His Majesty's Hope (11 page)

Father Licht smiled. “I’m heartened to see that someone in our congregation not only has been listening but also remembers.”

“Besides,” Elise said, “Jesus was quite the troublemaker, after all.”

The smile disappeared from the priest’s haggard face. “But remember, my child—that’s why He was crucified. You must be careful. Please.”

Early the next morning, Herr Karl pulled up to the entrance of the tile-roofed Hannover Hauptbahnhof station, the requisite red Nazi banners flying, Maggie in the seat beside him. He let the car idle as he pulled her suitcase from the back.

“Good luck,
Fräulein,
” he said, handing Maggie her valise. “Let’s not draw this out.”

“Thank you for everything,” Maggie said, shaking his hand. They parted ways.

Inside, the station was deserted, except for one lone ticket seller snoring, with a newspaper over his face, behind a glass window.

Maggie felt like an impostor.
Shouldn’t the SS be here at any moment, to arrest me?
she thought, her heart thundering in her chest and palms damp. She made sure to think in German, to go over her request, to familiarize herself with the Reichmarks in her purse. Then, she took a deep breath and, with her gloved hand, rapped at the window.

“Whaa—?” The newspaper fell to the floor as the man started, then blinked, then rubbed his eyes with two fists. “Yes,
Fräulein
. How may I help you?”

Maggie feigned nonchalance, even though her heart was beating rapidly. “Ticket to Lehrter Bahnhof in Berlin, please.”

“One way or round trip?”

For a long moment, Maggie blanked. Despite her fluency in German, she wasn’t expecting that question. Her jaw dropped, her cheeks turned red, and her eyes widened. She just couldn’t think of what he could possibly mean. Was she going to be found out so quickly? Was it over even before it had begun? How long would it take the SS to arrest her?

“One way or round trip?” the man repeated.

Maggie swallowed, looking for escape routes.

Then he started to laugh, a deep and hearty chuckle. “
Gnädiges Fräulein
, you clearly need coffee as much as I do in the morning!”

Maggie forced her stiff lips to smile. “Yes, I
do
need coffee, too,” she agreed. “One
one-way
ticket to Lehrter Bahnhof,” she managed finally, fumbling for the Reichmarks to pay.

“Five past six. Track two.”

“Thank you.”

“Here’s a schedule.” The man handed her a printed sheet. As he picked it up, it tore slightly. He reached down to get her a fresh one.

Maggie, used to rationing, including the rationing of paper, was incredulous. “It’s all right. I don’t mind. It’s still perfectly usable.”

“Nein!”
the man snapped, crumpling up the torn sheet and throwing it into the garbage.
“Wenn schon, denn schon!”

Maggie realized it was the old German expression “If something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing right.” She was silent, absorbing his sudden intensity, and accepting the new and unblemished schedule sheet.

“Heil Hitler!”
the man said, giving the salute.

“Heil Hitler,”
she managed to reply.

By six
A.M.
, a few more people had arrived, some with suitcases, some with rucksacks, waiting with Maggie on the waxed wooden benches. At exactly five minutes past six, the black train pulled up
on the track behind the station with a puff of steam and screech of brakes.

Once she boarded, it wasn’t hard to find a seat by herself. Maggie opened a copy of
Berliner Morganpost
she’d bought in the station and pretended to read, trying to calm herself.

She knew it was propaganda, but what she read was disturbing:
19 RAF AIRCRAFT SHOT DOWN OVER THE CHANNEL
was the headline for one article.
ENGLAND HAS LOST 12,432,000 TONS OF SHIPPING SINCE THE WAR STARTED
, blared another. Maggie turned the page.
GREEK FISHERMEN REPORT THAT ROYAL NAVY SAILORS SHOT AND KILLED SWIMMING AND HELPLESS GERMAN SAILORS. TWO SOVIET DIVISIONS AND 156 SOVIET TANKS DESTROYED IN TWO DAYS IN THE BATTLE OF DUBNO
. She folded the paper up and looked out the window instead.

Maggie saw cows grazing in pastures lit by the golden light, interspersed with dark forests of ancient oaks. A man in uniform came by to punch her ticket. Her heart was pounding and her hands sweating inside her gloves; still, she feigned boredom, and the conductor didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.

By the time the police officer reached her, to check her identity card, she felt a little less shaky, and his perfunctory examination of her papers went without incident.

Maggie took out
Mein Kampf
and tried to make sense of it. She had read it a few years ago, at her late grandmother’s house in London, when Hitler had invaded Poland. It seemed like several lifetimes ago.
“The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following,”
Maggie read.

Maggie ground her teeth and put the book away. The day was getting warmer, the sunshine through the glass heating the stale air. She turned to the crossword puzzle near the back of the paper—good practice for her German—and had nearly finished it when she heard the train’s whistle and the screech of the brakes, then felt the train slow down, and finally stop.

“Lehrter Bahnhof station!” a clipped voice over a loudspeaker announced. “We have arrived in Berlin!”

Hugh met with John Cecil Masterman. Not at his office, however.

Masterman had studied at the University of Freiburg and had the bad luck to be an exchange lecturer there in 1914, when the Great War had begun. He was interned as an “enemy alien” for four years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Ruhleben—which was why he hated to be indoors. And why he’d asked Hugh to meet him on the far side of Tower Bridge.

Hugh was there early, at a quarter to eight. It was a humid morning; gray skies above threatened rain. But in any weather, the scenery was spectacular—across the river Hugh could see the parapets on the great stone walls of the Tower of London, as well as the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the suspension bridge with its two Victorian Gothic towers and horizontal walkways.

And then there appeared Masterman, with his long sloping nose, thick brown hair, and propensity toward grim-humored smiles. He wore a black Anthony Eden hat on his head and carried a long umbrella under one arm. “You must be Hugh Thompson,” he said without preamble. “Let’s walk, shall we?”

Together, they began the trek over the bridge. They were
alone, except for the sound of intermittent traffic and the rush of the wind. Below them flowed the murky Thames.

“I’m assuming Frain’s told you about us,” Masterman began.

“Yes, sir,” Hugh replied. “About how MI-Five has been capturing German agents and turning them to our side.”

“There haven’t been that many, but when we do pick them up, they’re taken to the London Cage or Camp 020 at Latchmere House. Then we see if we can turn them.” Masterman gave one of his dour smiles. “We even take their pay and put it toward the war effort.”

“What about those who won’t turn?” Hugh asked. He knew about one captured German spy in particular, Josef Jakobs, who had parachuted into Ramsey in Huntingdonshire in January. Jakobs had been picked up by the Home Guard, who found that he’d broken his ankle when he landed. When arrested, he was still wearing his flying suit and carrying forged papers, a radio, British pounds, and a German sausage.

“He was tried in camera and found guilty under the Treachery Act of 1940. He was sentenced and executed by firing squad in the Tower of London only a week or so ago.”

“I see,” Hugh said.

“One of the other captured spies, hearing of Jakobs’s fate, has proved much more amenable. We’ve been able to persuade him to work as a double agent for us.” Masterman grimaced. “The key word to remember with double agents is
disinformation
. We feed them disinformation to send back to their contacts at Abwehr in Berlin. However—and this is a big however—we must also include some true information, to make the false seem credible. So it’s a game, really. A very, very high-stakes game.”

A seagull flying overhead shrieked. “Yes, sir.”

“Our prisoner’s a German, name of Stefan Krueger. You’ll be working with him.”

“Sir?”

“Krueger was an Abwehr S-chain agent—parachuted into Britain at the end of 1940, with the task of blowing up a factory producing Spitfires. However, he was picked up immediately and turned himself over to MI-Five. He was sent to Latchmere House and interrogated at length by Lieutenant Colonel Robertson. Do you know Robertson?”

“I know of him, sir.”

“Robertson’s a good judge of character. And he pegged this one immediately. Called him vain—said he thought of himself as something of a ‘prince of the underworld.’ ”

Hugh’s lips twisted into a sardonic half smile.

“But he’s more of a mercenary. Krueger has no scruples and will stop at nothing. He plays for high stakes and would like the whole world to know it. He himself knows nothing of fear, and no feeling at all of patriotism—which is all to the good, actually. He feels no loyalty to Hitler or the Nazis. Right now he works with us because it suits him and because he’s getting perks and extras that he wouldn’t normally get in prison, like being able to live under room arrest at the Queen’s House at the Tower of London.”

Hugh’s gaze went to the medieval fortress they were heading toward. Now the meeting place made sense. “What’s he involved with?”

“Krueger has duped the Germans into believing—with the help of faked photographs provided by MI-Five—that he carried out a successful sabotage attack on the Spitfire factory, at the Supermarine facility in Woolston, Southampton.” Masterman gave a bark of a laugh and opened his large black umbrella as heavy drops of rain began to fall. “MI-Five agents dumped rubble around the site and we planted a story in the
Daily Express
about the so-called raid. His handlers at Abwehr bought everything.”

“Fantastic, sir.” Hugh had forgotten his own umbrella and was
getting soaked. “That’s quite a coup,” he said, ignoring the water drops drenching his best suit.

“Glad you think so,” Masterman replied. “Because you’re going to be in charge of his next ‘mission.’ It’s been sent via code.” The older man pulled out a piece of paper. “This is what we intercepted.”

Hugh accepted the scrap of paper, raindrops splattering it, making the ink bleed. The letters and numbers made no sense to him.

He memorized it, then handed it back to Masterman, who tucked it into his breast pocket. “Code, sir?”

“Yes. And although we have his cipher disk, it hasn’t helped at all. So we’ll show it to Krueger, but we’ll also need to have one of our best men at Bletchley working on it. I suggest Edmund Hope. He’s done some work with Frain. You’ve worked with him, too, correct?”

“Uh, yes,” Hugh said. He tried not to grimace.

“You’ll need to get him on this.” Masterman looked closely at Hugh’s face. “I hope that won’t pose a problem, Mr. Thompson?”

“No, sir,” he lied. “Of course not, sir.”

Just as the rain eased up, the two men arrived at the Tower of London.

A former Norman keep, surrounded by thick stone walls, the Tower wasn’t actually a single tower but a cluster of buildings—Norman, medieval, Tudor—topped with ornate weathervanes and gruesome gargoyles. Over the centuries, it had been an infamous prison: Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Pepys, and countless unknowns had been kept there; many of them—including Queen Elizabeth’s own mother—had left minus their heads.

The Tower had been closed to the public in 1939, just before Parliament had declared war on Germany. It was now being used for military purposes under the name the Tower Prisoner of War Collection Center. It had sustained some bomb damage but was still basically intact.

Hugh and Masterman showed their identification to the Yeoman Warders at the East Drawbridge entrance, then were met and taken inside by the Constable of the Tower, Sir Claud William Jacob. “Welcome to His Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, gentlemen.”

Together, the three men walked through the rain to the Queen’s House, a row of Tudor buildings with their decorative half-timbering on a square green. A few ravens strutted through the lush grass.

They went to one of the Tudor doors, guarded by two Yeomen Warders, and were let in by yet another Yeoman. He led them up the narrow stairs to the top floor, and opened a multitude of locks. The men then walked inside the chamber.