It was a respite from England’s usual creaky and claustrophobic class- and gender-bound society—a bizarre democracy of the brave, resourceful, and perhaps slightly suicidal, where a Glaswegian arsonist might train next to a Duke’s daughter. But the truth was, at a certain point in the training, especially the intensely physical paramilitary training they did in Scotland, they all started to look alike: hollow-eyed, damp, shivering in their uniforms, and miserable. By this point in their journey, they had thin, athletic bodies with ropy muscles, yet their faces were often still round and quick to smile or laugh. While Maggie didn’t resent their easy camaraderie and banter, she felt a bit lonely to be left out of it; she’d been the same way with her group, a long, long time ago.
In the shadow of Arisaig House, on the croquet lawn, Maggie could see them sizing her up. She was fit, but she was still female, and somewhat petite at that. “Who wants to go first?” she called, her breath forming clouds in the chill air. It’s probably wrong how much I enjoy this part, she thought. The women all held back, squeamish at the thought of hand-to-hand combat. That’s all right, I’ll get to them next. Maggie had her routine down cold—the first task was to select the alpha male of the group. “Come on, light the blue torch paper!” She recognized Charlie. “You!” She pointed at him. “Three! You’re up!”
Charlie gave his most appealing movie-star smile and ambled over to where Maggie stood in the grass. He pulled a face and the other trainees laughed. Oh, this will be fun. Charlie was almost a foot taller than her, and about eighty pounds heavier. She seemed to be no match for him.
He blushed, his cheeks staining pink, afraid to make the first move.
“Come on,” Maggie goaded, “pretend I’m a Nazi sympathizer who’s going to blow your cover in France. What’re you going to do?”
Charlie tried to grab Maggie’s slender wrists with his large hands. Maggie could feel the mood of the students shift—they were afraid for her, afraid she’d be hurt. Afraid, but also just a little excited. Those who knew her didn’t like her. Those who didn’t know her yet had heard the stories. Whatever Charlie was going to do, all of them believed she’d asked for it.
As an explosion boomed in the distance, Maggie stepped aside. She seemed to merely touch Charlie’s wrist with her delicate hands—and then he lurched forward, rose up in the air, and somersaulted over, coming down hard on his back in the grass about six feet away. Her expression never changed.
Charlie groaned in agony, but scrambled to his feet, brushing off dirt and glass. “Ouch” was all he could come up with. He limped back to the rest of the trainees, rubbing one elbow. Some of the men laughed at him, for being thrown by a woman. There were whispers of “Lady Macbeth.”
“This is no joke,” Maggie said, hands on hips. “I want you to take this seriously. What you learn here, your skills—may save your life someday. I’m not hard on you because I enjoy it, I’m hard on you because I want you to come back alive.”
“Because you’d miss us, Ma’am?” Charlie put a hand to his heart in mock sentiment.
“Because we would have wasted our time and effort on your training,” Maggie retorted. “Now, who’s next?”
Later that day, the trainees were taken to another grand manor house not far from Arisaig. K jumped up onto Maggie’s shoulder and perched there, as if to say, Well, of course I’m going with you!
The trainees had been practicing with their British Stens and Brens and different foreign guns using stationary, close-range targets in the pistol practice room at Arisaig House—formerly the servants’ dining hall. They’d learned the Fairbairn-Sykes method of shooting, created by William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes, inspired by the gun crime they’d witnessed as police officers on the Shanghai waterfront.
In the army and traditional police, officers would extend their arm, raise the weapon to eye level, take aim, and then shoot. Fairbairn and Sykes thought this wasted precious seconds—their practice was to draw and fire from hip level, with a crooked arm, using two shots called a double tap. This could be managed from a crouched or running position.
Now it was time to try for practice with something less static.
As they approached the abandoned house on the shore, Mr. Burns gestured for them to stop. “We’ve been practicing on pictures of Hitler on the firing range, and you’ve improved,” he said, his voice fading in the chill wind. “But it’s unlikely that Herr Hitler, or any other enemy combatant, will be so obliging as to sit still while you take aim and shoot. And so we’ve created a moving training exercise for you that will test your instincts and reaction times.”
Maggie looked at the house. She remembered her own experiences shooting there, at mocked-up dummies that danced on ropes and pulleys, controlled by a technician in the front garden. Back then, she’d thought of it as a kind of fairground shooting gallery, with targets popping out from cupboards, or flying in on fishing line. Back then, it had seemed like nothing more than fun and games. What a little fool I was.
K jumped down to check under the house’s front steps for prey.
Mr. Burns eyed the group. “All right, then. Who wants to go first?”
Charlie raised his hand, perhaps eager to make up for his poor showing in jujitsu earlier.
“Fine.” Mr. Burns nodded. “I’ll give you the countdown, and then in you go.”
Charlie drew his pistol, his jaw set. Maggie wondered if, in his mind, he was playing the role of war hero. She could picture him someday repeating the same grimace for a movie camera. If the boy survives this damn war …
“And five, four, three, two …”
Charlie approached the front door of the house as they’d all been taught, pistol cocked and held at his side, ready for action. On an angle, he snuck up the porch to the door and waited there, listening, before signaling the all-clear. He kicked in the door.
Mr. Burns, Maggie, and the students waited outside the open door as he made his way inside. There he saw an old, warped mirror and took in his reflection, posing just a bit with the gun.
Mr. Burns nodded to the technician, who pulled a lever. A cardboard figure of a man appeared at the top of the staircase and, through use of rope and pulleys, drifted, ghost-like, down the stairs.
Charlie shot. And missed. And missed again and again and again. “Damn thing keeps moving!”
“That’s the point, lad,” Mr. Burns said drily. He turned to the technician. “Stop.” Then, “Stop!” he called to Charlie, who was still trying to hit the target. Mr. Burns shook his head in disgust. “That’s enough. God help you and your team if you even make it to France.”
He scanned the group, his eyes lighting upon Maggie. “Miss Hope, this was always one of your favorite exercises. Come and show Charlie and the rest how it’s done.”
Maggie hadn’t touched a gun since she’d returned from Berlin. She had no desire to, ever again. “Mr. Burns, I would prefer not to.” But apparently Mr. Burns wasn’t a Melville aficionado.
“Miss Hope,” Mr. Burns said, his voice kind but firm. She knew that he knew why she didn’t want to touch a gun. And he wasn’t going to let her get away with it any longer.
“All right.” There was a rustle of whispers from the trainees. They were eager to see what she could do.
She took Charlie’s gun from him, weighing it in her hand. It was a Sten, not a Luger, the weapon she’d used in Germany. Feeling sick, she inspected it, then walked to the front of the house.
Doing as she’d been trained, she stood, back to the door frame, and listened. Nothing. She reached out and turned the knob. The door swung inward, groaning on its hinge.
Maggie kicked it all the way open, gun shifting in her sweating palm. She gripped it tighter. Nothing. No one.
She made her way into the dim light of the room; a few floorboards gave way and creaked underfoot. Dust motes floated in the air, illuminated the slanting sunlight from a high window. A chill lurked around the corners of the room.
Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie s
potted movement. She shot once at a plywood cutout of a man painted to look as if he was wearing a Nazi uniform moving at the top of the stairs, the bullet piercing the cross over his heart. She then spun around to shoot another cutout, this time of a Nazi officer emerging from an armoire. From behind a door, there was a movement. Maggie whirled, her heartbeat exploding in her chest, her weapon raised to shoot. The cutout this time was of a mother, holding a baby in her arms.
Maggie fell to her knees. And stayed there, paralyzed.
Mr. Burns came through the door. He was saying something. Maggie turned the gun on him, eyes wild.
She couldn’t hear him, but she could see he’d put his hands up. She kept the Sten trained on his chest. There was an interminable moment before she could make out who he was, and what he was saying.
“Put the gun down, Miss Hope,” Mr. Burns said, walking to her slowly.
She backed away on her knees, keeping the gun on him, eyes darting, every nerve alert.
“Stop!” she called. “Stop—or I’ll shoot!”
“It is only I—Mr. Burns,” the older man said. He continued to walk toward her, as one would approach a wild animal with teeth bared. “It’s all right, Miss Hope. Everything is all right now. You’re safe—you’re fine. Everything is fine.”
Maggie’s eyes were still glassy with terror, and the hand holding the gun was shaking, but she let Mr. Burns approach her, and then allowed him to take her gun, put on the safety, and pocket it. It was the scent of pipe tobacco clinging to his sweater that calmed her, finally.
“It’s all right.” He extended a callused hand and she grabbed on to it, letting herself be pulled up.
“It’s all right,” he whispered to her as she sank into the cushions of the dusty sofa. “Get out!” he yelled at the faces peering in the doorway. “Go away! There’s nothing to see here!”
The trainees dispersed.
Burns sat down next to Maggie.
“Shooting triggered a bad memory,” he stated. It was not a question.
“Yes,” Maggie managed.
“Happens to all of us,” he said gruffly, pulling out a cambric handkerchief from his jacket pocket and handing it to her. She accepted it and wiped at her eyes, then blew her nose.
“That message you received, Miss Hope—what was it for?”
“What?”
“The telephone message you received yesterday morning.”
“It—” Maggie concentrated on her breathing. “It was a message from my friend Sarah. She’s performing with the Vic-Wells Ballet in Edinburgh. She wants me to come and see her perform.”
“And you binned it and didn’t get back to her. Not even to say that you weren’t coming.”
“Yes,” Maggie whispered.
“Why?”
She turned her eyes up to his. “You know why.”
“And that’s why I’m ordering you to go.”
“Sir?”
“Go to Edinburgh. Spend some time with your friend. Take the weekend.”
“No, no—I couldn’t possibly …”
“It’s an order, Miss Hope.”
“I can’t—”
He patted her hand awkwardly. “I repeat, it’s an order, Miss Hope. You’re going to Edinburgh. No arguing.”
“But—” Maggie gave a faint smile and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
It looked as if she was going to Edinburgh—Black Dog or no Black Dog.
During the training exercises, K had found a place on a stone wall in the weak winter sun, and kept watch through slit eyes. When Maggie and Mr. Burns left Traigh House, K leapt from the wall and trotted after them.
But then the wind had picked up, and the cat became distracted, chasing after a papery brown leaf. “K! Mr. K! Naughty kitty!” Maggie shouted, her voice blown away.
“I’ll leave you to your chase,” Mr. Burns said, tipping his hat. “Enjoy the ballet.”
“Thank you, sir,” Maggie said as she began running after the tabby.
K had turned and trotted off over the dead grass to a path in the surrounding forest, which led down to the rocky shore. Maggie scrambled after him. “Wait, come back here!” she called, her voice lost in the blustery weather. Cats are not like dogs, she had to remind herself, more used to Churchill’s dog Rufus and Princess Elizabeth’s menagerie of corgis. Even Nelson, the P.M.’s cat, would at least pretend to listen every once in a while.
K darted over the moss-covered stones, tail low, as if on the trail of something. He slunk under a rusty metal gate, which Maggie then had to climb, wire biting into her hands.
Stupid cat, she thought as she pushed loose hair out of her eyes. Why did I ever think I could take care of an animal? She trailed him through thorny underbrush, then found herself on the rocks of a different cove, on the property next to Arisaig House. The beach was stonier, harder to walk on. K jumped up onto a boulder and sat, watching.
There were men on the shore, leading a line of docile sheep down a worn path, then loading them into a waiting boat. Some of the sheep were white, or cream, or gray; some had black patches. Each had two notches cut into one ear and a red dot on its rump. Maggie could hear their baas carried off in the wind.
K jumped down, then walked back to Maggie, pawing her knee, wanting to be lifted. Absently, still watching the men, she bent and scooped him up into her arms. He purred and settled himself on her shoulder, like a pirate’s parrot. “And what do you suppose we have here?” she muttered as the boats drifted farther and farther from the shore, toward a small island, whose name she didn’t know. “Maybe they’re taking them to another island to graze?”
“Meh.”
“Yes, meh indeed,” Maggie replied, scratching him under the chin. “But now I need to pack for Edinburgh.”
When her next meal was brought in, Clara was found unconscious and she was rushed to the Tower of London’s infirmary. There Dr. Clive Carroll, a fifty-something man with gray-blond hair and narrow shoulders, was called to examine her. By the time Dr. Carroll had finished, Peter Frain, Director of MI-5, was on the telephone.
Carroll sat down behind his wooden desk to take the call.
“What do you think it is?” Frain asked without preamble. “What’s wrong with Hess?”
The doctor fidgeted with the coiled telephone cord. “Physically, Frau Hess is fine, Mr. Frain. Robust health. Good muscle tone, strong pulse, normal blood pressure, even breathing …”
“So, what the devil’s wrong with her?”
Dr. Carroll pushed up horn-rimmed glasses. “Well, she is—in a word—catatonic.”
“Catatonic?” Frain didn’t sound convinced. “What does that mean, exactly? Medically speaking?”
“Well, we still need to rule out stroke—but I believe Frau Hess is experiencing what we call catatonic stupor. She’s in an apathetic state and nonreactive to external stimuli. Right now, motor activity is nearly nonexistent. She’s not making eye contact and appears to be mute.”
The telephone lines hissed and crackled. “And … how do you know she’s not faking?”
“I don’t. However, I’m going to proceed as if she is indeed catatonic, and for that I suggest electroshock therapy. We’ve had some good results with it in the past. It’s a new technology—only been around a few years.”
“What is—what did you call it? Electroshock therapy?”
Dr. Carroll took off his glasses and put them in his jacket pocket. “It’s a psychiatric treatment where we electronically induce seizures in patients for therapeutic effect.”
Frain’s bark was so loud that Carroll had to pull the receiver away from his ear. “You electrocute them? Why?”
“Well, we don’t really know why it works.”
Frain gave a dry laugh. “Well, that’s not very reassuring.” Then, “And if she’s faking?”
“The procedure is … most uncomfortable. No one in her right mind would voluntarily go through with it.”
“My dear doctor,” Frain said, “let me assure you—you’ve never
met anyone like Clara Hess before. And her state of mind has always been up for question.” In his large office at MI-5, Frain lit a cigarette and leaned back in his leather chair. “She’s playing you, Dr. Carroll. Like the proverbial violin.”
“Mr. Frain, I suggest you come here, to see Frau Hess’s condition with your own eyes.”
“I’ve seen her act many times, back in the day. Her portrayal of Konstanze in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail was sublime. But I don’t need to see her do it again.” Then, “And as far as I’m concerned, her execution proceeds on schedule. December seventh at twelve noon.”
Before the doctor at the Tower of London could take Clara for her electroshock therapy, however, something happened.
“Wo bin ich?” said a little girl’s voice. Where am I?
“Frau Hess,” Dr. Carroll said, also in German, “you are safe, you’re—”
“I’m going to play by the lake today!” Clara said in the same little girl’s voice, sitting up in bed with evident glee.
“The lake?” the doctor said, taken aback. “Frau Hess—”
“Who is Frau Hess?” the little girl asked, giggling. “Not I, certainly.”
The doctor tilted his head. “Who are you?”
She smiled. “Don’t you know?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Agna, of course,” Clara said, with a hint of impatience. “Agna Frei.”
Dr. Carroll was on his guard, but willing to play along. “And you are going to play by the lake today, gnädiges Fräulein? Where do you play?”
“The lake!” she said. When he didn’t react, she said, “Lake Wannsee?”
“Who will go with you?”
Clara’s mouth turned down. “No one. I don’t have any friends. My mother won’t let me have any friends.”
“She won’t? Why?”
“I’m not allowed to say,” she whispered, hunching over and wrapping her arms around herself. “Don’t tell Mutti I said anything.”
The Prime Minister's Secret Agent Page 7