His Majesty's Hope (33 page)

Maggie fell to her knees, gasping from pain. Her dress was soaked with blood. It was puddling under her, sticky and red.

Maggie had killed him. She’d killed a man. A boy, really. It was what she’d been trained to do, what Thorny had told her to do. “Kill the Kraut!” he’d thundered at Beaulieu. But she hadn’t ever pictured “the Kraut” looking so young, so small, so vulnerable. “Elise,” she said to the horrified girl, her voice weak now, “I’m …”

Still in shock, Elise released Ernst and then John from their cases. Swiftly appraising the situation, Ernst scrambled to Maggie and tugged off his jacket. “You can’t die on me,” he said firmly, pressing it against her wound. “I’m a doctor. We’ve come too far.”

John knelt, taking Maggie’s hand in his.

“What are you doing here?” Elise repeated to Clara.

“Going to London with your half sister,
Mausi
. It’s time for Mutti’s third act.”

Maggie looked up at Elise, whose mouth had fallen open in an expression of horror, as if she’d seen a monster. Their eyes met, then Maggie crumpled to the floor.

Maggie opened her eyes. She saw nothing but blinding white. For a blissful moment, she didn’t know where she was, or even who she was. Then the memories flooded through her.

She looked around and saw white sheets, a white enamel bed frame, white walls, white curtains, and, in a sky of dazzling blue outside the window, puffy white clouds. It was quiet. The air smelled of freshly laundered sheets. Through a haze of morphine, she saw an older woman, plump, with a kind face, dressed all in white, come toward her. “Mademoiselle Hope?” the nurse asked gently.

Maggie nodded. The slight movement set off a chain reaction of pain, which seemed centered in her abdomen.

The woman stood by her bed, her gray hair and eyes framed by a white, winged nurse’s cap. “Mademoiselle Hope,” she said in French, “you are in Universitätsspital Zürich—the University Hospital of Zürich. You sustained a gunshot wound to your right ribs. You will need to rest, but the doctors anticipate a full recovery.”

“What about the others?” Maggie asked weakly.

“They survived. Monsieur Sterling and Dr. Klein have returned to London. And Mademoiselle Hess has returned to Berlin.”

Elise!
Maggie thought. A picture flashed of Elise’s face—her
horror and disgust—when she’d seen Maggie shoot the boy. And then when she learned they were sisters—

Maggie turned her face away. “And Madame Hess?”

The nurse shook her head. “A gentleman is here from Britain—he will tell you the rest.”

“How—how long have I been here?”

“You were brought in yesterday.”

The events on the train came coursing back, horrific images she could not obliterate.
What have I become?
Maggie wondered. She looked down at her hands, remembering. They were clean now, but she could still feel the blood, sticky and hot. Then she grabbed the enamel basin on the bedside table and vomited. There was nothing in her stomach, so she brought up bile, black and bitter.

The nurse held her shoulders as Maggie vomited, then brought her cool water to drink, wiped her face with a cloth, and laid her back against the pillow. “The bullet is still in you,” the nurse warned. Maggie touched her wound, probed it gently with her fingers. Yes, there, embedded in flesh, she could feel the hard outline of the bullet. “The doctor will remove it later today,” the nurse continued. “It’s a minor procedure.”

“No.”

The nurse looked surprised. “No?”

Maggie’s face hardened. “I said no—leave it in.”

A shadow appeared at the door. It was Sir Frank Nelson, Director of the SOE. “Leave us, please,” he said to the nurse as he removed his knife-creased hat. “May I get you anything, Miss Hope? Water? Tea from the hospital cafeteria?”

Maggie’s lips twisted as she remembered his asking her to make him tea back in London, which now felt like an eternity ago.
My, how the worm has turned
, she thought. But instead of feeling joy, she felt nothing but numb.

Nelson closed the door. They were alone in the room. “Father Licht was able to get the film developed and the resulting information to Bishop von Preysing and Bishop von Galen.”

“And what did the Bishops do with it?”

“They’re going to speak out at High Mass today. By tonight, German resistance groups will have flyers of the homilies distributed all through Germany, and dropped on German troops. Hitler and his cronies will be exposed for the child murderers that they are.”

“What about Gottlieb Lehrer?” Somehow, her own safety meant so little, knowing how much peril those two valiant men were in.

“Lehrer, I’m sorry to say, was killed by the SS. Or, rather, he committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner and have secrets tortured out of him. Father Licht is still safe, as far as we know.”

Gottlieb? Dead?
“But he’s a Catholic. He would
never
commit suicide. He’d consider it a mortal sin.”

“He saved the resistance group.”

“But according to Catholic doctrine, he’ll go to hell.”

Nelson shrugged. “Maybe his version of hell wasn’t as bad as what he was experiencing in Berlin. At any rate, surely God would take his motives for the greater good into consideration?”

Maggie said nothing. Gottlieb was dead. The German boy was dead. The little girl and her mother on the train were probably dead. Elise … She felt numb inside. Nelson reached for the enamel pitcher and poured her a cup of water. She waved it away.

“Miss Hope,” Nelson said. “You were right to obtain that information and get it to Lehrer and his group. It wouldn’t have done much good to us in Britain, and in fact might have backfired if we’d tried to use it—dismissed as mere propaganda. But directing the information into the hands of the German resistance movement, and letting a German Bishop expose what the Reich was
doing … that’s a coup. Against the rules, of course. But still, a coup. Brava.”

“I don’t give a flying fig about any coup.” Maggie was fighting back tears. “What about the murders? Operation Compassionate Death? Has it been shut down?”

“Not yet,” Nelson answered. “But it’s only a matter of time now. The program will be officially shut down within days. But unofficially …” He shrugged again. “Hitler and his goons are capable of anything, as you now well know.” He graced her with a sad smile.

Maggie stared up at the ceiling, eyes unseeing. The “units”—the children. Gottlieb, Elise. John, alive. The escape. Clara …

“How is”—Maggie didn’t know what to call her—“Frau Hess?”

Nelson pulled up a metal chair, its legs scraping against the spotless linoleum. “Frau Hess is fine,” he answered. “And she’s an important Nazi official with any number of ties in Berlin. She could have returned to Germany. Instead, she deliberately surrendered herself to us.”

“She did what?” Maggie wasn’t sure if something had happened to her ears or if she’d been administered too much morphine.

“We were surprised as well. After all, she was on Churchill’s most-wanted list. But after her plot with the London water supply failed—”

“Plot with the water supply?”

Nelson smiled. “Classified information, I’m afraid, Miss Hope. But I assure you that Clara Hess is in British custody. She’s been transferred to the Tower of London, where she will be interrogated.”

“What will happen to her?”

“She’ll be imprisoned. If she’s willing to work for us, she’ll live. If not …”

Clara’s unspoken fate hung in the air between them. Nelson pulled out a silver cigarette case and a lighter. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

He lit it, then watched the tip smolder before saying, “She had an unusual request.”

“And what is that?”

“She wants to be interrogated by you, Miss Hope.”

“Me?”

“You.”

Maggie was silent.

“I suspect a game of some sort, quite frankly,” Nelson continued. “As does Mr. Churchill. But we’re not going to know what she has up her sleeve until you talk to her.”

“I am
not
talking to her,” Maggie spat. “I will never lay eyes on that woman, ever, ever again. Do you understand me?”

Nelson dropped his cigarette in the cup on Maggie’s bedside. It hissed as it hit the water. He rose. “I’ll leave you to get some rest, Miss Hope. You should be released today, and we’ve chartered a flight for you back to Britain tonight.” He turned.

“I’m not going to talk to her! Never!”

“Feel better, Miss Hope,” he said at the doorway.

“Wait!” she called. “What about John?”

“Mr. Sterling is fine. In fact, he’s back in London now.”

“And Ernst?”

“We were able to get him to London as well.”

“And Elise?” Maggie asked in a small voice. “Did she really go back to Berlin?” If Elise had gone back to Germany, there would be no chance to talk to her, to explain …

Nelson nodded. “Yes, she decided she was needed in Berlin.”

Maggie wished tears would fill her eyes, but they remained hot and dry. “Just go,” she said. Nelson hesitated. Maggie threw the cup at him, splattering him with water and ashes.
“Go!”

Elise sat in one of the pews at St. Hedwig’s Cathedral for High Mass.

The cathedral was crowded—women in their best dresses and hats, men in suits, small children being shushed. The air was scented with candle wax and incense, and shafts of light pierced the edges of the boarded-up windows. The light danced over the floor, the pews, and the faces of the congregation.

There was a murmur in the crowd as Bishop von Preysing rose to give the homily.

And in the soaring space, the Bishop spoke. Within moments, Elise realized what he was talking about—that he had received the information about Charité and Hadamar from Father Licht, and had decided to publicly denounce Operation Compassionate Death.

He didn’t mince words—and ended with “Woe to mankind and woe to our German nation if God’s Holy Commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is not only deliberately broken, and if this act of mass murder is not only tolerated, but allowed to continue.”

Throughout the cathedral, there was stunned silence.

Women had tears running down their cheeks, while men looked on with pale faces and set jaws. In the back, one older woman fainted. She was helped up by two ushers and taken outside for air.

Bishop von Preysing put his hands together. “Let us pray.”

Elise knelt and bent her head. She prayed for Gretel. She prayed for the deaf boy on the train. She prayed for all the murdered children.

She tried to pray for Maggie, and for her mother, but the words wouldn’t come.

Copies of Bishop von Preysing’s homily were distributed throughout Berlin. Bishop von Galen and other higher-ups in the Catholic Church also spoke out against Operation Compassionate Death, and copies of their homilies, too, were circulated.

Through the Solf Circle, the resistance group Father Licht belonged to, the British propaganda office obtained copies of the homilies and dropped flyers of them over German cities and German-occupied territories, to let the people know that their government was murdering children. There was rioting in Hadamar and Ansberg, and the other sites where Operation Compassionate Death was being carried out.

Adolf Hitler was about to give a speech at the Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in Munich, where in 1920 he had once proclaimed the twenty-five theses of the National Socialist program. Then, the assembled crowds had cheered and applauded. Now, two decades later, the people waited, stony-faced and silent, for their Führer.

Inside the Hofbräuhaus, the mood of the top Nazis was subdued.
“Mein Führer,”
Goebbels said. “Are you sure you want to do this—now?” Goebbels was keenly aware of the disposition of the crowd. They had heard or read the homilies. Many of them had relatives and friends who had “disappeared” to Hadamar, or one of the other institutes, only to be returned as ashes in a black urn.

“My people need me,” Hitler replied, pushing back a limp lock of hair. “They may not know it, but they need me.”

Goebbels knew better than to object.
“Ja, mein Führer,”
he answered, head bowed.