The Prime Minister's Secret Agent

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  The P.M. smoked, then took another swig of his drink. Ash fell on his vest. “Well played, Miss Hope, well played. And so I say to you—I will do everything in my power to rescue your sister, if you agree to come to Washington with me. We leave tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Sir?”

  “Tomorrow. Get your things in order and return bright and shiny in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  He waved his cigar at her. “Go. Go away now.”

  Maggie stood. She had won. She would save Elise. “Yes, sir.”

  Back at the party, David was waiting. “How did it go with the Boss?”

  Maggie smiled. “Looks like I’ll be coming to DC with you.”

  “Wizard!” David exclaimed, clapping her on the back. “We’re going to have an excellent time. No rationing there, remember?”

  Maggie lowered her voice. “I’m worried about Mr. Churchill.”

  David’s smile faded. “The pressures are starting to get to the P.M., I’m afraid. It’s a horrible thing to say, but the attack on Pearl Harbor couldn’t have come at a better time. Things were quite grim for a while there. Grimmer than most people knew.”

  The pianist segued into “There Will Always Be an England.” People stood to sing.

  As voices drew out, “Britons, awake!,” the P.M. burst into the room. “We’re going to watch That Hamilton Woman,” Churchill declared, “in honor of our voyage to America! We have moved into a new phase of this war, and while it might not be the beginning of the end, I do believe—now that we stand side by side with the United States—that it just may be the end of the beginning, the part where Britain stood alone.

  “The film’s been set up. Move along, then, move along!”

  “Again?” someone whispered.

  David mouthed to Maggie, “He’s obsessed.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  The assembled guests found seats in the long Pillared Room. The lights were dimmed, the projector began to roll, and the film started.

  The Prime Minister mouthed the words Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh spoke as Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton along with them in the darkness. “ ‘Tell him we’re not the guardian angels of every country too lazy to look after itself. You’ve got to do something too! At the battle of the Nile, we cleared them off the seas, but as long as those madmen had their armies on land no country in Europe is free, they want to get hold of the whole world. If you believe in freedom, stir yourselves! Prepare and help drive them off the land!… You cannot make peace with dictators! You have to destroy them, wipe them out!’ ”

  In the dimness, Maggie thought of the next generation and, God willing, the next. She thought of Chuck and Nigel’s baby—his cuddly roundness and the way his head smelled like shortbread, warm from the oven. If our generation doesn’t do something, what will the world be like for the next? I may physically die. I may morally die. I may lose my soul. But it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. Take me, use me. I’m ready.

  She noticed that, a row away, John was watching her. He made a little walking motion with his fingers and she nodded. They left the room together. John found their coats, and they went up to the roof, where the P.M. used to watch the Blitz, to the deep consternation of his private detective and Mrs. Churchill. The edges were lined with walls of sandbags.

  “London doesn’t look so bad,” Maggie remarked, “at least, covered in snow. I was thinking about that earlier. It hides a lot. Although all the damage is still there, underneath.” Her hand went to her own bandage. But her wound—her wounds—were healing now.

  “At least the bombing’s stopped—for the moment—while Hitler turns all of his attention to Russia.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Maggie said, looking at the devastation below, realizing. “While I was gone, they took out the Admiralty. Mr. Churchill must have been disconsolate.”

  “Actually, what he said was, ‘Now I can see Nelson on his column more clearly.’ ”

  “Yes, that sounds like him.” Maggie smiled.

  “So,” John began, “how was your time in Scotland? I picture you like Artemis, running the moors of Scotland with a bow and arrow.”

  “Artemis has a gun these days. I suppose David can be my Apollo.”

  John ran his hands through his hair. “Well, please don’t turn me into a deer, like poor what’s-his-name.”

  “Actaeon. No, you’re more like Orion, I suppose.”

  “Not Adonis?” John said, with an arched eyebrow.

  “Oh, you’d like that, would you?” She laughed. “But these days I’m sure I’ll end up alone. Like Artemis. Or Athena. Or even Bastet, the cat goddess.”

  They stood for a moment in silence, as large lacy snowflakes began to fall. Then John said, “I wonder what everyone’s doing downstairs now. Probably breaking out the Champagne. The good Champagne.” He looked down at Maggie. “Sorry you’re missing it. And you must be cold. Shall we go downstairs now?”

  “Well,” Maggie said with a grimace, remembering the last time she’d been drunk, and had made herself a fool in front of John, “I’ve more or less sworn off liquor these days. Besides, I know exactly what’s happening. Mr. Churchill will swear. Then Mrs. Churchill will say, ‘Oh, darling, please don’t use that word in front of the ladies!’ And Mr. Churchill will say, ‘Oh, bother, Clemmie. Lady Hamilton never chided Lord Nelson for his language …’ And then David will offer them both drinks and smooth everything over.”

  “He does love that film.”

  “I love it, too. I thought of you tonight, while I was watching it. Especially when Lady Hamilton mocks Lord Nelson. “ ‘And there sits John Sterling, exhibiting his various moods, one by one. John Sterling in a bad mood. John Sterling in a good mood. John Sterling in an exuberant mood …’ ”

  “Yes, well …” John looked at Maggie and took her gloved hand in his. “What mood is this?”

  She remembered the film enough to remember the line was “in love,” but didn’t want to say it. “John Sterling—allowing himself to be just a wee bit happy?”

  “It will be Christmas soon, and then New Year’s—1942. How strange it sounds …”

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it gently, like a chivalrous knight.

  “This doesn’t change anything, you know,” Maggie managed.

  “No, of course not,” John said, tucking her hand under his arm.

  “In Washington, our relationship will be strictly platonic,” she insisted. “We shall be consummate professionals.”

  He smiled. “Consummate,” he agreed.

  As they headed back down to the party, Maggie said, “I like what Mr. Churchill said about beginnings and ends tonight—‘This might not be the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning.’ ”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Clara Hess was ready to die.

  Like German spy Josef Jakobs before her, she had been court-martialed in front of a military tribunal at Duke of York’s Headquarters in Chelsea. Because of her unwillingness to participate in the Double Cross system, she’d been convicted after a one-day trial and sentenced to death.

  Like Jakobs’s execution, Clara’s was to take place in the East Casements Rifle Range, on the grounds of the Tower of London. Eight soldiers from the Holding Battalion of the Scots Guards, armed with .303 Lee-Enfields, were waiting to fire in unison at her heart.

  “Clara.” It was Frain, along with a Catholic priest, an older man with a long, drooping face, only emphasized by an even longer, drooping mustache.

  She looked up at Frain, face hard. “Is Margaret here?” she asked. “Edmund?”

  “I’m sorry, Clara,” Frain answered gently. “They’re not.” They had not come to the trial, either.

  “Do you have any last words?” the priest said, face as white as his collar.

  “No,” Clara managed, standing. He face was bare of makeup and her natural light brown hair, streaked with gray, was beginning to grow in, leaving a contrast between her
real hair and the bleached platinum blonde she had sported in Berlin. But instead of looking older, she looked younger and more vulnerable. Except for the set of her mouth.

  “We’re going to blindfold you now.” Frain stepped behind her, taking a black cloth from inside his suit’s breast pocket. As he placed it around her eyes and tied it tightly, he leaned in to smell her hair.

  “Peter,” she said in a small voice, unable to see, her hands reaching out in vain in front of her.

  “I’m here,” he said, taking one of her hands and pulling it through his arm as if they were about to enter a dinner party. “I’ll be with you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  They made their way out of her cell and down the staircase of the Queen’s House and out the door. Clara’s nostrils twitched as she smelled the frosty air. “I’ll take it from here, Father,” Frain said to the priest.

  Together they walked, arm in arm, as though out for nothing more than a Sunday stroll. Then Clara heard a car engine start and Frain dropped her arm as he went to open a car door.

  “Peter?” she said, reaching out her hands, clawing the empty air. “Peter? Don’t leave me!”

  Frain grabbed Clara around the waist and, careful to protect her head, helped her into the backseat of the waiting car, slid in beside her. “Go!” he snapped at the driver, who shifted into first gear and pulled out, leaving a shower of gravel and snow behind.

  “Peter?” Clara asked. She began to pull at her blindfold.

  “Keep it on,” he said, taking her hand in his. “It’s better for both of us if you don’t know where we’re going.”

  An hour or so later, the car pulled to a stop. Frain untied Clara’s blindfold; it fell to her lap. She blinked at the light, and at the sight in front of her.

  They were at the gate of a stately manor home, encircled by barbed-wire fences. Frain gave his identity papers to the Coldstream Guard on duty. The guard looked them over, then handed them back to Frain. “Our newest guest?”

  Frain nodded. The driver pulled around the circular drive, stopping at the grand entrance. The double doors opened and a man stepped out. He opened the car door for Clara and offered his hand. “Welcome, Frau Hess.” He gave a stiff bow. “We are delighted to have you with us.”

  “Clara, this is Lord Murdoch,” Frain said. “He’s your host here.”

  Clara blinked, then found her voice. “And what sort of place is this?”

  “This is to be your home now, Frau Hess.” Lord Murdoch was smiling. “We hope you’ll be very happy here.”

  Clara looked up, taking in the soaring grand architecture. A chill wind ruffled her hair. She looked at Frain. “Thank you,” she said, and lifted herself on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.

  “You really do have nine lives, Clara.”

  “Well, at this point, I’m probably on my eighth.”

  She turned back to Lord Murdoch and offered her gloved hand. “This will do,” she said. He bent and kissed it.

  Clara gave one of her dazzling smiles, the one that used to bring audiences to their feet at the Berlin Opera House back when she was a prima donna. “Yes, this will do quite nicely.”

  Historical Notes

  This is where we get to that part of the book where I always say this a work of fiction. My goal is to entertain, and if a reader here or there decides to do further research on what “really” happened (as some have written to tell me), I’m delighted.

  Let’s start with the SOE training camp in Arisaig, Scotland. Yes, Czechs and Slovaks, Norwegians, as well as all the agents who were sent to France, trained there. Arisaig House still exists and is now a bed-and-breakfast, where I’m honored to have stayed. The present owners still have the original plans to the house, marked up by British officers, remaking the manor house into a workable administrative hub, making the servants’ dining room the officers’ lounge, and even creating a small barbershop in the basement, near the wine cellar.

  And yes (a lot of people questioned this!) the laundry was sent to a convent in Glasgow. Also, there really was a Japanese-American man on staff to teach martial arts, although his name seems lost to the ages.

  The grounds really were the SOE’s training grounds and even the present-day gardener, Richard Lamont, says that he’s careful when he digs, “because you may hit the odd unexploded grenade.”

  There is a plaque commemorating SOE agents at Arisaig House, most of whom were dropped behind enemy lines in France. There is also a memorial to Slovak Jozef Gabčík and Czech Jan Kubiš—who assassinated Nazi Reinhard Heydrich—in the town of Arisaig, where there is also the Museum of Sea and Isles, with a section dedicated to SOE.

  For more information, I recommend the book at the Museum of Sea and Isles and also at Arisaig’s Land, Sea, and Islands Centre, titled Special Operations Executive: Para-Military Training in Scotland During World War II by David Harrison. It contains amazing details about life in the Arisaig area and the instructors and trainees of SOE. I am indebted to it.

  And yes, for those history scholars among you, the date of Special Envoy Kurusu’s arrival to Washington, DC, and Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States are both a bit early (artistic license).

  In researching Pearl Harbor, I relied on many sources, but especially At Dawn We Slept and The Broken Seal: “Operation Magic” and the Secret Road to Pearl Harbor. Both are fascinating. So many of the characters in this book were real people, especially Mrs. Dorothy Edgars, Lieutenant Kramer’s secretary, who translated the decrypt revealing the upcoming attack on Pearl Harbor on Friday, December 5, 1941, and was told by Kramer, “it could wait until Monday.” (Of course a secretary called it, was all I could think …) Alas, The Broken Seal is out of print now, but the odd copy still exists, and, who knows, maybe it will come back as an e-book?

  I had the privilege of visiting the Pearl Harbor Memorial and USS Arizona, and also the USS Missouri, the USS Bowfin, the Aviation Museum, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and the Manoa Hotel. The Army Museum on Waikiki is not as well publicized as some of the others, but it’s a gem of a museum, and well worth going to.

  In terms of information on spies and spycraft in World War II, I relied on many books, including Beaulieu: The Finishing School for Secret Agents, by Cyril Cunningham; Churchill’s War Lab: Code Breakers, Boffins and Innovators: The Mavericks Who Brought Britain Victory, by Taylor Downing; The Spies Who Never Were: The True Story of the Nazi Spies Who Were Actually Allied Double Agents, by Hervie Haufler; The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby, by Phillip Knightly; Young Philby, by Robert Littell; Ian Fleming, by Andrew Lycett; One Girl’s War, by Joan Miller; Codename Tricycle: The True Story of the Second World War’s Most Extraordinary Double Agent, by Russell Miller; Spy/Counterspy: The Autobiography of Dušan Popov, by Dušan Popov; My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy, by Kim Philby; and Odette, by Jerrard Tickell.

  There are many conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbor. Did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt know and still allow the attack to take place? Did Winston Churchill know? I don’t believe FDR knew, after speaking to any number of scholars and doing extensive reading. However, I’ve chosen to have my fictional Mr. Churchill know about the impending attack and say nothing. First because I do believe the intelligence gathered at Bletchley Park was equal, if not superior, to the intel gathered by the United States’ “Magic” machines and Purple code, but also because the British were much more organized than the Americans in terms of intelligence, with less petty bickering and infighting among the branches of service.

  Second, the Abwehr gave Popov a map, which the British knew about, breaking down Pearl Harbor into sections, which Popov took to J. Edgar Hoover. Popov, in a later television interview, said that Hoover dismissed his concerns about Pearl Harbor because he disliked him personally, and threatened to have him arrested and thrown out of the United States under the Mann Act. In addition, the British noted the Japanese Fleet off the coast of Formosa (now Taiwan) and informed the Americans of t
he ship movement. They must have believed that the fleet’s movements posed a danger to Pearl Harbor.

  Whether it’s true or not, for the purposes of this novel, I made it so. Why? Because I believe if Churchill had known, he would have done anything—anything—to save Britain. And so, his fictional actions here are completely in character.

  Many books on the people, places, and institutions mentioned were extremely helpful, specifically: The Royal Ballet: 75 Years, by Zoe Anderson; Daily Mail’s Britain at War: Unseen Archives, by Maureen Hill; Chequers: The House and Its History, by Norma Major; The Last Lion 3: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940–65, by William Raymond Manchester; Honolulu: Then and Now, by Sheila Sarhagni; and Dinner with Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table, by Cita Stelzer.

  Yes, the British really did have mustard gas stockpiled for use during World War II, and were also developing anthrax. The research did take place in Scotland, but on Gruinard Island, geographically much farther to the north of Arisaig than where I fictionally placed it. (It’s ironic that at the time this was written, the use of chemical weapons is still in the news with Syria.) For a fascinating look at British research, and to watch actual footage of the experiments on sheep, see “Gruinard Island Anthrax Biological Warfare Experiment Great Britain 1942” at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIpB2gVliyk (warning: not for the tenderhearted).

  In dealing with the making and stockpiling of chemical and biological weapons in World War II and the history of chemical and biological warfare, as well as the concept of “just war,” important books included: Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, by Nicholson Baker; The M Room: Secret Listeners Who Bugged the Nazis in World War II, by Helen Fry; Just War: The Just War Tradition, Ethics in Modern Warfare, by Charles Guthrie and Michael Quinlan; A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman; The Art of War, by Niccolò Machiavelli and Ellis Farneworth; The Horrors We Bless: Rethinking the Just-War Legacy, by Daniel C. Maguire; The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan, by Wilson D. Miscamble CSC; The Art of War, by Sun Tzu; War Is a Lie, by David Swanson; On War, by Carl von Clausewitz; and Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument, by Michael Walzer.