Princess Elizabeth's Spy(10)

He could hear Marta making her way down the creaky narrow staircase. “I’m taking care of it,” he called to her. Still, she came, fully dressed in a heavy wool skirt and cabled cardigan.

“Marta Kunst,” the man said to the tiny older woman, “you have relatives in Germany. You’ve sent them chess moves, which our censors suspect to be code. You’ll be sent to a British prison camp until the authorities get to the bottom of it.”

“What?” Marta put a blue-veined hand to her throat. “I write to my Cousin Albie—we play chess! It’s perfectly innocent!”

“We’ll see about that,” the man said. He gestured to his comrades. “Take her.” Without preamble, they clamped a pair of handcuffs on her and began to lead her out of the house.

“Marta!” Alistair called in anguish.

“It’s all right,” his wife said, trying to reassure him. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

They hustled her out the door and into the waiting van.

“I’ll do everything I can!” Alistair called after her. “I’ll go to the King!”


The London police identified the woman who checked into Claridge’s under a false name and was shot in the bathtub as Victoria Keeley, missing from Bletchley Park. An autopsy had revealed that from the angle of the gunshot wound, suicide was an impossibility.

As soon as the word Bletchley was introduced, MI-5 took over the case.

Peter Frain, head of MI-5, immediately called in Edmund Hope, his Bletchley undercover operative. Edmund was a former London School of Economics professor, until he’d been in a car accident that killed his young wife and severely injured him. He’d been recruited as a spy and been at Bletchley since its inception, posing as a brilliant but mentally unstable code breaker. But his real job was working for MI-5, tracking a suspected traitor in their midst, one that could ruin everything everyone at Bletchley was trying so hard to achieve. Victoria Keeley’s death could possibly be linked to the spy.

The two men met late at night in a small conference room in Bletchley’s main building, the former manor house. It was the first time the two had seen each other since the events of the summer, where, among other things, Maggie discovered her presumed-to-be-dead father alive and well—and working for MI-5 at Bletchley Park. But Edmund and Frain had known each other for years and enjoyed an easy camaraderie.

“Victoria Keeley worked as a teleprinter,” Edmund explained. “She wouldn’t have access to the decrypts themselves. Bletchley’s extremely careful not to let anyone know anything they don’t need to—each hut knows very little about the other parts of the operation. However, Miss Keeley was beautiful,” he said. “She had a lot of beaux. Specifically, some of the code breakers.”

“Anyone in particular?”

Edmund shrugged. “Lately a young code breaker named Benjamin Batey—I saw them together a few times. He would have had access to that sort of decrypt too. Miss Keeley may have gotten her hands on it somehow and passed it on to someone.”

“There was no decrypt found in the room. Worst-case scenario is that whoever killed her took the decrypt as well.” Frain stood up. “Well, then,” he said. “Let’s bring young Mr. Batey in for a chat, shall we?”

“One more thing,” Edmund told him. “I hear you’re going to have Maggie working with an agent named Hugh Thompson.”

“Yes, Thompson’s good,” Frain replied. “Young but promising. I think they’ll make an excellent team.”

“Considering his family history, do you think that’s wise?”

“They’ll never find out,” Frain said. “Never. I promise you, Edmund.” He held up his hand. “I give you my word.”





Chapter Four


The next morning, Maggie picked her way through the rubble outside David’s flat to get to the Sloane Square Tube station, her Rayne pumps crunching on shards of broken glass. A sullen sun tried to shine through an overcast sky. The cold air rang with the wails of sirens from emergency vehicles and stank of smoke, ash, and petrol. Fires still smoldered here and there. A charwoman poured a bucket of dirty water over a dark bloodstain on the pavement, as a body, wrapped in a white bedsheet, was being loaded into a rusty Black Maria.

Maggie saw that an entire town house had been flattened the night before. As she passed, she noticed a woman in a Jaeger suit, hat, and gloves stumble and nearly fall over as she took in the wreckage. “This—was—my house,” she said to one of the volunteer firefighters still hosing down the charred remains.