There were tears in Claire’s eyes that threatened to overflow. “But what can we do?” she said, her knee touching Pierce’s.
“My dear,” Pierce said, his leg pressing against hers. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
SIX
MI-5 WAS OFFICIALLY known as the Imperial Security Intelligence Service—but no one called it that. Headquartered in a small office building at 58 St. James’s Street, MI-5’s mission was counterintelligence. Protecting secrets. Catching spies.
And with the Prime Minister’s blessing in wartime, at any cost, by any means necessary.
Down in smoke-filled windowless offices crammed with battered wooden desks, dented gray filing cabinets, and worn green carpeting, junior MI-5 agents toiled in obscurity.
“Mark, I need you on something.”
Mark Standish, a youngish man with tortoiseshell spectacles, looked up from the piles of photographs on his desk with tired, red-rimmed eyes. He was dark-haired and doughy. “What is it?”
“I just spoke with one of our agents,” Hugh Thompson said. “There’s a high probability that someone from the watch list was spotted in London yesterday.” Hugh was taller and slimmer, with a high forehead and deep-set green eyes. He had a tendency to stick his hands in his hair when he was frustrated, which was often, and so it stuck up at odd angles.
“Nazi?” Mark asked.
Hugh shook his head. “Bloody IRA. Suspected of coordinating several bombings, including the one at Euston.”
“Euston, you say? Bad one, that.” Mark shuffled through some papers. “Let’s see.… Our agents in the field have picked up some leads in the last week about a possible attack by the IRA.” Mark shuffled through some papers and picked one up. “Here it is, from Agent Dunham.”
“What was the target?” Hugh asked.
“Saint Paul’s Cathedral. But the time-and-date window passed.”
“Passed?”
“Yes.”
Hugh looked at the memo again. “What if the agents got the date wrong? Would be terrible if something happened to it. Change the skyline, terrify people, crush morale …”
Mark shrugged. “Don’t know, old bean.” He surveyed the mountains of papers and maps and photographs of suspects. “But I’ve got at least fifty IRA leads that are even more specific, and I suggest that’s where we put our manpower. Most of them somehow connected with one Eammon Devlin.”
“Fine,” Hugh said. “But I’m taking this memo up to Frain.”
As Hugh reached for it, Mark pulled it closer to himself. “I can take it to him,” Mark said, smelling an opportunity.
Hugh snorted. “Why? I thought you had at least fifty leads that were more specific.”
“You know, you’re really a transparent bastard. Stop trying to brownnose Frain. He doesn’t like it.”
Hugh scratched his head, unwilling to push the matter. “Fine. Forget it, then.” He snatched the memo back and jammed it underneath a towering stack of papers. He sighed, unbuttoning his top button and loosening his tie. “Anything else?”
“Ah, here’s something—that girl who was murdered in Pimlico.” Mark picked up a piece of paper with a photograph clipped to it. He gave a low whistle. “Too bad—she was a real looker.” He handed the photo to Hugh.
Hugh replied, “Thought that was a police matter. Open-and-shut case.”
“Not when it’s someone connected with the Prime Minister’s office.”
Hugh looked down at the photo again. The girl had a doelike quality to her. Not that it meant anything. “Think it was more than a murder, then?”
“Frain found a witness—one of the girl’s flatmates caught a glimpse of a man lurking around. Didn’t think much of it at the time.”
“In the blackout?”
Mark leaned his bulk back in his chair. “There was a moon that night. Almost full. Said she got a decent look.”
“Was she able to make an identification?”
“Not a conclusive one. She picked out a few men from photographs. The other two were decoys. But one was IRA—name of Michael Murphy.”
“Murphy? That bastard’s still in the country?” Murphy was implicated in a series of IRA bombings in London earlier in the year, which had killed almost fifty people.
“Apparently.”
“But if it was Murphy, why her?” Hugh gave Diana’s picture a hard look, as if she could somehow answer him. “And why now?”
At No. 10, Maggie was learning that Mr. Churchill could often be irritable, incensed, and sarcastic.
When she made a mistake—and she made plenty—her hearing, her education, and her country of origin were all called into question.