UNDERGROUND

There’s a whole world which lives underground in Washington. People work there as if they were coal miners, arriving before dawn and leaving after dusk, never seeing the sun.
The underground railway system which transports congressmen and senators also houses a group of shops where the good and the great can buy a vast variety of products at cheap prices. It was in one of those strange warehouses that Robert Harding the Third was buying rolls of Kodachrome 25 film. He was flirting with the young raven-haired assistant. Robert could never turn down a chance to dally with any member of the opposite sex.
He took his film and his Visa receipt and made his way to the train. Emerging twenty minutes later into the sunlight of the late winter morning he blinked and waited for his eyes to adjust to the bright light.
A tall man with a wooden stick stood near the corner of the opposite street. He carried a neat black briefcase which looked more like a woman’s handbag. The man was standing so still he resembled a lamp post or hydrant. He had arrived a quarter of an hour early. No one was paying any attention to him. That did not surprise this man. He would have been shocked had anyone come up to him and started talking. Washington was a city where people minded each other’s business. The people who walked the streets were rarely worth paying attention to.
He gave a little cough, as if to reassure himself he was still alive, then moved to the corner to meet the person who had emerged a few moments earlier.
‘Let us stroll down the street for a block or two, Ted,’ Robert Harding said, as their paths met. The two men walked in silence for a while as if they were two chickens walking down a mountainside with their eyes wide open watching not for other chickens but for the fox hiding in its bushy lair.
The tall man spoke first. ‘Anthony has been in touch with me.’
Robert did not alter his pace nor did he look at Ted Garner.
‘He was on the telephone from Moscow. Things are moving fast.’
‘What are you planning?’
‘All the evidence from our point of view is to be wiped. A special team is working on it right now.’
‘How can we trust these people you are employing?’
‘There is no problem over that. None of them have any idea of the whole story. Each is set a small task which they have to complete without doing any more than confirming they are destroying the correct files.’
Ted Garner stumbled. ‘Damn this leg.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Quite all right, thank you. Just a weakness I’ve had since a teenager. Some nervous problem.’
‘You ok to fly?’
‘Of course. As I said, it is an ever-so-slight disability I have had since I was a child. Please do not worry about me. I am more robust than many an Olympic athlete.’
Robert Harding did not laugh. His sense of humour was so well refined it only reacted to his own jokes.
‘We want you to fly to London.’
‘Don’t tell me you let any of their people know about the operation.’
‘Not exactly.’
A little girl, furiously pedalling a cheap yellow bicycle, swished by on the inside of the pavement.
‘Bloody child. Could have paralyzed me.’
‘You have health insurance Robert. You would be all right.’ Two jokes in as many minutes were more than enough for Robert Harding. The operative was getting on his nerves. It was a pity Anthony Marshall thought so highly of him. He would far rather have used one of his own men who were trusty, reliable, young and competent. People who were of the New World Order not these decrepit middle-aged old men who seemed to live on another planet.
‘The problem is not one of our making. Long before our operation came into effect some of the Brits got involved. We fear they may have kept track of us. Anthony simply wants to find out how much they know. You’re good at prising information out of pompous old men in gentlemen’s drinking clubs.’
‘What an accusation,’ Ted commented, with an infectious chuckle.
‘But most certainly true. I think they like you. They see a doddering old fogey with no physical presence and a bit of a simple mind. People are such snobs.’
‘I am ready to go. It will be good to leave this Sodomic City of Sin for the fresh carbon dioxide fumes of London.’
‘We’ve booked a flight tonight. That will be suitable?’
Ted Garner nodded his approval.
As Robert hailed the taxi he looked at with concern at his partner’s briefcase.
‘I do wish you would come with a proper briefcase. I think you do this deliberately. I feel such a fool returning with your woman’s handbag.’
Ted Garner smiled softly. He was glad he had found some way of getting under the skin of the little prick.