by Bonnie Toews
It was Sir Fletcher’s idea to protect the atomic project and the covert agents he recruited into the safety of subterranean bunkers. These extended from the cellars of London’s Kew Palace in the Royal Botanic Gardens to the basement of Radcliffe House at the east end of the Gardens.
In this underground facility, the ‘nerve center’ could work to analyze experimental findings and papers published by other scientists in the nuclear field. Not only were they charged with unlocking the secrets of the tiny atom, they had to track Germany’s progress developing atomic energy as well. With all these resources at their disposal, they were expected to figure out ways to sabotage the Nazis’ headway. To this end, Sir Fletcher and Quinn believed the project’s best tactic would come from an inventive use of misinformation.
The most difficult task during the excavation and tunneling stage was keeping it secret from Grace and her mother as well as from unwanted prying eyes. Lord Radcliffe told his wife and daughter they were repairing the sewers and that the easiest access for the workers was from their basement. While Grace and her mother never suspected what was going on, Lee came to realize that it was because the two musicians, during their long rehearsal periods each day, lived in a realm oblivious to their surroundings.
At first she didn’t know how to relate to mother or daughter. She had never sought friendship with other women. But eventually, the shared trauma of Kristallnacht drew Lee into Grace’s world. The moment that truly defined their kinship happened after Grace’s mare, Decency, foaled.
They arrived at the Radcliffe’s country estate in Guild Oaks just as Decency was in the last throes of delivery. The grand chestnut mare was lying on her side grunting when they reached her stall in time to see her expel a tremendous gush of water that flooded the bedding of straw.
Immediately Grace knelt down by Decency and began stroking her head. Under the mare’s tail ballooned a white bag, and then emerged one leg covered in a transparent sac. To Lee it looked like parachute silk.
“Shouldn’t the head come out first?” Lee asked alarmed.
“If the foal is in the right position, the front legs come out first, ahead of the head,” explained Ed Tanner, the Radcliffe’s horse trainer, who had been with Decency from the start of her labor.
“But there’s only one leg showing.”
“I think we’ll see the other one after Decency’s next push,” he assured her.
Lee watched anxiously. Decency’s back leg twitched, and she grunted again.
“Here we go,” Tanner said. “Push, girl. I can see the other leg.”
He was positioned behind her ready to pull the foal out if the mare needed help. “There it is. The head’s next.”
Lee watched fascinated. Still enclosed within the heavily veined amniotic sac, the foal’s head emerged. Tanner cut the sac at once and peeled it back from the foal’s nostrils. As he continued to slip the bag off its face, she could see a dark blue tongue extending from its mouth and its eyes glued shut. Was it dead after all this?
Tanner toweled its wet face, pulling bluish-white mucus out of its nose and mouth. First, its eyes fluttered, and then it uttered a soft mew-like sneeze. Its mouth opened, and its tongue, already amazingly pink, darted out between its lips. Decency grunted again.
Now its shoulders, the largest and widest part of its body, were free of the birth canal. Blowing hard, Decency rested. The foal nickered. Decency tried to raise her head to see it struggling to break out of the sac with its forelegs jabbing at the membrane. Decency angrily snorted, bobbing her head back and forth. The foal lifted its head toward her and whinnied a strong protest.
“A cheeky devil,” Tanner commented.
A whistle of air escaped as another contraction propelled the foal through the birth canal and its hindquarters and back legs cleared the passageway with a final slap of amniotic fluids as foal and sac landed on the straw bed. Its long umbilical cord pulsed, perfectly intact.
“Keep Decency’s head down, Grace. I don’t want her to stand up while the cord is still beating. She could break it.”
Tanner supported the foal beside the mother’s back feet and gently held the cord with his free hand until the pulsation quit about a minute later. Then he let the foal kick away from Decency, and the cord ruptured itself.
Grace let go of Decency’s head, and the mare rolled awkwardly from her side to her stomach. Pawing with her front legs, she pushed herself up. Her back hoof hovered over the foal as if she might step on it. Lee shivered and looked to Grace and Tanner to stop her, but they patiently watched Decency’s hoof slide over the baby’s struggling form until it cleared it before she shifted her weight and stepped around her foal.
“Wow!”
Lee cried with relief as she watched the foal struggling to find its feet. It quivered and rocked on gangly forelegs that unfolded like a rusty card table, each leg awkwardly straightening as it tested its strength and balance. Unsteadily, it pulled itself up and, just as it looked as if it would make it, fell back down with a disgusted plop. All three of them broke out laughing at the indignant expression on the foal’s face.
“Well, Tanner, do we have a colt or a filly?” Grace asked.
“Judging by its cheekiness, I’ll wager it’s a filly,” he grinned.
“I’d challenge that,” scoffed Lee.
“Me too,” agreed Grace.
The foal tried to co-ordinate its wobbly legs and pushed itself up on all fours at once. Again it collapsed in a heap on the straw. After several more tries, it stood up shaking, afraid to move in case it fell down again.
“Who’s going to check it out?” asked Lee.
Grace and Tanner almost knocked heads as they bent down at the same time to see the foal’s plumbing. Grace stood up first with a satisfied smile.
“You lose, Tanner. Good thing we weren’t wagering money.”
Lee helped support the colt, while Decency walked over to sniff and lick his damp coat. He was a rich red with a black mane.
“He’s so beautiful!” Lee’s heart filled with tenderness. “Is he a chestnut like Decency?”
“No,” answered Grace. “A blood bay. Though his coat will be reddish in color, his mane, tail and stockings will be a deep brown. He’ll be gorgeous when he grows up.”
Swaying, the colt staggered, one foot in front of the other. Very carefully, he dragged his hind feet forward, one at a time. The next step was stronger. And then the next. Decency stood patiently waiting. He wavered. She nudged his rump, directing his nose to her full udder.
“He’s looking for milk. Lee, help steer him to his mum’s underbelly,” Tanner instructed.
Uncertain and awkward at first, Lee felt the colt’s muscles tense until he trusted her support. She propped him up facing his mother’s hindquarters. Wobbling forward, he eagerly sniffed the droplets of colostrums leaking from her udder; and then grasped one teat and began sucking. Decency snickered, well pleased with her strapping son.
“Listen to the little pig slurp!” Lee exclaimed.
She let him go and watched him nurse. In less than half an hour, she had seen a helpless newborn rise to its feet, walk and take his first drink. She had never experienced such a miracle of life before. A lovely serenity washed over her.
“What will you call him, Grace?” she asked curiously.
“He’s not mine to name. He’s yours.”
“You’re kidding! How do you figure that?”
“He’s yours, Lee, because you’re part of the human family he’s already learned to trust. He will always remember you.”
Lee searched for words, which didn’t come. She had never belonged to anyone, and no one had belonged to her. By asking her to name the colt, Grace made the foal hers. She cleared the huskiness choking her throat.
“A name … well, let’s see. It must be something special.”
She looked at the colt. For an instant, the world shrunk to just the two of them, and she talked to him as if he understood her.
“Wit
h your mother’s heart and your father’s speed, I predict you’re going to be a bold and fearless champion, little fella.”
Lee remained quiet, while she thought. A memo to Sir Fletcher from Churchill came to mind. Churchill had code-named the spymaster he assigned to New York, Intrepid. To Lee, the name conjured up an image of dignity and great courage.
“I have it! We’ll call him Intrepid.”
“Intrepid …” Grace repeated. She nodded. “Strong and brave. Our own Intrepid. I think it’s perfect, Lee. Don’t you agree, Tanner?”
“I do.”
“Then Intrepid is his name.”
Lee and Grace touched shoulders as they watched Intrepid nurse. After awhile, Lee picked up the water pail and let Decency drink a few swallows. Grace watched her.
“Lee, you may not want to hear this, but I am going to tell you anyway. For some reason I can’t explain, I feel as if I have known you all my life, almost as if we have been the missing parts of one soul brought together again. No matter what happens, I want you to know I will always be here for you.”
Lee bit her lip and allowed herself to nod, afraid to show her feelings. She busied herself putting the water pail outside the stall door, and for a second, she stood with her back to Grace, silently struggling with herself.
“Tell me,” she said finally, “do you believe the real influence on Decency’s breeding is seventy-five percent her dam’s?”
“Of course not.”
Lee turned around to face Grace.
“Neither do I. But the Jews do. By their rules, I am a Jew.”
For an instant, Lee’s meaning eluded Grace.
“Are you saying your mother is a Jew?”
“I am. She’s a Russian Jew and a Communist.”
“Good grief! What if the Nazis found out?”
“Well, they didn’t. I have doctored papers proving I am an American orphan. Only you, Quinn and Sir Fletcher know the truth, Grace.”
Grace stared at her as the significance of the secret Lee revealed sank in, and then her expression softened.
“Your secret is safe with me.”
“I know.”
In that moment, Lee recognized the voiceless calling within that begged to be recognized. She did understand what Grace meant: the knowing and a coming together in an immortal quest for full acceptance and absolute deliverance was as if, what their hearts did seek in solitude, they found together. They were sisters-in-spirit, and for the first time in her uprooted life, Lee felt the embrace of unconditional love in the friendship Grace offered.
When Quinn requested she rejoin him in Poland, she found it difficult to return to the insecurity of a spy’s life.
In recent weeks, her uncertainty had grown worse as German troops mounted Poland’s borders, and these unannounced calls for Quinn had increased. Everyone was tense, anticipating Hitler’s ominous invasion, yet Lee recognized a spirit of bravado and confidence in the Polish people she interviewed. This time, if Germany invaded Poland as it did Czechoslovakia, the Poles believed England and France would come to their rescue.
EIGHT
Thursday, August 31, 1939
The honking seagulls and siren hoots from the Shell oil tanker flying the U.S. flag announced its arrival in the Danish port. Fishing vessels lining the canal on either side bobbed in the wake of the fully loaded ship. Grace kept it within her view as their limousine followed the canal route to Copenhagen’s Amalienborg Palace. Just as they passed the small square, the tanker docked one block down from the Shell Oil Building, and Grace caught a glimpse of beech trees surrounding the 18th Century convent opposite it. She craned her neck around, as they continued on, to admire the elegance of the chapel steeple rising proudly into the clear summer sky above the convent.
Finally, their limousine rolled up to the grand entrance of the royal palace near King’s Square at the harbour, and the palace valet helped Lord Radcliffe, Princess Alexandra and Lady Grace step out of the prestigious Silver Arrow Mercedes, which Denmark’s King Christian X had sent to transport them to his annual awards banquet. Every year, he honored fellow countrymen and Scandinavian royalty for their celebrated accomplishments, and this year, the sixty-eight-year-old king included Grace from the English side of his family for winning the revered Belvedere Gold Medal.
The three Radcliffes politely acknowledged the sentries, resplendent in blue uniforms and bearskin shakos, before climbing the steep steps.
In the entrance lobby, Grace whispered to her mother, “Before I meet King Christian, explain how we are related again.”
“My cousin is the daughter of King Edward VII. She married King Christian’s son, who is now King Haakon of Norway.”
Grace mentally repeated what her mother said.
“The simplest thing to remember,’ suggested her father, “is that you are a distant cousin by marriage to all the royal families in Sweden, Norway and Denmark through King George’s maternal side.”
“Like line breeding but not too selectively,” said Grace.
“Precisely,” said Lord Radcliffe, as they were announced into the royal banquet hall.
King Christian sat at the head of the table. Grace and Dr. Bernhard Nielsen, a nuclear physicist in his mid-fifties, were seated on his right as his guests of honor, while Princess Alexandra and Denmark’s opera diva, Mme. Pia Margretha Orsted, were placed side by side on his left.
The two women had studied music together in Paris before Princess Alexandra had married Lord Radcliffe and given up her promising piano career. Pia, on the other hand, had carried on and become a famous opera star. Through the intervening years, the two had remained close friends, and Grace found the big-boned but firm and handsome singer fascinating. Her face, up close, seemed to be perpetually sniffing a rose or about to burst into laughter— at whom or with whom, Grace could not tell, but her uplifted expression added to the diva’s charm.
King Christian lifted his fork in signal for everyone to begin their feast of fish and seafood including marinated herring, Scandinavian bouillabaise, lobster au gratin au flambé in cognac and poached sole stuffed with a light fish mousse.
“You must be proud of your daughter, Lord Radcliffe,” he said at one point in the lively conversation during dinner.
“I am, your majesty,” replied Grace’s father, who sat further down the table amid the king’s other noble and distinguished guests from Norway and Sweden, “but my wife deserves a large part of the credit. She taught Grace.”
“Wynne, don’t tell me you are finally admitting what a remarkable pianist Alexa is?” laughed Pia. “When you stole her heart, you not only robbed me of my best friend, you took away my best accompanist. I’ve never forgiven you for that.”
“Pia Orated,” reproached Grace’s mother, “you never needed me. You were destined to become a great diva.”
“My dear Alexa, even divas need their friends.”
“Dr. Nielsen,” said Lord Radcliffe, redirecting his attention to the physicist sitting next to Grace. “I’m curious. Now that you have won the Nobel Prize for your nuclear research, aren’t you concerned about what could happen if your knowledge and the results of your atomic experiments fall into the wrong hands?”
Dr. Bernhard Nielsen laughed.
“If you mean by ‘wrong hands,’what would the Nazis do with my papers? Have no fear, Lord Radcliffe. My findings are based on Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and Einstein is a Jew. Hitler does not take any Jew seriously. He finds Jewish scientists especially distasteful. So far, no one has learned how to control the chain reaction resulting from nuclear fission.”
“Not even you,” countered Lord Radcliffe.
“Not even me.”
Grace sensed the silver-tongued scientist’s evasiveness. His appearance surprised her. She expected him to be a studious, myopic man, when she learned he was to be her dinner companion. Instead, this slight Dane exuded charm. With his trim pepper hair, widow’s peak, refined features, mellow voice and pencil-thin moustac
he, she could imagine him as a Shakespearean actor rather than as a physicist. His bright blue eyes sparkled with mischief.
She challenged him. “Isn’t the real question: how far away are you from learning the atom’s secret, Dr. Neilsen?”
Everyone around the table stopped talking at once to hear the nuclear scientist’s answer. He responded with a condescending smile. “Years, my dear child. Many long, long years.”
NINE
Friday, September 1st, 1939
The next day, Sir Fletcher stepped out of the taxi and climbed the concrete steps into the Science Building at the Copenhagen University. In the hallway, he was relieved to see Baron Erich von Lohren approach him.
The SD officer, dressed in a civilian suit, touched his lips with his right forefinger. Sir Fletcher understood. Somehow, the Nazis had listening devices posted throughout the building.
Erich headed toward the side entrance, and Sir Fletcher followed him outside. Erich did not stop until he took a seat on a bench near the waterfalls in the campus garden. Sir Fletcher positioned himself beyond the bench, by the pond, as if he were counting the gold fish, with his back turned to the German.
“Baron,” he said in a low voice, “I am grateful you have hidden Dr. Neilsen’s results from Berlin. Does he know Schellenberg assigned you to monitor his results?”
“No, Sir Fletcher. As far as he knows, I am the German liaison to the Scientific Institute in Berlin,” Erich told him.
“He trusts me. That part has been easy. What’s frightening is that he is so wrapped up in his findings he talks to anyone who will listen to him. He doesn’t discriminate. I don’t know whether he is arrogant or simply naïve.”
“Whichever it is,” Sir Fletcher observed, “it could be very dangerous to us. One good thing, according to Lord Radcliffe, Dr. Neilsen didn’t brag about his work at King Christian’s banquet last night. In fact, Lord Radcliffe said the physicist was quite coy and evasive about his findings.”
“Maybe it’s because he wasn’t talking to other scientists. Here, he’s immersed in a scientific community. He seems to think all scientists think like him and rambles on in great detail to his peers.”