His Majesty's Hope

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  “What will happen to her?”

  “She’ll be imprisoned. If she’s willing to work for us, she’ll live. If not …”

  Clara’s unspoken fate hung in the air between them. Nelson pulled out a silver cigarette case and a lighter. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  He lit it, then watched the tip smolder before saying, “She had an unusual request.”

  “And what is that?”

  “She wants to be interrogated by you, Miss Hope.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  Maggie was silent.

  “I suspect a game of some sort, quite frankly,” Nelson continued. “As does Mr. Churchill. But we’re not going to know what she has up her sleeve until you talk to her.”

  “I am not talking to her,” Maggie spat. “I will never lay eyes on that woman, ever, ever again. Do you understand me?”

  Nelson dropped his cigarette in the cup on Maggie’s bedside. It hissed as it hit the water. He rose. “I’ll leave you to get some rest, Miss Hope. You should be released today, and we’ve chartered a flight for you back to Britain tonight.” He turned.

  “I’m not going to talk to her! Never!”

  “Feel better, Miss Hope,” he said at the doorway.

  “Wait!” she called. “What about John?”

  “Mr. Sterling is fine. In fact, he’s back in London now.”

  “And Ernst?”

  “We were able to get him to London as well.”

  “And Elise?” Maggie asked in a small voice. “Did she really go back to Berlin?” If Elise had gone back to Germany, there would be no chance to talk to her, to explain …

  Nelson nodded. “Yes, she decided she was needed in Berlin.”

  Maggie wished tears would fill her eyes, but they remained hot and dry. “Just go,” she said. Nelson hesitated. Maggie threw the cup at him, splattering him with water and ashes. “Go!”

  Elise sat in one of the pews at St. Hedwig’s Cathedral for High Mass.

  The cathedral was crowded—women in their best dresses and hats, men in suits, small children being shushed. The air was scented with candle wax and incense, and shafts of light pierced the edges of the boarded-up windows. The light danced over the floor, the pews, and the faces of the congregation.

  There was a murmur in the crowd as Bishop von Preysing rose to give the homily.

  And in the soaring space, the Bishop spoke. Within moments, Elise realized what he was talking about—that he had received the information about Charité and Hadamar from Father Licht, and had decided to publicly denounce Operation Compassionate Death.

  He didn’t mince words—and ended with “Woe to mankind and woe to our German nation if God’s Holy Commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is not only deliberately broken, and if this act of mass murder is not only tolerated, but allowed to continue.”

  Throughout the cathedral, there was stunned silence.

  Women had tears running down their cheeks, while men looked on with pale faces and set jaws. In the back, one older woman fainted. She was helped up by two ushers and taken outside for air.

  Bishop von Preysing put his hands together. “Let us pray.”

  Elise knelt and bent her head. She prayed for Gretel. She prayed for the deaf boy on the train. She prayed for all the murdered children.

  She tried to pray for Maggie, and for her mother, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Copies of Bishop von Preysing’s homily were distributed throughout Berlin. Bishop von Galen and other higher-ups in the Catholic Church also spoke out against Operation Compassionate Death, and copies of their homilies, too, were circulated.

  Through the Solf Circle, the resistance group Father Licht belonged to, the British propaganda office obtained copies of the homilies and dropped flyers of them over German cities and German-occupied territories, to let the people know that their government was murdering children. There was rioting in Hadamar and Ansberg, and the other sites where Operation Compassionate Death was being carried out.

  Adolf Hitler was about to give a speech at the Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in Munich, where in 1920 he had once proclaimed the twenty-five theses of the National Socialist program. Then, the assembled crowds had cheered and applauded. Now, two decades later, the people waited, stony-faced and silent, for their Führer.

  Inside the Hofbräuhaus, the mood of the top Nazis was subdued. “Mein Führer,” Goebbels said. “Are you sure you want to do this—now?” Goebbels was keenly aware of the disposition of the crowd. They had heard or read the homilies. Many of them had relatives and friends who had “disappeared” to Hadamar, or one of the other institutes, only to be returned as ashes in a black urn.

  “My people need me,” Hitler replied, pushing back a limp lock of hair. “They may not know it, but they need me.”

  Goebbels knew better than to object. “Ja, mein Führer,” he answered, head bowed.

  Hitler stepped out onto the balcony.

  There was complete silence. Then, from the back, came one soft call of “Boo!”

  Soon, the call was picked up by others in the crowd. “Boo! Boo!” they shouted. “Boo!” Hitler glared at his audience, daring them to continue—and yet they did. His composure began to melt.

  He glared into the mass of people with his hypnotic silver eyes, but this time no one was mesmerized, no one was afraid.

  They met his eyes, and still they called “Boo!”

  The Führer opened his mouth to say something—then closed it. The booing continued, becoming louder and stronger. Abruptly, Hitler turned on his heel and left the balcony.

  Once they realized what had happened, the crowd burst into applause. They applauded von Preysing, they applauded von Galen, and they applauded themselves. They had stood their ground. They had saved their friends and relatives. They congratulated themselves as they left the Hof: “Now the euthanasia program will end. Now our children are safe.”

  Inside, Hitler met with Goebbels, Bormann, Heydrich, and Himmler. “I want von Preysing arrested and executed!” the Führer screamed, pacing with his hands behind him, clasped so hard the knuckles were white. He was furious, forehead crawling with veins of rage.

  He swept all of the items off the desktop in sudden, wrathful petulance—lamps and bronze figurines and teacups falling to the floor with an ominous crash. He flung open cabinet doors, just to slam them—hard. It was a temper tantrum of the worst kind, that of an adult.

  “Mein Führer,” Goebbels soothed. “Would you like some tea?”

  “Nein! I want von Galen and the rest of the clergy in handcuffs, immediately!”

  “I say this as both a colleague and a friend. I don’t think that would be prudent—at this time, that is.” Goebbels was white with fear.

  Hitler threw himself into a chair, head in hands. His uncanny understanding of mass psychology had failed him, and he was both enraged and hurt, as a favored child disciplined for the first time.

  “They booed me,” he muttered. “My people—my volk—they booed me. Me! Do you understand? That has never happened. Ever! How could they do that to me?” His metallic eyes darkened and flashed with hatred and hurt. “I am their Führer!”

  “If we arrest von Preysing, von Galen, Delp, and the other high-ranking clergy,” Goebbels said, “they become martyrs. Bavaria, especially, has a strong Catholic base. By taking the Bishops into custody, you risk alienating a huge source of your support. And we risk alienating the Pope. So far he’s held his tongue, but …”

  Hitler sat up. “The Pope will stay quiet, he always does. What do you suggest, then?”

  “Publicly dismantle the Operation Compassionate Death program. But continue it in secret, of course. The clergy don’t know a thing about eugenics. Or racial hygiene. Or economics, for that matter. But—for now—we need to appease them.”

  Hitler smiled. “We will give them some lessons …”

  “Yes, mein Führer, when we’ve won the war, there will be time for lessons.”
/>
  “In a generation or two, the clergy will all be dead and Jesus will be forgotten.” Hitler’s body, so taut before, started to relax. He looked to Goebbels. “That priest at St. Hedwig’s—the one working with von Preysing—what’s his name?”

  “Father Johann Licht, mein Führer.”

  Hitler made a steeple of his fingers. “Someone must pay, and if it’s not a Bishop—yet—it shall be a priest. Arrest him.”

  Reinhard Heydrich held many titles: SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. He was also a consummate athlete—fencer, boxer, cross-country skier. Whenever possible, he preferred to be moving. This need, plus the demand for utter secrecy, was why he often conducted meetings on horseback.

  It was early, well before the start of the workday, but the air was already shimmering with heat. Dew-covered spiderwebs glittered on the grass. Heydrich rode through the lime and chestnut trees in the Tiergarten with Adolf Eichmann, the “Czar of the Jews.”

  Both men were dressed in traditional riding garb: black velvet—covered helmets, jackets, breeches, leather gloves, tall black boots, and riding crops. Their horses were proud and noble stallions.

  “I spoke with Göring yesterday,” Heydrich said. His seat was impeccable. “He wants to know where we are with the Jewish question.” He pursed his lips. “As you know, it’s complicated. No country wants them, even Britain. Even the mighty United States of America won’t take any more than her usual quota. Don’t forget about the MS St. Louis.”

  Eichmann put his heels into the horse’s flanks to keep up. “I was able to get three thousand smuggled into Britain, but, as you know, that’s a drop in the proverbial bucket.”

  “Where are we with the Madagaskar Projekt?” Heydrich asked.

  “The Madagascar Project was an option when we thought we could take Britain easily. No one expected her to hold out this long. But as long as the British navy is still fighting, we can’t afford the risk to our own ships.” The horse whinnied and twitched his ears but increased his pace.

  “What of the cleansings in Poland?”

  “They’re proving to be inefficient—shooting is too time-consuming, too hard on the morale of the soldiers involved. There are just too many Jews. If we can’t get the Jews out, we’ll have to deal with them. Somehow.”

  Heydrich pulled on his horse’s reins, to slow down. The horse, unhappy, flicked his tail, but obeyed. “Tell me about Operation Compassionate Death.”

  Eichmann shrugged. “It’s officially been closed down. Of course, unofficially, it still exists. ‘Life unfit for life’ is now being poisoned or starved in secret—instead of gassed.”

  Heydrich considered. “What if we look to Operation Compassionate Death as an inspiration? We might be able to improve upon its efficiency.”

  “Go on.”

  “If we used a faster-acting and more powerful poison, for example, we could speed up the process of extermination.”

  “We could get Mennecke on that,” Eichmann said. “I hear they’ve done experiments with something called Zyklon B gas on Gypsies at Buchenwald. But what about disposal? Disposal of the units was the real issue with Operation Compassionate Death.”

  Heydrich whipped the flank of his horse. “Well, isn’t that why we have Lebensraum?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Most of the concentration camps are in Poland, under our control and well away from the German population, unlike Hadamar and the rest. We will have enough room and privacy to dispose of as many units as we need to. No moralistic Germans to interfere out there. It’s like America’s Wild West.”

  “Excellent, excellent idea!” Heydrich slapped Eichmann on the back, and gave one of his winning grins. “Of course, we’ll need to discuss it with the Führer and the others. In the meantime, get plans from Kurt Gerstein and some of the other Reich scientists. I want numbers. How fast can we actually do this? How many units can we process per day?”

  They dug the heels of their riding boots into their horses’ flanks and turned back toward the stables. “Once I get those figures and have the Führer’s approval, I can call a meeting—the official villa in Wannsee would be perfect, don’t you think?” Eichmann said.

  “We could make a weekend of it.” He smiled. “And when the war is over, I’ve already made sure that the villa will be mine.”

  The SS arrested Father Licht and took him to Gestapo headquarters at No. 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. “Look at the parson in the Easter bonnet!” one of the SS officers called, referring to Licht’s black biretta, as the handcuffed priest walked in.

  The Gestapo was a law unto itself, free from condemnation by the German legal system. Licht was interrogated, then taken to Columbia-Haus, the Gestapo prison center in Berlin, notorious for the screaming that could be heard coming from its windows.

  All of this and worse Father Licht endured, without giving up any information on the von Solf Circle. Returning to his cell, naked, bruised, and bloody, he would drop to his knees and pray.

  When they realized they would get nothing from him, the SS decided he should be sent to Dachau. At least twenty prisoners were being dispatched that day, taken by the SS to the Grunewald train station.

  “Come on, come on,” one of the SS officers grumbled as the prisoners scrambled out of the back of the van. He hit the men with his nightstick to get them to move faster.

  Father Licht kept his eyes down as they waited in line to march to the train platform. “Off with the hat! Take off your hat, Father!”

  Father Licht continued to look down into the tracks, unmoving.

  With his nightstick, the SS officer poked at the priest’s black biretta, knocking it off. The hat fell, turning over and over in the air, until it came to rest on the tracks below.

  The train pulled into the station, crushing the felt hat beneath its wheels. Licht turned to the SS officer. “God be with you, my son.”

  The man blinked, years of Catholic school and Masses bringing the words to his lips out of habit. “And also with you, Father.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  David’s parents collected him at Guy’s Hospital and took him back to his flat in Knightsbridge. Mr. Greene helped him into his freshly made bed while Mrs. Greene hovered. “Are you all right, darling? Do you want one of your pain tablets? Some water? A cup of tea?”

  “A cup of tea would be lovely, Mother, thank you,” David said, as he lay back against the pillows. That left him alone with his father.

  “By the way, do you have my glasses, Father?”

  Mr. Greene reached into his breast pocket and handed the wire-framed spectacles to David. “Your—Mr. Wright, that is—held on to them for you. He gave them to me to give to you.”

  David settled them on his nose. “Yes, that’s better. I can see clearly now.”

  The two men sat in silence until Mrs. Greene returned with the tea tray. “Here you go, darling,” she said, pouring a cup and handing it to David.

  “Thank you, Mother.”

  Mrs. Greene seemed nervous and Mr. Greene uncomfortable. “We’d better let you rest now, darling.”

  David put down the cup. “There’s one thing I want to say to you. To both of you.” His parents stood very still.

  “A bad thing happened to me. A very bad thing. But I lived through it, and came out the other side. And now, I have a better idea of what’s important to me. As we know all too well these days, life is finite. A random German bomb—or an angry stranger—can change things in an instant.”

  “David—” Mr. Greene began.

  “No, I want to say this. I need to say this. My life, until now—even with the war—has been a series of parties and dances and good times. I thought a certain, shall we say, standard of life was imperative. But then, I believed I was lost, about to die. And do you know what I thought about? You and Mother. My friends. And, yes—Freddie.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,�
� Mr. Greene said, turning to go.

  “Wait, Benjamin,” Mrs. Greene said. “Let him finish.”

  “Thanks, Mother.” David took a breath. “And so, while I’ve definitely enjoyed my flat and my car and my trips and my parties—I now realize that’s not what really matters in life. People matter. And to me, Freddie matters most of all. I love him. And he loves me. And if that means I forfeit my trust fund, my inheritance, so be it. I have a job, I can support myself. And I can live the kind of life I want to live.”

  Mr. Greene couldn’t take any more of this. “You’ll be arrested! And worse …”

  “I appreciate your concern, Papa, I really do. But Freddie and I are careful. There are a lot of us in London, who are very, very careful. And we can live good lives, productive lives.” He thought of Kay and Daphne. “Happy lives.”

  “Oh, David …” Mrs. Greene wept, reaching out to stroke his hair.

  “I’m sorry, but this is the kind of life I choose for myself, no matter what the consequences.” He turned over. “And now I’d like to get some sleep, please.”

  Back in London, after being debriefed and taking a few days to recover, Maggie knew what she had to do. There was no question who she wanted: John. And there was no question that the proper thing to do, before things with John proceeded any further, was to break things off with Hugh.

  She called and asked him to meet her at a neutral spot—the Caxton Bar at St. Ermin’s, a Queen Anne–style hotel in Westminster. She arrived early and sat at a small table. Hugh came up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Hello, Maggie,” he said in her ear.

  In one movement, she stood and turned—ready to take him down. The other patrons in the bar looked up and fell silent.

  “It’s just me.” Hugh held up his hands and smiled. “Sorry to startle you.”

  “Of course,” Maggie said, relaxing and embracing him. They kissed cheeks and sat. A waiter came by, and they ordered pink gins. As the silence between them grew, Maggie took a cigarette and lighter from her purse.

  “Since when do you smoke?” Hugh asked.