“What—?”
Maggie passed him a Bible, in which she’d hidden the Grimm text and her notes.
“Oh, Hugh,” she said, as he began to read. “I’m so, so terribly sorry.”
Chapter Twenty-one
In a fog of shock, Hugh returned to the MI-5 offices in London. Without apparent emotion, he dropped the book and Maggie’s decryption of the pinprick code on Frain’s desk, leaving Frain, for once, looking shocked. Then he went to his office and sat down at his desk. He didn’t even pretend to work, just stared at the wall.
A while later, Mark entered the small windowless office and looked at Hugh. Then he sat down at his own desk, pretending to work.
Finally, Hugh spoke. “Maggie broke the code found in her mother’s book. The names of three MI-Five agents. All of whom were assassinated. Including my father.”
“Jesus.” Mark reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of gin. “Drink?”
“Do you need to ask?”
Mark took out two tea mugs and poured gin into each. He got up and handed one to Hugh.
“Thanks,” Hugh said, accepting the mug. He downed the gin in one gulp.
Silently, Mark poured Hugh another, then went back to his desk and pulled out some paperwork. He pretended to be engrossed in it, crossing things out, scribbling in the margins.
Finally, still staring at the same spot off in the distance, Hugh spoke. “It’s a strange thing, you know. When you’re a child, you learn that your father’s dead. You don’t really know what that means besides your mother always crying and everyone wearing black. At some point you put it all together—that he’s not away on a trip, that he’s never coming back. He’s gone. Forever.
“Then, when you’re older you learn more—that he was ‘killed in the line of duty.’ But even that’s vague. It doesn’t tell you where, or when, or how.” He downed the gin. “Or by whom.”
Mark was thinking ahead. “Should we go to the Red Lion? Because given what’s just happened, I doubt that Frain would mind.” He closed his folder and stood up. “And, if he does, he can bugger off.”
Hugh went on, as if he hadn’t heard. “And then, then you find out the details. The particulars. That the Germans knew about your father. That they wanted him dead. That his name was written in code. In a line of tiny pinpricks. In a book. Then you learn that the book belonged to your friend’s father. Who carried out the assassination.”
There was a sharp rap at the door, then Nevins opened it and walked in. He had a sheet of paper in his hands, which he handed to Hugh.
“Quite the day, I gather,” he said. “Frain told me. Maggie Hope just called him.”
Hugh took the paper, like an automaton, and put it down without reading it.
Mark shook his head. “Jesus, Nevins. Perhaps you’d like to look up the word diplomacy in the dictionary?”
Nevins shrugged. “This is huge. Maggie Hope’s father—your father … Well, I can’t imagine how you must be feeling.”
“Obviously,” Mark said.
Nevins wouldn’t take the hint. “And, you know? I think Saul Levy’s going to be good for you. Just the thing to straighten you out.”
Hugh looked down at the memo and read it. Then he crumpled it and threw it in the metal wastebasket. “I’m not seeing Levy.”
Nevins leaned up against the doorframe. “I’m afraid Frain’s insisting. Levy may be a Jew, but he’s supposed to be a damned good psychiatrist—studied with Freud and all. He must live for this sort of thing. Positively Oedipal.”
“Just get out,” Mark said. “Now.”
“Well, it’s not up to you two,” Nevins said, turning to go. “It’s mandatory.”
Hugh stood up. “You serious about that pub?” he said to Mark. “Because I need to get very, very drunk.”
The same winter rain that had drenched Windsor had moved out to the coast, flooding Norfolk and its coast as well. It was raining hard in Mossley by Sea, a small village on the coast of the North Sea, not far from Grimsby. Mossley was tiny—there were only a few blocks of what was considered the main street, with the chemist, hardware store, grocer, the Royal Oak and Six Bells pubs, and the gray-steepled church with its neighboring graveyard, the stones crumbling, covered in velvety moss and damp lichen.
Christopher Boothby had taken the train from Bletchley, reaching Mossley as the cold driving rains became their heaviest. It had taken the residents a while to get used to him—they weren’t used to strangers—but his story of being a veteran of the Battle of Norway, now doing clerical work in Bletchley, needing a weekend place, stirred their maternal instincts, despite their official classification as a restricted military zone. Adding to the tale were rumors of his being a widower—wife and baby buried in the Blitz, don’t you know—which had the village’s matrons clucking. Why shouldn’t he buy that little cottage on the shore and fix it up? Didn’t he deserve a little peace after all he’d done for his country, after all he’d lost?