James Benn - Rag and Bone

“Because you were asking about Russians?”

“Yes. There’s something odd going on. Bull had a big map in his office, showing targets in Europe. He had two places marked in Russia, well behind their lines. Mirgorod and Poltava. Are we going to bomb Russia, Colonel?”

“If we were, I doubt the Eighth would invite a delegation of Russian officers to their headquarters. Whatever it is, it sounds top secret. I’ll see what I can find out. Let me know if Big Mike comes up with anything in his, ah, investigation. And meanwhile, you stay focused on Egorov.” I was about to promise to be a good soldier and sell out Kaz and the London Poles when heavy footsteps in the outer office heralded Big Mike’s return from High Wycombe.

“The bastards transferred her! She’s gone, goddamn sonuvabitch!” Big Mike was not happy. He wasn’t much on military protocol, and I knew he and Harding had some kind of odd understanding, born out of long hours together in cramped quarters, that allowed them to bicker like old friends. Even so, he had the sense to slow his forward momentum, remove his cap, and mutter, “Sir.”

“Estelle?” I asked, although the answer was obvious.

“Damn right. They did the paperwork yesterday, right after we skedaddled. I went to see Bull and he filled me in. Orders from the top brass at Eighth Air Force. She was on a transport to Tangier by nightfall. Can you believe it?”

“You hit a nerve,” Harding said.

“Yeah, but was it because of a top-secret air operation or the fact that she recognized Egorov?” I said, half to myself. Or was it that she had gotten close to Sidorov, even for a moment of harmless flirting? How would the Russians get that sort of pull with the U.S. Army Air Force?

“Can you get her back, Colonel?” Big Mike was still stuck on his missed date.

“Hell no, Big Mike,” Harding said. “I’m only a light bird, not a miracle worker. Find a new girlfriend.”

“Jeez, Colonel, she was a swell kid.”

“She still is, Big Mike. She’s not dead, she’s on her way to Morocco.”

“That ain’t any kind of place for a gal like Estelle. Sir.”

“Colonel, I’m heading over to Liverpool Street,” I said, trying to cut off the argument over Estelle’s fate.

“Report to me in the morning,” he said. I left as fast as I could, their voices rising in unreasoning determination at my back. Outside, early winter night had descended, cloaking London in blacked-out darkness. The few vehicles on the street cruised slowly, their tires clinging to the curbside to guide them, as they laid on the horn at every intersection. I crossed Trafalgar Square, making my way through crowds of GIs looking spiffy and confident, and swaggering in small groups, with a sprinkling of other services and nationalities thrown in. Most of the females were with Americans, who were guaranteed to have ready cash, chocolate, and cigarettes.

Buildings were still sandbagged, great walls of them thrown up during the Blitz to protect homes and offices. Windows were decorated with tape in large white X s, precautions against shattered glass shards. I’d never seen an intact window after a bombing, so I guessed it was one of those things people did to help them believe they’d survive a stick of five hundred-pound bombs. Pieces of tape hung in tatters, neglected since the last raid months ago. Many of the sandbags had fallen, burst at the seams, the burlap weathered and rotting.

Working girls stood at corners, offering their services to anyone within earshot. Some were gaudily made-up, their red lipstick and rouge visible even in the city’s darkness. Others tried to imitate them, but their threadbare coats, false smiles, and drawn faces gave them away. Bombed out, husbands dead, wounded, missing, or just gone, they offered the motions of sex to boys who could’ve been their kid brothers or sons. It would be a transaction, maybe fair, maybe not, but one that could satisfy only in the moment of release, or with the relief of cash and forgetfulness. I wanted to shake them by the shoulders, the women and the boys, but I didn’t know what I’d tell them. Go home? Hers might not be more than a Tube station, and he might never see his again. I turned away, the crush of loneliness and desire heavy, the sadness of these couplings nothing I wished to witness. I scurried along the Strand, cries of Hey, Yank nipping at my heels, and I felt unaccountably afraid. For all these people gathered together tonight, for Estelle in Tangier, for Diana in disguise, for Kaz and Tadeusz, even Sidorov in all his icy mysteriousness. But not for myself, no. I was fine. I was between a Polish rock and a Russian hard place, lying to my boss, wishing I had a fistful of drinks, and looking to find a killer crime boss deep underground. I was doing just dandy.

Then the sirens sounded.

Everyone on the street stopped and looked to the sky. As if in answer, searchlights stabbed at the darkness, each one brilliant white at its base, fading into starlight and casting a reflective glow against upturned faces. The wail of the sirens rose and fell, rose and fell, the rhythmic pattern endlessly repeating. I didn’t know which way to turn or where to go. Everybody seemed confused, dumbfounded by what had been a nightly routine short months ago.

I ran, heading for the Liverpool Street Underground. When the first explosions came, a woman screamed, holding her hands over her ears, as if the noise was what she feared most. But the sound was antiaircraft fire, coming from somewhere to the east, near the docks. Searchlights darted across the sky, followed by more gunfire, the explosive shells joined by tracer bullets in their deceptively graceful arcs as gunners sprayed the assigned quadrant of air, filling it with burning phosphorus and hot lead, hoping for that terrible symmetry, the geometry of death, as intersecting lines of fire and aircraft met, carrying the planes and men of the Luftwaffe to the ground, altering their course with a finality that only mathematics and bullets can ensure.

I ran along Fleet Street, gathering speed until a group spilled out of a pub, knocking me over, leaving me on my back in the gutter. The last of them sauntered amiably by, stopped and leaned down, his hands on his knees and his breath harsh with whiskey and smoke.

“So is this the real thing, or a drill, d’ya think?”

“Get to a shelter, pal,” I said as I got up, wondering why he thought a Yank lying in the road might know one way or the other. I scanned the sky, watching for the searchlights to latch on to the bombers, but there was nothing but dancing spears of incandescence. A giant pair of spectacles gazed at me, eerily illuminated by the reflected light, holding me in its grip until I realized it was a store sign, a pince-nez suspended from curved iron grillwork. I wondered if the spectacles had witnessed that nameless East Ender get his throat slit as a warning to Kaz’s friend, or if he had seen them in his last moments, the blank eyes of an uncaring, watchful God.

The sirens continued their wails, louder now, as I came closer to the docks. I caught a glimpse of St. Paul’s just as the first bombs fell, the distant crump, crump, crump signaling the hits as they crept closer. I risked a glimpse up and saw, finally, the dark shape of a German bomber caught in the lights. I careened into another figure running in the opposite direction, and cursed myself for looking up. I saw a sign for a shelter and ignored it, passing the sandbagged Bank of England on Threadneedle Street as I turned north, close to Liverpool Street. I could make out the drone of aircraft over the howl of the sirens, and occasional explosions as bombs hit their mark, or at least detonated. The bombing seemed uncoordinated, as if the aircraft had been split up, each releasing its separate load, in a hurry to avoid the antiaircraft fire that was now growing in intensity.