Chapter Text
LONDON
FEBRUARY 1941
No one could ever say I lived a dull life. In fact, you might call me a biographer’s dream.
To begin with, there were my parents. My father was murdered six months before I was born, stabbed in the heart in his own kitchen. My mother, his wife, was arrested for the crime and sentenced to hang. The only thing that saved her was me; the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when it was discovered she was pregnant. I was born in Holloway Prison and taken from my mother as soon as I was weaned. Less than two years later, she would be one of the millions carried off by the Great Influenza. To the bitter end, she insisted that she was innocent and loved her husband.
I was given to my father’s older brother, Uncle Mick, to raise. He had two little boys; Colm was three years older, and Toby and I were less than a year apart. Their mother had died giving birth to Toby, so Uncle Mick sent for Nacy Dean, a distant relative, to keep house and raise up his motherless brood.
Despite the tragedies that my life began with, my childhood was wonderful. Colm and Toby were practically my brothers; we spent our days wrestling and getting into scrapes with the other neighborhood children. Nacy doled out love with daily scoldings and freshly baked biscuits. Uncle Mick was a jolly man who taught me all the family trades: locksmithing, charming people, and stealing.
We never went hungry, but money was always tight, especially during the Depression. And one didn’t survive in London without learning a few tricks. Uncle Mick taught me and my cousins to pick locks and crack safes. Every heist was carefully planned. We never picked targets who were too powerful or famous, and we only took from those who could afford it. We’d spend weeks casing the houses we broke into, memorizing the layout and the inhabitants’ routines. We knew how to move soundlessly through dark rooms, how to slip through windows and disappear into the shadows. We never got caught.
When the war broke out, my cousins immediately signed up. Colm went to Torquay to fix RAF planes; he was always a whiz with engines and anything mechanical. Toby was sent to France; we hadn’t heard from him since the Battle of Dunkirk. He wasn’t on the list of prisoners or the dead; he certainly hadn’t made it onto one of the boats evacuating our lads back across the Channel. He had simply disappeared, leaving behind neither a body nor a notice.
Uncle Mick never let on that he was worried, but I knew he needed someone to lean on. So I began accompanying him on more jobs. Not only was it better to have two people so one could be a lookout, but I inherited his thirst for adventure and danger. There was nothing that quite matched the thrill of slipping down the blacked out streets into strangers’ houses and back out again without getting caught. It took our minds off Toby, and for me, it felt like a small justice for my mother. The law had stolen her life, but I could steal back from it.
On our last burglary, my uncle and I were captured by a group of lawmen and taken to a townhouse in Belgravia. We’d heard a tip about a safe full of jewels, which turned out to be a trap; the government, or to be more specific, military intelligence, wanted a safe cracker. Someone who was good at sneaking into places without notice and leaving things exactly as they found them.
The head of the operation was a cold, formal, rather devious officer called Major Ramsey. He offered us a choice: help him break into a safe and switch out some classified documents, or deal with the police. It wasn’t a difficult decision.
It was supposed to be a quick and simple favor, but of course, it didn’t happen that way. Major Ramsey and I ended up on a long, convoluted chase for a traitor and a killer. We grudgingly learned to work together, and I discovered that using my talents to help my country gave me the same thrill as stealing, but with something better: the knowledge that we were doing the right thing.
Major Ramsey continued to come to us for help when he had a tricky case, usually one that involved locks and underworld dealings. We dealt with enemy spy rings, quite a few poisonings, and stolen information, all while the Germans rained bombs on us. I had been shot at, threatened with knives, and nearly drowned. He nearly died from several gunshot wounds; we had each saved the other’s life.
Even though he was aloof and could be high-handed, I really did grow to enjoy working with Major Ramsey. He was terribly competent, and when he wanted to, he could turn on the charm. Several missions involved posing as a couple. It didn’t help that he was terribly good looking, and everyone kept saying that he fancied me. Well, everyone but the man himself.
But on some level, it was true. There’d been long glances and a few passionate kisses. I trusted him deep in my gut. On the last night we worked together, he said we’d talk. But less than forty-eight hours later, he called me to his office to sack me and tell me that he could not afford distractions during a war.
To be fair, I hadn’t quite upheld my end of the bargain.
Major Ramsey kept us on the payroll on the condition that we kept our noses clean. But I had done two illegal side jobs: first, I’d stolen a packet of love letters from a politician’s office. He was using them to blackmail one of my old girlfriends. I didn’t want to do the second job, which involved wiretapping an MP’s office, but I owed a favor. Pony Peavey was a drug-peddler and gangster who helped the major and me with our last mission. And nobody crossed him unless they wanted to end up face-down in the Thames.
My intentions were pure, but the major didn’t see it that way. He was a man who very much saw things in black and white. I had broken my word and the law. I was a liability to his operation and a “distraction” to him. With a war on, he needed to be able to do his best work, and he couldn’t focus if he was worrying about me disobeying his orders and putting myself in harm’s way.
I knew I’d mucked things up by pulling those jobs, but I didn’t see how I had another choice. I had to protect my friend and get out of Pony’s debt. And if he really loved me, then he wouldn’t have cast me aside like a broken part.
But he was a man who put rules and duty above all else. I’d known that about him from the start, and he knew that I was someone who made a living by breaking the rules. It was foolish to ever believe things could have worked between us. There were other things to consider as well. We were from completely different worlds. I was not only a thief but the daughter of a convicted murderess. Ramsey’s uncle was an earl. I’d never be accepted among his people. Not to mention he thought it foolish to mix a professional relationship with a personal one.
Until the dismissal, I hadn’t realized how much I cared. There had been attraction and yearning, but it wasn’t until it was all taken away that I realized it was love. I supposed it was a rite of passage to have your first heartbreak, but there were times I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.
Some days I’d be so angry; I’d picture myself years in the future, on another man’s arm, walking past him and his desk. I hoped he was feeling every bit as miserable as I was, though I very much doubted it. If I could be put out of sight, I was out of his mind. I argued and shouted at him in my head: You didn’t listen, you were being unfair, you used me for your work then threw me away.
More often, I simply missed him. I’d think of things I’d say to make him laugh. Stupid, unrelated things kept reminding me of him. When I went to the cinema, I saw soldiers with their dates, kissing and giggling, and felt sick with envy. I wondered what Ramsey would be like on a date, what he’d think of the movie. I didn’t know what kind of pictures he liked, if he even liked them at all. And I would never find out.
I remembered the one time we’d been in a cinema together; he’d put his arm around me and informed me about our mission to Sunderland. The mission where we kissed for the first time, where he nearly died from gunshot wounds. I’d feel the memory course through my body and make my heart rush, only to come crashing down as I remembered how it all ended. Then I’d be angry all over again. It was a vicious cycle of spoiled memories and impossible futures that kept feeding off each other.
Nacy and Uncle Mick comforted me as best as they were able. Nacy had thought he was the perfect man for her little girl, but as soon as he broke my heart, he was Public Enemy Number One. She held me while I cried and let me follow her around as she dusted and baked, just as I had when I was little.
“There will be other fellows,” she insisted. “He’s not the only pretty face in London. Trust me, one day he’ll realize what he threw away and spend the rest of his life regretting it. You’ll be happily married to another chap and will hardly think of him.”
Uncle Mick wasted no time in ringing the major’s office to hand in his resignation. Ramsey had been willing to keep him on the payroll, but my uncle was loyal. He would never work for a man who sacked me.
“You don’t have to,” I protested as he gave the operator the major’s number. “It would be a waste of your skills. You’d still be helping the war effort.”
“I can find other ways to do my bit,” Uncle Mick said.
“But the money-” We still had the locksmithing business, and with so many buildings getting bombed, plenty of people needed new locks. But money dried up like water in a desert, especially during wartime. I didn’t want my uncle to have to go back to stealing.
“Don’t worry about that, Ellie girl,” my uncle assured me. “We’re going to be alright. Haven’t we always?”
I sat on the sitting room sofa as Uncle Mick ended his professional relationship with the major. After he hung up, my uncle sank down beside me and wrapped an arm around me. Even though I didn’t always tell him everything, he was a man who could read between the lines.
“He’s a fool to let you slip through his fingers, Ellie.” His green eyes, the exact shade and shape as mine, held understanding and sympathy. “You’re something special, and he ought to have realized it. I thought he did. But I suppose a man fights a thing even when it isn’t his enemy.”
I smiled, unable to stop the tears from springing to my eyes. “It’s sweet of you to say so.”
“Because it’s true.”
I thought the dismissal would be the end of my spy career and my time with Ramsey. But it wasn’t so. Captain Archie Blandings, an officer based in Portugal, collaborated with us on our last mission. He was so impressed by me that he went over Ramsey’s head to their superior, Colonel Radburn, and recruited me for a new job.
Captain Blandings thought my skills would be useful in Lisbon. Portugal and Spain were supposedly neutral countries, but they were a hotbed of espionage. Spies from opposing sides often dined at the same restaurants and used the same hotels. It sounded glamorous and rather exciting. I wasn’t exactly sure why Captain Blandings wanted me specifically or what he expected me to do, but I leaped at the chance to salvage my spy career and help the war effort.
What really intrigued me was the hope of finding Toby. Several resistance groups had set up escape lines, shuttling Allied soldiers out of occupied territory into Spain and Portugal. We didn’t know who these brave people were – secrecy was crucial to their safety - but British military intelligence wanted to connect with them. Together, they could streamline the escape of prisoners and offer their helpers protection and support. Major Ramsey had told me that they’d intercepted several radio transmissions about escapees, one of whom matched Toby’s description. Same dark hair and green eyes, same platoon, same talent for picking locks. It had to be him.
We McDonnells never liked to admit defeat, but we were beginning to lose faith that we would ever see Toby again. Now hope beat in my chest like a caged bird, a thing with feathers. I would go to Lisbon. I would do whatever it took to find that escape line and bring my cousin home safe.
Even work with Major Ramsey again.
I thought I’d seen the last of him with the dismissal, but he would join us in Lisbon under Captain Blandings’ command. Major Ramsey made it clear that his involvement changed nothing between us; I was no longer his employee, and he did not want to pursue any kind of relationship with me. I’d have rather chewed metal than work with the man who’d sacked me and broken my heart, but if it meant saving Toby, I’d endure that and more.