Whispers Under Ground

could keep an eye on Zach and avail herself of the coffee thermos and the emergency packets of Hula Hoops. I didn’t have the same luxury on account of this all being my idea in the first place.
    We were joined by Kittredge, who turned out to be a tall thin man in a navy blue three-piece suit with a sour expression – although that might just have been a reaction to being out on Christmas Eve. He actually had a sprig of mistletoe in his buttonhole and I had sudden wistful thoughts of Dr Walid six hundred kilometres north in what I imagined to be the squat granite cottage of his ancestors, sitting in front of a roaring fire and toasting his family with a wee theologically unsound dram of the good stuff.
    Kittredge frowned at me and turned to Nightingale. ‘We have a problem,’ he said.
    ‘The American?’ asked Nightingale.
    ‘She’s seen too much,’ he said.
    ‘Then you know she must be taken care of,’ said Seawoll.
    ‘Funny,’ said Kittredge.
    ‘Who cares what the Yanks know?’ asked Seawoll. ‘They’re not going to give a fuck about all this voodoo shit. Why should they?’
    ‘That’s not how it was explained to me,’ said Kittredge. ‘There are some things we’re supposed to keep in the family.’
    ‘Then I suggest we take our young American friend with us,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘Are you mad?’ asked Kittredge. ‘God knows what the FBI’s going to make of it all. Hasn’t she seen too much all ready?’
    ‘On the contrary,’ said Nightingale. ‘I don’t think she’s seen enough. Where is she now?’
    Kittredge gestured up the street. ‘Round the corner,’ he said. ‘Sitting in a red Skoda Fabia that she borrowed off the second trade attaché’s wife’s nanny.’
    ‘You’re sure about that, sir?’ I asked Kittredge.
    ‘I’ve had a whole team watching over her since they dug you out of the ground,’ he said.
    ‘Touch of the stable door,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘Don’t you start,’ said Kittredge. ‘This was all routine until you were involved.’
    ‘I’ve been keeping secrets since before you were born,’ said Nightingale. ‘You’ll just have to trust me on this. Besides, the young lady is exceedingly clever. So it’s nothing she won’t be able to work out for herself.’
    ‘But at least she wouldn’t be an eyewitness,’ said Kittredge.
    ‘Fortunately,’ said Nightingale. ‘Seeing isn’t always believing.’ He turned to me. ‘Why don’t you go over and extend her an invitation?’ he said.
    I turned and strolled up the road humming the happy tune of the subordinate who knows that whatever shit hits the fan it wouldn’t be him who’d be blamed for turning the bloody thing on.
    It’d have been nice to sneak up on Reynolds and give her a shock, but a good rule of thumb is to never startle someone who might be equipped with a loaded firearm. Instead I approached from the front and gave her a wave. The annoyed look on her face – she obviously thought she’d ditched her surveillance – was rewarding enough.
    ‘Got your sewer gear?’ I asked as she climbed out the car.
    ‘In the trunk,’ she said. ‘Are we going down again?’
    ‘You don’t have to,’ I said.
    ‘Give me five minutes to get ready.’
    It might have taken Reynolds five minutes but it took the rest of us about an hour, what with the milling around, strapping stuff on and testing the equipment. This time we’d borrowed the appropriate waist-high orange waders from a surly man from Thames Water. The CO19 boys insisted on retaining their dark blue ballistic vests and helmets as well, which gave them the unfortunate appearance of modern ninjas who’d given up on the whole stealth thing below the waist level. I was wearing a brand-new Metvest but with a high-visibility jacket over the top. I planned to avoid getting shot, through the deployment of peaceful diplomacy and, if that failed, by making sure I stayed back behind the guys with guns. Zach said we’d be better off without the guns, but that’s the thing about armed police. When you need them you generally don’t want to be hanging around waiting for them to arrive.
    It was a good plan and like all plans since the dawn of time, this would fail to survive contact with real life.
    When we were ready, Seawoll gave us a farewell admonition not to fuck things up any worse than they were already. Then he, Stephanopoulos and Kittredge skived off to a nearby pub to set up a ‘command centre’.
    The surly man from Thames Water