The Prime Minister's Secret Agent (15 page)

“And here she is,” Maggie said, reading a toe tag and pulling back a sheet.

Estelle Crawford was lying on her back. Her stage makeup hadn’t been removed, and her face looked Kabuki-like under the lights. The corpse was naked, her breasts and hips slight, and the muscularity of her legs imposing. She was white as marble, except for the open, black oozing sores on one hand and up the slender arm to her chest, where the makeup had worn away.

Oh, poor Estelle
, Maggie thought.
You poor, poor girl
.

“Well, shall we begin?” Findlay said, rubbing his hands together.

“Yes, let’s,” Mark Standish said.

“By all means,” managed Maggie, with far more enthusiasm than she felt.

Later in the day, after Frain had left, Dr. Carroll tried again to induce a trance state in Clara Hess. This time, he was surprised to hear a different voice—an older, rougher voice—coming from her lips.

It’s as if yet another woman has slipped into Hess’s body. This is definitely not Agna Frei
, the doctor wrote in his notebook.
Could it be one of Freud’s dissociation disorders, triggered by some sort of trauma?

“What are you writing? Are you writing about me?” the voice asked.

“What do you think?”

Clara turned and looked through the cage bars and out the window. “I think I want a cigarette. But I know you don’t like it when I smoke in your office.”

“Whose office is this?”

“Why, yours, of course,” she replied in impatient tones.

“Who am I?”

Clara sneered. “Well, if you don’t know, I don’t know why I should tell you.”

The doctor scratched his head. He didn’t know what office she thought she was in, or who she was—or who she thought he was. All he knew was that this was someone who was neither Agna Frei nor Clara Hess.

“I’m testing your memory,” he told her.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake, Dr. Teufel, let’s get on with it, shall we?”

“Is this your first time in my office?”

“Of course not.”

“And where is the office?”

Clara barked a laugh. “What a stupid question.”

“Answer, please.”

“It’s in Mitte, of course.” Mitte was in central Berlin.

“What is the date?”

“Please. There’s a calendar on the wall behind you.” The wall behind Dr. Carroll was blank, but apparently Dr. Teufel’s office had a wall calendar.

He tapped his pen on the pad of paper. “Well, then this should be a very easy question for you.”

She answered scornfully, “Fifteen March, 1913.”

“And why are you here in my office?”

“To get my vitamin shot, of course.”

“And what is your name?”

“For God’s sake—you
know
my name.”

“For my research, please—what is your name?”

The woman threw back her head and laughed. “Clara,” she said.

“Clara what?”

“Clara Schwartz.”

Dr. Carroll looked down at his file, scanning until he found what he was looking for. Clara Schwartz was Agna Frei’s stage name when she was first starting out as an opera singer. “Do you know Agna Frei?”

“Of course,” she answered, sounding bored. “Really, I’d kill for a cigarette, you know.”

“Who is she?”

Clara stared at Dr. Carroll. “She’s a weak, pathetic little girl—that’s who she is.”

“And you—are you strong?”

“Of course I am. I’m a survivor.
I’m
the one who survived.”

“Survived what?”

“Survived
who
,” Clara corrected. “My mother, of course. And Agna was weak. I had to step in.”

“And she let you?”

“I told you—she’s weak. And when bad things happen, I step in.”

“How do you ‘step in’?”

“She gets a stomachache—terrible stomach pains.”

“Do you feel bad about her pain?”

“No, why should I?”

“Do you like Agna?”

“Not particularly. But she serves a purpose.”

“And what’s that?”

“I get to come out sometimes.” She curled a strand of hair around a finger. “I’m stuck with her, I suppose.”

“What do you do when she’s here?”

“It’s boring,” Clara Schwartz said. “Dark. I don’t like it.”

“Do you think it’s right for you to take over her body the way you do?”

An eye roll. “She needs me. When she’s weak, she needs me to step in. She wouldn’t have survived without me.”

“Is Agna ever strong?”

“No, that’s what I keep trying to tell you—that’s why I’m here. With me, there’s no tears, no whining, no hiding. No backing down.”

“Do you ever cry?”

“Never.”

“But Agna cried when you weren’t around?”

Again, Clara looked out the window. The view was of the White Tower. “She was weak. She was lonely. She was pathetic.
She wanted”—Clara Schwartz’s eyes drifted to Dr. Carroll’s—
“love.”
She spat out the word with contempt.

“And what do
you
want?”

Clara stared at him as if he were dim-witted. “To
survive
, of course.

“I must
survive
.”

David Greene, sheaf of papers in hand, went to find the Prime Minister. It was just before cocktail hour at Chequers, and the P.M. had typists taking dictation and private secretaries drafting speeches, as he paced the floors like a mighty lion, mind bursting with ideas, impatient and prone to the occasional roar.

Tonight, however, Winston Churchill was uncharacteristically subdued. There were violet shadows under his eyes. He was in the wood-paneled Hawtree Room, sitting in a leather armchair pulled up to the fireplace, the only warm place in the big, drafty room. Nelson, the cat, was in his lap and he was stroking him, watching the orange-blue flames dance behind the andirons.

“Prime Minister?” David murmured, not wishing to disturb the older man’s reverie, but knowing the papers must be delivered. “Sir?”

Churchill started, then looked up in irritation. “What? What do you have there, Mr. Greene?”

“A number of things, sir. Would you like me to leave them with you—?”

“Read them!”

David cleared his throat. “A decrypt from Bletchley regarding Rommel and the Afrika Corps.”

“I’ll look at it later. What else?”

“Our navy has spotted five Japanese troop transports with naval escort off China’s coast, near Formosa, heading south.”

“Interesting. Send to President Roosevelt. What news of Popov, our playboy spy? The information he had on the Japs making a grid of Pearl Harbor?”

“Popov went to Washington and met with J. Edgar Hoover, sir. But he reports back that Hoover was unimpressed and nearly had him thrown out of the country.”

Churchill nodded, then motioned for David to continue. “Burns at SOE reports Operation Anthropod is proceeding. Jozef Gabčík and his new partner, Jan Kubiš, are working well together.” Operation Anthropod was the code name for the planned assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich. “They’re still working on getting Kubiš’s identity papers in order.”

“Well, tell them to get a move on with the papers! When do they think they’ll be ready to go?”

“Plans are to get them to Prague between Christmas and the New Year, sir.”

“Where are they training now?”

“In Arisaig, sir. The same place Maggie Hope is working. And speaking of Miss Hope, sir,” David continued, “there’s also an update from Frain at MI-Five about Hess.”

“Our caged bird,” the P.M. said, nodding. He cocked an eyebrow. “Is she singing yet? Or is she still trying to negotiate peace?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. Hess refuses to speak with anyone but Maggie, and Maggie refuses to meet with her.”

“And so the bloodthirsty Frain wants to execute Hess. Blindfold and shoot her, just like Josef Jakobs.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s mentioned some rather interesting prognoses of her current mental state. Regression and whatnot.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It might be real—it might be an act. Frain seems to think she’s
playacting—as she did in her operas. The doctor doesn’t.” The P.M. contemplated the orange flames. “But just because she won’t talk doesn’t mean we can’t use her.” He cleared his throat. “Hitler and his cronies don’t know she’s not talking. And as long as she’s alive, they’ll wonder what secrets our little nightingale is singing. Tell Frain to keep his bloody hands off her—at least for now.”

“Yes, sir.” David waited a moment. “Will that be all, sir?”

The P.M. held out one hand. “Gimme.” As Churchill scanned through the documents, David braced himself, knowing that there was a transcript of a particularly harsh speech about the British Prime Minister that Joseph Goebbels had given to a huge crowd in Berlin.

Churchill squinted and reached for the gold-framed spectacles in his breast pocket. He put them on and read aloud,
“… ever since Gallipoli, Winston Churchill has spent a life wading through streams of English blood, defending a lifestyle that has long outlived its time—”

“That’s not true, sir.”

“Ah, but the monster does have a point, young Mr. Greene,” Churchill replied, his face tired and eyes sad. “I grew up during Queen Victoria’s reign, then came of age under King Edward the Seventh. It was a magical time to be an Englishman—‘the sun never set on the British Empire,’ et cetera, et cetera. Soldiers in red coats, the Union Jack. That world is gone now.”

“Sir?”

“Britain will live through this war, but we will be changed, utterly unrecognizable. We are now too damaged, too small, perhaps even too gentle to compete in this brave new world. We are Tolkien’s hobbits—small and provincial, yet surprisingly resilient in stern times. No, we have Hitler and Fascism, Stalin and Communism, and America—young, foolish, capitalist America—who are all poised to lead now.”

David scratched his head. “If the British are the hobbits, who are the Americans, sir?”

“The Americans are the
eagles
, Mr. Greene! The American eagles, of course! It’s their country’s symbol, for God’s sake—that Tolkien’s none too subtle!”

The Prime Minister contemplated the fire. “The eagles save Bilbo and the dwarves from the bloody orcs. What did Tolkien write about the eagles?
‘Eagles are not kindly birds. Some are cowardly and cruel. But the ancient race of the northern mountains were the greatest of all birds; they were proud and strong and noble-hearted.’
If that doesn’t describe the bloody Americans, I don’t know what does.”

“But, sir—the Lend-Lease Act—all those destroyers, all the aid—”

“All of their oldest destroyers, held together with tape and taffy. They’re keeping their best at Pearl Harbor, in order to defend their territories in the Pacific. And for those few, ancient ships, we are expected to give up our military bases, our gold, maybe even our art and manuscripts.”

“But surely America
will
join the war?” David’s voice had the edge of desperation.

“Sit down, my boy,” Churchill said, gesturing to the chair opposite.

David did. “I’m not so sure anymore,” the Prime Minister continued, taking a sip of cognac. “I do everything I can with President Roosevelt, and I flatter and cajole him as I would any woman I’d want as my mistress. But Roosevelt is, as we used to say in the Navy, a tease. I would like to believe America will choose to fight on the side of right in this war, but I no longer feel I can guarantee it, the way I felt a year or so ago. We can’t depend on them. Unless …”

“Unless?”

Churchill stared into the red embers of the dying fire. “Unless their hand is forced.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“We’ve had new posters made, in case of invasion—‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’ ”

“Miss Tuttle!”

Trudy Tuttle started when she heard Admiral Kimmel’s bellow over the noise of the rusted rotary fan that did nothing against Hawaii’s heat and humidity. She was young, in her twenties, in a new white cotton dress covered with a pattern of yellow hibiscus blossoms.

She rose from her desk and walked to the door of his office. It was dominated by a framed photograph of President Roosevelt. Turquoise maps of the Pacific speckled with colored pushpins covered the walls, and the window afforded a sweeping view of the Pacific Fleet, docked in Pearl Harbor. Outside, an American flag snapped in the warm, jasmine-scented breeze.

“Yes, Admiral Kimmel?” she said. Dorothy’s boss, Rear Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, was a handsome man in his midfifties, a four-star Admiral in the United States Navy and Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. When he bellowed, people ran to fall in line—the Admiral was infamous for throwing books at walls, or even taking off his hat and jumping on it in frustration, a situation that happened so frequently when he’d been at sea that the mess boys kept an old sea hat handy, just in case.

But today Kimmel was with Major General Frederick L. Martin, Commander of the Hawaiian Air Force, a man about Kimmel’s age. Kimmel was in Navy whites and Martin in Army browns. Both men were highly decorated.

Kimmel took off his horn-rimmed glasses, folded them, and placed them on his desk. Above his head, the blades of a ceiling fan turned lazily. “Major Martin and I are going to have an early supper in my office today, Miss Tuttle. Would you order us two burgers, french fries, and Coca-Colas from the canteen, then pick it all up? That’s a good girl.” His face crinkled in a smile. “Oh, and a thick slice of one of those Maui onions, if they have them.”

She couldn’t help but smile back. “Yes, sir.”

“And two of those pineapple tarts, you know—the ones with the caramelized coconut on top? And order something for yourself too, honey, while you’re at it.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“You can have mine, Admiral. I’m not eating much these days,” Martin admitted, after she left.

“Nervous stomach? You can’t let it get to you!” Kimmel thumped his palms on the desk. “Don’t let the damn Japs get you down!”

Kimmel rose and widened the angle of the wooden blinds. Outside, the Honolulu sky was a dazzling blue. Two orange butterflies chased each other beyond Kimmel’s windows. The windows were open as far as they could go, and, if they’d wanted to, Kimmel and Martin could have reached out to touch the spiky stalks of bird-of-paradise that grew outside.