Max in the House of Spies: Chapters 24–34

The next week passed in a blur of trunks and valises, servants rushing through the halls and the shuttering (and shuddering) of the house as bombs crashed down upon London.

Listen—and I’m only half joking when I say this, so do listen—these capitalists will exploit anyone and anything they get their hands on.

How do you compare crimes like that? I would hazard the Nazis are the worst, if you pressed me.

“This is where you’ll be lodging,” Jean said, pointing out the various amenities—the icebox, the stove, the teapot, the wood stacked next to the fireplace.

“Just focus on what you’re doing here: trying to get sent back to Germany and your imminent death. Thinking about your imminent death should focus your mind.”

The road curved around a small copse of trees and then opened onto a clearing, revealing a beautiful home, made of the same brick as the cottages, with the same slanting slate roof.

But this home was three stories high, with two chimneys, a cupola, and large, beautiful mullioned windows.

“Oh! Of course! The boy wonder!” the man enthused, rubbing yet more soot from his eyes so he could appraise Max.

“Max,” said Jean with a new air of solemnity, “say hello to our expert in explosives, sabotage, and clandestine devices—and also our gracious host, Lord Rothschild.”

West Field was dotted with huge round bales of hay.

But he did not let go of the rucksack. Instead, Max looped one arm through the straps so the kangaroo couldn’t abscond with the pack, and with his opposite hand he unlatched the flap that kept the pack closed.

Jean gave Max a wry smile.

“Max, this is your espionage instructor, Lieutenant Chumley,” Jean said as they came within range.
“This is what spies look like?” Berg wondered out loud. “I thought spies were supposed to blend in.”

Lots to show you, Max! Tricks, feints, fictions, the whole caboodle.

Lots to show you, Max! Tricks, feints, fictions, the whole caboodle.

Third imperative of clandestine work: Always pay attention! You never know when a piece of crucial information will be communicated, either intentionally or, more likely, unintentionally. And when it is, you will almost never have another chance at it.

Papa was spreading out all the tiny cogs and springs of a Junghans pocket watch on the shop’s black-velvet-covered table—back before Rabbi Kolski was thrown through their window and the shop had been shuttered forever.

“Then this,” Papa said, using long sharp tweezers to pick up a tiny pinion and laying it into a hole in the disc.

Max stole a glance at the hay bales with wary respect, like you would a worthy adversary.

And in order to be able to get out of a hostile nation, it is highly beneficial to be in contact with our side. But how can you be in contact with our side without blowing your cover, eh? You can’t just walk into the British embassy in enemy territory!

Chumley brandished his fingers as if he were a stage magician and then gripped the brick with his fingertips.

Lieutenant Chumley waved his arm at Sergeant Thompson, beckoning him over.

“Pocket that letter, Max,” Chumley whispered as they watched the military policeman approach. “As nonchalantly as possible.”

There was a small writing desk in the corner of the living room. Max went over to it. It was stocked with cream-colored stationery.

“Hullo, Max. Mind if we have a little debriefing from your first day?”

“It was great, Uncle Ewen,” said Max, as earnestly as he could.

Then he said, “There is an erroneous belief, Max, that to be a spy, you must be a liar.”

He’d never had two metaphysical incorporeal creatures fighting on his shoulders before and it was completely freaking him out.

Stein was incredulous: “That’s how you pass training? Figuring out how to spell Chumley’s name? I don’t get it.”

But Berg crawled onto Max’s face and started sticking his tiny hands in Max’s nose. Max couldn’t feel it, because Berg was incorporeal, but it was incredibly distracting.

“You can pay me in installments throughout the day, if you like.”

Sergeant Toby Thompson emerged, leaned down, and spoke with the driver for a moment, and then went back into the guardhouse—Max figured to check that the driver’s name was in the ledger book.

The interior of the Large Cottage was luxurious and cozy all at once—though there was a thin sheen of black dust on the wallpaper, presumably from yesterday’s explosion.

It was made of stitched leather filled with straw—you could see bits of it sticking out from the seams—and at the bottom of each leg instead of feet there were thick springs that had been soldered to a large iron disk.

“Lieutenant Chumley,” Lord Rothschild was saying, “I’m sure you could explain to our young friend the significance of the placement of these odious marks? This one, for instance?” He pointed at the swastika in the middle of the dummy’s chest.

Sergeant Thompson went on: “So when I was younger, I was this big radical. Running around Trinidad going to meetings about the British, reading all sorts of books. But then I had to get a job, and I did what most boys do—I went down to the south side of the island and started working in the oil fields. Brother, do they work you down there. And brother, do they not pay you much. So me and some other young people—we started speaking up. Saying this wasn’t right. Speaking out. Fighting back.”

“The Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.”
Ewen said, “Right. Public Enlightenment. How charitable of Dr. Goebbels. Here in England we have the Ministry of Information. What’s the difference, Max, between propaganda and information?”

“So while the British might use it occasionally, the Nazis have made propaganda into an art and a science. Goebbels’s Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda—you call it the ProMi, don’t you? The ProMi is a machine designed to convince the Germans to do horrible things—like the Blitz, Max. And the ProMi’s secret, their ace in the hole, is that they have no qualms about lying.”

He said that people won’t believe small lies, because they themselves tell small lies every day, and so they recognize them. But the average person can’t imagine someone would have the gall to tell an enormous lie, a huge fiction, a total falsehood, because it’s something they couldn’t get away with in their own lives. And so those are the lies that they believe.

And he remembered one more thing Ivor had said: We find a resource and exploit it... We wring it dry, till it’s all used up. Or dead… In this case, Max, you are the resource.