Chapter One
Maggie Hope was feeling her way through thick darkness. She was panting after shimmying up a rickety drainpipe, knocking out a screen in an upper-story window, avoiding several trip wires, and then sliding silently onto the floor of a dark hallway. She took a deep breath and rose to her feet, every nerve alert.
Beneath her foot, a parquet floorboard creaked. Oh, come now, she thought. She waited for a moment, slowing her breathing, feeling her heart thunder in her chest. All around her was impenetrable black. The only sounds were the creaks of an ancient manor house.
Nothing.
All clear.
Maggie could feel dampness under her arms and hot drops of sweat trickling down the small of her back. Aware of each and every sound, she continued down the hall until she reached the home’s library. The door was locked. Well, of course it is, Maggie thought. She picked the lock in seconds with one of her hairpins.
Once she’d ascertained 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 carpet 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 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 tumblers dropping into place—not hear, but feel the vibrations with her fingertips—she knew she had 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 wearing an SS uniform. “You’re never going to get away with this, you know,” he lisped, like Paul Lukas in Confessions of a Nazi Spy.
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 squinted at the light in his eyes.
Maggie ran at him, kneeing him in the groin, hard. While he was doubled over, she elbowed him in the back of the head. Satisfied he was unconscious, she ran to the door, folders still in hand.
Except that he wasn’t unconscious. An arm shot out and a hand grabbed Maggie’s ankle. She fell, files sliding across the floor. She kicked his hand off and scrambled for the door.
He struggled to his feet and ran after her, catching and holding her easily with his left arm while he wrapped his right hand around her throat. She gasped for breath, trying to throw him off, but she couldn’t get the proper leverage. He threw her up against the wall, pinning her—
“Stop! Stop!”
Then, again—the voice amplified by a megaphone, louder this time: “OH, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, STOP!”
The man’s arms around Maggie relaxed and released her.
“What on earth …?” she muttered in exasperation.
The hall’s lights blinked on, bare bulbs in elaborate molded ceilings. It wasn’t actually the home of a high-ranking Nazi in Berlin but the Beaulieu Estate in Hampshire, England. Beaulieu was considered the “finishing school” of SOE—Special Operations Executive—Winston Churchill’s black ops division. Some of the recruits joked that SOE didn’t stand for Special Operations Executive as much as “Stately ’omes of England,” where all the training seemed to take place.
“What now?” Maggie grumbled and started to pace the hallway.
A severe-looking man in his late forties with a full head of gray hair walked out into the hall with a clipboard. “All right, Miss Hope—would you like to tell us what you did wrong?”
Maggie stopped, hands on hips. “Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Thornley.” Maggie had to remember not to call him Thorny, which was his unfortunate nickname among the trainees. “I picked the lock, cracked the safe, took the folders, disarmed the enemy—”
“Disarmed. Didn’t kill.”
Maggie stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “I was just about to do the honors, sir.”
“You were about to be killed yourself, young lady,” Thornley barked.
The tall man in the SS uniform walked up behind Maggie, rubbing the back of his head. “Not bad technique there, Maggie. But they told me that if you only knocked me out and didn’t fake-kill me I’d have to come after you again.”
She gave him her most winning smile. “Sorry about the knee, Phil.”
“Not at all.”
Thornley was not amused. “Not killing the enemy is the worst mistake because …”