‘But do you know what really makes me cross?’ Millicent added.

  ‘No . . . what?’

  ‘We needn’t have had this blasted war at all. Poor Lord Halifax told everyone, again and again, “We should sue for peace.” And he was right. We’d have kept our country, our king and our empire. Our young men would have stayed safe at home. There’d never have been a Blitz. Johnny and I would be married, and the Halifaxes would have their boys safe and well, without a care in the world.’

  The car was slowing down. Across the road, Saffron saw a fence of high, spiked, black iron railings, broken by a series of stone-pillared gates. Beyond stood a large U-shaped red-brick building, with two protruding wings running down towards the street, decorated by a classical pediment at its centre.

  ‘We’re here,’ Millicent said. She turned into the furthest gate, drove along the side of one of the wings, then turned towards an entrance in the side of the building. Above the entrance there were three windows: a large rounded one, flanked by two smaller, narrow ones, with the Union Jack fluttering above them.

  ‘That’s Lord Halifax’s office,’ Millicent said, glancing up at the three windows. As they drove through the arch, Saffron saw a shallow flight of stone steps to her right, leading to a glazed door. Millicent parked the car in a small courtyard beyond the arch, and said, ‘Right, enough moping – let’s go and meet Lady Halifax.’

  • • •

  T

  he British ambassador’s residence was built as an English country house in the heart of America’s capital. It was an elegant, gracious, but still forceful reminder that while Britannia might not be the force she once was, she wasn’t entirely finished, either.

  The entrance that Millicent had driven past a minute earlier led to a hall from which a double staircase in grey marble rose in sweeping, mirror-image semicircles, with twin red carpets running up the steps.

  ‘The residence is built on sloping ground, so we’re actually going uphill to a second ground floor,’ Millicent said, as Saffron looked around. The walls were painted in a pale grey that set off the brilliant white of the ceiling and the ornate plasterwork of the Corinthian pilasters that were set against the walls.

  At the top of the stairs, a bridge to Saffron’s right led across the stairwell towards a corridor that, lit by tall windows, stretched the entire length of the building.

  ‘That’s the door to the ambassador’s study,’ whispered Millicent, nodding to the left, as if speaking more loudly might penetrate the study’s thick oak door, set within a classical arch.

  ‘Have you ever been in there?’ Saffron whispered back, finding herself playing along.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Millicent, raising her voice a little and holding her head higher as she added, ‘Lady Halifax often asks me to pass messages on to His Lordship, so I’m in and out all the time.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Well, the walls are all panelled in oak. It’s a little too masculine for my taste, of course, but entirely suitable for an ambassador and—’

  Before Millicent could finish her sentence, the door opened and Jock Colville scurried out, moving, as always, as if he should have been somewhere else by now, like the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he exclaimed, bringing himself up short. ‘Hello, Saffron, what on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Lady Halifax very sweetly said I could put my feet up here, while I wait for the kind lady who’s volunteered to put me up.’

  ‘Well, you’ve picked a hell of a time to arrive.’ He looked around and in a quiet, conspiratorial voice added, ‘Between you and me, a very eminent, but somewhat, ah . . . controversial personage has decided to make his presence felt . . . with his wife.’ The last words were said with a weight that suggested they were of considerable significance. ‘Anyway, must dash!’

  ‘Wait a sec,’ Saffron said. ‘Could you tell the PM that I saw his friend in New York, and will be acting on their advice?’

  A puzzled frown crossed Colville’s face. ‘I’m not sure I follow you, old girl.’

  ‘Don’t worry, he will understand – and he will be very glad to hear it.’

  Just as Colville had emphasised ‘wife’, so she underlined ‘very’.

  ‘Well, I’m off to see him now, so I’ll be sure to pass it on,’ Colville said, getting the hint, before he raced away across the bridge. He turned right and disappeared. By the sound of his footsteps, Saffron guessed that he was heading up another flight of stairs.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Millicent asked, not even trying to mask her inquisitiveness.

  ‘Oh, just a friend of Mr Churchill’s who he wanted me to look up when I was in New York. He thought she could give me some useful advice about dealing with Americans. Which she did . . . and she took me shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue, too, which was wildly extravagant, but great fun.’

  Saffron hoped that Millicent would be sufficiently put off by her spoiled-little-rich-girl story that she wouldn’t pursue it. To encourage a change of subject, she added, ‘What did Colville mean by the personage and his wife?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ Millicent replied. ‘But the word “personage” is usually quite specific in its meaning.’

  Having despatched that question, she returned to the scent she had been chasing.

  ‘You seem to have struck up quite a friendship with Mr Churchill.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. I was introduced to him aboard the Queen Mary. I was the only female in our part of the ship, so I dare say he just wanted some light relief. And then, as we were saying hello, a German U-boat appeared and let off a couple of torpedoes. They only just missed. So I suppose that made the occasion a bit more memorable. And then we bumped into each other again, just as we were coming into harbour. You know, leaning on the railings and admiring the view.’

  ‘You’re very casual about being attacked by a submarine.’

  ‘Well,’ said Saffron, deciding to take a different approach, ‘it’s not nearly as bad as being on a ship that’s being dive-bombed by Stukas. That didn’t feel casual at all.’ She smiled sweetly and added, ‘Shall we go and find Lady Halifax?’

  ‘She instructed me to take you to the portico,’ Millicent replied, doing her best to put Saffron back in her place. ‘Follow me.’

  They set off across the bridge and along the corridor, heels clacking on the black and white patterned marble floor, past the staircase that Colville had just ascended and a series of closed doors, until they came to a point, about halfway along, where light flooded in from both sides. To her right, open to the corridor, save for a line of marble columns, with the same white Corinthian capitals, Saffron saw an oak-floored room with a grand piano at the far end. ‘That’s the ballroom,’ Millicent said.

  ‘It’s magnificent.’

  ‘Not that magnificent. The Treasury panicked at the amount of money this place was costing and ordered a drastic cutback. The columns aren’t marble. They’re painted plaster.’

  ‘Well, they look pretty splendid,’ Saffron said. Peering further down the corridor, she saw what she had assumed was a window but was actually a pair of French doors that opened onto a flagstone path ending in a set of steep steps.

  ‘Where does that go to?’ Saffron asked, pointing towards the door.

  ‘The ambassador’s swimming pool,’ said Millicent. ‘Very lovely, and entirely out of bounds to anyone except for the Halifaxes and their guests. Now, if you’d just come this way . . .’

  Millicent turned left, where three more sets of glazed doors looked out onto the embassy garden. The middle pair were open, and she led Saffron onto a terrace that sat beneath a portico, supported by more columns. Saffron tapped one as she walked out and said, ‘I hope this isn’t plaster.’

  ‘No, that’s stone. Quite solid.’

  A wicker table had been laid for two with a pristine white cloth, silver cutlery and gleaming crystal glasses. A vase of freshly cut flowers sat upon a smaller table to one side.

  ‘I’ll let Lady Halifax know you’re here,’ Millicent said, disappearing into the house.

  Saffron gazed across the gardens at the skyline, thinking that the Capitol dome seemed to be at the centre of every view of Washington, just as St Paul’s rose over London. She concentrated on what Millicent had said. What kind of a person is called ‘a personage’? Had she grown up in England, instead of Kenya, and been familiar with the nuances of upper-class etiquette, Saffron would have known in an instant. As it was, she had to rack her brain and . . .

  ‘Oh,’ Saffron said, as it came to her. ‘Personage’ – in the way Colville and Millicent had used it – must refer to someone of royal rank. This royal was controversial, and the presence of his wife only added to the difficulties it caused.

  Even a Kenyan girl knew what that meant.

  The Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, must be in Washington, accompanied by Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom he had abdicated the throne. So he, Churchill and Roosevelt were all in the same place at the same time, and suddenly Saffron was struck by another question. What if this embassy mole wasn’t intent on getting information about the Allied invasion plans? What if his purpose was something more straightforward, more brutal – a strike at the Allied leaders themselves?

  But the Duke of Windsor was infamous for being a great admirer of Hitler’s. Why on earth would the Nazis want to kill him? And if that was not their intention, what did they intend to do with him?

  Saffron Courtney had spent enough time in the conspiratorial world of secret intelligence to doubt there was any such thing as coincidence. Whatever the duke was doing in Washington, she refused to believe that it was purely a matter of chance.

  Lady Halifax must once have been a ravishing English rose. Her features were modelled with the delicacy of fine porcelain: her cheeks were high, her eyes were gentle, her mouth, with its wide, slightly overhanging top lip, conveyed vulnerability as well as beauty. In Saffron’s experience, women blessed with such perfect – almost regal – bone structure retained their looks all their life. But grief and loss had left their mark on Lady Halifax, just as they had on her secretary. Her eyes were dull, her skin dry, her hair wiry, and she was rail-thin, her limbs looking as frail as a china doll’s.

  The embassy staff had prepared a picnic lunch of ladylike sandwiches – crust-less rounds of ham, with a touch of mustard; egg mayonnaise and cress; and finely sliced cucumber – accompanied by a green salad. To Saffron, whose few days in America had not yet stopped her thinking like someone on meagre British rations, this was a real feast, and it was all she could do not to wolf the spread down in an instant. Lady Halifax, however, barely managed a mouthful.

  Putting a single leaf on her fork. She took a nibble out of one corner of a cucumber sandwich and a quick sip of the chilled white wine that had been served with the food. ‘It’s Californian, I’m afraid,’ she said distractedly. ‘We have to save the French for official occasions.’ She attempted a smile. ‘And of course, we’ve set aside the best champagne and cognac for Mr Churchill’s visits.’

  ‘I gather that’s essential!’ said Saffron, doing her best to be upbeat.

  Lady Halifax barely seemed to hear her. ‘Anyway, it’s really not too bad for an American wine.’

  The wine, Saffron discovered, was delicious. So, too, were the sandwiches, but they might as well have been tap water and cardboard for all the pleasure Lady Halifax took in them.

  ‘My husband tells me you spent the first two years of the war in North Africa,’ she said. ‘I never had the chance to talk to . . . Well, one received letters, of course, but, well, one can’t help but wonder what it was like. You know . . . for our boys.’

  ‘Surprisingly cold at night,’ Saffron said, beginning with the most trivial but surprising thing she could think of. ‘You could always tell the old hands because they made sure they had thick jumpers, greatcoats and sheepskin jerkins to keep them warm.’

  ‘Tell me about the desert,’ Lady Halifax said.

  Saffron told her how it could be as brutal and unforgiving an environment as any human could be forced to endure, yet beautiful, too. She talked about a land war that was often as fluid as any naval engagement, with the battle lines sweeping like tides across eight hundred miles of the Mediterranean coast, deep into the heart of Libya, then back all the way to Egypt, before turning once again.

  ‘It was nothing at all like the trenches must have been. It was exciting . . . I know, because I saw it. In fact, I was mixed up in it a few times.’

  Lady Halifax hung on Saffron’s every word as she recounted her adventures, and was equally enthralled as she described life in wartime Cairo. ‘There are the most wonderful riverboats there. You can steam up and down the Nile, eating dinner and dancing to the band. It’s heavenly. And the Great Pyramids are only just outside town. Of course, the fighting could be terrible. But if you asked any of the chaps who’d been sent to the desert, they wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

  Saffron was trying, with all her heart, to make Lady Halifax believe that her two sons, one dead, the other mutilated, had not been sacrificed in vain. And she felt she was beginning to succeed. Lady Halifax’s eyes seemed a little brighter, her smiles wider, her conversation more animated. And then Millicent James stepped onto the patio.

  ‘Excuse me, My Lady, but I have a message for Miss Courtney. A Major General Donovan called from the Coordinator of Information’s office. He wishes you to know that if you want to meet him to discuss your schedule in Washington, this afternoon might be the only time he can spare, and the sooner you get there, the better. He is apparently . . .’ Millicent pursed her lips in an expression of both scepticism and disapproval. ‘. . . a very busy man.’

  ‘Thank you, Millicent,’ said Lady Halifax. She turned back to Saffron. ‘Well, my dear, it seems you must be off. I’ve greatly enjoyed our conversation, and I do hope we shall have the chance to continue it before you leave Washington. Millicent, could you call a taxi for Miss Courtney? And have her luggage ready to be taken over to the Playfairs’ house when Mavis returns home.’

  ‘Yes, My Lady. Mrs Playfair told me that she would be home by five.’

  ‘Ah, Millicent, how wonderfully efficient you are.’ Lady Halifax glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, goodness, is that the time? I’m afraid, my dear, that I must in any case desert you. I have a rather important little reception, which requires more formal attire.’

  ‘With a duke and duchess?’ asked Saffron, innocently.

  Lady Halifax laughed, and for a moment Saffron caught a glimpse of the woman she had once been. ‘Exactly so,’ she said. ‘But do feel free to wait here until your taxi arrives. Oh . . . and my husband tells me you’re here to bang the drum for your unit, though he won’t go so far as to tell me what that unit is.’ She smiled to let Saffron know that she was being self-deprecating, rather than put out. ‘Perhaps you could give Millicent a list of the meetings and social events you are planning to attend. I may well know some of the people involved, or their wives. I’ll try to put in a good word for you if I can.’

  • • •

  ‘M

  iss Courtney, let me be blunt,’ said William Donovan. Just months shy of his sixtieth birthday, he was silver-haired with what Saffron thought of as a headmaster’s face: one whose expression suggested genuine care for the people over whom he ruled, combined with an unflinching refusal to accept anything but the highest standards from them. He wore a single general’s star on his epaulettes and, though there was a relatively short line of medal ribbons on his jacket, they comprised, as Gubbins had suggested, the most prestigious awards for valour that the United States could bestow.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Saffron was sitting opposite Donovan, and suddenly felt like a naughty schoolgirl. His office was on the first floor of a white building fronted by the columns that seemed obligatory for grand Washington properties, close to the Old Naval Observatory. Behind him, she could see a globe at least four feet in diameter, mounted in a wood and metal cradle like a boiled egg in a cup, symbolising the global reach of the Office of Strategic Services. Beyond that, dark wooden shelves laden down with books suggested the breadth of his intellectual interests.

  Their meeting had begun well, as Donovan had talked her through the names on Stephenson’s list of Washington bigwigs, describing each man’s character, suggesting things that she should or should not say, and subjects to be raised or avoided. Having made sure to thank Donovan for the trouble he had taken, Saffron had said, ‘There’s something else, sir – another reason I’m here.’

  He looked at her quizzically. ‘Tell me.’

  Saffron had outlined Stephenson’s fears about an enemy agent at work in the British embassy. She had also offered Donovan her theory that the agent’s real purpose might be more aggressive than merely passing on classified information. And that was when Donovan had decided to put her in her place.

  ‘I have heard nothing but good things about you,’ he said, making his words sound nothing like a compliment. ‘Gubbins tells me you’re one of his best operatives. Stephenson says that you could teach my men a thing or two about unarmed combat, and he is not alone in praising your fighting skills.’

  Saffron wondered who else might have spoken about her to Donovan. But before she could follow the thought any further, he continued. ‘I can think of few men whose opinions I value more highly than those two gentlemen. I also consider them both, Bill Stephenson in particular, to be my personal friends. But I believe Stephenson has set you off on a wild goose chase.’

  ‘But, sir—’

  ‘I’ve not finished.’

  ‘No, sir.’