The Prime Minister's Secret Agent

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  The office was small, with a low ceiling and a yellowing print of a Cameron landscape tacked up on the wall. The veterinarian was an older man, tall—well over six feet—with a tuft of white hair sprouting from each ear. He might have started out the day with what was left of his hair neatly combed, but now the red and white strands—pink, almost—were standing up straight, like prawn antennae. His features were large, like an ancient Lewis chess piece. Where his long legs were thin, his midsection was full, and he moved like a great circus bear on its hind legs.

  “What do you want, lass?” he demanded, scowling, as Maggie entered the office dripping wet, her large black umbrella no help. His words were spoken with a thick burr, his voice low and rumbling.

  “I found a dead sheep on the beach near Arisaig House—” she began, folding her umbrella.

  “Well, if it’s dead, lass—you don’t need a veterinarian.”

  Score one for the ginger-haired brute from Barra. “At first I thought it was one of the neighboring flock that had somehow slipped through a fence and accidentally fallen in and drowned,” Maggie continued, undeterred, “but it’s from a different flock.”

  “So? Could have fallen in somewhere else, then washed ashore near Arisaig House.”

  “Then I noticed it was covered with sores.”

  The vet’s face creased. “What kind of sores?”

  “About an inch or two across, looked like blisters. They were black.”

  “And this sheep—you didn’t happen to notice any other markings on it?”

  I’m a bloody spy, you addlepated giant, she thought. Of course I noticed everything. “There were two triangular-shaped notches in his right ear, and a dot of red paint on his rump.”

  The vet ran his hands through his hair. “That sheep belongs to Fergus Macnab, then.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But his flock doesn’t graze anywhere near the coast …”

  “I just thought someone should know.”

  “Yes, yes …” growled the vet, lost in thought. “You didn’t touch the beast, did ye, Doreen?”

  “No, I most assuredly did not.” Maggie was cold and wet. And her feet in heavy, muddy boots were numb. “And my name’s not Doreen.”

  “Doreen’s Gaelic for a sourpuss—and your puss is a sour one. Sour and sallow.”

  From the back room came a mewing sound. “What’s that?” Maggie asked.

  “Stray cat.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “It’s a cat, Miss.” The vet’s voice betrayed annoyance. “I’m a vet—I deal with sheep and cows and horses. Farm animals. Great beasts of the field. Not cats. Especially cats that won’t quiet down.”

  The mewing continued. “What’s he doing here, then?”

  “Pub owner brought him in, didn’t want him hanging around, beggin’ for food. He’s an older cat, not a great mouser. I’d guess he was an indoor cat for most of his life—maybe when his owner died, no one wanted him, so they dumped him in the country. Probably doesn’t have much time left anyway.”

  “But why’s he here then? Are you taking him in?”

  The doctor looked down at her from his immense height with a mixture of annoyance and pity. “I’m going to euthanize him, Miss. Can’t fend for himself, since he’s a pampered indoor cat. It’s kinder this way.”

  “What?” Maggie exclaimed. “No!” She pushed past the doctor and opened the door to his office. Two eyes glowed phosphorescent in the darkness. Maggie switched on the light. There, on the vet’s pinewood desk, sat a tabby cat. He was painfully thin, with rough reddish fur and bald patches and a torn ear. He looked up at Maggie with green eyes, pupils narrowing to slits. Goodness gracious, you look as bad as I feel, she thought.

  “Meh,” the tabby proclaimed. The disdainful sound was expressed in a peculiar nasal tone.

  “ ‘Meh’?” Maggie looked up at the doctor, who’d followed her in. “I thought cats said meow.”

  The vet shrugged. “He’s a talker, that one is. Talk your ear off. I think whoever he belonged to lived alone and talked to him. Talked to him day and night, and fed him from her plate. That’s why he’s no good as a mouser. Thinks he’s human, he does. A wee man in a cat suit.”

  Maggie went up to the cat and held out her hand. She knew cats from the Prime Minister’s office, where they roamed freely, along with a few of the Churchills’ dogs.

  The cat acquiesced to sniff her hand, then stepped closer. Raising himself on his haunches, he put one paw on her left shoulder and one paw on her right, holding her in place as he looked into her eyes with laser-like intensity. Maggie looked back, disconcerted by the scrutiny.

  “Meh,” he said finally, then dropped back down to all fours and rubbed against her, beginning to purr. Something was communicated between them; she had passed his test. Although no words had been spoken, Maggie knew, as clear as she knew her name or the day of the week, that she and this animal belonged together. Or at least he had chosen her, for whatever reason, and she was powerless to say no.

  “Bold as brass, that one,” Dr. McNeil said. “Looks like he’s decided on you. Whether you fancy him or no. What are you going to do, then?”

  “I’ll take him,” Maggie said, scooping him up in her arms without hesitation. “My little Schrödinger.”

  “Don’t know his name, lass.” The cat settled in, purring. Then he opened his mouth and hissed at Dr. McNeil.

  “I just meant—” Maggie wasn’t up to explaining the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat. “Never mind.”

  “Suit yourself, Miss,” the vet said as Maggie turned to leave, cat in her arms. “But don’t think he’ll be catching any mice for you.”

  “Come on,” she whispered to the cat, unbuttoning her coat and slipping him inside, where he clung to her. “We’re going home.”

  As the door closed behind her, Dr. McNeil reached for the telephone. “Put me through to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. It’s urgent—someone found another dead one.”

  Chapter Four

  In his office in the Intelligence Section of the War Department, Colonel Bratton sat at his desk, going over Purple decrypts. His forehead was sweating; the top button of his shirt was open and his tie askew. He mopped his grim face with his handkerchief and reread the papers in front of him.

  His secretary showed in Lieutenant Commander Kramer.

  “Are you all right?” Kramer said, taking in the shorter man’s disarray.

  Bratton didn’t look up. “I’ve been reading these intercepts over and over again. Things are looking bad. Ambassadors Nomura and Kurusu recently asked their government to extend the deadline suspending negotiations between Japan and the United States.”

  Kramer sat down opposite Bratton, his long legs at angles, a pull in his sock exposed. “Yes, I know. We all know.”

  “But according to this latest decrypt, Tokyo wants to conclude negotiations, and I quote, ‘no later than November twenty-ninth.’ After which ‘things are automatically going to happen.’ ”

  He looked up at Kramer, who met his gaze. “Yes, we’ve all read it,” the Lieutenant said.

  Bratton was undeterred. “But look at this intelligence report from the British—five Japanese troop transports with naval escort were sighted off China’s coast, near Formosa, heading south.”

  “That must be a mistake.” Kramer crossed his legs. “You know we’ve been monitoring the Japanese fleet. And most of their ships are in home waters.”

  Bratton shook his head. “We have intelligence that the Japanese are on the move,” he said, standing and walking to the map. “One of their expeditionary forces is embarking in Shanghai on as many as forty or fifty ships.” He pointed at the map. “And a number of ships have left Japan and are sailing toward the Pescadores. And now a cruiser division, a destroyer squadron, and a number of aircraft carriers have been spotted in the harbor of Samah on Hainan Island. Everything we have indicates that Admiral Yamamoto’s forces are set to sail in a matter of days. If not hours.”

&nbs
p; The pieces came together and clicked in Bratton’s brain. “I bet you they’re going to attack us.” His voice rising in both pitch and intensity, he finally spoke his worst fears aloud: “I bet that Japan is going to attack the United States of America—most likely on a Sunday, when the fleet is in. This Sunday is November thirtieth.”

  Bratton’s eyes met Kramer’s in an unwavering gaze. “The goddamn Japs are going to attack us on Sunday, the thirtieth of November!”

  Prime Minister Winston Churchill had seen the film That Hamilton Woman so many times that he would often unconsciously mouth the words along with the actors on-screen. On this night, it was playing at the library at Chequers, set up as a makeshift movie theater. All of the oil paintings had been rolled up and put away for safekeeping, leaving the ornate gold frames empty, like blank eyes. The film viewing was after a long and rich dinner, with bottles of wine and spirits, and a few of the guests and staff had settled in, preparing for a nap. But Churchill, a wine stain on the lapel of his velvet siren suit (which the staff referred to, behind his back, as his “rompers”), was on the edge of his seat.

  In his own plush armchair, while the rest sat behind, in metal folding chairs, the Prime Minister growled, unlit cigar clenched between his teeth, “Mr. Greene, please start the projector. Mr. Sterling, turn off the lights.”

  His two private secretaries did his bidding, and soon the room was dark, filled with the noise of the whirring projector and then the black-and-white images projected onto a screen.

  When Lord Nelson, played by Laurence Olivier, said, “Gentlemen, you will never make peace with Napoleon … Napoleon cannot be master of the world until he has smashed us up, and believe me, gentlemen, he means to be master of the world! You cannot make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them—wipe them out!” the P.M. rose and shook his fist at the screen.

  He turned toward the audience, who did their best to rouse themselves and look attentive. “I’ll have you know I wrote that line—and several others of Nelson’s! Just fill in ‘Hitler’ wherever ‘Napoleon’ appears and have done with it!” he barked, stabbing the air with his cigar for emphasis.

  “Winston …” his wife, Clementine Churchill, said from a brocade settee behind the P.M.’s armchair.

  But Churchill paced in front of the screen, mouthing Nelson’s words. “Yes, things were different when we were here five years ago, weren’t they? Our braid was shining in those days. Today they won’t even let us anchor in the harbor. It’s as though we had the plague. They’re so scared of Bonaparte they daren’t lift a finger to help those who are still fighting him …”

  Then he stopped his pacing. “Turn off the damn projector! Mr. Greene! Mr. Greene!” David Greene jumped to his feet to do the P.M.’s bidding.

  “And Mr. Sterling—let there be light!” John Sterling switched on the lights. The two private secretaries exchanged a knowing glance. They knew from experience that whether the film was done or not, movie time was over.

  David Greene was the shorter and slighter of the two, with light hair and silver-rimmed spectacles. He and his friend, John Sterling, had worked for Winston Churchill during his so-called Wilderness Years, when no one in the House took his warnings of Nazi armament seriously. Now that he was almost thirty, his former impish charm had become somewhat subdued, yet another casualty of the war.

  John was taller, with curly brown hair and dark eyes and a grim smile. He wore his RAF uniform well, his body not betraying, at least to the casual observer, the injuries he’d survived in Berlin.

  The enormous bookcase-lined Long Gallery was chilly, even though a fire burned in the grate and the floor was covered in Kazakh rugs. The room smelled of book restorer and wood smoke. Churchill began to pace, his round face pink from the prodigious quantities of Pol Roger Champagne and red Burgundy he’d put away during dinner. “Do you know that that damn isolationist group, the so-called America First Committee, calls That Hamilton Woman ‘wartime propaganda’? And has called on the U.S. public to boycott it? Apparently, the AFC sees them as ‘preparing Americans for war.’ ”

  He kicked a metal wastebasket, and Nelson, the P.M.’s black cat, who’d been curled up on one of the folding chairs, started, then scurried away. “No one named Nelson—man or cat—ever runs from a fight!” Churchill shouted after the feline, shaking his fist. “And of course we’re trying to rouse the damn Americans. They’ve sat on their fat—”

  Clementine shot her husband a warning look.

  “—posteriors long enough. The Nazzies have sunk the USS Robin Moor, the Kearny, and the Reuben James. Do they have to invade the East Coast and march on Washington before President Roosevelt will declare war?

  “Meanwhile,” Churchill continued, his voice rising in power, as if addressing the back benches of the House of Commons, “they’re wasting time rounding up filmmakers when they should be after the bl—”

  He shot a look at Clementine, who arched one eyebrow in warning. “… the Nazzies,” he amended, in a gentler tone, using his usual and distinctive sibilant pronunciation.

  “Winston, darling,” his wife said, rising, “if you’re done with the film, I think I’ll retire for the evening. Good night, love. Good night, all.” The gentlemen stood as Mrs. Churchill, with her fine posture and impeccably cut silk dress, walked out in a trail of Arpège. The rest of the women, including Churchill’s daughter Mary, also excused themselves.

  When they were gone, Churchill gave a fierce battle cry: “Gentlemen,” he thundered, rallying the troops, “to the Hawtree Room!” As he stalked out, he called over his shoulder to his beleaguered manservant, “And Inces! We shall require both port and Stilton!”

  Churchill led the way through a secret door, camouflaged in the library’s books, to the Cromwell Passage, and then to the Hawtree Room, which he’d commandeered as his study. There the Prime Minister threw himself into one of the leather club chairs. Nelson rubbed up against his shins.

  The P.M. reached down to scratch Nelson under the chin, and the cat started purring—but then froze at the rumble of German planes flying overhead, flattening his ears. “Don’t worry, darling Nelson,” murmured the Prime Minister, continuing his chin scratches, “just remember what those brave boys in the RAF are doing.” Nelson, named after the venerable Lord Horatio, was prone to hiding under beds during air raids.

  “Come, dearest Nelson,” the P.M. crooned, patting his lap. “Up!” The cat jumped up, kneaded a bit, then settled in, wrapping his tail around his compact body and closing his eyes.

  There were five men in the Hawtree Room at Chequers Court: Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff; General Ismay, chief staff officer and military adviser; and Churchill and his two private secretaries.

  Since the P.M. was known to say, “A change is as good as a rest!” and resting wasn’t possible, Churchill often decided—at the last minute, to the consternation of his detectives and staff, not to mention his wife—to travel.

  Although a fire crackled in the room’s fireplace behind bronze fenders, behind the blackout curtains the windows were loose and rattled in the wind, a damp chill in the air. The men sat on chairs with faded petit-point seats at the enormous mahogany pedestal table, under the watchful eyes of a painting of Cromwell’s General, John Lambert. All waited for the meat of the discussion to begin. There was a globe on a stand in the corner, with territories marked from the midthirties, now hopelessly out of date.

  Mr. Inces, his footsteps muffled by the Ochark carpet, carried in blue-veined Stilton and plum bread on Frankenthal dishes, and a cut-crystal decanter filled with amber liquid that glowed in the firelight.

  “Stilton and port are like man and wife,” the P.M. intoned. “Whom God has joined together, let no man tear asunder.” Then, “Damn it, Inces, pour the port!”

  Churchill took a greedy sip and swallowed. “I hear Popov made it to the U.S. Told that Hoover chap at the FBI about the Pearl Harbor survey from the Germans. Didn’t seem to make much of an impression, though, a
ccording to my sources at MI-Six.”

  “The Yanks are disorganized, sir,” David said, pushing up his wire-rimmed glasses. “The Army doesn’t talk to the Navy and the Navy doesn’t talk to the Army. On any given day, neither of them may be talking to the President. And Hoover’s supposed to be the worst of them, in terms of cronyism and iron-fisted control over information. Controlling, petty—”

  “That’s enough, Mr. Greene!” the P.M. said, taking another gulp of port and slipping a tiny sliver of Stilton to Nelson. “But I did hear that when Mr. Hoover discovered our man Popov had taken a woman from New York to Florida, he threatened to have him arrested under some ancient American blue law if he didn’t leave the U.S. immediately.” He shook his head in mock despair. “Yanks—often licentious, and yet suspect of pleasure. It’s their beginnings, you know. No matter where they come from, they’re all affected by America’s Puritan beginnings. And what about the Orient? Granted, Herr Hitler is keeping us more than occupied in the Atlantic, but the Japanese have now bound themselves to him and Mussolini. And their atrocities in the Far East are just as savage as the Nazzies’.”

  “Just in China, though,” said Dill.

  “ ‘Just in China’?” the P.M. boomed. “They’re starting with China, an amuse-bouche, just as Hitler started with Austria and the Sudetenland. First China, then French Indo-China? The Dutch West Indies? Our own Hong Kong and Singapore? If they went after our colonies, we couldn’t take them. Not with all of our manpower needed in the Atlantic. I asked Roosevelt for a few ships from his Pacific Fleet, do you know what he said? No!”

  The booming voice had grown thunderous. “He said, and I quote, ‘It’s not the job of the United States to steam around the world, shoring up other people’s empires. We don’t like empires, no matter whose flag they fly.’ ” He gestured with his glass of port, spilling some on the linen tablecloth. “Damn Yanks!”