the walls. ‘I don’t know the last time one of your people came up, and I’ve been here six years. Let’s start with the canteen, get a cup of tea, warm you up a bit. Then we’ll meet the boss. I think he’d rather show you around himself.’
Binning led the way into a broad curving corridor. It was a complete contrast to the dilapidated cabins above.
‘How far down do you think we are?’ Binning asked.
‘Haven’t a clue,’ Stratton muttered, uninterested in guessing games.
‘The ceiling is a hundred feet from the surface. There’s supposed to be over three miles of tunnels down here but unless they’ve hidden some of them I think that’s an exaggeration.’
One of the walls gave way to plate glass from floor to ceiling, an empty conference room beyond. Then a series of offices and data-storage rooms either side of the corridor. It was all very high-tech. The place sounded alive, a mixture of electronic humming and moving air.
‘They built these tunnels at the same time as the buildings up top, a couple of years into the Second World War. Then it became some kind of government emergency evacuation centre in the event of a nuclear attack. That was sometime during the late 1940s, early 1950s. MI16 took it over twenty years ago. It has been completely gutted and modernised, of course.’
Binning pushed through a pair of swing doors into a canteen equipped with chairs and tables for a dozen people. The place had a row of food and drink dispensers, a handbasin with a soap dispenser and paper towels, and several hatches labelled for various types of waste that were set into a wall.
‘We’re very much a help-yourself organisation down here. Everything’s self-service. All part of the security. You get used to it,’ Binning said as he pushed a button on a machine that responded by dispensing a plastic cup followed by a jet of brown liquid. ‘Tea, coffee, or something else perhaps? There are sodas, fruit juices, soup if you prefer.’
‘Coffee, thanks. White, no sugar.’
Binning pressed the appropriate button but the machine did not respond. ‘Of course, it’s a bugger when something breaks down. It’s like trying to pass a bill through Parliament to get a mechanic down here.’ The machine suddenly responded. ‘Do you know much about MI16?’ he asked, handing Stratton the drink.
Stratton shrugged. ‘Only that you make toys.’
‘Yes, I do like that expression. War toys for war boys. We’re essentially divided into three parts: research and theory, construction and development, and then testing and field trials. We have around a dozen staff down here, a dozen more low-key techs at another surface location. We work in quite a unique way, a sort of free-form system. Anyone can work on any project at any of the stages - within reason, of course. Can’t neglect the boring jobs or crowd the interesting ones. One of my specialities is simplification. Much of the equipment we produce is far too technical to hand over to you chaps.’
‘We’re a bit thick, I suppose?’ Stratton said, sipping his coffee.
‘I wouldn’t have put it quite that way,’ Binning said, with a grin. ‘You’re soldiers, not scientists. But then again, it’s not always easy or possible to make things user-friendly for everyone. Look how long it took to make the computer compatible with everyday users. We don’t have the facilities, the manpower nor the time for that kind of compliance. Once we’ve built it, we need to get it in the field as soon as we can. Most of the things we put together three years ago are already out of date. A lot of them never even reached the field, at your level, because they were too complicated.’
Stratton found the coffee bitter. ‘So who did?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Who did take them into the field?’
Binning wasn’t expecting the question. ‘I don’t think that’s for me to say, really. Shall we press on?’ He headed back through the door.
Stratton poured the coffee down the sink, placed the cup through the hatch marked ‘plastic rubbish’ and followed the scientist. As they walked, a casually dressed man in his late fifties stepped into the corridor. ‘Hello, Phillips. This is John Stratton from the SBS,’ Binning said.
‘Ah. Right,’ Phillips said, offering a hand while inspecting Stratton through his glasses as if trying to bring him into focus.
Stratton shook it. ‘Hi.’
Binning did not hang around and moved on. Stratton caught him up. The scientist said in a low voice, ‘We’ve got a few old fogies here.