B008AZB1XW EBOK by Monique Martin Read Free Book Online

effectively. It might look a bit odd, but they are pretty damn useful.”
    She listened for the drone of a fighter plane and watched for the shaft of light from a searchlight on the ground, but none came. At least, not yet.
    As they walked up the Mall and turned off onto the side streets toward Mayfair and the hotel, they saw more and more people. The few pedestrians became a stream and the random car became many. Bicyclists darted in and out of traffic in the darkness. One narrowly escaped being clipped by a passing car. Forget the bombs, the blackout itself was dangerous.
    The blackout gave everything a surreal quality. Add to that, tall piles of sandbags that created makeshift bunkers around a huge anti-aircraft gun emplacement and Elizabeth felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air.
    An older man in a dark blue uniform and wide-brimmed helmet with a large “W” stenciled on it walked down the street, inspecting each building he passed. “Best get inside,” he said to them. “I have the feeling Jerry’s restless tonight.”
    “Warden,” Simon said with a nod.
    Just as it was before, that first contact with someone from the actual time period grounded her in the new reality. Before that, Elizabeth felt like she was walking around a set where everything was just a façade. It was the people that made it all real. How those people adapted to hardship and how bizarre and frightening things became everyday occurrences had always fascinated Elizabeth. Now, she was going to get a chance to see it play out first hand. Except for the dark and the giant gun, everything seemed almost normal.
    The buildings they passed were mostly large four and five story buildings, lots of them hotels, with impressive gray stone fronts and elaborate black wrought iron railings and embellishments. They had a timeless elegance about them, except for the one with an enormous bomb crater carving out the bottom two stories.
    They traveled a few more blocks before making a left.
    “Piccadilly,” Simon said.
    “Why aren’t there any street signs?” She’d noticed early on that nothing was marked. Whenever she went to a new town, she always did her best to get the lay of the land, but here it wasn’t going to be easy.
    “They were all removed at the start of the war, in case of invasion. Why make it easy for the enemy to find where they want to go? Anyone who’s supposed to be here knows where everything is.”
    “Except me,” she said, pulling her coat more tightly around her.
    “That’s why you’ve got me,” Simon said with a smile and then looked ahead and nodded. “Ah, there it is.”
    He gestured toward a block-sized building that appeared to have been transported directly from Paris. A huge arcade served as a covered walkway and ran the length of the building. In the darkness, she could just make out an unlit set of Broadway-like lights above the first arch that spelled out “THE RITZ.”
    Sticky tape crisscrossed the glass windows and doors and blackout blinds kept any light inside. The doorman was an older gentleman, his suit a little threadbare. Elizabeth noticed a helmet and rucksack next to the door. Probably working double duty in the home guard. Elizabeth had read that all fit men between the ages of 18 and 51 were serving their country. That left boys and old men to do everything else.
    She smiled at the doorman as he opened the main door to the lobby for them and they stepped inside a dark vestibule with large black drapes keeping the bright lights from the lobby away from the open door.
    Moving from the dark entryway into the lobby was like Dorothy landing in Oz. The muted grays and blacks outside were replaced by vivid colors — blazingly bright candelabra sconces, enormous vaulted marble walls and an ornate gold and red carpet were a shock to the system. Cigarette smoke drifted up through the open domed ceiling and into the grand staircase spiraling several stories above.
    The room was packed. The