The train platform itself was dark, illuminated only by a few blue bulbs of blackout lights. It was a hot, sullen night. The sky lit up every few minutes with flashes of lightning, and she could hear the distant rumble of thunder. Finally, the train pulled up in a cloud of steam and shriek of brakes. She handed her two tagged suitcases to a uniformed porter and climbed aboard.
The train was crowded—full of new recruits, both men and women, soldiers and civilians, on their way to various training camps. They were loud and their laughter was raucous. She walked the smoke-filled corridors looking for an empty seat, ignoring the occasional whistle or catcall from a man in uniform.
She found an empty compartment and sat down on the dusty velvet seat cushion. Then, with a screaming whistle, the train began to lurch forward, on its way to Scotland.
Maggie startled when the conductor knocked on the door, asking for her ticket, her heart beating wildly, her brain full of images of train journeys in Berlin. But she gave it to him, and he moved on without noticing her trembling hands.
She blinked, as though to clear the memories, took off her gloves, and rummaged in her handbag for the book she’d brought, one she’d once read in an English class at Wellesley College. She’d memorized the words then, but she hadn’t understood them. But the poem haunted her, and she wanted to give it another chance now. She opened the yellowing pages.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
As the urban landscape slipped away into the darkness, she read and reread the words. English class had always scared her. Unlike math, there was never a right answer. Words always seemed slippery, with multiple meanings—impossible to pin down. But now there was an odd relief in that very property.
Although the words of the poem were bleak, she felt a strange comfort in them. Yeats himself, who’d survived the Great War, had felt as she did. Through the years, through the centuries, many, many people had felt the same way.
Absently, her hand went to her side, feeling the outline of the bullet there, just beneath her skin. And she braced herself for whatever lay ahead.
Clara Hess was the new occupant of the Queen’s House at the Tower of London, billeted next door to Stefan Krueger.
With no makeup on her face, her long hair loose, and wearing her prison-issued jumpsuit, she looked years younger than she had in Berlin, girlish even. She sat at a small wooden desk, writing in a journal.
When the two guards at her door announced that Edmund Hope had arrived to see her, she didn’t seem surprised in the least. When Edmund entered, Clara smiled, a warm and generous smile.
One he did not return. He took off his hat but did not sit down.
“Hello, Edmund,” Clara said, rising and walking over to him, her feet bare on the cold stone floor.
He did not respond but stared, as if unable to fuse together the pictures in his mind of his late wife with the woman in front of him.
“Don’t stare, darling,” she said finally. “Or at least blink once in a while. Otherwise it’s rude.”
Finally, finally, Edmund spoke, almost in a whisper. “There are people here, people in charge, who believe you have turned to our side now, and that you’re willing to work for us. They hold the Machiavellian, and I say cynical, belief that they can use you.”
Clara opened her mouth to reply, but Edmund put up a hand. “You’ll never see her again. I’ll make sure of that.”
“Oh, Edmund,” Clara said, stretching like a cat. “She’ll return. Wait and see.”
Biting back unsaid words, Edmund strode out of the room, calling “Guard!” The door closed behind him, and then she heard the series of locks click, one by one, fifteen in all.
Clara turned back to the window, staring out over the Thames and Tower Bridge, a small smile playing on her lips.
Historical Notes
As with Mr. Churchill’s Secretary and Princess Elizabeth’s Spy, His Majesty’s Hope is not a history, nor is it meant to be—it’s a novel, an imaginary tale.
However, I used many historical sources. Instrumental to writing about Berlin in 1941 were the books Hitler’s Spy Chief: The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery, by Richard Bassett; Berlin: The Downfall, 1945, by Anthony Beevor; Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II and Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror, by Michael Burleigh; The Perfect Nazi: Uncovering My Grandfather’s Secret Past, by Martin Davidson; The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape, by Brian Ladd; In the Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, by Eric Larson; Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, by Eric Metaxas; Berlin at War, by Roger Moorhouse; and Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power, by Andrew Nagorski.