I TOOK THEM DOWN to the Embankment where the old river ran pure silver under the uncloaked moon, its waters free of human detritus, driftwood and loose craft the only blight. A short flight of stone steps over the river wall led us to a wooden jetty where I kept a small motor launch, tanked up and regularly serviced like all my escape vehicles. Soon we were heading downstream, the quiet throbbing of the boat’s engine and the distant, fading drone of the Dornier, one contented Kraut bomber on his way home, the only sounds. We’d heard more gunfire behind us as we’d made our way to the jetty, but now it’d ceased, leaving us to wonder about those poor souls we’d found waiting outside the Savoy. How many had been shot or beaten for resisting the Blackshirts? How many of those suffering the Slow Death had been killed where they stood, eliminated because their blood was useless to Hubble and his parasites? And how many more of those pilgrims had arrived at the front of the hotel, at the shattered main entrance, attracted by the lights blazing through the night sky? Had they been captured too?
While Cissie cradled Stern in her arms and did her best to stanch his bleeding, I steered the motor launch close to the riverbank, keeping us under the cover of buildings and walls, checking over my shoulder to see if we were being followed, watching the grand old hotel burn. Its electric lights, sirens to the survivors, a beacon to the Dornier’s pilot, were finally doused, but by then the flames had taken over, more than compensating for their loss. It was nothing new to me, this kind of senseless vandalism, but still it was a tragic sight and a heaviness weighed upon me. The Savoy had served as a resolute symbol of London ’s unbreakable spirit during the Blitz; by tomorrow it would be a gutted shell, maybe even reduced to rubble. It had survived the war almost intact and three years later it’d taken just one man, guided by a company of fools, to destroy it.
Cissie was quietly weeping, but there wasn’t much I could do to comfort her. Nor could I help the wounded German – all my efforts had to go into getting us away from there. Rumpled barrage balloons drooped like small grey clouds over the blackened city, testimony to mankind’s inventiveness and absurdity, and the river stretched ahead like a broad, metallic highway, taking us to a quieter part of the graveyard.
We journeyed into the concealing darkness of the river bends.