His Majesty's Hope Read online

  The heavy door opened and her secretary announced, “Admiral Canaris to see you, as you requested, Frau Hess.”

  “Come in,” Clara said.

  Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, was a distinguished-looking man with white hair and shaggy white eyebrows. He walked in and stopped in front of her divan. “Heil Hitler!” Images of Clara were reflected back to him in the many beveled mirrors the office had on the walls, along with an oil portrait of Adolf Hitler.

  Her eyes were still closed. “Our agent in London is in place, Wilhelm. He’s just waiting for my go-ahead.”

  “Good,” Canaris said, taking a seat as one of the women finished massaging Clara’s hands and began to remove the mask with cotton pads soaked with witch hazel. “We’ll coordinate with Göring and Halder. It’s high time Britain surrendered. And Operation Aegir plays an important role.”

  “I’m no admirer of Mother Russia,” Clara said, sitting upright, the mask now removed, glacier-blue eyes open. While they were undisputedly beautiful, one wandered just slightly, the gaze of each pupil focusing on a different point in space. “But when we went into Poland, the Russian General Staff shared their methods for population control with us. And what they accomplished with their workers in the gulags is nothing short of inspiring.”

  One of the women opened a black crocodile makeup case, extracting pans of foundation, compacts of powder, tins of rouge, and tubes of lipstick.

  “Yes, I’ve heard they’ve already started using it in the camps,” Canaris said, as the woman began to paint Clara’s face.

  “We can control any population through medication of its drinking water supply. And by our releasing this poison into London’s water supply before the invasion, British morale will be destroyed. Churchill’s great speeches will be useless. The population will put up no resistance.”

  “Just by adding a chemical to the water supply?” Canaris didn’t sound convinced. “This is all on you, you know. If this mission should fail …” The silence turned ominous.

  Clara didn’t answer as the woman finished applying her makeup; then she barked, “Mirror!” The woman handed Clara a silver hand mirror. She studied her visage in the reflection, turning this way and that. “It will do,” she said to the woman, who nodded and began packing up.

  “Aegir won’t fail,” Clara assured Canaris. “I went over the facts with one of the top chemists at I.G. Farben.” She smiled, a gorgeous smile of crimson lipstick and pearly teeth, a smile that used to bring audiences at the Berlin Opera House to their feet, applauding madly, back in the day when she was a soprano famed for her Wagnerian roles. “And now, I must get dressed to meet Herr Goebbels at the cinema. We’re seeing a preview of Ich klage an—it’s his favorite.”

  Frieda knocked on the door to the servants’ entrance to the Hess house in Grunewald, a leafy, wealthy suburb of Berlin. Joseph Goebbels’s family lived in a large house nearby.

  Unlike her Jewish husband, Frieda was allowed to be out after curfew. Even so, and even with her Aryan features and identity card, it terrified her to be in such close proximity to high-ranking Nazi families.

  Elise, who’d been waiting for her friend, opened the door within moments. “Good to see you,” she said, giving her friend a hug the best she could, considering the other woman was carrying a covered birdcage and a brown paper bag filed with seed.

  “And you, too,” Frieda said, wiping her feet on a coconut mat and then walking into the kitchen, which smelled of baking bread. “And here is the lovely Marthe.” She set the cage down on the long wooden table and pulled back the protective covering. Marthe, a white-feathered dove, stared back at the two young women with shiny black eyes and cocked her head.

  Elise bent down to the cage to address the bird. “Hello, little Marthe. I hope you’ll be happy here. That is, until you can get back to your real home.”

  Frieda snorted. “As if that’s going to happen anytime soon.”

  “Come, sit down,” Elise urged, pulling out a chair for her friend. “I’ll get us something to eat.”

  Frieda sat as Elise made ham sandwiches with dark, grainy mustard and poured two glasses of milk.

  Although many foods in Germany were rationed, for the well-placed Hess family nothing was in short supply. Along the shelves, Frieda could see the tribute from the conquered: long, slim bottles of apricot schnapps from Austria, stout bottles of horseradish vodka from Poland, boxes of chocolates from Belgium, and magnums of champagne from France.

  As Elise sat down, Frieda took a huge bite, cramming as much as she could of the sandwich into her mouth. With a pang, Elise realized how hungry her friend must be. “I’ll give you some to take home, for you and Ernst.”

  “Thank you,” Frieda said through her mouthful, reaching for the milk.

  “Marthe and I are going to have a lovely time, aren’t we?” Elise said to the bird, who looked at her quizzically, and then began pecking an errant seed on the bottom of the cage. She turned back to her friend. “And Ernst, how is he?”

  “Not well,” Frieda managed between mouthfuls. “Since he’s married to a blond shiksa, he’s safe, for now, but they’re making him …” She swallowed. “He has to deliver letters to Jews, telling them to report for deportation to the camps. It’s the letter everyone dreads. After a day of delivering, all he can do is sleep. It’s all he does anymore—sleep. Sleeping is preferable to this new reality, I think.”

  “I can imagine.” Elise pictured Ernst, once a pediatric surgeon, so full of vitality and energy. She wondered how he looked now, not a surgeon anymore, banned from the hospital.

  “But enough about me.” Frieda took another sip of milk. “How are you? How’s your piano playing?”

  “Fair,” Elise said. “I’d rather be studying for the boards, even if we can’t take them until the war’s over. But Mother has this party coming up and wants me to accompany her, so …” Whatever her mother wanted, Elise usually did. Although not without a fair amount of resentment.

  Frieda gave a grim smile. She knew exactly who Elise’s mother was in the Reich, and her reputation at the Abwehr. She was terrified of her. But keeping her husband alive and in Berlin was her biggest and most overwhelming challenge now. “And … how is she?” Frieda managed, trying to sound normal.

  Elise did her best to distance herself from her mother’s Nazi affiliations, saying that medicine and science had no politics, and thus she had no politics—certainly not her mother’s.… But she and Frieda both knew the truth. They did their best, for the sake of their friendship, to avoid talking about it.

  “I haven’t seen her yet today, Frieda. But I promise you—I’ll speak to her about Ernst tonight.”

  “I know the Abwehr’s not in charge of deportations, but I saw a picture of her in the newspaper, at a concert with Himmler.… She must have some sort of influence?”

  “I promise you, Frieda, I will do everything in my power to help you and Ernst.” Elise made the sign of a cross over her chest. “Hand aufs Herz,” she vowed. Her stomach lurched as she said the words, for she remembered how her mother had screamed and shouted the last time she’d brought up protection for Ernst.

  Frieda also made the sign. “Cross my heart.”

  SOE was no ordinary spy organization. It was unconventional, fluid, rogue. And its goals were not military. No, the goals of SOE were sabotage and subversion, often collaborating with local resistance groups in enemy territories to thwart the enemy, working toward the ultimate liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe. Based at 64 Baker Street in London, its motley crew of administrators and agents were sometimes called the Baker Street Irregulars, after Sherlock Holmes’s men. They were charged by Churchill to “set Europe ablaze!”

  Sir Frank Nelson, the Director of SOE, was at his massive wooden desk in his office. He had high cheekbones, thin lips, and fine hair held fast with a copious amount of Brylcreem. He pulled over a heavy file labeled margaret hope. Stamped on it, in thick red letters, was top secret.

  The paper
s in the file were typed, single-spaced. British by birth, but raised in the United States for most of her life, Margaret Rose Hope had started off in May 1940 as one of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s secretaries. She’d cracked a secret code that a Nazi sleeper spy had put in a newspaper advertisement, and saved not just the Prime Minister’s life but also St. Paul’s Cathedral from destruction.

  These strengths, along with her fluency in French and German, led to her being recruited by Peter Frain, head of MI-5. Her increased strength and endurance, honed at Windsor Castle while protecting the young Princess Elizabeth from a kidnapping threat, had convinced Frain to put her name forward as a candidate for SOE. She’d been accepted, and had spent much of the winter and spring of 1941 at various training camps.

  Surviving those, she’d moved on to six weeks of “finishing school” at Lord Montagu’s Beaulieu Estate in the New Forest, in the Station X–Germany division. Passing her final test at Beaulieu was what led Maggie Hope to SOE’s sandbagged Baker Street office.

  Maggie stepped around a Salvation Army soldier ringing an iron bell, an older woman in the requisite navy-blue uniform, and dropped a coin into the basket. Air Raid wardens in tin helmets were sweeping up broken glass from the bombing the night before.

  She entered the building, showed her papers to the guard on duty, and was led by a young woman in uniform to Nelson’s office. He rose when she entered. “Please sit down, Miss Hope.”

  Maggie had endured a long day. Her cartwheel hat, with its low crown and wide, stiff brim, was askew. She had a run in her last good pair of stockings. Her dark red hair was slipping from its bun, and her lipstick had worn off long ago. She’d taken three different trains to get from Beaulieu to Baker Street in London, and had lost her gas mask on one of them, her gloves on another, and her temper on the third. She’d only had time to drop her valise in her room at David’s flat in Knightsbridge before making her way to Marylebone and SOE’s offices.

  “Thank you,” she replied, as she took a seat in the hard-backed wooden chair, crossing her ankles and folding her gloveless hands in her lap.

  It was summer in London. Outside Nelson’s taped windows, Maggie could see the glossy leaves of a hawthorn tree. The office itself was austere, with only a green banker’s lamp and two framed photographs: King George VI and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Nelson turned back to finish reading her folder. “I’d love a cup of tea, Miss Hope.”

  Tea? Maggie thought, as she clenched her hands. He expects me to parachute into Germany and make tea? Still, her voice remained even. “Why, I’d love a cup of tea, too, sir. One sugar, if you have it. Of course, I understand if you don’t.”

  Nelson looked up, blinked, then recovered. He cleared his throat. “I know you’ve just returned from Beaulieu, Miss Hope, but it’s time.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Two missions in one.” He peered at her over the rim of his glasses. “The first is to deliver desperately needed radio crystals to one of a resistance circle in Berlin. The other, a more difficult task, is to gain entrance to a high-level Nazi officer’s study and bug it.”

  “I see.” Maggie considered. “Who’s the officer?”

  “A Commandant Hess.” He looked down at the file. “I understand Hess was the mastermind behind the attempted assassination of the King and the kidnapping of the Princess last December?”

  “Yes,” Maggie said, aware that Nelson was scrutinizing her face for any reaction. She gave none.

  “So it’s personal for you.”

  “You might say.” If there’s no notation in your little file that Commandant Clara Hess of the Abwehr had once been known as Clara Hope, my allegedly dead-in-a-car-crash mother, I’m not about to enlighten you, Nellie.

  “I will tell you, Miss Hope, that as of yet, no women have been sent to the Continent. The Prime Minister has serious issues with the thought of women spooks. As do I. But, as I said, the P.M. asked for you specifically for this job, and so here we are.” He flipped the folder closed, then rose and went to the window. “Feels a woman will be able to slip in and out more easily. As the war goes on, any young man we send in looks more and more suspicious—‘Why isn’t he off fighting?’ Et cetera, et cetera.”

  Maggie raised her chin. “Of course. However, I can assure you, sir, that I’ve been well trained. I can carry out any missions assigned as well as any man.”

  Nelson turned back toward Maggie. “I realize the personal angle might give you extra impetus, but it’s important not to let emotions cloud your vision. You go in, perform your mission, and leave. That’s it. Clean and fast. In fact, the job is quick—no more than four nights.”

  “What’s my cover?”

  Nelson found another folder on his desk and opened it, his eyes scanning the page. “Let’s see—you’ll pose as a mistress to an Abwehr officer. He’s part of the resistance circle that’s been working with us. He’ll be your way into Berlin. You’ll deliver the radio crystals to him. And then he will also be your entree to Commandant Hess’s home.”

  “Sounds straightforward.”

  He flipped a page. “You’ll parachute into the German countryside, where one of our people will meet you and take you to a safe house. From there you’ll take the train to Berlin, where your contact will meet you. Your cover story is that you met while he was in Rome, at a conference the Abwehr was having with the Vatican. You were assigned to be his temporary secretary there, and you fell madly in love.”

  “Does this new love of my life have a name?”

  “Let’s see.” Nelson riffled through the papers. “Here we are—Gottlieb Lehrer.”

  “Gottlieb Lehrer,” Maggie repeated.

  “And you’ll need this.” Nelson opened his desk drawer and riffled inside until he found what he was looking for: a gold lipstick tube, which he handed to Maggie.

  No stranger to the methods of SOE, she unscrewed the bottom. There, in a hidden compartment, was a tablet encased in rubber.

  “Cyanide, I presume?” she asked, returning the pill to its chamber and screwing the cap back on tightly.

  “Indeed. I hope you won’t have to use it.”

  “Thank you. I hope I don’t either.” Maggie gave a grim smile. “When do I leave?”

  “Because of the urgency of the mission, and the fact we’re coming up on a full moon, you’ll be leaving tomorrow night. I assume you can get everything in order? You do have a will, yes?”

  Tomorrow night! Maggie thought. But I’ve only just returned! I haven’t even seen Hugh yet.… Still, there was no arguing with the phases of the moon. If she didn’t leave now, she’d have to wait another month. And she wanted to go. It was what she’d dreamed of, trained for.… “Yes, I have a will. And yes, I’ll be ready, sir.”

  “Excellent, Miss Hope.” They both stood and shook hands across Nelson’s wooden desk.

  “Report here tomorrow morning at nine sharp,” he said, walking her out. “First you’ll get all your paperwork together and then head to Wardrobe. You’ll be dropped into Germany tomorrow night.”

  “Ah,” Maggie said. “Das Eisen schmieden, solange es heiß ist.”

  “Yes, let’s strike while the iron is still hot. And, Miss Hope?”

  “Yes?”

  “I hope your skills are up to par. Your life, and the lives of the brave people of the resistance group in Berlin, depend on them.”

  Maggie replied, with the confidence of youth, “You can count on me, sir.”

  Frieda returned to the apartment she and her husband shared, carrying two loaves of bread, a thick slab of ham, a tin of coffee, and a bag of sugar. In addition, she had large bars of Neuhaus chocolate from Belgium and a bottle of schnapps.

  It was a cramped, dingy, airless flat, so different from the one they had shared when they’d first been married, in 1934. Frieda had always felt that, somehow, because they were married before the Nuremberg Laws passed, they were still safe. Even when the SS took their spacious, sunlit apartment near the Tiergarten, along wi
th their furnishings and artwork, even when they were relocated to a small, dark one in the ghetto, even when Ernst lost his job, even when he started having to send out the letters. They were together. And Ernst was still alive. That was the only thing that mattered.

  She set the rucksack full of food on the table. “Look, love,” she said, feigning cheer. “Finally, something decent to eat!”

  “I don’t want any damned Nazi food,” Ernst said, shirtsleeves rolled up, sorting through envelopes. “I’d rather starve.”

  “And we just may.” Both Ernst and Frieda had become gaunt in the last few years, due to fear as well as bad nutrition. “Well, I’m not going to let this go to waste,” Frieda declared, peeling back the foil on the chocolate bar and taking a greedy bite. The intense creamy sweetness nearly caused her to tear up—it had been so long since she’d had candy.

  “The Belgian storekeeper that bar was stolen from was probably shot,” Ernst said. “Doesn’t that bother you at all?”

  “Well, he may be dead, but I’m still alive,” Frieda countered through her mouthful. “And if I throw out this beautiful chocolate, who wins? It doesn’t affect the shopkeeper either way.”

  Ernst stood up from his wobbly chair and walked over to Frieda, giving her a gentle kiss on the cheek. Then he rifled through the bag. “Oh, and I see she gave you ham. How thoughtful, to give a Jew ham.”

  “You’re lucky to be eating at all.” Frieda was exhausted and losing patience. “They now expect two weeks’ worth of rations to last for three. When the war’s over, we can keep kosher again.”

  Ernst didn’t want to argue further. “Yes, of course,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know you’re doing your best.” Then, “I have a joke for you.”

  Frieda didn’t smile. “Really?”

  “What do you call one Englishman?”

  She cocked one pale eyebrow. “I don’t know, what?”

  “An idiot. What do you call two Englishmen?”

  “No idea.”

  “A club. And what do you call three Englishmen?”

  Frieda sighed in disapproval. “Oh, Ernst.”