Megan O'Shaunessey (Ma)

Quick Facts

• Role: Irish intelligence operative running Allied espionage from inside Nazi Berlin; wife of Ireland’s ambassador
• First appearance: Early chapters in Berlin, within the Irish embassy and diplomatic social circuit
• Alias: “Ma” to her son
• Family: Husband Davin O'Shaunessey (Da); son Michael O'Shaunessey
• Core theme: The hidden labor of Deception and Espionage behind a diplomatic façade
• Notable skills: Tradecraft, rapid improvisation, asset handling, training a novice spy, photographic intelligence

Who She Is

A master operator hiding in plain sight, Megan O'Shaunessey turns the underestimation of women into a weapon. Her work hums beneath the polished surface of embassy dinners and Berlin salons, where she directs operations while letting her husband act as the public, neutral face. Small, dimple-cheeked, with short curled brown hair and a simple green dress, she cultivates an unassuming silhouette that invites condescension—and thus grants invisibility. That deliberate plainness becomes her strongest cover: people look past her, and that is when she is most dangerous.

Personality & Traits

Megan is the family’s strategist—maternal in motive, flinty in method. Her warmth and her severity aren’t contradictions so much as two tools she uses to protect her family and win a secret war. She weighs outcomes quickly, accepts compromise when necessary, and keeps the mission moving even when the cost is personal.

• Cunning and resourceful
  • Evidence: She stages a grape-juice “accident” to slip Michael into a Daimler-Benz executive’s study, then calmly produces chloroform from her handbag “for emergencies” to neutralize a butler who threatens to expose them. Her preparedness makes luck unnecessary.
• Pragmatic and hardened
  • Evidence: During Kristallnacht, she refuses to intervene in a street beating, insisting they keep moving because their roles are “important.” Her logic—“weigh the cost of one man’s life against the value of an entire operation”—lays bare the moral math of Moral Compromise and the Cost of War.
• Brave and unflinching
  • Evidence: She photographs sensitive targets, shelters Allied airmen, and orchestrates extractions inside Nazi Berlin, accepting that exposure would doom her entire family.
• Maternal yet demanding
  • Evidence: She tells her son the truth because “if he’s going to share in the danger, he should at least know the truth of it,” then trains him in lying, diversions, and memory work—loving him while treating him like an asset.

Character Journey

Megan begins the novel as a fully formed operative—trained since sixteen, already running a network behind diplomatic cover. Her turning point comes on Kristallnacht, when she decides that silence endangers Michael more than honesty; she inducts him into the family’s clandestine life and immediately sets him to work. As stakes escalate—sheltering a wounded Allied flyer, uncovering an assassination plot, and navigating intensifying scrutiny—she continually recalibrates the line between using Michael’s talents and protecting him. The culmination of her arc is a strategic sacrifice: she authorizes a plan that burns their cover, sends the family on the run, and trades hard-won access in Berlin for a broader Allied gain. Her evolution isn’t about becoming ruthless; it’s about deciding how much of her own life she will spend to buy the mission’s success—and her son’s survival.

Key Relationships

• Michael O'Shaunessey
  • Megan is both mother and handler, recognizing Michael’s photographic memory as a rare asset and shaping his training accordingly. By initiating him into the trade after Kristallnacht, she accelerates his Coming of Age and Loss of Innocence, turning childhood into cover and adolescence into a toolkit.
• Davin O'Shaunessey (Da)
  • Partners in purpose, they divide the work: Davin plays the “legit side,” soothing diplomats and projecting neutrality, while Megan runs the clandestine spine of the operation. Their friction over Michael’s safety exposes the fault line between parenting and espionage—yet when the mission demands it, they close ranks and choose strategy over comfort.
• Lieutenant Simon Cohen
  • Megan treats Simon as a mission to be managed: she tends his wounds, arranges his movement, and coordinates risks across a tightening web of surveillance. Her professionalism highlights the quiet, procedural bravery required to keep a single asset alive inside enemy territory.

Defining Moments

Megan’s most revealing scenes marry meticulous planning with steely restraint, showing how a “small” presence can bend events.

• Kristallnacht: She witnesses the pogrom’s brutality and decides secrecy is now more dangerous than disclosure—she tells eight-year-old Michael the truth about their mission.
  • Why it matters: This choice forges the family into a unit of three operatives and reframes motherhood as mentorship under fire.
• The Daimler-Benz dinner: She engineers a spill to slip Michael into the study, then uses chloroform to silence a butler who might expose them.
  • Why it matters: Demonstrates her layered tradecraft—create chaos, exploit it, and clean up—while revealing the moral risks she is willing to accept.
• The final plan to burn their cover: She agrees that Michael will “turn in” Simon and the family, triggering their flight from Germany.
  • Why it matters: Confirms her willingness to sacrifice access for impact; preservation of the larger mission supersedes the safety of their Berlin positions.

Essential Quotes

“We’re not only ambassadors, Michael. We have another mission. A secret mission.”

This line collapses the distance between public role and private reality, reframing family identity around clandestine duty. By saying it aloud, Megan transfers both knowledge and burden to her son, making him a stakeholder in the war behind the war.

“If he’s going to share in the danger, he should at least know the truth of it.”

Megan’s ethics are stark but protective: informed risk, not ignorant exposure. The sentence defines her parenting philosophy under occupation—agency through clarity, even when that clarity ends innocence.

“Chloroform. I always keep a bottle in my handbag for emergencies. Did you get it?”

The offhand tone is the point: in Megan’s world, preparedness is ordinary. The juxtaposition of “handbag” and “chloroform” captures her paradoxical power—domestic objects as instruments of covert action.

“Michael, it’s terrible to say so, but sometimes you have to weigh the cost of one man’s life against the value of an entire operation.”

Here Megan articulates the ruthless arithmetic of espionage. It’s not cruelty but triage, and the discomfort she names (“terrible to say so”) shows she hasn’t surrendered her humanity even as she makes inhuman choices.

“Women and children make terrific spies... Because people always underestimate us.”

This credo is both strategy and social critique: prejudice becomes camouflage. Megan weaponizes invisibility, turning the regime’s contempt into her operational edge.