The Unlikely Spy(26)

A policeman--a short chubby man who looked too old to get into the army--stood watch at the entrance to Lambeth Palace Road. He raised his hand and, shouting over the wail of the air raid sirens, asked for her identification.

As always, Catherine's heart seemed to miss a beat.

She handed over a badge identifying her as a member of the Women's Voluntary Service. The policeman glanced at it, then at her face. She touched the policeman's shoulder and leaned close to his ear so that when she spoke he could feel her breath on his ear. It was a technique she had used to neutralize men for years.

Catherine said, "I'm a volunteer nurse at St. Thomas Hospital."

The police officer looked up. By the expression on his face Catherine could see he was no longer a threat to her. He was grinning stupidly, gazing at her as if he had just fallen in love. The reaction was nothing new to Catherine. She was strikingly beautiful, and she had used her looks as a weapon her entire life.

The policeman handed back her identification.

"How bad is it?" she asked.

"Bad. Be careful and keep your head down."

London's need for ambulances had far exceeded the supply. The authorities grabbed anything suitable they could lay their hands on--delivery vans, milk trucks--anything with four wheels, a motor, and room in the back for the injured and a medic. Catherine noticed a red cross painted over the faded name of a popular local bakery on one of the ambulances pouring into the hospital's emergency entrance.

She walked quickly now, trailing the ambulance, and stepped inside. It was bedlam. The emergency room was filled with wounded. They seemed to be everywhere--the floors, the hallways, even the nurses' station. A few cried. Others sat staring, too dazed to comprehend what had happened to them. Dozens of patients had yet to see a doctor or a nurse. More were arriving by the minute.

Catherine felt a hand on her shoulder.

"No time for standing round, Miss Blake."

Catherine turned and saw the stern face of Enid Pritt. Before the war, Enid had been a kind, sometimes confused woman accustomed to dealing with cases of influenza and, occasionally, the loser of a Saturday-night knife fight outside a pub. All that changed with the war. Now she stood ramrod straight and spoke in a clear parade-ground voice, never using more words than needed to make a point. She ran one of the busiest emergency wards in London without a hitch. A year earlier her husband of twenty-eight years had been killed in the blitz. Enid Pritt did not grieve--that could wait until after the Germans were beaten.

"Don't let them see what you're thinking, Miss Blake," Enid Pritt said briskly. "Frightens them even more. Off with your coat and get to work. At least a hundred and fifty wounded in this hospital alone, and the morgue's filling fast. Been told to expect more."

"I haven't seen it this bad since September 1940."

"That's why they need you. Now get to work, young lady, quick as you like."

Enid Pritt moved off across the emergency room like a commander crossing a battlefield. Catherine watched her take a young nurse to task over a sloppy dressing. Enid Pritt didn't play favorites--she was hard on nurses and volunteers alike. Catherine hung up her coat and started making her way down a hallway filled with injured. She began with a small girl clutching a scorched stuffed bear.

"Where does it hurt, little one?"

"My arm."

Catherine rolled up the sleeve of the girl's sweater, revealing an arm that was obviously broken. The child was in shock and unaware of the pain. Catherine kept her talking, trying to keep her mind off the wound.

"What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Ellen."

"Where do you live?"

"Stepney, but our house isn't there anymore." Her voice was calm, emotionless.

"Where are your parents? Are they here with you?"

"The fireman told me they're with God now."

Catherine said nothing, just held the girl's hand. "The doctor will be along to see you soon. Just sit still and try not to move your arm. All right, Ellen?"

"Yes," she said. "You're very pretty."

Catherine smiled. "Thank you. You know what?"

"What?"

"So are you."

Catherine moved up the hallway. An older man with a contusion across the top of his bald head looked up as Catherine examined the wound. "I'm just fine, young lady. There are a lot of people hurt worse than myself. See to them first."

She smoothed his rumpled ring of gray hair and did as he asked. It was a quality she had seen in the English time and time again. Berlin was foolish to resume the blitz. She wished she were allowed to tell them.

Catherine moved down the hall, tending to the wounded, listening to the stories while she worked.

"I was in the kitchen pourin' meself a cup of bleedin' tea when boom! A thousand-pound bomb lands right on me bleedin' doorstep. Next thing I know I'm lyin' flat on me back in what used to be me garden, lookin' up at a pile of rubble that used to be me bleedin' house."

"Watch your mouth, George, there's children present."

"That's not so bad, mate. House across the street from mine took a direct hit. Family of four, good people, wiped out."

A bomb landed nearby; the hospital shook.

A nun, badly injured, blessed herself and began leading the others in the Lord's Prayer.