The eyelids flickered open, but the reply was feeble.
“Billy, sir.”
“I’ll have you out of here in no time, Billy. Can you move your legs at all?” The lad shook his head and began to cry, his chest heaving as the sobs convulsed his body. “I want my Dad,” he whispered.
Kruze tore at the bricks once more and uncovered the beam which had fallen across Billy’s legs, breaking both of them and pinning him to the floor. The Rhodesian bellowed at the top of his voice for assistance. On the other side of the ruins he could hear more bells; ambulances removing the dying and the wounded. There was little chance that any of the rescuers would hear him.
He tugged at the beam. At first it would not move, then it gave a little, but Kruze could only raise it a few inches off the ground. It was all he could do to prevent it from crashing down on the boy’s pale and broken legs.
Kruze wiped the furrowed forehead and swept the matted brown hair from Billy’s eyes.
“Listen to me,” he said gently, “I’m going for some help. When I get back we’ll have you out of here, that’s a promise.”
Kruze made a move, but the boy grasped him by the fingers and tugged with all his strength. “Please don’t leave me.
Kruze was about to soothe his fears, when a gust of wind blew through the ruins, fanning the embers of the stage curtain which had been slowly smouldering nearby. It burst into flames.
Kruze tore his hand free from Billy’s grip and wrenched off his greatcoat. He tried to get close to the source of the flames but the wind whipped them up into an inferno which drove him back. He threw the coat over the boy and tried with all his strength to lift the beam high enough to throw it clear of Billy’s feet. This time Kruze raised the thick wooden support almost a foot off the ground, but the weight of the masonry at one end made it impossible to do any more. Kruze screamed for more strength, but he felt the energy being sapped from his body. The beam started to slide from his fingers.
A pair of hands pulled Billy away from the smoke and the flames. Kruze dropped the beam and ran, jumping over his fallen coat which had now become prey to the creeping flames from the curtain. He followed the figure running awkwardly with the boy through the smog-filled ruins in front of him, before losing them in a crowd of people who rushed forward to take the injured child to the nearest ambulance. As the white truck tore away, its bell clanging, the crowd parted to expose the anonymous rescuer.
Penny Fleming turned to face Kruze.
“I was just behind you when the explosion happened,” she said. “I saw you dart into the building and knew you’d seen something.”
“You could have been killed.”
“So could you.” She smiled. “I’m sorry I took my time, but it’s hard to climb over rubble in high heels.” She held up a battered shoe.
Away to the west the bell of an ambulance sounded above the din of the rescue workers.
“That poor little boy,” she said looking down the street, “will he be all right?”
“His legs were badly broken, but he seemed like a brave kid. I think he’ll pull through. Where are they taking him?”
“I heard one of the drivers say Charing Cross hospital.” She turned to the burning ruins of the cinema. “Do you think he had family in there?”
“He asked for his father once, but I don’t know.”
“Shouldn’t we go with him? He’ll be terrified, the miserable little thing.”
“Penny, there’s nothing we can do. He’ll be unconscious by now and in next to no time they’ll be operating on his legs. He won’t even wake up till tomorrow.”
“Then I must go and see him. Tomorrow.” She paused. “What about you?”
He looked up at the scudding grey clouds, so different from the sky over the New Forest where yesterday he had almost flown her husband into the ground.
“Why not? I didn’t really want to see Errol Flynn anyway.”
She looked puzzled.
“He was playing here at the Rialto.”
“Oh, I see.” She laughed. She studied him for a moment, unsure what he intended. He held her gaze. “What happened?” she asked, suddenly feeling conspicuous amidst the rescuers picking their way through the rubble. “I heard someone say it was gas.”
Kruze beat the dust from his cap. “The V2 is faster than sound, so there’s no sign, no way of spotting it. Just an explosion, followed by that rushing sound. Once you’ve heard it you’ll never forget it.” He looked back into the smoke. “Gas explosions are convenient explanations, not so bad for morale. Ordinary people don’t like hearing about weapons that kill hundreds at a time with no warning.”
She shivered. “I’ve never been so… close before.”
The rain had soaked her hair, causing several strands to fall down over her face. The defiance that had been etched there when she had turned on him outside the Ministry had disappeared, revealing soft, fair features instead. There
was a look about her, he thought, which bordered on elation.
“It doesn’t do to think about it,” he said.
She shook her head and smiled. “Not death, my God, I hadn’t really thought about that. I meant the war. It’s happened, here, and I finally did something about it. I actually saved a life, instead of shuffling pieces of paper around for the RAF.”
The Rhodesian remembered his dinner at their cottage, so English with its little gravel path, the wild roses over the porch and inside, glimpses and snatches of an alien life. Photographs of Robert at his pukka public school, studio portraits of her parents staring from their frames in that way only the British aristocracy could. Talk of racing, parties, picnics, large country estates and the antics of eccentric friends. She was, and was not, a part of all that.
They stood watching each other, while a short distance away the firemen battled to keep the blaze under control. Kruze was suddenly struck by the absurdity of their surroundings.
“Look, we’re going to freeze if we don’t get moving.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We could get a drink. I reckon I owe you one.”
She looked at her watch. It was past closing time. “A drink? At this time of day? My dear Piet, this is London, not some Rhodesian country club.”
He smiled. “Come on, I know just the place.”
At that moment Robert Fleming was a hundred miles away, heading for the burns ward in the military hospital attached to the United States 8th Army Air Force base at Horsham St Faith in Norfolk, and on some wild bloody goose chase. A B-17 gunner, pumped to the eyeballs with morphine, had ranted about being attacked by a rocket fighter. Not that there was anything unusual in that. The stubby little Me 163B Komets had been knocking B-17S and Liberators out of the sky every day of the week for the past four months. They were highly effective quick reaction fighters, but their flaw was they were short on range. Their modus operandi was simple: wait for the bomber waves to come over, light the rocket, pop up to forty thousand feet, knock down a Fortress, or two, or three, and glide back to base.
The remedy had been fairly simple, too. Plot the 163 bases and stay well clear of them.
Now this gunner had gone and said that a 163 had pounced on his straggling B-17 over the North Sea — almost two hundred miles from the German coast. So the Americans, in their wisdom, thought the EAEU should hear about it. Hallucinations from a dying man. But someone had to check it out.
Fleming flipped the report shut. Poor sod. Probably just as well he’d lost his marbles. All the way to Regensburg and back only to have his Fortress blow up over the field. Must have pulled his rip-cord somehow. But the nine others were all gone.