His Majesty's Hope(95)
Still in shock, Elise released Ernst and then John from their cases. Swiftly appraising the situation, Ernst scrambled to Maggie and tugged off his jacket. “You can’t die on me,” he said firmly, pressing it against her wound. “I’m a doctor. We’ve come too far.”
John knelt, taking Maggie’s hand in his.
“What are you doing here?” Elise repeated to Clara.
“Going to London with your half sister, Mausi. It’s time for Mutti’s third act.”
Maggie looked up at Elise, whose mouth had fallen open in an expression of horror, as if she’d seen a monster. Their eyes met, then Maggie crumpled to the floor.
Chapter Twenty-one
Maggie opened her eyes. She saw nothing but blinding white. For a blissful moment, she didn’t know where she was, or even who she was. Then the memories flooded through her.
She looked around and saw white sheets, a white enamel bed frame, white walls, white curtains, and, in a sky of dazzling blue outside the window, puffy white clouds. It was quiet. The air smelled of freshly laundered sheets. Through a haze of morphine, she saw an older woman, plump, with a kind face, dressed all in white, come toward her. “Mademoiselle Hope?” the nurse asked gently.
Maggie nodded. The slight movement set off a chain reaction of pain, which seemed centered in her abdomen.
The woman stood by her bed, her gray hair and eyes framed by a white, winged nurse’s cap. “Mademoiselle Hope,” she said in French, “you are in Universitätsspital Zürich—the University Hospital of Zürich. You sustained a gunshot wound to your right ribs. You will need to rest, but the doctors anticipate a full recovery.”
“What about the others?” Maggie asked weakly.
“They survived. Monsieur Sterling and Dr. Klein have returned to London. And Mademoiselle Hess has returned to Berlin.”
Elise! Maggie thought. A picture flashed of Elise’s face—her horror and disgust—when she’d seen Maggie shoot the boy. And then when she learned they were sisters—
Maggie turned her face away. “And Madame Hess?”
The nurse shook her head. “A gentleman is here from Britain—he will tell you the rest.”
“How—how long have I been here?”
“You were brought in yesterday.”
The events on the train came coursing back, horrific images she could not obliterate. What have I become? Maggie wondered. She looked down at her hands, remembering. They were clean now, but she could still feel the blood, sticky and hot. Then she grabbed the enamel basin on the bedside table and vomited. There was nothing in her stomach, so she brought up bile, black and bitter.
The nurse held her shoulders as Maggie vomited, then brought her cool water to drink, wiped her face with a cloth, and laid her back against the pillow. “The bullet is still in you,” the nurse warned. Maggie touched her wound, probed it gently with her fingers. Yes, there, embedded in flesh, she could feel the hard outline of the bullet. “The doctor will remove it later today,” the nurse continued. “It’s a minor procedure.”
“No.”
The nurse looked surprised. “No?”
Maggie’s face hardened. “I said no—leave it in.”
A shadow appeared at the door. It was Sir Frank Nelson, Director of the SOE. “Leave us, please,” he said to the nurse as he removed his knife-creased hat. “May I get you anything, Miss Hope? Water? Tea from the hospital cafeteria?”
Maggie’s lips twisted as she remembered his asking her to make him tea back in London, which now felt like an eternity ago. My, how the worm has turned, she thought. But instead of feeling joy, she felt nothing but numb.
Nelson closed the door. They were alone in the room. “Father Licht was able to get the film developed and the resulting information to Bishop von Preysing and Bishop von Galen.”
“And what did the Bishops do with it?”
“They’re going to speak out at High Mass today. By tonight, German resistance groups will have flyers of the homilies distributed all through Germany, and dropped on German troops. Hitler and his cronies will be exposed for the child murderers that they are.”
“What about Gottlieb Lehrer?” Somehow, her own safety meant so little, knowing how much peril those two valiant men were in.
“Lehrer, I’m sorry to say, was killed by the SS. Or, rather, he committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner and have secrets tortured out of him. Father Licht is still safe, as far as we know.”
Gottlieb? Dead? “But he’s a Catholic. He would never commit suicide. He’d consider it a mortal sin.”
“He saved the resistance group.”