Princess Elizabeth's Spy mhm-2

by Susan Elia MacNeal

“Glad you like it.” Hugh cleared his throat. “So, what’s the plan, once we get there? Sounded like you had one.”

  Maggie’s smile was crooked. “As we say in America, Hugh—we’re going to wing it.”

  Frain’s call to Scotland Yard had caused local police precincts to scramble to put up roadblocks, but the van with the Princess was already racing along the AI, on its way to Mossley. Poulter and Audrey were in the front seats, while Lilibet, tied up, was lying in the very back. The van, one used by the castle staff for transporting large game animals from the grounds where they’d been shot to the slaughterhouse, had the metallic smell of old blood. But it was fast and the all-terrain tires had a surprising amount of tread still left on them. They gripped the road as Poulter drove faster and faster in the blackness, past cities, villages, and hamlets: Hatfield, Welwyn, and Stevenage; Letchworth, Foster, and Baderton.

  For a moment, he considered removing the blackout hoods from over the headlights. But only for a moment. A move like that would allow them more speed but would ultimately attract attention. And by this time, Poulter had no doubts that Scotland Yard had been alerted.

  The winds had picked up. Between the motion of the van as it sped over the darkened roads and the gusting of the wind, the insides shuddered and shook. The passengers were silent as Poulter turned off the main road onto a narrower one, less likely to be blocked by the police. It was rough going, and he had to reduce speed, but he was convinced it was better to be safe than sorry.

  “Shit,” he said, seeing lights and roadblock ahead. He could see at least four men in police uniforms, gesturing for him to slow down and stop.

  Audrey’s eyes were wide as she reached into the glove compartment. There she found two guns. She passed the first to Poulter, then picked up the second, wrapped her hands around the Sten, hiding it in the folds of her skirt. “Merde,” she whispered.

  Then she turned back to Lilibet. “Lie down and keep silent!”

  Poulter slowed the van, braking to a stop in front of the barricade. He rolled down his window. “Good evening, officers,” he said, smiling.

  “Please step out of the van, sir,” the fresh-faced officer said.

  “Look, it’s late,” Poulter said, “and my wife and I are tired. Would you mind just letting us pass?”

  “Where are you and your ‘wife’ going, sir?” the bobby asked.

  Poulter could see the other officers conferring in the background, probably matching their faces to an issued description.

  “Grimsby—visiting family there,” Poulter answered, even as one of the officers came up to Audrey’s door and the two others around to the back of the van.

  The young officer pulled out his gun and then opened Poulter’s door. “All right, sir, we’ll need you to get out of the vehicle. Slowly, please. Mind the step.”

  In the back of the van, Lilibet lay with her hands and feet bound. She’d seen the lights from the front window and felt the van slow and then stop. She’d seen Audrey pass Poulter his gun. She heard Poulter’s side of the conversation with the officer, for they had to be police officers. She’d also heard the door open and saw them both getting out of the van. She’d been afraid, to afraid to think, but now that was passing. She was still afraid, of course, but she was starting to get angry, too. How dare they! And Audrey! Cook’s husband’s cousin! They thought they were helping a poor French girl get out of occupied France, when the whole time she was plotting against them. Lilibet felt not only angry but terribly betrayed.

  After seeing them shoot the Marine, Lilibet had no doubts about what they were capable of. She had to warn the officers. But how?

  “Help!” she wanted to call, but no one would hear her.

  In the dim light, she rolled over on her back and started kicking the metal side of the van with both feet, with all of her might.

  Before the officers could react to the banging from the back of the van, they were dead.

  While Poulter grabbed the men and dragged them, one by one, to the side of the road, Audrey went to the back of the van and opened up the rear doors.

  “You little bitch,” she hissed at Lilibet, then slapped her hard across the face. “Thanks to you, they’re dead.”

  Lilibet recoiled at the pain but wouldn’t allow herself to cry. She’d bitten her lip and tasted blood. They were dead? She was responsible for the deaths? Poulter had pulled the trigger, but if she’d only kept still.…

  “Don’t even think of pulling a stunt like that again! Unless you’d like to change this little scenario from kidnapping to murder. I, for one, would be more than happy to oblige.” Then she slammed the doors shut.

  In the darkness, the Princess realized she had to be good, that she couldn’t risk any more deaths of innocent civilians. She would have to see this through, on her own. She blinked away tears and set her mouth. She would wait for an opportunity and then use it. Yes, that was what she would do. They wouldn’t get away with this.

  As Audrey climbed back into the front passenger seat of the van, shaking out her hand still burning from the slap, Poulter consulted the map. “We’re not far now.”

  Finally, finally, Audrey, Poulter, and Lilibet reached Mossley by Sea. The tiny white cottage appeared in light from the dim headlamps. And Audrey was relieved to see a man standing in the drive with a kerosene lantern, directing them in.

  The man was Gregory Strathcliffe.

  She allowed herself a brief warm moment of hope that she would actually make it back to France.

  Gregory, holding the lantern as well as his nearly empty flask, led them inside the cottage. The interior was cold, with just a few plain furnishings. He took off his hat and unbuttoned his mackintosh. David was lying, passed out again, on the stained sofa. Audrey was behind the Princess Elizabeth, whose feet had been untied to walk, although her wrists were tied. Every few moments, she prodded the Princess in the small of her back.

  “Christopher Boothby, you already know Mademoiselle Audrey Moreau and Mr. George Poulter.” Gregory gestured grandly, as though they were at sherry hour. “And, of course, Her Royal Highness, the Princess Elizabeth.” He gave a sardonic bow. He pointed to David’s still form. “David Greene.” He walked to the window and peeked out. “The BBC’s been airing reports about a shoot-out at Windsor Castle. I don’t suppose that has anything to do with you two?”

  “What’re the reports saying?” Poulter asked.

  “Nothing about the attempt on the King. Just that you killed one guard and wounded another. Oh, yes, gave your names, your descriptions—everything. Mounted a nationwide search. By dawn, the entire country will be out in force to look for you.”

  “Well, then it’s a good thing we’ll be in France,” Audrey said.

  Gregory, swaying slightly under the influence of all the alcohol, took down a radio from the cupboard. He placed it on the wooden kitchen table and switched it on. Static hissed from it. He took out his pocket watch and checked it again.

  “It’s almost two,” he said. “The U-boat should be waiting just off the coast. We’ll let them know we’re here and then set out. They’re going to be ten miles due east of Mossley and wait for us until six a.m. If we don’t make it, they’ll head back out to sea and try again in three days.”

  “We’ll make it,” Poulter said, as Gregory sat down and began keying Morse code into the radio, alerting the U-boat that they were on their way.

  “How are we going to meet the sub?” Audrey asked. “All the ships and boats have been confiscated since Dunkirk.”

  “We have a small fishing skiff hidden in the barn,” Boothby answered. “We’ll use that to meet the submarine.”

  “In this weather?” Poulter said. “Don’t you think that’s a bit dangerous?”

  Gregory narrowed his eyes. His escape from the RAF, from Britain, from all of his problems, was in his reach—he wasn’t about to let the chance slip away. “Do we have another option?”

  Beeston Regis was a village just in Norfolk, near the coast of the Nor
th Sea. Roman in origin, it was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Besetune. Now, it was just a small village like so many others. The ruins of St. Mary’s Priory drew a few tourists before the war, but other than that, it was quiet, with one main street, boasting one bank, one grocery, one pharmacy, one barber shop, and one beauty parlor.

  Mary Manley, a young slim girl of just eighteen, was making her way from the house she shared with her mother, father and five sisters just outside of town, up the hill to Beeston Bump. She was going to work, as a radio operator at the Y-station. Beeston Bump was one of the many Y-stations in a network of Signals Intelligence collection sites. These stations collected material to be passed to the War Office’s Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley.

  It was a damp, dark evening and the higher she climbed, the stronger the icy wind blew. It smelled of salt water and seaweed. Cold and wet, Mary was grateful to reach the concrete bunker and go inside. Once past the entrance, she took off her coat, hat and heavy wool mittens and put them in her cubby. She flashed her badge to the guard on duty, Lenny Doyle, even though they had known each other since they had been toddlers and in the first grade he’d stuck chewing gum in her long, honey-colored hair and she’d had to get it cut out. She hated him from then on and got in the habit of avoiding him. But now they worked together. He scrutinized her photograph on her card.

  “Come on, Lenny,” she said, “it’s the same as yesterday and the same as the day before that. And it’ll be the same tomorrow.”

  “Just doing my job, Mary. Just doing my job.” He handed it back to her.

  “Yes, I feel so much safer with you here.”

  She marched into the radio room, her the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking on the concrete, and slid into her seat between two other women before Mr. Leaper could notice she was late.

  It was dim in the room, and damp, the smell of wet concrete pronounced. In front of her, the dials of her RCA AR-77 communications receiver glowed. She slipped on her heavy black headphones and listened.

  Her job was to eavesdrop on Morse code that German senders were tapping out throughout Europe. She turned her receiver to “her” band of frequencies and listened in.

  The German Morse code senders were fast, especially the professionals at BdU, the Kriegsmarine headquarters. However, they each had their own fist. Mary and the other operators had nicknamed some of the more distinctive: Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. They could recognize them as easily as seeing a familiar face across a room.

  This evening, however, Mary heard an unfamiliar fist.

  Instead of the typical burst of fast-paced typing, this transmission was slow, with awkward pauses, indicating uncertainty and unfamiliarity with the transmitter.

  Amateur, she thought dismissively. Still, she recorded the transmission on an ocillograph, creating a radio “fingerprint,” called a Tina, and then transcribed the Morse code that had been sent.

  After the tentative sender had finished, there was a rapid-fire burst of code as response from whomever received it. Mary recognized the fist. They’d nicknamed him Hegel. He was a radio operator on one of the Nazi U-boats, one that was very close to the coast.

  They went back and forth a few times, the amateur and Hegel, and then the channel went ominously silent.

  Mary felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise. She went to the ossillograph and collected the printout. Usually she just put it in a metal basket to be collected at the end of her shift, bundled up with the rest of the communiqués, and sent on by motorcycle courier to Bletchley Park.

  Still …

  She got down a Morse code book from a shelf and began to decode.

  “Miss Manley!” called Martin Leaper from across the room. He was a narrow middle-aged man, with a narrow pencil mustache, and the station’s overseer. The memo Frain had dispatched to all the Y-stations by motorcycle courier was laying on his desk, unread.

  Mary didn’t look up from her translating. “Sir,” she said, “you’re going to want to look at this.”

  “Yes, Miss Manley?” he said, pursing his lips and walking over.

  “Sir, someone here, in England, just signaled to a U-boat.”

  “What?”

  “It could be a spy!” she ventured. “A spy signaling a U-boat for a pick up!”

  “Control yourself, Miss Manley,” Mr. Leaper admonished, shaking his head as he took the papers away from her. “I’m afraid you’ve seen far too many movies.”

  In the cottage, Audrey finished tying Princess Elizabeth to a wooden ladder-back chair. She took some moldy hard bread from the cupboard and stuffed it in the Princess’s mouth, securing it tightly with a tea towel around her head. If it were up to her, she would have killed the Princess—for keeping her alive was a bigger risk. Still, she was following the orders of Commandant Hess. And from what Commandant Graf had told her, one didn’t question Hess’s orders.

  Lilibet kept very still, but her blue eyes glittered with defiance as Audrey went about her work. “I want you to be a good little girl,” Audrey said as she gave the knot at the back of Elizabeth’s head a final tightening. “Or I’ll kill you myself.” She smiled and came over to face Lilibet, her breath smelling sweet, like violet chewing gum. “And I know how to make it look like an accident.”

  You just wait, Lilibet thought. This isn’t over yet, you know.

  In the control room of U-246, First Officer Horst Riesch approached Captain Vogt. “Sir, our friends in Britain have given us word. They’re ready,” Horst said.

  “Good, good,” said Vogt. “What’s the weather?”

  “Clear now, sir, but the wind’s picking up, up to seventy kilometers per hour.”

  “Christ,” Vogt said, rubbing his stubble-covered chin—water was too precious in a submarine to waste on shaving. “They’re probably coming in a dinghy, for all we know. Still, can’t be helped. I’ll set a course for the rendezvous point and have the men prepare to surface. You organize a reception party. Also, Horst told me they’ll have two prisoners with them.”

  “Yes, Herr Vogt,” Riesch said, saluting. Then he issued a long string of commands to the crew. Moments later, U-246, like the mythical kraken, was making its way through the black waters of the North Sea, up to the rendezvous point, ten miles off the coast of Mossley.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  A fierce wind was blowing as Gregory, Poulter, and Boothby went to the barn to uncover the small boat they’d hidden away, a twenty-foot gasoline–engine–powered fish tug, with a V bottom. The three men strained and grunted as they pushed it over the rocks and grasses until they reached the stone-strewn beach.

  Gregory looked out over the rough sea. “Not the best night for a sail, eh, lads?”

  “It’s that or hide out for another three more days, for another pickup,” Boothby said. “I’d rather take my chances on the water.”

  “No, it’s now or never,” Gregory said, staggering slightly in the wind. “I’ll stay here with the boat. You two go back and help Audrey with the prisoners.”

  Maggie and Hugh pulled up to Mossley by Sea’s two piers, with only a few fishing boats rocking wildly in the black water. The local police were there. Maggie got out of the car, heading into the stiff wind. Hugh grabbed the flashlight and gun from the glove compartment, slipping the gun in the back of his waistband under his coat, then followed her.

  “These look like locals,” Hugh shouted into the wind. “So, where’s the cavalry?”

  “I’m sure they’re coming,” Maggie shouted back. But she was worried. She thought that by now the Army would have soldiers assembled, Navy ships offshore, RAF planes overhead. Where were they?

  As a police officer in a sou’wester waved them over, Hugh took out his MI-5 identification card. “Agents Thompson and Hope here,” he shouted, his words nearly blown away by the wind. “What have you got?”

  “We’re on it, sir. If they’re here, we’ll find ’em.” He looked at them, still in their light clothing. “Why don’t you go
back to the station, have a nice cup o’ tea? Me and my boys’ll take care of things here.” He walked off to confer with his men.

  Hugh and Maggie looked at each other in the darkness. They were not reassured. “There are police all over—they won’t get these boats,” Hugh said, scanning the dock.

  Maggie was thinking. Gregory and his crew were too smart to try to use a boat from the dock. “But what if they’re not using a boat from here? It’s possible they have their own, hidden away. They could carry it down to the shore and then launch from there.”

  “In this weather?” Hugh asked. “Couldn’t be a very large boat, then.”

  “They might not have any other option. And they just might be desperate enough to try it. I wouldn’t put it past them.”

  “So we have two choices. Wait at the station, or—”

  Maggie was already off, leaning into the wind as she made her way to the beach.

  “—or we look for them ourselves,” Hugh finished. “Right, then. Off we go.”

  They picked their way over stones and pebbles on the shore in the semidarkness. The white-tipped waves were crashing in, creating a low roar. The light from Hugh’s flashlight was ineffective against the crushing darkness. Only a waning moon overhead provided any useful light.

  “There!” Maggie shouted, over the din of the waves. She pointed to a small shack on the beach.

  The small shack on the beach was made of planks and covered in tar paper. The edges of the door were illuminated. Maggie and Hugh approached cautiously. He held the gun as Maggie rapped at the door. There was no answer. She pushed at the door. It swung open easily.

  The stench hit them first—the overwhelming odor of stale smoke, sweat, and alcohol. The room was bare, except for a bulb and an old, stained mattress in the corner. On the mattress, a man was lying on his back, snoring loudly, a ratty wool blanket pulled over his legs and a half-empty bottle of gin clutched to his chest.

  Trying not to inhale through her nose, Maggie went over to him. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, kneeling down and giving him a firm shake. “Sir?”