Princess Elizabeth's Spy

Europa, which catered to tourists and British expats. The town square was nearly empty, except for a young American couple walking arm in arm and a few pigeons strutting and pecking for crumbs in the dust.

Wallis, slender and elegant, wore a scarlet Schiaparelli suit, a bejeweled flamingo brooch, and dark glasses. She sipped a Campari and soda, the ice cubes clinking against one another in her tall glass. Next to her, the Duke, slight and fair-haired, toyed with a tumbler of blood-orange juice and read The Times of London. He was only forty-six, but the strain from the abdication, and subsequent banishment from royal life, made him look much older.

A shadow passed over his page. The Duke looked up in annoyance, then smiled broadly when he saw who it was—Walther Shellenberg, Heinrich Himmler’s personal aide and a deputy leader of the Reich Main Security Office.

“Shel! Good to see you—sit down,” the Duke said.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Shellenberg replied in accented English, sitting down on the delicate wire chair. The Duke and Duchess had befriended Shellenberg on their tours to Germany before the war, visiting with Prince Philip of Hesse and Adolf Hitler.

“Hello, Walther,” Wallis said.

Shellenberg removed his Nazi visor hat, with its skull and crossbones, to reveal thick brown hair parted in the center and glistening with a copious amount of Brylcreem. “Good afternoon, Your Highness. May I say you look particularly beautiful today?” he said to Wallis, a smile softening his angular features.

“Thank you, Shel,” she replied, warming to his use of Your Highness, which Hitler had also used when they’d visited him at the Berghof, his chalet in the Bavarian Alps. Technically, neither Hitler nor Shellenberg needed to address her that way, as she’d never been awarded HRH status by the current king, a snub indeed. His wife, Queen Elizabeth, referred to Wallis only as “that woman.”

As she offered her hand to Shellenberg to be kissed, the scent of L’heure Bleue mixed with Mitsouko—a heady mix of carnations and oakmoss, Wallis’s signature scent—wafted around her in the heat.

“They threw a rock at our window last night, Shel.” The Duke frowned. “Shattered the glass. Could have killed us.”

“I know, sir. Terrible, just terrible.” And he did know—Shellenberg himself had arranged the rock-throwing incident in order to frighten the Windsors, leaving false clues to make it look as though British Intelligence were to blame. If the Windsors were scared enough, blaming British Intelligence, they’d come around to the Nazis’ point of view, he was certain of it.

“It’s terrible,” Wallis said, smoothing her glossy black hair, cut down the middle with a narrow white part. “They hate us. The British just hate us now.”

“Now, now, dear,” Edward said, reaching over to take her hand. “It’s not the British people. It’s Churchill and his gangsters. And my brother and that wife of his. Silly old Bertie as King George VI, indeed. It’s as if I’d never been King!”

“You can’t abdicate and eat it too, dear,” Wallis said with a tight smile.

Shellenberg cleared his throat. “I’ve heard from the Fuhrer.”

“Oh, how lovely!” Wallis exclaimed, extracting a cigarette from a gold case and fitting it in a long ivory holder. The Duke pulled out his lighter and lit it for her; she smiled up at him as she drew her first inhale.

“He gave me a number,” Shellenberg said, knowing quite well the two were having money problems since the abdication. He took a small folded piece of paper from his pocket, put it on the table, and pushed it toward the Duke. If fear alone couldn’t persuade them, perhaps money could.

The Duke of Windsor waited, simply looking at the note for a few heartbeats, then reached for it. Slowly, he picked it up and opened it. He read the number and then handed the slip over to Wallis. She examined it, arching one perfectly plucked and penciled eyebrow, then handed it back.

“Quite a bit of money, Shel,” the Duke said, pushing the paper away.

“But it’s not just about the money, sir,” Shellenberg said, placing the paper in one of the ceramic ashtrays and then lighting it, letting it burn away to ash. “Germany has taken Austria, the Sudetenland, and Poland. We have taken the Low Countries and France. When Germany invades England—and it’s just a matter of time before London falls—your people will need you.” He looked to Wallis. “Both of you. You know it’s only a matter of time now. We’re establishing air supremacy, and as soon as we take out the Royal Air Force, we’ll invade. Your younger brother, the present king, has aligned himself with Winston Churchill and his gangsters. He won’t be permitted to stay on the throne, of course.”

“Of course,” Wallis murmured. She had no love for either the King or Queen, who had never acknowledged her and, in her opinion, had taken every opportunity to humiliate her. Why her husband couldn’t have simply stayed on the throne when he’d married her, she would never understand—or forgive.

“And his daughter, Elizabeth, raised with the same propaganda her father espouses, can’t reign either, so … And then we’ll need you—both of you,” Shellenberg stressed, “to urge the British to accept German occupation. With you as King, and the Duchess as Queen, of course.”

“It’s not about me, Shel,” the Duke said. “We need to end the war now before thousands are killed and maimed in order to save the faces of a few corrupt politicians. Believe me, with continued heavy bombing, Britain will soon be desperate for peace. The people will panic and turn against Churchill and Eden—and the current King, too, of course. Which presents the perfect opportunity to bring me back as sovereign.” The Duke sighed. “Of course, I can’t officially support any of this, you know.”

“What other options do you have?” Shellenberg asked.

There was a long silence. The Windsors knew they were running out of opportunities.

“Bermuda,” Wallis said finally, rolling her eyes and tapping ashes into a ceramic ashtray crudely painted with a bullfighter holding up a red cape. “Churchill and the present royals want to banish us to that godforsaken little territory. Conveniently out of their way.”

“Then don’t go,” Shellenberg urged. “You have the Fuhrer, and the British people, counting on you to step up. To be their King and Queen.”

The Duke and Duchess locked eyes. “What do you say, dear?” he asked her.

The Duchess took a moment for a long exhale, blowing out a thin stream of blue smoke. It had been a long few years for her. First there was her affair with him, when he’d been the Prince of Wales. The unexpected death of his father, King George V, had been both shocking and painful for both of them. Their relationship nearly collapsed when Edward had taken the throne, crushed by the disapproval of the rest of the royal family.

They’d thought, perhaps foolishly, that once the family got to know her better, they’d accept her. But no. The Royal family, in particular the newly crowned George VI and Queen Elizabeth, had made it overwhelmingly clear Edward would never be able to marry her, a two-time American divorcee and a close personal friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop’s, Foreign Minister of Germany, and still stay on the throne.

Edward had chosen her and abdicated—but it had nearly killed him. And it broke her heart to see him made to choose. Their love had survived, but only just. Even in the bright sunshine of Portugal, they had their good days and bad.

“We’re going to enjoy ourselves at the villa of our good friend, Ricardo do Espirito Santo Silva, for now,” she replied, finally. “If—and only if—Germany invades …” She shrugged her narrow shoulders.

“—you can count on us to do the right thing,” the Duke finished. “For the British people, of course.”

The three of them nodded.

“Excellent,” said Shellenberg, rising. “That’s what we hoped you’d say. Heil Hitler!”

Chapter One

Bletchley was a small, seemingly inconsequential railway town about fifty miles northwest of London. However, since 1938, the town was also the home of what was officially known as the Government Code and Cipher School. But those in the know referred to it as Station X. Or War Station. Or just the initials B.P., for Bletchley Park.

The Bletchley estate, the former manse of Sir Herbert and Lady Fanny Leon, was a red-brick Victorian monstrosity in a faux-Tudor style. Now, under government control, it bustled with men and women in uniform, as well as civilians—mostly men in baggy wrinkled trousers and herringbone tweed jackets with leather elbow patches. The house’s formerly lush lawns were flattened and worn from all the foot and bicycle traffic. The gardens had been