His Majesty's Hope(76)

Still, with her tiny SOE-issued camera, the one Noreen had given her in London so long ago, Maggie photographed as many documents as she could, each click intensifying her disappointment. She stopped short when she came to a packet of mathematics problems awaiting Oberg’s approval. The first question, obviously for children, read: If it costs 15,000 marks to build one house per working-class family and it costs 6,000,000 marks to build and run an insane asylum, how many working-class houses can you build for the cost of one insane asylum?

Excellent, Oberg had written in red pen. APPROVED.

Maggie shook her head. It’s time to go home, Hope, she thought as she put the papers back, exactly as she’d found them, closed the locks, and replaced the briefcase as it had been.

Maggie slipped out of Oberg’s study and up to her room, silent as a ghost.


The next morning, when David awoke, the young nurse was at his bedside. “Just need to take your vitals,” she said, checking his pulse and sticking a thermometer under his tongue. “Your pulse is strong, that’s good,” she added briskly. Then she pulled out the thermometer. “And your temperature’s normal. You’re doing quite well, considering.”

David stared off into space.

“You know,” the nurse continued, “it’s none of my business, but your brother—that is, your brother who your parents now tell me isn’t really your brother—is still in the waiting room. He slept here last night. Don’t think he’s eaten a thing.”

David wouldn’t meet her eyes. “He should go.”

The nurse put a hand on his shoulder. “I can fetch him.”

“My father …” David finally looked at her. “I can’t …” She didn’t look away. “I know what you’re thinking—here I am, a grown man—and I can’t even stand up to my own father.”

“That’s not what I was thinking at all,” she said. “What I was thinking is that it’s hard.”

“Hard?” David repeated. “What’s hard, exactly? Being stabbed? Living through the Blitz? Fighting a losing war? Having parents who love you—but only conditionally? Or”—he lowered his voice and she leaned in to hear him—“being ‘like that.’ ”

“I was just thinking that life is hard,” she replied. “Life is hard—for all of us, luv. And maybe it’s just a bit easier if you have someone by your side. I’ll check in on you again in a bit.”


The cafeteria at Guy’s Hospital was crowded. After Freddie paid the cashier for his cup of tea and toast, he looked for somewhere to sit. There was an empty chair at Benjamin Greene’s table.

Freddie decided to bite the proverbial bullet. “May I sit down?” he asked Mr. Greene, who was pretending to read The Times with shadowed eyes.

There was no reply.

Freddie sat and stirred his tea. Mr. Greene ignored him.

“I know my being here makes you uncomfortable,” Freddie said, “and for that I’m sorry.”

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Mr. Greene said, laying down the newspaper and taking off his reading glasses. “I don’t have any feelings about your being here. You’re nothing to me. No one.”

“We all love him,” Freddie persisted gently. “And I just want to know how he’s doing.”

“You love him? Then get out of his life,” Benjamin Greene snapped and folded his paper shut. “Leave. Him. Alone.”

“No.” Freddie was resolute.

“No?” Mr. Greene shoved back his chair and stood. “If you think you’re going to get your hands on my fortune, now or later, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”

“You can’t buy his love,” Freddie countered. “And if you hold it over him, he’s going to hate you for it. David’s better than that. And, sir, I think that deep down you’re better than that, too.”

“I could have you arrested for gross indecency,” Mr. Greene whispered. “You’d be put in jail. Chemically castrated.”

“Then you’d have to do that to your son, too.”

Mr. Greene was going to retort, then stopped himself, put on his hat, and stalked out.

Freddie pulled over the Times Mr. Greene had left and scanned the articles. Most were about the meeting between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the eight points of their Atlantic Charter, and if and when the United States would finally commit to war. “Well, well, well,” Freddie muttered, tossing the paper aside. “Close, but no cigar, eh, Winnie?”





Chapter Fifteen


Edmund Hope took the train from Bletchley to London the next day, to go to MI-5 and speak with Hugh Thompson.