“You believed your father was the double agent. But today, you found out it was your mother who was the Sektion agent.”
“Yes.” Then, “Look, what’s this all about? Why, with a war going on, are we talking about something that happened over twenty years ago?”
“Because, Miss Hope,” Sir Frank said, “your mother is, indeed, still quite relevant to us in this war, right now.” He motioned to David. “Mr. Greene, would you turn on the projector?”
David turned off the overhead lights and then flipped the switch, the incandescent lightbulb glowing and the fan whining. Mr. Stevens turned off the overhead lights.
Maggie was bewildered. First she was told it was her mother, not her father, who was a double agent responsible for murdering five British officers. Now she was back at No. 10, asked to watch—a slide show?
David dropped a slide in the projector. The black-and-white slide was old; still, the lovely woman photographed was obviously Maggie’s mother, at approximately Maggie’s current age.
Sir Frank took a deep breath. “This is Clara Hess, better known to you as Clara Hope. In 1912, she was recruited to Sektion by Special Agent Albrecht Kortig.”
Maggie stiffened.
Sir Frank paused but pressed on. “She was given a mission. She was to pose as a British woman, a student at the London School of Economics. She was to make the acquaintance of a British agent, Edmund Hope. She was to make him fall in love with her, to become his confidante.”
“And to murder three MI-Five agents,” Maggie managed.
“Yes,” Sir Frank replied, evenly. “And then, she faked her own death in a car accident, and made her way back to Germany. Next slide, please.” David hit a button. The picture was now of an older woman, with the same thick hair and fine features. Her eyes were inscrutable.
If Maggie hadn’t already been sitting down, her legs would have buckled under her. What more can they throw at me? “Is that her? But that’s a recent picture! Surely that’s not possible?”
“Clara Hess, the woman known in Britain as Clara Hope, returned to Germany,” Sir Frank said, ignoring Maggie’s questions. “Ultimately, she became the agent known as Commandant Hess, along with Walther Schellenberg one of the most dangerous figures in the Abwehr. The figure behind the attempt to assassinate the King and kidnap the Princess.”
“She’s Commandant Hess?” Maggie breathed.
David turned the overhead light back on.
Winston Churchill studied her, with eyes blue and cold. “You’ve proven yourself to be mentally, emotionally, and physically capable of being an S.O.E. agent. How would you like to go to Berlin?” He glanced at Frain. “We have a few things that need doing over there—including a few that have to do with Clara Hess. We thought, after all your hard work, that you’d like to do the honors.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Maggie, in her room at David’s flat, was packing the last of her things in a trunk. She was going for three months of intensive training at an S.O.E. camp called Beaulieu, in Hampshire, and then, when ready, a nighttime parachute drop into Germany.
Edmund Hope stood at the doorway, coat still on, twisting his hat in his hands. “Maggie, I don’t want you to go.”
“Dad, this is my job now. I must.” Finding an armload of socks and stockings, she dropped them into her open trunk. “She’s a German spy, one who nearly succeeded in running a mission to kill the King and kidnap the Princess. One who’s plotting God knows what else as we speak. That doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course it does,” he snapped, “but it doesn’t need to be you!”
“Mr. Churchill asked me.” She went to her closet.
“Forget Churchill! It’s too dangerous.”
“I would disagree,” Maggie said, taking a few dresses off hangers. “And the Prime Minister and Mr. Frain think otherwise, too.”
“Look, she’s a despicable human being, a sociopath. Do you really think you can just walk up to her and say, ‘Hello, Mother’?”
Maggie gave a tight smile as she folded the dresses and placed them in her suitcase. “That’s not in the mission plan.”
“And even if you do have a moment where you can reconnect, it doesn’t change what she did!”
She turned back to the closet, rummaging for sweaters on a high shelf. “Dad, I know. Hugh is—one of my best friends. How could I possibly forget what she did to his father, the pain he still carries? And that she did the same thing to other families?”
“Do you expect her to say, ‘Oh, my dear darling daughter, how I’ve missed you all these years. Let’s go shopping and then have tea’?”