The man snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”
“Is that her current position?”
The man, beginning to sweat, checked his list of coordinates. “No, sir.”
“Where is she now, then?”
The man looked to his clipboard and noted the position, then moved the red pin symbolizing U-246 toward land.
“Looks like she’s moving in closer to shore, sir.”
Two people on the run with a kidnapped girl, a radio transmission from the coast, a U-boat moving into position. It could mean only one thing—a pickup and rescue of two spies. And whoever the girl was. But there was only one girl, in all of Great Britain, who would be that important.…
“Get me Peter Frain, MI-Five on the line,” Kirk barked. “And hurry!”
Maggie and Hugh, breathing heavily, knocked at the door of the cottage. Maggie’s lungs were burning, but she couldn’t even think about her body, she was so focused on Lilibet’s safety.
There was no answer.
Inside, Audrey froze. Lilibet tried to scream through her gag.
Maggie and Hugh tried the door. It was locked.
Hugh pulled out his gun and handed it to Maggie. As she covered him, he kicked open the door. Even in the throes of the chase, Maggie was surprised and not a little impressed—she’d never seen Hugh in action before. But there was no time for that.
As the rickety door flew open, Hugh and Maggie entered the cottage, taking in the gagged and bound Princess, with Audrey standing beside her. An unconscious David, hands tied, was lying on the sofa.
“David?” Maggie gasped before she pointed the gun at Audrey. What’s he doing here? “Hands up,” she managed to get out. “On your knees.” Oh, what I wouldn’t give to pull the trigger, Maggie thought, surveying the petite Frenchwoman. What I wouldn’t give …
As Audrey obeyed, Hugh went to the Princess. “We’ll get you out of here in no time, Your Highness,” he said, working at the knots.
“Ahem.” Maggie and the others turned to see Gregory and Poulter standing in the doorway, dripping water.
Gregory was just as shocked to see Maggie, holding a gun no less, as she was to see him. It was with a mix of admiration and shame that he ordered, “Put your gun down on the floor. No one’s going anywhere. At least, not until I say so.”
“Gregory?” It has to be some sort of hallucination, Maggie thought. It can’t be Gregory. He can’t be wrapped up in this mess too—can he?
At the Y-station in Beeston Regis, Leaper went to his office and sat down at his desk, still shaking his head. “Spies!” he muttered, going through his inbox. “Indeed! That’s what comes of having these young girls about, with their movie-star daydreams and their—”
He suddenly remembered the courier delivery and picked up the MI-5 memo about the alert. He read it, feeling the blood drain from his head. As he put his head between his legs in order not to faint, he called out his door, “Miss Manley!” Then, louder, “Mary Manley! Get in here with that U-boat transmission right away!”
As Poulter tied up Maggie and Hugh, she wondered, How did I get so much so wrong? Why did I waste so much time worrying about the wrong people? When it was Gregory, she realized, feeling sick. As much as she thought, she found no easy answers—except that she’d let her own prejudices blind her and lead her astray. Then she started to add up what she’d observed: Gregory’s increased drinking, his erratic behavior, a few of his more cryptic sayings, that he didn’t wear his RAF uniform to dinner.…
She looked over at Lilibet, who was pale, with shadows under her eyes and the beginning of a mottled bruise on her cheek where she’d been slapped. “It’s all right,” she said to the girl. “Everything’s going to be all right.” Her heart nearly broke when she was able to get a better look at David, his hands and feet tied with heavy rope, a gag in his mouth. Trickles of blood from a head wound had run down his face and were now scabbing over. Never had she felt more powerless. Think, Maggie. Keep your head and you’ll get them out of this.
“What time is it?” Audrey asked.
Poulter checked his watch. “Almost three-thirty. We need to hurry.” He jerked his chin at Maggie and Hugh. “What are we going to do about them?”
“Actually,” Gregory said, “the question is, what are we going to do about you?” He and Boothby exchanged a look. Without preamble, Boothby shot Poulter through the heart, and then, before Audrey could scream, he shot her through the forehead. They each slumped to the floor. Then he took aim at Hugh.
“Nooooo!” Maggie screamed.
“Give me the gun,” Gregory said.
“What are you doing?” Boothby snapped.
“Give me the goddamned gun!”
Boothby handed it over and Gregory shot Hugh in the thigh, wounding but not killing him.
Hugh doubled over, moaning. “Sweet Jesus!”
“Hugh!” Maggie fought against the ropes binding her. “Are you all right?” she cried.
“I’ll live,” Hugh managed to gasp, trying to keep pressure on the wound. Nonetheless, crimson was staining his pant leg.
“Don’t want you following us,” Gregory said. “Sorry, mate. And I also need someone to tell the muckety-mucks that their precious Princess is still alive. And on her way to Germany.”
“Us?” Maggie said. She and Hugh locked eyes. It’s going to be fine, she tried to tell him mentally. I’ll take care of Lilibet. And I’ll be all right, too. I promise.
Gregory nodded. “You’re coming with us. Take care of him,” he said to Boothby, indicating the body. “I’ll bring the ladies.”
As Boothby lifted David’s inert body while still keeping a gun on the girls, Gregory untied the Princess from the chair, leaving her hands bound and gag in place. “I suppose you’ve figured out what I’ve done,” he said, grabbing Maggie and the Princess by an arm and hustling them to the door. Maggie gave Hugh one last look and then they were outside, in the cold and dark. He sounded just the slightest bit guilty.
“A lot of it,” Maggie said, trying not to trip on the stones. “But I still don’t understand Lily’s part.”
“Lily and I grew up together, remember?” he said, his voice rising against the wind. “We spent every summer together. We were soul mates.”
“So you and Lily had planned this operation?” Maggie tried to appeal to his vanity. “That’s quite the coup. How did you manage to pull it off?”
Gregory smiled, a grim smile. “Lily and I grew up with any number of other privileged young people. Another was Victoria Keeley.”
Realization dawned. “The woman from Bletchley who was murdered at Claridge’s,” Maggie said. “So, how does Benjamin Batey fit in?”
“Benjamin Batey was walking out with Victoria, and she exploited it. She stole the decrypt from him.”
“But why?”
Gregory snorted. “Why do you need to know?” The little party was trying to keep their balance on the slippery rocks strewn with seaweed, nearing the boat.
Maggie thought desperately. “Well, it’s been quite the victory for you, after all. I was sent by MI-Five to figure everything out and I didn’t—not in time, at least. So you might do me the professional courtesy of telling me how you did it.”
Lilibet’s eyes widened as she heard Maggie reveal that she wasn’t really a maths tutor but an agent.
And then she realized—the decrypt hidden in Lily’s copy of Le Fantôme de l’Opéra was meant for Gregory. It was right in front of you the whole time! Still, there was no time for self-flagellation. “Tell me your part—and I’ll tell you what happened to the decrypt.”
“The decrypt?” Gregory staggered a little and looked stunned. “How the hell do you know about that?”
“Tell me what I want to know—and I’ll tell you what happened to it.”
Gregory looked shocked, then smiled. “Victoria stole the decrypt because Lily asked her to. But Victoria, unfortunately, had fallen obsessively in love with Lily. And when Lily made it clear she wouldn�
�t be with her exclusively, Victoria threatened to expose Lily as a traitor.”
“So Lily killed her,” Maggie said, understanding. “And then Lily herself was killed, not long after, by Mr. Tooke.”
“Actually,” Gregory said, “Boothby killed Victoria. He was concerned Victoria might make good on her threats and jeopardize our little operation. He took the decrypt from Victoria’s hotel room at Claridge’s and gave it to Lily. She said she’d hidden it—where did she hide it? And how did you find it?” They were approaching the boat.
“Tell me the rest first,” Maggie said with a tight smile, picking her way over rocks that gave way to coarse wet sand. She stumbled, then righted herself.
Gregory was breathing hard. “Clever girl.”
“If you knew about Enigma,” Maggie continued, “then why did you even need the decrypt? Surely your connections in Germany would have believed you?”
They’d reached the boat, and Boothby overheard this. He began to chuckle, and Gregory joined in. “Oh, Maggie. You may know many things, but you don’t know Germans—their pride, their arrogance. They believe they’ve written the ultimate, the unbreakable code. Quite simply, they would not believe anyone could possibly break it without proof. Absolute proof.” Boothby dumped David’s body into the boat.
“So without the decrypt, you had no proof,” Maggie said. “And then David, with his briefcase of top-secret documents, came to Windsor. And you kidnapped him, along with his briefcase.”
“He had it handcuffed to him. And I didn’t have the heart to cut off his hand.” He smiled. “I think he’ll thank me for it, someday. You see, in Germany, my contact will pay me—us, that is—dearly for the information you have. Whatever David has in his briefcase must be worth a small fortune.”
“And Boothby?”
“Boothby—do you want to tell her?”
Boothby gave a barking laugh. “My name isn’t really Christopher Boothby,” he said in his too-perfect English, “it’s Krzysztof Borkowsky. I’m Polish. I was one of the Poles that Chamberlain and Britain betrayed when he traded us for ‘peace in our time.’ ” He spat. “A peace paid for with the blood of Poles.”
“How did you get to England?”
“I was born and spent my childhood in Poland, but I moved to Britain when I was ten. I was up at Cambridge, with Gregory, when Poland handed over her Enigma machine to the British. And then I was recruited to work at Bletchley, to help translate for some of the Poles that came over with it.”
“Ah.” Christopher was the spy at Bletchley that her father had been trying to find! Two misses! Maggie thought. Thanks a lot, Dad.
She turned back to Gregory. “And what’s your relation to Audrey and Poulter?”
“Poulter was my manservant for years and another of our little group. You see, we are quite democratic. He began sleeping with Audrey, who was working for someone named Commandant Hess. Poulter shot the King, while he and Audrey arranged the kidnapping of the Princess with Commandant Hess in Berlin. The plan is to put the Duke and Duchess of Windsor on the throne when Germany invades. How is the King, by the way?”
“He’s fine,” Maggie said grimly.
“Pity.”
Boothby snapped, “Less talking, Gregory.”
“She knows what happened to Lily’s decrypt!”
Boothby whistled. “The lost one?”
“My dear girl,” Gregory said, ignoring Boothby. “You can come with us, or I’ll have to kill you.” In a jovial tone he said, “Set sail with us—what do you say?” He looked at her and she realized that he didn’t actually want to kill her. And yet he would if he had to.
Maggie knew the risks of getting into a boat with these two, but she had no intention of letting them take the Princess or David anywhere without her.
“Fine,” she said, feigning more bravado than she felt. “I’ll go.” Lilibet and Maggie stepped into the craft and took their seats, Maggie’s heart beating wildly. The goddamned Royal Navy’s supposed to be here, she thought. The Coast Guard. The police, even. Where the hell is everyone?
Boothby and Gregory pushed the boat into a few feet of water, then jumped in themselves. The boat rocked violently, then steadied.
“And off we go,” Gregory said. “Just like old times.” He took a seat opposite Maggie as Boothby started the motor. “Keep an eye on her, would you?” he said to Boothby.
The tiny craft set out through the wind and roiling white-tipped waves, out to sea. As they pulled away from the shore Maggie could see the headlights of cars on the shore and tiny black figures running toward them. Here! We’re here! She wanted to scream into the wind. But they were still too far away to catch up.
“What about Lily’s baby?” she asked. She hadn’t forgotten that a baby had been murdered as well. “Was it yours?”
“I knew about the baby,” he said. “She told me, right before she was murdered. But it wasn’t mine. I, alas, can’t have children.”
“Whose was it, then?” Maggie called.
“Christopher’s.”
Maggie wasn’t expecting this. “Christopher’s?”
Boothby nodded his assent. His face was unreadable.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Gregory said. “Lily, Victoria, Christopher, and I—we—we shared many things.”
“I see,” Maggie said. She managed a quick glance at Lilibet. Maggie hoped the girl didn’t know what he meant.
“Would you take off her gag, at least?” Maggie asked. “It’s not as if anyone can hear us out here.”
Gregory pulled out his flask from his inside jacket pocket. He took a long pull, emptied it, then tossed it over the side. “Go ahead,” he said to Boothby, who went over to the Princess and undid the knots that tied the gag. As it loosened, she spit the moldy bread out of her mouth.
“Thanks, Maggie,” she managed, cold spray dousing her.
“ ‘Elizabeth and Leicester/Beating oars,’ ” Gregory quoted, finishing off the flask and throwing it in a long arc over the waves. He winked at Lilibet. “I suppose that would make me Leicester.”
“I hardly think Eliot was thinking of us all ‘Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe,’ ” Maggie said. The wind was stronger now and she wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. The waves were making her nauseous. She looked at David. In the darkness, she could see his eyes were still closed.
“So now it’s your turn,” Gregory said. “Where was the decrypt?”
Maggie gave a grim smile. “In the frontispiece of Lily’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“Because I was the one who found it,” Maggie shot back.
“It was Lily’s nickname for me—after I was burned so badly on one side of my face. It was our little joke, her calling me Le Fantôme.” Then, “This is it,” he said to Boothby, who cut the engine and turned on a kerosene lantern.
“Ship?” Maggie asked.
“Submarine,” he corrected. Oh, fantastic, Maggie thought.
Boothby used a flashlight to check his watch. “The pickup window is open for one more hour.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
The Prime Minister’s rooms at Windsor Castle had been transformed into makeshift War Rooms, with maps and pushpins and memos. The roar of the fire behind the andirons nearly overcame the soft and relentless tick of the mantel clock. The P.M. and King sat in large leather chairs while Frain paced.
“We have the Princess’s code, telling us they’re going to Mossley, which is near Grimsby. We have an intercept from a Y-station, saying that someone near Grimsby radioed a German U-boat. We have a German U-boat moving into position off the coast of Mossley. It’s obvious they’re trying to get the Princess out of Britain. However, the U-boat can’t get too close to shore—she’ll need at least five miles. Which means that either a few men from the U-boat will form a landing party and try to get to shore in one of the U-boat’s rubber dinghies. Or they have a boat hidden away on shore and will use that to meet the U-boat.”
The King sat very still. “What are the weather reports?”
“High winds, Your Majesty,” Frain answered. “They need to do it at night, under the cover of darkness. If they decide the conditions are too dangerous, they may try to establish another rendezvous, in a few days. But they must know that putting it off would increase their chances of being found.”
“After Dunkirk, the Royal Navy seized everything that could float!” Churchill barked.
“Yes, sir,” Frain replied. “But it’s possible that someone hid away a fishing skiff or other small craft, for just this very occasion.”
The telephone rang, a shrill sound. Frain dove for it. “Yes?” he said, then listened intently. “Thank you, Admiral Kirk.”
He put a hand over the receiver. “Kirk, from the Admiralty,” he told them. “They’ve pinpointed the U-boat. The U-two-forty-six is moving closer into shore, near Mossley.”
“Wonderful!” the King said, his face not as pale as it had been.
“Not exactly,” Frain said. “They could be anywhere near Mossley. And the weather isn’t helping.”
“Put every man on it,” Churchill growled. “Have them sift through every grain of sand and drop of water—until we find the Princess!”
Frain spoke into the receiver again. “Move two of our submarines into the area and see if you can get an exact location on U-two-forty-six. Move two of the Royal Navy’s corvettes in, as well. If we can’t get a lock on them by dawn, I’ll have the air force do a patrol.”
“I’m assuming, sir,” Kirk said on the other end of the line, “that the hostage is valuable?”
“Yes,” Frain replied. “Extremely valuable. Tell all your boys to keep that in mind.”
Maggie was gripped with fear and pain, but adrenaline kept her sharp. Jaw clenched against the cold and wind, she scanned the sky and sea in the moonlight, looking for anything—British ship or plane, Nazi U-boat. Who would reach them first? Mathematics were true and cruel. You have a fifty-fifty chance, Hope. Probability equals the number of desirable outcomes divided by the number of possible outcomes. A coin flip. And that’s only theoretical—a big wave might take you out first—better make that one of the possible outcomes. Probability of survival dips even lower, then.…
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