The Prime Minister's Secret Agent(20)

In the shadow of Arisaig House, on the croquet lawn, Maggie could see them sizing her up. She was fit, but she was still female, and somewhat petite at that. “Who wants to go first?” she called, her breath forming clouds in the chill air. It’s probably wrong how much I enjoy this part, she thought. The women all held back, squeamish at the thought of hand-to-hand combat. That’s all right, I’ll get to them next. Maggie had her routine down cold—the first task was to select the alpha male of the group. “Come on, light the blue torch paper!” She recognized Charlie. “You!” She pointed at him. “Three! You’re up!”

Charlie gave his most appealing movie-star smile and ambled over to where Maggie stood in the grass. He pulled a face and the other trainees laughed. Oh, this will be fun. Charlie was almost a foot taller than her, and about eighty pounds heavier. She seemed to be no match for him.

He blushed, his cheeks staining pink, afraid to make the first move.

“Come on,” Maggie goaded, “pretend I’m a Nazi sympathizer who’s going to blow your cover in France. What’re you going to do?”

Charlie tried to grab Maggie’s slender wrists with his large hands. Maggie could feel the mood of the students shift—they were afraid for her, afraid she’d be hurt. Afraid, but also just a little excited. Those who knew her didn’t like her. Those who didn’t know her yet had heard the stories. Whatever Charlie was going to do, all of them believed she’d asked for it.

As an explosion boomed in the distance, Maggie stepped aside. She seemed to merely touch Charlie’s wrist with her delicate hands—and then he lurched forward, rose up in the air, and somersaulted over, coming down hard on his back in the grass about six feet away. Her expression never changed.

Charlie groaned in agony, but scrambled to his feet, brushing off dirt and glass. “Ouch” was all he could come up with. He limped back to the rest of the trainees, rubbing one elbow. Some of the men laughed at him, for being thrown by a woman. There were whispers of “Lady Macbeth.”

“This is no joke,” Maggie said, hands on hips. “I want you to take this seriously. What you learn here, your skills—may save your life someday. I’m not hard on you because I enjoy it, I’m hard on you because I want you to come back alive.”

“Because you’d miss us, Ma’am?” Charlie put a hand to his heart in mock sentiment.

“Because we would have wasted our time and effort on your training,” Maggie retorted. “Now, who’s next?”


Later that day, the trainees were taken to another grand manor house not far from Arisaig. K jumped up onto Maggie’s shoulder and perched there, as if to say, Well, of course I’m going with you!

The trainees had been practicing with their British Stens and Brens and different foreign guns using stationary, close-range targets in the pistol practice room at Arisaig House—formerly the servants’ dining hall. They’d learned the Fairbairn-Sykes method of shooting, created by William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes, inspired by the gun crime they’d witnessed as police officers on the Shanghai waterfront.

In the army and traditional police, officers would extend their arm, raise the weapon to eye level, take aim, and then shoot. Fairbairn and Sykes thought this wasted precious seconds—their practice was to draw and fire from hip level, with a crooked arm, using two shots called a double tap. This could be managed from a crouched or running position.

Now it was time to try for practice with something less static.

As they approached the abandoned house on the shore, Mr. Burns gestured for them to stop. “We’ve been practicing on pictures of Hitler on the firing range, and you’ve improved,” he said, his voice fading in the chill wind. “But it’s unlikely that Herr Hitler, or any other enemy combatant, will be so obliging as to sit still while you take aim and shoot. And so we’ve created a moving training exercise for you that will test your instincts and reaction times.”

Maggie looked at the house. She remembered her own experiences shooting there, at mocked-up dummies that danced on ropes and pulleys, controlled by a technician in the front garden. Back then, she’d thought of it as a kind of fairground shooting gallery, with targets popping out from cupboards, or flying in on fishing line. Back then, it had seemed like nothing more than fun and games. What a little fool I was.

K jumped down to check under the house’s front steps for prey.

Mr. Burns eyed the group. “All right, then. Who wants to go first?”

Charlie raised his hand, perhaps eager to make up for his poor showing in jujitsu earlier.