“No,” she said. “Does this route take us through Edgware?”
“Edgware?” he said. “No, that’s the other direction. This road goes through Golders Green, and then we take the Great North Road south through Finchley.”
Oh, no. There’d been a V-1 in East Finchley this afternoon, and two in Golders Green. “Oh, dear, I thought this went through Edgware,” she said, and didn’t have to feign the distress in her voice. “I was to pick up some stretchers for the Major at Edgware’s ambulance post.” She slowed the car, looking for a place to pull off and turn around. “We must go back.”
“You’ll have to do it after we return, I’m afraid. I’ve a meeting at two, and I’ll be cashiered if I’m not there on time. And we’re late as it is. It’s already half past twelve.”
The Golders Green V-1s had hit at 12:56 and 1:08. And let’s hope Flight Officer Lang isn’t right about our meeting being fate, and that that fate is to be blown to bits by a V-1. I should have memorized the casualties from each rocket attack, she thought, so I’d know if an RAF flight officer and his driver were killed this afternoon.
But there’d scarcely been room in her implant for all the rockets which had hit in the areas she was most likely to be in, so all she knew was that the 12:56 one had been on Queen’s Road and the 1:08 one on abridge somewhere outside the village. And they were heading straight toward both of them.
The net wouldn’t have let her come through if her presence in the past would affect events, but that didn’t mean she could blithely drive into the path of a V-1, certain that nothing would happen.
For one thing, she could be killed even if he wasn’t. And for another, Flight Officer Lang had a constantly dangerous job. It might not make a difference to the course of history whether he was killed this afternoon or on a mission tomorrow.
But it made a great deal of difference to her, which was why she needed to get off this road. “I promise you we’ll go straight to Edgware after my meeting,” Lang was saying. “And to make up for it I’ll take you out for dinner and dancing. What do you say?”
I’d say that won’t make up for my being dead, she thought.
There was a crossroads ahead. Good. She’d ask him again which way to turn, then pretend she’d misheard his instructions, turn right instead of left, and get them somehow onto a road that would lead them back out of range.
She waited till they were nearly to the crossroads and then said, “Which road did you say I take?”
“We stay on this. In another mile it turns into Queen’s Road. Are you certain we haven’t met before?”
“Yes,” she said, only half listening. She peered ahead, looking for another crossroads. She wouldn’t ask this time, she’d simply turn off.
“You’re certain you haven’t driven me before?” he persisted. “Last spring?”
Absolutely certain. She wished he’d stop talking so she could hear. She might be able to swerve—or stop—if she heard the V-1 soon enough, but the noise of a car engine sometimes masked the sound, and with him prattling on—
“Or last winter?”
“No, I’ve only been in Dulwich for six weeks,” she said, glancing at her watch: 12:53. She rolled down the window. She couldn’t hear anything yet. And she didn’t know where on Queen’s Road the V-1 would—
“Stop,” he ordered. “There’s a lorry ahead!” There was—a U.S. Army transport, apparently stopped. She nearly ran up the rear end of it, and as she braked, she saw it was the last in a line of lorries loaded with what looked like crates of ammunition.
Oh, no, she thought, and then realized the lorries were her salvation. “It’s a convoy,” she said, backing the Daimler up. “We’ll never get through.” She began turning it around, wishing the road wasn’t so narrow.
“There’s no need to turn round,” Stephen said, leaning out to look ahead. “The front of the line’s beginning to move.”
“You said you were late,” she said briskly, then yanked on the wheel, completed the turn, and shot back the way they’d come.
“I’m not that late,” he said. “And it would be a blessing if I missed the entire thing. It’s one of those utterly pointless conferences on what should be done to stop these rocket attacks.” He had the map out and was poring over it. “If we turn right at the next opportunity, it will take us—”
Straight back toward that V-1, she thought. “I know a shortcut,” she said, and turned left instead and then left again.
“I’m not certain this road …,” he said doubtfully, peering at the map.
“I’ve taken it before,” she lied. “Why is it pointless?” she asked, to prevent him from looking at the map. “Your conference. Or can’t you talk about it? Military secrets and all that?”
“It would be secret if there was anything to be done to stop them on this end which hasn’t been done already—anti-aircraft defenses, detection devices, barrage balloons, none of which has been at all effective, as you and your ambulance unit no doubt know.”
And none of which stopped the ones that are about to hit here, she thought, driving as fast as she dared to get them out of the danger zone. The lanes were narrow and rutted, and there was no room to turn. If they ran into a car going the other way …
Behind them, she heard a muffled explosion. The 12:56 V-1. She waited for a second one, which would mean it had hit the convoy, but it didn’t come.
“As I was saying, none of our defenses is at all effective,” Stephen said calmly. “The only way to stop them is to prevent them from being launched in the first place.”
The lane was narrowing. She turned off it onto another, which was just as narrow and even more rutted. She glanced at her watch: one o’clock.
She needed to get them out of the danger area before 1:08, when the second V-1 had hit the bridge. She drove faster, praying for a road to turn onto. They passed a field of barley and then an ammunition dump, which the convoy had probably originated from, another field, another, and then a small grove of trees. Beyond it lay a bridge.
Of course, Mary thought, and glanced at her watch again. 1:06.
We are all going to have whistles as Mr. Bendall thinks if we are buried, it will be useful to our rescues. This I consider quite useful, and if buried shall whistle with all my might.
—VERE HODGSON’S DIARY,
28 February 1944
London—26 October 1940
AS SOON AS THEY REACHED THE LANDING OF THE EMERGENCY staircase, Mike asked Polly, “What if the retrieval team was in Padgett’s looking for Eileen, just like we were?”
“But … they can’t have been,” Polly stammered. The idea that some of the fatalities might have been the retrieval team had never occurred to her. The possibility so knocked her back on her heels that for a moment it seemed entirely possible. It would explain why there’d been five casualties—the three there were supposed to be and the two-man retrieval team.
“Why couldn’t they have been?” Mike pressed her. “Who else could they be? You heard Eileen’s supervisor. Everyone who worked there had been accounted for.
And that would explain why they haven’t been found yet—because they don’t know there’s anyone to look for.”
“But they knew Padgett’s was going to be hit. They wouldn’t have gone—”
“We knew it was going to be hit, and we did. What if they saw us go in and followed us? If they didn’t realize we’d taken the elevator down, they might still have been looking for us when the HE hit.”
There was no reason why a retrieval team, like historians, couldn’t be killed on assignment. And if that was what had happened, then Oxford hadn’t been destroyed and Colin hadn’t been killed. And Mike hadn’t lost the war.