Without waiting for me to comment, Mat pulled another pile of letters to him and started again.
After the third long soliloquy, I stopped trying to answer. He wasn’t talking to me but having a full-on research discussion with himself, his laptop, and his pen and paper.
He worked that way for hours, reading, notating, turning pages in his black Moleskine notebook, reconciling what he’d found months ago in the National Archives to what the letters and diaries revealed tonight.
Rather than answers, he found more questions.
“I give up.” He threw the pen down after one in the morning and pulled over his computer. “We’ll just have to go back.”
“Go back?”
“To the National Archives at Kew.” He started typing. “Grab your driver’s license and your passport. We’ll need them to get you a Reader Pass so you can get access to the files. Once we have your pass number, I’ll start ordering them.”
That’s how we ended the night. Exhausted around three in the morning, files ordered, I headed to my room to crash for a few hours, while Mat stayed, still racing through the letters and still talking to himself.
Twenty-Three
We got off the train and Mat led us down Richmond’s Ruskin Avenue.
“About today . . . There are going to be a ton of files. Thin sheets of paper, most of which will mean nothing to us, but any little clue—name, date, event, place—near Caro’s name, we record and chase down. That’s how I found your aunt. A notation in Arnim’s file—Schiaparelli’s employment files in Paris, the ATS, ISRB, and then I stumbled on Arnim all over again. We find a thread and we start pulling.”
“How many files did you order?”
“Twelve, for now. There’s more than you can imagine in there, and it’s a mess. You’ll find papers from SOE North Africa and an operational log from France in the same file. We’re looking for a needle in a haystack and in only about ten percent of the haystack.”
I felt my face scrunch in confusion. “Ten percent?”
“Most of the European SOE files burned in a records fire in 1999.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No . . . We have to accept we may not find anything more than what we already know.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” I stopped and stared at him. He was awfully excited for someone who needed to “accept we may not find anything more.”
He beamed at me. Lips pressed together. Eyes dancing. My heart simultaneously sank and rose.
“What? What did you find?”
“There was so much in those letters, Caroline. And once I paired them with the diaries . . . You might not have caught it all, but Baker Street, the Irregulars, references to books, Tube stations, people like Nelson and Selwyn Jepson. She was spilling the tea. She didn’t share secrets, per se, but she gave enough clues that now, with files no longer classified, it paints a picture. A really complete picture.”
“A picture of what?” I couldn’t move and Mat couldn’t stand still. He started walking down the street. I raced after him. “Hey! Slow down. A picture of what?”
“A spy. When I threw it out yesterday I wasn’t being serious. But I am now. It all became clear around four this morning. But I need proof. Proof and time to write it up by Friday.” He grinned down at me, racing on, one long stride after another.
At five nine, I can usually keep up with anyone, and Mat’s only about six two. Yet I had to run to catch him again.
I grabbed his arm. “What does that mean?” It didn’t sound good. From my perspective, it sounded a lot worse. This was no longer a private shame but an international one?
“It means a shift in history, Caroline.” His smile was a broad thing fueled by endless coffee and the entire tin of shortbread cookies Mom had delivered at midnight. “My article before was positing that your aunt worked for the SOE as a secretary, maybe in records or something, as that was common. But it was about how we view history, how it affects us, changes us, and we grow, rebound, and move forward. But what if I can prove your aunt was the very first female SOE agent? Her dates signal she was on board in 1940, putting her at the very beginning with Giliana Gerson and Virginia Hall. Earlier even—and they weren’t British. See? That’s a game changer. The stuff of history books and careers. This is no longer a discussion about nuances and perspectives but a seismic shift in the actual events themselves.”
“And if she defected?”
“Again, seismic shifts in how we look at that time. A defection like that, if known, would have changed everything for the SOE and the British war effort. A tsunami on a global scale.” He bounced on the balls of his feet.
I pulled at his forearm to stop the bouncing. He dropped his attention to my hand, white with pressure and still clutching his arm.
He calmed. “Something this big requires hard proof, Caroline. We’re far from that.”
I looked to the National Archives building in all its colossal cement solidity, then back to him. “I . . .” I was suddenly afraid of what we might find. For all my talk about putting ghosts to rest, the idea that Caro’s story could be bigger—and worse—had not felt like a probability. How much had the letters and diaries really taught me about my aunt?
Mat threw an arm around my shoulders. He squeezed and turned us both to face forward. He started us walking. “You can trust me, Caroline. I won’t blindside you and this will all be okay. Remember, we’re still at the beginning.”
“It’s the end I’m worried about.”
Mat and I turned our separate ways in the front lobby. He rode the elevator straight to the third floor Reading Room. I climbed the stairs to Security on the first floor to pick up my pass. Although I was only a few minutes behind him, he was already deep within a file by the time I dropped into the chair next to him.
He lifted a stack from his desk and gently laid it in front of me. “I pulled six folders from my locker. You can only have three out at a time, so you take these three.”
Three large, brown trifold folders sat in front of me. Each tied with a cloth ribbon. I opened the first and found that the thin copy pages inside were bound with strings like a three-ring notebook. The pages crinkled with every turn.
“Is there any order to this?” I whispered.
Mat leaned toward me. He smelled of citrus and something rich, like cedar. “Within each folder, it’s a loose reverse chronological. Just start reading. Take pictures of anything interesting. No flash.” He held out his hand. “Give me your card.”
I reached into my pocket and handed it over. He sniggered at the picture. My hair looked flat, eyes dull, and skin oddly yellow.
“It’s not that bad.” I nudged him. “The lighting was terrible.”
He raised a brow I read to mean nice try and continued with his thought. “Now that we’re here, I’m going to request three more files on each of our cards. You start reading.”
While he left the room for the computers outside, I began.
Page after page after page of . . . Egypt?