Previously: Mercenary Leon fails on a mission because of David, better known as Edward the Prince of Wales. Socialite Wallis Spencer, also a spy, has an affair with German Joachim Von Ribbentrop and marries Ernest. David becomes king. Wallis divorces, David abdicates and they marry. On their honeymoon they derail a train. Leon is now a spy par excellent.
Wallis finished her packing their grand tour of Germany. Then she counted the trunks. Too many, she knew, but everyone would be expecting to see a spectacular gown for each of their eleven days, and Wallis did not want to disappoint. Finally, she double checked her jewelry box ensconced in one of the larger pieces of luggage. She sighed in relief when she saw the large opal ring with the secret compartment for her Blue Ridge Mountains poison, which, much to her displeasure, had not arrived yet. Wallis did not like for things to go harem-scarem. A place for everything and everything in its place. This time, “it” had not even arrived yet. She hear someone at the door of their Paris suite. Perhaps the delivery from America arrived. Unfortunately, it was only David returning from a meeting with Lord Beaverbrook at the British embassy.
“You look gloomy.” It was only an observation, not an expression of concern.
David walked to a small cabinet stocked with his favorite liquors and splashed some whiskey into a short glass. “Lord Beaverbrook told me once again how displeased my brother the king was that you and I were launching on this –oh, what did he call it?—yes, this lark to Germany. Most inconvenient, he added.”
“Well, isn’t that what we want them to think?” Wallis pulled out a cigarette and lit it. These moods of David were absolutely taking the fun out of murder and espionage.
“I suppose.” His muttering was on the verge of indiscernibility.
“You know I hate it when you look like a lost dog.”
“The doctors call it schwermut,” David replied.
‘Well, when I visit my friends in the Blue Ridge Mountains they say you can call it manure or fertilizer but it still smells like shit.”
He slumped into an ornate stuffed arm chair and didn’t say a word. He must really be in the dumps. Usually when I use American vulgarities around him they bring the giggles out of him. David also plopped one leg across one of the arms, putting his crotch on full display, a bad habit he had picked up from Ernest; however, Wallis had to admit, Ernest had more to display than the duke.
David gazed out of the window of their Paris suite as he sipped his whiskey. “I don’t think you understand the dynamics of the Windsor family. It is true I hated my father. Never shed a tear when he died. Hard-hearted stupid man and proud of it. Mother’s just about as bad but not quite. I would be quite sad if I didn’t see her at least one more time before she died. My brothers and sister are a different matter. We all got along well. I think our youngest brother John who was epileptic and died in his early teens brought us together as human beings. But even that’s all over now, isn’t it? They can’t be part of our lives and we can’t be part of theirs. No more big family Christmas celebrations. No reunions at weddings and birthdays. And I have to pretend I don’t care. But, dammit all, I do care. At first I didn’t think I would, but I do care, and there’s not a whit I can do about it.”
Wallis could not decipher what all that meant. Her closest relative was Aunt Bessie who was pleasant company but could hardly be called a solace to the heart. Whatever a heart really meant. She snuffed out her cigarette as though she were crushing all of David’s maudlin mish mash of moods. Surely he was in one of his melancholia—life was just a pile of shit so what the hell difference did anything make? That posit of existence bored Wallis to tears. Life was just too damn exciting, prickling nerve ending to the point of orgasm.
Her missing package from America numbed her sensory pleasures of espionage. She couldn’t compete her mission without her package, and completing a mission was one of the main ecstasies of her life. The mission she had been given would the greatest challenge of her career at MI6.
The assassination of Adolf Hitler.
Wallis had several options at her disposal. One favorite involved a proper, sturdy long hat pin. It was most effective, quick, left few marks and blood stains and, if administered at coitus, evoked orgasm at the exact moment of death. It didn’t do anything for her personally, but Wallis enjoyed witnessing a man die with a smile on his face. The one drawback to this method was that it linked Wallis to the scene of death, bereft of any alibis. As much of being a master of charming banter Wallis could not talk her way out of murder.
Another favorite reminded her of the good old days of torturing Uncle Sol—the needle up the manhood. Joachim Von Ribbentrop did not consider it torture at all however. His eyes rolled up to the back of his head. He moaned like an enraptured bull. One extra thrust of the hat pin or quick jerks of the pin back and forth would tear into veins and arteries, causing intense bleeding and inevitable death. Ah, but there was the rub. Too much blood left the possibility of too many clues and they would all lead directly back to Wallis.
Therefore, she decided to fall back on an old reliable source which she used for Uncle Sol’s final dispatch—the strange, tiny herb she found during one of her long walks through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia when she was about twelve years old. She often visited family in Warrenton to escape the evil of Uncle Sol. She didn’t even know the name for it nor what other plants it might be related to. All those scientific names sounded too much like botany and school, and she wanted no more formal education.
The pretty little blossom hid among the longer more impressive vines draping the tall oaks and spruces. Its delicacy lured young Wallis to pinch a bloom off and sniff it. Suddenly she experienced a strange dryness to her throat. While not particularly painful she realized within minutes she could not speak at all. Twenty-four hours later she developed a horrid headache which kept her in bed for the next three days. By that time she had returned to Baltimore and no one had a clue what had happened.
Every doctor who examined her questioned her mother about her activities of the last twenty-four hours. They never knew she had been in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Eventually Wallis recovered, and she had no doubts about the cause of her illness—the strange little flower hiding behind the big heavy vines deep in mysterious corners of the ancient Appalachians.
On her next holiday to Warrenton, Wallis wandered into the Blue Ridge Mountains in search of her new little friend. When she found the blossoms, Wallis snapped several of them off their stems and put them into a small brown paper bag and folded it tightly. She did not smell them. When she returned to her host’s home she put the bag into another sack, repeating the process. Then she washed her hands with hot soapy water.
In Baltimore she left the bag in a dark corner of her closet. After about a month or two, she checked the bag to find the flowers withered to a point of disintegrating. Next she pounded the bag so the contents became a fine powder which she poured into an empty pill bottles.
Wallis had one week before leaving for boarding school. She was quite excited her last night home. She did not go to bed before midnight. What the others in the house did not know was Wallis went outside, extended her arm through the slats of the white picket fence where the neighbor’s dog—known for its incessant barking—licked a white powder from her palm.
The next morning, rested from a long quiet sleep, Wallis kissed everyone good-bye—even Uncle Sol—and mounted a carriage which took her to the train station. In her first letter to her daughter, Wallis’ mother wrote the neighbor’s dog was silent and moping around. Three weeks later Wallis received news the dog died. Wallis knew she had a winning recipe.
When they received the official invitation to Germany, she contacted General Trotter, using one of their usual circuitous routes to ask for her poison from the American mountainsides. She wrote meticulous descriptions of what the plant looked like and where it could be found. Wallis knew MI6 had connections with the American government which could find the flower, diminish it into a powder and send it on its way. She anxiously awaited its arrival. Without it she could not complete her mission.
Moments after David freshened his drink, there was a knock at the door. Wallis answered it and took a small box from a courier arrived. Stamped on the box were the words “United States Department of Agriculture”. Wallis opened it to find a vial of white powder. With great care she transferred the powder to the secret compartment of her opal ring.
Now she was ready to meet Herr Hitler.