Barbara did not know the reason for the night flight. She only knew it was not an official mission for either the British Air Ministry or the WASPS, the American volunteer air-ferrying unit, the Women Airforce Service Pilots. She was flying fighters and bombers for them on non-combat missions, relieving her countrymen for bombing flights from London to war targets over France and Germany. She would not be told her mission in Czechoslovakia until just before take-off that evening.
While she had been in her hotel room preparing for the flight, a bellboy had delivered the note:
Barbara, I am here in London and coming for you. Funny double meaning, huh? You cannot escape me. I will find you no matter where you go.
If you stay in your hotel room, so much the better. I'm sure there's a bed there for us.
If you leave and try to hide from me, don't think you can. I'll find you. I always have.
Today, this afternoon, I will finally have you. And afterward, no one else ever will.
Aren't you sorry now, you've made me wait so long?
Your adoring one, Chet.
Barbara could almost hear the writer's insane laugh as she crumpled the paper and threw it in a waste basket.
Stephen, where are you? I need you so desperately.I don't even know how to reach you.
It was impossible for Barbara not to add to her thoughts: And God, why do I fall in love with men I can't have?
She hoped her beloved American Army captain was still in London with his Special Services unit. But maybe by then he had rejoined General Patton's Third Armored command, giving Hitler's fading army hell on his rampage through Germany. Patton's brave men had just crossed the Rhine River and were fighting their way to Berlin, desperate to get there before the Communists.
Since Chet knew where she was, Barbara did not feel safe in her hotel room. She also would not give him the satisfaction of finding her that easily. Putting on her blue air service raincoat, she left the hotel and knew where she must go.
Riding a double-deck bus to London Tower, she imagined that Stephen, the man she would never stop loving even though she could not marry him, was beside her, as he once had been, his hand touching hers tenderly. But when the bus stopped at the Tower, Stephen vanished from her thoughts. She got off alone and found most of the buildings in rubble from Nazi bombings and missile attacks.
Barbara walked in a cold drizzle until without realizing it she began to run, toward All Hallows-by-the-Tower, an Anglican church first built by the Saxons in the seventh century. She had felt safe there once with Stephen; before it was gutted when Nazi planes had rained down bombs and turned London into an inferno and a pile of bricks. Now the ancient church was in ruins, she feared she might not find sanctuary even in its courtyard. The war in Europe was finally coming to an end, but she still had hers to fight.