18 1/2

Chapter 7 of 34

UHER 5000 Counter 0007

Starbucks on University Boulevard West was situated in a prominent place in the Westfield Strip Mall, convenient for in-store and drive-thru customers, a rather unaffected structure of stained siding, plate glass windows and an upper stone facade making it well fade into the background of this middle-class shopping district of Wheaton. It wasn't the usual Ed and Harry haunt, for their regular Starbucks's cup of Joe was in another franchise near their electronics store in Columbia Heights but today, after the earth-shattering event in Ed's basement and that onerous appearance of the black SUVs, both agreed to meet off the beaten path.

The men arrived within a couple minutes of one another, grabbing a table in the back of the cafe, away from those plate glass windows and exposure to God knows Who. It was Ed's turn to buy and as he lumbered back to the table, wearing a matching set of sand-colour Dickies slacks and work shirt, fully ironed, pens at the ready in the breast pocket, sans pocket protector, for he wasn't a geek, after all.

"Ed, it's a zillion degrees out there today, a thousand percent humidity and not a cloud in the sky, how on earth are you surviving in that get-up?" asked Harry, dressed as he thought reasonable in his well-worn Hawaiian shirt and wacky-print Bermuda shorts, his trademark outfit for a searing summer Saturday morn.

"Hawaiian shirts shouldn't even be worn in Hawaii and you've never even been to Bermuda, Harry, ignoring well the fact that only boys wear short pants," retorted his '70s retro buddy boasting a razor-sharp crease down his lightly starched slacks.

Expertly ignoring the jibe, Harry reached for the white trade-marked porcelain cups after he dropped his mesh golfing hat on the chair next to him. The pair sat, two peas in an audio pod, worlds away in fashion.

This should have been a glorious day, the weather was spectacular and the part-timers they had hired long ago always picked up the weekend slack at Super Sound Stereo, but today might as well have been overcast and threatening a nor-Easter for all the worry and stress these two suburbanites were carrying.

"God, Ed, how in the heck did we get here? It was a lark, something to while away our off-hours when we were home from the shop, a challenge to see if we could beat'em all at their own game. I figured if we ever did uncover voices, H. R. H. and R.M.N. would have been yakking about the Vietnam war and where they could get bigger buses to wall off the damn White House from those 'hippie communists', as R.M. N. was in the habit of calling them. Or maybe what to do with Brezhnev or Mao, nothing likethis. Now we're up to our necks in stuff that I'm just darn well sure was always on a Need To Know basis and doubtful two overweight audio-techs were ever on that list. And what, only hours after our discovery, we magically see SUVs lurking and our paranoia upping like some sort of bad LSD trip. Last night, I couldn't sleep, right, and so I got up and just sat at the living room in my robe, looking out the window onto suburban bliss and I began to doubt everything I ever knew. Had we been bugged right from the start? Had all the challengers who received copies from the NARA been bugged?", Harry said, his eyes popping out of his head despite his hushed tones, the caffeine having nothing to do with his demeanour.

“Can you believe this? We've said nothing, gone nowhere, talked to no one, not even to our wives. And we're being tailed? Already? And by whom?” asked Ed, a nice neat set of rhetorical questions, asked not out of preference but out of necessity, mixed with a tinge of panic.

The two sat in silence for the next few minutes, hunched over the petite cafe table, their coffees as yet untouched...thinking.

“Maybe we're imagining things, Harry. Maybe we're blowing this all out of proportion. Heck, remember when Bernstein got a hold of 'The Bookkeeper' for C.R.E.E.P. during the Washington Post's investigation of the Watergate bugging, he thought all the major networks would bust open the front door of that poor wee spinster and steal away the story. We're just being paranoid like Bernstein, that's all. It's been, what, forty-five years, almost to the date of Tape 342's debut and that infamous 18 & 1/2 gap. No one cares anymore, Harry, not really, right?” offered Ed, trying more to convince himself than convince Harry and he wasn't doing a great job of either, after what they of late had heard and seen.

“No one cares, sure, and yet you and I, separately, and at different times of the day, have what amounts to identical unmarked, windows-all-shaded, black SUVs tailing us like we're on the Ten Most Wanted List for Homeland Security, and as far as I knew, we hadn't done a damn thing wrong...until we succeeded...Christ!" hissed Ed.

"I don't believe in coincidence and neither should you. We have to forge a plan, there's obviously no going back.”

The two men leaned over the table and finally sipped at their black coffees until the mugs were emptied - just plain Colombian Joe, no sugar, no cream, no whipped cream, no toppings, almost a crime in Starbucks to order such a no-frills caffeine kick. Without another word, the pair rose from the matching rattan chairs and headed for the door. They had been business partners and friends for so long, like a married couple, words uttered to make a move were well wasted. Ed turned left as Harry turned right, both having grabbed opposite parking spots in the busy lot, but halfway to their cars, both stopped in their tracks and lifted their eyes to the sky. A helicopter, all black, unmarked just like the SUVs, hovered very noisily and noticeably above University Boulevard West. Ed glanced back at Harry, Harry matching his gaze, their silent stare - shock and shrouded panic. As the men separately drove back to their store, the 'copter seemed to follow, slow and low, along all the same streets and avenues, swaying and tilting left and right, hovering at intersections these men crossed in their roughly half hour journey.

Arriving at the last intersection before Super Sound Stereo, Ed pulled up to Harry's car and rolled down his passenger window, mouthing, “New plan, Harry, let's head home, I don't think it's safe to be out, but take a different route, something's seriously up,” said Ed, discretely pointing with his right index at the roof of his car to the spying bird in the sky, adding, “Come over to the basement tomorrow night, we have to talk.”

“Will do,” mouthed Ed, this unbelieving pair fearing they had accidentally slid into a Robert Ludlum
novel. Without further chit-chat, as the light turned green, the shaken men headed home, the 'copter vanishing just as swiftly as it had appeared as they reached the outskirts of Wheaton.