His Majesty's Hope Read Online Free PDF

Princess Elizabeth from a kidnapping threat, had convinced Frain to put her name forward as a candidate forSOE. 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 assureyou, sir, that I’ve been well trained. I can carry out any missions assigned as well as any man.”
    Nelson turned