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.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 and two fire pumpers stood in the courtyard, and just past the end of the steps was a huge hole surrounded by heaps of yellow clay littered with shovels, winches, pickaxes, planks.Two men in clay-covered coveralls were inching ropes down into the hole, two held fire hoses at the ready, and several more, some in clerical collars, watched in strained attention.The bomb was obviously still down there, and from the looks on the bomb squad’s faces, liable to go off at any moment.But it hadn’t.They’d successfully got it out and taken it to Hackney Marshes to be detonated.Which meant it was perfectly safe to be here and go inside whether they had the bomb out or not.If she could only get past them without being seen.She looked over at the cathedral doors at the top of the wide steps.They appeared too heavy to open quickly—and silently—even if they weren’t locked.A man’s voice shouted, “I can’t—where’s that damned—?” and cut off abruptly, followed by a hollow, heart-stopping thud.Oh, God, they’ve dropped it, Polly thought, and then, Mr.Dunworthy was wrong about how long it took to get it out.What if he was wrong about the bomb going off as well?But if the bomb had gone off, the cathedral would have collapsed.There’d have been no valiant effort to save it on the night of December twenty-ninth, no morale-lifting photograph of it standing defiant above the flames and smoke, the symbol of England’s determination and refusal to surrender.And the Blitz—and the war—would have gone very differently.All those thoughts had gone through her head in the fraction of a second it had taken her to look over at the hole and realize the thud hadn’t come from there.The men were still lowering the ropes inch by inch, still watching.She looked back at the porch.A man in a long black cassock and a tin helmet appeared from behind one of the pillars and hurried across the porch toward the hole, carrying a crowbar.There’s another door there, behind that pillar.Its opening was what I heard, she thought, and as soon as the clergyman reached the end of the porch and started down the side steps, she crept out of the doorway to look, keeping a sharp eye on the group of men.But no one looked up, not even when the clergyman handed the crowbar to one of the firemen.Yes, there was the door, smaller than the central doors and obviously not locked, but there might still be someone inside, and if they caught her, what could she say, that she somehow hadn’t noticed the barricades and the pumpers and the firemen? If she got arrested… But she was so close.She started cautiously across the courtyard.“Stop!” someone shouted, and Polly froze, but they weren’t looking at her.They were staring intently down at the hole.The men had ceased to lower the ropes, and a fireman was down on one knee, his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting down into the hole.“Try it to the left.”It’s stuck, Polly thought, and sprinted across the courtyard, up the broad steps and across the porch, and yanked on the door.It was so heavy she thought for a moment it was locked after all, but then it gave, and she was through it and easing the door silently shut behind her.She was in a dark, narrow vestibule.She stood there for a moment, listening, but the only sound was the audible hush of a large building.She tiptoed out of the vestibule into the side aisle and looked out into the nave.A wooden admissions desk stood there, but no one was manning it, and there was no one in the north aisle.Polly stepped out into the nave.And gasped.Mr.Dunworthy had said St.Paul’s was unique, and she’d seen vids and photographs, but they hadn’t begun to convey how beautiful it was.Or how vast.She’d expected a narrow-aisled Gothic church, but this was wide and airy.The nave stretched away in a series of rounded arches supported by massive rectangular pillars, revealing vista after vista—dome, choir, chancel, altar—all of them lit with a rich, warm golden light that streamed from curved golden ceilings, from the golden-railed galleries, the gilt mosaics, the gold-tinged stone itself, turning the air itself golden.“It’s beautiful,” Polly murmured, and felt for the first time what its destruction really meant.How could he? she thought.Even if he was a terrorist? He’d walked into the cathedral one September morning in 2015 and killed half a million people.And destroyed this.But it had only been there to destroy because the bomb underneath it at this very moment hadn’t gone off, and because Hitler and his air force had failed to blow St.Paul’s up or burn it down.Though they certainly tried, she thought, walking up the nave, her footsteps echoing in the vast open space.They’d dropped hundreds of incendiaries on its roofs, to say nothing of the V-1s and V-2s Hitler would send at it in 1944 and ’45.But St.Paul’s was ready for them.Tubs of water stood next to every pillar, and pickaxes and pails of sand were propped against the walls at intervals, next to coils of rope.On the night of the twenty-ninth, when dozens of incendiaries would fall on the roofs and the water mains would fail, they—and the volunteers wielding them—would be all that stood between the cathedral and destruction
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