“What, um, what happened—”
“To von Eisen?” she said.
“Yes, von Eisen.” Hector looked into her eyes and saw something he knew he would never have. Behind the pain and fatigue, he saw a profound confidence.
“He stumbled,” she said with a weary smile as the blood drained from her face, “and fell from grace.”
He caught her as she fainted.
46
In safer and warmer times, an invitation to spend the weekend at Chequers Court, the prime minister’s country retreat, was to be much coveted. Forty miles northwest of London, the sixteenth-century Elizabethan red-brick manor house sat in a hollow on extensive grounds. Guests could walk or ride across endless pasture and wander ancient woodlands or immaculate walled gardens. There was also a croquet lawn on which, guests were warned, Churchill’s wife, Clementine, was a cold-blooded assassin.
Lady Mary Grey, sister of the tragic Lady Jane Grey, had once been confined to Chequers by Queen Elizabeth. Portraits show Lady Mary was a tiny, unattractive, crook-backed woman, while her secret husband, Elizabeth’s serjeant porter, Thomas Keyes, was a mountain of a man at six feet eight inches tall. He was also of minor Kentish gentry and over twice Mary’s age. Ignoring the unspeakable horror of such an age-warped and morganatic relationship, the physical disparity alone so appalled Elizabeth she banished Mary from court to permanent immuration at Chequers. Mary and Thomas never saw each other again. As a repository of so much of England’s history, her bedroom was kept exactly as it was when she left it in 1567.
But these were not safer or warmer times, and invitations to visit were viewed with some understandable alarm because Chequers was a security nightmare. After passing through immense wrought-iron gates and between twin brick lodges, the visitors would drive along Victory Way, an arrow-straight road that led directly to the south side of the house. An RAF aerial reconnaissance photograph showed how detrimental that road was to security. On a landscape of open fields, it was a glaring direction marker for a Luftwaffe bomber, which had only to follow Victory Way to the end, drop its bombs, and leave. And if no bomber deigned to attack, with such vast grounds it was agreed that scores of bloodthirsty German paratroopers would have no difficulty descending unnoticed to earth, to then slaughter all the occupants in their beds before they could wake.
Added to all that was the near-impossibility of adequately patrolling the estate, although recently a detachment of the Coldstream Guards had set up camp in a wood behind the house. Churchill understood all of this but was not to be deterred from using it as refuge from the pressures of London. And this weekend was to be a very special one, which no zealous Luftwaffe bomber or murderous paratrooper would dare spoil.
The tall leaded-glass windows of the Great Hall were covered with blackout curtains, but the light oak paneling and oil paintings of ancestors past glowed with candlelight. A fire burned in the marble fireplace, and the invited guests sat at a table in the center of an immense red Turkish carpet.
They were all dressed for the occasion, and Churchill had even put on his pinstripe siren suit. Hector sat to his right, Caitrin to his left. Farther down the table SOE Brigadier Alasdair Gryffe-Reynolds, splendidly filling his uniform, sat across from Bethany Goodman, with Clementine Churchill’s gracious presence anchoring the far end.
Caitrin glanced at Clementine and wondered what kind of woman would be married to Winston Churchill. What it took to stay married to him.
“I’m told most of our food came from local Victory gardens, so we’re not transgressing rationing laws, much.” Churchill’s eyes twinkled as he gestured to a bowl of fruit in the center of the table. “Lloyd George kindly sent us apples from the orchard on his Surrey estate. No doubt the fair hand of Frances picked them.”
There were muffled laughs and giggles in response. Lloyd George’s thirty-year-long relationship with his mistress, Frances Stevenson, was an open secret in Westminster.
“Tell me, Miss Colline. You are fully recovered from your combat?”
“Yes, Sir,” Caitrin said and flexed her bandaged left hand. “A little sore is all, and the right hand is just about healed.”
“But we did get the Jewels back,” Hector said.
“More or less,” Churchill said. “The Sword of Spiritual Justice is bent from being thrust into a lorry’s radiator and the Sword of Temporal Justice is somewhat serrated from Caitrin’s fight with Heiko von Eisen.”
“But the hilt and all the jewels are intact,” Caitrin said. “Just replace the blade.”
“They were made by Andrea and Giandonato Ferrara—in Italy.”
“Oh, yes, Axis Powers, Mussolini. Pity, that. The Italians won’t last long, though, and then the Ferrara boys can get to work again.”
“In 1580.”
Caitrin thought for a moment. “A good bashing with a hammer won’t straighten them out?”
Churchill winced at the thought. “No.”
“Then it’s time to replace them with good English Sheffield steel.”
Churchill laughed. “There is a larger deficit. The Crown of Queen Elizabeth, which is incidentally the only crown made of platinum, lost its, dare I say, its crowning glory. The Koh-i-n
r Diamond.”
“Forgot.” Caitrin shot upright, snapped her fingers, and said, “Got it!” She dug into her pocket, retrieved the diamond, balanced it on her thumbnail, and flicked it in a high parabola toward him. To his credit, Churchill caught it in midair as she said, “I used it to start a fire and create a diversion.”
“Which worked rather well,” Hector said.
Caitrin leaned toward Churchill, and with an impish grin said, “I will confess to larcenous ideas. I thought of selling it and using the proceeds to buy every home in Abertillery their own swimming pool. Although I’m sure they’d be just as happy with running hot water and an indoor lavatory.”
“Miss Colline, I have only just gotten used to the New Woman, and now it seems there is the New New Woman to contend with.”
Caitrin nodded in happy agreement. “We’re on our way.”
“Overall, I thought our plan worked quite well,” Gryffe-Reynolds said.
“Our?” Bethany Goodman said. “Our? Unless my memory fails me, when we first met, you insisted you knew nothing about the planned operation.”
Gryffe-Reynolds colored. Churchill saved him. “The error is all mine, Miss Goodman. When we began, I mistakenly thought that Miss Colline would not be up to the complex demands the operation might put on her.”
“Why? Because she is a woman?”
“I was completely, utterly wrong, and I beg your, and Miss Colline’s, forgiveness. Both of you and your 512 organization deserve our gratitude. You may count on us to turn to you for help in the difficult years to come. And you did deflect us a bit by saying Miss Colline was only a police constable.”
“Not entirely. If my women are not in training or involved in an operation, I encourage them to return to their previous occupation. It keeps them in touch with the real world and authenticates their background story if ever they are caught.”
“What exactly was the plan?” Caitrin asked.
“To get the Crown Jewels to Canada, and for you and Hector, working as a partnership, to thwart Die Brücke’s attempt if they tried to steal them, of course,” Churchill said.
