Princess Elizabeth's Spy(11)

“Get her a seat,” one fireman in a tin helmet called to another. They found a chair that must have been blown out of the window from the force of the explosion. It was silk, singed and covered in soot but still functional. The woman sat down and crossed her ankles primly in the middle of the street. “I went to the country—that’s where my children are—I was only gone one night.…”

The fireman motioned to the ARP warden. “Mug o’ tea for the lady here? She’s had a bit of a shock.” Then he went back to hosing down a smoldering fire.

Maggie gritted her teeth and walked on. Some of the bombed-out shops had put up signs: “Back as soon as we beat Hitler,” “Keep Smiling,” and, at a street fruit seller’s cart, “Hitler’s Bombs Can’t Beat Us—Our Oranges Came Through Musso’s Lake.” On the remains of a wall and floor that had the appearance of a gallows was a rope with a noose tied in it and a sign: “Reserved for Hitler.”

Inside the Tube station, Maggie walked down the stopped escalator steps, careful not to disturb those people who were still sleeping, slumped against the wall with only thin wool blankets for warmth. Since they’d lost their homes, a vast number of people had taken shelter down in the Tube stations. They slept on the steps or in makeshift bunks against the walls on subway platforms. The air was rank with the smell of unwashed bodies and human excrement from the covered buckets lining one wall.

A group of old women in dirt-stained clothes were huddled around a coal brazier, making what Maggie guessed was a pot of tea. She made her way through the sea of humanity and finally caught her train.

She was headed to the offices of the Imperial Security Intelligence Service, which everyone called MI-5. Headquartered in a sandbagged building at 58 Saint James Street, MI-5’s mission was national security.

After showing her ID to one of the guards in the lobby, she was permitted access. The building was massive and her steps echoed along the well-polished hallways. “I’m here to see Mr. Frain, please,” Maggie said to the receptionist, an older woman with thick glasses named Mrs. Pipps.

She hung up her gas mask and coat on the hooks by the door and removed her gloves and placed them in her handbag. Then, straightening her hat, she sat down to wait.

Peter Frain, a spy during the Great War and a former professor of Egyptology at Cambridge after that, became head of MI-5 when Winston Churchill had become Prime Minister in May 1940. Maggie had met him over the summer, after she’d discovered hidden Nazi code pointing to three specific attacks, including the assassination of the Prime Minister. When Frain had seen her in action, plus learned of her fluency in both French and German, he’d asked Maggie to leave her job as secretary for the P.M. and come work for him at MI-5, which she’d done, intrigued by the possibility of working undercover. She’d had high hopes of being dropped behind enemy lines on a clandestine mission.

And despite her wretched showing in the physical tasks at Camp Spook, she was still determined to do it.

Finally, she was ushered into the room to find Peter Frain behind a large oak desk, a reproduction of Goya’s Lord Nelson hanging on the wall behind him, next to an official photograph of King George VI.

Frain had the same black, slick-backed hair and cold gray eyes Maggie remembered, and, despite the privations of wartime, yet another impeccably tailored suit. In front of him was a manila folder, thick with papers. Maggie could see her name on a label and then, over it, the heavy red-inked stamp, TOP SECRET.

“Ah, Maggie,” Frain said, rising to his feet. They shook hands. “Please, take a seat.” They’d been on a first-name basis since their exploits of the summer. Still, the informality sounded a bit out of place in the austere offices of MI-5.

Maggie had the distinct and uncomfortable sensation of being called to the dean’s office. Still, she refused to let that show. “Good morning, Peter. A pleasure to see you again,” she said, sitting in the chair opposite his desk.

“And under more agreeable circumstances than last time,” Frain replied, his wintry features momentarily warmed by a smile.

“Indeed.”

“I’ve had a chance to look over your file.” He folded his long, tapered fingers. “You scored well on the Intelligence test. In fact, your answer to the first question on the maths section could be the basis of an article for a mathematics journal, if we had the time for such things. Perhaps after the war.”

Maggie’s stomach lurched a bit. “Perhaps.”

“However …”

Oh, here it comes.

“In regard to your physical skills—”