The Queen's Accomplice

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  Maggie was worried about this particular message, from agent Erica Calvert, a young geologist who’d made a midnight boat landing on the beach near Normandy a few weeks before. Something was…not right. Calvert had studied earth science at St. Hilda’s at Oxford and was considered an expert on sand grains. But this particular message from her—well, Maggie had never seen anything like it. It was what they called “mutilated,” which might have been caused by atmospheric conditions. But Erica’s writing was also uncharacteristically clipped.

  Most troubling was that Calvert hadn’t included her secret security check, carried by each agent, which gave SOE contacts back in Britain absolute confirmation the wireless operator was transmitting freely. Before leaving for a mission, each agent was assigned both a bluff check and a true check, which he or she had to insert into every message. These took the form of spelling mistakes or secret signals, agreed on with SOE, to show the sender had been captured.

  All right, stay calm, Maggie thought as fear prickled up her spine. Let’s look at this logically. She could see four explanations for the oddities of Erica Calvert’s message.

  One: The message had been transmitted by someone else in Erica’s network, but on Calvert’s set—and had left off the security code.

  Two: Calvert was on the run and operating in difficult circumstances, which changed her fist, and she didn’t have time for the security code.

  Then, three: Calvert had been captured. She was operating under German control and so had deliberately omitted the security code to alert SOE she’d been compromised.

  And there was four—the worst-case scenario: Calvert was dead and the Germans were using her radio and codes with impunity.

  When Maggie went to the overflowing file cabinet and looked up Calvert’s former messages, she found not only that Calvert had sent more than a dozen near-perfect ones since arriving in France, but also that she’d never forgotten her security check before. Not once. Damn, Maggie swore. What’s going on over there, Agent Calvert? Tout va bien?

  There was the click of heels on the scratched parquet floor, and then a woman’s sweet, breathy voice inflected with a Welsh accent. “Excuse me? Miss Hope?”

  Maggie slipped Calvert’s message into a manila folder, then looked up, into the eyes of a petite, curly-haired brunette named Bronwyn Parry, kitted out in an ATS uniform. A gap between her two front teeth and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose only added to her charm. Bronwyn had been one of Maggie’s best students at the SOE paramilitary training camp, near the town of Arisaig on the western coast of Scotland; she’d excelled at jujitsu, Fairbairn-Sykes knife fighting, and detonating explosives. Maggie had always liked Brynn.

  “Just Maggie is fine now. How did the interview go?” Bronwyn had finished interviewing with Miss Lynd, one of the final hurdles before being sent to Beaulieu, the “Finishing School” for all SOE agents.

  “It went well,” the young woman replied in her broad Cardiff accent, “but I don’t have a place to stay in London.” Her usually open face was troubled. “All these posh girls can book a room at Claridge’s or stay at Daddy’s pied-à-terre.” She rolled her eyes. “Meanwhile, the rest of us have to scrum for a place….”

  Maggie nodded. She knew firsthand how SOE was a curious cross section of social class and privilege.

  Brynn shrugged. “And Miss Lynd insists I come in again tomorrow—for yet another interview.”

  “I wish I could help you, Brynn,” Maggie offered with sincerity. “I’d ask you to stay with me, but my own flat was smashed in a raid—I’m bunking with friends myself.”

  Brynn opened her handbag and pulled out a Woodbine cigarette and enamel lighter. She stuck the cigarette between her lips, lit it, and inhaled. “What should I do, sleep on a bench in Regent’s Park?” She puffed out a series of blue smoke rings.

  “Well, that option might prove a bit nippy. Alas, SOE doesn’t provide temporary lodging—but here’s a place to try.” Maggie rummaged through the left-hand desk drawer, through an old bottle of clear nail polish for stocking runs, two rationed sugar cubes saved in an envelope, and a battered box of paper clips, until she found a business card: THE CASTLE HOTEL FOR WOMEN: Temporary Lodging for Ladies and the address in heavy black ink.

  She handed it to Brynn. “You can call from here to see if there are any vacancies for tonight. Miss Lynd tells me a number of SOE interviewees have stayed there. Here, use this phone,” she said, pushing a green one toward the Welsh girl.

  As Brynn came around the desk, they both heard a bellow. “Meggie!” a gruff male voice boomed from behind a thick wooden office door. “Meggie!”

  Maggie sighed, then picked up Calvert’s file and rose. She walked the strip of threadbare carpet through the dim passageway, then pushed at the half-closed office door.

  “It’s Maggie, sir,” she reminded him gently. Although the men in the office were referred to by their rank and wore uniforms, the women were called by their first names and expected to dress in civilian clothes.

  Colonel Harry Gaskell was in his late forties, a short, rotund man with yellow hair and a fleshy, shining face. The beginnings of rosacea pinked his nose and cheeks. Although he’d served in the British Army’s Intelligence Corps as a doctor at the outbreak of the war, he’d been evacuated from Dunkirk and stayed in Britain. What concerned Maggie most was he had no firsthand knowledge of, or training in, guerrilla warfare, despite the fact he was in charge of F-Section.

  Gaskell blinked pale eyes. “Meeting’s at five-thirty. We’ll jolly well need tea, and some of those oatmeal biscuits Miss Cooper made—hard as rocks, but if you dunk them, they’re not so bad.”

  “Colonel—” Maggie began, handing him Erica Calvert’s file. Gaskell accepted it with a brisk movement, then flicked his eyes over the document and Maggie’s notes. He handed it back to her. “Jolly good job, young lady.”

  “No,” Maggie persisted, “I believe something’s wrong, sir.”

  “There’s only one explanation for Miss Calvert’s mistakes—carelessness,” the Colonel admonished. “The next time the girl’s schedule comes up, tell her she’s forgotten her security check. And remind her to be more vigilant!” He chortled. “Give that girl a rap on the knuckles!”

  Maggie braced her shoulders. “Colonel Gaskell, Erica Calvert didn’t only forget the security check. Her fist was also out of character—unusually hesitant, not her style at all. I don’t like to be negative, but I believe it’s possible she’s been captured and her radio’s now in the hands of the Germans.”

  Outside the window, she could see cars passing on Baker Street dusted by a light snow shower. The side of one red-brick building was painted with the advertisement TAKE BOVRIL TO RESIST FLU. There was the screech of brakes, a loud crash, and then a torrent of swearing as one car hit another on the slippery pavement.

  “Fiddlesticks, Meggie! Er, Maggie. When you hear hooves, think horses, not unicorns! You’re doing jolly good work here and I know you’re concerned about the agents in the field, my dear, but let’s not let drama override duty, yes?”

  As she turned and stalked away, Gaskell called after her: “And don’t let the tea steep too long this time!” Maggie could easily make out his grumbled complaint, “Damn Yanks…”

  Gritting her teeth, Maggie put the file back in her desk drawer, then braved the frigid corridor to the dingy kitchenette to put the kettle on.

  Officially, she was part of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, a major in the women’s branch of the Army, known as ATS—but for her, that rank was actually a cover for work with SOE. When she’d arrived in London from Boston, four years ago, all she’d wanted to do was settle her grandmother’s estate, then return to the United States to pursue doctoral studies in mathematics at MIT, one of the few top universities to allow women as graduate students.

  But then war had been declared, the Blitz began, and she’d convinced herself to stay in London and help—which had led to working for Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When give
n the opportunity to work for SOE as an agent, she grabbed it. She loved Britain and wanted to do “her bit.”

  As the kettle boiled, Colonel Frank Brody, second in command of F-Section, entered on wooden crutches, the left leg of his uniform trousers pinned around the stump. Brody hopped up on the rickety wooden table, his one leg swinging, whistling “Green Eyes.”

  “My aunt used to say ‘whistling calls the Devil,’ ” Maggie teased. “Perhaps Satan’s a fan of Jimmy Dorsey?”

  Unlike Colonel Gaskell, Brody had trained to be an SOE agent, and been sent to France as part of F-Section. However, a leg injury on a mission led to an amputation that made short work of his career abroad. He’d returned to the London offices to be promoted.

  As he slipped a bit on the table, then used his hands to right himself, he gave her a rueful smile. It lit up his plain, broad features, compensating for his upturned nose and overly large ears. “You should see my Giselle,” he joked, finally settling his lanky frame. “I can pirouette better than Margot Fonteyn.”

  Maggie liked Brody. He never complained, and was always good for a witty rejoinder and a smile. She turned off the gas. “Any news on the leg?” she asked, using a pot holder to lift the kettle.

  “The peg? No, still in the works, I’m afraid. With the amount of time they’re taking, I’m hoping it comes with any number of additional features—a corkscrew, a dagger, even a flask. A whole Swiss Army knife of tricks.” Brody had been fitted for a prosthetic leg, but because of high demand, its creation and delivery were delayed. “But, really, just the flask would be lovely.”

  He picked up a newspaper lying on the table. “Have you seen this yet?” he asked, glancing down the front page of The Times. “A murder last night, not too far from us. A girl—they say she was an ATS.”

  Maggie stopped fiddling with the tea things and looked up. “Do they say who it was?”

  “Joanna Metcalf.”

  Maggie knew the name; she’d met the young woman in the SOE office three days ago. Joanna had been another of her trainees at Arisaig. “Joanna Metcalf?” she managed. “Joanna’s not just any ATS—she’s one of ours—tapped by SOE and supposed to be sent to France. She was here for an interview just a few days ago.”

  “Bloody hell.” Profanity, even in front of ladies, was as common in the office as French. “Poor thing.”

  Maggie turned away and bit her lip: She didn’t want Brody to see the shocked expression on her face. When the tea was prepared, she put the Denby stoneware pot, mugs, and chipped plate piled high with biscuits on a tray, and carried it into a windowless conference room. Present were Gaskell and two other high-ranking SOE men in uniform, Colonel Bernard Higgs—with a neatly trimmed iron-gray mustache, and Colonel Rupert Shaw—with brilliantined, bushy hair that stuck straight up, like porcupine quills.

  The walls were thin and Maggie’s and Brody’s voices had been overheard. “One of our girls murdered, you say?” Gaskell asked as Maggie walked in carrying the tea things, Brody on his crutches behind her. The Colonel shook his head in dismay. “I may be old-fashioned, but in my opinion, these girls should stay at home and listen to their mothers—war or no war, what ho? Certainly not gallivanting around London at all hours of the night, going to bars and dance clubs, listening to jazz…”

  Maggie set the tray down on the trestle table covered in green baize as Brody took a seat, leaning his crutches against the wall. “That’s a good girl,” Gaskell muttered absently as he watched her pour. “Jolly good. Not too much tannin in the tea this way.”

  “What took you so long, my dear?” Colonel Higgs asked. “Powdering your nose in the ladies’ loo?”

  “You could use a little powder—and a little lipstick, too,” Colonel Shaw added. “ ‘Beauty for Duty’—am I right, gentlemen?”

  Maggie bit her tongue and passed out the agenda for the meeting, the title of which was “The Woman Problem”—about the alleged knotty conundrum of female SOE agents—then perched on a rickety wooden chair.

  When SOE had been created by Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on July 22, 1940, Colonel Colin McVean Gubbins had first secured authority, albeit unofficially, to send women behind enemy lines. Colonel Gubbins saw no reason why women couldn’t do the job of secret agent as well as the men. Gubbins had met fierce opposition, but was ultimately supported by Prime Minister Churchill, who’d approved the deployment of women as SOE agents.

  Colonel Gaskell, Gubbins’s successor at SOE, was far less enthusiastic about the “women situation.” Although SOE employed scores of women—as typists, drivers, and clerks—all were officially barred from armed combat, and there was no legal authority for servicewomen to carry out the kind of guerrilla work SOE desperately wanted them to perform. The 1929 Geneva Convention and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, the main legal instruments offering protection to prisoners of war, made no provision for women—as they were never considered, in anyone’s wildest imagination, to be combatants.

  And so, although all SOE agents, both male and female, were performing undercover missions, because of the Geneva Convention, women agents were at a higher risk. Men would be treated as prisoners of war. Women, on the other hand, had far less legal protection. They could be tortured for information and then executed as spies.

  “We’re already using women in the field to great advantage,” Brody reminded Gaskell. “Nowadays, more and more Frenchmen are being sent to Russia and the East—and any able-bodied man left behind is looked on with suspicion. Whereas women can still travel freely—generally underestimated by the Nazis, you know.”

  Gaskell looked to Maggie. “Would you be mother, my dear?”

  Maggie poured the scalding, fragrant tea, passing out mugs to the men.

  Gaskell blew noisily on the steaming liquid. “I’m still not in favor of sending our ladies abroad. And of course, if our use of girls as guerrillas leaks out, the policy will have to be denied.”

  “Sorry I’m late—” came a woman’s high-pitched, warbling voice in a tone suggesting she was anything but sorry. Diana Lynd was the last to arrive for any meeting. Maggie was never sure if it was because she was legitimately busy or because she enjoyed making a grand entrance in a cloud of smoke and Jicky perfume. Miss Diana Lynd was a statuesque woman in her late thirties, with a quintessentially English sense of style—always dressed in impeccably tailored tweed suits in shades of brown and caramel and soft suede court shoes, her tawny hair rolled up at the nape of her neck. She had a distinctive accent—Benenden and Kensington, Maggie guessed, spoken in tones of cream and honey.

  She’d informally been assigned not only responsibility for overseeing the women recruits but also the task of intelligence officer, which largely meant sifting through all information about life on the ground in France.

  Gaskell stood, as did the other men. “Until we can shut down sending women agents to France, we can’t have this policy of using females get out,” Gaskell said, taking his seat once again. “If the Germans ever learn we’re using women to fight, we’d be an international disgrace.” He gave a nervous chortle.

  “I believe,” Maggie said, raising one eyebrow, “that the welfare and safety of our women in the field—as well as their well-being after they return—should be our highest concern. Not what the Germans may or may not think.”

  Brody cleared his throat. “I agree with you in principle, Maggie, but we cannot, under any circumstances, let the use of women as combatants become public knowledge—Goebbels would use it for the most horrific propaganda. If anything ever were to come to light, the policy of dropping women behind enemy lines would have to be denied.”

  “The problem is,” Maggie interjected, pouring a mug of tea for Miss Lynd, “if the War Office won’t take official responsibility for our female agents, they can’t be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention—we’re allowing them to be tortured, raped, and killed with impunity.”

  She handed the steaming mug to the older woman. “Also, if th
ey die while serving their country, what are we going to tell their husbands, their children, the parents of these women when they don’t return? They’ll never know what their wives and mothers and daughters did for Britain.”

  “Plenty of us labor in obscurity, Miss Hope,” intoned Miss Lynd as she accepted her tea, pursing moist, red-painted lips.

  Maggie was undeterred. “And what of the female agents’ pensions?”

  Gaskell startled. “Pensions?”

  “Yes, pensions,” Maggie insisted. “Female operatives are already making only one-third the salary of the men—which I’ve said again and again is hardly fair, as we’re doing the same jobs and in the same danger. But what if they return and need disability?” She looked to Brody, who had the grace to redden.

  “And what if they’re killed? What happens to their dependents?” Maggie cupped her numb hands around her own mug, using it for both warmth and strength. “The families of the male agents are well cared for—but what do the families of the women get? As of now—nothing.”

  “The female agents have fathers and husbands to take care of them, of course,” reassured Colonel Shaw.

  “No, sir, not all of them do. Only this morning I filed paperwork for Miss Audrey Thomas.” Maggie looked to Colonel Gaskell. “You may recall she’s part of F-Section’s Prosper network, in Paris. She was captured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbrück. She’s divorced, with one child—who’s now in the care of an aunt, a retired schoolteacher, who’s also taking care of their mother.”

  “Shouldn’t have gotten divorced then,” joked Colonel Higgs, lighting a cigarette.

  “A little late for that bit of advice now, I think. What about her five-year-old daughter? What are we going to tell her? What sort of pension will she receive? The aunt is already taking care of the mother—how is she supposed to care for a child as well? If there were a pension in place, as the men have, it would be an invaluable help.”