All Brynn Parry knew was she had the worst headache of her life. Her temples throbbed. She cracked open her eyes.
Then she started. The room she was in was not the room she’d gone to sleep in.
Something was wrong. She looked around. The room itself was small and narrow, with no windows and a low ceiling. Shadows from a candle on a battered campaign bureau danced over rough stone walls. It smelled of must, damp, and old brick.
She knew she had to get out.
As she struggled to sit up in her hard, narrow bed, her head spun and she feared she might vomit. When she kicked off the coarse, faded coverlet and swung her legs over the side, her muscles ached, as if she’d been through battle. She stood with effort, shaky on her feet, then took a few tentative steps on the cold, bare floor toward the door.
It was locked. She jiggled the knob and twisted and pulled at it. Then she beat upon the thick pine and called for help until her throat was raw.
You’re a trained agent, she reminded herself. Act like one. In the dresser drawers were all of the things she’d had crammed in her suitcase—all the things she hadn’t bothered to unpack the night before.
Her suitcase was gone. Someone had taken her suitcase.
There was a chipped jug of water and a bowl on a dressing table, along with her hairbrush and tube of lipstick. The bed’s frame was made of white ceramic, like a hospital bed, and the mattress was thin. A reproduction of Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare hung on one wall, the incubus staring back at her with a malevolent expression. There was a deep chill in the air—like in her parents’ cellar. Wherever she was, she was underground, she was certain of it.
The candle’s flame flickered. Her book on the bedside table, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, mocked her.
She didn’t know where she was.
She didn’t know what time it was.
Or even what day.
For a moment, the wave of terror and shock was so overwhelming she feared she might faint, but she sat on the bed’s edge and bent to put her head between her legs, as she’d been taught, taking deep breaths.
When the dizziness and nausea began to subside, she lifted her head. She’d been trained to withstand capture, imprisonment, even torture. And although her training was supposed to be of use in Nazi-infested Europe, in London—assuming she was still in London—it was the same principle.
She swallowed hard.
She was still alive.
And—somehow—she would get out.
Chapter Four
On St. James’s Street, past Boodle’s and White’s and the other exclusive men’s clubs, between Park Place and Jermyn Street, stood the headquarters of MI-5. It was officially known as the Imperial Security Intelligence Service. Its mission: countering any and all threats to national safety.
Maggie hadn’t been back recently, but she still remembered where to go, resolutely making her way through marble hallways lined with rows of Corinthian pillars and past various security checkpoints, up in a polished brass elevator, until she reached the director general’s office.
A secretary with grayish white hair that didn’t quite match the fake white braid on her headband greeted her, then picked up the telephone receiver. “Miss Hope is here, sir.” She looked up to Maggie. “Go in.”
Maggie opened the heavy paneled door.
Behind his massive mahogany desk, Frain stood. “Thank you for coming, Maggie.” Peter Frain had been made director under Mr. Churchill during the dark days of the summer of 1940, which was when Maggie had first met him. Then a tall man with slicked-back hair and cold gray eyes, he still looked the same—elegant, sophisticated, debonair—although Maggie could see he had more silver hair at his temples. It suits him, she decided as she shook his hand.
“Please sit down.” He regarded her from across the desk, piles of folders, papers, and notes stacked neatly under brass paperweights. Not a salacious look, but intense—the kind one might give a particularly interesting crossword clue or a game of Chinese Go in progress.
“How’s your father?” he asked, sitting back and making a steeple with his fingers.
“Still in the hospital, I’m afraid. I’ve been visiting once a week, although he’s usually asleep or groggy. The doctors have him on a high dose of morphine.”
Earlier in the winter, Edmund Hope, Maggie’s estranged father, had been burned in an “accident” that revealed terrible abscesses on his feet, due to untreated diabetes. Both legs had to be amputated above the knee.
“I should go and visit, I know—but it’s been, shall we say, busy here.”
“?‘There’s a war on, you know.’?” She quoted their oft-repeated line. “Next time I see him, I’ll let him know you asked after him.”
“I knew he’d been drinking, but I had no idea things were so bad.”
Maggie didn’t want to discuss it. “And any news of”—she didn’t know what to call her estranged mother—“Clara Hess?”
“You know as much as we do. Either she died in the fire that night—or she somehow made it out of Chatswell House and she’s out there.” He waved a manicured hand in the direction of the window, with a view to Hyde Park and the rest of London. “Somewhere.”
Terrific, Maggie thought. Nazi agent Clara Hess could possibly be at large in London—now that’s just bloody well terrific, isn’t it?
“By the way, I have something for you.” Frain reached into a desk drawer.
“For me?”
He pulled out a brown paper envelope. To Miss Margaret Hope c/o MI-5 was written in calligraphy on the front. Maggie flipped it over before slipping it into her handbag.
“You’re not going to open it?”
It was the rarest of moments for Maggie to see Frain surprised. She rather liked it. “Later. I assume you asked me here for something more important than to pick up my mail.”
There was a rap at the door; it opened to reveal Mark Standish, Maggie’s former colleague. They’d worked together before, and while they hadn’t always gotten along, they’d developed a begrudging professional respect.
However, the Mark Standish who stood in front of her was a different man from the one she’d known in Scotland last fall. He wore the same style double-breasted suit, but now it hung loosely on him. Where he’d once been charitably called robust, he was alarmingly gaunt and wan. His formerly doughy face was angular, and a startling streak of white cut through his dark hair.
“Hello, Maggie. Welcome back to MI-Five.”
Maggie wondered if she would have recognized Mark if she’d passed him on the street. And when she shook his hand, she noticed it had a slight tremor. “Hello, Mark. Good to see you again.”
“Let’s go to your office, Mr. Standish,” Frain said, standing.
“Yes, sir.”
They walked down a corridor, and Mark opened a door. “Welcome.” He stepped aside to let them enter.
Maggie fought the urge to whistle. “Spiffy,” she said instead. It was spacious, with several good-size windows overlooking the street. There was a large desk with a green banker’s lamp and a leather chair, overlooked by the official photograph of the King. On the desk was a typewriter, hole punch, a TOP SECRET red stamp, several telephones, and a metal inbox.
On one wall of the office, a corkboard had been set up. Photographs of a dead girl, clearly taken at a crime scene, were tacked up. Opposite was a green chalkboard, recently cleaned, fresh chalk and erasers at the ready.
Maggie couldn’t help but think back to when Mark and Hugh had dented metal desks in MI-5’s windowless basement, with all the other junior agents. She wished she could say she’d seen Hugh in the morning, but it was against all rules to mention it. Anyway, Frain probably knew—he somehow made it a point to know everything.
“Sit, both of you,” the director ordered, gesturing to a sofa and a side chair. It might have been Mark’s office, but it was clear who was running the show.
The secretary with the white braid came in with the tea things and set them on a low table, then poured. Once the door closed again, Frain took a seat and turned to Maggie. “We want to borrow you.”