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 completed 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
