‘Woolwich Arsenal,’ Reynolds said. ‘But that’s miles past the royals. Even the krauts wouldn’t miss by that much.’
The thunder was louder, and Cook saw glints of light in the sky, like a shoal of silvery fish in a dark pool.
‘Your idea to bring up the boy?’ Reynolds asked Cook.
Cook didn’t respond.
Reynolds winked. ‘Welcome to the island,’ he said, then slipped into the darkness of another alley.
Cook watched the sky. Hard not to. Hypnotic, in its own way. Thousands of bombers, coming from the east.
Churchill had called the city a giant sow, tethered and vulnerable. Impossible to defend. No amount of fighters or anti-aircraft guns could make a mark. The bomber will always get through, was the mantra of the newspaper headline and the military strategist alike.
The only response had been to prepare the defences. Gas masks. Sandbags. Public shelters. Tape on every window.
As Cook stood in the churchyard and watched the sky turn red, suddenly the defences seemed all too thin.
Were they ever intended to protect the population of the biggest city in the world? Or were they just to keep the people quiet? Keep them going about their work without complaint, while the great and the good built deep shelters for themselves, and laid out escape plans.
The bombers were above Cook now, and he had to crane his neck, looking directly up into the late-afternoon sky.
And all the time, the sirens wailed, and the searchlights panned.
So this is it, Cook thought. The end of the world.
12
Margaret tapped out her message amidst the dust of the farmhouse attic. Mice, in their hundreds, scurried in the deep recesses of the eaves, disturbed by her presence. A thin copper wire had been threaded up and down the rafters. The work had been done hurriedly, the wireless set parachuted into the woods across the river and ferried across.
The transmitter was Morse code only. No voice. Communicating this way was second nature from endless childhood games, the sets her father had strung around the house, delighting the young girl and infuriating the servants she’d forced to commune with her across the wires. Her finger moved quickly, not waiting for confirmation from the other end, wherever that was, her message going out into the ether. There’d be a calm young woman sitting in a government office somewhere, typing out the message, ripping the paper from the typewriter and handing it to a runner.
BOMBING RAIDS TO CONTINUE TIL LONDON DESTROYED STOP
INVASION DELAYED STOP
G RUNNING SHOW WITH H FULL SUPPORT STOP
They’d know who she meant without needing to spell out the names, and they’d know what it meant. Goering was amaniac. Fighting against the army and navy, normal tactics had prevailed, men on both sides having studied the same books, pored over the same maps, gone to the same schools in many cases. But Goering was different. Not from the same school. And air war was new, the ability to strike deep into the enemy’s home, to wage total war against a population. It had driven the tacticians mad, trying to predict the worst, because the worst turned out to be unthinkable. Bunny had briefed Margaret during one of her first days of training, back in ’39 when war was still on the horizon. A million coffins ordered. Vast asylums made ready for the hundreds of thousands who’d go crazy under constant bombardment. Iron gates quietly installed at all tube station entrances, to keep the people out, to stop the population turning into a race of subterranean savages, refusing to come to the surface. And evacuation, of course, which Margaret had already seen in action. A noble idea turned to chaos in the hands of a nation that made a god of bureaucratic process without a care about reality.
The front door clicked, two storeys below. Margaret was moving instantly. She pulled the wires from the transmitter and pushed it into its hiding place in the chimney stack. Was there time to replace the bricks that concealed the Bakelite machine? Don’t think, just do, she commanded herself, jamming the crumbling bricks into place, hardly feeling the pain as a nail tore off.
Margaret peered out from the door to the attic, watching the SS man climb the stairs. He was different. A new-found confidence.
There was a time when she’d have been scared. A vulnerable woman alone with a determined man. Even now, Margaret wasn’t a fool. She knew she was in trouble. But Margaret wasn’t the woman this young soldier thought shewas. He saw an aristocrat, someone raised to a life of ease, defenceless against a predator, relying on the rules of civilisation. He didn’t know her at all. He hadn’t seen her growing up in India, watching Father playing his role in what they’d called the great game – facing off against enemies known and unknown from rival European empires, coming home late at night, cleaning off his gun, sitting by the fire while the trembling left his body. When Margaret had been recruited by Bunny she’d lacked the hands-on knowledge of what to do with a weapon, or how to defend herself against an attacker, but her mind and spirit were already prepared, so when they’d put a knife in her hand and thrown her into the ring against a padded instructor, it had felt like something she’d been waiting for. And when the instructor had looked like he’d get the better of her, when she’d been forced to look deep inside her soul to find out what she was made of, she’d found a survivor. Bunny had taken that survivor, and turned her into a predator. Part of her hated him for that. But part of her rejoiced.
So when her SS captor reached the top of the steps, Margaret knew with a cold certainty what was next. More than that, she welcomed it.
13
Cook stood in the doorway, a slow crocodile of people hurrying out.
Every few seconds, a crump heralded another bomb, followed by other sounds – the shower of bricks and crashing of glass. The cries of someone hurt. Cook tuned the sounds out. Focus on the job in hand – getting the crowd out of the pub, into the shelter.
A nearer thud. The air in the pub condensed, suddenly resolving into a thick soup of brown fog. A liquid sound from above as slates slid from the roof, crashing onto the road. Now, the door jamb in Cook’s hand lost all solidity, and he took an awkward step to the side, struggling to stay on his feet.
A new sound got everyone’s attention, slowing the crocodile as all eyes were raised to the sky. A whistling sound. Louder than the sirens, louder than the explosions, cutting through all of it. Like hearing your lover calling to you across a crowded room.
‘Keep moving!’ Cook shouted, pushing an elderly man who’d stopped in the doorway, his half-finished pint still in his hand. The man didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to step outside. But the pub was only an illusion of safety.
