Princess Elizabeth's Spy

“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 in his cigar.

“Good morning, everyone,” Edmund said, rising. “As most of you know, I’ve been working as an undercover agent for years, 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 encryption 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 didn’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, 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 the front of them, they could still hear the sound of traffic and 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 supposed 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 math—two plus two always equals four.” Maggie thought for a moment. “Although, as Kurt Godel theorized, there’s a vast difference between the truth and the part of the truth that can be proved.”

“Er, what?”

“Godel’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 Fantome. Then she hid the decrypt in Le Fantome de l’Opera. 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.”