His Majesty's Hope(104)

“Since when do you smoke?” Frain asked.

“Since when are you so curious about my personal habits?” she retorted. Then, “Since I returned from Berlin.”

“I see,” Frain said. Then, “Thank you for agreeing to meet me here.”

“Did I have a choice?” Maggie was exhausted—her face was drawn, with smudges of purple under her eyes. She had lost the plushness of youth.

“Of course you do. But since I was the one who originally brought you into the spy game, I do feel a certain amount of responsibility to you.” Frain lit his own cigarette. “How are you?”

“I’m getting through, one hour at a time. No, let me rephrase that—one minute at a time.”

She wouldn’t look Frain in the eye, and instead glanced over at the painted tiles. “William Donald of Bayswater aged nineteen, railway clerk, was drowned in the Lea trying to save a lad from a dangerous entanglement of weed. July sixteenth, 1876,” she read aloud. “George Lee, fireman. At a fire in Clerkenwell carried an unconscious girl to the escape falling six times and died of his injuries. July twenty-sixth, 1876. Elizabeth Boxall aged seventeen, of Bethnal Green who died of injuries received in trying to save a child from a runaway horse. June twentieth, 1888.” Maggie gave a delicate snort. “It’s a bit macabre, no?”

“Actually,” disagreed Frain, “I think it’s rather beautiful.”

“Didn’t realize you had a ghoulish streak, Peter.”

“Unlike these poor souls, you didn’t die, Maggie. But I want you to know that I understand the sacrifice you made. That you’re still making. That you will continue to make.”

She finally fixed her gaze on him. “You knew all along, didn’t you? You and Churchill.”

There was no “Mr. Churchill” anymore.

“About my father and my mother. That’s why I was hired for the secretary job in the first place. That’s why I was able to become a spy. That’s why I was sent to Berlin. I was bait to bring Clara in.”

She stared at the tiles, no longer seeing the litany of heroics. “You both used me. And, worst of all, I let you. I was an ambitious young thing and I believed in the cause. I wanted to be a patriot.”

Her lips twisted in a smile. “Ha!”

“Maggie.” Frain searched for the right words. “I was hoping that you’d never learn the truth, but it was inevitable, I see now. Now you know. And now you have to deal with what’s been uncovered.”

“Well, I have a fantastic way to ‘deal with it,’ as you so ambiguously say—I quit.” She threw her half-smoked cigarette down and ground it savagely under her heel.

Frain sighed. “It’s not that simple, Maggie.”

“Well, let me make it that simple for you. I quit. I resign. I’m walking away. You can find someone else to get information out of that woman. Because I’m never going to speak to her, ever again.”

“I’m not sure that anyone else can. She’ll only talk to you. And if she doesn’t talk, she’ll be executed.”

“That’s not my problem—I quit, remember?”

“You can’t quit, Maggie,” Frain said. “You’re a spook now. You’re part of a family.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me about ‘family’!”

“When you first started with Churchill you were certainly smart, but unfocused, a bit unformed. Frankly, I didn’t know if you had what it takes to work in Intelligence—whether you had the skills, the cunning to survive. But the way you handled yourself in Berlin shows us that you’re the whole package now. Look at yourself. You’re strong, capable, and yes, even ruthless. You should be proud of how far you’ve come.”

“I don’t want to be ruthless,” Maggie shot back. “I never wanted to be ruthless. I want to be ruthful. Full of ruth, in fact.”

“I understand that you’re upset. But it will be worth it when we win this war.”

“Look, Peter,” Maggie said bitterly. “I’ve changed. I’ve done things I never thought I was capable of doing. I killed a man. A boy, really. He’s dead now—because of me. Me! His blood is on my hands, and I’ll think of him for as long as I live.”

“He was the enemy.”

“That’s nonsense! He was a boy. A boy! A scared little boy, with the rest of his life ahead of him.”

“A boy who was willing to kill you.”

“Because he had to. Because that’s what he was brainwashed to do. That’s the world we live in now. Just a few years ago, we might have been friends.”