Free Rembrandt's Ghost by Paul Christopher

on her heels.
    Amazingly there was light to see by; every second fluorescent bar in the ceiling of the old ticket hall was lit. There was a white-tiled entrance archway on the right and a sign: THIS WAY TO TRAINS. Once upon a time, there had been two large passenger elevators, but all that was left now was the emergency exit, a pirouette of iron steps fitted in a descending spiral, filling one of the paired elevator shafts. Oddly the lights were on here as well. They clattered downward, footsteps clanging loudly, echoing off the old brick. The air was thick and musty.
    “Where the hell are we going?” yelled Billy, a few steps above Finn.
    “How should I know?” she yelled back.
    There was another sound. High above them; steps on the staircase and then a whining roar. The stairwell-elevator shaft was suddenly filled with an earsplitting, roaring echo.
    “They’re firing at us!” Billy yelled. Another shot rang out, whirring and banging off the metal steps as it ricocheted past.
    “Come on!” Finn hurtled down the seemingly endless steps, finally reaching the bottom. There was a narrow sloping tunnel, brightly lit, and then she erupted onto the old platform. She stopped dead in her tracks and felt Billy stumble to a stop, barging into her, pushing her farther out onto the platform and into a waiting crowd. Directly in front of them was a waiting train, doors open.
    “Bloody hell,” Billy whispered. There was a poster on the curving wall beside them. Three soldiers with rifles marching left to right and the message below:
     
TAG DER WEHRMACHT
17 MARZ 1942
KREIGSWINTERHILFSWERK
     
    There was also a large metal sign on the wall giving the station’s name: PICCADILLY CIRCUS.
    The crowd on the platform was made up of an assortment of men and women, all dressed in vintage clothing, some carrying rolled umbrellas, others with newspapers or parcels. There was also a sprinkling of men in uniform. German uniforms. A whistle blew loudly, answered by a second whistle from the head of the train. The crowd surged forward and a distinctly British voice called out:
    “Mind the gap, ladies and gents. Please, mind the gap! Mind the gap,
mein herren
!
Auflachen der kluft bitte
!”
    “Definitely not Kansas,” muttered Finn. She could hear echoing footsteps coming from the passage behind them.
    “What do we do?” said Billy.
    “Get on the train.”
    They joined the crowd surging onto the train and found themselves pushed through the open doorway. There was a pause and then the doors slid closed and they began to move.
    “This is insane,” whispered Billy. Directly in front of them, hanging on to a strap, was a man wearing the soft cap and gray uniform of a sergeant in the Nazi Landspoliezei, the regular police. He had a copy of
Signal
, the German version of
Life
magazine, under his arm. Above him was an advertisement for Dr. Carrot, guaranteed to bring you good health if you ate a lot of him. The Landspoliezei sergeant had a holstered Luger pistol on his hip. He looked bored.
    “Did they get on?” asked Finn.
    “I didn’t see.”
    “Do you know where this train goes?”
    “No, except that wasn’t bloody Piccadilly back there.” The German cop was definitely staring at them now, a worried expression on his face. He started to say something, then turned away. “This is giving me the collywobbles,” Billy muttered. He looked away from the cop. There was another poster beside the Dr. Carrot advertisment. It was a stern black-and-white illustration of a strong man with shirtsleeves rolled up, a cap on his head, and a serious expression on his face. There was a massive sledgehammer over his shoulder. He had muscles like a stevedore’s. The message said something about helping the soldier on the front lines, which didn’t make much sense because a man with muscles like that would have been on the front lines himself, unless he had some kind of heart condition, in which case he wouldn’t have the sledgehammer over his