London -- May, 1945
In the ruins of a bombed-out London churchyard on a gray afternoon the first of May, Barbara Markey was fleeing from two disparate men. One of them young and beyond handsome, pursuing her; the other a hideous-looking older man with half a face, stalking her. Physically opposites, she feared they both had the same things on their twisted minds -- lust or murder. Or both.
Hiding among the tombstones in the church graveyard in a steady drizzle, she wished desperately for the third man in her life. The man she loved. But he was nowhere near her, now.
The man in the churchyard who was her age, just under thirty, might be every woman's dream of a man come true. His face bordering beautiful, possessing an athlete's toned body, he was one of the richest men in the free if war-torn world, and wielded power to equal his wealth.
Barbara found more than one reason to fear him, but his main fault, she had grown to realize, was that he was mad. Certifiably. And worse, he was obsessed with her, in a very dangerous way.
The older man with the disfigured face stalking her was not her dream of a lover; he was her nightmare come true. She feared him almost as much as the younger man, though she knew nothing about him except he would be wherever she tried to hide, because he was always there. At times over the years, when she had almost forgotten he existed, he was there again, menacing her like a ghost, a phantom. And she had no clue as to who he was or why he kept entering her life.
Of the three men in her life, she only felt safe with Stephen, the man she loved but could not have.
Stephen, save me from them! she beseeched silently in the churchyard. I've always been able to take care of myself... I've flown B-17 bombers, nearly been shot out of the sky half a dozen times, and survived more than that many tailspins. But I can't save myself now, without you!
She wanted Stephen even though she knew that marriage with him, her greatest love, was impossible.
Barbara had gotten her handsome pursuer's note at her hotel in Grosvenor Square in the early afternoon, just after she had returned from the British Air Ministry, for whom she was a volunteer pilot. She had gone there to get her next flight assignment and learned she was to fly a B-17 bomber on a secret mission that night to a part of Czechoslovakia still under Nazi domination. Or had the Russians taken it for themselves by then?; she did not know. Nazis or Communists, it did not matter. The flight would be dangerous no matter which of them controlled it now.