His Majesty's Hope

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  Herr Oberg, still wearing his uniform, took a few steps closer and appraised her, in her nightgown and robe. The appraisal lasted too long for Maggie’s taste.

  “What are you doing here, Fräulein Hoffman?”

  “I—I couldn’t sleep,” Maggie lied. “I thought I’d come downstairs for some cooler air.”

  Herr Oberg looked down on her. “I couldn’t sleep, either,” he said at last. “We seem to suffer from the same affliction.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. In the darkness, given her state of undress, it seemed a forward, even possessive, gesture. The touch of his hand on her shoulder burned. Maggie kept completely still, not meeting his eyes. “Get some sleep, Fräulein Hoffman,” he said finally. “I’m having a few important guests over on Saturday night. I would like you to sit at the foot of my dinner table and be hostess.”

  Maggie’s mind raced. She remembered that he’d mentioned the possibility earlier. “Wouldn’t that honor fall to your daughter?”

  “Alexandra is in no condition to be seen,” he said. “You—you will be splendid.”

  She had to get away. “Yes, Herr Oberg,” she said, making her way back to the door to the servants’ staircase.

  “Wear something pretty,” he called. “If you don’t have anything suitable, my daughter surely has something. And there are gowns and jewels that belonged to my late wife—have my Alexandra show you those. They would suit you well.”

  “Yes, Herr Oberg. Good night,” Maggie said as she reached the door and opened it, bolting up the stairs, her heart in her throat. Play hostess at a Nazi dinner? Wear a dead woman’s jewels? Oh, which ring of hell are we in now?

  Maggie went back to her room, her head spinning. She felt as if her cover might be approaching its expiration date.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Freddie knelt by David’s still body until the ambulance arrived. One of the onlookers found David’s wire-rimmed eyeglasses, which had fallen during the attack, miraculously unbroken. He handed them to Freddie, who slipped them inside his breast pocket. Without his spectacles, David’s face looked young and intensely vulnerable.

  The ambulance finally arrived. “You know, we have bombs falling almost every night,” one of the medics grumbled, adjusting his steel helmet. “It’s not like you lads need to go out looking for trouble.”

  Freddie looked up with a grim face. “Trouble found us.”

  The other medic was examining David’s wounds. “Stab wounds to the abdomen. Can’t tell how deep, but he’s lost a lot of blood. Let’s take him in.”

  “Where?” Freddie asked.

  “Guy’s Hospital has a few open beds last I heard. We’ll try there.”

  “You’ll try there?”

  “Lots injured this week—all the beds are full.” The medic and his partner lifted David onto a stretcher and moved him to the back of the ambulance. “But we’ll make sure he’s all right and they get all the glass out, of course.”

  The low, forlorn wail of the air-raid siren sounded. “Oh, hell,” the first man grumbled. “Damned Blitz—come on.”

  Freddie prepared to board, too. “Wait—are you family?” the first medic asked.

  “I’m—I’m a … friend,” Freddie said.

  “Look, sir—if you’re not immediate family, the best thing you can do is go home and contact his next of kin. Then come to the hospital.”

  The ambulance door slammed closed in Freddie’s face.

  Freddie knew he had to call David’s parents.

  He took a taxi, infuriatingly slow in the blackout, back to David’s flat in Knightsbridge. He could hear planes overhead and bombs dropping in the distance—the East End, most likely. But there was no time to think. Freddie took the stairs two at a time, opened the door with the spare key David always left on the transom, then ran to David’s study. His desk was a mess, with papers, files, books, and letters everywhere. Freddie turned on the desk light.

  “Address book … address book,” he muttered. Finally, he found it, a tiny leather volume, pages filled with David’s flourish-marked script. Hands shaking, Freddie flipped through it, looking for Greene. Finally, he found it: Benjamin and Ruth Greene’s country house in the Lake District.

  He picked up the receiver. “Yes, Operator,” Freddie said. “Please connect me.” He gave the number.

  A bomb dropped on a building down the street. There was a shattering explosion, which knocked Freddie to the floor. The power failed, but he managed to hold on to the receiver. Freddie tested his limbs—nothing seemed to be broken. Miraculously, the connection was completed.

  “Yes, is this Mr. Benjamin Greene?” Freddie said. “Sir, this is Freddie Wright, your son’s … friend. I’m so sorry to tell you this, but David’s had an accident. He’s been taken to Guy’s Hospital, in London.”

  Trying to sit up, Freddie held his hand over his other ear. Another bomb was dropped somewhere else on the block, creating earthquake-like tremors. Now, Freddie could hear the wail of ambulances. His body was sore and his ears were ringing.

  “Yes, we’re being bombed right now, I’m afraid, sir. From what I understand he’s lost some blood.” Another pause. “No, sir, he was … mugged.” Then, “Right. Yes, sir. See you as soon as you can get here, then.” He hung up the receiver.

  He knew he had to get to the hospital.

  Freddie made his way through London in the blackout. He could hear the bombing raid had moved on to another part of the city, but as he traveled through the streets, tripping over debris in the dark, orange fires still smoldered.

  David was in surgery when Freddie finally arrived at Guy’s Hospital. “Are you a family member?” asked a nurse with a white, winged cap.

  This time Freddie was prepared. “His brother.”

  “All I can tell you, sir, is that your brother is still in surgery,” she said. “He’s had a lot of bleeding. One wound penetrated to his liver—what we call liver laceration. The doctor is ascertaining the damage and then doing the best he can to repair it.”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Dr. Marland is one of our best surgeons, sir, and I know—”

  Freddie put his hand on her forearm and bent to look into her eyes. “Please. Tell me. Is he going to be all right?”

  The nurse clasped her hand over his. “It’s touch and go, dear. He’s very slight after all—there wasn’t much protection for him. There’s a chapel on the first floor, if you’d like to pray.”

  Dr. Marland, in blood-spattered scrubs, found Freddie kneeling on a pew in the small chapel of the hospital. “Mr. Greene?”

  Freddie didn’t respond.

  “You’re David Greene’s brother?”

  Freddie looked up. “Yes.”

  “He’s out of surgery,” the doctor reported without preamble. “We were able to repair the liver. It’s going to take him some time to recover, but he’ll be fine.”

  “Fine?” Freddie couldn’t comprehend the word.

  “He’ll be fine,” the doctor repeated. “Is he married?”

  “What?”

  “He’s going to need some help while he’s recovering. If he’s not married, it’s best if he stays with someone.”

  “Oh—I’ll, I’ll look after him, of course.”

  “Good. That’s settled then. Good luck to you both.”

  And with that, the doctor left.

  Freddie was in David’s room when he opened his eyes.

  “You look terrible, old thing,” David managed to croak.

  Freddie gave him a look of pure joy. “Not as wretched as you, I admit.” He poured David a glass of water from a nearby pitcher. “The nurse said you could have a few sips when you woke up.”

  “So,” David said, “am I going to die?”

  “Not for a long, long time,” Freddie said as he held the glass while David took a sip. He lay back, exhausted.

  “You were lucky,” Freddie said, interlacing his fingers with David’s. “Looks like you’ll be with me until
you recover.”

  “He’ll be with us, of course.” It was David’s mother, swooping in on a cloud of Arpège. Ruth Greene was a petite, slender woman with bleached platinum hair and the sparkling green eyes David had inherited. “Oh, my darling, darling boy,” she said, sweeping up to the bed, nudging Freddie aside, and stroking David’s fair hair. “How are you, my love?” She kissed his forehead. “We were so worried about you. Weren’t we, dear?” she called to her husband, a few steps behind her. Benjamin was the same height as his wife, with a long, thin face and silver spectacles, much like his son’s.

  David blanched. “Oh, merciful Minerva—you’re all here. Together. I really am about to die, aren’t I?”

  “Of course not, darling,” David’s mother crooned, kissing his forehead, then rubbing off the lipstick smear.

  Mr. Greene stepped up to David, setting down his briefcase on the floor by the bed. “Good to see you, Son,” he managed, before turning away and wiping his eyes.

  A nurse, young and very pretty, peered in and smiled at the assembled group. “I’m sorry, but family time is over,” she announced cheerfully. “Time for Mr. Greene’s morphine.”

  “Sleep well, dearest,” David’s mother said, giving him one last kiss. “We’ll be back to check on you later.”

  Freddie smiled up at Mr. and Mrs. Greene. “I’d like to sit with him, until he falls asleep, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Of course, darling.” Mrs. Greene patted his cheek with a gloved hand. “How sweet of you—what a good friend you are,” she said, and then Mr. and Mrs. Greene departed.

  Freddie bent down to David. “You gave me the scare of my life,” he whispered.

  “Sorry,” David said, already drowsy from the morphine.

  “I just want to tell you—that I love you.”

  “I … love … you … too …” David replied.

  Their lips touched just as Mr. Greene returned for his briefcase. The older man stared at the two young ones in shocked disbelief, which turned to anger. His cheeks turned red and his hands started to shake. “Get! Out!” he shouted at Freddie.

  “Sir, I—”

  “Get out! Don’t make me throw you out!”

  Head down, Freddie left.

  “David …” his father began.

  But David had turned his head away. He let his father believe that morphine had done the trick and he was fast asleep, oblivious to what had just happened.

  Generally, Herr Oberg ate an elaborate dinner alone, in the dining room. He didn’t eat with his daughter and, in fact, seemed to want as little to do with her as possible. When Maggie saw them interact, his face was crimson and his manner was stiff. Maggie’s own interactions with her employer were limited to “Good morning, sir,” and “Good evening, sir.”

  Maggie bided her time until Oberg was out at the ballet. This time, she’d found a larding needle—used to poke lardoons of seasoned pork fat into roasts—in the kitchen. She took a flashlight she found there as well. She made sure Alexandra was tucked safely in her bedroom, snoring loudly, then crept, for the third time, to her employer’s locked office.

  She held the flashlight in her teeth as she worked at the lock with the larding needle. It was the perfect size and shape. Finally, Maggie thought, as the lock clicked open. She pushed open the heavy oak door, slipped in, then closed the door softly behind her.

  Oberg’s study was dark, and smelled of smoke and leather. Her heart was pounding. While she didn’t think anyone at the villa suspected her of being anything more than Fräulein Oberg’s companion, she’d been taught to anticipate the worst.

  Flashlight in hand, Maggie walked over the carpeting to the massive desk. Without touching a thing, she looked for hairs, powder—some secret way that Oberg might be using to see if his things had been rifled.

  She didn’t see anything. Not only that, but the desk itself was immaculate—no papers, no files. Just a photograph in a silver frame of a woman Maggie assumed was his late wife.

  By the desk chair stood his briefcase—standard, black leather. Was it rigged to explode? Any special locks?

  It appeared not. Maggie breathed a sigh of relief, the knot in her gut unclenching just the slightest bit.

  With a hairpin, she was able to pick the locks open.

  She sat down on the carpet and opened the briefcase in front of her.

  There, flashlight still in her teeth, she went through the papers. Most of them were letters and memos from the Kraft durch Freude’s Central Office II, Division IV—Health and Social Welfare—of the Reich Interior Ministry, and Office IIb.

  There were some from the Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses, as well as memoranda from the various medical departments, transport department, inspections department, and calculations office, talking about “units” and delineating the various costs of “treatment.” Still more memos and letters that Oberg was carbon-copied on from other departments—bus drivers’ salary, bus repairs, cost of gasoline, cost of film, doctor and nurse salaries. Notices of inspection of various facilities. A special budget for staff parties and alcohol.

  Numbers swarmed in front of her, calculations of costs. Histories of costs. Projections of future costs. Costs of what?

  Maggie tried to figure out where the main office was located, but the best she could find was a postbox address: Berlin W 9, P.O. Box 101. That’s odd.

  Maggie shook her head, confused. The language meant nothing. Only the mention of hospitals, like Charité, and institutions, such as the Hadamar Institute, and mention of the “Reich’s community and nursing homes” gave any indication they were talking about people. But this had nothing to do with the war—with soldiers, supplies, munitions factories, troop movements—nothing. Just internal German bureaucracy.

  Damn! Maggie felt a hot flush of disappointment and anger. She’d risked so much for so little. Oberg, so important in his own mind, was a midlevel bureaucrat—a paper pusher—and none of the papers he was pushing were the least bit useful.

  Still, with her tiny SOE-issued camera, the one Noreen had given her in London so long ago, Maggie photographed as many documents as she could, each click intensifying her disappointment. She stopped short when she came to a packet of mathematics problems awaiting Oberg’s approval. The first question, obviously for children, read: If it costs 15,000 marks to build one house per working-class family and it costs 6,000,000 marks to build and run an insane asylum, how many working-class houses can you build for the cost of one insane asylum?

  Excellent, Oberg had written in red pen. APPROVED.

  Maggie shook her head. It’s time to go home, Hope, she thought as she put the papers back, exactly as she’d found them, closed the locks, and replaced the briefcase as it had been.

  Maggie slipped out of Oberg’s study and up to her room, silent as a ghost.

  The next morning, when David awoke, the young nurse was at his bedside. “Just need to take your vitals,” she said, checking his pulse and sticking a thermometer under his tongue. “Your pulse is strong, that’s good,” she added briskly. Then she pulled out the thermometer. “And your temperature’s normal. You’re doing quite well, considering.”

  David stared off into space.

  “You know,” the nurse continued, “it’s none of my business, but your brother—that is, your brother who your parents now tell me isn’t really your brother—is still in the waiting room. He slept here last night. Don’t think he’s eaten a thing.”

  David wouldn’t meet her eyes. “He should go.”

  The nurse put a hand on his shoulder. “I can fetch him.”

  “My father …” David finally looked at her. “I can’t …” She didn’t look away. “I know what you’re thinking—here I am, a grown man—and I can’t even stand up to my own father.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking at all,” she said. “What I was thinking is that it’s hard.”

  “Hard?” David repeated. “What
’s hard, exactly? Being stabbed? Living through the Blitz? Fighting a losing war? Having parents who love you—but only conditionally? Or”—he lowered his voice and she leaned in to hear him—“being ‘like that.’ ”

  “I was just thinking that life is hard,” she replied. “Life is hard—for all of us, luv. And maybe it’s just a bit easier if you have someone by your side. I’ll check in on you again in a bit.”

  The cafeteria at Guy’s Hospital was crowded. After Freddie paid the cashier for his cup of tea and toast, he looked for somewhere to sit. There was an empty chair at Benjamin Greene’s table.

  Freddie decided to bite the proverbial bullet. “May I sit down?” he asked Mr. Greene, who was pretending to read The Times with shadowed eyes.

  There was no reply.

  Freddie sat and stirred his tea. Mr. Greene ignored him.

  “I know my being here makes you uncomfortable,” Freddie said, “and for that I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” Mr. Greene said, laying down the newspaper and taking off his reading glasses. “I don’t have any feelings about your being here. You’re nothing to me. No one.”

  “We all love him,” Freddie persisted gently. “And I just want to know how he’s doing.”

  “You love him? Then get out of his life,” Benjamin Greene snapped and folded his paper shut. “Leave. Him. Alone.”

  “No.” Freddie was resolute.

  “No?” Mr. Greene shoved back his chair and stood. “If you think you’re going to get your hands on my fortune, now or later, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”

  “You can’t buy his love,” Freddie countered. “And if you hold it over him, he’s going to hate you for it. David’s better than that. And, sir, I think that deep down you’re better than that, too.”

  “I could have you arrested for gross indecency,” Mr. Greene whispered. “You’d be put in jail. Chemically castrated.”

  “Then you’d have to do that to your son, too.”

  Mr. Greene was going to retort, then stopped himself, put on his hat, and stalked out.