The Rose Code

by Kate Quinn

  “You have taken things from your section before.”

  “Oh, really. I smuggled out a few blank pieces of paper to prove how easily it could be done.”

  “Were you trying to prove something again?”

  “No. I’m dished if I know what happened in Hut 3.” Though Osla wouldn’t have been surprised if someone else had reached the same conclusion she had, about how easily files could be snatched. Never in her life had she wanted so badly to say I told you so.

  The florid man in the pin-striped suit—MI-5 or MI-6, Osla was suddenly, unpleasantly certain—cleared his throat and opened a file under his arm. “It’s my understanding that you are, ah, involved with a certain Prince Philip of Greece.”

  Osla blinked. “What has that to do with anything?”

  “Answer my question.”

  “That wasn’t a question. It was a statement.” A statement with a nasty little implication ladled over the word involved, I might add. But this was not a man with whom she could afford to get snippy. “Prince Philip is my boyfriend, yes.”

  “You two went out last Thursday to the cinema.”

  “That Hamilton Woman. Not a very good picture.” Philip had howled with laughter at how the Battle of Trafalgar was depicted.

  “Did you happen to . . . give your boyfriend anything that night?”

  “What on earth do you mean?” Osla asked frostily.

  “You are aware several of his brothers-in-law are members of the Nazi party?” There was a superior note in the man’s voice. As if she was too dense to connect the dots. “He’s related by blood and by marriage to a pack of Nazis.”

  “So is King George,” she shot back. “It hasn’t snaffled his game any.”

  “Don’t be flippant.”

  “Philip’s relatives are neither a matter of choice nor a reflection on him.” She could feel rage shortening her breath. “He abhors his family connections to the Third Reich. He just passed his lieutenant’s exams for the Royal Navy. If he has the royal family’s approval, to the point where he’s allowed to correspond privately with the future queen of England, how can he be considered a risk?” The man in the pin-striped suit looked peevish. He couldn’t lose face by backing down, Osla knew, but he couldn’t say the king was a dupe, either. She crossed her arms. “Now you’re the one who hasn’t answered my question.”

  He shifted tack instead. “Are you quite certain he doesn’t write to those sisters behind enemy lines? Who knows what he might be telling them. Especially when one considers his girlfriend has access to so much critical intelligence.”

  “Don’t talk slush, sir.” Osla could feel Philip’s tousled hair under her hand, the exact feel of it. The roughness of the reddish beard he’d been growing on leave. “He does not write to his German relatives. And even if he did, he has no idea that I have access to critical intelligence. He thinks I have a boring office job.”

  “Oh, come now, Miss Kendall. Not one single cozy confession over a pillow?”

  Icicles dripped from Osla’s voice. “There is no pillow.”

  “No need to be indelicate,” Travis said at the same time, looking rather disgusted.

  Pinstripes shrugged, unapologetic. “You have to admit it looks bad. She’s careless with rules, knows how to smuggle information, let things slip to her godfather—”

  “I did not—”

  “—embroiled with a damned wog who has a pack of Nazis in the family tree. Specifically reported to us for turning up in Hut 3 where she shouldn’t have been—”

  Someone reported me? Osla thought sickly. Who would do that?

  “—and Canadian, to boot.”

  “Like the Canadians who are fighting for England right now?” Osla’s voice rose. “Are those the Canadians you mean?”

  “Lower your voice.”

  “I will not. I left Montreal and came back to Britain to fight for this country. I have lied to everyone I love, including Philip, rather than violate the Official Secrets Act. I will not be labeled an outsider, and I will not be accused of being untrustworthy.” Osla unfolded her arms. “I would never have helped myself to a file of reports against all rules and regulations. I am as careful and clever a worker as you have ever hired at Bletchley Park.”

  They looked skeptical. To them she was that silly girl who didn’t have a thought in her head but hijinks and handsome princes—who would believe a word she said?

  “If you want to prove your loyalty,” Pinstripes said at last, “then I’m sure you’ll have no objection to turning over all your correspondence with Prince Philip.”

  For a moment Osla couldn’t speak. Could an oath demand this?

  Apparently it could. She jerked out a nod, tasting bile.

  Pinstripes looked satisfied, but Travis put up a hand. “It would be better for BP if you broke things off with this fellow altogether,” he said bluntly. “A girl with your access to sensitive information cannot have Nazi connections, however thirdhand.”

  Osla’s stomach rolled. Take everything, she thought. Just take it all, why don’t you. The two things that had brought her happiness after the shattering darkness of the Café de Paris: Philip, whose arms had become something like a home, and her pride in her job. So much for her shining hope, once she’d moved to translation duties, that she’d finally proved herself enough to be taken seriously. Her word of honor clearly meant nothing here. A girl like her couldn’t be trusted to keep her mouth shut around her boyfriend, so just break things off, you silly socialite. She wanted to lash out, pound the desk in rage.

  “I understand, sir,” she forced out.

  What else was there to say?

  PHILIP’S VOICE DOWN the telephone line was jubilant. “I’ve received my posting, Os. Sublieutenant on the Wallace. Just an old Shakespeare-class destroyer, but she’s got teeth.”

  “Topping,” Osla managed to say. He wouldn’t tell her where the ship would patrol, but she already had a very good idea, after translating so many reports on surface navy action. Probably E-boat Alley, that treacherous passage between the Firth of Forth and Sheerness . . .

  “I’m off in two days. Any chance you can get to London for a final hurrah?”

  Osla closed her eyes tight. She had to swallow twice, but her voice came out light, careless. “I’m simply knackered, darling. See you on the other side?”

  Then she rang off, going upstairs to gather all his letters. The idea that someone would be pawing through their correspondence made her sick, but the sooner Pinstripes saw it was all innocuous, the better. Turn the letters over, and then she’d better start discouraging Philip from writing any more. Being close to a Bletchley Park translator was clearly agitating London intelligence about his loyalties—it was absurd, but Osla knew exactly how paranoid MI-5 could be. She’d heard all about the fuss they’d kicked up last year over an Agatha Christie novel, for God’s sake, just because the mystery writer had named a spy Colonel Bletchley . . .

  Osla’s vision blurred as she finished bundling up Philip’s letters, but she wouldn’t let the tears fall. Any Agatha Christie heroine worth her salt would poker up here and do what she had to. Even if it meant breaking her own heart.

  An Agatha Christie heroine might do a little digging, too, if she were in Osla’s situation. Might poke around after those missing files. Because this was the second set of files that had been either rummaged or nabbed, and Osla couldn’t help but wonder, disquiet running through her bones, if someone here was stealing information.

  Ten Days Until the Royal Wedding

  November 10, 1947

  Chapter 39

  Inside the Clock

  Back in the straitjacket again. One of the matrons, it seemed, had reported Beth’s throwing up her morning pills.

  “Just until you’re calm,” the doctor said as she was buckled in.

  “If I take those blasted tablets I am halfway to a coma,” Beth snarled, thrashing. “How calm do you want me, you pill-peddling hack?”

  “An extra dose, doctor?
” The matron spoke up, cream smooth—the same matron whose arm Beth had burned with a cigarette. “Liddell has been misbehaving lately. An orderly said she made indecent overtures to him, in a linen closet. These nymphomaniac types . . .”

  Her eyes danced, spiteful. Beth reared back and spat on the front of her apron.

  A needle pricked. “Just wait, you nasty little thing,” the matron said as soon as the doctor left. “When they get you under the scalpel—”

  “When?” Beth hissed, but the matron was gone, the world sliding away into smoke and mirrors. Beth’s veins felt unclean, as if her blood had been greased. She found herself weeping at some point and forced the tears away. Tears would wear her mind down like water on stone, and her mind was all she had.

  I break codes. I eat secrets. Enigma was no match for me—neither is this place.

  Breathe in, breathe out. Ignore the numbness of her trapped hands. Think of something else, not scalpels and spiteful matrons and oblivious doctors with their unfair punishments.

  Unfairly punished . . . Beth’s drugged memory turned up something long forgotten: Osla hauled up by Commander Travis at BP, raked over the coals about Prince Philip’s Nazi relatives, interrogated about what Osla had guessed were some missing decrypted messages from Hut 3. When had that been, June ’42? If someone had snatched files, they could easily have reported beautiful, highly visible Osla, who had sauntered over from Hut 4 on routine business and diverted attention from the presence of a traitor.

  Who? Beth thought. Back to that again, endlessly turning over old memories, hoping for some fresh insight—but none of her ISK colleagues had ever worked in Hut 3.

  So don’t focus on the where, Beth thought. Focus on the when. June of ’42 . . .

  Peggy Rock had returned to Bletchley Park from her breakdown that same month. Peggy, the cleverest woman Beth knew. Had there really been a breakdown? Or had she been . . . somewhere else? Meeting someone, passing information?

  Beth had weighed Peggy’s name before on her list of suspects and always cringed from the thought. Peggy a traitor? Fair-haired, brilliant Peggy who had shown her how to rod?

  But Peggy worked in ISK. She had disappeared and been gone for months. She had returned to work, Dilly’s best codebreaker aside from Beth. A woman as clever as Peggy could have found a way to walk into Hut 3 and out again with a file, surely. And with Dilly no longer keeping an eye on his section’s day-to-day routine . . .

  Peggy. Yes, she might be the one.

  Or any of Dilly’s team. Dear friends all, because Beth had made friends almost exclusively inside Knox’s section. Except for Osla and Mab, who now hated her.

  What a cruel twist of fate that her friends were all suspects, and her enemies were the only ones she was sure of.

  Come on, you two, Beth thought throughout the endless afternoon, canvas-bound and helpless. Come through.

  York

  Mab dropped her teaspoon. “You want us to go where?”

  “To Clockwell, to see Beth.” Osla saw they were getting glances from the other patrons of Bettys tea shop, and no wonder—two well-groomed women in New Look billows of skirt, dagger eyed, going at each other over the teacups for the past half hour. “Try not to look so hacked off, will you? We’re attracting attention.”

  Mab bared all her teeth in a smile, violently stirring her tea. “I am not going to a madhouse.”

  “You’re willing to leave her there, because you’re afraid?” Reverting to whispering, making sure no one was walking past. “When she may be perfectly sane, and there may be a traitor who betrayed Bletchley Park—who betrayed all of us who worked there—walking free? Now, that really takes the biscuit, darling.” Osla gave Mab a withering look. “I knew you were a ruthless cow, but I didn’t think you’d become a coward.”

  “I’m not afraid, you featherweight gossip-page hack.” Mab reverted to whispers, too. “I’m pointing out that we could be breaking the law by contacting her at all.”

  “We would also be breaking the law if we allowed the secrecy of our work to be compromised.” Osla leaned forward. “I may be a featherweight gossip-page hack now, but I take my oath seriously.”

  “But you can’t possibly entertain the notion that someone at BP—”

  “Yes, I can. Remember the time I was hauled into Travis’s office and accused of lifting files from Hut 3? I ranted to you and Beth about it.” The rifled Hut 4 box files, too . . .

  Mab fiddled with her strand of black pearls. “So we report this to someone higher up. Someone unconnected with Beth’s section.”

  “No one is going to take it seriously, because they think Beth’s gone potty. But we lived with her for years, and we know her better than anyone. If we see her in the flesh, put the question to her ourselves”—However we can make that happen, Osla thought—“we’ll know if she’s crazy. We’ll know if she’s lying.”

  Mab spoke very low. “And what if we don’t think she’s lying?”

  A long silence.

  “We’ll think of something.” Osla pushed her teacup away. “Perhaps there’s something my godfather could do. Pull strings—”

  “Or you could ring Philip,” Mab suggested. “It must be nice having the future royal consort in your address book. He’s got to be worth a ring on the telephone, even if he came up short as far as rings on the finger.”

  “Mention Philip again,” Osla snapped, “and I’ll cram those pearls up your nose until you are sneezing nacre, Queen Mab.”

  “You aren’t exactly endearing yourself to me, considering you want my help.”

  “I don’t want your help, you blithering bitch. I need it. I need another pair of eyes on Beth to figure out if she’s talking straw or gold.” Osla began tugging on her gloves. “The eleven oh five leaves tomorrow morning, and it stops two miles from Clockwell. I plan to be on it.”

  “Don’t count on me joining you.” Mab finally broke down and took a scone, reaching for the butter dish.

  “No one could ever count on you for anything, Mab. Break form for once, why don’t you.” Osla rose, smiling sweetly. “Not too much butter, darling. Watch that waist! Right now, it’s all you’ve got going for you.”

  Five Years Ago

  June 1942

  Chapter 40

  * * *

  FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, JUNE 1942

  * * *

  Boffins and gents, stop trying to peek into the hut with all the machine racket going on inside. It is just a rumor that the Wrens sometimes strip down and work in their knickers.

  * * *

  Job’s up!”

  It was always a moment, Mab reflected, when a proper stop was logged on one of the bombe machines—when all the checks came back and it wasn’t a mistake that had stopped the drums’ whirring, but success. Who knew what might come from the bombe’s latest break? Maybe intelligence important enough to go straight to Churchill’s desk. Ever since his visit, Mab had felt a bit proprietary about the prime minister. He wasn’t just Britain’s PM, he was her PM.

  “Strip down,” Wren Stevens sighed as she and Mab began unplugging the great wired back of the machine. “I wish we could strip down.” They’d finally moved from windowless, claustrophobic Hut 11 to new-built 11A, which had an actual air-conditioning unit—but the unit was on the fritz, as the Yanks would say, and the summer heat inside the hut was overwhelming. Mab felt sweat running down her back, and the Wrens in their smart brass-buttoned uniforms had it even worse.

  “Well, why don’t we?” she replied with a grin. “Who’s going to see us?” The Wrens laughed uncertainly, but Mab was fizzing along, carefree and happy. She was going to see Francis tomorrow—they’d have three days together in Keswick. “Let’s have a bit of mischief!” She yanked her sweaty frock over her head and her gummy slip after it, hanging them on a nail. She stretched her arms, standing in her knickers and brassiere. “Much better.”

  “Right, I’m with you.” Stevens began unbuttoning her uniform, and soon they were all stripping d
own and going back to man their machines in their unmentionables. Mab carefully tweezed the tiny drum wires apart, plugged up the back for a new menu, and gave Aggie a pat. “Ready to go, you cranky cow.” She set it in motion, for once not minding the clacking drone. There were many more bombe machines now besides these—so much traffic poured through BP, the handful of bombes here couldn’t possibly cope. And it would be dangerous, anyway, to keep all the machines in one place where a single Luftwaffe strike could knock out Britain’s entire decoding capacity. The Wrens said that there were stations in Adstock Manor, Wavendon, and Gayhurst now—Mab wondered if any of the Wrens at those stations were on duty in their knickers.

  The shift was about to turn over, and the operators shrugging back into their clothes, when a young Wren slid through the door with a miserable look. “Why the long face?” Mab asked.

  “Does anyone know Wren Bishop?” the girl blurted. “Stationed at RAF Chicksands?”

  “I knew her from training in Dunbartonshire,” one of the other Wrens volunteered.

  “She’s being sent home. It’s terrible.” The Wren lowered her voice. “There was a baby. She was seeing an American officer . . . supposedly she was six months along, trying to keep it hidden. Until last night. Last night she—she had it. Or something happened. And it was dead and she tried to hide it in a d-drawer—and the officers I overheard talking about it, they didn’t even care. They were just saying things about l-loose morals—”

  She burst into tears. Two of the others hugged her. Mab wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly chilled despite the choking heat.

  “Bloody men,” one of the Wrens spat. “She’s done in the WRNS now, and what’s going to happen to the fellow who got her in trouble?”