The Prime Minister's Secret Agent

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  “Well, I’ve seen it, too, of course,” Maggie said. “ ‘Has it ever occurred to you that a woman can sometimes be of more help than a man?’ Although it seems a shame that Lord Nelson had a hero’s death, while Lady Hamilton had to die alone, an alcoholic, in prison.”

  “ ‘You must please excuse these souvenirs …’ ” John said, looking at her.

  “ ‘I had no idea,’ ” she quoted back. “ ‘They told us of your victories, but not of the price you had paid.’ ”

  They sat in silence, until John stood and switched seats so he could be next to Maggie. “Meh,” K protested, jumping up and wedging himself between them.

  “We should probably get some sleep,” John said.

  “Yes. We probably should.”

  In the darkness, they closed their eyes, then reached for the other’s hand.

  Snow was falling on the city of London, covering it in white, like a bandage, as their taxi made its way past bombed-out blocks, next to those left curiously intact. Barrage balloons still stood guard.

  “Wait,” said Maggie. “I want to see how much damage there is to my house. Driver, may we please go by Portland Place?”

  “Your grandmother’s house was bombed?” John asked.

  Maggie nodded. “The tenants escaped, but they tell me it’s uninhabitable now. I just need to see for myself.”

  When they reached Portland Place, there were already signs of damage from explosions on the street—broken windows boarded up, burned trees, craters in the street marked off with hastily built fencing.

  “It’s—it’s still standing, at least,” Maggie said finally, as they reached the address. It was true: A bomb had flattened what had been the upper story of the house, leaving nothing but charred remains. The first floor was burned and the windows were cracked.

  Maggie looked from the window of the taxi. “Damn,” she said, taking it in.

  “Yes,” John said.

  Maggie bit her lip, hard. “All right, no need to gawk,” she said finally, tasting blood. “Let’s get to David’s.”

  At David and Freddie’s flat in Knightsbridge, they were able to freshen up and change.

  “You’re just in time for the bon voyage party tonight,” David exclaimed, clapping his hands. “At Number Ten. Everyone will be there, oh, you must come!”

  Maggie nodded. She had a few things she wanted to say to Mr. Churchill before committing to go to the United States with his entourage. “Will you be joining us at the party, Freddie?”

  Freddie shook his head. “Only for staff, I’m afraid.” He sneezed, then pulled out a cambric handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “Oh no,” Maggie said, suddenly piecing it together. “Are you allergic to cats?” She’d put K in her old room, for the time being, letting him get used to his new home.

  “Afraid so,” Freddie said. “More of a dog person, really.”

  David was not one to wait on ceremony. Once John and Freddie went into the library to work, he pounced. “So, are you and John back together?”

  “No.” Oh, David … Maggie felt a warm wave of affection wash over her. He might be somewhat tactless when it came to matters of the heart, but he always meant well. “It’s complicated.”

  “Doesn’t have to be.” David leaned back in his chair. “Oh, suffering Sukra, I don’t see why you two don’t just tear each other’s clothes off and have at it. I don’t understand all the angst, all the drama. Pansies, I’ll have you know, don’t waste so much time.”

  “David!” Maggie exclaimed.

  “We pansies are quite efficient, it’s true.” David nodded. “Pocket squares and whatnot. Men and women could take a page, you know. Stop wasting so much time. Carpe diem. Or noctem, as the case may be.”

  “Well,” Maggie retorted, “I can assure you that everyone’s clothes are staying on, thank you very much. I had the bullet removed. I quit smoking. I adopted a cat—or I guess he adopted me. Humpty Dumpy has been put back together again—and I’d like to make sure that glue holds before any rending of garments occurs.”

  “Fair enough. And, speaking of the king’s horses …”

  John entered the room and sat at the table with them. David poured him a cup of tea.

  Maggie, eager to change the subject, looked to David. “What am I going to do with K? Obviously, he can’t stay here. Poor Freddie will die sneezing.”

  “Well,” he said, pushing up his silver-framed glasses. “You could bring him to Downing Street. He could stay with Nelson and the resident Number Ten cat.”

  “K? At Number Ten?” Maggie was surprised. “Would that be tolerated?”

  “Please,” David said, “we’re British—we adore animals. It’s children we can’t stand. That’s why we invented boarding schools. More tea?”

  The cocktail party at Number 10 was being held in the Blue Drawing Room. There was the hum of conversation and, in the background, the tinkle of a piano.

  “May I fetch you a drink?” David asked Maggie once their coats were taken care of. K had been dropped off in the kitchen, and was busy trying to make friends with Mr. Churchill’s cat Nelson, who was not at all interested. The Number 10 cat glared down from a high perch.

  “Thank you, that would be lovely.”

  She looked around, disconcerted by being back. Here she’d once taken dictation and typed while bombs rained down outside and Mr. Churchill had smoked and shouted and kicked the wastebasket. So much time had passed. So many things had changed. But it still looked the same—an enormous and empty room. The grand oil paintings had been taken away for safekeeping, leaving vacant frames. And the huge Persian carpet had also been rolled up and put into storage. The chairs and sofas ringing the walls remained, though, and a cheerful orange-and-blue fire burned behind the fireplace’s grate.

  In the crowd, she spotted Miss Stewart, Mr. Snodgrass, and Mrs. Tinsley. Maggie immediately went to the older woman, Mr. Churchill’s longtime typist and her first supervisor at Number 10. “Miss Hope, you look much better than the last time you were here,” the older woman said. “Not so sallow and sickly. Why, I do believe there’s even a touch of pink in your cheeks now. Scotland must have agreed with you.”

  And some things never change. “Thank you, Mrs. Tinsley,” Maggie said, putting a hand on the woman’s arm. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I remember your photograph of your son in uniform, by his RAF plane.”

  Mrs. Tinsley blinked, hard. “Thank you, Miss Hope.”

  The crowd parted, and Mrs. Churchill came forth in a cloud of lavender chiffon and gray pearls. “Miss Hope, so glad to see you back,” said Mrs. Churchill, shaking Maggie’s hand warmly. “Please take good care of Mr. Churchill on this trip, won’t you, dear? America seems a bit … unpredictable. Like the Wild West.”

  “I—” Maggie began, not wanting to talk about it with Mrs. Churchill before talking to the Prime Minister himself.

  David appeared and handed Maggie a coupe of Champagne. The three of them clinked glasses. “And take care of yourselves over there.”

  “We’ll try our best, Ma’am.”

  There was the sound of a crash, then a yowl, then the shadow of a cat running from the Prime Minister’s office, tail low.

  “No one named Nelson ever runs from a fight!” Mr. Churchill shouted, holding on to a squirming K. He addressed the party. “And who is this rascal? To whom does he belong?”

  “He belongs to me, sir,” Maggie said. “His name is K—Mr. K, on more formal occasions.”

  “K, hmmm? Is he in espionage? You know, some of my best top-secret agents have just one-letter code names.”

  “He’s extremely good about sneaking about, sir, and gathering intelligence—about food sources especially.”

  David interposed. “Sir, it’s all my fault—I told Miss Hope that the cat could stay here, just during our trip to Washington.”

  Mr. Churchill walked over to the group, scratching K under the chin. “Found him in Scotland, did you?” he asked Maggie.

  “He,
well, he sort of found me, sir.”

  “Well, he can’t come to America with us. Not even my beloved brood can.”

  “No, sir.”

  “But he’s welcome to stay at Number Ten for the duration.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!”

  “Come with me to my office, Miss Hope,” Mr. Churchill said, still cradling K in his arms. “We must talk.”

  Inside, with the thick door of his study closed, the P.M. dropped down into a leather chair and motioned for her to take the one opposite. “Sit! Sit!” he admonished, reaching for a cigar from his breast pocket. He looked older now, stouter but at the same time weaker than when he dictated the Battle of Britain speech to her. His blue eyes were weary. Maggie did as she was bid and sat.

  “I’m terribly sorry, sir. But I can’t go with you. To Washington.” It was a lie. She knew that the best way to get what she wanted, Elise’s rescue, was to be coy.

  Churchill regarded her with dark-blue eyes and chewed on his cigar. “But I must have Hope!” Then, “Are you afraid?” he asked. “The ocean voyage alone, with all those Nazi ships and submarines, would put most men off. And according to the Geneva Conventions we’re not technically supposed to bring women—there’s a loophole, though, because you’ll be going as the Prime Minister’s agent. Plus, I don’t want to hire a new typist over there. Some Yank who’ll probably spell all of our noble British words wrong.”

  “I’m not afraid, sir,” Maggie said, twisting her hands in her lap. “After being sent blind to Berlin. After learning about the anthrax that you’re developing …”

  “Ah,” the P.M. said, leaning back in his chair. Having mutilated his cigar long enough, he took out a monogrammed gold lighter and touched the flame to its end, sucking in. The tip turned crimson. “Not going with me, eh? Your sense of morality has been punctured?”

  Maggie didn’t know where to rest her eyes, but they kept returning to the unwavering blue ones on her. “I don’t question the necessity of the war, sir. I don’t question that it’s a just war. But I do have reservations about how we’re going about fighting it.”

  “What are your specific issues, Miss Hope?”

  “First, I was hired to work as your secretary under false pretenses. You used me for my family connections—connections I wasn’t even aware of—without informing me.

  “Next, I was trained as a spy and sent to Berlin. Again, I was used for my family connections and sent under false pretenses.

  “And then there’s the anthrax. One of my dearest friends—a patriot, who risked her life to capture Claire Kelly—nearly died as ‘collateral damage’ to your anthrax experiment.”

  Maggie took a deep breath. “You must understand that—with all due respect, sir—I do not trust you.”

  Churchill smoked impassively, a wreath of blue smoke drifting above his head. The fire crackled in the hearth.

  “Miss Hope, we’ve been discussing theoretical moral problems in our highest circles. Let me pose to you one of our most frequently discussed scenarios. Suppose Hitler has given orders for the Luftwaffe to obliterate a city—a city that is not London. A nonmilitary target. An undefended city of civilians. Hitler wants to demonstrate his power—that he can flatten any target he chooses in Britain and get away with it. We know of this because our cryptographers at Bletchley Park have unscrambled some of that secret Nazi code. There’s no mistake, it’s been checked and crosschecked.”

  He kept the full intensity of his gaze upon her. “Now, what would you do?”

  Maggie thought before replying. “Could the attack be stopped with an all-out effort by the RAF, sir?”

  “Yes, of course. But there’s a catch—the Germans will know we had prior knowledge of the raid. They’ll know we broke their code. It comes down to the code, or the city.”

  “Well, surely we could evacuate the children …”

  “No! To do so would betray the secret. And the city would be bombed anyway and we’d still have lost the advantage of breaking the code. Think, Miss Hope! Think!”

  “Just to clarify, sir, we are talking about letting innocent civilians die. Without warning.”

  “Yes. Now let’s make it more complicated—because life often is. This city that will be bombed—it’s a city near Bletchley, and many of the people working at Bletchley have relocated their families there. So it’s not random and anonymous families who will die, but families of the people who broke the code in the first place.”

  Maggie’s forehead creased. “There are only two possible moves, sir—either defend the city in an all-out battle, or—”

  “Or what, Miss Hope?”

  “Or …” Her heart sank as she realized the only other option. “… sacrifice the city and keep the secret. Lose the battle, in order to win the war.”

  The Prime Minister rested his cigar in a cut-glass ashtray. “And what would you do, Miss Hope?”

  “I would—” Maggie stared into the dancing flames. “But it’s—it’s an impossible choice, sir.”

  “Yes, but as Prime Minister: You. Must. Decide.”

  “I would sacrifice the city,” Maggie said finally. “I would sacrifice the city to win the war.”

  “And now, Miss Hope, you know how impossibly hard my job is. And how impossibly hard it was, with you, in regard to your past. But we had an advantage and I pressed it. I used you to press it.”

  “You used me.”

  “I did. And I’m deeply remorseful, Miss Hope, for any mental anguish I’ve caused you. But you’ve furthered our cause more than you know.”

  Maggie took his words in. “Thank you, sir. I accept your apology. But what about the anthrax? With all due respect, how could you possibly approve the development of such a monstrous thing, sir?”

  “You yourself have used a gun, Miss Hope, have you not?”

  “Yes, I have,” Maggie answered, voice steady. “I took a man’s life in Berlin. And I take full responsibility for my actions—and will until my own dying day. But biotoxins—they’re indiscriminate. They’re shameful. They’re—for want of a better word—dirty.”

  “Dirty, you say? And you prefer clean weapons, like guns.”

  “At least you look your enemy in the eye. And it’s better to die by gunshot than by a long, slow, festering illness.”

  “You’re talking again about your friend. The one who nearly died.”

  “Yes, and two women who did die. Innocent women, who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Doctors, whose edict is to ‘first, do no harm,’ are making poisons to be used as weapons. It turns civilization on its very head.”

  “Do you think we are alone in our potion making? We received all of our information from France before she fell. Germany has its own wizards and warlocks, making their own bubbling cauldrons of poison. Surely we would be remiss not to act to protect ourselves against our adversaries?”

  He sighed gustily. “Sometimes I miss the Battle of Britain. Everything seemed so clear back then. Right and wrong. Good and evil. Black and white. Freedom and slavery. But we’re fighting against humans who have been infected with an inhuman germ. And so we must fight. With broken bottles and pitchforks if we must. And even with mustard gas and anthrax.”

  He rose and walked to a credenza arrayed with various cut-crystal bottles and glasses. “Oh, my dear Miss Hope, things are going to become much darker before the dawn.” He poured two fingers of Johnnie Walker Black into one of the glasses and added a tiny splash of water. “And people wonder why I drink,” he muttered.

  “That’s why it’s important to differentiate the Germans versus the Nazis. The Nazis are a humorless creed, and a damned creed, carrying misery and fear where they go. In addition, they’re dreary sentimentalists. The kind who go to a whorehouse, and then, after it’s over, show the whore pictures of their wife and children back home and cry. They’re not terrible, and they’re not even all that interesting when all is said and done. Crashing bores, really.

  “Miss Hope, you don’t have
much family, do you?”

  Maggie tried not to guffaw in the presence of the Prime Minister. That’s an understatement. “No, sir.”

  “I didn’t, either, you know. In that way we are alike.”

  “Sir?”

  “Like you, I was an only child. My father was absent more than he was present—was absent even when he was present. And my mother—well, she was like a movie star to me, just as glamorous and just as real as an image on the silver screen. We moved so much, when I was young, and then I went to boarding school … and then she died …”

  He shook himself from his reverie. “That’s why I married Clemmie, why we built Chartwell, why we had children. Family, Miss Hope, family is what’s important!” he roared, raising his glass. “And while we can’t choose the one we come from, we can create our own.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Think you’ll settle down, get married?”

  Maggie blushed. “Maybe after the war is over, sir.”

  “My advice is—don’t wait too long. Get married and have children. Four, if possible—one for Mother, one for Father, one for Accidents, one for Increase.”

  Maggie cleared her throat. “Mr. Churchill, your mentioning family brings me to another thing I wanted to ask.”

  “What? Speak up, Miss Hope!”

  “I’m actually not an only child. In Berlin, I learned that I have a half-sister, Elise Hess.” Maggie chose her words carefully. “If you promise to do everything in your power to get Elise Hess out of Germany, then I will come with you to Washington, DC.”

  The Prime Minister sat down and pondered his drink for a moment. Then he looked up. “You think I have time to locate and save one German girl—the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi, no less?”

  “She’s on our side, sir. She’s a nurse and an aspiring nun, and she put herself in great danger to help John Sterling and a Jew named Ernst Klein, who’s now patching up the British army in the Mideast. And she’s my sister.”