“Where else was he supposed to go?”
“I don’t remember. Salisbury, I think, and the World Trade Center. I wasn’t—”
Really listening, Polly thought, wanting to shake her. Of course not. Just like you weren’t listening to Gerald Phipps.
“You can ask Mike when he rings us,” Eileen was saying. “Why do you need to know?”
Because Pearl Harbor happened on December 7, 1941. And the storming of the Bastille was before the Reign of Terror.
Mike had said Mr. Dunworthy had been shuffling and canceling dozens of drops. What if he’d been doing it because the slippage increase was a matter not of months but of years? What if Mr. Dunworthy had been putting all the drops in chronological order and canceling ones where there was already a deadline because he had been afraid their drops wouldn’t open in time? What if the increase had been four years? Or the length of the war, and that was why she’d seen Eileen at VE-Day?
Because they hadn’t got out?
But if that was it, then why hadn’t he canceled her drop?
Perhaps the increase isn’t that large, she thought. Pearl Harbor was only a year and a half after Dunkirk. She didn’t know how far apart the two events in the Perhaps the increase isn’t that large, she thought. Pearl Harbor was only a year and a half after Dunkirk. She didn’t know how far apart the two events in the French Revolution were. The storming of the Bastille was July 14, 1789, but she didn’t know when the Reign of Terror had begun. If it was less than three years …
Or that might not be the reason they’d changed the schedules at all. It might be something else altogether. When Mike phones. I need to ask him the original order of his assignments and what it was changed to, she thought. If he phones. And in the meantime, it’s pointless to worry.
But it was impossible not to. She spent her lunch break going to Selfridges and Bourne and Hollingsworth’s to look at women’s coats—which were luckily all far too expensive for Eileen to afford, even at Bourne and Hollingsworth’s “Bomb Damage” sale. And when clothing rationing went into effect, it would be impossible to save up enough points to buy one. But it still made Polly more cheerful to see that the only colors available were black, brown, and navy blue.
Mike phoned Monday night, and it was exactly as Eileen had predicted. He’d had difficulty finding a phone where he could speak without being overheard. “Either I’m going to have to find a phone booth that’s closer,” he said, “or we’ll have to conduct our conversations in code.”
“You’re surrounded by England’s greatest cryptanalysts,” Polly said. “I wouldn’t recommend that.”
“You’re right, it’ll have to be letters. Does Mrs. Rickett steam open your mail?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’ll think of something. I don’t suppose the retrieval team’s answered one of our ads yet?”
“No. You were supposed to do your Pearl Harbor assignment first, is that right?”
“Yes, and then the World Trade Center and the Battle of the Bulge, so I could use one L-and-A implant for all three.”
“And what did they change it to? Were Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor the only two they switched?”
“No, they switched them all around. After Pearl Harbor they wanted me to do El Alamein and then the Battle of the Bulge—”
I was right. They put them in chronological order. Polly felt the familiar flutter of panic. But El Alamein’s only seven months after Pearl Harbor, and the Battle of the Bulge is only two and a half years after that. It’s still not as great a length of time between as mine.
“—followed by the second World Trade Center attack—”
Which was nearly sixty years after the Battle of the Bulge.
“—and the beginning of the Pandemic in Salisbury,” Mike said.
Twenty years later.
But that didn’t prove anything. The lab might have put his assignments in chronological order because of Pearl Harbor, not the others.
I need to find out when the Reign of Terror began, Polly thought, and tried to think of who would know. Not Eileen. Polly didn’t want her to begin asking questions. And because Eileen was working in the book department, she couldn’t look it up in a book on the French Revolution.
Sir Godfrey would no doubt know—he’d almost certainly played Sydney Carton on the stage. But he’d ask questions as well, and he saw far too much as it was.
The librarian at Holborn, she thought.
When they got to Notting Hill Gate, she told Eileen she’d forgotten to give Doreen a message and had to go to Piccadilly Circus to tell her. Instead she took the train to Holborn.
“The Reign of Terror?” the ginger-haired librarian said promptly. “It began in September of 1793.” Four years and two months after the storming of the Bastille.
Don’t leave it to others.
AIR RAID PRECAUTIONS POSTER,
1940
Oxford—April 2060
MR. DUNWORTHY WENT OVER DR. ISHIWAKA’S CALCULATIONS again and then called, “Eddritch, come into my office, please.” When his secretary appeared in the doorway, he said, “I need you to ring up the lab and see why they haven’t sent over that slippage analysis yet.”
“They did send it, sir,” Eddritch said, and just stood there.
I should never have let Finch become an historian, Dunworthy thought, thinking longingly of his previous secretary. “Well, then, where is it?”
“On my desk, sir.”
“Bring it to me,” Dunworthy said, and when Eddritch came back with the file, he asked, “Has Research telephoned?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did they say?”
“They said they had the information you requested and that you were to ring them back,” Eddritch said. “Would you like me to ring them for you?”
No, because you would very likely fail to inform me you’d put the call through, Dunworthy thought. “I’ll do it myself,” he said, and rang them up.
“There were two hundred fatalities that night,” the tech who answered the telephone said. “Twenty-one in the area you asked about. But that figure doesn’t include those who might have been injured on that date and later died of their wounds.”
Or anyone who was killed days—or weeks—later as a consequence of what they did, Dunworthy thought.
“Do you want us to attempt to find out about those who suffered eventually fatal injuries?” the tech asked.
“We’ll see. Give me what you’ve found thus far. You said twenty-one that night?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Six firemen, an ARP warden, a Wren, an officer in the Lancaster Rifles, a WAAC, a seventeen-year-old boy, and two charwomen.”
“No naval officers?”
“No, sir. But as I said, this is only the people who died that night.”
“Have you the exact locations where they were killed?”
“For some of them. The officer and two of the firemen were killed in Upper Grosvenor Street, and the others fighting a fire in the Minories. The ARP warden was killed in Cheapside. The post was hit.”
“What about the Wren?”
“She was killed in Ave Maria Lane.”
Only a few streets away from St. Paul’s. “Is there a photo of her?”
“No, not with the death notice. Do you want me to try to find one?”
“Yes. And I need the names of the fatalities and, if possible, photographs. As soon as you can. When you have it, phone me directly.”
He gave her the number, rang off, and started through the slippage analysis, afraid that it held more bad news. But although there was a slight increase in the average amount of slippage per drop, it wasn’t as large as Ishiwaka had predicted, and several of the drops were in areas where their opening was highly likely to be observed, which could account for the increase. And there was nothing to indicate a spike.