Maggie stiffened.
Stevens paused but pressed on. “She was given a mission. She was to pose as a British woman, a student at the London School of Economics. She was to make the acquaintance of a British agent, Edmund Hope. She was to make him fall in love with her, to become his confidante.”
“And to murder three MI-Five agents,” Maggie managed.
“Yes,” Sir Frank replied, evenly. “And then, she faked her own death in a car accident, and made her way back to Germany. Next slide, please.” David hit a button. The picture was now of an older woman, with the same thick hair and fine features. Her eyes were inscrutable.
If Maggie hadn’t already been sitting down, her legs would have buckled under her.
“Clara Hess, the woman known in Britain as Clara Hope, returned to Germany,” Stevens said, ignoring Maggie’s questions. “Ultimately, became the agent known as Commandant Hess, along with Walther Shellenberg, one of the most dangerous figures in the Abwehr. The figure behind the attempt to assassinate the King and kidnap the Princess.”
“
David turned the overhead light back on.
Winston Churchill studied her, with eyes blue and cold. “You’ve proven yourself to be mentally, emotionally, and physically capable of being an S.O.E. agent. How would you like to go to Berlin?” He glanced at Frain. “We have a few things that need doing over there—including a few that have to do with Clara Hess. We thought, after all your hard work, that you’d like to do the honors.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Maggie, in her room at David’s flat, was packing the last of her things in a valise. She was going for three months of intensive training at an S.O.E. camp in Scotland, and then, when ready, a nighttime parachute drop into Germany.
Edmund Hope stood at the doorway, coat still on, twisting his hat in his hands. “Maggie, I don’t want you to go.”
“Dad, this is my job now. I must.” Finding an armload of socks and stockings, she dropped them into her open bag. “She’s a German spy, one who nearly succeeded in running a mission to kill the King and kidnap the Princess. One who’s plotting God knows what else as we speak. That doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course it does,” he snapped, “but it doesn’t need to be
“Mr. Churchill asked me.” She went to her closet.
“Forget Churchill! It’s too dangerous.”
“I would disagree,” Maggie said, taking a few dresses off hangers. “And the Prime Minister and Mr. Frain think otherwise, too.”
“Look, she’s a despicable human being, a sociopath. Do you really think you can just walk up to her and say, ‘Hello, Mother’?”
Maggie gave a tight smile as she folded the dresses and placed them in her suitcase. “That’s not in the mission plan.”
“And even if you do have a moment where you can reconnect, it doesn’t change what she did!”
She turned back to the closet, rummaging for sweaters on a high shelf. “Dad, I know. Hugh is—one of my best friends. How could I possibly forget what she did to his father, the pain he still carries? And that she did the same thing to nineteen other families?”
“Do you expect her to say, ‘Oh, my dear darling daughter, how I’ve missed you all these years? Let’s go shopping and then have tea?’”
“N-no. No! Of course not!” Maggie took down a few sweaters, then turned and looked Edmund in the eye. “There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about, though.”
“Yes?”
“When I went to what I thought were your graves at Highgate Cemetery—which turned out to be only her grave—there were fresh white roses by the headstone. I remember the gardener said a man came regularly, to leave them. Is that you? Were you—are you—leaving flowers on her grave?”
Edmund lowered his eyes. “Yes,” he said finally.
“But why? She betrayed you—betrayed us. She’s not even there, not even dead! Why?”
“I loved her,” Edmund answered. “Or at least the person I thought she was.”
“I see,” Maggie said, not seeing at all. She placed the sweaters in the suitcase.
After a few moments passed, Edmund rubbed at his eyes with his fist, then said, “And, what, exactly, is your mission?”
“I’m afraid, Dad,” she said, closing the valise and tightening the leather buckle, “that it’s classified.”
They both heard voices in the flat. “Maggie? Maggie?”
“Coming!” she called. Then, to her father, “they’re giving me a little party before I leave.” There was an awkward pause. “Would you like to stay?”
Edmund tugged at his collar. “I have to get back to the office, actually. I’m off the Bletchley case now. Getting a new assignment.”
“I’ll walk you out, then,” Maggie told him.
People had already begun to arrive. David put a Fred Astaire record on the phonograph and she could hear him in the kitchen, using a pick to make ice chips for shaking cocktails. As “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” began to play, he came in with a tray of glasses full of amber liquid.
“Sure you won’t stay?” she asked.
“Afraid not,” he said. “Good luck, Maggie.”
“Thank you. To you too.” She let him kiss her cheek before he left.
After the door closed, the party began in earnest. David was there, as was Hugh, talking to Sarah, perched on the windowsill. And there were a few dancers from the ballet and people from No. 10, including Richard Snodgrass.
“Don’t suppose you can tell us what you’re up to next, Miss Hope?” Richard asked as Hugh handed her a martini.
“It’s terribly boring,” Maggie said as she accepted the glass. “Up to Scotland, to do goodness knows what sort of paperwork.”
“That’s your official story, then?” Richard asked.
“I’m afraid so.” She smiled. “And I’m standing by it.”
Hugh raised his glass. “To Maggie,” he said. “Wherever her travels may lead. Although, I must say, I hope they ultimately lead her back to me.”
“Thank you, Hugh,” she said, blushing.
“To Maggie,” the rest chorused.
She was momentarily speechless, then pulled herself together. “Thank you,” she said. “But I must toast to you, all of you—it’s a horrible war we’re in, but it’s had a strange way of bringing people together—and helping us all achieve much more than what we think we’re capable of. To us, then.”
“To us! Cheers!”
And they drank and danced long into the night.
The pilot had survived, but barely.
He’d survived first by burying his parachute. He’d survived by limping, then finally crawling, though fields and woods until he found a barn. He’d survived by drinking rainwater from a pig trough and eating their scraps. He’d survived by hiding his identity disks and ripping out any British labels in his clothes. And he’d survived by staying in the barn’s hayloft during the day, afraid to move a muscle or make a sound.
Still, with the internal organ damage he sustained, he wouldn’t be able to survive much longer, at least without proper medical care. Which was why, finally, he gave himself up to the farmer and his wife, Herr and Frau Schafer.
They did not turn him into the local police.
Instead, they put him to bed in a room with fresh white sheets and fed him brown bread soaked in milk.
