The Prime Minister's Secret Agent

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  “Never.”

  “But Agna cried when you weren’t around?”

  Again, Clara looked out the window. The view was of the White Tower. “She was weak. She was lonely. She was pathetic. She wanted”—Clara Schwartz’s eyes drifted to Dr. Carroll’s—“love.” She spat out the word with contempt.

  “And what do you want?”

  Clara stared at him as if he were dim-witted. “To survive, of course.

  “I must survive.”

  David Greene, sheaf of papers in hand, went to find the Prime Minister. It was just before cocktail hour at Chequers, and the P.M. had typists taking dictation and private secretaries drafting speeches, as he paced the floors like a mighty lion, mind bursting with ideas, impatient and prone to the occasional roar.

  Tonight, however, Winston Churchill was uncharacteristically subdued. There were violet shadows under his eyes. He was in the wood-paneled Hawtree Room, sitting in a leather armchair pulled up to the fireplace, the only warm place in the big, drafty room. Nelson, the cat, was in his lap and he was stroking him, watching the orange-blue flames dance behind the andirons.

  “Prime Minister?” David murmured, not wishing to disturb the older man’s reverie, but knowing the papers must be delivered. “Sir?”

  Churchill started, then looked up in irritation. “What? What do you have there, Mr. Greene?”

  “A number of things, sir. Would you like me to leave them with you—?”

  “Read them!”

  David cleared his throat. “A decrypt from Bletchley regarding Rommel and the Afrika Corps.”

  “I’ll look at it later. What else?”

  “Our navy has spotted five Japanese troop transports with naval escort off China’s coast, near Formosa, heading south.”

  “Interesting. Send to President Roosevelt. What news of Popov, our playboy spy? The information he had on the Japs making a grid of Pearl Harbor?”

  “Popov went to Washington and met with J. Edgar Hoover, sir. But he reports back that Hoover was unimpressed and nearly had him thrown out of the country.”

  Churchill nodded, then motioned for David to continue. “Burns at SOE reports Operation Anthropod is proceeding. Jozef Gabčík and his new partner, Jan Kubiš, are working well together.” Operation Anthropod was the code name for the planned assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich. “They’re still working on getting Kubiš’s identity papers in order.”

  “Well, tell them to get a move on with the papers! When do they think they’ll be ready to go?”

  “Plans are to get them to Prague between Christmas and the New Year, sir.”

  “Where are they training now?”

  “In Arisaig, sir. The same place Maggie Hope is working. And speaking of Miss Hope, sir,” David continued, “there’s also an update from Frain at MI-Five about Hess.”

  “Our caged bird,” the P.M. said, nodding. He cocked an eyebrow. “Is she singing yet? Or is she still trying to negotiate peace?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir. Hess refuses to speak with anyone but Maggie, and Maggie refuses to meet with her.”

  “And so the bloodthirsty Frain wants to execute Hess. Blindfold and shoot her, just like Josef Jakobs.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s mentioned some rather interesting prognoses of her current mental state. Regression and whatnot.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It might be real—it might be an act. Frain seems to think she’s playacting—as she did in her operas. The doctor doesn’t.” The P.M. contemplated the orange flames. “But just because she won’t talk doesn’t mean we can’t use her.” He cleared his throat. “Hitler and his cronies don’t know she’s not talking. And as long as she’s alive, they’ll wonder what secrets our little nightingale is singing. Tell Frain to keep his bloody hands off her—at least for now.”

  “Yes, sir.” David waited a moment. “Will that be all, sir?”

  The P.M. held out one hand. “Gimme.” As Churchill scanned through the documents, David braced himself, knowing that there was a transcript of a particularly harsh speech about the British Prime Minister that Joseph Goebbels had given to a huge crowd in Berlin.

  Churchill squinted and reached for the gold-framed spectacles in his breast pocket. He put them on and read aloud, “… ever since Gallipoli, Winston Churchill has spent a life wading through streams of English blood, defending a lifestyle that has long outlived its time—”

  “That’s not true, sir.”

  “Ah, but the monster does have a point, young Mr. Greene,” Churchill replied, his face tired and eyes sad. “I grew up during Queen Victoria’s reign, then came of age under King Edward the Seventh. It was a magical time to be an Englishman—‘the sun never set on the British Empire,’ et cetera, et cetera. Soldiers in red coats, the Union Jack. That world is gone now.”

  “Sir?”

  “Britain will live through this war, but we will be changed, utterly unrecognizable. We are now too damaged, too small, perhaps even too gentle to compete in this brave new world. We are Tolkien’s hobbits—small and provincial, yet surprisingly resilient in stern times. No, we have Hitler and Fascism, Stalin and Communism, and America—young, foolish, capitalist America—who are all poised to lead now.”

  David scratched his head. “If the British are the hobbits, who are the Americans, sir?”

  “The Americans are the eagles, Mr. Greene! The American eagles, of course! It’s their country’s symbol, for God’s sake—that Tolkien’s none too subtle!”

  The Prime Minister contemplated the fire. “The eagles save Bilbo and the dwarves from the bloody orcs. What did Tolkien write about the eagles? ‘Eagles are not kindly birds. Some are cowardly and cruel. But the ancient race of the northern mountains were the greatest of all birds; they were proud and strong and noble-hearted.’ If that doesn’t describe the bloody Americans, I don’t know what does.”

  “But, sir—the Lend-Lease Act—all those destroyers, all the aid—”

  “All of their oldest destroyers, held together with tape and taffy. They’re keeping their best at Pearl Harbor, in order to defend their territories in the Pacific. And for those few, ancient ships, we are expected to give up our military bases, our gold, maybe even our art and manuscripts.”

  “But surely America will join the war?” David’s voice had the edge of desperation.

  “Sit down, my boy,” Churchill said, gesturing to the chair opposite.

  David did. “I’m not so sure anymore,” the Prime Minister continued, taking a sip of cognac. “I do everything I can with President Roosevelt, and I flatter and cajole him as I would any woman I’d want as my mistress. But Roosevelt is, as we used to say in the Navy, a tease. I would like to believe America will choose to fight on the side of right in this war, but I no longer feel I can guarantee it, the way I felt a year or so ago. We can’t depend on them. Unless …”

  “Unless?”

  Churchill stared into the red embers of the dying fire. “Unless their hand is forced.”

  “And if it isn’t?”

  “We’ve had new posters made, in case of invasion—‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’ ”

  “Miss Tuttle!”

  Trudy Tuttle started when she heard Admiral Kimmel’s bellow over the noise of the rusted rotary fan that did nothing against Hawaii’s heat and humidity. She was young, in her twenties, in a new white cotton dress covered with a pattern of yellow hibiscus blossoms.

  She rose from her desk and walked to the door of his office. It was dominated by a framed photograph of President Roosevelt. Turquoise maps of the Pacific speckled with colored pushpins covered the walls, and the window afforded a sweeping view of the Pacific Fleet, docked in Pearl Harbor. Outside, an American flag snapped in the warm, jasmine-scented breeze.

  “Yes, Admiral Kimmel?” she said. Dorothy’s boss, Rear Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, was a handsome man in his midfifties, a four-star Admiral in the United States Navy and Commander
in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. When he bellowed, people ran to fall in line—the Admiral was infamous for throwing books at walls, or even taking off his hat and jumping on it in frustration, a situation that happened so frequently when he’d been at sea that the mess boys kept an old sea hat handy, just in case.

  But today Kimmel was with Major General Frederick L. Martin, Commander of the Hawaiian Air Force, a man about Kimmel’s age. Kimmel was in Navy whites and Martin in Army browns. Both men were highly decorated.

  Kimmel took off his horn-rimmed glasses, folded them, and placed them on his desk. Above his head, the blades of a ceiling fan turned lazily. “Major Martin and I are going to have an early supper in my office today, Miss Tuttle. Would you order us two burgers, french fries, and Coca-Colas from the canteen, then pick it all up? That’s a good girl.” His face crinkled in a smile. “Oh, and a thick slice of one of those Maui onions, if they have them.”

  She couldn’t help but smile back. “Yes, sir.”

  “And two of those pineapple tarts, you know—the ones with the caramelized coconut on top? And order something for yourself too, honey, while you’re at it.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “You can have mine, Admiral. I’m not eating much these days,” Martin admitted, after she left.

  “Nervous stomach? You can’t let it get to you!” Kimmel thumped his palms on the desk. “Don’t let the damn Japs get you down!”

  Kimmel rose and widened the angle of the wooden blinds. Outside, the Honolulu sky was a dazzling blue. Two orange butterflies chased each other beyond Kimmel’s windows. The windows were open as far as they could go, and, if they’d wanted to, Kimmel and Martin could have reached out to touch the spiky stalks of bird-of-paradise that grew outside.

  Martin shook his head. “It’s not the Japs. It’s the Army. General Short’s insisting that we move all of our planes together in the center of Hickam Field, all bunched up together. They’re sitting ducks in case of an air attack.”

  “Why the hell is Short doing that?”

  “We have over a hundred thirty thousand Japanese on Oahu, and Short thinks those planes are far more vulnerable to sabotage on the ground than air attack from above—‘It would be far too easy for the enemy to sneak in at night and blow up all the planes.’ He thinks that with the new radar installations in place, there’s no way any enemy aircraft could sneak in undetected.”

  “It’s a good thing you finally put in that radar station.”

  “No thanks to the National Park Service, which didn’t even want to give us permission—damn wildlife preservationists! Now we just have to get those men out there some telephones.”

  Kimmel sat and tipped back in his chair. “What are those boys supposed to do without telephones? Walk a mile to the nearest store and use a pay phone?”

  Martin gave a nervous smile. “We’re doing the best we can, with what little we have.”

  Miss Tuttle rapped on the door and then entered, carrying a white paper bag full of food, grease stains beginning to form on the bottom. The bottles of Coca-Cola clinked against each other. “Thanks, honey,” Kimmel said. She nodded to the two men and left.

  Kimmel dug into the bag and handed a burger wrapped in paper to Martin.

  Martin accepted it, unwrapping the paper on Kimmel’s desk.

  “That’s one good thing about this move to Hawaii—fantastic golf. Tennis, too.”

  Kimmel swallowed a french fry and took a swig of Coke. “I still think the fleet should have stayed in San Diego—but don’t mention it to Roosevelt, he won’t listen to any of us. Doesn’t even seem to see the need for a Pacific Fleet these days—wants to send more and more of our ships to the Atlantic, to help the damn British. And then what are we supposed to do? I even brought up the British success toppling the Italian fleet at Taranto—they just used some old biplanes and sank nearly all of the Italian battleships. And the harbor at Taranto’s similar to Pearl’s.”

  Martin pushed his food away. “Pearl’s too shallow.”

  “That’s just what Roosevelt said. Here”—Kimmel said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a spear wrapped in waxed paper and handing it over to Martin—“at least have a pickle.” He dunked a french fry into a small paper cup of ketchup and shoveled it into his mouth. “And I’ll have Miss Tuttle call the club to set up a golf match for us this afternoon.”

  Chapter Ten

  Later, when Estelle Crawford’s autopsy was over, Maggie and Mark put aside their mutual distrust and went out for a much-needed drink. Mark chose the place, a tiny bar with dark wood paneling and chandeliers with fringed lamp shades. They secured a table by the crackling fireplace.

  At the next table over, businessmen in double-breasted suits talked in low tones with a definite Scottish burr about where to hide their money—trust funds for their children and grandchildren—watched over by the glassy eyes of mounted red and roe deer with enormous antlers.

  “You could have done worse, Miss Hope,” Mark said as he sat down across from Maggie, having secured their pink gins.

  Maggie had no illusions about her professionalism. “Mr. Standish, I threw up three times.”

  “At least you had the good sense to vomit over the drain.”

  “I do my best.”

  “I have a confession,” Mark said.

  “Yes?”

  “At my first autopsy I didn’t even make it to the sink.”

  “Ah.” Maggie smiled crookedly. “Thank you for telling me that.” She raised her glass. “To Estelle Crawford.”

  “To Estelle,” Mark echoed as their glasses clinked.

  They drank in silence. Maggie was grateful for the fire’s heat after the long, chill hours in the autopsy room. A chocolate-brown Labrador snoozed in front of the flames while his owner, an older man with a pipe, read the newspaper. A large white-faced grandfather clock ticked in the shadows.

  One of the men at the bar stood, leaning heavily on crutches. “Excuse me,” he said, making his way to the loo. Maggie could see that not only was he in uniform, he was missing a leg and hadn’t yet been fitted for a prosthesis. Realizing all eyes were on him, the man grinned and good-naturedly called out, “Graceful—like a gazelle, I am. Like a ruddy mountain goat!” That caused a few chuckles and raised glasses in the soldier’s direction.

  “I brought the pathology report.” Mark took some papers out of his pocket and handed them over to Maggie.

  She scanned the documents. They confirmed what they had witnessed. “Heart failure due to chronic emphysema, along with nonrelated psoriasis, which surely clears both Sarah and Mildred Petrie of murder charges. So where does that leave us?”

  “It still doesn’t explain why the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries ordered the body to be cremated immediately, without an autopsy,” Mark mused, chewing on the end of a pen. “How did they know? What could be their agenda?”

  “You’ve been at MI-Five for—how long now?”

  “Almost eight years.”

  “So you’re well aware of how much red tape most British offices produce. Might be one of those situations where departments overlap?”

  “Maybe …” He shook his head. “Sorry I was rough on you earlier.”

  Maggie was determined to take it like a man; she knew too well that hazing was part of the job. Only the toughest survived. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not. I let it get personal. But you must understand that Hugh’s one of my best friends, and—”

  “I understand. And I’m sorry it ended the way it did, too. But I was … confused, and it didn’t seem fair to Hugh to string him along while I tried to figure things out. I thought, given everything that happened, a clean break was best. Fairer to him.”

  Mark gave a grim smile. “And now you’re reunited with your RAF pilot?”

  “No,” Maggie said, her face stone. “It didn’t work out.”

  They sipped in silence.

  “Rotten luck,” Mark said finally. “Does Hugh kn
ow?”

  “No. After my last mission … Well, let’s just say I’m not exactly in a position to be stepping out with anyone, let alone someone as wonderful as Hugh. Quite frankly, he’s better off without me.”

  Maggie changed the subject. “You’re married, yes?” She knew the answer, having seen photographs of Mark’s wife and child on his desk when she worked with Hugh at MI-5.

  He smiled. “Sixth anniversary next month and second baby on the way.”

  “Congratulations!” A baby. How brave, in the midst of all this chaos and destruction. “If you don’t mind my asking,” she ventured, sensing a change in his mood. “What did happen with Hugh on his last job? Why was he fired?”

  “You truly don’t know, do you?”

  Maggie shook her head.

  “I can’t give you specific details, of course—”

  “Of course.”

  Mark lowered his voice. “Instead of sending visual confirmation that a certain mission succeeded, as he’d been ordered, he sent a photograph. A different sort of photograph.” He took a swallow of gin. “Of his—” Mark had the grace to redden. “—er, naked buttocks.”

  “No!” Oh, Hugh …

  “And I’m sure you can imagine who these photographs were addressed to?”

  No. No. Surely Hugh couldn’t have. “My … mother?”

  Mark tapped his nose. “Exactly.”

  Oh, Hugh, Hugh … Maggie’s eyes narrowed as she thought. “And so her boss found out their spy had been turned …”

  “… and that’s most likely the reason she gave herself up to the British and offered to work as a double—or maybe a triple?—agent.”

  Her head was spinning, putting it all together. “And poor Hugh was fired for it.”

  “He was.” Again they drank in silence. A log broke in two, and the dog twitched in his sleep.

  “Mr. Standish, I have just one question.”

  Mark had finished his gin and gestured expansively. “Anything, Miss Hope.”

  “When Hugh pulled down his pants, who was taking the pictures?”

  He looked like a guilty little boy.

  “I thought so. More tea, Vicar?”