No, wait, there was one, in the darkness at the end of a side lane. He stepped into the lane and hailed it.
It had seen him. It pulled out and began to move toward him, and thank God Colin had insisted on his bringing money. Dunworthy pulled out his papers and It had seen him. It pulled out and began to move toward him, and thank God Colin had insisted on his bringing money. Dunworthy pulled out his papers and shuffled through them, looking for the five-pound notes, and then looked up again.
The taxi was moving away. It hadn’t seen him after all. “Hullo!” Dunworthy shouted, his voice echoing in the narrow street, and rushed toward it, waving.
There, it had seen him now. The taxi began to move toward him again. It must be farther away than he’d thought because he couldn’t hear the engine at all. He hurried toward it, but before he’d gone half the distance, he saw it wasn’t a taxi. What he’d thought was the vehicle’s bonnet was the rounded edge of a huge black metal canister, swinging gently back and forth from a lamppost. A dark shroud was draped over the lamppost. A parachute.
It’s a parachute mine, he thought, watching as the canister swung gently back and forth, missing the lamppost by inches. And if the wind shifted slightly, or the parachute ripped …
He took two stumbling steps backward, and then turned and ran for the mouth of the lane, listening for the tearing of parachute silk, for the scrape of the mine against the lamppost, for the deafening boom of the explosion.
It didn’t come. There was a faint sigh, and he was suddenly on the ground, his hands out in front of him on the pavement. He thought at first he must have tripped and fallen, but when he got to his feet, he was covered with dust and glass.
It must have broken the stationer’s window, he thought, and then, confusedly, The mine must have gone off.
He brushed the glass and dirt off his trousers, his coat. And he must have cut himself in the process because the palms of his hands were scraped and bloody, and blood was trickling down behind his ear. He could hear ambulance bells.
I can’t let them find me here, he thought. I must get back to Oxford. I must pull everyone out. He started down the lane, wishing there was a wall to lean against for support, but all the buildings seemed to have fallen down except the one at the very end. He walked toward it as quickly as he could. The bells were growing louder.
The ambulance would be here any second, and so would an incident officer. He needed to be out of the lane, across the road, around the corner …
He made it just past the corner before he collapsed, falling to his knees.
Colin was right. He said I’d get into trouble, he thought. I should have let him come with me. And he must have been unconscious for a few minutes, because when he opened his eyes, it was nearly light and the rain had stopped. He got heavily to his feet and then stood there a moment, looking confused. What had he—?
Oxford, he thought. I must get back to Oxford. And started down the hill to Blackfriars to take the tube to Paddington Station to catch the train.
The rain it raineth every day.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
TWELFTH NIGHT
London—December 1940
MIKE STARED AT POLLY, SITTING THERE ON THE STEPS OF the Albert Memorial. “You were the historian we were talking about that day in Oxford?” he said angrily. “The one we couldn’t believe Mr. Dunworthy would let do something so dangerous?”
Polly nodded.
“Which means your deadline’s not April second, 1945. It’s what? When did the V-1 attacks start?”
“A week after D-Day.”
“A week—in 1944?”
“Yes. June thirteenth.”
“Jesus.” VE-Day had been bad enough, but D-Day was only three and a half years away, and if the slippage had increased enough for Dunworthy to be canceling drops right and left … “Why didn’t Dunworthy cancel your assignment if you had a deadline?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Polly said.
“But if he didn’t, then perhaps he was changing the order for some other reason,” Eileen suggested. “Because he was putting the less dangerous ones first or something. The Reign of Terror was more dangerous than the storming of the Bastille, wasn’t it? And Pearl Harbor was more dangerous than—”
She stopped, flustered, and looked down at Mike’s foot.
“It would have been more dangerous,” Mike said, “if I’d gone to Dover like I was supposed to. Eileen’s right, Polly. The assignments could have been switched for lots of reasons. And the fact that they didn’t cancel yours is a good sign Oxford doesn’t think you’re in danger.”
“And her seeing me at VE-Day might be a good sign, too. I could have gone there after we got back to Oxford. Because Mr. Dunworthy felt badly about our having been trapped. He knows I’ve always wanted to go to VE-Day.”
You may get your wish, Mike thought grimly.
He looked at Polly, who hadn’t said anything. Her expression was guarded, wary, as if there was still something she hadn’t told them, and he thought about her saying, “You asked me if I’d been to Bletchley Park.” Could she still be lying to them and carefully answering exactly what they asked and nothing else?
“Is the V-1 assignment your only one to World War Two?” he asked, and Eileen looked, horrified, at him and then Polly.
“Is it?” he pressed her. “Or did you go to Pearl Harbor? Or the end of the Blitz?” he asked, remembering she’d known all about those attacks, too.
“No,” she said, and looked like she was telling the truth. But then, he’d thought she was telling the truth before.
“You weren’t here in World War Two on any other assignment besides this one and the V-1s and V-2s?”
“No.”
Thank God, he thought, but the V-1s assignment was bad enough. Denys Atherton wouldn’t be here till March of 1944, which was cutting it awfully close.
If he’d come through. And to get to him, they had to survive the next three years and the rest of the Blitz, and in another few weeks they wouldn’t know when or where the bombs were going to be. And if the increase in slippage was bad enough for Dunworthy to have switched drops that were years apart, there might not be anything they could do till well after Polly …
But they didn’t know the increase was that big. And even if it was, the increase might only be on a few drops. And there might be some other reason Phipps hadn’t come. Bletchley Park was still a divergence point, and, for all they knew, so were these months of the Blitz. And the soldiers at Dunkirk had thought they were licked, and look how that had turned out.
“Don’t worry, Polly,” he said. “We’ll get you out of here. We’ve got three years to figure out something. And there’s still Denys Atherton.”
“And Historian X,” Eileen said. “The historian who’s here till the eighteenth.”
He’d hoped they’d forgotten about that. “Afraid not,” he said.
“Why not?” Eileen said.
“Because Historian X was Gerald,” Polly said. “Wasn’t it, Mike?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?” Eileen asked.
“Yes.” He told them about the date on the letter. “And there was a train ticket to Oxford for December eighteenth, and his departure letter was postmarked the sixteenth.”
“Oh, dear,” Eileen said.
“But we still have the drop in St. John’s Wood,” Mike said. “And on my way here, I saw that hoardings have gone up on the site in front of your drop, Polly.”
“So if the drop wouldn’t open because people could see into it,” Eileen said eagerly, “it may begin working again.”
“Exactly,” Mike said. He stood up. “What say we get out of here and give the Luftwaffe a clear shot at this atrocity?” he suggested, looking around at the Albert Memorial statuary. “I’ll take you two to lunch and we’ll plan our strategy for finding the drop. Eileen, did you hear from Lady Caroline?”