Mr.Churchill's Secretary(83)

Pierce touched the poker to her shoulder again, and this time pressed it into the flesh.

Maggie cried out as the burning metal seared her arm. The stench of charred flesh filled the room. Unbidden tears filled her eyes. She turned once again to Leticia, deliberately allowing the tears to run down her face. Maggie saw Leticia blanch.

“All right! All right!” Edmund said. “I’ll tell you. Everything. Just stop.”

All eyes turned to him.

“As you know, we’re aware you’re sending encrypted messages,” Edmund said.

The poker waved in front of Maggie. “Tell me something I don’t already know,” Pierce said.

Maggie could see Leticia begin to inch around the kitchen, unnoticed by the men.

“We know that you communicate with each other using ciphers generated from five rotator wheels.”

Leticia was now at the kitchen sink.

“Yes, I know that already,” Pierce said, impatient.

Leticia picked up a large, black cast-iron skillet. Maggie could see remnants of scrambled eggs—that day’s supper?—coating the bottom.

“Leticia!” Roger called.

Yes! Maggie thought. Leticia, you do have a moral compass, after all.

As if in slow motion, Pierce turned to her. “Mrs. Barron? What on earth do you think you’re—”

The heavy pan hit Pierce at the base of his skull. He crumpled to the floor.

Roger gasped at Leticia. “You stupid bitch! What have you done?”

Murphy wasn’t impressed by the symmetry and elegance of the soaring interior of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Too bloody Protestant, he muttered, as he made his way down a side aisle, his tread soft on the black-and-white marble tiles. He avoided looking at the altar and any depictions of Jesus.

He permitted himself to light one candle in the chapel of St. Dunstan for Claire and her mission before moving on. Claire was surely dead by now, he knew. But if she had accomplished her mission—to assassinate that bastard—then it was worth it.

It had to be.

An elderly woman with an elegant gray chignon, holding a Bible in trembling, blue-veined hands, gave Murphy a sideways look.

“Eh, sorry, ma’am,” he said, suddenly realizing he still had his hat on his head. He snatched it off and covered his heart with it, affecting a pious posture as he made his way down the long aisle.

When he could see that no one was looking, he let himself through one door and then another, taking a few flights of stairs down to the crypt. From there, he made his way in the dark to a place he’d come to know quite well.

The place where, slowly, night after night, he’d been building the bomb.

“Hey there, darlin’,” Murphy said, running his hands along the bomb’s edges. He’d spent many hours down in the darkness crafting this beauty. Between destroying Winston Churchill and then St. Paul’s Cathedral—the spirit of London to so many of the bloody Brits—he and Claire would bring England to her knees. With no firm leadership and a panic-stricken public, the Germans would have no trouble finishing the country off.

“All right, baby,” he cooed to the machine, twisting a wire here and tweaking one there. “It’s almost time.”

Above him, mothers prayed for their sons in the military, widows prayed for their dead husbands, and even a few atheists clasped hands and looked heavenward in hope. None of these people were in Murphy’s thoughts as he set the timer on his bomb.

In the darkness, the gold pocket watch began a slow ticking countdown.





TWENTY-SIX





“ROGER!” LETICIA HISSED, still holding the heavy skillet that had taken down Malcolm Pierce.

Roger’s eyes bulged as he took in Pierce’s prone form. “Christ, woman! Are you daft? What did you do that for?”

“I didn’t sign on for murder! Pierce said Hitler would bring order and stability.” She wrinkled her nose. “Not torture in my kitchen!”

The dogs barked in the background, excited by the noise, their claws scraping on the locked kitchen door.

“But you believe in the cause?”

“Y-yes,” she answered. “I’m just not keen on the idea of burning people with hot pokers.” She clicked her tongue. “Not at all seemly.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Roger said. “Going ahead anyway.”

Maggie and Edmund exchanged a look. Pierce’s gun was on the floor. If there was some way one of them could get to it, they’d at least have a chance.

“Roger!” she said. “You’ll do no such thing!”

“I don’t think you understand. In for a penny, in for a pound, what? These two people can identify us. And people in Berlin are waiting for a prisoner to be delivered.”