“Thank you.” She rose and walked the length of the icy hall to Miss Lynd’s office. It was smaller than Colonel Gaskell’s, the window with slatted blinds looking out on a red-brick wall across an alley, a lone bare sapling’s branches whipped by the rising wind. It was tidy, though, with papers, pens, and reference books rigidly organized. At her elbow, Miss Lynd had a row of flip-flop card indexes, an inventory of names, addresses, and aliases of every F-Section agent, each with a small photograph attached. If she wanted to confirm a detail of an agent, she could run a fingernail along the top of the index, and little faces would appear, flipping over on the roller. The office’s only decoration was a silver-framed photograph of the King.
Miss Lynd settled herself at her desk, scrutinizing a document, underlining a word here and there with a black fountain pen. It was almost six, and most of the staff were leaving or had already left—only the occasional clatter of a typewriter could be heard, and the intermittent call of “Good night!”
Maggie didn’t like Miss Lynd. She found the older woman abrasive and tiresome, with a “what are you doing here, young upstart?” tone and a “don’t bother me” attitude. Unearned, in Maggie’s opinion, because Miss Lynd had never trained for the SOE or been on a mission. But as Miss Lynd was now in charge of so-called women’s issues, she was the only one for Maggie to talk to.
Miss Lynd looked up as Maggie entered. “You’re getting quite the reputation around here, you know.” Her jeweled rings flashed as she plucked a cigarette from an engraved silver box. “Do you know what they call you? ‘That talky redheaded bitch.’?”
A fine, fine line between “plucky” and “bitchy,” isn’t there? Maggie knew she wasn’t necessarily popular in the office, especially with Colonel Gaskell—but she wasn’t about to let it stop her.
“Miss Lynd,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “I don’t give a flying fig what ‘they’ say about me—I’m concerned about the safety of the women. They—we—deserve the same protections as the men over there. Not to mention the same pay. And a pension, when this war’s over.”
“Close the door, Miss Hope.” Maggie obeyed. The older woman stared at the redhead, then gazed over her head, through the small window behind, as she lit her cigarette. “I know you’re concerned. And I am, as well,” she admitted finally. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“But more and more female agents are being sent over now, especially to France!” Maggie exploded. “Those are our own over there. We can’t just drop them by parachute, cross our fingers for luck, then look the other way when something goes wrong. Britain has a responsibility to them! To their families!”
“I agree.” Miss Lynd exhaled a mouthful of smoke and gestured in the direction of the conference room. “But you see what we’re up against.”
“Bad enough we have to fight against the Nazis, but our own agency, too? Why don’t we go higher?” Maggie suggested. “Appeal to Sir Frank Nelson or Lord Wolmer? Sir Charles Hambro? Major Gubbins has always advocated for women agents—as has Mr. Churchill! Why not go to the P.M.?”
“Perhaps I’ll bring it up the next time I take tea with the King.” Miss Lynd blew smoke from her two nostrils like a dragon, then flicked the ashes of her cigarette into a cut-glass ashtray.
Maggie hated her, truly hated her, in that moment.
“Not a bad idea,” was all she allowed herself to say, but she thought, Maybe not the King, but perhaps the Queen? Queen Elizabeth does owe me a favor, after all—and I know after everything that happened at Windsor Castle, she’d at least hear me out….
Without warning, the rumble of an explosion rocked the office. The filthy window cracked, and dust from the plaster ceiling sifted down on them. Maggie put a hand to the wooden doorframe until it was over. Outside was deathly silent, then sirens began to wail in the distance.
Miss Lynd blinked. “Well, it’s either the Nazis or the IRA.” Unruffled, she looked back to the memo. “Regardless, Miss Hope, I suggest you get back to work.” She waved one bejeweled hand. “Off with you!”
—
“Hankering Hades! What the devil was that?” demanded a young man in front of the receptionist’s desk in the antechamber, brushing snowflakes off the lapels of his double-breasted cashmere coat.
Maggie smiled. It was her friend David Greene; they’d worked together in Mr. Churchill’s office at Number 10 during the summer of ’40 and become close friends. “David! What are you doing here?”
“Apparently, taking my life in my hands,” he said, straightening his polka-dot silk bow tie. He was thirty, slender and fair, with owlish eyes behind silver spectacles.
“It was probably an unexploded bomb randomly detonating. Wouldn’t be the first. Won’t be the last.”
“Fantastic,” David said, walking over to give Maggie a brotherly peck on the cheek. “Now that bombs have stopped falling from the sky, we need to worry about the unexploded ones left on the ground?”
“Not a lot of manpower left for that sort of thing—womanpower either…”
“I have something to distract you! A surprise!”
Maggie was on guard. “I don’t like surprises.”
“You’ll like this one.” He sat on the edge of the reception desk as his smile widened into a grin. “Now, now, don’t be spiky, Mags. You’ll love it, I promise.”
Maggie eyed the folders on her desk.
“Oh, it’s after six—surely Smaug will let you go?”
“David!” Smaug—the dragon of Tolkien’s Lonely Mountain—was their private nickname for the incessantly smoking Miss Lynd.
David stood and offered his arm in a sweeping gesture. “Come, my dear Maggie—you can’t win the war tonight. I have something quite special, quite special, for you up my sleeve. And I can’t wait for you to see it!”
Chapter Two
Not far from Baker Street in Marylebone, there was a row of what used to be handsome houses, now shabby and worn. Most of those that had survived the Blitz had been converted to flats and rooms catering to war workers and an influx of Polish, Canadian, and, more recently, U.S. soldiers.
In the early spring of 1942, it was a quiet street. But to those who could remember, the bomb-pitted pavements, damaged buildings, and burned brick walls painted a story of the worst of the Blitz—bombs exploding night after night, fires raging, cars and buses tossed about like toys, broken bodies dragged from rubble. In the mornings after the raids, firemen swept ash, broken glass, and severed limbs from the gutters.
This wasn’t Brynn Parry’s first wartime excursion to London. She thought back to trips the year before, and recalled nights of bombing when the East End was blazing and the sky glowed red, and mornings when ugly clouds of black smoke filtered the light of the rising sun, bathing the city in a depressing gray smog.
Tonight, though, the air was clear and cold, the sirens were distant, and the searchlights dimmed. Still, it felt like more of an intermission than an end.
Halfway down the block, the row of brick houses was broken by the entry to a courtyard. Set back in the shadows was a massive turreted and crenellated building, six stories tall, covered with carved stone gargoyles and grotesques.