His Majesty's Hope(8)
SOE was no ordinary spy organization. It was unconventional, fluid, rogue. And its goals were not military. No, the goals of SOE were sabotage and subversion, often collaborating with local resistance groups in enemy territories to thwart the enemy, working toward the ultimate liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe. Based at 64 Baker Street in London, its motley crew of administrators and agents were sometimes called the Baker Street Irregulars, after Sherlock Holmes’s men. They were charged by Churchill to “set Europe ablaze!”
Sir Frank Nelson, the Director of SOE, was at his massive wooden desk in his office. He had high cheekbones, thin lips, and fine hair held fast with a copious amount of Brylcreem. He pulled over a heavy file labeled margaret hope. Stamped on it, in thick red letters, was top secret.
The papers in the file were typed, single-spaced. British by birth, but raised in the United States for most of her life, Margaret Rose Hope had started off in May 1940 as one of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s secretaries. She’d cracked a secret code that a Nazi sleeper spy had put in a newspaper advertisement, and saved not just the Prime Minister’s life but also St. Paul’s Cathedral from destruction.
These strengths, along with her fluency in French and German, led to her being recruited by Peter Frain, head of MI-5. Her increased strength and endurance, honed at Windsor Castle while protecting the young Princess Elizabeth from a kidnapping threat, had convinced Frain to put her name forward as a candidate for SOE. She’d been accepted, and had spent much of the winter and spring of 1941 at various training camps.
Surviving those, she’d moved on to six weeks of “finishing school” at Lord Montagu’s Beaulieu Estate in the New Forest, in the Station X–Germany division. Passing her final test at Beaulieu was what led Maggie Hope to SOE’s sandbagged Baker Street office.
Maggie stepped around a Salvation Army soldier ringing an iron bell, an older woman in the requisite navy-blue uniform, and dropped a coin into the basket. Air Raid wardens in tin helmets were sweeping up broken glass from the bombing the night before.
She entered the building, showed her papers to the guard on duty, and was led by a young woman in uniform to Nelson’s office. He rose when she entered. “Please sit down, Miss Hope.”
Maggie had endured a long day. Her cartwheel hat, with its low crown and wide, stiff brim, was askew. She had a run in her last good pair of stockings. Her dark red hair was slipping from its bun, and her lipstick had worn off long ago. She’d taken three different trains to get from Beaulieu to Baker Street in London, and had lost her gas mask on one of them, her gloves on another, and her temper on the third. She’d only had time to drop her valise in her room at David’s flat in Knightsbridge before making her way to Marylebone and SOE’s offices.
“Thank you,” she replied, as she took a seat in the hard-backed wooden chair, crossing her ankles and folding her gloveless hands in her lap.
It was summer in London. Outside Nelson’s taped windows, Maggie could see the glossy leaves of a hawthorn tree. The office itself was austere, with only a green banker’s lamp and two framed photographs: King George VI and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Nelson turned back to finish reading her folder. “I’d love a cup of tea, Miss Hope.”
Tea? Maggie thought, as she clenched her hands. He expects me to parachute into Germany and make tea? Still, her voice remained even. “Why, I’d love a cup of tea, too, sir. One sugar, if you have it. Of course, I understand if you don’t.”
Nelson looked up, blinked, then recovered. He cleared his throat. “I know you’ve just returned from Beaulieu, Miss Hope, but it’s time.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Two missions in one.” He peered at her over the rim of his glasses. “The first is to deliver desperately needed radio crystals to one of a resistance circle in Berlin. The other, a more difficult task, is to gain entrance to a high-level Nazi officer’s study and bug it.”
“I see.” Maggie considered. “Who’s the officer?”
“A Commandant Hess.” He looked down at the file. “I understand Hess was the mastermind behind the attempted assassination of the King and the kidnapping of the Princess last December?”
“Yes,” Maggie said, aware that Nelson was scrutinizing her face for any reaction. She gave none.
“So it’s personal for you.”
“You might say.” If there’s no notation in your little file that Commandant Clara Hess of the Abwehr had once been known as Clara Hope, my allegedly dead-in-a-car-crash mother, I’m not about to enlighten you, Nellie.