The Innocent by Ian McEwan Page B

corridor of the railway lines. They edged past an American technician who was working there and opened a second door.
    “Now,” MacNamee said as he closed it behind him. “What do you think?”
    They had entered a brightly lit section of the tunnel that was clean and well ordered. The walls were lined with plywood that had been painted white. The railway lines had disappeared under a concrete floor, which was covered with linoleum. From overhead came the rumble of traffic on the Schönefelder Chaussee. Wedged between racks of electronics were tidy workspaces, plywood surfaces with headsets and the monitoring tape recorders. Neatly stowed on the floor were the cases Leonard had sent down that day. He was not beingasked to admire the amplifier. He knew the model from Dollis Hill. It was powerful, compact and weighed less than forty pounds. It was about the most expensive item in the lab where he had worked. It was not the machine, it was the sheer quantity of them, and the switching gear, all down one side of the tunnel, stretching ninety feet perhaps, stacked head high, like the interior of a telephone exchange. It was the quantity MacNamee was proud of, the handling capacity, the amplifying power and the feat of circuitry it implied. By the door, the lead-sheathed cables broke into multicolored strands, fanning out to junction points from which they emerged in smaller clusters held by rubber clips. Three men of the Royal Signals were at work. They nodded at MacNamee and ignored Leonard. The two men passed along the array at a stately pace, as though reviewing a guard of honor. MacNamee said, “Near on a quarter of a million pounds’ worth. We’re drawing off a tiniest fraction of the Russian signals, so we need the best there is.”
    Since his remark about the chips, Leonard was confining his appreciation to nods and sighs. He was thinking about an intelligent question he might put, and only half listened while MacNamee described the technicalities of the circuitry. Close attention was not necessary. MacNamee’s pride in the bright white amplification room was impersonal. He liked to see the achievement afresh through the eyes of a newcomer, and any eyes would do.
    Leonard was still working on his question as they approached a second steel door. MacNamee stopped by it. “This one is a double door. We’re going to keep the tap room pressurized to stop the nitrogen leak.” Leonard nodded again. The Russian cables would have nitrogen sealed within them to keep moisture out and to help monitor breaks. Pressurizing the air around the cables would make it possible to cut into them undetected.
    MacNamee pushed open the doors, and Leonard followed him in. It was as though they had stepped inside a drum being beaten by a wild man. Road noise was filling the vertical tunnel and reverberating in the tap chamber. MacNamee steppedover empty sacks of sound insulation piled on the floor and took a torch from a table. They stood at the base of the access tunnel. Right up in its roof, picked out by the narrow beam, were the three cables, each four or five inches thick and caked in mud. MacNamee was about to speak, but the pounding intensified to a frenzy and they had to wait. When it subsided he said, “Horse and cart. They’re the worst. When we’re ready, we’ll use a hydraulic jack to pull the cables down. Then we’ll need a day and a half to cement the roof for support. We won’t make the cut until all the backup is in shape. We’ll bridge the circuits first and then break in and lead off. There’s likely to be more than a hundred and fifty circuits in each cable. There’ll be an MI6 technician laying the actual tap, and three standing by in case something goes wrong. We’ve one man off sick, so you might have to be in the support group.”
    While he was speaking, MacNamee rested his hand on Leonard’s shoulder. They came away from the shaft to be out of the worst of the noise.
    “Well I have got a question,”