Princess Elizabeth's Spy

pinpricks. In a book. Then you learn that the book belonged to your friend’s father. Who carried out the assassination.”

There was a sharp rap at the door, then Nevins opened it and walked in. He had a sheet of paper in his hands, which he handed to Hugh.

“Quite the day, I gather,” he said.

Hugh took the paper, like an automaton, and put it down without reading it.

Mark shook his head. “Jesus, Nevins. Perhaps you’d like to look up the word diplomacy in the dictionary?”

Nevins shrugged. “This is huge. Maggie Hope’s father—your father … Well, I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”

“Obviously,” Mark said.

Nevins wouldn’t take the hint. “And, you know? I think Saul Levy’s going to be good for you. Just the thing to straighten you out.”

Hugh looked down at the memo and read it. Then he crumpled it and threw it in the metal wastebasket. “I’m not seeing Levy.”

Nevins leaned up against the doorframe. “I’m afraid Frain’s insisting. Levy may be a Jew, but he’s supposed to be a damned good psychiatrist—studied with Freud and all. He must live for this sort of thing. Positively Oedipal.”

“Just get out,” Mark said. “Now.”

“Well, it’s not up to you two,” Nevins said, turning to go. “It’s mandatory.”

Hugh stood up. “You serious about that pub?” he said to Mark. “Because I need to get very, very drunk.”

The same winter rain that had drenched Windsor had moved out to the coast, flooding Norfolk and its coast as well. It was raining hard in Mossley by Sea, a small village on the coast of the North Sea, not far from Grimsby. Mossley was tiny—there were only a few blocks of what was considered the main street, with the chemist, hardware store, grocer, the Royal Oak and Six Bells pubs, and the gray-steepled church with its neighboring graveyard, the stones crumbling, covered in velvety moss and damp lichen.

Christopher Boothby had taken the train from Bletchley, reaching Mossley as the cold driving rains became their heaviest. It had taken the residents a while to get used to him—they weren’t used to strangers—but his story of being a veteran of the Battle of Norway, now doing clerical work in Bletchley, needing a weekend place, stirred their maternal instincts, despite their official classification as a restricted military zone. Adding to the tale were rumors of his being a widower—wife and baby buried in the Blitz, don’t you know—which had the village’s matrons clucking. Why shouldn’t he buy that little cottage on the shore and fix it up? Didn’t he deserve a little peace after all he’d done for his country, after all he’d lost?

From the train, Boothby walked through the downpour, protected by his oilskin coat, heavy boots and nor’easter, striped Trinity scarf at his throat. He unchained his bicycle, waiting where he’d left it at the fence, and started off, struggling to keep upright in the punishing wind on the pitted and potholed roads.

He was an ordinary-looking man of about thirty—light hair, light eyes, average height and weight, clean- shaven. His nose was ordinary as well; it had once been patrician, but he’d broken it in a fight with the communist Reds when he’d been a follower of Walter Mosley and the Fascist party at Oxford, and now the bridge was just slightly flattened and off-center. He was a chameleon, adept at blending into any environment, including wounded veteran and grieving husband and father.

The brackish cold air assaulted his face as he rode, turning it mottled and red, his breath coming in short bursts.

As he pedaled, chain clanking, the rains abated. Cresting the top of the low-rising hill, Boothby could see the brown fields, the mudflats, the salt marshes with their tall feathery dying reeds, adapted to live in either fresh or salt water. Beyond the salt marshes was the gray-green ocean, waves roaring faintly upon the rocky shore in the distance.

From his vista he could see the cottage. It was small and dilapidated, but it was his, along with the battered van alongside it. He turned off the main road, onto a side one, and then into the gravel drive, getting off the bicycle and walking it to a protected space under the eaves. Stomping his boots on the mat, he reached into his oilskin’s coat pocket and drew out a heavy brass key. Then he let himself in. “Audrey?” he called into the shadows. “Audrey, are you there?”

It hadn’t been hard for the Nazis to convince Audrey Moreau to work for them. After they’d invaded Paris, she’d been harassed by groups of German soldiers as she went to and from her job at a local cafe. There, German officers would order pastries and coffee, talking and laughing. Audrey would clear the dishes of half-eaten palmiers, chausson aux pommes, and iced mille-feuille and take them back to the kitchen, where she and the rest of the staff would fall on them, famished, not caring that there were bite marks or that cigarettes had been crushed out in the custard.

When one of the officers, a young man with shocking white-blond hair and a cleft chin, had begun to harass her, she kept her eyes down and stayed silent. Day after day she endured his assaults, patting her derriere, pinching her cheek, asking her if she liked it on her back or on all fours, while his fellow officers egged him on and laughed.

The next week, his commanding officer, Otto Graf, appeared. He was closer to fifty than forty, with black hair and green eyes. When the cleft-chinned boy began his antics with Audrey, Graf strode across the room and slapped him across the face, hard, with his black leather glove.

“I’m sorry, Commandant,” the boy said.

“Don’t apologize to me,” Graf said, in a soft voice, “apologize to her. We are guests in her country. “

He did, turning red and stammering.

“Now leave,” Graf said. As the boy made his way out the door, Graf said, “And you have my apologies as well, Fraulein. Why don’t you sit down with us and have some coffee?”

Audrey looked over to the owner, her boss, a bald middle-aged man with a shiny pate. He nodded. Whatever the Germans wanted, the Germans got.

Graf patted the empty chair, and she sat down. “Now, tell me about yourself, Liebchen.”

Of course they became lovers. One night, in bed at his suite at the Ritz, when he learned she had relatives in England, he was thrilled. “It would be so easy,” he said, rubbing her cold hands with his, to warm them. “Your cousin married an English woman—who’s a cook for the British King and Queen, no less—let me see what I can do.”

A few weeks later, Audrey arrived in Windsor, feigning gratitude that her cousin was able to get her out. She knew who was already in place, and she awaited further instructions. Commandant Graf had no worries about Audrey’s cooperation—he knew very well where her parents and brother and sister lived. And he’d made it clear what would happen to them if she didn’t oblige.

In the cottage, Boothby called out again, “Audrey?” He fumbled for a lantern.

“I’m here,” she responded from the shadows.

“Good. Let’s go over the plan again.”

During preparations for the three-day Red, White and Blue Christmas weekend, excitement buzzed through the castle like a shot of adrenaline, which was a good thing, as the days were getting shorter and darker. Marquetry floors were waxed, silver polished, carpets taken out of storage and beaten, chandeliers washed and rehung, guest rooms aired. The enormous kitchen was filled with aroma of bread and cakes and roasts, and servants picked bouquets of flowers from the greenhouse to arrange and display throughout the State Apartments.

After everything she had learned about her father and what she’d had to share with Hugh, Maggie was grateful for the distraction of seeing David and Mrs. Tinsley from the Prime Minister’s office, in addition to Mr. Churchill himself, of course. Frain was coming as well. Maggie felt as though her worlds—No. 10, MI-5, and Windsor Castle—were all about to collide.