Princess Elizabeth's Spy

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  Many documentaries were also helpful with research, including Hitler’s British Girl (about British Nazi sympathizer Unity Mitford), Windsor Castle: A Royal Year, and The Windsors: A Royal Family.

  I’ve incorporated excerpts from Princess Elizabeth’s and Winston Churchill’s actual radio addresses, as well.

  In addition, I would like to thank the Imperial War Museum’s Principal Historian, Nigel Steel, and Uniforms Curator, Martin Boswell, for help with the “dog tag” versus “identity disk” question.

  A special thank you to Paul Johnson, at the National Archives in London, for working with me to secure permission to reprint the Babington code illustration.

  To Judith Merkle Riley, 1942–2010,

  mentor, friend, and the real Maggie Hope.

  Thank you.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, thank you, Noel MacNeal—your kindness, generosity, and support leave me speechless.

  Thank you to Idria Barone Knecht, one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever encountered—and one of the loveliest people, as well—for her time and editing insights.

  I am grateful to Victoria Skurnick at the Levine Greenberg Agency, the best agent imaginable at the best agency ever, who makes everything possible.

  Thanks to the always-patient-with-me editor Kate Miciak, who believed Maggie’s story could continue, and actually asked for a second book (as well as a third and fourth!). And, of course, associate editor Randall Klein, who is never, ever “kerfluffled.”

  Thank you to “wicked smart” M.I.T. friends: Monica Byrne, Wes Carroll, Stephen Peters, Mary Linton Peters, Erik Schwartz, and Larry Taylor for advice and help with various math and code questions. Thanks to Laura Redding Koeppen, and her son, Zach Harris, for various boat- and ship-related questions.

  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. Leslie Jette, Dr. Meredith Norris, and Dr. Mary Linton Peters for answering medical questions. (How long can someone actually talk in the freezing cold water of the North Sea in December? was one.) Thanks to friend and Londoner Claire Weldin, for answering architecture questions and good-naturedly traipsing around Westminster, Mayfair, and Bletchley with me. Thanks to Jeffrey Kaiserman, for sharing his fencing expertise. Thank you to Dr. Ronald Granieri, for his patience and help in translating German.

  Thank you Jennifer Stock and Fran Feeley, for generously answering 1940s library-related research questions. And special thanks to early readers Tricia Burns, Scott Cameron, Fidelma Fitzpatrick, Emily Klein, Christine McCann, Ji Hyang Padma, Kathryn Plank, and Jennifer Stock.

  I am grateful for friends Christina CB Bauer, Jennifer Boyer, Danielle Bruno, Tricia Burns, Fidelma Fitzpatrick, Aymee Garcia, Ron Granieri, Shannon Halprin, Emily Klein, Melissa Leeper, Joyce Luck, Lauren Marchisotto, Jane Beuth Mayer, Christine McCann, Jennifer Valvo McCann, Terry Mumma, Kathryn Plank, Amy Putnam, Audra Branum Rickman, Rebecca Carey Rohan, Caitlin Sims, Sally Smith, Jon Stucky, and Lilly Tao, for daily laughs.

  A special thanks to Robert Lopez and Kristin Anderson Lopez, Jodi Kantor and Ron Lieber, and Kathryn Fletcher and John Hodgman, for graciously letting me house-sit their apartments for a “room of my own,” while they were off visiting glamorous places. And thanks to the New York Writers Space.

  ALSO BY SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL

  Mr. Churchill’s Secretary

  If you enjoyed Princess Elizabeth’s Spy, you won’t want to miss the next ingenious mystery in the Maggie Hope series. Read on for an exciting early look at His Majesty’s Hope by Susan Elia MacNeal.

  PUBLISHED BY BANTAM BOOKS TRADE PAPERBACKS

  Chapter One

  Maggie Hope was feeling her way through thick darkness, panting after shimmying up a rickety drainpipe, knocking out a screen in an upper-storey window, avoiding several trip wires, and then sliding silently onto the floor of a dark hallway. She rose to her feet, every nerve alert.

  Beneath her foot, a parquet floorboard creaked. Oh, come now, she thought, knowing that she was better than that. She waited for a moment, feeling her heart thunder in her chest, slowing her breathing, as she’d been trained. All around her was impenetrable black. The only sounds were the creaks of an ancient, dilapidated manor house and a loose pane of glass rattling in the wind.

  Nothing.

  All clear.

  Even though there was a spring chill in the nighttime air, Maggie could feel the dampness of sweat under her arms and hot beads trickling down the small of her back.

  Aware of each and every sound, Maggie continued down the hall, until she reached the home’s library. The door was locked. Well, of course it is, Maggie thought. She picked it in seconds with one of her hairpins.

  Once she’d ascertained that no one was there, she turned on her tiny flashlight and made her way to the desk. The safe was supposed to be under it. And it was, just as her handler had described.

  Good, she thought, sitting down on the floor next to it. All right, let’s talk. That was how she pictured safecracking—a nice little chat with the safe. It was how the Glaswegian safecracker and notorious criminal Johnny Ramensky—released from prison to do his part for the war effort—had taught her. She spun the dial and listened. When she could hear the barrels dropping into place—not hear really, but feel the vibrations with her fingertips—she knew she’d gotten the first number correct. Now, for the second.

  Biting her lower lip in concentration, immersed in safecracking, Maggie didn’t hear the room’s closet door open.

  Out from the shadows emerged a man. He was tall and lean, and sported a black mustache. “You’re never going to get away with this, you know,” he lisped, like a character from a bad movie.

  Maggie didn’t bother to answer, saving her energy for the last twist of the dial, the safe’s thick metal door clicking open.

  In a single move, she gathered the files from the safe under her arm and sprang to her feet. She turned the flashlight on the intruder. He was wearing a grey S.S. uniform and squinted at the light in his eyes.

  Just as she was trained, Maggie ran at him, kneeing him in the groin, hard. While he was doubled over, she kicked him in the head. Satisfied he was unconscious, she ran to the door, folders still in hand.

  Except he wasn’t unconscious.

  He struggled to his feet, and ran after her, catching up to her and holding her with his left arm, while he wrapped his right around her throat. She gasped for breath, trying to throw him off, but she couldn’t get the proper leverage, and he threw her up against the wall, pinning her.…

  “STOP, STOP!”

  Then, again—the voice amplified by a megaphone, louder this time: “FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, STOP!”

  The man’s arms around Maggie relaxed and let her go.

  “Why?” she muttered in exasperation.

  The hall’s lights were turned on, bare bulbs in elaborate molded ceilings. It wasn’t actually the home of a high-ranking Nazi in Berlin, but the Beaulieu Estate, a manor house in Hampshire, England, just outside of New Forest. Some of the recruits joked that S.O.E. didn’t stand for “Special Operations Executive” as much as “Stately ’omes of England,” where all the training seemed to take place.

  “Oh, what now?” Maggie started to pace, exasperated.

  A severe-looking man in his late forties walked out with a clipboard. He sighed. “All right, Miss Hope, would you like to tell us what you did wrong?”

  Maggie stopped, hands on hips. “Major Woolrich.” Maggie had to remember not to call him “Woolybanks,” which was his unfortunate nickname among the Section X S.O.E. trainees. “I picked the lock, cracked the safe, took the folders, disarmed the enemy—”

  “Disarmed. Didn’t kill.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I was about to do the honors.”

  “You were about to be killed yourself, young lady,” Major Woolrich barked.

  The tall man in the Nazi uniform came up behind Maggie, rubbing his head. “Not bad technique there, Maggie. But they told me that if you knocked me out and didn’t fake-kill m
e that I’d have to come after you again.”

  She gave him her most winning smile. “Sorry about the kick, Phil.”

  “Not at all.”

  Major Woolrich was not amused. “Not killing the enemy is the worst mistake because …”

  Maggie and Phil looked at each other.

  From behind the man came a loud, high-pitched nasal voice: “… Because the only safe enemy is a dead enemy.”

  “Oh, Colonel Gubbins—we didn’t know you were there,” Major Woolrich said, as Gubbins stepped out of the shadows.

  “There is nothing more deadly than an angry Nazi—remember that—you’re not killing a person, you’re killing a Nazi. A Kraut. A Gerry.”

  Colonel Colin McVean Gubbins was Head of Training and Operations at Beaulieu—a haunted-looking man with dark recessed eyes, thick eyebrows, and wispy brown mustache. He was the one who set up the training places and protocols for the apprentice spies.

  “Only sixty percent of agents dropped behind enemy lines survive, Miss Hope. You’re the first woman to be dropped into Germany—the first woman to be dropped behind enemy lines in this war, period. Lord only knows what your odds are. We’re taking an ungodly risk. And we want you to be prepared.”

  Maggie’s frustration cooled. This wasn’t about her—it was about the mission succeeding. “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re going in to deliver a radio part to a resistance group in Berlin, and also to plant a bug at an important Abwehr officer’s home. For whatever reason, the Prime Minister has asked for you on this mission specifically. And if you take out a Nazi in the process, so be it. This is no time to be squeamish or sentimental. Do you understand?” Gubbins barked.

  The Prime Minister asked for me personally for this mission! Maggie glowed a bit with pride, but tried to damp it down so Gubbins wouldn’t notice. “I do, sir.”

  “With your fluency in German, and the skills you’ve been working on, you just might pull it off,” he said. “But it’s dangerous work and that’s why you can leave nothing—and no one—to chance.”

  “Yes, sir.” Maggie had dreamed about becoming a spy. She’d dreamed of it working as a typist to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and she dreamed about it while she was acting as a math tutor to the Princess Elizabeth. Now, finally, was her chance.

  “Let’s try it again,” Gubbins said. “And this time, Miss Hope, I want you to finish the Nazi off. Kill the damned Kraut.”

  It was morning. The skies were a brilliant blue, promising a gorgeous day to come.

  Elise Hess was navigating the rough cobblestone side streets of Berlin-Mitte, in order to avoid the parade on Unter den Linden, fast approaching the Brandenburg Gate.

  The Nazis had reason to celebrate—it was May 22, 1941. Not only had they just taken the lowland countries and France but now German troops were invading Crete, Rommel was beating back the British in the Middle East, and the Bismarck had sunk the British Royal Navy battle cruiser HMS Hood. They seemed invincible. Only Britain was still holding on—but her defeat seemed a matter of time.

  Elise could hear the steady beating drums of the soldiers and the coarse clamor of the crowd in the distance, singing the “Horst Wessel Song.” She could see the red banners with their white circles and black hakenkreuz—broken crosses—that the Volk had hung from their apartment windows. Papering the brick walls were multiple tattered posters of Adolf Hitler in medieval armor, on horseback like a Teutonic knight or Pagan god, captioned Dem Führer die Treue—Be True to the Führer. Trash, cigarette butts, and broken glass from the rally the night before lined the gutters, and the air smelled of stale beer and urine.

  The ground was marked with chalk squares for the children’s hopping game Heaven and Earth. Above the buildings soared the baroque verdigris dome of the Berliner Dom, its golden cross pointing heavenward like an accusing finger.

  Girls in pastel dirndls and boys in lederhosen were playing, throwing small stones, then hopping on the chalked squares, trying to make it from one end to another and back again. They were young and fresh—the boys well scrubbed, the girls with intricate braids, all with rosy cheeks.

  In unison, they spied a small boy with knobby knees, wearing a crocheted yarmulke. Like a well-trained pack, they circled him, surrounding him. They all looked at one another and laughed as they danced in a circle, holding hands, as the boy’s eyes darted, trying to find a way to escape. In the distance, church bells tolled the hour.

  One of the older boys started singing. “Jew-boy, Jew-boy, tell us quick! How you pull your dirty tricks!”

  The other children joined in, “Jew-boy, Jew-boy, for your crimes—you will pay for sure this time!”

  “Children!” Elise said, clapping her hands. “Stop! That’s enough!” They looked over at Elise, angry.

  The Jewish boy took their momentary distraction as an opportunity to burst through the circle and make a hard right into an alley, running as fast as he could in his worn leather shoes. The children laughed, the moment broken, and picked up rocks and threw them after him, but didn’t bother to give chase. “Are you going to the parade, Fräulein?” one boy called to her.

  “Nein,” she said. “I have to work.”

  “Too bad!” they called back, skipping and laughing, slapping each other’s backs.

  Walking away, she shook her head.

  Elise took one of the many baroque bridges over the sparkling blue Spree and finally arrived at Charité Mitte Hospital.

  She went directly to the nurses’ changing room. It was small, with walls of grey lockers and a low wooden bench. There was a poster on the wall of a handsome doctor and a mentally disabled man in a wheelchair, with the caption: “This hereditarily sick person costs the Volksgemeinschaft 60,000 RM for life. Comrade, it’s your money, too.”

  Elise slipped out of her cardigan sweater, skirt, and blouse. She kept on her necklace with the tiny gold cross, tiny diamond chip in its center.

  The door opened. It was Frieda Klein, another nurse. “Hallo!” Elise said, smiling. Shifts were always better when Frieda was working, too.

  “Hallo,” Frieda replied. She put down her things and began to change. “Gott, I wish I had breasts like yours, Elise,” Frieda said, looking down at her own flat chest. “You’re the perfect Rhine maiden.”

  “I’m too fat,” Elise moaned. “As my mother loves to remind me. Often. I wish I had collarbones like yours—so elegant.”

  Where Elise was curvaceous, Frieda was thin and all angles. Where Elise had dark blue eyes and chestnut-brown curls, Frieda was blonde and pale. And where Frieda was phlegmatic, Elise had a habit of speaking too quickly and bouncing up and down on her toes when she became excited about a finer point of medicine, swing music, or anything at all to do with American movie stars. The two young women, friends since University, had both wanted to be nurses since they were young girls.

  They both put on their grey nurses’ uniform, with starched white aprons and linen winged caps. “Do you mind?” Elise said, indicating the back strings on her apron.

  “Not at all,” Frieda said and tied them into a perfect bow. She turned around. “Now do mine?”

  Elise did, then slapped Frieda on the bottom. They laughed as they walked out together to the nurses’ station to begin their shift.

  In a tiny examination room that smelled of alcohol and lye soap, a tiny blonde girl asked, “Will there be blood?” The only picture on the wall was Heinrich Knirr’s official portrait of Adolf Hitler—the Führer’s figure stiffly posed, hard eyes gazing impassively over the proceedings.

  Elise smiled and shook her head. “Nein,” she said. “No blood work today. The doctor just wants to take a look at your ears. To make sure the infection’s gone.”

  The girl, Gretel Paulus, was sitting on a hard hospital bed. She held a small brown well-loved teddy bear, and spoke with a slight speech impediment. Her thick lower lip protruded and was covered in saliva, her tongue overlarge. She had a round face, small chin, and almond-shaped eyes behind thick, d
istorting eyeglasses.

  Elise smiled. “What goes ninety-nine thump, ninety-nine thump, ninety-nine thump?”

  Gretel shrugged.

  “A centipede with a wooden leg, of course!”

  That got a weak smile out of the young girl.

  Elise took her stethoscope from around her neck, put in the ear-buds and held the chest piece to the girl’s back. She listened to the young girl’s lungs. “Take deep breaths for me, Gretel.”

  The girl did as she was told. Then, “Nurse Hess?”

  “When it’s just you and I, you may call me Elise.”

  “Elise—why do my ears always hurt?” Gretel asked.

  Elise knew all too well that ear infections were common with Down Syndrome patients.

  “It’s just something that happens sometimes,” she said, rubbing the girl’s back. “And you feel better now, yes? The medicine worked?”

  “If I feel better, why do I still have to see the doctor? The new doctor?”

  Gretel didn’t miss a thing, Elise realized. “Dr. Brandt. He wants to make sure you don’t get any more ear infections, if we can possibly help it.”

  The door to the examination room opened, and in walked Dr. Karl Brandt, Adolph Hitler’s personal physician. He was new to Charité, one of the S.S. doctors who came in the late winter of 1941, with their red armbands with black swastikas and their new rules and regulations. Young, handsome, with thick dark hair, Brandt radiated confidence.

  Elise handed Gretel’s chart to him, which he read. Without preamble, he marked the black box in the lower left-hand corner of the medical history chart with a large and clear red X, the last of three. He looked out the door and beckoned. Two orderlies arrived, strong and broad-shouldered in white lab coats.