I had not seen her in months. When we met again, eventually, it was almost like meeting each other for the first time. The safe house, this time, was a large bare flat up high in a tower block. It made me nervous, being up that high. It always limits the chances of escape. After all, there is only the one way to go, realistically, and that is down. Up this high you soon run out of options to go any higher.
Unless you sprout wings, of course, such things, though, require more planning and time than we had; although, it has been done. You do feel incredibly vulnerable though, up there, exposed to the gun sights of the chasing police officers. It only works, therefore, if you do it unexpectedly. If you do it and they have marksmen ready… well, I’ve seen that happen too.
Anyway, Mary was there in the flat when I arrived. I wasn’t expecting it. Paths do cross occasionally, but never predictably. One of the first things the Underground learnt, back in the early, bloody days, was that predictability meant death, or worse – capture.
We didn’t say much. There is not much too say. The memories haunt us like ghosts. We can see it in each other’s eyes. If the security forces ever invent some machine that can detect the ghosts of comrades lost in people’s eyes, then the Underground will be finished. We all carry those memories, those scars. Sometimes I think we only carry on out of habit, the habit of always running, and not always just from the security forces and the secret police.
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