The taxi was moving away. It hadn't seen him after all. "Hullo!" Dunworthy shouted, his voice echoing in the narrow street, and rushed toward it, waving.

There, it had seen him now. The taxi began to move toward him again. It must be farther away than he'd thought because he couldn't hear the engine at all. He hurried toward it, but before he'd gone half the distance, he saw it wasn't a taxi. What he'd thought was the vehicle's bonnet was the rounded edge of a huge black metal canister, swinging gently back and forth from a lamppost. A dark shroud was draped over the lamppost. A parachute.

It's a parachute mine, he thought, watching as the canister swung gently back and forth, missing the lamppost by inches. And if the wind shifted slightly, or the parachute ripped ...

He took two stumbling steps backward, and then turned and ran for the mouth of the lane, listening for the tearing of parachute silk, for the scrape of the mine against the lamppost, for the deafening boom of the explosion.

It didn't come. There was a faint sigh, and he was suddenly on the ground, his hands out in front of him on the pavement. He thought at first he must have tripped and fallen, but when he got to his feet, he was covered with dust and glass.

It must have broken the stationer's window, he thought, and then, confusedly, The mine must have gone off.

He brushed the glass and dirt off his trousers, his coat. And he must have cut himself in the process because the palms of his hands were scraped and bloody, and blood was trickling down behind his ear. He could hear ambulance bells.

I can't let them find me here, he thought. I must get back to Oxford. I must pull everyone out. He started down the lane, wishing there was a wall to lean against for support, but all the buildings seemed to have fallen down except the one at the very end. He walked toward it as quickly as he could. The bells were growing louder. The ambulance would be here any second, and so would an incident officer. He needed to be out of the lane, across the road, around the corner ...

He made it just past the corner before he collapsed, falling to his knees.

Colin was right. He said I'd get into trouble, he thought. I should have let him come with me. And he must have been unconscious for a few minutes, because when he opened his eyes, it was nearly light and the rain had stopped. He got heavily to his feet and then stood there a moment, looking confused. What had he-?

Oxford, he thought. I must get back to Oxford. And started down the hill to Blackfriars to take the tube to Paddington Station to catch the train.

The rain it raineth every day.

-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

TWELFTH NIGHT.

London-December 1940 MIKE STARED AT POLLY, SITTING THERE ON THE STEPS OF the Albert Memorial. "You were the historian we were talking about that day in Oxford?" he said angrily. "The one we couldn't believe Mr. Dunworthy would let do something so dangerous?"

Polly nodded.

"Which means your deadline's not April second, 1945. It's what? When did the V-1 attacks start?"

"A week after D-Day."

"A week-in 1944?"

"Yes. June thirteenth."

"Jesus." VE-Day had been bad enough, but D-Day was only three and a half years away, and if the slippage had increased enough for Dunworthy to be canceling drops right and left ... "Why didn't Dunworthy cancel your assignment if you had a deadline?" he asked.

"I don't know," Polly said.

"But if he didn't, then perhaps he was changing the order for some other reason," Eileen suggested. "Because he was putting the less dangerous ones first or something. The Reign of Terror was more dangerous than the storming of the Bastille, wasn't it? And Pearl Harbor was more dangerous than-"

She stopped, flustered, and looked down at Mike's foot.

"It would have been more dangerous," Mike said, "if I'd gone to Dover like I was supposed to. Eileen's right, Polly. The assignments could have been switched for lots of reasons. And the fact that they didn't cancel yours is a good sign Oxford doesn't think you're in danger."

"And her seeing me at VE-Day might be a good sign, too. I could have gone there after we got back to Oxford. Because Mr. Dunworthy felt badly about our having been trapped. He knows I've always wanted to go to VE-Day."

You may get your wish, Mike thought grimly.

He looked at Polly, who hadn't said anything. Her expression was guarded, wary, as if there was still something she hadn't told them, and he thought about her saying, "You asked me if I'd been to Bletchley Park." Could she still be lying to them and carefully answering exactly what they asked and nothing else?

"Is the V-1 assignment your only one to World War Two?" he asked, and Eileen looked, horrified, at him and then Polly.

"Is it?" he pressed her. "Or did you go to Pearl Harbor? Or the end of the Blitz?" he asked, remembering she'd known all about those attacks, too.

"No," she said, and looked like she was telling the truth. But then, he'd thought she was telling the truth before.

"You weren't here in World War Two on any other assignment besides this one and the V-1s and V-2s?"

"No."

Thank God, he thought, but the V-1s assignment was bad enough. Denys Atherton wouldn't be here till March of 1944, which was cutting it awfully close.

If he'd come through. And to get to him, they had to survive the next three years and the rest of the Blitz, and in another few weeks they wouldn't know when or where the bombs were going to be. And if the increase in slippage was bad enough for Dunworthy to have switched drops that were years apart, there might not be anything they could do till well after Polly ...

But they didn't know the increase was that big. And even if it was, the increase might only be on a few drops. And there might be some other reason Phipps hadn't come. Bletchley Park was still a divergence point, and, for all they knew, so were these months of the Blitz. And the soldiers at Dunkirk had thought they were licked, and look how that had turned out.

"Don't worry, Polly," he said. "We'll get you out of here. We've got three years to figure out something. And there's still Denys Atherton."

"And Historian X," Eileen said. "The historian who's here till the eighteenth."

He'd hoped they'd forgotten about that. "Afraid not," he said.

"Why not?" Eileen said.

"Because Historian X was Gerald," Polly said. "Wasn't it, Mike?"

"Yes."

"Are you certain?" Eileen asked.

"Yes." He told them about the date on the letter. "And there was a train ticket to Oxford for December eighteenth, and his departure letter was postmarked the sixteenth."

"Oh, dear," Eileen said.

"But we still have the drop in St. John's Wood," Mike said. "And on my way here, I saw that hoardings have gone up on the site in front of your drop, Polly."

"So if the drop wouldn't open because people could see into it," Eileen said eagerly, "it may begin working again."

"Exactly," Mike said. He stood up. "What say we get out of here and give the Luftwaffe a clear shot at this atrocity?" he suggested, looking around at the Albert Memorial statuary. "I'll take you two to lunch and we'll plan our strategy for finding the drop. Eileen, did you hear from Lady Caroline?"

"Yes, but not from the officer at the manor."

"Write them again, and write your vicar and see what you can find out about the riflery range. Maybe they've moved it. And I'll write my barmaid and see if they've taken the beach defenses down. You said the invasion had been called off, didn't you, Polly?"

"Yes, but that doesn't mean they'll take the defenses down."

"You don't know that," Eileen said. "Or maybe Mike's barmaid's written to say the retrieval team's been there, and all our problems will be solved."

"Eileen's right. We'll stop by Mrs. Leary's on our way to lunch and pick up my mail. Come on," he said, pulling Polly and then Eileen to their feet and walking them back to Mrs. Leary's.

When they arrived, Eileen said, "While you're collecting your letters, I'll go see if we've had any."

"It's Sunday," Polly said. "There's no post on Sunday."

"But the retrieval team may have rung up," she said, and hurried off toward Mrs. Rickett's.

Mike watched her till she rounded the corner and then turned to Polly.

"You said you saw Eileen on VE-Day. Was she the only person you saw?"

"What do you mean? There were thousands of people in Trafalgar Square that night-"

"Was I one of them?" If she had seen him, it would be proof they hadn't got out, that they'd still been there when Polly's deadline passed.

"No," Polly said. "I didn't see you."

"Did you see something else, something that made you think she was there because we didn't get out?"

"No, nothing except that our drops won't open and Mr. Dunworthy was worried about a slippage increase and was changing assignments to chronological-"

"But he didn't change yours. And the fact that you didn't see me there with Eileen means she's right. She was there on a later assignment. Otherwise, I'd have been there with her. How did she look? Excited? Sad?"

"Not sad," Polly said, frowning as if trying to remember. "Optimistic," she said finally.

He looked hard at her, trying to decide if she was still keeping something from him. "You're sure it was Eileen? That it wasn't just somebody who looked like her?"

"No, I'm certain it was her."

"Then why, when I left for Bletchley Park, were you so worried about Marjorie?"

"Because I did change what happened. And a nurse is in a position to save who knows how many lives-"

"But whatever she does, we know it can't lose the war. You may have gone to VE-Day before all this other stuff happened, but Eileen didn't. She hasn't gone yet. She went after I saved Hardy and after Marjorie was dug out of the rubble."

"I hadn't thought of that," Polly said.

"Well, it's true. Either we didn't alter events or there was no lasting harm done," Mike said. "I wish you'd told me all this before I left for Bletchley Park. I got worried after that encounter with Turing."

"Turing? Alan Turing?" Polly cried. "What encounter?"

"He nearly ran me down with his bicycle," Mike said. "He swerved at the last minute, and crashed into a lamppost. He wasn't hurt, and neither was his bike, but when I found out it was him, it scared me to death. But thank God it didn't do any damage. I'll be right back."

He ran inside to ask Mrs. Leary if he'd received anything while he was gone and then came back out. "No letter and no messages," he said. "Where's Eileen? Isn't she back?"

"No, she must have got caught by Miss Laburnum. She's doing the costumes for the play. We'd best go rescue her." But as they came round the corner they saw Eileen running toward them, waving a letter.

"I thought you said there wasn't any mail delivery on Sunday," Mike said to Polly.

"You've had a letter from Daphne," Eileen called excitedly, running up. "It came yesterday, but since it was addressed to you, Mrs. Rickett thought it had been sent to the wrong address, and she was planning to send it back. Thank goodness I saw it before she did."

She handed it to Mike. He opened the letter and then frowned.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"The letter's dated a week ago. She must have forgotten to mail it." He began reading the letter. "She also misplaced the other address I gave her. That's why she sent it to Mrs. Rickett's. And-"

He stopped short, reading silently. "Oh, my God!"

"What?" Eileen and Polly said in unison.

"I don't believe this. Listen to this," he said excitedly. " 'You said to tell you if anyone came round asking after you. Two men came in to the Crown and Anchor last night, asking all sorts of questions. They said they were friends of yours and that they needed to get in touch with you and did I know where you were." He looked up at Eileen. "Christ, you were right. The retrieval team's here. They've been here for over a week."

"I told you they'd find us," Eileen said smugly. "Did she tell them where you were?"

Obviously not, or they'd have been here by now. "No," he said, and told them he'd leave for Dover that night.

"I think we should go with you," Eileen said, "or at least Polly should. She's the one it's the most urgent to get out."

He shook his head. "I'm going to have to get the information out of Daphne, and she wouldn't appreciate my showing up with another woman."

"She wouldn't need to go with you to the pub," Eileen argued. "She could stay at the inn or-"

"The inn and the pub are one and the same," he said, "and even if they weren't, Saltram-on-Sea's a tiny village. Daphne'd know about Polly within five minutes of her arrival. Besides, I have no idea how I'm going to get there."

He explained about the bus service having been discontinued and the gasoline rationing making it hard to rent a car. "I'll probably have to hitchhike, and it could take two or three days. Plus, it's a restricted area. I've got a press pass, but neither of you do."

Polly agreed. "The trains will be jammed with Christmas travelers and soldiers home on leave. Perhaps instead of going there, you should write to Daphne. It might be quicker."