The Prime Minister's Secret Agent(89)
“Would you like the paper?” John asked, folding it and handing it to Maggie.
“Thank you,” she said, accepting it. She scanned the articles. “The numbers from Pearl Harbor keep growing.” She blinked back tears. “Now they’re saying nearly twenty-five hundred Americans killed.”
“How many injured?” John asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Maggie said. “Let’s see—‘One thousand one hundred and seventy-eight injured, both military and civilians.’ ”
“I always look at the statistics for the wounded,” he said. “I always wonder if any of them feel that they would be better off dead.”
Maggie looked at John. “Is that how you felt?”
It was now his turn to look out the window.
When Sarah returned to the flat, she noticed that an envelope with her name on it had been slipped under the door:
Dear Miss Sanderson,
Your name has been passed on to me with the suggestion that you possess skills and qualifications that may be of value in a phase of the war effort.
If you are available for an interview, I would be glad to see you at Arisaig House, today, at three p.m.
Yours truly,
Timothy Gordon,
Captain.
She walked to the main house at the assigned time, gave her name for Captain Gordon, and then waited downstairs in the vestibule until Gwen at the reception desk called her name.
An officer walked her up the thistle-carved stairs and ushered her into an office, formerly the master bedroom suite, full of desks and file cabinets and stacks of papers.
“Come in, sit down,” a man said. Seated at one of the desks, he had a long face, with a long nose and long ears as well. There were deep furrows between his eyebrows. “Would you give us a few minutes?” he said to the other men.
When they had left, Sarah took a seat opposite. “Thank you for coming, Miss Sanderson. I’m Captain Gordon. Miss Hope let me know you are fluent in French, and know Paris well. And that, while you’re recovering from an illness, you’re quite athletic.”
“Yes,” Sarah replied. “And I’d like to do my bit for the war effort.”
Captain Gordon leaned forward and made a steeple of his hands. “Well, Miss Sanderson, how do you feel about this German business?”
Sarah took a moment to think. “I—I suppose I feel that—for the second time—the Germans have bamboozled their way into war—and that’s two wars too many. As Maggie—Miss Hope—may have mentioned, my grandmother was murdered by the Nazis in Paris recently.”
“Ah—so you’re looking for revenge.”
“No,” Sarah answered. “Well, maybe. A bit. But it’s not personal. I don’t hate the Germans, per se, but I do hate the Nazis. They’re the ones who’ve perverted everything. For the Germans, oddly enough, I have pity.”
“I was hoping you might separate the Nazis and the Germans.”
“I hate the Nazis. But I’m a woman, and there’s not much I can do about it. If I were a man, I’d already be in the armed forces.”
Captain Gordon considered the slight young woman in front of him. “Yes, that must be frustrating.”
Then, as if he’d made up his mind: “Miss Sanderson—how would you like to go to France and make things a bit uncomfortable for those who would invade other people’s cities—and kill their grandmothers?”
Sarah snorted. “Me? Go to France? How can anyone go to France?” She laughed. “You may or may not be aware that the Channel boats are no longer running. What sort of game are you having at my expense, Captain?”
“There are ways of going to France other than the Golden Arrow, Miss Sanderson.”
She frowned. “You mean the War Office can send people to France? Despite the Germans?”
“The War Office?” He gave a dry laugh. “No, the War Office is far too respectable to do any such thing. Never mind how it’s done, but a trip to France could be arranged. Let’s call our office—the one that could send you to France—The Firm. Tell me what you think.”
Sarah looked him straight in the eye. “I think you’re absolutely bonkers.”
“Miss Sanderson, you have no husband, no children. You are fluent in French. You have dark hair and dark eyes and look, if I may, Gallic. You know and love Paris. You could move around and not be spotted.”
“And then what?”
“We’re sending what we call hush-hush troops to the Continent to ‘set Europe ablaze,’ as our esteemed Prime Minister put it. One of our goals is to organize and train a secret army in France, supply them with British weapons, and teach them how to use them against the Nazis. How to carry out sabotage, to make things difficult, keep them off-balance.” He made a note on a pad of paper. “I must interject here, if you haven’t figured it out already, that the job is quite dangerous. Some people, as they say, ‘fail to return.’ However, with your particular skill set, you could be of great value to us.”