''48

  Cissie and the woman fell to the floor, the Blackshirt on top and still clinging to Cissie’s wrists. It took two steps to reach them and I dragged the woman off Cissie, throwing her aside. She lay there screeching, but the fight had left her.

  As I turned to help Cissie to her feet I noticed Stern stoop to pick up a discarded Sten gun, then aim it at someone rushing at him from out of the smoke. Just as the Blackshirt reached him, Stern jerked the weapon forward into his belly and pulled the trigger. The man did a little jog, his arms flapping, boots stamping carpet, as the bullets disassembled his innards.

  A wave of heat engulfed me once more as the fire bloomed out from the broad staircase to the foyer and lobby area, gusts of air sucked in from the blitzed entrance exciting the flames. The grand old hotel was finished: it had survived the worst London air raids, wounded but always unbent, but now there was nobody to quench those flames and repair the damage; fires in other parts of the building would join with this one, making one huge conflagration that would only be extinguished when there was nothing left to burn. There was no more time to waste; we had to leave, and we had to leave now.

  ‘Look out, Hoke!’

  Cissie had screamed the warning almost into my face as a tall Blackshirt loomed up over my shoulder. When I wheeled round, his rifle was raised to smash down into my head. I started to duck, even in that split second aware there was no way I could avoid the blow, but gunfire rattled through the smoky air and the butt-end of the weapon wavered above me, only inches from my skull. Then it just dropped away, the goon holding the rifle falling with it. Stern joined us, a wisp of smoke curling from the Sten gun’s muzzle.

  He leaned close to my ear and shouted, ‘We must get out!’ and I was dumb enough to nod my head at the obvious.

  ‘Through that way!’ I pointed towards an opening at the side of the big room which led past the cloakrooms and into the corridor where all the private dining rooms, including the Pinafore, were located. Although I’d been unconscious at the time, I knew Hubble must have brought us along that way into the lounge.

  We started off in that direction, moving as one, Cissie clinging to my bare arm as if afraid to let go, Stern on the other side, Sten gun held hip-high, covering the ground before us. Once again, survival instinct had kicked in, helping me to operate despite a groggy head and some stiffness from the beating, and we dodged around figures who seemed oblivious to us as they rushed around in the swirling smoke, afraid the whole building was gonna tumble down on them. But if we had the idea that all of Hubble’s Blackshirts had forgotten about us we were soon corrected: a whole bunch of them were suddenly standing between us and our intended escape route, pistols and rifles raised towards us, staves and short axes brandished by the few women amongst them. They wouldn’t want to kill us, I knew that – we, were useless to them dead – but they could incapacitate us easily enough; besides, they had another reason for negotiation, a hostage.

  In all the commotion and anxiety to get out of there fast, I’d forgotten about Albert Potter. He was on hands and knees, one of the Blackshirts crouched over him, holding a blade to his plump throat.

  The three of us came to a halt, Cissie calling out the old warden’s name, her fingers digging into the flesh of my arm. Stern brought the Sten gun up to his chest and aimed it at the group. I could only spit more dust from my mouth.

  It was a stand-off, smoke swirling between us, the flames from the stairway and other parts of the room licking everything orange. The electric lights flickered again, dulled, came back, the generator in the hotel’s basement beginning to run slow, then picking up; either the bombardment had caused problems, or three years of lying idle had upset the machinery. I didn’t care which, I just prayed for a total blackout. Sure, the fires would still provide some kind of light, but it would be unsteady as well as poor, and any edge was better than none at all.

  Hubble was among the group holding us up, his ever-faithful goon, McGruder, by his side, supporting him. Hubble took an unsteady step forward, McGruder careful to go with him, making sure his leader didn’t stumble.

  ‘Don’t make another move!’ Hubble shouted in that weak, high-pitched way of his. ‘If you do, this man will be killed instantly.’ He pointed a shaky, dark-stained finger at Potter. The blade at the warden’s throat pressed into the soft flesh, not enough to draw blood, but enough to make a furrow. ‘His is old blood anyway and we’d prefer the younger, more healthy kind,’ Hubble said, as if we’d appreciate his reasoning. ‘Your kind, Mr Hoke. And your companions’. Good, vibrant blood.’

  How long was it gonna take the mad bomber to make his turn and get back over target? He wouldn’t let an opportunity like this go by without dropping every last bomb and incendiary on board. No, he’d douse those glowing lights with fires of his own making, and then he’d spit on the wreckage as he headed home to the Fatherland. C’mon, Fritz, knock this place out, gimme a chance.

  I pulled Cissie behind me and scanned the immediate area for fallen weapons. Okay, the Blackshirts would go for non-fatal wounds, tricky for any marksmen. And they’d have to try for the kind that didn’t bleed too much; off hand, I couldn’t think of any. So: Dive for the nearest gun before they cut the legs from under you. Already tense, I tensed some more.

  ‘Kill Hubble first,’ I told Stern.

  ‘No!’ Cissie tugged at my arm. ‘You can’t do that, Hoke, they’ll kill Albert.’

  ‘They’ll kill us all anyway,’ I replied, still searching the floor. ‘Do it, Stern, do it now.’

  The German turned his head towards me, then looked back at Hubble. Something crashed in the foyer, beyond the wall of flame.

  ‘Hoke, I cannot-’

  ‘None of it matters!’ I snapped, at last finding what I was searching for, a pistol lying close to an upturned chair on the littered floor. ‘Shoot him now and let’s finish it.’

  ‘You’re insane,’ said Cissie over my shoulder.

  I felt myself grin. ‘Yeah,’ I agreed as I judged the distance between myself and the fallen weapon.

  Stern levelled the Sten at the Blackshirt leader, who suddenly looked less sure of himself. But the German lowered the submachine gun, then dropped it onto the carpet.

  ‘It is senseless,’ he whispered, as if to himself. It was as if not just his energy, but his spirit too, had drained from him. Then, to me: ‘There has been too much killing. We must reason with these –’

  A number of things happened before he’d completed the sentence: Hubble nodded at the goon with the long knife, who neatly slit Potter’s throat; the lights surged, then fell almost to nothing; I went down, rolled forward and came up with the German’s discarded Sten gun, finger already tightening on the trigger.

  17

  I’D FIRED TOO WILD and too soon, because McGruder pulled Hubble to the floor before I could take proper aim at him. The bullets caught a couple of Blackshirts who weren’t quick enough to duck, while others in the group blocking our way scattered, some diving for the floor, others just scooting off, heading for cover. A mirror shattered on the far wall and splinters flew from a marble column. The lights brightened again as the generator below ground revived and I had the chance to pick out Hubble with the Sten gun. He was crouched on the floor, his loyal henchman’s beefy arm thrown over his shoulder for protection, and he was watching me like a paralysed rabbit. His time was up sooner than he’d figured, and I was the gun-packing Reaper, both counts pretty hard for him to take.

  I pulled the trigger and nothing happened.

  Tried again, but it was useless. The gun was jammed or empty, God knows which, but it was all the same to me. I threw it away and went for the pistol I’d spotted earlier.

  But even as I hit the deck it seemed to rise up beneath me, slamming into my body so that I turned over from the shock. The blast – heavy, thunderous, like nothing I’d heard before – overwhelmed all other noise, and the shell of the building juddered so violently I thought it must come tumbling down on us all. The Bomber King had comp
leted his turn and was back over target. I guessed he’d dropped his whole bomb-load in his determination to blot out the beacon below. A great wind from the foyer swept through the lounge, carrying with it lethal shrapnel and fireballs, and I hugged carpet, pressing my body into its softness, riding the reverberations, sparks and burning cinders scorching my naked back and arms, pellets of masonry and splinters of wood raining down on me. My hands were over my head, but I heard more crashing sounds, then screams, shouts, and the floor beneath me continued to tremble. Although there were more close-set explosions, I decided it was time to be up and running again.

  The broad stairway leading to the foyer and main entrance was totally engulfed in flames by now, and I knew everything beyond it – the reception area, reading lounge, and the staircase to Harry’s Bar – would have been completely destroyed. Powdered glass and dust filled the air with thick smoke as other chandeliers broke loose from their fittings and hurtled to the floor, while whole ornamental mirrors fell from the walls and more pillars fissured as they shifted under the strain of the collapsing ceiling. But I was on my feet, looking round for Cissie and the German, swiping at the smoke with my hands as though it were concealing veils.

  I soon found them both behind me. Stern was pulling bright red cinders from Cissie’s smouldering hair, his face covered in blood. Cissie’s nose was bleeding and I saw her lips were moving; she was shouting at me and pointing, but I couldn’t hear a thing – my ears, and probably theirs too, had been deafened by the explosions. As Stern flicked away the last cinder, smothering the smouldering strands with his other hand, Cissie touched my face. Her fingers came away stained with blood and she showed them to me. I wiped my face with my own hands and felt no wounds or embedded glass and shrapnel, so was sure all I was suffering was a nose-bleed from the blasts and, from the look of her, that was Cissie’s only problem too. Stern, though, had a deep cut over his brow and blood was streaming down into his eyes; he kept clearing it with his sleeve so that he could see, but still it poured out, blinding him each time. His clothes were ripped and I wondered if he’d shielded Cissie from the worst of the blasts, because her dress was relatively untouched.

  Taking them both by the arms, aware they couldn’t hear a word even if I screamed at them, I pulled them towards the opening we’d been heading for. I took time out to kick over a Blackshirt who was lumbering to his feet in our path and, although he went down fast enough, there were others all around, dark shapes looming up in the smoke mists like spectres in a graveyard. Something brushed my cheek, a sharp arrow of air, and even though I hadn’t heard the gunshot, I knew someone had recovered enough to take shots at us. Pushing the girl and Stern on ahead, I paused only long enough to lift an upturned coffee table from the floor and hurl it at the murky forms closing in on us. Then I was running again, quickly catching up to the other two, who had almost reached the passageway, and it was weird, unreal, rushing through that silent chaos, slow-moving figures around us, the fires bathing everything orange, even the smoke, old corpses beginning to smoulder with the advancing heat. Then my ears suddenly popped and the full horror hit me with its sounds. Shots were being fired, people were yelling and screaming, and a terrifying low rumbling-grinding was coming from the building itself.

  I couldn’t see Hubble anywhere, but then I wasn’t bothering to look for him. I only had one thought and that was to get through that archway into the passage before one of the bullets found a target A hail of bullets ripped through a group of tables and chairs close by, shredding the husked corpses seated there, and sending fountains of splinters and broken crockery into the air. I ducked and swerved, managing to grab at Cissie as I went, bringing her down with me when I fell. I heard Stern cry out, saw him stagger as another wild volley was sent our way. He seemed to recover, stumbling on, and as he disappeared through the archway I was already pulling Cissie to her feet and pushing her after him.

  We made it. We rushed into the wide passageway, the smoke thinner inside, the air more breathable, and we kept going, catching up with Stern, who was holding his shoulder as he ran. The three of us almost reached the turn in the passageway that led past the private dining rooms where a couple of hours ago we’d been enjoying a fine meal with rare wines and excellent brandies; almost, but not quite, because some of the goons had fired into the archway after us. Stern staggered again, this time into the closed door of the Gondoliers Room directly ahead of us, and I caught him as he bounced off it and started to fall. I dragged him round the corner and out of sight of the Blackshirts just as wood splintered from the door. Stern sagged in my arms, but I wouldn’t let him go down; I kept him moving, even though he was crying out at the pain. I could hear footsteps pounding the floor-tiles behind us.

  ‘Hoke, there’s a stairway!’ Cissie shouted.

  The lights stuttered again, almost fading to complete darkness. They came back, but not to the same glory; I prayed for the generator to help us out a little by giving up entirely.

  ‘Help me with him,’ I said to Cissie, pulling Stern’s arm over my shoulder.

  She took the other side and we went down the stairs, moving as swiftly as we could, but taking care not to stumble. We heard shouts and more running footsteps from above and we tried to keep our descent as quiet as possible, shushing Stern when he started to groan. The further we went, the gloomier it became; not because the generator was failing, but because there were fewer lights in use down there when the machinery controlling them had originally shut down. That suited me fine: the more shadows to hide in the better. There were husks on the stairs, all dressed in faded Savoy livery, and it was over one of these uniformed corpses that I tripped, bringing both Cissie and Stern down with me. The German shrieked at the sudden aggravation to his wounds and as I clamped my hand over his mouth we heard more shouts, then footsteps on the stairs. I was up again as quickly as I’d fallen, bringing Stern with me, then bending his body with my shoulder, hoisting him in a fireman’s lift. He was goddamn heavy, but I clenched my teeth and kept going, whispering to Cissie to go on ahead and clear the steps of other obstacles. Down and round we went, the sounds of our pursuers growing louder, closer. At the bottom of the staircase we found a narrow corridor and we hurried along it, the light in this basement area almost non-existent. My load was growing heavier and my limp decided to make a comeback after a day’s absence. Another corridor, this one broader, rooms off it leading to boiler rooms, machine rooms and store rooms; there were thick pipes running along the ceiling, smaller ones running alongside them. The walls were of white brick tiles covered in dust and grime, and long cobwebs hung from the pipes; our own footsteps seemed even louder in this place, but still we could hear the Blackshirts drawing closer. We came to a heavy door and Cissie pushed it open: we were in a smart hallway, doorways on both sides, an ascending stairway directly ahead. I recognized where we were: the stairs led to the riverside entrance and behind the doors were the hotel’s grand function rooms and banqueting halls. Tempting though those stairs were, I knew I’d never get up them fast enough carrying the injured man – I could hear our pursuers behind the door we’d just emerged from and they’d be bursting through after us at any second – so I grabbed Cissie’s hand and pulled her into the open doorway on our right.

  She realized where we were the moment we were over the threshold and in the gloom I felt her go rigid in my grip. She began to back away, shaking her head.

  ‘We gotta hide,’ I hissed at her. ‘Just long enough to shake ‘em off.’

  ‘Not here,’ she whispered back.

  But it was already too late to change our minds. We heard the door to the hallway open.

  ‘Quick.’ I pushed her ahead of me towards one of the curtained bunk-beds. Pulling the curtain aside, I unloaded the semi-conscious German onto the narrow bed, then ordered Cissie to climb in after him.

  At first I thought she was going to resist, but voices outside the door took the choice away from her. She slid in after Stern and I climbed in after her, drawing the
curtain closed behind us. Something softly broke beneath our bodies and in the darkness a powdery dust smelling of fossilized mushrooms rose up around us. Stern gave a feeble moan and I groped for his face, finding his mouth and covering it with both hands. He tried to twist his head away, but he was too weak to succeed; I held him there, hands clamped tight, and soon his body went limp. Afraid of suffocating him, I immediately lifted my hands an inch or two away from his mouth, ready to bring them down at the faintest murmur. Beside me, Cissie was trying to control her own breathing – I could feel the slow rise and fall of her chest within the close confines of the veiled bunk. Her fingers clasped my bare shoulder.

  The sour odour of decay became almost overwhelming, giving us another reason to restrain our breath intake: it was difficult to shake off the notion that the foul dust floating around inside that enclosed refuge might poison our lungs. That smell and more soft crumblings beneath us confirmed what I already suspected and what I really did not want to know: we were lying on top of the crusted body of someone who’d crawled inside this darkened space a long time ago to escape the invisible killer thing that was in the air itself. Cissie must have realized at the same time, because she made a sudden lunge across my shoulders, and only by twisting my body and pinning her to the wall with my back did I prevent her from tearing open the curtain and tumbling out. Her breasts heaved against my shoulder blades and for an uncomfortable few moments I thought she was gonna throw up all over me. She held on though, her panic giving way to a more controlled fear, her breathing slowing down; and soon I felt her tears on my back. Beneath me, Stern began to moan and I quickly eased my weight off him again and held a hand to his lips. Despite the pain he was in, I think maybe he was aware of our situation – or at least, that we were in danger – because he became quiet and lay still once more. In inky blackness we waited, and I wondered how many other rotted corpses lay about us in this reinforced tomb. Cissie had sensed them when I’d first brought her here, and I admired her willpower now; me, I was used to the decayed remains of the dead – I even collected them – but she was still learning to accept it all. Voices tensed us.