its pewter-colored dome, standing high on Ludgate Hill above the city, but she could only catch intermittent glimpses of it between and above the newspaper offices lining Fleet Street. They’d all be hit several weeks from now, so badly that only one newspaper would manage to get out an edition the next morning. Polly smiled, thinking of its headline: “Bomb Injured in Fall on Fleet Street.”
St. Bride’s was just ahead. Polly leaned forward to look at its wedding-cake steeple, with its decorated tiers and arched windows. On the twenty-ninth of December, those windows would be alight with fire. So would most of the buildings they were passing now. This entire part of London’s old City had burnt that night in what history would call the Second Great Fire of London, including the Guildhall, and eight Wren churches.
But not St. Paul’s, she thought, even though the reporters watching from here that night had thought it was doomed. The American reporter Edward R. Murrow had even begun his radio broadcast, “Tonight, as I speak to you now, St. Paul’s Cathedral is burning to the ground.” But it hadn’t. It had survived the Blitz, and the war.
But not the twenty-first century, Polly thought. Not the terrorist years. Nothing they were driving past had survived a terrorist with a martyr complex and a pinpoint bomb under his arm. She looked up at the dome again, which she could see looming ahead.
We’re nearly there, she thought, but moments later the bus turned sharply to the right away from it. She leaned over the side to look down at the street. It was blocked off with sawhorses and notices reading This Area Off-Limits.
There must be bomb damage ahead. The bus drove down two streets and turned east again, but that way was blocked, too, with a rope and a hand-lettered notice reading Danger, and when the bus stopped, a black-helmeted policeman came over to confer with the driver, after which he pulled the bus over to the curb, and passengers began to disembark. Was it a raid? She hadn’t heard anything, but Colin had warned her that engine sounds sometimes drowned the sirens out, and everyone seemed to be getting off. Polly ran down the winding steps. “Is it a raid?” she asked the driver.
He shook his head, and the policeman said, “Unexploded bomb. This entire area’s cordoned off. Where were you going, miss?”
“St. Paul’s.”
“You can’t go there. That’s where the UXB is. It fell in the road next to the clock tower and burrowed into the foundations. It’s under the cathedral.”
No, it’s not. It’s already been removed, but she could scarcely tell them that.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to go there another time, miss,” the policeman said, and the driver added, “This bus can take you back to Piccadilly Circus, or you can take the tube from Blackfriars. It’s just down there.” He pointed down the hill to where she could see an Underground station.
“Thank you. That’s what I’ll do,” Polly said and walked in the direction he’d pointed down to the first side street, then glanced back to see if they were watching. They weren’t. She ducked down the side street and walked quickly to the next street and back up the hill, looking for a way through the barricade. She wasn’t worried about being seen, except by the policemen. This area was all offices and warehouses. It would be deserted on a Sunday. That was how the fire on the twenty-ninth had got out of control. That had been a Sunday, too, and there’d been no one there to put out the incendiaries.
There was a policeman standing guard at the end of this street as well, so she cut over to the next one, which led into a maze of narrow lanes. It was easy to see why this had burned. The warehouses were mere feet apart. Flames could easily jump from building to building, from street to street. She couldn’t see the cathedral’s dome or west towers, but the lane she was on led uphill, and through the obscuring white paint on the curb, she could make out “Amen Corner.” She must be getting near it.
She was. Here was Paternoster Row. She started along it, keeping close to the buildings so she could duck into a doorway if necessary, and there was the front of St. Paul’s, with its wide steps and broad pillared porch.
But Mr. Dunworthy had been wrong about how long it had taken to remove the UXB, because a lorry