“Anglican.”
“Well, well, well.” Maggie had no idea of Hugh’s religious proclivities.
“Do you go to church?”
“Er, no,” Maggie said. “I was raised Episcopalian—what you’d call Anglican—but more because my Aunt Edith said it was a cultural necessity. That the Episcopalians use the King James Bible, which, according to her, is the best—meaning most literary—translation. And it would be impossible to understand history and literature without reading it. But I consider myself a scientist, first and foremost.”
“Are science and religion mutually exclusive, then?”
“Not necessarily. My position concerning God is that of an agnostic, in the Jeffersonian tradition.” Her smile widened. “So, how are the Chelsea Blues shaping up for the spring season?” They talked easily and freely, laughing loudly and often, and ate with gusto.
When they were through with dinner and wine, Maggie rose and began to clear the dishes from the dining room to the kitchen. Hugh began to clear as well.
“Oh, it’s all right,” she said, running the water in the sink and adding some homemade dishwashing soap, made from baking soda and Borax.
“How about if I wash and you dry?”
“Excellent.”
Dishes put away, they went into the parlor, where Maggie put on one of David’s records. Hugh picked up the Vera Lynn album that Maggie had listened to, thinking of John, before she’d left for Windsor. “Oh, not that,” she said without thinking.
“Too many memories?” he asked. “How about Noël Coward’s ‘Bitter Sweet’?”
“Perfect.”
On Monday morning, Maggie rose from her bed in her room at David’s flat and stretched.
“Must you go?” Hugh murmured, eyes still closed, reaching for her.
“Yes,” she said, leaning back to kiss him, “and you must too.”
In the weekend they’d spent together, Maggie had experienced such joy in his company, his wry grin, his pointed way of looking at the world, the simple pleasure of—behind closed doors, at least—being a normal couple. Despite the gray morning outside their window, she was still surrounded by a feeling of surprising happiness, a feeling that had only grown during their time together. As she watched him stand naked in the dim light, she delighted in how very beautiful he was. Despite, perhaps because of, his injury.
“Poor leg,” she said, taking in the bandages.
“Much better now,” Hugh said.
Maggie threw a pillow at him. “Stop smirking!”
“That wasn’t a smirk. It was more of a leer, I believe.”
She put her arms around his neck and he put his around her waist. They kissed, a long kiss. “I’ll see you at the office,” she said, voice serious. Her meeting with Frain was today.
“I know,” he answered. “I’m there for you—no matter what happens.”
Maggie and Hugh sat next to each other in a large conference room in the MI-5 offices, at a long, polished wood table, dotted by a few heavy glass ashtrays. It was impersonal, except for a framed photograph of the King and a large black clock. Maggie had her book in front of her. Outside the windows the day was chill and gray.
“You sure you’re all right?” Hugh asked, as men in dark suits began to filter in, taking seats around the table. A few of them lit cigarettes.
“I didn’t realize this was going to be such a big meeting,” Maggie whispered, wishing she could take his hand.
“Neither did I.”
As the clock on the wall ticked, they all waited. Then Frain walked in. He was followed by Edmund Hope. Maggie took a sharp intake of breath.
“Good morning, gentlemen, Miss Hope,” Frain said, as he took the seat at the head of the table. Edmund sat down next to him.
Maggie looked at Hugh, confused. He raised an eyebrow, surprised as she was.
Frain cleared his throat. “Our first order of business is the review of the attempt to smuggle critical information from Bletchley Park to the Germans, and the assassination attempt on the King and the attempt to kidnap the Princess Elizabeth. In addition, there was a last-minute attempt to smuggle out an important aide to the Prime Minister, one who knows nearly everything Churchill himself knows, with a briefcase full of classified documents. Thanks to courage, bravery, and quick thinking by our team, disaster was averted. The stolen decrypts never left England. The King is recovering nicely, the Princess is safe at home, and Mr. Churchill’s private secretary is back at work at Number Ten this morning.”
“Hear, hear!” Maggie heard. She and Hugh exchanged small smiles.
“Yes, and we owe special thanks to the two young agents here—Margaret Hope and Hugh Thompson.”
There was warm applause.
Suddenly Winston Churchill opened the door, lit cigar clenched between his teeth. Everyone rose.
“Please come in and take a seat, Prime Minister,” Frain said, offering up his own. Churchill did.
What’s he doing here? Maggie wondered as they all sat down again.
Frain held up his hand. “However, we can’t ever rest on our laurels. We’re still at war—there are still any number of threats to the Royal Family, the Prime Minister, the carefully kept secrets that give us an advantage in this war. And Commandant Hess is still in Berlin, a most formidable foe.”
“Commandant Hess?” Maggie asked.
Frain and Edmund exchanged a look. “The mastermind behind the King’s assassination and the Princess’s kidnapping plot,” Frain explained.
Edmund Hope shifted in his seat.
“Ah, yes,” Frain said. “There’s one additional matter we need to discuss.” He gestured to Edmund. The room was silent. Mr. Churchill puffed impassively on his cigar.
“Good morning, everyone,” Edmund said, rising. “As most of you know, I’ve been working as an undercover agent for years, most recently at Bletchley, and was part of the team investigating the stolen decrypt. Thanks to the work of my daughter, Margaret Hope, and Hugh Thompson—Christopher Boothby, an engineer at Bletchley, has come to light as the spy we were searching for—and he has been arrested, along with the rest of the crew of U-two-forty-six. However, there’s another matter I would like to address at this time—a more personal one.”
All eyes were fixed on him. Edmund continued. “I knew weeks ago that my file had been removed.” He looked at Hugh, who looked uncomfortable. “And that certain people were suspicious of my actions during the Great War, regarding the German group Sektion, the precursor to today’s Abwehr. Actions which cast doubts on my integrity as an agent, and as a father, today.”
Maggie and Hugh exchanged glances.
Edmund looked directly at Maggie. “The pinprick encryptions you found in those books—yes, they were orders from the Sektion. Yes, they were orders to kill British intelligence officers.”
“Including Hugh Thompson, Senior,” Maggie stated.
Hugh swallowed. Maggie put her hand on his arm, aware that he was in the same room as his father’s murderer. Her father.
“Yes,” Edmund said.
Maggie was in shock. We’re right? And yet here he is at MI-5? Admitting to all of it? Why isn’t he in handcuffs? In jail …
“But, Maggie—” His tone softened. “I wasn’t that agent.”
Across the long table, Maggie met his eyes.
“Then who was it?” she asked, softly.
“It was—” Edmund faltered, unable to continue.
“Oh, good Lord, man, just rip the bandage off!” the P.M. interrupted. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Miss Hope—I truly am—but the double agent in question wasn’t your father.
“It—she—was your mother.”
Unblinking, Maggie pushed back her chair and rose to her feet. Then she slowly walked to the door. Once through it, she began running down the long hall, her footfalls echoing on the marble floor.
“Maggie!” Edmund called. “Wait! Please!”
Maggie stopped in the middle of the empty corridor but d
idn’t turn around.
“You can’t …” Edmund chose his words carefully. “You can’t let this affect you.”
She spun to face him. “You know what—Dad? You have no right—no right to lecture me. Or to tell me how I should deal with this!”
“I know how horrible this feels. I’ll never forget how I felt when I learned the truth.”
“And having a child? Was that part of the plan too? Did Sektion dictate that as part of the cover story?”
Edmund was silent in the face of her accusation.
Maggie turned on her heel and left.
Meeting adjourned, Hugh caught up with Maggie outside of the MI-5 building on St. James’s Street.
“Quite the piece of news,” he said, falling into step beside her.
“I adore British understatement.”
“Let’s find somewhere to sit down, all right?”
She shrugged.
“Or, we can just keep walking.”
“Let’s go to Saint James’s Park.”
Eventually, they reached a bench by the bottle-green lake, which was wrinkling in the wind. Hugh put his arm around her and Maggie started talking, words pouring out of her. “When we were on the U-boat, I watched a man die. Someone I cared about.” Despite the bucolic picture in front of them, they could still hear the sounds of traffic and the bells of Big Ben.
“Gregory Strathcliffe was a traitor. If he hadn’t drowned, he would have been taken into custody and hanged. Do you really think once you reached Germany, you’d just be sent back to England? Or that you and he would go quietly to Switzerland? Gregory was a bad man. The worst kind, actually—a turncoat.”
“A weak man, perhaps,” Maggie admitted, watching the swans circle warily around the geese on the water. “I’m not exonerating him, but the way he grew up, and then the stress of battle, and his injuries …” She sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. He did what he did. But the truth is, he’s one in a long line of people I’ve known who’ve betrayed me, who’ve lied to me. And where does that leave me? Never knowing whom to trust. Since I’ve come here, since I’ve gotten involved with these people, it’s becoming a part of me. And I’m afraid of becoming what I despise.”
The cold wind rustled what leaves were left on the enormous ancient maple trees. “Maggie, you’ve a brave, loyal, strong Briton, despite that accent of yours. What you’ve done—are incredible accomplishments. You should feel proud.”
“I got distracted,” Maggie said, admitting her secret guilt. “I didn’t like Louisa and I let that color my perception of her. You were right all along—she wasn’t an exemplary human being, but she never did anything wrong. And I was so convinced she had, that I let my feelings trump logic.” She gave a sharp laugh. “I did that with my father too. I was so mad at him for abandoning me, that I let it cloud my judgment—and lead me to suspect him of being a double agent.”
“The file was incriminating.”
“No,” Maggie snapped. “It was inconclusive. I let my emotions cloud my judgment.” Then, in gentler tones, “I miss maths—two plus two always equals four.” Maggie thought for a moment. “Although, as Kurt Gödel theorized, there’s a vast difference between the truth and the part of the truth that can be proved.”
“Er, what?”
“Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem tells us that it’s impossible to fulfill Hilbert’s wish to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all of mathematics. In other words, we’ll never be able to prove everything. We might know something to be true, or we might want something to be true, need it to be true—but we may not ever be able to prove it.”
“Let’s take this back to the practical—you had theories and you followed them.”
“I wasted valuable time on Louisa, when I could have been looking for the real threats: Gregory and Audrey. And I missed the connection between Lily and Gregory. She called him Le Fantôme. Then she hid the decrypt in Le Fantôme de l’Opéra. It was plain as a nose on a face! How on earth did I miss that?”
“It’s easy to see these things after the fact.”
Maggie snorted.
“Personally, when I think of intelligence, I like to think of Sherlock Holmes. Not the hot-on-the-trail-of-the-killer Holmes, but the man sitting quietly at his desk, putting two and two together. It’s not glamorous in the least—it’s hard, boring, often exasperating work. You need to organize the facts, assess them, dismiss the irrelevant. Then, using induction and deduction, you come to a conclusion.”
“I know—”
“But you’ve got to do this without emotion, or prejudice or even hope clouding your judgment.”
“It was so much easier when it was just maths. You throw all these people into the mix—”
“It’s hard, yes. But now you know. You have experience. And I know you—you won’t make the same mistake again.”
“That’s for certain.” Maggie looked off across the lake. After a few moments of silence, “Thank you.”
“We’re partners, Maggie. And friends. And … more. I’d do anything to help you.”
“I know.”
Prime Minister Winston Churchill was in his large Victorian bathtub in the Annexe when his butler, Mr. Inces, showed in Peter Frain.
The P.M., plump, rosy, and naked as a cherub, was immersed in steaming water, smoking a cigar, glass tumbler of brandy and soda balanced on the edge of the tub.
“Prime Minister,” Frain said.
“Sit down,” Churchill growled. Then he shouted to Mrs. Tinsley, seated outside the bathroom door with her noiseless typewriter propped on her lap. “We’re done, Mrs. T.! Go away!”
“Yes, sir,” she said serenely, picking up the typewriter and her papers and making her way downstairs.
Frain sat down on the wooden chair placed in Churchill’s bathroom specifically for meetings. He tried not to stare at the large, pink form. “Sir.”
The P.M. splashed like a child, then a shadow passed over his face. “Inces!” he bellowed.
The beleaguered butler appeared in the doorway. “Sir?”
“I believe the temperature of my bath has dropped below one hundred and four degrees, Inces. Check. Now.”
The butler entered the bathroom and went to the tub. He knelt, rolled up one sleeve and reached into the water, pulling up a thermometer that was attached by a thin chain to the faucet.
“Well?” the P.M. demanded, chewing on the end of his cigar.
“Ninety-nine degrees, sir. Shall I add more hot water?”
“Damn it, yes! Do I need to tell you everything?”
“No, sir,” Inces said mildly as he turned on the hot water tap.
Frain permitted himself a small smile, thinking of the rest of Britons with their five-inch water mark and limited supplies of hot water. Rules just never seemed to apply to Winston Churchill.
As the tub filled, the P.M.’s lip jutted forward in a pout. “Now get out!”
“Yes, sir.” Inces took his leave.
Churchill rested his cigar in a cut-glass ashtray, then sank beneath the waterline and blew bubbles. Rising to the surface, he stared up at the ceiling, floating. “I was thinking about our meeting at MI-Five today.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It occurs to me that, with Miss Hope’s connections, we have an in.”
“The thought has occurred to me, too, sir. Miss Hope did well at Windsor. She’s in much better physical shape now, stronger, with more endurance. I think with some additional training up at Beaulieu, we’ll have her ready to go in a few months.”
Churchill blew a few blue smoke rings. “War’s a nasty business, my friend.”
“It is, indeed, sir.”
“And when we see an advantage, we must press—no matter what the personal cost.”
“If that’s your decision, sir.”
The P.M. took a swig of brandy and soda. “It is.” He waved Frain away. “Tell Mrs. T. to invite Miss Hope to Number Ten this afternoon.”
Frain rose. “Yes,
sir.”
It was strange for Maggie to return to No. 10 Downing Street after so many months and so much that had happened. She remembered how nervous she’d been when she’d first knocked on that dignified front door, so plain and black and unpretentious. She was met by Richard Snodgrass, her former nemesis, now her colleague and friend.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Snodgrass,” she said, extending her hand.
He shook it. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss Hope. Follow me, please.”
She followed Mr. Snodgrass through the dignified hallways of No. 10, past the main entrance with its grand cantilever staircase, and through several carpeted hallways. They reached a small conference room, where a projector and screen were set up. A cut-crystal bowl of apples—green Bramleys, bright red Bismarcks, and mottled Pippins—was set in the middle of the polished wood table.
“Hello, David,” Maggie said, surprised, as David rose to greet her.
“I just found out about all of this myself, Maggie.”
“All of what?” she asked as Mr. Snodgrass left them.
“You’ll see.”
The door opened and in came Frain and another man, short and round, where Frain was tall and slim. He was in his late fifties, with a beaky nose and a shiny pate. “Hello, Maggie, David,” Frain began. “I’d like to introduce Sir Frank Nelson, head of the so-called Baker Street Irregulars.”
“Sir Frank,” Maggie said, extending her hand. “How do you do?”
They shook. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Hope.”
Maggie’s mind was racing. “Baker Street Irregulars?” She’d heard rumors of a secret spy organization, but had always assumed they were just that—rumors. “How very Holmesian.”
“Nickname for the Special Operations Executive, or S.O.E.,” David said, pleased, for once, to know something she didn’t. “Also known as Churchill’s Secret Army, Churchill’s Toyshop, or the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”
“We’re a bit off the grid, Miss Hope. Our mission is to coordinate espionage and sabotage. All hush-hush, of course,” Sir Frank said.
Maggie shot David a look. “Of course.”
They all sat down at the conference table, waiting. Finally, the door burst open. It was the Prime Minister. “You’re all here? Good, good,” Churchill rumbled, taking a seat. He waved his already-lit cigar. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
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