Free The Yellow Glass by Claire Ingrams

I
don’t think you can have been working hard enough, Tristram.   Still . . I hear they corner well.”
    “Oh no you don’t!   I’m driving us home and I don’t want any arguments, so let’s get
cracking.”
    I took possession of the keys and signed the car off,
which - like a whole raft of new procedures at HQ - seemed to take an
interminable amount of time.  
    It was while I was tossing Tamang’s hat onto the back
seat that the idea first occurred to me.
    “How’s the slide, these days?”   I asked the mechanic.

 
    Let me elaborate.   The slide is a tunnel that lies fifty feet beneath HQ which has, on the
odd occasion, been used as a secret exit.   I believe it’s part of the network of underground tunnels and shelters
that were used during the war: parts of it having been built at that time of
maximum civilian danger, on top of other parts which were already in existence,
either from when they built the Tube, or from when Bazelgette [14] built the sewers back in the mid-nineteenth century.   The slide will get an operative to Borough
High Street, with an exit just before London Bridge - should he wish to leave
there - or it will carry on, burrowing lower, until it reaches the deep-shelter
beneath Chancery Lane tube station, which is 130 feet down.   That’s one of the second-wave of
deep-shelters originally built for Londoners after the Blitz, you remember . .
those shelters nobody wanted to use because they were just too far down and
people didn’t fancy being buried alive.   It’s my understanding that Chancery Lane became a bolt-hole for a
top-secret branch of HQ [15] ,
instead, which is why the slide lands up there.   However, on this occasion I fancied that Borough High Street would do
the job.

 
    “That’s a bit irregular, Mr Upshott,” the mechanic scratched
his head.   “I don’t know that I can help
you there . .”
      “I know, I know
. .” I sighed, “I’d have to get permission and sign some more bits of paper and
so on and so on.   The Services are
dwindling to desk jobs for the shifting of ever more bits of paper.”  
    It was damn frustrating, especially as I knew that the
only executive left in the building was Hutch and Hutch would never agree to a
night ride down the slide.   Not unless
World War Three had been declared.
    “What is the
slide?” Asked Kathleen.   “It sounds like
fun.”

 
      The idea was growing on me.   We had to get out of HQ without a tail and
what better way?   Getting Kathleen back
to our house in Chelsea in one piece was the number one priority.   I was sure that Rosa had never mentioned my
full name to Magnus Arkonnen and that he hadn’t seen Kathleen’s famous face; it
was unlikely that Arko’s gang knew who I was, or where I lived.   Not yet, anyhow.   Tomorrow I would find a safe house for her,
but she could sleep in her own bed that night.   I was more and more determined to use the slide.   If I could only find somebody with the
know-how to get us through the door and into the tunnel, Hutch need never find
out.   What was required was a bod with a
technical head on their shoulders.

 
    The small figure of Tamang sat all alone in his gloomy
citadel, guarded by his towers of bric-a-brac.   He was at his desk with a salt-beef sandwich in front of him - gherkins,
mustard, the whole shebang.
    “All alone, Tamang?   The Monk left you in charge, has he?”  
    “Mr Upshott!   What brings you back so soon?”
    “I need your help.”   I played my trump card.   “ We need your help.”   I stepped aside to reveal my wife.
    He stood up, slowly, brushing crumbs from his mouth
and lap.
    “Good evening,” said Kathleen.   “I love your office.   What on earth do you get up to down here?”
    Tamang appeared mesmerized.   His black eyes widened and he opened his
mouth to reply.   I cut him short; it was
unwise to ask Tamang anything at all about what he’d been up to down there
because he was liable to tell