, and could read each other’s minds with a glance. It was clear they both thought it was unsafe to take their British refugee to a hospital.

“I have an idea,” Dr. Lang said. “My son—I still have my son’s Luftwaffe uniforms.” Dr. Lang’s son, Helmut, had died in one of the early air raids over Britain. “There is a comradeship among pilots, even pilots of warring nations. I know he’d want …” He swallowed. “I mean, if Helmut had been shot down, over England—”

Frau Schäfer put her hard, callused hand over his. “—you’d want an English family to take care of him. Of course.”

Dr. Lang shook his head, focusing on the present. “So, we put him in the Luftwaffe uniform and I drop him off at a hospital in Berlin. I say that he must have been shot down. He’s been gravely injured—and that, because of trauma, he can’t speak.”

“Do you think they’ll believe it?”

He shrugged. “What choice do we have?”

And so, after profuse thanks that only seemed to embarrass the Schäfers, and promising to return after the war was over, the British pilot was carried into the truck Dr. Lang usually used for transporting large animals. Dr. Lang drove from the rural countryside of Rietz, to Charité Mitte in Berlin.

The young nurse at the admissions desk wanted his papers, but Dr. Lang feigned insult. “Look at him!” he cried. “Look! A German pilot, a war hero, shot down while defending his country. Defending
you
!” The more he said, the easier the lies poured from his lips. “His entire plane went down in flames—you really think he had time to reach for his
papers
?”

“Of course not,” the nurse said, backtracking. “I’m very sorry, sir. We will admit him immediately, and have our very best doctors examine him.”

“Thank you, Nurse,” Dr. Lang said, giving the pilot a wink. He placed a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, then whispered in his ear, “You’ll see, they’ll take good care of you here.”

Looking around at all the doctors in long white coats with swastika armbands speaking rapid-fire German, RAF Flight Lieutenant John Sterling felt a wave of fear. Then he thought of Maggie. And so he smiled at Dr. Lang, and then at the young nurse in gray who came around from behind the nurses’ station.

“I am Nurse Hess,” the young nurse said by way of introduction. “Elise Hess. I’ll be taking care of you while you stay with us.”