Princess Elizabeth's Spy

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  “Ah, all you lovely girls are princesses to me,” he quipped, grinning at her.

  “That’s funny, I’ve heard you say we’re all the same in the dark.” She batted her eyelashes as Abbot gasped and nearly fell over in his chair. “The walls are thin, Mr. Abbot,” she admonished, as he tried to right himself.

  She turned to Batey. “Are you ready?” She already had her gray overcoat on and was finishing pinning on her black velvet hat. Batey caught a whiff of the pungent, oily scent of the teletypewriters she worked with all day. It clung to her dress and hair, as alluring to him—on her, at least—as Shalimar or Chanel No. 5.

  “Yes,” he said, putting on his felt hat and pulling on leather gloves.

  “So, where are you two going?” Abbot asked. He picked up a sheaf of tea-stained papers and rose to his feet. “Mind taking these out for me?”

  “Concert,” Batey said, as he accepted the papers. “Bach. Fugues. Bletchley Park String Quartet.”

  “Well, have fun, you two,” Abbot said. “Someone has to stay here and mind the shop.”

  In the narrow hallway, Victoria pulled Benjamin close. “I thought this day would never end,” she said, nuzzling his neck.

  “Not here.” He still needed to dispose of the papers in his hand. There was a room with a shredder, and then all the tiny scraps of paper were put into a large bin marked CONFIDENTIAL WASTE.

  She was tall in her heels, and her lips reached his ear easily. “We don’t even have to go to the concert,” she whispered. “I don’t even know how I’d be able to sit through it, knowing …”

  Her tongue swirled in his ear and Benjamin groaned.

  “Let’s go,” he said in a low, anxious voice.

  On their way out they saw Christopher Boothby, who worked in the main office, doing administrative work. The two men were wearing the same navy, red, and yellow striped Trinity College scarf. As they passed, Boothby gave the couple a wink and a smile.

  Afterward, in Victoria’s tiny bedroom in the drafty cottage she shared with one of the other teleprincesses, Benjamin fell asleep.

  As he snored lightly, Victoria slipped out of the warm bed and wrapped herself in her chenille robe. Going to his coat, she rummaged through the pockets, taking the papers he was supposed to have shredded and dropping them into a drawer.

  Then she crawled back under the covers and gave him a gentle nudge, then a harder one.

  “What?” he mumbled.

  “Darling, I’m so dreadfully sorry. But my roommate is such a little priss—and if she catches you here she’ll tell the landlady … who won’t approve at all.”

  “Sorry?” Benjamin echoed, rubbing his eyes. “Right. Yes, of course,” he said, standing up and pulling on his plaid boxers.

  “Thanks ever so much,” she said, “for understanding. Well, and that, too.”

  “Oh, thank you.” He stepped into his trousers, his features boyish when he smiled. “You know, I really do want to take you out. A concert, the pictures, a nice dinner—or at least as nice as you can get these days. Please, let me take you somewhere.”

  “You’re a sweet boy, Benjamin Batey,” she said with a sigh, getting up and kissing the back of his neck as he finished buttoning his shirt. “A very, very sweet boy.”

  She helped him with his coat, scarf, and hat, and then sent him on his way. The door clicked closed and she waited as the sound of his footsteps receded.

  Then she picked up the black Bakelite receiver and dialed. “Yes,” she whispered into the telephone, “I have something you’ll want to see. I’m leaving for London now. Should be there in a few hours, give or take. Yes, of course I’ll use an alias.”

  Then, “I love you too, darling.”

  Claridge’s in London was a large red-brick hotel located in fashionable Mayfair, still elegant despite the removal of all of its lavish wrought-iron railings, which had been taken down to be melted for munitions. After her long train trip in the blackout, Victoria was grateful to check in, under an assumed name, and retire to a warm, damask-swathed room, worlds away from the shabby indignities of Bletchley.

  After placing the decrypts carefully on the bed, she went into the marble bathroom and drew a bath, noticing that Claridge’s had “forgotten” the five-inch watermark for hot water rationing. She turned on the tap and out poured a scalding stream, to which she added a liberal handful of sandalwood-scented Hammam Bouquet bath salts. She sighed as she undressed, then slipped her long and elegant limbs into the bath, reclining against the slanted back of the tub. Benjamin was just such an easy target. He was lovely, really. It wasn’t his fault, the poor dear.…

  The front door clicked open, then closed quietly. With the water still running, Victoria didn’t hear it. Then there was a loud thud. “Darling, is that you?” she called, lifting her head.

  There was a silence, then the bathroom door creaked open.

  “Darling?” Victoria called, sitting up in the tub.

  The shot went directly between her eyes. She slumped back into the bath, bright red blood streaming down her face and into the water, turning the froth pink and then crimson. As her pale slim body slipped down under the bubbles, her mouth fell open into a perfect O of surprise.

  Chapter Two

  Maggie Hope had fallen yet again and was covered in cold, wet mud. She pushed back a soaked lock of red hair that had fallen in her eyes, leaving a trail of dirt across her forehead. To add insult to injury, it began to rain, large, cold drops falling faster and faster. Still, it didn’t matter. She and the other eleven women would all be done when they’d finished the obstacle course and not before. “Get up, Hope!” Harold Burns, the training leader, bellowed to Maggie from the sidelines.

  Burns was a wiry man in his early fifties, a veteran of the Great War. His light hair was thinning, and the brown splotches on his face were testament to a life lived outdoors. He wore corduroy trousers, a heavy cabled sweater, and Wellington boots, and carried a clipboard. He had a perpetually perplexed expression on his face, as if to say, How the hell did I get here of all places? Training all of these … women.

  Maggie tried to stand, then slipped and fell yet again.

  He glowered. “I said, get up! Keep going!”

  When Maggie had been Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s secretary, she’d never thought of herself as potential spy material. And yet now she was living somewhere in Scotland, in a dilapidated Edwardian manor house the government had taken over for training purposes, known unofficially as Camp Spook. She slept on a hard thin cot in a bedroom with peeling wallpaper that she shared with two other girls.

  She and her fellow MI-5 trainees did daily exercises in a roped-off area of the garden. There, in their coveralls and plimsolls, they did push-ups, sit-ups, and rope climbing. Today they were split into two teams, competing to finish an obstacle course, which included wriggling through an oil drum, crawling through the mud under netting, crossing a man-made pond with only a few planks and a rope, navigating through a “minefield,” and climbing up an old factory ventilation shaft.

  As Maggie tried to right herself once more in the slippery black mud, Burns was shouting, his face turning red from the exertion. “Come on, keep going! The Nazis are after you! What are you waiting for? Move! Move! Move!”

  With grim determination, Maggie struggled to her feet and ran onward through the mud, toward the next obstacle, a ten-foot chain-link fence they were supposed to scale and then drop from. With a running start, she jumped up onto the fence, then began clawing her way up to the top, blinking away raindrops. Her teammates who’d already finished the course were on the sidelines.

  “Come on, Maggie!” the girls chorused. “You can do it!”

  Her hands were clumsy from the cold and her breath burned in her lungs, but she made it to the top, swung her legs over, then jumped down to the ground.

  Something popped and started to pinch in her right knee, but she ran on to the next challenge, picking up one of her fallen mates in a fireman’s carry. The
girl, a tiny thing named Molly Stickler, lay on her back in the mud, waiting. “Don’t drop me again, Hope,” she warned. “Not like you did last time.”

  Maggie ignored Molly and reviewed the task at hand. As she’d practiced, she rolled Molly over onto her abdomen and straddled her. She extended her hands under the girl’s chest and locked them together. She lifted Molly to her knees as she moved backward.

  “Careful!” Molly complained.

  “You’re ‘the casualty,’ ” Maggie muttered. “Casualties aren’t supposed to talk.”

  Maggie continued to move backward, straightening Molly’s legs and locking her knees, then walking forward, bringing the limp girl to a standing position. Gently, gently, every muscle burning, Maggie maneuvered the girl’s body into the proper position.

  “The Nazis are coming, Hope!” Burns yelled from the sidelines. “They’d have shot you both by now!”

  Undeterred, Maggie followed protocol. Rising to her feet, she carried the girl over her shoulders toward the finish line, hair dripping, covered in mud, oblivious to the agony in her knee.

  But just before she reached the end, her foot slipped in the mud. She skidded like an ice skater, and then toppled backward, taking Molly down with her.

  “Ooof,” Molly gasped as they hit the ground. “Ow! Goddamn it, Maggie, that hurt.”

  “Under ten minutes today, Hope. Better.” Burns looked at his stopwatch. “Slightly.”

  Maggie gave him a pinched smile as she got up, then offered her hand to help Molly. His “slightly” was a small victory, considering her legs felt like rubber and her injured knee throbbed. Then she limped over to the rest of the group, to cheer on the next girl, who was just starting the course.

  “No,” Burns called over to Maggie, through the rain. “Get cleaned up and dressed, Hope. And meet me in the dining room.”

  Was this it? Was she going to be thrown out of the program?

  The dining room had a lingering sense of the house’s former grandeur. The faded and water-stained wallpaper had squares of bright perfection, where large paintings must have once hung, four-sided ghosts of the manor’s past opulence. Still, a cheerful fire crackled and popped in the grate and the brass was polished. Mr. Burns was already seated at the table when Maggie came in, washed and combed and dressed in clean, dry trousers, a white blouse, and a cabled wool cardigan.

  The wireless was on. Maggie could hear the fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth addressing in bell-like tones the children who’d left London for the relative safety of the British countryside: “Before I finish, I can truthfully say to you all that we children at home are full of cheerfulness and courage. We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers, and airmen, and we are trying, too, to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war.…”

  Mrs. Forester, an older woman with a tight gray bun and wide hips, both chaperone and housekeeper, peeked through the door. Maggie knew from several conversations over cups of tea that she was grateful to have the job—a widow, both her sons were in the Royal Navy, floating somewhere in the North Sea. She found that cooking and cleaning for the girls of Camp Spook kept her mind occupied and tired her out enough during the day so she could manage at least a few hours of sleep at night. “Will you be wantin’ any tea, Mr. Burns?” she said, her plump face folding into a smile as she walked into the dining room and turned off the wireless with a loud click.

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Forester,” Mr. Burns replied. In front of him was Maggie’s file, a thick folder labeled MARGARET HOPE.

  “Very well,” she said and left.

  Burns looked at Maggie, then gestured to a straight-backed chair. “Please sit down, Miss Hope,” he said.

  Maggie did.

  He cracked his knuckles. “Mr. Frain, head of MI-Five, sent you to me, with the highest recommendations,” he began. “He let me know a bit of your role in taking down the Prime Minister’s assassination plot and preventing the bombing of Saint Paul’s.”

  Maggie permitted herself the slightest—just the slightest—feeling of pride.

  “Frain also tells me you have excellent instincts when it comes to code breaking. Also that your French and German are flawless.”

  The slight feeling grew just a bit brighter.

  “During your time here, you’ve applied yourself and worked hard.”

  I passed! Maggie thought with a glow of pride. So where am I going? Dropped behind enemy lines in France? Undercover in Germany? Her pulse quickened with excitement.

  “However,” Burns said.

  However?

  “However?”

  “Your background in academics and then as secretary to the Prime Minister hasn’t been conducive to the, er, physical aspects of spy work. We have certain standards for our candidates, and, Miss Hope, I’m afraid you have not attained them.”

  What? Despite the warmth of the fire, Maggie felt cold. She’d worked hard. She’d learned how to shoot Sten and Bren guns and hit targets. She’d learned to transmit Morse code, jump out of a plane, and kill with various implements—a pen, a dinner knife, her bare hands. She’d been (with Mrs. Forester supervising, of course) tied to a chair, blindfolded, and interrogated for hours and hours by “Gestapo” officers with no rest, food, or water.

  In the mental aspects of the training, Maggie had excelled; in the endurance aspects, she’d failed. The most egregious was a twenty-five-mile cross-country trek all the candidates had to do in the cold and rain. Only a few miles into the course she’d tripped on a tree root, fallen, and knocked herself unconscious. After coming to, she’d limped almost a quarter of a mile before Burns and his men picked her up. The doctor at Camp Spook diagnosed her with a sprained ankle and hypothermia.

  “I cannot, in good conscience, recommend undercover work in Europe. I’m not convinced you’re physically up to it.”

  There has to be some mistake. “Mr. Burns, I can assure you—”

  “My mind is made up, Miss Hope. I’ve spoken to Mr. Frain, and he’s asked that you return to London. He’ll inform you of your new position when you arrive.”

  “New position?” Maggie was bewildered.

  “Probably reading through mail for possible codes, that sort of thing. Desk work.” Burns struggled to let her down gently. “But it’s all important work, Miss Hope. There are no small jobs. After all—”

  Maggie bit her lip to hide her disappointment. After everything she’d been through, she was, once again, going to end up behind a typewriter, fighting with no more than the stack of papers in her inbox? No, no, no—she was not.

  “—there’s a war on,” Maggie finished for him. “But you can’t afford to waste me behind a desk. I speak perfect French and German. I’m smart, smarter than you, most likely, and I—”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hope,” Burns said. “But when you’re over there, there’s not a lot we can do to keep you safe. And if something happens—and Lord knows it will—we need to know you can take care of yourself. I’m not convinced you’re up to it. And so I can’t, in good conscience, recommend you.”

  “But, Mr. Burns—”

  “I have a daughter your age, Miss Hope. I wouldn’t even consider dropping her behind enemy lines at all, let alone if I thought she might not survive.”

  Maggie saw he was sincere, if narrow-minded. “Thank you, Mr. Burns,” she said, relenting, at least for the moment. She might have lost the battle, but she wasn’t ready to concede the war. “However, I must tell you I will take this up with Mr. Frain.” Surely Peter Frain, head of MI-5, who personally recruited her, would see the folly of Burns’s decision and set things straight.

  “Of course, Miss Hope. Good luck to you.”

  Mr. Burns watched her as she left, a pale and serious-looking girl with reddish hair, pretty when she smiled. He’d come to admire her grit, even if her performance hadn’t been up to par, and wished he had better news for her. Although the news he had would most likely keep her alive. Very few of the British spies dropped in Fra
nce or Germany survived more than three months, if that. And no women had been dropped yet.

  “Oh, well,” he muttered as he packed up her file. “Frain will find something for her.”

  Abwehr was the German counterpart to MI-5 and MI-6, located at 76/78 Tirpitzufer, Berlin, in an imposing neoclassical building topped with huge black-and-red Nazi flags, snapping smartly in a cold wind under a brilliant blue sky. The Nazi spy organization had three main branches: die Zentrale, or the Central Division; Abwehr I, II, and III, which dealt with foreign intelligence collection, sabotage, and counterintelligence, respectively; and the Foreign Branch, or Amtsgruppe Ausland, responsible for the evaluation of captured documents. The Foreign Branch was run under the direction of Luca von Plettenberg.

  Claus Becker answered to von Plettenberg and was in charge of information received from Britain, specifically. He was a short man, round, in his early forties, with an agreeable face and an infectious smile. A native Berliner, he’d worked as a grocery store clerk before joining the Nazi party in 1925, after reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He’d worked his way up through the SS before transferring to Abwehr in 1938. He was a bachelor, living in a spacious apartment in Mitte, and had a sweet-tempered miniature greyhound named Wolfgang, who went everywhere with him on a thin black leather leash. People at the Foreign Branch knew to be affectionate to Wolfgang if they wanted to keep their jobs.

  Becker was sitting behind his desk in his office, facing two junior agents. Torsten Ritter and Franz Krause were both young, short, and swimming in their too-big gray uniforms—nothing like the robust blond men from the propaganda posters boasting Aryan supremacy. Still, they were smart, they were blue-eyed, and they were Nazis. The office was large, as was Becker’s mahogany claw-foot desk, over which hung a large official portrait of Hitler by Heinrich Knirr. The two junior agents sat on low black leather chairs, facing Becker.