Mr.Churchill's Secretary(55)

Gran, you’d be so proud, he thought, surveying his work. And using Da’s watch, too—that’s the perfect touch.

Before he could stop it, his thoughts returned to the night that the British had burned down his house, killing his mother. He’d hidden in the shed and finally crept out and saw the Black and Tans beating his father to the ground, then giving his lifeless form another savage kick before divesting him of his wedding ring and pocket watch.

As he hid behind the corner of the house to observe them go, eyes blank with shock, he heard one of the men. “Look, there’s a little one!”

The other men looked, ready for another fight. “Should we get him?” one asked, not eager to leave any witnesses behind.

“Nah, he’s not worth it, after all,” the first man said. “Here, lad. Catch!” And he threw the pocket watch through the air.

Without thinking, Murphy’s hand reached up into the air, and he caught it before hitting the dirt path, hard. The watch was solid and warm in his small hand.

“Something to remember your dear dad by,” the man said, cackling.

His companions laughed. “And us, too!” one shouted as they made their way off into the darkness.

Looping the last green, white, and orange wires around the pocket watch, he thought, This is for you, Da, and then he gave the screw a final twist.

The day went on—there were letters to write, dictation to take, filing to do. But still Maggie couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling that she had almost seen something. As though out of the corner of her eye.

Could it be? she thought, reaching for the newspaper again.

No.

No, no, no.

Her hands found the paper, flipping it open again to the page with the advert. She couldn’t take her eyes from the stitching, the dots and dashes.

Nelson meowed, loud and long, and came over to her. He rubbed against her ankles, purring.

She ran her hands through her hair. “Nelson, quiet! I’m trying to think.”

Abwehr was the German intelligence agency—the counterpart to MI-5 and MI-6. It had three distinct types of spies operating in Britain. The first, known as the S-Chain, consisted of agents who entered the country with false British identities and engaged in spying. R-Chain agents were third-country nationals—neither British nor German—who entered Britain legally, collected intelligence, and reported their findings back to Hamburg or Berlin. Then there were the V-Chain agents—sleeper agents who melted seamlessly into English life, waiting to be contacted and activated.

Malcolm Pierce had been waiting for years.

In the bedroom of his apartment, he double-checked to make sure his blackout curtains were completely closed. Then he locked the bedroom door.

To the casual observer, the bedroom looked unremarkable. There was striped green paper on the walls, a mahogany four-poster bed, and gold-framed paintings of foxes and hounds. There were no personal mementos or photographs. A large bay window provided an excellent lookout onto the street below. And in the closet, hidden underneath piles and piles of merino and cashmere sweaters wrapped in tissue, was a suitcase radio.

Pierce had been living in London under an assumed name for almost a decade, but he still found himself longing for the strong black coffee and baumkuchen of his childhood. He shook off the thought and took down the suitcase, placing it next to the window for optimal reception. He opened the lid and switched it on.

Every week, on Monday nights at ten, he switched on the radio and listened for fifteen minutes. If the higher-ups in Berlin had orders for him, that’s how they’d contact him.

Every Monday night for ten years he’d opened his suitcase by the window and listened. Every Monday night he had pen, paper, and codebook ready, just in case. And nearly every Monday night, all he’d heard was this empty hiss of the airwaves. The communiqués he did receive were always short and sporadic.

Tonight, however, would be different. The message had been placed in the newspaper advert. Claire had clipped it and sent it to the contact in Norway, who’d posted it on to Berlin. And tonight he would receive his orders.

After what seemed like an interminable wait, the radio sputtered to life.

The operator in Hamburg typed out code, fast and staccato. Pierce wrote it down, then asked the operator to repeat the message, standard protocol. She did, and he acknowledged and signed off.

It took Pierce several more minutes with the codebook to decode the message.

When he did, he held it in shaking hands and stared at it in incredulity and wonder.

Bedienhandlung die Zuversicht.

Translated, it read: Execute Operation Hope.

“John?”

John looked up from the pool of light from his green-glass banker’s lamp, which illuminated the neat stack of papers on his wooden desk in the private secretaries’ underground office.