The Delirium Brief

by Charles Stross

  “The agency is under attack, isn’t it?” I dry-swallow. “The Black Chamber are making some kind of move on a global scale. How long have you known? And for how long?”

  “Long enough.” Johnny walks over to the floor-to-ceiling picture window and stares moodily out at the darkness. He’s backlit, and I’m momentarily aghast at his reckless self-exposure until I realize he’s not the real target here. He turns to face me. “Interesting you say it’s the Nazgûl. Productive meeting?”

  I nod. “The SA sent me. They’re making a move on the Comstock office—details are all in the bag.” I nod wearily towards the sofa. “Big wheels turning. Do you know what’s going on?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences.” His tone is flat. “This Monday at nine eighteen a Falcon 7X landed at the general aviation terminal at STN and was glad-handed by a reception party: full red carpet, small armored convoy, very select VIP treatment you may be assured. The Money gets to side-step the e-borders palaver although the Border Force still checks their passports and visas. And let’s not mention the State Department hitchhiker they had along for the trip, whisked off to Grosvenor Square before you could snap your fingers. But of course we don’t get notified routinely because we’re not the police or Security Service. So today’s cock-up is that it turns out we can keep penniless Syrian war refugees out but when Raymond Fucking Schiller knocks on the door he’s given a posh handshake and the keys to the kingdom and nobody tells us for days.”

  “But he’s dead,” I say, mouth on autopilot, or maybe it’s the shock talking.

  “Turns out he isn’t, not so much. Pete’s been keeping an eye on the Golden Promise Ministries as part of his brief. They toned down the rhetoric and Schiller hasn’t been seen in public pounding the pulpit; it’s been one aspiring guest preacher after another. And there’s been a significant internal reorganization of his Church’s innermost circles, dissolutions and reformations and restructurings and suchlike. Some of it’s our fault for killing off his brain-parasites’ brood-mother. But he’s had time to procure another egg-layer so he could be up and running again in the ole tongue-eating game by now. Or worse. Meanwhile his compound is still active and there are certain interests he invested in and they’re … well, he hasn’t been declared dead so his corporations go marching on.”

  “That’s what Bill was saying. GP Services is fronting for the OPA.” I lick my lips. “But surely Schiller himself is out of the game? I mean, we—”

  I do not say we killed him, because, firstly, that’s not something you say in a nonsec location you haven’t personally swept for listening devices and warded against some of the more irritating occult bugs. Secondly, I didn’t personally verify cessation of metabolic activity or put a stake through his heart. I was flash-blind from taking out Schiller’s guards when Persephone went for the man himself. According to the RAINBOW appendix, ’Seph closed the gate he’d opened to an alien world while Schiller was still on the wrong side of it, in the Temple of the Sleeper in the Pyramid. The world in question lacks a human-compatible biosphere, so it’s not unreasonable to assume he died. But another thought strikes me immediately after I realize all this, and it’s not a welcome one:

  “If Schiller’s back over here and the tail was his work? And the Nazgûl are involved? It’s not just the American government that’s under attack, is it?”

  “Not a clue, me old cock!” Johnny makes what is clearly his best effort to show good cheer. “The fact that Golden Promise Services Corporation are up to their armpits in outsourcing contracts and the OPA are making cannibal whoopee on their sister agencies is neither here nor there. But when someone with ’is photo on their passport flies in and a couple of days later someone else tries to snatch you off the streets of London, that’s kind of suggestive, innit?”

  “I was on TV the evening before,” I say slowly, slotting an unwelcome realization into place. “Was I there as bait?” Did someone set me up with Paxo on Newsnight just to tell Schiller’s people that I’m about? (I knew the “let’s bug the BBC newsroom” mission was too Mickey Mouse to be the entire story.) My nasty paranoid imagination supplies a plausible scenario all too easily: The armed cops on the door of a clearly compromised work site put up a neon sign saying BOB WORKS HERE, but they clock off at 6:00 p.m. because bad guys only kick the door down during office hours. Meanwhile I’ve just ploughed through a day of meetings carefully contrived to keep me busy until the SA sends me to run his little after-hours errand, instead of sending the cops to haul the helpful Mr. McKracken into protective custody—

  No, Bob, don’t be fucking stupid, the Laundry wouldn’t set you up as a tethered goat, they’d never do that to anyone senior and you’re a valuable high-level asset—

  “Dunno, Bob, not my brief, more’n my job’s worth to go drawing conclusions.” He whistles surprisingly tunefully, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “Although it isn’t just Schiller who’s got the knives out for you. You being our public face to the nation and all that, it could be anyone, really. And it would be really fucking stupid of Schiller to do something so gauche as to try to put a hit on his least favorite Laundry employee the week he sets foot back on old Blighty, wouldn’t it? Not saying what you’re thinking is impossible, like, but say wot you will about him, Schiller isn’t stupid. Smart money is on you being the wrong target: he sent them after your contact, and they followed you because ’e passed you the file the SA wanted. Let’s face it, it’d be pretty fucking dumb to send only three-and-a-bit brain-scorched gunmen to take down the Eater of Souls, right?”

  I take a deep, shaky breath. “I could have killed everyone within a quarter-kilometer radius.” That’s an underestimate, probably, but I know better than to go full Angleton in the middle of a city. (I practice rigid self-control. It leaves me with unresolved anger issues, but those are the breaks: with great power comes a great tendency to mangle Spider-Man quotes.)

  “If it’s any consolation, the SA knows that.” He ponders for a few seconds. “What d’you think would have happened that time in Denver if you’d had your current mojo when we walked into the New Life temple while Schiller was running his summoning?”

  I let my breath out. “I’d have dropped the hammer.” Necromantic rituals are really easy to break if you’re the Eater of Souls, just like house fires are really easy to blow out if you just happen to detonate a few kilos of C-4 inside them. Of course there won’t be much of the house left afterwards—but that’s not the point.

  “Right, right.” He punches the palm of his left hand for emphasis. “Nobody in the big tent would be stupid enough to hang you out as bait, and Schiller—or his people, or whoever fielded those grunts—are too professional to take the bait. Which means we’re probably looking at something else, it’s not about you, you just ’appened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not that that’s a surprise, knowing you. You sit tight, read yer file and write yer report, and I’ll see it gets to the big man as soon as you’re done—” The buzzer rings again. “’Scuse me.”

  Johnny disappears from my field of view and I slump back on the sofa. I hear quiet voices from the vestibule, then feel the arrival of someone with another high-level ward. Two sets of footsteps approach: Johnny’s heavy boot steps and someone lighter and faster. “Bob? Are you all right? Bob?”

  It’s Mo, she’s upset and frightened, and that’s when I get really afraid.

  THREE

  GOD GAME INDIGO

  I force myself to my feet, dizzy and nauseous notwithstanding, as Mo breaks into an uneven trot. Time stops, or goes a bit blurry for a while. “I’ll just be minding my own business out back,” Johnny grumbles in the background.

  When I come back to myself I’ve got a double-armful of my wife, and she’s hugging me hard enough to hurt, and sniffing. “Don’t you dare get yourself killed!” she scolds me, voice catching somewhere between laughing and crying.

  “I’m”—I’m wheezing—“touched.”

  “Touched in the head,” she
grumps, but her grip around me loosens. If she was that fragile when she was carrying the White Violin she’d have been an hors d’oeuvre for horrors years ago, but she’s shaking. That medical leave she’s back from, I wonder if it was worse than she’s letting on? Add a sudden change of job—“What … what exactly happened?”

  “Let me sit down…” Somehow we find ourselves hip to hip on a white leather sofa so big it could be the end product of a really bad taxidermy job on Moby Dick. “The SA sent me to talk to an informer and I was jumped on my way home.”

  “I got that,” she says impatiently. “You mentioned a snatch.”

  “They were tailing me, I’m not sure for how long. Then they set up a box, three plus a bomb in a pram—the pram was an insurance policy, I think. There was a van in the frame. I think they meant to take me but they were armed”—I feel her shiver as I continue—“and I’m not sure whether they were after me or the brief.” I tilt my chin towards the messenger bag on the sofa.

  “Right. Right.” She tucks herself against my side and buries her chin on my shoulder.

  “How not-all-right are you?” I ask, hoping she’ll tell me something meaningful.

  “I’m”—she sniffs—“not very all right at all, it’s the relief more than anything else, I mean, you’re not kidnapped or dead”—she sniffs again—“during is easy it’s after that’s harsh, that’s what my counselor keeps telling me.”

  Counselor? What? I’ve been so up to my ass in lost temples to nameless evil and laying to rest the thaumaturgic equivalent of leaking radioactive disposal sites that I can almost half-kid myself I’ve got an excuse for not knowing, but—“We—” I pause and rephrase. “I haven’t been doing a good job of keeping an eye out for you lately, have I?”

  “Makes two of us,” she mumbles.

  Johnny reappears. He’s carrying two tumblers half-full of amber liquid that promise unguarded words and sore heads on the morrow. “I shall just leave you two lovebirds in ’ere,” he tells us as he hands over the water-of-life. “I’ll be out front with the guard detail if you want me, polishing the guns. Master suite’s all yours; if you want the second bedroom—” He hesitates momentarily. “—I’ll take the sofa.”

  He ducks out discreetly enough, but just the mention of the second bedroom is a real buzzkill in view of our recent difficulties. Mo sniffs and straightens up self-consciously. “I’m staying the night,” she says, as if challenging me to contradict her. “Spooky can cope, he’s just a cat.”

  “You can stay,” I say as gently as I can, “if you feel safe.”

  Her immediate hand-wave takes in the apartment. “Feel those wards?” I nod. “The agency is renting it. It isn’t regular Crown Estate, but it’ll do for tonight; the security was installed by a minor Saudi prince who was afraid of being strangled in his sleep by the vengeful ghost of his third wife.”

  “Was he?”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “Slipped and drowned in the bathtub between rounds of golf at Gleneagles. Or maybe he fucked the wrong kelpie.”

  “Should I be afraid of Saddam-style cheesecake murals on the bedroom ceilings?”

  Her shoulders slump and she leans against Moby Dick’s carcass. “Same old Bob.” She sounds somewhere between nostalgic and sad.

  “When the going gets tough, the tough desperately evade the issue,” I throw back at her. She is tense. I haven’t seen her outside of meetings for ages—Dr. Armstrong all but ordered me to stay away—and I don’t like what I’m seeing now in close-up. If you see someone every day you maybe don’t notice the minute incremental changes, but take a few weeks out and they become glaringly obvious, and what’s obvious to me right now is that she’s been to a very dark place and I’m not sure she’s out of it. Judging by the way she’s reacting, what happened to me tonight hasn’t helped. “Okay, so not really excessively bad taste, just ten-centimeter shag carpets, a mirrored ceiling over the black silk sheets on the water bed, and an implausible collection of kangaroo-shaped sex toys…?”

  She chuckles weakly. “Never stop trying to cheer me up.” She knocks back a good-sized mouthful of Talisker, goes cross-eyed from the effort of trying not to spray it everywhere, and holds her breath before taking a whooping gasp. Then her mood slumps. “I’m a bad woman, Bob. I’m about as supportive as a plank; I really ought to try harder. You deserve better than me.”

  “And I’m about as perceptive as a plank so maybe we deserve one another.” I sip at my glass and the liquid evaporates before it reaches the back of my tongue. “We’ve got to start somewhere.” Change the subject before you get maudlin, Bob. “How does it feel not having the violin in tow all the time?”

  “Like walking around naked in public.” She shivers again. “It was weird and frightening at first but now it’s almost liberating. I don’t have to worry about keeping Lecter under control anymore. The worst has happened, it’s all history. If it hadn’t nearly broken me I’d be doing just great.”

  There doesn’t seem to be much I can say to that so I put my arm around her and we sit in silence for a couple of minutes.

  “Why are you here tonight?” I eventually ask. “Aside from the obvious?”

  She half-turns into my chest and wraps an arm around me. “You gave me a bad fright. Also, Dr. Armstrong told me to come.” And there you have it, I just about have time to think, before she adds, “Not that he could have stopped me with anything short of a direct order.” Oh.

  “Um. Why?”

  More hugging ensues. It’s embarrassing—we’re acting like teenagers—but neither of us is inclined to stop. “Something about putting an armed guard on the stable door to stop the horse thief if they make a second attempt, I think. He said Johnny will babysit you until he can organize a personal protection detail. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “What?” The words I’m the Eater of Souls, I don’t need no steenking bodyguards die before they reach my lips: the sore patch on the side of my neck aches and I remember a searing moment of near-panic, the realization that I could have lost control.

  “Don’t worry, they’re not coming back tonight. But if they try it they’ll have to come through Johnny and me.” The way she says it reminds me Mo is formidable with or without the violin. I remember the incident report on the attack on the New Annex, detailing the damage Judith Carroll inflicted on the ancient vampire sorcerer before he rolled over her. She was an Auditor. Mo is her replacement, and they have capabilities we mere mortals don’t know about. Best not to ask too many questions. “One more piece of work to do, and I’m done for the night: how about you write up your report on the SA’s meeting while I examine whatever it is that your attackers were so keen to get their hands on?”

  That’s a no-brainer. “Sure.” I lean over, grab my bag, open it, and pass her the envelope.

  Her finger circles cautiously over the seal as she checks it for unseen wards or invisible occult finger-traps. “Who was it…?”

  “A fellow from the US Postal Service Inspectorate. He’s taking early retirement and thought we ought to know why.”

  “Oh dear.” She frowns as she opens the envelope and removes a fat sheaf of printouts. “This is going to take some time.”

  “I’ll be over there.” I stand up and shuffle towards the inhumanly clean desk at the other side of the room, tugging my bag along. I had the foresight to pack a couple of biros and a notepad, but I’m not looking forward to tomorrow’s writer’s cramp: I don’t normally handwrite anything longer than my signature these days.

  “Oh, and one last thing,” she calls across the room. “I asked HR to book us a slot with a relationship counselor for early next week, one with a security clearance. Are you okay with that? It’s in your calendar, we can change it if you want.”

  “I can’t—” I stop and rephrase. “I don’t see any reason why not, as long as work doesn’t get in the way.” I heft the bag. “But first…”

  She chuckles sadly. “Work always gets in the way, love, that’s our problem. But we’re not go
ing to fix things by sitting around in a safe house waiting for the end of the world to fall on our heads.”

  * * *

  Night in the capital.

  There is a row of six Georgian town houses with shared walls on one of the avenues near Sloane Square in London. Taken individually they are astronomically valuable pieces of real estate, any one of them worth tens of millions of pounds. An onlooker might suppose that they’re owned by sovereign wealth funds or minor Middle Eastern royalty, like so many others in the center of the world’s most expensive city.

  But of course, the onlooker would be completely wrong. They’re all owned by the resident of the house in the middle of the row. She’s had the attic spaces combined into a single open studio workspace, she rents out the lower three floors of the other five houses for income—and she’s a witch. By which I do not mean the crystal-chakra-healing kind of witch, but the consorts-with-demons, walks-between-the-raindrops, stops-hearts-with-a-single-word kind of witch. She’s Baba Yaga with a laser beam, guaranteed to blow your mind. And right now Persephone Hazard is furiously, incandescently angry.

  “They let who into the fucking country?”

  It’s late evening and Ms. Hazard has made an emergency exit from a gallery opening in Knightsbridge—a cocktail reception full of investment bankers looking to diversify into a new type of portfolio, WAGs with money to burn, and hopeful artists trying to get a handle on their market—in response to the news about the attack on Mr. Howard. Not only is her weekly evening off duty a washout, she has barely had time to walk in the door (never mind unpinning her hair, removing her display jewelry, or kicking off her aching Jimmy Choo couture heels) before the doorbell rang. Zero the butler admitted the guest directly, which is exceptional and would normally be bad form, but under the circumstances Persephone is more annoyed with the cause of the visit.