Take Back The City - Part One of the 'Life in London Town' series

21 - The Smoke Bomb

   The morning after Operation Acre was pretty uneventful. Any remaining Piccadilly Circus left camped out in the remnants of British Museum station had been moved on by nine o’clock meaning that, for the first day in weeks, no-one at Holborn was active in battle. I spent most of the morning wandering rather aimlessly through the corridors and passageways of the station which, despite the fact that almost none of them could receive sunlight from the world above, were a little brighter than they had been last night upon our arrival; the thin tubes of light lining the uppermost surfaces of the passageways seemed not to be flashing as much as usual. Even the Common Room, the usual home of drunkards and ‘extroverts’ – a self-given name for boring people who magically loosen up under the influence of alcohol – looked in no worse a state than the average Sixth Form Common Room in a secondary school. I sat quietly upon the steps splitting the two halves of the room, the scene of one of my two victories over Jamieson – whom I had not seen or heard from since humiliating him in front of yesterday’s first meeting – and watched two operatives I did not know by name play a rather soft, dull game of table tennis. I hadn’t experienced a day this boring in three and a half years.

    At around three o’clock, things began to change a little. Victor found me in the Common Room, slumped nonchalantly up against the black pillar at the back of the room where it met the westbound Piccadilly platform, and slipped a few words into my ear.

   “I sorted it.”

   “Sorted what?” I asked, a little nonplussed at his statement. A simple ‘Hello’ and an explanation wouldn’t have gone amiss.

   “You mentioned wanting an evening away from this place,” he whispered. “I managed to find a way to get the three of us out of here - so long as the streets are clear, that is."

   “You did?” I cried, shaking the table tennis players out of their white ball-induced trance as the noise reverberated around the tiny cavern. “I thought it’d be impossible to get Patrick’s son out of here given the level of security around the place. How did you manage to find a way around it all?”

   “What I’ve decided to do,” began Victor as he dragged us around to the other side of the pillar, “is to hold a defensive drill on the other Aldwych platform. I’m going to let off a small smoke bomb at the tunnel portal and, as the other operatives scramble to the ‘attacked’ platform, we’ll sneak out of the surface entrance.”

    I hardly knew what to say. Tonight, after all these years, I would be free of the passive experience of replaying memories of my past in my head. Tonight, at last, I would be creating brand new memories. Tonight, after all these years, I would be living my life. “Th-Thank you,” I stuttered. I had half a mind to dash straight back to the sleeping quarters, grab Patrick’s son and dart out of the station entrance right that instant, but I had to restrain myself. The time would come.

   “I have to go and – how should I put this – deliver an urgent message so I’ll be away for about an hour or so.” It seemed as if, just for a second, Victor was losing his nerve a little – he struggled to spit some of his words out, but managed to retain his cool in the end. “I'm going to Bush House. Once I'm there, I'll ask whether it would be safe for the three of us to leave here tonight; if so, I'll set off the smoke bomb at six.”

   “Fair enough,” I said, just as Victor began to stroll towards the Common Room steps. “See you then.” I flicked my head back around the pillar to watch him leave and, as I did so, found myself sucked back into spectating table tennis matches; I didn’t leave the room until gone five o’clock, by which time the crowd around the table had built up so greatly that no matter where I stood, my eye-line was not far above its collective waistline.