elites try to figure out what just happened and whether the general public noticed. He’s got the bit between his teeth and a bee in his bonnet, it seems. Started talking about extending extra credit to tapped out governments like Greece via Special Drawing Rights and he’s meeting with the German chancellor next week to revisit the entire austerity thing.”
“And he’s still walking around?” Jane asked curiously, trying to figure out how far they were from Mayfair. The streetscape was so drab and unremarkable, all office buildings and residential flats. An occasional respite in the form of a small public park. But no high end window shopping. No window shopping at all. She missed window shopping.
“With an Arab Spring in his step,” Whitney said. “While we wait to see how the empire strikes back, we need to talk about your next little adventure.”
“There and back again,” Jane said.
“Once upon a time we were plain quiet folk and had no use for adventures,” John sighed. “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things.”
“Not this time,” Whitney assured them. “You won’t believe how easy.”
“Uh oh,” Jane gave John a look.
“Yeah, I noticed. They’re quoting each other now,” John said.
“First off - the money,” Whitney paused at a particularly bad intersection. It was five o’clock on the eve of a national holiday and traffic clogging the thoroughfare was on the one hand making their progress tricky but on the other masking their conversation. Always trade-offs.
“Oh hell,” John laughed.
“Starting with the money,” Jane winced. “Always a bad sign.”
“You want to work for free?” Whitney said. “Fine by me.” A red double-decker bus sped by, full to the brim with flag-waving tourists.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don’t get me wrong. Even dead people have to make a living,” John admitted ruefully. He stepped to one side to avoid a jogger.
“Even if it kills them,” Jane rejoined. “Are we raiding someone’s trust fund, by the way?”
“We make money the old-fashioned way - we skim it. Off laundered assets. Drug deals, black market weapons, political payoffs,” Whitney said. “A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
“Oh well, as long as we’re playing Robin Hood. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let’s review.” Jane adopted a litigious tone. “My government tried to kill me twice, without due process - what’s that worth, do you suppose? One million? Two?”
“Dollars or Euros? And don’t forget two years interest, compounded daily,” John prompted.
“They destroyed our home, stole our pensions, inflicted untold pain and suffering -“
“You left out loss of livelihood, darlin’,” John reminded her, as the light changed and they stepped into the crosswalk.
“Loss of livelihood.” Jane snapped her fingers. “What he said. We just bailed out his parents, we’ve had zero income for two years, and do you know what it costs to raise a child these days? Well, do you?” She pointed her Union Jack at John first, and then at Whitney. Suddenly, both of her companions were staring at her. Slack jawed.
“African or European?” Whitney managed at last.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” John stopped dead in the middle of the intersection, thunderstruck and dazzled by an idea that explained and transformed everything. The pedestrian clock was counting down inexorably. Eight, seven, six.
“Look, we need to stay on message here. And not get run over. Operation Underdog? Hello!” Whitney tried to border collie them along.
“I mean - if a person - or two - were so inclined,” Jane recovered. “Which we’re not.” Cars began honking. Bicycles and mopeds whizzed past. Bobbies sprang up from every compass point, bearing down with grim intent. John’s face fell. Whitney made a gesture of surrender and left them there.
“Aren’t we?” he asked.
“This ain’t the Globe theater, Romeo,” a cabbie yelled. “Get the fook out of the way. Eejit!”
“People with bad mothers should not become parents,” Jane said, hunching her shoulders and walking hastily toward the curb.
“What about people with great fathers?” John objected, hastening after her. The ensuing torrent of traffic cut most of the bobbies off. They stood on the far side of the street, hands on hips, scowling. “Besides, it wasn’t her fault. Your mom.”
“This is so screwed up,” Jane said. “I was raised in an orphanage. My mom was some kind of drug addict. And that’s the happy part of my childhood.”
Whitney was not amused. “You came this close to being on the cover of every tabloid in the kingdom tomorrow morning,” she scolded. “I can see the headlines: ‘Lover’s Quarrel Kills Couple on Eve of Royal Nuptials.’ And what’s all that about your mama?”
“Kate’s dress will be on the cover of every tabloid tomorrow morning,” Jane said coolly. “And I don’t want to talk about my mama.”
“Good thing you weren’t saying what I thought you were saying,” John remarked. “We would be so outta here.”
“Let me get this straight,” Whitney fumed. “As long as you had nothing more to lose, you were ready to rumble; but if you were suddenly the Von Trapp family or something, you would just climb right out of the movie? Well, maybe I should say so long, farewell to you, girlfriend, ‘cause you are letting the side down, as they say over here. Not to mention your own family history. Your mama died in a prison cell alright, but drugs had nothing to do with it. She was tortured to death in Chile, along with thousands of other leftie dissidents. I thought you knew. They sure talked about it enough after they thought you died. All your pinko commie family history. Fox News had you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
They were halfway across Vauxhall Bridge now, with the green and white Legoland of the MI6 building before them, like an alien toy accidentally dropped from a passing space ship onto the mud flats of the Thames. To their left Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and the great wheel of the London Eye. To their right, the shiny new castles of the global rich and the rotting hulk of the Battersea Power Station. Whitney waved her flag at a passing cab.
Jane looked stunned. John looked from Jane to Whitney and back again. “You didn’t know that?”
“How would I know that?” Jane demanded. “I never heard anything remotely like that.”
“Lie,” Whitney said, eyes rolling heavenward. “They lie like breathing.”
“It’s in your file,” John said.
“I never looked in my file,” Jane snapped. “Who looks in their own file?”
By their faces, it was pretty clear that John and Whitney both had.
“OK, OK, OK,” Jane said. “None of this matters. None of this changes anything. We came here to do a job. An easy job, by all accounts. So let’s cut the crap.”
“And discuss babies later?” John said hopefully.
“Operation Underdog,” Whitney interposed sternly. “Is a simple in-and-out live drop. You show up in a car tomorrow morning, you drop off a package, and you’re pretty much done.”
They had resumed walking and had reached the Lambeth side, where fresh boodles of bobbies were unloading vans full of riot barricades, those aluminum frames that resemble bicycle racks and are used in crowd control. Apparently, they were preparing to close down the bridge.
“Speaking of things people know,” John began, “Were we aware that the bridge will be closed tomorrow?”
“Oh sure. No biggie. The car will be taking an alternate route,” Whitney assured him. They were off the bridge and then under it, traversing a footpath that wound along the river for a spell. Near at hand, a bright yellow amphibious vehicle sped down a concrete ramp and entered the water with a brownish splash. “We had planned to have it pick you up at your squat. This side of the river.”
“Notice I did not so much as flinch when you said ‘squat,’” J
ane observed. “Nor mention the proximity of the Dorchester or the Ritz. But I admit to having qualms at the thought of dropping off a package at a place that must have such fond memories of IRA bombings.”
They had rounded the MI6 building, with its sturdy, no-nonsense fencing and shielded, turnstiled entries, and were negotiating the unpleasant junction of roads and rail lines known as Vauxhall Cross. Breathing here was difficult, as the area was more charitable to toxin-emitting cars and buses than to mere oxygen-dependent bipeds.
“And if that’s all there is to it, wouldn’t FedEx be a whole lot cheaper?” John asked, thinking yes, there was more than a whiff of sulphur underlying the choking gas fumes and car exhaust.
“See the trick is, you have to drop off the package inside,” Whitney emphasized. “I have been trying for almost a year, but they always stop me cold. However, tomorrow we have the perfect setup.”
“I’m lost.” Jane said, lowering her voice to minimize the echo inside the pedestrian tunnel. They were beneath the railway viaduct. “I thought we were trying to hack a network.”
“And to do that, we have to get inside,” Whitney reiterated. “Get inside all their anti-hacking defenses and - make a phone call.”
“The plot thickens. And the contract requirements escalate,” John said.
They were skirting a block of gay bars and fitness clubs, bristling with trendy youngsters of all genders. There must have been a Starbucks close by; the green and white cups were more