All Clear

“Then why didn’t you know about the bomb at St. Paul’s, but you knew all about V-1s and V-2s?” She turned back to Mike. “She knew the exact date the V-1

attacks began. Don’t you see? She was the historian who did the rocket assignment. She drove an ambulance in Bethnal Green. Didn’t you, Polly? That’s why you were so upset when I told you we had to go there to get me a new identity card. Because you were afraid someone in Bethnal Green would recognize you. You were attached to the ambulance unit there, weren’t you?”

“No,” Polly said. “To the ambulance unit in Dulwich.”

Wars are not won by evacuations.

—WINSTON CHURCHILL,

SPEAKING OF DUNKIRK

Oxford—April 2060

THE SHIMMER FLARED. “COLIN’S NOT TO COME THROUGH AFTER me,” Dunworthy said again, though the shimmer was too bright—Badri would never be able to hear him. But he tried nonetheless. “He’s not to come. No matter what excuse he gives you.”

It was too late. He was already through. And definitely in St. Paul’s, though he couldn’t see a thing. His words echoed and then died away into the hush of a high, open, vaulted space. He’d have recognized it anywhere, just as he’d have recognized the distinctive chill. It had always felt like the dead of winter in St. Paul’s. He peered into the solid darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. It clearly wasn’t four A.M. Or if it was, there’d been locational slippage, and he’d come through in the Crypt instead of the north transept.

No, this couldn’t be the Crypt. The fire watch had their headquarters down there, and there’d be lights. But he might be inside one of the staircases. No, the sound wasn’t that of an enclosed space. He wasn’t willing to take chances, though. He’d come through on a flight of stairs one time early in his career and nearly pitched off it and killed himself. He slid one foot forward and then the other, feeling for an edge.

He was on a flat surface. A stone floor, so this had to be on the main floor of the cathedral, which meant it was far earlier than four A.M. But even if it were midnight, there should be some light. The raids in the early morning hours of the tenth had been less than half a mile from here, and some of the docks had still been burning from the first two nights’ raids. And there should be searchlights.

And noise. But he couldn’t hear anything—no clatter of incendiaries, the bane of St. Paul’s. No muffled thud of bombs. No droning of planes overhead. No sound at all, except the distinctive hush. What if Linna had got the coordinates wrong in her haste, and this wasn’t 1940? Or what if Dr. Ishiwaka had been right?

But when Dunworthy put his hand out, it connected with canvas and a yielding weight, which could only be a sandbag. He patted around it. More sandbags, and when he felt his way around them to the wall and along it, he came to a carved wooden doorway. The north doors. Which meant he was exactly where he was supposed to be, and the sandbags meant he was in the general vicinity of when.

There should be two steps leading down to the doors. He felt his way carefully down and tried to open them. They were locked. Locked? John Bartholomew had said they kept the cathedral unlocked. But he wasn’t here yet. He wouldn’t arrive till the twentieth, and perhaps St. Paul’s hadn’t unlocked the doors till later, after the necessity of getting fire hoses in became apparent.

It should have been apparent from the beginning, Dunworthy thought irritably, groping his way back up the steps. Now he’d have to go all the way down the nave to the west doors. Which would take him an hour at this rate.

Perhaps he should sit down and wait for it to grow light enough to see, but it was too cold. His teeth were already chattering. And the longer he waited, the more likely he was to run into the fire watch and have to explain what he was doing here. He could always tell them he’d come in looking for shelter when the sirens went and had fallen asleep, but if he and Polly were seen when he brought her back here, there could be complications. Worse, they might decide they needed to make a sweep of the cathedral every night. Or lock the west doors.

He needed to get out now, before anyone saw him. And if he was lucky, and it was as early as the darkness and the lack of raids suggested, the trains would still be running, and he could make it to Notting Hill Gate before they stopped. He could spend the night searching that station, search High Street Kensington and the others on the list as soon as the trains began again in the morning, and find Polly before nightfall and have her back in Oxford before breakfast. And he could stop worrying over what might happen to her if Dr. Ishiwaka was right.

He patted his way cautiously back along the wall, around the sandbags. Wall, more sandbags, pillar …