“Absolutely not,” Maggie said firmly, pouring a glass of water from the carafe on the table. “You shall stay with me,” she decreed, holding the water to Sarah’s lips to let her sip. “You’ll need some help until you’re back on your feet, and until then I can give you a helping hand.”
“I wouldn’t want to intrude—”
“On me and my nun-like life? On my new cat, who will simply adore you?” Maggie kept her tone light. “Nonsense—the fresh air of western Scotland will be just the tonic for you. It’s beautiful there—the mountains, the woods, the shore … I’ll just have a little chat with Mr. Burns. Sort it all out.”
Then she shook her head, as if to clear it. “Sarah, dear, I do have one very serious thing to tell you. When you were very sick and it looked—well, it looked as if we might lose you—I called your mother.”
“My mum? Is she all right?”
“Your mother’s fine, darling, but I’m afraid there’s bad news about your grandmother. Your mother asked that I relay the news. I’m sorry to have to tell you that …” Maggie took a breath. “Your grandmother is dead.”
Sarah sat in silence, struggling to take in the enormity of the news. “No!” She shook her head. “No, it can’t possibly be—you must have heard wrong—my mum must have heard wrong—”
“I’m sorry, Sarah. Your mother has official confirmation.”
“How—?”
“The Nazis. She was shot just outside her apartment on the Île Saint-Louis. No reason given. But she didn’t suffer—your mother wanted you to know that.”
“I can’t believe it. Those Nazi bastards. I’ll kill those Nazi bastards! Salauds de Nazis! Je les déchirerai en petits morceaux quand je sors d’ici!”
Churchill walked about the frost-encrusted gardens of Chequers with John and David.
“Not that I think Chequers has been bugged, but we’ll have complete privacy out here. Look at it!” He swept his walking stick at the sprawling vista—tree-covered rolling hills, several horses grazing in a field, and sky. “England!”
John and David nodded. They were used to the P.M.’s theatrics.
They walked farther along the path. “I’ve been thinking about Mount Niitaka,” the Prime Minister began. He plopped down on one of the wooden benches, with a view of the rolling hills. He was humming “There Will Always Be an England.”
“How can we help, sir?” asked David.
Churchill looked at both the young men, who’d stood by him through so many years. “I’m asking you not to say anything.”
“Sir—?”
“If we tell Roosevelt, he’ll publicly denounce the Japanese. Then they’ll call the attack off, swearing it was a training exercise or some such falsehood. Pearl Harbor will be put on alert, and so the Japs will never have the element of surprise again. They’ll turn their attentions to our territories in the Far East … And then we’ll be at war with Japan, as well as Germany and Italy.”
“But sir,” John began, “there are over two thousand American servicemen stationed at Pearl Harbor. To not warn them of a potential attack—”
“—is wicked,” Churchill finished glumly. “Evil, even. Despicable. Don’t you think I’ve wrestled with this? If I don’t tell them, I’m the Devil himself.
“But if I do warn them, they still won’t join the war. And the Japanese will destroy us in the Pacific. While Roosevelt smokes his cigarettes with his ivory holder and talks out of both sides of his mouth, we will be destroyed. We’ll become Nazi slaves. And, personally, I have a cyanide pill handy, should things come to that.”
“You—you do have some time, sir. We have until the eighth,” John reminded him.
Churchill got to his feet, walking stick tapping. “Yes, Mr. Sterling, that’s true—we have until December eighth.”
The very same message that Consul Kita had sent to Admiral Yamamoto was also picked up by “Magic” in Washington.
That afternoon in Washington, one of the young men from the Intelligence service gave it to Kramer’s secretary, Mrs. Dorothy Edgars, to file until a translator came on duty the following Monday.
But Dorothy was bored, restless. She didn’t like to be idle. She’d already typed everything that needed to be typed, filed everything that needed to be filed, washed the coffee cups, and sharpened all the office pencils. She looked up at the ticking clock—still another three hours until her shift ended. And so when the next “Magic” landed in her in-box, she decided to take a crack at it herself, using her hard-won knowledge of Japanese learned while her husband had been stationed in Tokyo.