Mr. Churchill's Secretary

H
ALF AN HOUR
before Diana Snyder died, she tidied up her desk in the typists’ office of the Cabinet War Rooms.

She looked up at the heavy black hands of the clock on the wall and sighed. There were no windows in the War Rooms, the underground lair used by the Prime Minister’s staff, reinforced by concrete slabs and considered to be bombproof. The ceilings were low; signs warned
Mind Your Head
. The once-white walls had faded to a dull yellow, and the floors were covered in worn brown linoleum. Overhead were lines of drainage pipes from the Treasury. While the air was filtered by a special ventilation system, there were still lingering odors of floor wax, chemical toilets, and cigarette smoke.

The windowless typists’ office was lit by four green-glass pendant lamps and adorned with several gas masks, along with steel helmets and whistles for air-raid drills. It was quiet in the small room, but outside, in the hall, the subterranean air was punctuated with the clatter of typewriters, conversations in low voices, and the piercing ring of telephones.

The only evidence it was spring was the calendar on the wall.
May 1940
.

May 12, 1940, to be exact. Winston Churchill had just been made Prime Minister. Armies of Nazis were marching across Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg—and it looked as though the entirety of Belgium was about to fall. If and when Belgium fell, France would be next. And after France, well, what then? Attacks on England from the air, invasion from the sea? St. Paul’s Cathedral a smoking ruin from bombs dropped from Messerschmitts and Heinkels? Red, white, and black flags with swastikas flying from the Houses of Parliament with Nazi troops goose-stepping down the Mall, through Admiralty Arch, to knock over Nelson’s Column? Would they set up military headquarters at Buckingham Palace, execute high-ranking officials at the Tower of London?

The people to whom Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had promised “peace in our time” were now trembling on the edge of a terrifying abyss. It was a strange moment in time, a limbo-like state when the horror was fast approaching but barbarity hadn’t yet quite descended.

Diana sighed again and pushed back a limp wave of pale hair that had held a curl when she’d begun her day, nearly sixteen hours before.

Pulling the last sheets out of the typewriter—the special noiseless kind Mr. Churchill insisted upon when he’d taken office so that the secretaries could type directly while he dictated—Diana separated the original from the carbon and added each to its respective stack. Then she said her goodbyes to the other typists, pinning on her navy-blue straw hat, the one with the daisies and cherries.

It was late and the sunlight was fading as Diana made her way to the bus stop. Silver barrage balloons floated high in the sky, turning pink in the slanting sun’s rays, negligible protection against threatened Nazi air raids.
No lights glowed against the encroaching darkness—blackout regulations had been in effect since Neville Chamberlain had declared war almost eight months before.

Like most Londoners, St. James’s Park was looking unkempt around the edges. The metal gates had been dug up and taken away to be melted down for munitions. Most of the grassy lawn had been turned into victory gardens. Men with pale faces and black bowler hats, carrying gas masks over their shoulders, walked with tense and hurried steps. They were leaving Whitehall or Parliament, or whatever government building covered in thick barbed wire and sandbags they reported to. There were women, too, in their gray-and-brown uniforms, carrying on with their work as secretaries and nurses and drivers.

Diana groaned inwardly as she saw the queue for the bus that she usually took to her flat, a third-floor walkup in Pimlico.

“Damn,” she muttered as she eyed the long line. Her mother, back in Kent, would have been aghast. No umbrella, hat pinned at a rakish angle, heels just a fraction of an inch too high. Her mother always complained about the way Diana dressed. Sweaters too tight, lipstick too bright, curfew too late—and this was before Diana had moved to London. That was the last straw. No respectable young woman went to London to work, even for the P.M. Especially for
this
P.M. Better to stay in Kent, playing tennis and bridge, rolling bandages and knitting socks for soldiers, until the right young man from a proper family came along. Of course, these days, any so-called “proper young man” was going to be in the army, navy, or air force.

Diana stood still for a moment, contemplating her options, her delicate features momentarily creased with worry. She had her mother’s face, she’d have to admit—the
sparkling eyes, the high cheekbones, and the tiny, pointed chin. Normally, despite the war and threat of invasion, she wasn’t one to worry. She was well-off financially. She had a large circle of what her mother would call “the right sort” of friends. She had a number of “the wrong sort” of beaux—which were just right for the present moment.

“Damn,” she repeated. She looked up at the darkening sky, then back toward the bus stop. She’d never get on the next bus; she’d be lucky to get the one after that. So she decided to walk, a good half-hour to forty-five minutes, in the dark.

Her mother would be appalled, of course.

Diana took off at a brisk clip, heels tapping smartly on the pavement. The sun gave its final golden explosion and then sank past the horizon, leaving a few clouds of rosy gray. The winds picked up, and she shivered, ducking her head down and keeping a firm grip on her pocketbook.

After the sunset, blackout swallowed her. Her mother, terrified of the city, was always ringing to warn her about rapists and muggers. Diana had laughed and told her not to worry. London was her city; she’d be fine. More than fine, in fact. Still, she shivered again in the damp darkness. She thought of the small flat she shared with two other girls. With work and parties and dates, they all kept irregular hours. No one expected her home at any particular time.

Her killers knew this.

She heard the heavy footsteps behind her and walked just that much faster in the inky darkness, her heels making a delicate staccato rhythm on the pavement. Instinctively, she pulled her twill coat around her and gripped her handbag even tighter.

She heard the heavy pounding of the man’s boots as
they hit the pavement, faster now. Diana sensed it—the primal smell of danger. He was the hunter, and she was the prey. She tried to search the gloom for a policeman or an air-raid warden. But there was nothing and no one. She began to run, her breath burning in her lungs, feet squeezed by her pumps.

Diana turned around, her heart drumming, ready to scream—when she heard a car’s engine rattle behind her. The Humber coupe’s large, round headlights were covered by blackout slats. As it passed, she nearly choked on the noxious exhaust fumes.

The car pulled up to the curb in front of her, liberally covered with thick, white paint visible in the blackout, and stopped.

“Are you all right?” came a breathy voice through the car’s window.

In the faint gleam of the rising moon, Diana could see that the driver was female, a young girl like herself. She breathed a sigh of relief.

She looked behind her for whoever had been following her—and saw nothing in the shadows.
You silly ninny
, she thought,
imagining ghosts and goblins at your age. Probably just some poor man trying to get home to his wife and children. Serves you right for not waiting for the bus
.