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The Prime Minister's Secret Agent(17)



Dill interjected, “Our experiments with N include putting them into cakes of grain, which would be dropped for livestock to eat.”

“So starvation’s better than gas or poison?” John asked.

“Mr. Sterling, you are certainly correct—the dead are dead in any case, and it’s unclear that having someone choke to death while convulsing is somehow worse than burning them to death with jellied gasoline, or causing a firestorm, or blowing them up, or shooting them in the head, or even instituting a blockade that denies them access to food and medicine.”

The P.M. puffed on his cigar; he looked tired, his eyes were ringed with red. “War is a terrible, terrible thing. Robert E. Lee allegedly said that it is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it. And now we have witchcraft and magic added to the mix. ‘Double, double, toil and trouble,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.’ Find out what progress there is on our hell-broth boiling and broiling in Porton Down, Mr. Sterling!”

John rose. “Yes, sir.” He left the room.

Only Dill and Ismay remained with Churchill. “And these developments are not something we will share with the Americans,” Churchill decided, rising and pacing, jabbing at the air with his cigar. Blue smoke wove tendrils around his head like the tentacles of a man-of-war.

“Understood, sir,” Dill said.

“Yes, sir,” chimed in Ismay.

Abruptly, Churchill changed the subject. “Odds of Russia falling?”

“I should be inclined to put it even at this point, sir, with Old Man Winter giving Mother Russia the edge,” Dill replied.

“The Balkans are a sticking point—but if Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons. If we’re still standing alone by the end of ’41 …”

Churchill bellowed, “Fetch me the women!” referring to his typists. “I’m going to dictate another letter to President Roosevelt,” the Prime Minister stated. “Let’s meet up again later—at one, back here, to discuss these matters further, once Greene and Sterling have procured more information.” He left the room, muttering,

Swelter’d venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.





Chapter Five


By Clara’s calculations, it was 3 A.M. on November twenty-sixth—three months to the day since she’d been taken into British custody. None of her many overtures at brokering a peace treaty had been taken seriously. Her daughter wouldn’t meet with her. She’d continued to refuse to offer British Intelligence anything without her daughter’s intervention. And so, like the German spy Josef Jakobs before her, she was to be executed. The date of her death had been set: Sunday, December 7, 1941.

Clara stood at one of the barred windows overlooking the Thames and began to sing, her once golden voice now breathy and raspy. What she chose for her debut at the Tower of London was Olympia’s aria, “Les oiseaux dans la charmille,” from Offenbach’s opera Les contes d’Hoffmann, her voice gaining in strength, and she went along, muscle memory stirring. Olympia was a mechanical doll with whom Hoffmann fell in love and so Clara accompanied her singing with stiff, robotic, doll-like movements, as though in performance. As she sang, her voice steadied, returning to its former glory.

Les oiseaux dans la charmille

Dans les cieux l’astre du jour,

Tout parle à la jeune fille d’amour!

Ah! Voilà la chanson gentille

La chanson d’Olympia! Ah!



Tout ce qui chante et résonne

Et soupire, tour à tour,

Emeut son coeur qui frissonne d’amour!

Ah! Voilà la chanson mignonne

La chanson d’Olympia! Ah!



When she had finished, the last sweet notes dying in her cell, she fell to the cold stone floor.


Maggie’s screams woke her.

It was a different nightmare every night—variations and permutations of her time in Berlin. There was the one where she saw Gottlieb Lehrer, part of the German Resistance and ardent Catholic, shoot himself in the head rather than be taken alive by the Gestapo. There was the one where she saw the small Jewish girl cry for water. And the one where her sister Elise looked at her as if she were a monster, after she had killed a young German man, really no more than a boy.

This night, however, there was a cat in her bed. She’d made him his own place to sleep—a wicker basket lined with fabric scraps, near the radiator. But at some point during the night he’d crawled in with her, curling up into a tight furry ball encircled by her torso. Now he was purring, and rose to pad over to her head and try to lick her hair.