her long train trip in the blackout, Victoria was grateful to check in, under an assumed name, and retire to a warm, damask-swathed room, worlds away from the shabby indignities of Bletchley.
After placing the decrypts carefully on the bed, she went into the marble bathroom and drew a bath, noticing that Claridge’s had “forgotten” the five-inch watermark for hot water rationing. She turned on the tap and out poured a scalding stream, to which she added a liberal handful of sandalwood-scented Hammam Bouquet bath salts. She sighed as she undressed, then slipped her long and elegant limbs into the bath, reclining against the slanted back of the tub. Benjamin was just such an easy target. He was lovely, really. It wasn’t his fault, the poor dear.…
The front door clicked open, then closed quietly. With the water still running, Victoria didn’t hear it. Then there was a loud thud. “Darling, is that you?” she called, lifting her head.
There was a silence, then the bathroom door creaked open.
“Darling?” Victoria called, sitting up in the tub. “You? No, not
The shot went directly between her eyes. She slumped back into the bath, bright red blood streaming down her face and into the water, turning the froth pink and then crimson. As her pale slim body slipped down under the bubbles, her mouth fell open into a perfect O of surprise.
Chapter Two
Maggie Hope had fallen yet again and was covered in cold, wet mud. She pushed back a soaked lock of red hair that had fallen in her eyes, leaving a trail of dirt across her forehead. To add insult to injury, it began to rain, large, cold drops falling faster and faster. Still, it didn’t matter. She and the other eleven women would all be done when they’d finished the obstacle course and not before. “Get up, Hope!” Harold Burns, the training leader, bellowed to Maggie from the sidelines.
Burns was a wiry man in his early fifties, a veteran of the Great War. His light hair was thinning, and the brown splotches on his face were testament to a life lived outdoors. He wore corduroy trousers, a heavy cabled sweater, and Wellington boots, and carried a clipboard. He had a perpetually perplexed expression on his face, as if to say,
Maggie tried to stand, then slipped and fell yet again.
He glowered. “I said, get
When Maggie had been Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s secretary, she’d never thought of herself as potential spy material. And yet now she was living somewhere in Surrey, in a dilapidated Edwardian manor house the government had taken over for training purposes, known unofficially as Camp Spook. She slept on a hard thin cot in a bedroom with peeling wallpaper that she shared with two other girls.
She and her fellow MI-5 trainees did daily exercises in a roped off-area of the garden. There, in their coveralls and plimsolls, they did push-ups, sit-ups, and rope climbing. Today they were split into two teams, competing to finish an obstacle course, which included wriggling through an oil drum, crawling through the mud under netting, crossing a man-made pond with only a few planks and a rope, navigating through a “minefield,” and climbing up an old factory ventilation shaft.
As Maggie tried to right herself once more in the slippery black mud, Burns was shouting, his face turning red from the exertion. “Come on, keep going! The Nazis are after you! What are you waiting for? Move! Move!
With grim determination, Maggie struggled to her feet and ran onward through the mud, toward the next obstacle, a ten-foot chain-link fence they were supposed to scale and then drop from. With a running start, she jumped up onto the fence, then began clawing her way up to the top, blinking away raindrops. Her teammates who’d already finished the course were on the sidelines.
“Come on, Maggie!” the girls chorused. “You can do it!”
Her hands were clumsy from the cold and her breath burned in her lungs, but she made it to the top, swung her legs over, then jumped down to the ground.
Something popped and started to burn in her right knee, but she ran on to the next challenge, picking up one of her fallen mates in a fireman’s carry. The girl, a tiny thing named Molly Stickler, lay on her back in the mud, waiting. “Don’t drop me again, Hope,” she warned. “Not like you did last time.”
Maggie ignored Molly and reviewed the task at hand. As she’d practiced, she rolled Molly over onto her abdomen and straddled her. She extended her hands under the girl’s chest and locked them together. She lifted Molly to her knees as she moved backward.
“Careful!” Molly complained.
“You’re ‘the casualty,’ “ Maggie muttered. “Casualties aren’t supposed to talk.”
Maggie continued to move backward, straightening Molly’s legs and locking her knees, then walking forward, bringing the limp girl to a standing position. Gently, gently, every muscle burning, Maggie maneuvered the girl’s body into the proper position.
“The Nazis are coming, Hope!” Burns yelled from the sidelines. “They’d have
Undeterred, Maggie followed protocol. Rising to her feet, she carried the girl over her shoulders toward the finish line, hair dripping, covered in mud, oblivious to the agony in her knee.
But just before she reached the end, her foot slipped in the mud. She skidded like an ice skater, and then toppled backward, taking Molly down with her.
“Ooof,” Molly gasped as they hit the ground. “Ow! Goddamn it, Maggie, that
“Under ten minutes today, Hope. Better.” Burns looked at his stopwatch. “Slightly.”
Maggie gave him a pinched smile as she got up, then offered her hand to help Molly. His “slightly” was a small victory, considering her legs felt like rubber and her injured knee throbbed. Then she limped over to the rest of the group, to cheer on the next girl, who was just starting the course.
“No,” Burns called over to Maggie, through the rain. “Get cleaned up and dressed, Hope. And meet me in the dining room.”
Was this it? Was she going to be thrown out of the program?
The dining room had a lingering sense of the house’s former grandeur. The faded and water-stained wallpaper had squares of bright perfection, where large paintings must have once hung, four-sided ghosts of the manor’s former opulence. Still, a cheerful fire crackled and popped in the grate and the brass was polished. Mr. Burns was already seated at the table when Maggie came in, washed and combed and dressed in clean, dry trousers, a white blouse, and a cabled wool cardigan.
The wireless was on. Maggie could hear the fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth addressing in bell-like tones the children who’d left London for the relative safety of the British countryside:
Mrs. Forester, an older woman with a tight gray bun and wide hips, both chaperone and housekeeper, peeked through the door. Maggie knew from several conversations over cups of tea that she was grateful to have the job —a widow, both her sons were in the Royal Navy, floating somewhere in the North Sea. She found that cooking and cleaning for the girls of Camp Spook kept her mind occupied and tired her out enough during the day so she could manage at least a few hours of sleep at night. “Will you be wantin’ any tea, Mr. Burns?” she said, her plump face folding into a smile as she walked into the dining room and turned off the wireless with a loud click.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Forester,” Mr. Burns replied. In front of him was Maggie’s file, a thick folder labeled MARGARET HOPE.
“Very well,” she said and left.
Burns looked at Maggie, then gestured to a straight-backed chair. “Please sit down, Miss Hope,” he said.
Maggie did.
He cracked his knuckles. “Mr. Frain, head of MI-Five, sent you to me, with the highest recommendations,” he began. “He let me know a bit of your role in taking down the Prime Minister’s assassination plot and preventing the bombing of Saint Paul’s.”
