One night they talked. "I'm expected," she said ruefully, "to make a decision that will affect the rest of my life. It scares me, Papa."
"He's a fine young man," Nigel Worthington said. "He treats you well. He could offer you a good home and a good life. He bestows love upon you."
Laura nodded. "But I don't love him," she heard herself saying.
"Yes. I know," her father answered.
Nigel Worthington had a much older brother who had quit school, moved to America years ago, and successfully gone into the steel business in Pennsylvania. The two branches of the family had remained in touch. The English side had the grace, the education, and the culture. The American side had the money and the informality, both in vast quantities. Nigel suggested that his daughter spend the following summer visiting.
There was an exchange of letters. Dr. Worthington had a niece Laura's age who was finishing university at a strangely named place called Bryn Mawr. The niece, Barbara Worthington, whom Laura had met years ago, wrote that she knew dozens of boys from Yale, Princeton, Williams, and Penn. Barbara promised to give Laura an interesting summer.
"You'll get yourself involved with some dirty-fingernailed Yank millionaire who does violence with auxiliary verbs," chided her father. "You'll love him and never come home."
"That's not my type, Papa, actually," Laura answered.
"But it might be an excellent time for your trip to America, mightn't it?" her father said. "With what's going on in the world, who knows how long travel will be safe?"
And if a war starts, she thought to herself, Papa will have me safely tucked away in America, rather than in England, where there could be fighting.
But Laura's spoken response addressed none of this. "I suspect you're right," she said. "About the right time to travel, I mean."
"The Queen Mary sails every other Thursday for New York," her father said at length. "What would you think of that?"
Laura said she would think a great deal of that.
One week later, Laura traveled by train to London to book passage. She was met by a man named Peter Whiteside, a longtime friend of her family.
Whiteside was slightly younger than her father. Laura had known that Peter Whiteside and her father had served together during the Great War. Since then, Whiteside had been in and out of the government, mostly in when the Tories were in power, and out when the Liberals held a majority in Parliament. Right now, the Tories were in and so was Whiteside. "Buried somewhere in the Ministry of Defense," as he himself had put it in March when Laura had seen him last. "But whenever you come to London let me take you to lunch."
Today was "whenever."
Whiteside was a tall man, with short hair that was as black as a rook. His face was thinner than the rest of his body, giving an austere, almost gaunt cast to his face. But his eyes were lively and intelligent; they were deep gray and sharp as thorns. He wore a navy suit and his regiment's necktie. He kissed Laura's hand when he met her at the railroad platform.
"Laura. I'm charmed as ever. You look ravishing today," Whiteside said.
Peter Whiteside, she thought, was one of the last of the true English gentlemen, along with her father. The dying breed. The Great War had changed everything in all of Europe. No one made men like this anymore.
"Come," he said, taking her arm. "We have a reservation at the Ritz dining room for one o'clock. I've made an appointment for you at the Cunard offices for the afternoon. I'd like to stop by my office first. Something to discuss."
"If you're at all too busy today, Peter," she offered, "I'll be in London again before I leave."
"Nonsense," he said. They passed through the iron gates of the sooty station. There was a Rolls Royce waiting with a driver. Peter Whiteside ushered Laura toward it. "The 'something to discuss' is between us," he informed her.
"Oh," she said.
London was best seen from the back of a limousine. Or so Laura decided as the chauffeured automobile pulled away from the curb.
"Now," Whiteside said at length, "tell me about your impending travels."
She did. And by the time she had finished, the chauffeur had delivered them in front of a sturdy Edwardian town house, nestled on a quiet tree-lined side street. They were in a residential neighborhood bordering Earl's Court and Kensington, and Whiteside leaned forward and opened his door. His driver opened Laura's door and Whiteside ushered her inside, where, upon entering a white rotunda, she began to focus upon the nature of Peter Whiteside's business.
There was a guard in a suit just inside the door. He nodded curtly as Whiteside entered. Directly in front of them was a portrait of His Majesty, George V, and beyond that, a Union Jack stood in its stand, making its own statement.
Whiteside led her down a short hallway. His office was at the end.
He moved behind a polished rosewood desk and seated himself only after Laura did. He leaned back very slightly in a leather swivel-based chair, steepled his fingers in front of him, and assessed Laura for a final time.
"I think you'll enjoy America," he said at length. "Indeed, I suspect you'll have a wonderful trip."
She looked back at him, appraising also. "Peter," she said very firmly, "would you mind telling me why I’m here?"
His fingers broke their token marriage and he returned his hands to his desk.
"No. Not at all," he said. "Certainly I owe you the explanation, whatever you may ultimately think of it." Whiteside's gaze lowered for a moment and he glanced at a pair of papers before him. Then he looked back to her.
"Laura," he said, "this building belongs to the Ministry of Defense. I work here. They are my employer. I need to know if you would be willing to do something for England. Something which might seem very simple, but which is, in actuality, very important."
Laura responded with a very stunned silence for several seconds. "You'd better tell me more before I say anything," she said.
"My child," Peter Whiteside answered, "as any fool with two eyes could tell you, Europe may soon again be at war. Inevitably, Hitler will draw England in. If this is the case, the intelligence networks which we piece together now-and the information we have access to-may be of vital national interest. Should I go on?"
Laura found herself nodding, and tingling very slightly with excitement.
"This office, the one you are beautifying as we speak, belongs to Military Intelligence 5, the bureau charged with intelligence gathering within the United Kingdom. However, it is part of my duty to coordinate operations with M.I. 6, counterintelligence and intelligence gathering abroad. Specifically, operations in the United States and Canada."
Here Whiteside glanced at his desk again, double-checking the papers before him. "Your trip comes at a very propitious time. And leads you to an excellent place. For our purposes, that is."
Laura was incredulous. "You want me to become sort of a spy? Against the Americans, is that it?"
Whiteside smiled indulgently. "Not at all," he said. "Or at least, not exactly." He pursed his lips against his fingertips again.
He was about to continue when she interrupted. “I thought the Americans were our friends," Laura said.
"Some of them are," he answered. "Some of them are not. President Roosevelt is definitely a friend of England. The Vice President, Mr. Jack Garner, the deplorable ‘Cactus Jack,’ definitely is not. But this is precisely the type of thing which we would want you to find out for us. On a lesser scale, of course. One knows all about the American government officials. It's the people, the important families, we wish to know more about. We need facts, Laura. My office deals in facts."