His Majesty's Hope

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  With his trowel, Churchill scooped another glob of mortar from the wheelbarrow. “Of course it’s a good idea, Frain,” he growled, the cigar still clenched in his teeth. “It’s my idea. Clara Hess is what you in the intelligence business call ‘a human asset with strategic importance.’ She’ll be vulnerable after her failure at Windsor. If we didn’t send Miss Hope on this particular mission, how on earth could Clara Hess figure out that our Maggie is her daughter? How else could we reel that woman in?”

  “If Miss Hope ever finds out she’s being used as bait …”

  “Miss Hope won’t. And even if she does, if it works, it’s worth it.”

  “And you really think Clara will jump ship? She’s in a very high position in the Abwehr.”

  “A high position, yes, but her time is up. One more failure and she’ll be out. And one thing I know about Clara Hess is that she’s a survivor. Like a cockroach.”

  The two men heard footsteps and looked up. It was Clementine Churchill, the Prime Minister’s wife, wearing a flowered dress and wide-brimmed hat. “It’s time for lunch, gentlemen.”

  “Mrs. Churchill,” Frain said, doffing his hat.

  “Oh, not now, Clemmie—I’m just getting started.”

  “Well, Cook has been at work all morning and will be cross if you’re not dressed and at the table for luncheon on time. Lord Beaverbrook and Mr. Attlee have already arrived.”

  Mr. Churchill wiped his hands on his jumpsuit. “All right, my dear.”

  “And are you talking about our Miss Hope?” Clemmie asked as the trio made its way back to the house.

  “Why, you know I can’t tell you anything of that nature!” the P.M. grumbled.

  “Winston, these are people and not chess pieces. I trust you and Mr. Frain remember that.”

  “This is war, Clemmie. We do what we must. Miss Hope would be the first to agree.”

  “This is someone’s life, Winston.”

  “His Majesty himself gave his seal of approval. I have every confidence in our copper-tressed spy.”

  “I pray you’re right, Winnie darling.”

  Chapter Eight

  Hugh left his office at MI-5 and took the crowded, noxious, fly-infested Tube to Euston Station. From there, he took the train to Bletchley.

  Hugh had no desire to meet with Edmund Hope. However, they were both professionals, and Hugh hoped that the work would take precedence over any possible grudges. But he still found the idea of the upcoming meeting disconcerting.

  After passing green fields dotted with white spring lambs and stopping at the Tring, Cheddington, and Leighton Buzzard stations, Hugh finally reached Bletchley, a small town about forty miles northwest of London. It was the home of the Government Code and Cipher School, known as Station X—but more commonly called Bletchley or the Park.

  It was located on the Bletchley estate, an ugly red-brick Victorian mansion now overrun with both military and academics found to be good at crossword puzzles. But the real business of those who worked at Bletchley was breaking Nazi military code.

  At the high front gate, Hugh presented his papers and was waved inside. He walked the long distance through the front lawn. Although it was hot, young men and women—code breakers and staff—were playing the childhood game of rounders with a broomstick and an old tennis ball, their laughter echoing in the distance. Finally, he reached the grand neogothic entrance of the Great House, guarded by two men in uniform, holding rifles. Again, he presented his identification and was waved in.

  In the airless, high-ceilinged main hall, covered in dark wood paneling and held up by pink marble columns, he asked for Edmund Hope.

  “He’s expecting you?” asked a shrunken elderly man in a seersucker suit, sitting at a small metal desk. He was smoking a pipe; the tobacco smelled sweet.

  “Yes, we have an appointment,” Hugh answered.

  “One minute.” The man put the pipe down in a glass ashtray and picked up the telephone receiver. He dialed four numbers. “An Agent Hugh Thompson to see you, sir?” A pause. “Yes, yes, of course, sir.”

  The man looked up at Hugh with watery blue eyes. “He says he’s in the middle of something, and he’ll be with you as soon as he’s able.” He nodded to a hard wooden bench along the wall, underneath a stained-glass window and a poster for the Bletchley Park Orchestra’s performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

  More than three hours later, Hugh was still waiting. He’d paced, sat down, tried to break the code himself and failed miserably, tried again, only to resume pacing. His stomach rumbled. He looked over at the older man. “Is there somewhere where I can get something to eat?” Hugh asked.

  “There’s a canteen,” the man replied, “near Hut Four. Behind the main house and take the path to your left. Ask anyone and they’ll point it out for you.”

  “If Professor Hope comes while I’m gone—”

  “I’ll tell him where you’ve gone.” The man winked. “Don’t worry lad.”

  But Hugh did worry. He was worried about his new job with Masterman and the Twenty Committee. He was worried about breaking the code. He was worried about working with Edmund Hope. He was worried about being able to work with Krueger. He was worried about making sure Clara Hess thought her plans were succeeding, when in fact they weren’t. And, in the back of his mind, as always, he was deeply worried about Maggie.

  After a few wrong turns, he reached the canteen, smelling of cooking grease and dirty dishwater, papered with propaganda posters. A close-up of a man’s face with a black X over the mouth, captioned, Closed for the duration—loose lips sink ships. Another, with an image of a dying soldier: Careless talk got there first.

  As he pulled out a few coins to pay for his tea and buttered roll, he heard laughter and turned. A few men in rumpled suits were finishing up dinner together—shepherd’s pie by the looks of it. And one of them was, unmistakably, Edmund Hope.

  If Edmund was embarrassed at being caught going to dinner while leaving Hugh waiting, he didn’t reveal it. “Mr. Thompson!” he called, arm in the air. “Come join us!”

  Hugh took his tea and roll and made his way over. One of the men moved so that he could sit down. “Hello.”

  “This is Hugh Thompson,” Edmund told those who remained. “Mr. Thompson, these rapscallions are Josh Cooper and Alan Turing,” he said, pointing to each one in turn.

  The men said hello, then turned back to their conversation, an animated discussion on the Collatz Conjecture. “I hear Paul Erdös has posted a reward for anyone solving it,” Cooper said. “Five hundred U.S. dollars.”

  Edmund whistled through his teeth. “Nice. Where is Erdös these days?”

  “Princeton, I believe,” Turing said through a bite of shepherd’s pie. “He doesn’t stay in one place for long.”

  “He’s a Hungarian Jew, can you blame him?” Edmund said. “He’s lucky to have escaped in time. I hear—”

  Hugh had no time to waste. “Edmund,” he said, “I don’t mean to interrupt your dinner, but may we talk privately?”

  Edmund looked to the other code breakers. “Do you mind, gentlemen?”

  “Not at all,” Turing said, as he and Cooper rose to leave. “Long night ahead of us. Cheers, Mr. Thompson.”

  Hugh looked around, noting the empty dining room, then cleared his throat. “Professor Hope,” he began, “as you may know, I’m now working with John Masterman.”

  “The Twenty Committee.”

  “Yes, well, the thing is that we have a German agent in custody, who’s acting as a double agent. He’s received some new information in code, but he refuses to tell us anything about it.”

  “So, Masterman wants a boffin to take a stab at it.” Edmund sighed. “All right, I accept.”

  “Thank you, sir. Do you have a piece of paper?”

  Edmund pulled out a crumpled paper and an old fountain pen from his jacket pocket.

  Hugh wrote down the numbers and letters that he’d memorized. When he was do
ne, he handed it to Edmund, who squinted at the sequence. Then he took out a lighter from his jacket pocket and hit the roller, so that sparks flew. He set the piece of paper on fire. Together, the men watched it burn until only ash remained.

  “He had a cipher disk, as well,” Hugh said. “Standard German issue. No one at the Twenty Committee found any correlation between the code and the cipher disk.”

  Edmund gave a grim smile. “I’ll have a look at it—and be in touch,” he said. The meeting was over. He stood and turned to go.

  After a few steps, however, the professor turned back to Hugh. “Have you heard anything from—”

  Hugh knew exactly whom he meant. Maggie. “Not since she was last in London. She’s … away now.”

  “Right, right,” Edmund muttered to himself as he turned again to leave, shoulders stooped. “All right then.”

  “But you should probably know …”

  “What?”

  Hugh blurted it out. “The code for this mission was sent by your—by Clara Hess.”

  “I see,” Edmund said. Then he waved Hugh away. “That will be all.”

  Once Edmund had left the canteen, he leaned against the wall of Hut 5, his legs shaky. From his back pocket, he took out a silver flask and drank.

  David Greene wasn’t used to going on dates with women.

  Which was why he was disconcerted to be sitting across a white linen–swathed table at the Savoy Grill for dinner with Rosamund Moser. In the background, the band played under the hushed tones of conversations and the soft clinks of china and crystal.

  Rosamund was lovely. Stunning really, in David’s opinion, in her sharp FANY uniform. She was young, well educated—St. Hilda’s at Oxford—and possessed a delicate beauty, with chestnut hair, pale skin, luminous eyes, and full lips. He had known her growing up, for her parents were friends of his parents, but he was enough years older that he’d mostly been able to ignore her. However, when he’d telephoned and asked her if she’d like to have dinner sometime, she’d accepted so coldly that he was surprised his ear wasn’t frostbitten.

  Sitting across the table from each other was proving even more awkward.

  “So,” David said. “You’re looking well.”

  “Yes,” Rosamund replied curtly. “I believe you’ve mentioned that already.” It was true, David had already complimented her on her looks. Three times.

  He cleared his throat. “How are—and how are your parents?” he asked, trying again.

  “They’re fine,” she said. “Mummy is at the house in the country, while Daddy’s working for the Admiralty. I don’t know what he does and he doesn’t tell us. All very top secret, hush-hush.”

  After another silence, she asked, in obligatory tones, “And how are your parents?”

  “They’re well,” David said. “Yes, well—quite well.” Inwardly, he cursed himself for being tongue-tied. Normally he was charming with women, gallant, even. But that was when he was free and easy, a man-about-town—not on a date, with a woman who could tell her parents everything, and who would then tell his parents everything. His parents, who were ordering him to marry, or else he’d forfeit his trust and inheritance.

  And certainly he couldn’t tell Rosamund that he’d asked her out to see, just see, if it was even remotely possible for him to feel enough of a spark with a kindred soul, a Jewess, someone from his exact background, that they might—might, that is—have enough in common to perhaps—someday—settle down together and raise a family. Still, that was unlikely to happen, especially as she wouldn’t even meet his eyes.

  The band launched into a cover of “Blue Champagne.”

  “You seem uncomfortable,” David remarked, finally.

  “ ‘Uncomfortable’?” Rosamund hissed. She met his eyes. “I know who—what—you are, David. I know all about you, you know. You were the talk of Oxford while we were there. You’re a family friend—and it was humiliating for me. Absolute mortification. It was difficult enough being Jewish, but then you had to go and act—like that. It reflected poorly on me, David. And it cost me friends.”

  She knew, David realized. But he needed her to say it. “What, exactly, did you find humiliating?”

  “That you’re a … friend of Dorothy’s. And, just for the record, I think it’s absolutely shameful. Disgusting, too.” She folded her arms over her chest and pressed her pink lips together.

  David took a breath. “Yes, I did have the pleasure of meeting Miss Dorothy Parker once, but that’s not—”

  Rosamund raised a hand. “Leviticus twenty-thirteen: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

  David stared. He knew that “gross indecency” was illegal. If his actions were found out, he could be arrested and imprisoned, even do hard labor. Since “friends of Dorothy” were widely diagnosed as diseased, they were often “cured” with castration, lobotomies, pudendal nerve surgery, and electroshock treatment. And while at Oxford most looked away, in London, especially working in government, one had to be careful. Extremely careful. “I’m sorry if … I’ve offended you. Truly.”

  “You don’t offend me,” Rosamund clarified. “But your behavior does. Color-coded pocket squares to signal interest to absolute strangers. Foot positions in public lavatories. It’s disgusting. It’s unnatural. An abomination in the eyes of God.”

  David recoiled as if struck. “You’ve heard from God on this, then?”

  “I’ve heard from the Rabbi. God expects us to be chaste and reserve … that sort of thing … for marriage. Within the context of marriage, it’s a mitzvah. And marriage can only be between a man and a woman.”

  “So why did you say yes to my dinner invitation? Why subject yourself to my company, if it’s so distasteful to you?”

  Rosamund looked across the room to summon their waiter. “First of all, because my parents asked me to, and I didn’t want to tell them why I didn’t want to. They don’t know anything about your … proclivities, and I don’t want to be the one to shatter their illusions. Second, because I wanted a chance to tell you how I felt, after all those years of humiliation at Oxford. And third, because I’m absolutely sick of rationing.” She looked up at the hovering waiter. “I’ll have the roast, please. Rare.”

  The next morning, Elise did as she had promised Father Licht, and snuck into the record-keeping rooms of Charité Hospital. There, she found drawer upon drawer of records of Charité’s patients deemed “unfit for life.” All had been dispatched to Hadamar.

  Within each file was abundant paperwork. Notification of admission to the Hadamar Institute. A letter to the parents, reporting a fake illness, such as pneumonia. Then the real death report, for Nazi eyes only. A death notification with the false reasons. The death certificate. Letter to the parents about the dispatch of the urn. And often, correspondence, sometimes tearstained and written with a shaky hand, from the parents, pleading for more information about what had happened.

  In the files, Elise also found a letter from the Führer—the official letter, which gave Dr. Brandt and the other doctors their go-ahead for the mass murders. It was dated—backdated?—from the day Germany declared war.

  BERLIN, 1. Sept. 1939.

  Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Karl Brandt are instructed to broaden the powers of physicians designated by name, who will decide whether those who have—as far as can be humanly determined—incurable illnesses can, after the most careful evaluation, be granted a mercy death.

  Signed, A. Hitler

  God help me, Elise prayed. With shaking hands, heart thudding, she made copies of the papers, wrinkling her nose at the stench of the sulfur used to make reverse-image photocopies.

  As she was copying, the door opened. “Nurse Hess!” she heard. “What are you doing in here?”

  Elise startled and tried not to panic at the sight of Nurse Flint. “Oh, um, Dr. Brandt asked me if I could try to fix the photocopy machine. He said
it was broken.”

  Nurse Flint cocked one eyebrow. “There are protocols for handling a broken photocopy machine and you know that. And we must follow them. Ordnung muβ sein!”

  Elise smiled her brightest. “I think I almost have it, Nurse Flint.”

  “How would you feel if one of the technicians tried to perform a nurse’s duties?” She clapped her hands. “Step away from the machine, Nurse Hess.”

  Before she did so, Elise tried to gather up the papers she had been copying.

  “Hand them to me,” Nurse Flint ordered. She was taller than Elise and outweighed her by at least sixty pounds. It suddenly seemed close and hot in the room.

  Elise handed over the files.

  “Nurse Hess, these are confidential records. Why on earth would you be making copies?”

  “As I said, I was fixing the photocopy machine.”

  Nurse Flint’s eyes narrowed. “There seems to be nothing wrong with it.”

  Elise tried to pull up the corners of her mouth into a smile. “Well, of course there isn’t—I fixed it.”

  Nurse Flint threw the papers into a nearby bin. “Don’t do it again.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Nurse Flint seized Elise by the elbow and steered her out of the records room. Elise knew that her mission—or at least this particular attempt—had failed.

  In another wing of Charité, Herr Mystery, also known as Patient No. 1564, was lying silently, staring up at the whitewashed ceiling.

  The most pertinent thing about his case now was that he seemed to be unable to speak—even though there was no damage to his vocal cords that any of the doctors could find. “Shell shock,” Dr. Brandt called it. “Battle trauma.” It could be permanent, the doctors said—or it could go away at any moment.

  Elise believed that all Herr Mystery needed was someone to talk to. And so, when she checked on his vital signs, she made sure to keep speaking to him. “It’s a beautiful day today,” she said, as she took his pulse with warm, steady hands. “You wouldn’t know it in here, but the rhododendrons in the Tiergarten are blooming.”