“I don’t know. He didn’t say. But he had me somewhere near here earlier. I could just make out the roof of the factory from the window. There was empty space between us. Near the river, perhaps? He may have gone back there.”

Near the river. Across it? In the section that had already been hit by raids once and left largely abandoned?

The place he’d described when Margot had needed a decoy target.

They pushed their way out the door, into the screaming night, just as one of the Gothas banked overhead.

33

The idiots! Das Gespenst stumbled his way out of the building, coughing until he could barely stand. Smoke billowed out after him, stinging his eyes as it burned his lungs. What had gone wrong this time? Were their pilots so incompetent they didn’t know which side of the river to target? Did they not know right from left?

Or had he failed to convince the High Command he was useful? Were they trying—perhaps again—to eliminate him? How did they know where he’d be?

He tripped over something he couldn’t see through the smoke, fell against the lamppost, and loosed a growl of pain when he landed on his hand. That blighted howitzer shell had crushed it. He had made himself probe it and had counted at least five breaks.

But a broken hand would not kill him. He was still on his feet, still breathing, more or less. He pushed away and turned toward the Thames, waiting to see the flames roar up from the factory.

More Gothas appeared. One, two. Three. Enough to finish the job. Elton would be inside now, trying to free his clever little sister, who had played the innocent so very well. She deserved credit for that last stunt. And he ought to have anticipated it. It was something Ilse would have done.

Even if they got out, they wouldn’t get far enough. All those munitions would go up like the largest bomb in the land. There was no way they would escape its blast.

Except the Gothas were off course. They didn’t veer left, toward Woolwich. They veered right. Toward him.

Biting off a curse, he forced breath into his lungs and ran.

Margot pulled her coat tighter around her and wished her hat covered her ears. One thing to be said for the crisp December night, though—it woke her up. And after the last thirty hours, she needed the jolt it gave her.

But she couldn’t go home to her bed quite yet. That was impossible. She aimed herself instead toward Dot’s flat, where they’d agreed, as Drake rushed out, that they would reconvene. She had to know they were safe, all of them. She had to see it with her own eyes. She had to hear them say they’d apprehended Regnitz. Then, perhaps, she could sleep.