Princess Elizabeth's Spy

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  “Come, Wolfie!” Becker called to his small greyhound, who ran to him, tail wagging, and licked his hands. “Sit!” he commanded. The slender gray dog went to his vermilion velvet pillow under Becker’s desk and settled down with nary a whimper.

  Becker turned his attention to the junior agents. “And?”

  Ritter began, “We have word our agent in Bletchley has managed to obtain an actual decrypt from their so-called Enigma machine.”

  Becker gave a hearty chuckle, warm and rich. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “Sir,” Krause said, “we received a short radio dispatch from London, telling us our contacts are working out their escape, with the decrypt, as we speak. They’ve asked us to have the money ready.”

  Becker made a steeple with his hands, still smiling. “Ah, yes—the money.” He leaned back in his chair. “You know, I have the utmost respect for your operation, I really do. But to suggest that England has broken our codes … a joke, surely.”

  Ritter spoke up. “But they say there’s a whole group of British code breakers working on it. And they’ve done it. And they have a stolen decrypt to prove it.”

  “If the British have broken it,” Becker objected, “why haven’t they shown their hand? Why haven’t they evacuated their cities when they know that air attacks are coming?”

  Krause shrugged. “We’re not sure how fast they can break each message, sir.”

  “If they can break them at all.” Claus looked up at the ceiling. “Which I sincerely doubt.”

  “But the code can be broken, yes?” Krause insisted.

  Becker sighed. “The Enigma machine has a hundred and fifty million million million ways of producing its cipher, according to how you set its three rotors and how you connect its plugs. It is, in a word, impossible to break.”

  Ritter and Krause sat very still.

  “However,” Becker said, “I will permit you to continue to work on what, I believe, is a wild-goose chase, if only so I will own your souls when it comes to nothing. By the way, there’s a huge air attack coming up soon, payback for the bombing of Berlin. If the British can decrypt our messages, surely they’ll evacuate the city in question. Then we’ll know if, indeed, they’ve broken it.”

  Becker opened his desk drawer and took out a dried pig’s ear, passing it down to the dog, who began gnawing on it. “Good boy,” he said to Wolfie, rubbing the velvety fur on his back. “Oh, that’s my good, good darling boy!”

  He looked back to the two agents. “In regard to more important matters, everything is in place for Operation Edelweiss. We have our two operatives ready to go. When Commandant Hess gives the word, the plan will commence. It won’t be long now.”

  He rose to his feet, gave a delighted smile, and clapped his plump hands together. “That will be all.” Then he raised his right arm. “Heil Hitler!”

  Wrapped in a magnificent green silk robe embroidered with red-and-gold dragons, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was lying in his bed at the Annexe to No. 10, working at his Box, which held all of his most important documents. His cheeks were flushed with anger. One memo, from Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Menzies of MI-6, on the topic of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and their many conversations with Walther Schellenberg in Lisbon, had him in a foul temper.

  “Where’s Tinsley?” he bellowed to his butler, David Inces.

  Inces was used to his employer’s temper. “Sir, she’s—”

  Mrs. Tinsley, his head typist, appeared in the doorway. “Right here, Prime Minister,” she said, bringing in her portable noiseless typewriter and setting up at the desk. Inces left.

  “Letter to the Duke of Windsor!” the P.M. barked.

  Mrs. Tinsley waited, fingers poised over the keys.

  He began dictating. “ ‘Sir, may I venture upon a word of serious counsel. Many sharp and unfriendly ears will be pricked up to catch any suggestion that your Royal Highness takes a view about the war, or about the Germans, or about Hitlerism, which is different from that adopted by the British nation and Parliament. Even while you have been staying at Lisbon, conversations have been reported by telegraph through various channels, which might have been used to your Royal Highness’s disadvantage.

  “I thought your Royal Highness would not mind these words of caution from your faithful and devoted servant, et cetera, et cetera. Got that, Mrs. Tinsley? Yes? Excellent. Get the letter dispatched as quickly as possible. Go!”

  He picked up the telephone receiver on his bedside table. “Nelson at S.O.E.—now!” S.O.E. was short for Special Operations Executive—Churchill’s special team of black ops, who were able to do things even MI-6 couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

  There was a pause, then a man’s voice came on the line: “Yes, Prime Minister?”

  “Get the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson out of Portugal immediately. Kidnap them in the middle of the night if you need to, just get them out!”

  In the garden of Buckingham Palace, under a cold late-afternoon mother-of-pearl sky that threatened rain, the hedges of the gardens were covered in spiderwebs dotted with beads of dew. There, Queen Elizabeth stood, holding a gun.

  “That’s right, darling,” King George VI called to her as the chill wind picked up. “Just bend your knees the slightest bit. Brace yourself for the recoil. Then squeeze.”

  She did, and the gun fired with a loud bang that caused a murder of crows in a nearby oak tree to shriek and take flight. The bullet hit its intended target forty paces away—a wooden cut-out shaped like a man. On its face was a photograph of Hitler’s.

  “Jolly good!” the King exclaimed. “You got him right in the n-n-n-naughty bits.”

  The Queen, in a Wedgwood-blue coat and hat that matched her eyes perfectly, smiled. “Good,” she said. “That’s where I was aiming.”

  When Scottish aristocrat Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon had married Albert, Duke of York, the second son of King George V and Queen Mary, she’d never expected to become Queen, let alone a wartime one. But when Edward, the firstborn son, had abdicated the throne to wed Wallis Simpson, Albert had become King George VI—and Elizabeth had become his queen consort. When the Blitz began, she reached out to her people, touring the decimated East End, offering comfort and support to the grieving and homeless. For her steely inspiration, Adolf Hitler had called her “the most dangerous woman in all of Europe.”

  The palace’s black-clad butler walked up to the King and Queen and bowed. “Your Majesties,” he said, then gestured to the bald, stout, pink-faced man in a dark pin-striped double-breasted suit behind him. “The Prime Minister.”

  “Welcome, Winston!” the King said, as Winston Churchill bowed.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he answered in his gruff smoke- and whiskey-laced tones.

  The Queen smiled as the P.M. bowed and kissed her offered hand. “Your Majesty,” he said.

  “Care to take a shot, Mr. Churchill?”

  “I would love to, ma’am. Alas, I’m afraid I’m fighting Mr. Hitler on a far less literal plane.”

  “We’re learning how to defend ourselves.” The King indicated the target. “Getting better.”

  “Good,” Churchill said. “We’ve made it through the Battle of Britain, but, just between us, invasion’s still a distinct possibility. Glad you and the Queen decided to stay in England, though. Keeps up morale.”

  “Halifax wanted us in C-C-C-Canada—do you remember? And the girls, too.”

  A corner of the P.M.’s mouth twitched. He and Lord Halifax, a supporter of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policies, didn’t agree on much. “Didn’t surprise me at all, sir.”

  “Well, living at Windsor Castle’s been wonderful for them,” the Queen said. “All that fresh country air. And it’s easy enough for us to see them on the weekends. They’ve transformed one of the dungeons into a bomb shelter, can you believe?”

  Churchill cleared his throat. “Your Majesties, we’ve heard some radio chatter indicating the Germans are going forward with the plot we discussed recent
ly.”

  The King took the gun from the Queen. “Nazis want to replace me with Edward, do they? The Duke of Windsor can stage his abdic-c-c-ation, in reverse?” His fingers squeezed the trigger and the bullet exploded into what would have been Hitler’s kidneys.

  “A little higher, dear,” the Queen said.

  “Have that w-w-w-woman wear a crown?” The King’s tones indicated the contempt he still felt for Simpson, the American divorcée for whom his brother abandoned the throne. “She had an affair with Ribbentrop!”

  Joachim von Ribbentrop had been appointed ambassador to Britain with orders to negotiate the Anglo-German alliance. Wallis Simpson had been a regular guest at Ribbentrop’s social gatherings at the German embassy in London; it was rumored that the two were having an ongoing affair. It was also rumored that Ribbentrop might have used Wallis Simpson’s access to the then King Edward VIII to funnel important information about the British to the German government.

  “Von Brickendrop,” the Queen said, using Ribbentrop’s London nickname, inspired by his cloddish manners and tactless behavior, “sent her seventeen carnations every day she was in London. Seventeen, allegedly for the number of times they made love!”

  “The Nazis hold Mrs. Simpson in high regard, yes,” the P.M. said. “She was always one of their biggest supporters, from the beginning. But what we’ve heard is that the Germans not only want to assassinate you, sir, but kidnap the Princess Elizabeth as well—since she’s first in line to the throne. At fourteen, she’s old enough to rule.”

  The King blanched. “Lilibet …”

  “On top of all the Coldstream Guards we have in place at Windsor, what else do you suggest, Prime Minister?” the Queen asked.

  “Actually, I had an idea.… There’s a young woman from MI-Five,” the P.M. said. “She used to work for me, actually. She’s smart, circumspect, an eye for the unusual and out-of-place—and able to put two and two together. I’d like to have her at Windsor to keep an eye on things, from the inside.”

  The Queen looked at the King. She nodded. He smiled at her and took her hand.

  “Of c-c-course,” the King said. “What is her name?”

  Chapter Three

  Maggie’s one consolation after her poor performance at Camp Spook was that she could finally return to London. When David Greene, her friend and one of Winston Churchill’s private secretaries, pulled up to the servants’ entrance of the great house in his old Citroën, she slid in and gave him a huge bear hug.

  “Maggie, love,” David managed, “you’re crushing me.”

  “Sorry,” she said, settling into the worn leather seat. “But I’ve missed you.”

  “Missed you, too, Mags,” David replied as the car pulled away with a few splutters and pops. “Number Ten isn’t the same without you.” There was an awkward silence as they both thought of who else was missing.

  “And I’ve missed Number Ten,” Maggie said, evading the unspoken question. “How is everyone—Mr. Churchill, of course, and Mrs. Tinsley, Miss Stewart, Mr. Snodgrass, Nelson … And how are you? How’s it working out with that nice fellow from the Treasury? Freddie, was it? Freddie Wright?”

  “Oh, Maggie,” David said as he shifted into second gear, “keep up, darling. Freddie is so very last month. There was also Francis, then Timothy—let’s see—then Rupert, Felix, Robert, Hamish.…”

  “Oh, my!” Maggie said, laughing. David, like her Aunt Edith back in Boston, was “like that.” While he could be himself with Maggie, it wasn’t something he was able to share with many others in London, especially at No. 10.

  “So how was it?” he asked. “I’m dying to know. I realize you can’t tell me much, but anything you can share—”

  “Oh, David,” Maggie said, words tumbling over each other, “is there any way I can come back to work for Mr. Churchill?”

  David swerved to avoid a large white sheep standing in the middle of the road, baa-ing to his woolly fellows still in the high grass. “Bad, huh? Well, the Old Man has a new girl now, a Marion something-or-other.…”

  “I see,” Maggie said, trying not to let the hurt she felt show.

  “Was it really that horrible?”

  Maggie gave a delicate snort. “Worse. I may be a decent mathematician, but I’m terrible at anything physical. It was a living nightmare. Nonstop gym class.”

  David, who was fair and slight and wore thick glasses with wire frames, nodded, understanding. “First off, you’re a brilliant mathematician. And second, people like you and me, well, we aren’t cut out for all that robust outdoorsy life anyway—thank goodness I found fencing. So, what now?”

  “Good question.” Maggie shrugged. “Tomorrow I meet with Peter Frain. We’ll see what happens and go from there. Surely there must be something I can do.”

  As they approached London, in the gray dimming light, Maggie could see smoke rising from the city, its acrid stink unmistakable. The skyline had changed as well; there were gaps where tall buildings had once proudly stood, like the smile of an aging prizefighter. London, as well as Bristol, Cardiff, Southampton, Liverpool, and Manchester, had been under attack from the Luftwaffe since the summer, in what Churchill had called the Battle of Britain. London had been bombed nearly every night since September.

  Maggie was silent, both sickened and awed by the destruction that had happened since she’d left.

  Across one building’s brick side was chalked, “There will always be an England!” Some of the letters had been blasted away, but it was still legible.

  “Bloody Nazis,” Maggie said, taking it all in—the death, destruction, and defiance—as they drove closer and closer to the city.

  David gave a grim smile. “Bloody Nazis.”

  Back at David’s flat in Knightsbridge, Maggie was surprised. She expected girlish voices filling the air, but instead there was only gloom and thick silence.

  “Where is everyone?” she called, her voice echoing as she put her suitcase down.

  After the horrific events of last summer, Maggie and her flatmates Sarah, Charlotte (better known as Chuck), and the twins, Annabelle and Clarabelle, had moved in with David, who had a ridiculously large flat—originally a pied-à-terre his father had bought for business trips to London. David had taken it over after graduating from Oxford and beginning a job as private secretary to then M.P. Winston Churchill.

  “Well, Sarah, as you know, is on tour.”

  “Oh, of course, she’s dancing the Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty. I’d forgotten.”

  “Yes, Freddie Ashton still loves her.” The Sadler’s Wells Ballet was traveling across England, both to build morale nationwide and also because the bombing in London had become so horrific that it was difficult, if not downright dangerous, to continue to give nightly performances.

  “The twins left their production of Rebecca and joined the Land Girls. They’re off farming somewhere in Scotland. And Chuck’s either working overnight shifts at hospital or off to Leeds to prepare for the wedding. I think she’s there now, actually.” Chuck was engaged to be married to Nigel, an RAF pilot and one of David’s best friends.

  “So, for the moment, it’s just you and me?” Maggie said, unpinning her hat.

  “More or less.” David looked at the grandfather clock. “Jumping Jupiter! I’ve got to run—needed back at the office, don’t you know.”

  David turned to leave, then called back to Maggie, now shrouded in darkness, “You’ll be all right, then? There’s some tea in the cupboard and a bottle of decent Scotch. The Anderson’s still in the back garden—just in case. And don’t forget the blackout curtains, yes?”

  “Thanks, David,” she said, with more enthusiasm than she felt. “Say hello to everyone at Number Ten for me. See you when you get back.”

  When David left, Maggie took off her coat and hung it in the closet. David’s flat looked the same as it had when she’d left—Paul Follot art deco velvet sofas in deep blues, wood-paneled walls, polished herringbone floors punctuated with Chinese geomet
ric-patterned rugs in golds and crimsons. The walls had originally been hung with oil paintings, landscapes and portraits by Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. Now they’d been rolled up and sent to David’s parents’ home in the country for safekeeping. Only the frames were left, now displaying comics and photos torn from Tatler, Britannia, and Tales of Wonder.

  She picked up her suitcase and walked down the long hall to the bedroom she’d had for only a few days before she’d left for Arisaig in western Scotland, footsteps echoing. She put the case down and sat on the bed. The air in the room was stale and cold from being closed up for so long.

  “Things have changed,” she whispered to herself in the murky darkness. “Of course they have—they always do.”

  And how illogical of me to think otherwise.

  Affected by the quiet, she went back to the parlor and went through a cabinet with David’s record collection, selecting a Vera Lynn album. She slid the hard black disk from its paper sheath and fitted it on the turntable. She turned the phonograph on, then carefully placed the needle in the groove. After a few crackles and pops, the music poured forth and, through the shadows, Lynn sang out:

  “We’ll meet again

  Don’t know where

  Don’t know when

  But I know we’ll meet again

  Some sunny day.…”

  They came in the night.

  But this time it was real, not one of Alistair Tooke’s nightmares. He was in his bed in one of the narrow houses of the Great Park Village when he heard the knock. He looked over at his wife. Marta was also awake and clutching the sheet, drawing it up to her chin protectively.

  “Probably just some sort of frost—and they’re worried about the roses,” he whispered in what he hoped was a reassuring way. Alistair Tooke was the Head Royal Gardener at Windsor Castle and had worked there for more than twenty years, almost as long as he’d been married to Marta.

  “Of course, dear,” Marta replied, her German accent barely noticeable after so many years, but he noted she’d slipped out of bed and had started to get dressed.