His Majesty's Hope(79)
Maggie sat, frozen, at her end of the table. Why would Clara want to find her—a woman who was the date of a low-level Abwehr agent? Did she suspect something? What did she know?
Seeing Oberg look at her with concern, Maggie forced herself to pick up her knife and fork and join in the conversation once again. Once Goebbels told Clara that Maggie was working for Oberg, it would be over. The Gestapo would come.
When the last guest had left, Oberg smiled at Maggie. “You were magnificent, my dear.”
Maggie, who felt as though she might lose her mind at any second, was feeling less than magnificent. All she wanted to do was get away. If her cover hadn’t been compromised yet, it would be by morning. She had only a few hours in which to run. Every second counted. “Thank you, Herr Oberg,” she replied evenly.
“Please,” he said, “after such a wonderful evening, why don’t you call me Gustav? And may I call you Margareta?”
“Of course,” Maggie answered, even though her heart was hammering treacherously. Was Goebbels on the telephone now, telling Clara that she was working for Herr Oberg? And then what would happen? Would the Gestapo bang on the door and take her to headquarters for interrogation? Certainly in the morning.… But what if he called Clara tonight? Would there be SS officers pounding on the door during the night?
“Would you like a drink, my dear?” Oberg suggested. “In my study? Some cognac, perhaps?”
Maggie forced a yawn. “I’m afraid it’s late and I’m tired,” she said, moving away from him.
He pressed closer, pinning her against the wall, hot breath scented with chocolate. “You have such beautiful hair,” he murmured, running a hand along her cheek. “What I wouldn’t do to see it down …”
Maggie pulled away. “I’m sorry, I have”—it took her a moment to think of the word in German for menstrual pain—“Krämpfe. It’s not the best time.”
She was relieved to see his look of ardor dim. She walked to the door to the servants’ stairs. “Good night, Gustav.”
“Good night, Margareta,” he replied regretfully.
Maggie forced herself to walk in a sedate fashion up the stairs to her room.
However, as soon as she’d closed the door and locked it behind her, she set to work with feverish intensity. She tore off the borrowed jewelry, stepped out of her evening gown, and slipped on a nondescript cotton dress. Over it, she put on a cardigan. And then, as she’d rehearsed at training camp, she rolled up a blouse and stuffed it under the sweater, creating the illusion of a dowager’s hump.
From the secret pocket in the hem of her skirt, she took out the slip of silk with her codes. Then she lit a match and let the silk burn on the green-glass candle stand. When only ashes remained, she mixed the ash with water from the basin, then used her fingers to paint the gray through her hair, hide the coppery red of her curls. She used some of the dry ash as powder, and darkened the circles under her eyes and below her cheekbones. She pinned on her hat and pulled on her gloves, then picked up the bag with knitting and the false bottom with the camera. She knew what she’d captured on film in Oberg’s office didn’t amount to much. Should she risk taking it and being discovered?
In for a penny, in for a pound, she decided, and threw it in.
Then, looping the handbag around her neck, she opened the window and crawled out, leaping down to the lower-floor roof—an insane distance, but she had no choice. When she’d recovered from the impact, she climbed down a trellis. She hit the ground, looked around her, and then began to run. In the yard next door, a chained dog began to bark.
Only when she reached the U-Bahn station did she slow, affecting a shuffle and limp, as though her joints were arthritic. She kept her eyes down and tried to focus on her breath. In and out, Hope—in and out—just like Thorny taught you …
Her train pulled away from the station just as an SS van pulled into Herr Oberg’s drive.
Chapter Sixteen
The Berlin-Mitte that Maggie returned to had changed. The RAF had been making nightly raids—there were more bombed-out buildings, some completely leveled, others decimated. The hot morning sun shone red through the haze of dust and destruction. The acrid stench of smoke wafted on the breeze as air-raid sirens throbbed in the distance.
Maggie glanced surreptitiously at the people on the street and realized that the Berliner invincibility she’d noted when she first arrived had been punctured. She could see it in the people’s eyes—a flicker of realization, of panic, of the knowledge that the war wasn’t just something happening in the abstract but was now coming home to them.