Free Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal Page B

men—he knew he was tolerated because hekept his love life a secret, his Jewishness to himself, and had charm, wit, and style to spare.
    David had also studied mathematics at university and, like Maggie, was fascinated by numbers, logic, and game theory. He was intrigued by Maggie’s acceptance at M.I.T. for graduate work and asked endless questions. “So what about number theory?” he asked one late night in the office. “Do you know Alonzo Church’s work? What about Wittgenstein’s? Have you heard of Alan Turing? Brilliant fellow, from Cambridge. Wrote ‘Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals.’ ”
    Maggie, John, and David were in Mr. Churchill’s study in the Annexe, a cozy, wood-paneled book-filled room that reeked of cigar smoke. The P.M. was preparing for another British foray into Norway, and much of the evening’s discussion was about guns. After the debacle of the first Norwegian invasion, when the Royal Marines were proved unprepared, it was determined they needed rubber sheaths to protect their gun muzzles from the cold. A pharmaceutical company had developed and delivered the prototype, a sample of which John handed to the P.M. He picked it up and looked at it, then looked at the packaging, and then the box.
    “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Won’t do. Won’t do at all.” John and David looked at each other in dismay. They’d worked hard to make sure everything was in order.
    “Sir, what won’t do?” John asked, his mouth tightening. “They’re long enough for the muzzles, ten and a half inches, just as we discussed.”
    “Labels!” Mr. Churchill said, pounding his fist on the table.
    “Labels?” David asked, looking confused.
    “Yes,
labels
,” the P.M. insisted. “I want a label for every box, every carton, every packet, saying ‘British,size medium.’ That will show the Nazis, if they ever recover any of them, who’s the master race!”
    Maggie raised one eyebrow.
Does he really mean …?
    The P.M. cleared his throat. “My apologies, Miss Hope.”
    He does, he does indeed
. She shot a look at John and was pleased to see that he’d colored slightly and was pretending to be engrossed in his notes. Nelson, who’d been curled in an unused chair, decided to roll over and clean his paws.
    There was a knock at the door. It was Snodgrass, with his sloped shoulders and dusting of dandruff. “Sir, Mr. Frain is here to see you.”
    “Send him in!” roared the P.M.
    In walked a tall man with black slicked-back hair and cold, gray eyes. He wore a carefully tailored yet understated suit. He was broad-shouldered and trim through the waist, and walked with a quick and confident stride.
    “Good evening, Prime Minister,” the man said. “I hope you remember me. We met at Chartwell a few times—”
    “Damn it, man! Of course I remember you,” the P.M. said. “Peter Frain, head of MI-Five. I hear that in your younger days at Cambridge, you were quite the chess player. Scotch?” he said, pouring himself a tumbler. “Macallan. Only twenty-two years but not bad.”
    “Neat,” Frain replied, taking a seat opposite Mr. Churchill’s large and imposing mahogany desk. “Yes, I used to play a bit.”
    “More than a bit, I heard,” the P.M. continued. “Brilliant, cold-blooded, ruthless—that’s how you’re described.”
    Frain accepted his glass. “Before I became a professor at Cambridge. Although academia could be described by those words as well.” Maggie’s lip twitched as she remembered Aunt Edith’s battles for tenure.
    “What was your field of expertise? Egyptology?”
    Frain nodded before taking a sip. Mr. Churchill looked over to John, David, and Maggie. “Young men, that will be all for tonight. Miss Hope, I’ll need you to take notes.”
    John and David left silently. Snodgrass followed, turning and closing the heavy door. As Maggie took a moment to unkink her neck before starting in with note-taking again, she noticed Frain looking at her. It wasn’t a salacious