The Prime Minister's Secret Agent (3 page)

Sallow and pinched, with shadows under her eyes and a chafed red nose, Maggie shrugged into her thick wool coat and pulled on a scarf and stocking cap. She left the upstairs flat of the gardener’s cottage, where she’d been assigned to live, and headed to Arisaig House, the large home that loomed above.

Although her body ached and felt as if it were made from spun glass, she jogged to warm her muscles before breaking into a run up the path of the rockery, taking the steep lichen-covered flagstone steps to the manor house at a brisk jog in the darkness. It was November and so it was light only from eight thirty in the morning to four thirty in the afternoon. But to Maggie it
always
seemed dark, not Henry Vaughan’s “deep but dazzling darkness” but a sinister absence of light.

Arisaig House was the administrative heart of the War Office for Special Operations Executive—or SOE, as it was better known—in Scotland. SOE was neither MI-5 nor MI-6, but a black ops operation, training agents to be dropped into places such as France and Germany, and helping local resistance groups “set Europe ablaze,” as Winston Churchill had admonished. The SOE used great houses all over Britain to train their would-be spies, sparking the joke that
SOE
really stood for “Stately ’omes of England.” While training camps were preliminary schools, or
specifically dedicated to parachute jumping or radio transmission, Arisaig was the place where trainees received intense training in demolition, weapons, reconnaissance, and clandestine intelligence work.

Isolated on the far western coast of Scotland, closed off by military roadblocks, the rocky mountains and stony beaches were perfect for pushing trainees to their physical and mental limits. Arisaig House was the administrative hub, with its own generator and water supply. Other great houses in the area were used for training—Traigh House, Inverailort, Camusdarrach, and Garramor, just to name a few. Maggie’s lips twisted in a smile as she recalled how groups of Czech, Slovak, and Norwegian trainees had stumbled over the Scottish and Gaelic names.

But it was the perfect place for Maggie, still recovering from her wounds.

As an instructor, she trained her charges harder than Olympians—swimming in the freezing loch, navigating obstacle courses in the cold mud, and mastering rope work. From other instructors, the trainees learned field craft, demolition, Morse code, weapons training, and the Fairbairn-Sykes method of silent killing. Anything and everything they might need to know to be sent to France, or Germany, wherever a local resistance group might need aid.

Maggie hadn’t always been a draconian instructor; in fact, the very idea would have made her formerly bookish and dreamy self laugh in disbelief. She’d wanted to earn her PhD in mathematics from MIT, but had instead been in London when war had broken out in 1940. She’d found a job in Winston Churchill’s secretarial pool, and, after discovering secret code in an innocuous advertisement, and then foiling an IRA bomb plot, had been tapped for MI-5. She’d been sent to one of the preliminary training camps in
Scotland as a trainee in the fall of 1940. While she was excellent at Morse code and navigating by stars, she’d flamed out spectacularly at anything that required the least bit of physical fitness.

Approaching the manor house, Maggie recalled how furious she’d been when she’d washed out of the SOE program and Peter Frain of MI-5 had placed her at Windsor Castle to look after the young Princesses. But in retrospect, it had done her good. She’d grown stronger both mentally and physically, and was able to help save Princess Elizabeth from a kidnapping plot.

After her assignment at Windsor with the Royals, she’d returned to SOE training in the spring of 1941. She made it through all the various schools, and, as a newly minted agent, was sent on a secret mission to Berlin. Now she had returned once more to Arisaig House—but this time as an instructor. As she opened the thick oak door, the bells in the clock tower chimed eight times.

The vestibule of the large stone manor house led into the great hall, which SOE had turned into a lobby of sorts, with a desk for a telephone and a receptionist. Sheets protected the grand house’s chestnut paneling from the government workers, while Arisaig and Traigh Houses’ owner, a Miss Astley Nicholson, had been relocated to a smaller cottage up the road for the duration of the war. However, the spacious high-ceilinged entrance hall with its mullioned windows, staircase elaborately carved with birds and thistles, and views over the fields dotted with white sheep leading down to the jagged coastline made it clear this was no ordinary office.

In the vestibule, Maggie heard an ongoing discussion by some of her current charges: this time around, mostly young women bound for France. Pausing unnoticed in the doorway, she stopped to listen.

“Yes, Miss,” the girl on receptionist duty said into the black telephone receiver, twisting the metal cord around her fingers. She
was short, sturdy, and a bit stout, with a wide grin and eyes that crinkled when she smiled, which was often. Her name was Gwen Glyn-Jones and she was from Cardiff, Wales. But her mother was French, and she had a perfect accent from summers spent just outside Paris. She wanted to become a radio operator—if she survived the physical training at Arisaig.

In the light of an Army-issue lamp, Gwen scribbled something down on a scrap of paper, and finished with a number. “Yes, Miss—I’ll make sure Miss Hope receives the message as soon as possible. Thank you, Miss.” She hung up.

“Message for Lady Macbeth?” one of the other girls asked. Yvonne had been born and raised in Brixton, London, but her grandfather was French—from Normandy—and, like Gwen, she was bilingual.

“The one and only.” The girls giggled. Maggie was strict. She was hard on her students. She never smiled. None of the women at Arisaig House liked her. None of the men liked her much, either, for that matter. “I loathe being in her section.”

Yvonne leaned in. “Why does everyone call her Lady Macbeth?”

“Because she’s a monster.” Gwen lowered her plummy Welsh-inflected voice. “Rumor is, she has blood on her hands.”

Yvonne’s eyes opened wide. “Really?”

“I heard she killed a man in France.”

Two other trainees walking down the staircase, a man and a woman, joined in the exchange. “I heard she killed three men in Munich,” the woman offered.

One of the men said, “I heard she was interrogated by the Gestapo and never talked—”

“She’s always nice to the gardener’s dog …” Yvonne ventured.

“Well, Hitler loves dogs, too.”

All right, that’s enough
. Maggie swept in, giving them what she’d come to call her “best Aunt Edith look”—cold and withering.

“Two, Five, and Eight—aren’t you supposed to be out running?” Maggie had given her trainees numbers instead of names.

There was an uncomfortable silence, punctured only by the ticking of a great mahogany long-case clock. Then, “I’m on desk duty …” sputtered Gwen.

“And I was waiting …” Yvonne tried.

Maggie held up one hand. “Stop making excuses.”

“I’m—I’m sorry, Miss Hope,” Gwen stuttered.

“Stop apologizing.” Maggie looked them all up and down. “You—Twelve—stay here and do your job. You others—go run on the beach. Relay races on the stony part of the shore—they’re good for your ankles and knees and will help your parachute jumps. I’ll be there shortly.”

They stared, frozen in place.

Maggie glared. “I said,
go
. Go!
Gae own wi’ it
, as they say around here!”

The trainees nearly fell over themselves in their haste to get away from her. Gwen became very busy at the reception desk.

Harold Burns, a fit man with smile lines etched around his eyes and rough skin dotted with liver spots, walked in from one of the other huge rooms of the house, now used as administrative offices. He favored Maggie with a wintry grin from around the billiard pipe clenched between his teeth. The tobacco smoke smelled sweet in the frigid air.

He removed the pipe to speak. “Impressive, Miss Hope. I remember a time when you could barely run a mile without passing
out. Or twisting your ankle. Or dropping your fellow trainees in the mud.”

Maggie put a finger to her lips. “Shhhhh, Mr. Burns. That’s our little secret.”

Burns fell into step beside her. They entered what used to be the great house’s dining room. “When you first came here, you were god-awful. One of the worst trainees I ever had. But you persevered. And you came back. You worked hard. I’ve heard of some of the things you’ve accomplished, Miss Hope, and I must say I’m proud.” Mr. Burns was a survivor of the Great War. Maggie could see in his eyes that, like her, he had seen things. Things he wished he hadn’t.

The grandfather clock chimed, sending out a loud metallic
gong
. Maggie started, breathing fast, pupils dilated.

“It’s all right,” Mr. Burns murmured as if to a lost lamb, nearly putting a hand on her arm—and then withdrawing it. “You’re safe here, Miss Hope.”

Safe. Who’s safe, really? Certainly not children with any sort of illness in Germany. Certainly not the Jews. Certainly not young men who just happen to be on the wrong side of a gun
. But Maggie liked Mr. Burns, she did, even though he’d been hard on her when she’d been in his section. In fact, much of what he taught her had helped keep her alive in Berlin.

She looked out the window, to the sheep grazing in the neighboring fields, in the shadow of mountains. Maggie watched them until she felt calmer.

“Thank you, Mr. Burns.” She reached for the letter in her marked mail cubby and opened it. She frowned as she read the contents.

“Everything all right, Miss Hope?”

She didn’t receive that many letters. Occasionally a postcard
from David, Mr. Churchill’s chief private secretary at Number 10—with funny pen-and-ink cartoons illustrating his favorite expressions:
Merciful Minerva
and
Jumping Jupiter
. Sarah sent letters in loopy scrawl on hotel stationery from around Britain, on tour with the Vic-Wells Ballet. And Chuck wrote less now that her husband, Nigel, was stationed in the Mideast and she was taking care of their baby, Griffin, almost three months old. And of course there was RAF pilot Captain John Sterling, now working once again for Mr. Churchill. But after what had happened between them in London last summer, after their return from Berlin, Maggie didn’t expect any letters from him.

But in fact, everything was
not
all right. The letter was regarding Maggie’s house—the house on Portland Place in Marylebone that she’d inherited from her Grandmother Hope and moved to in ’38. The house she’d lived in with flatmates Paige, Sarah, Chuck, and the twins. The house that, after everything that had happened with the attempted assassination of Mr. Churchill, the planned bombing of St. Paul’s, and Paige’s death, she’d wanted nothing to do with. She’d let out to a lovely couple—he a high-level mucketymuck at the Treasury and she a young wife with the Wrens.

According to the letter, the house had sustained significant bomb damage. Her tenants—who had survived—had moved.

“Fine, fine, Mr. Burns,” Maggie murmured. “Everything’s just fine.”

But her face said otherwise. She hadn’t been to the house in over a year, yes—but it was still a part of her, part of her family, part of her past, a past that had grown ever more complicated and confusing the more she learned about it. And now it had been bombed. Was she sad? Angry at the Luftwaffe? Maybe even just a little bit relieved to be free of the responsibility of it and forced to move on?
It doesn’t matter anyway
, she decided.
Probably all for the best
. She crumpled the letter and threw it into the waste bin.

Burns shifted his weight from side to side. “You know, Miss Hope, I served, too—over in France, in the trenches. I was a soldier then. Oh, you wouldn’t know it now, but once I was young—almost handsome, too. We all were, back then. Saw a lot of my friends killed, better men than I ever was, and killed any number myself.”

“Mr. Burns—no one died. Truly. It’s just a house—my house—that was bombed. But no one was hurt. And houses can—perhaps someday—be rebuilt.”

Mr. Burns didn’t seem to hear her, lost in his own memories. “I don’t remember their faces, but I still think of them. What I try to remember is the Christmas truce—Christmas of ’14, we had a cease-fire over in France. We sang songs, if you can believe—us with ‘Silent Night,’ and them with ‘Stille Nacht.’ Same melody, though. We even had a game of football, that afternoon, the ‘Huns’ versus the ‘Island Apes.’ Then, the next day, back to the killing business …”

He shook his head. “I’ll leave you to read your telephone message, Miss Hope.”

“Thank you, Mr. Burns.” Maggie turned her attention to the message Gwen had written out:

Long-legged and high-cheekboned, Sarah was one of Maggie’s closest friends. At first Maggie had found her intimidating—Sarah was so worldly, after all, so beautiful and glamorous, with
the slim figure of a runway model, dark sparkling eyes, and long dark hair. But she had an irresistible sense of humor and was given to witty retorts in a decidedly Liverpudlian accent.

Maggie had only seen Sarah a few times since they’d parted ways in London the summer of the attempted bombing of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and missed her. If it was at all possible, she’d make it to Sarah’s performance. The trouble was the Black Dog. Would the Black Dog let her? Sometimes it was hard to know. He was always ready to strike, but would he go for her throat? She walked back to the entrance hall, Mr. Burns not far behind.

“Miss Hope?” Gwen asked from her seat at the reception desk.

Maggie blinked. “Yes, Twelve.”

“Are you—are you going to go to Edinburgh to see your friend dance in the ballet? Because that sounds so very exciting and glamorous—and, quite frankly, fun.”