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and, at night, it wasn’t likely to be too busy.
    “Are you all right?” Simon asked as he held her elbow to steady her.
    It took Elizabeth a few seconds to unscramble her brains. “You?”
    “Yes,” Simon said as he looked around to make sure their arrival had gone unseen.
    They weren’t alone in the park, but they’d landed in the middle of a copse of plane trees obscuring them from view. Luckily, it was so dark that unless they’d landed smack on top of someone it was doubtful they would have been seen anyway.
    Simon studied her face, assuring himself she was steady enough and stepped away from the cover of the trees. He walked out onto the path and Elizabeth followed.
    He took a few steps in one direction before stopping. “Strange sensation. It’s the same, and yet, it isn’t.” He turned around to get his bearings and must have seen something he recognized. “It’s this way, I think,” Simon said pointing toward a path that disappeared deeper into the park.
    The “it” was the Ritz. One of Simon’s conditions was that if they were going to do this, they were going to do it in style. She’d survived her trip to Grey Hall, so she was pretty sure she could deal with the Ritz. It was a strange awakening, realizing that there were levels of posh she’d thought existed only in books and fairy tales. But then, before Simon, she’d thought the Best Western in Amarillo was the height of luxury. Maybe her frame of reference was a bit askew.
    As though Simon could hear her thoughts, he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. The moon was bright enough to light their path and they made their way down the wide colonnade to the northern edge of the park. After a few minutes, they emerged onto one of London’s main thoroughfares, the Mall. Elizabeth had seen it in documentaries and footage of processions from Buckingham Palace which was just up the road. But it certainly didn’t look like this.
    Even though it wasn’t really all that late, just after nine o’clock if all went as planned, it was difficult to see. She’d read about the blackout, but nothing prepared her for the reality of it. Even before the war, the Air Ministry issued strict regulations regarding lights at night. Every window was covered; every streetlamp and outside light was kept off. The goal was total darkness so that enemy planes couldn’t use ground landmarks to navigate to their targets. In the world before GPS, if all the pilots saw below was a featureless darkness, they’d have virtually no way of knowing if they were over their intended target or not.
    The blackout was serious business and heavy fines were levied for letting even the smallest chink of light escape into the night. The result was a city plunged into total and complete darkness, save for the moon when it broke through the clouds. There was absolutely no ambient light, not from windows or streetlamps or even cigarettes. Or cars.
    She heard the car before she saw it. It was as black as the night around it and it was nearly on top of her before she realized how close she’d come to it.
    “Be careful,” Simon said. “They can barely see us.” As if to illustrate his point, two more large army trucks sped past like hulking metal shadows.
    The streets were bustling with people, but there was an odd hushed quality to it, like everyone was holding their breath. It reminded Elizabeth of the blackout she’d experienced after an earthquake in Southern California a few years back. London had that same dreamlike feeling to it.
    Elizabeth stood on the sidewalk and had to pause a moment to take it all in. Her eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness. The skies were fairly clear and in the distance she could see several large, silver blimp-like things hanging in the air with long tethers keeping them in place.
    “Barrage balloons,” Simon explained following her gaze. “They keep the bombers from flying low. The higher they have to fly, the more difficult it is to target