The Apocalypse Codex lf-4

by Charles Stross

  JOHNNY MCTAVISH IS IN BED WHEN HIS PHONE RINGS. UNCHARACTERISTICALLY, he is asleep, but one eye opens immediately. It’s Persephone’s ringtone, which means business. Johnny blinks, trying to orient himself. The bed in question is half-familiar, the furniture around it less so. Then the phone trills again. His view is obstructed by a shapely back, spray of honey-blonde hair across the pillow, curve of buttocks resting against his upper thighs—oh, it’s Amanda—she mumbles something sleepily and thrusts her buttocks against him as he elbows his torso upright and reaches past her to the bedside unit.

  “’Lo,” he says to the phone.

  “Afternoon, Johnny.” The Duchess sounds amused. “Got company?”

  She knows he has a special ringtone for her; the laconic greeting gave him away. “Of course.” Amanda is still half-asleep. Hardly surprising—they didn’t get to bed until 6 a.m. The poor thing must be worn-out. He feels himself begin to stiffen against her ass-crack.

  “Do you have any plans for this evening?” asks Persephone.

  Johnny yawns deliberately to force carbon dioxide out of his blood-stream, levering himself to a higher state of awareness. “Nothing definite,” he says. “Got something in mind?” His three days and nights with Amanda are drawing to an end: in another few hours her banker hubby will be back home from the Arabian Gulf, and it’ll be time for Johnny to disappear.

  “Yes, there’s a little evening event I want to attend, and I think you should come along. How about Zero and I swing round to pick you up from home at seven? Smart casual will do.”

  “All right.” He swallows her name; Amanda is showing enough signs of awareness that tact is the better part of valor. “Seven sharp. Bye.” He puts the phone down.

  “Who was that?” Amanda murmurs, catching his arm as it crosses her chest.

  “Work,” he says.

  “Work.” She sounds doubtful, but guides his hand down until his fingers lightly stroke one of her nipples. “Your boss expects you to work evenings?”

  “Oh yes.” He feels her aureoles pucker beneath his fingertips. She sighs and leans against him. First-class booty, the best that oil money can buy. He strokes her flank regretfully, already half-certain that this will be the last time. “My boss is evil,” he whispers in her ear. “And I’m going to have to go to work soon.”

  “But not just yet.” She tenses as his hand slides between her legs. “Please?”

  “Not just yet,” he agrees.

  THERE IS A GARAGE ATTACHED TO PERSEPHONE’S HOUSE, OCCUPYING most of what was once a garden. It’s a very large garage, by Central London standards. Right now it’s semi-occupied by two vehicles—a diesel Land Rover and a squat, brutally powerful Bentley coupe. The third resident, a Rolls-Royce Phantom, is cautiously nosing its way out into the street. The chauffeur and occasional butler, Oakley shades and hipster goatee packaged in a black suit, is clearly trying too hard to look like a gangster in a Tarantino movie.

  In the back, Persephone has the windows dimmed to near-opacity as she skim-reads reports on her smartphone. Head down, intent and focussed, she pays no obvious attention to the sway and surge of the car, but grips the device tightly in one gloved hand, zipping through a series of pages pre-digested and highlighted for her convenience by a very private research bureau. It’s not that Persephone can’t use a web browser herself; but some of the material in this briefing would be hard to come by without a lot of tedious legwork and access to some expensive databases, and time is the one thing money can’t buy.

  It’s a February evening in London: cold but not yet chilly, dank and dark beneath clouds that promise rain but never quite deliver. The chauffeur drives smoothly, but behind the gold-tinted reflective surfaces of his shades his eyes are constantly flickering, evaluating threats, looking for trouble. A few months ago, a banker had his Aston-Martin hijacked at knife point while waiting for traffic lights not far from here. It would be most unfortunate if thieves were to target this particular vehicle: explaining their injuries to the police might delay Ms. Hazard.

  “Zero.”

  He glances in the mirror at her voice. “Yes, boss?”

  “Tune to Premier Gospel, please.”

  Zero blinks slowly, then switches on the sound system and brings up the radio control panel. “What do you want that rubbish for?”

  “I couldn’t possibly say.” She sounds coolly amused. “Mood music, maybe.”

  Zero’s knuckles tighten on the steering wheel for a moment, then he goes back to scanning for hijackers, tails, suicidal cyclists, and other threats.

  It takes them half an hour to drive out to the North Circular, then a further twenty minute detour into the wilds of London suburbia—estates of 1930s semis with privet hedges and fences out front. Finally they come to a pub with a mock-Tudor half timbered frontage and a sign declaring it to be The Legionnaire’s Rest. Zero pulls into the abbreviated car park and stops. Behind him, Persephone is finishing a phone call. Moments later the back door opens and a man climbs in.

  “I thought you said smart casual, Duchess,” complains Johnny. His accent switches seamlessly to cod-cockney: “Wotcher, Zero old cock.”

  “Same to you, motherfucker,” the chauffeur says cheerfully. “Strap in so I can go.”

  “Smart casual for you,” says Persephone. She’s wearing a Chanel suit and a hat. Gucci handbag, designer heels. “You’re going in the main audience. I’ve got a VIP backstage pass. Going to see the Man.”

  “What’s the gig?”

  “Revival meeting. Have you found Jesus yet?”

  “Isn’t he down the back of the sofa?” Johnny stares at her for a moment, his face set in a grimace of distaste. “Revival meeting. Have you gone freaking insane?” He looks at the back of Zero’s head, then asks plaintively: “Is it something in the water?”

  “Button it up, we’re on a job.”

  “Oh.” He shakes his head. “You had me for a moment there. What kind of job?” He notices the music, barely audible over the road noise. “Is the Church of England hiring us to take out the Pope? Or are the Scientologists—”

  “Neither.” She passes him the phone. “Start reading.”

  Johnny takes the phone and begins to skim. Then he stops abruptly and stares out the window, his expression haunted. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

  Persephone is silent for a few seconds. Then: “Gerry Lockhart thought you might have some special insights.”

  Johnny pauses, doing a slow double take. “Gerry wants my insight? Since when?”

  “Since you grew up in a very wee highland kirk that practices the baptism of the sea and other, odder traditions.” She looks at him. “He figures you’re quite the expert on what’s going on here.”

  “Does he now,” Johnny breathes.

  Persephone nods. “We’re to sit at the back—or at the front, in my case—and sing along with the music. And we need to make notes. Your job is to apply your highly experienced eyeball to their particular brand of religion. What are we looking at, what do they believe, what species of animal are we dealing with? I’m going to be in the front row.” She unfastens the top button of her blouse, raises a button-sized leather bag on a fine silver chain from around her neck. “I’m warded.” She lets it drop between her breasts, refastens the button, then rummages in her bag and pulls out a small cross and pins it to her lapel. She passes another cross lapel pin to Johnny. “Here, use this. Camouflage.”

  Johnny is wearing chinos, a polo shirt, and a fleece. After some fumbling, he pins the alien symbol to the fleece. “I’m allergic to churches,” he says glumly. “As you should well know.”

  “Yes. But are you warded?” Persephone persists.

  Johnny sighs. “Does the Pope shit in the woods?” He doesn’t bother to show her the wrist band.

  “Good.”

  “You think we’re going to run into trouble?”

  “Not on this occasion.”

  “Are you sure?” He pushes. “Really sure?”

 
; Persephone sighs. “Johnny.”

  “Duchess.”

  “We are going to a church service. Evangelical big tent outreach, singing and clapping, that kind of thing. No more and no less. Doubtless your dear departed dad would disapprove, but ours is not to question why, etcetera. Take notes, do not draw attention to yourself, we can discuss the where and the why of it afterwards.” She pauses. “We’ve got a lunch date with Gerry and a junior co-worker tomorrow. That’s when you get to hear what the caper’s all about, capisce? For now, just finish reading that report and take notes.”

  Johnny glances back at the phone. “There’s nothing here that a hundred other churches aren’t doing. They’re millenarian dispensationalist Pentecostalists and they’re trying to spread the happy-clappy around. Film at eleven.” He sounds as if he’s trying to reassure himself, and failing.

  “Let’s hope that’s all it is.” She takes a deep breath. “Either way, we’re here to find out.”

  THE GOLDEN PROMISE MINISTRIES ARE NOT UNAMBITIOUS: they’ve booked the O2 Arena for a week now, and another week in a month’s time.

  It takes Zero the best part of an hour to drive into Greenwich. He drops Johnny just around the corner from the O2 complex, then drives on to find a spot in the VIP car park. Traffic is heavy—the arena is able to hold more than 20,000 spectators, and a lot of them are coming by car for this one. It’s not just a church service—it’s an evening out for all the family, with a gospel choir, a band, and a star-studded cast led by Pastor Raymond Schiller of the Golden Promise Ministries.

  The arena itself is huge—a domed performance space the size of a medium-scale sports stadium. Tiered blocks of seats tower above the central stage, lit by distant spotlights far overhead; the atmosphere among the audience is as deafeningly expectant as at any rock concert or football match. Johnny, who walks in among the regular punters, finds himself a roost halfway up one of the rear stands, with a bottle of Pepsi and a cheeseburger. He settles back in his seat and scans the crowd below him. Somewhere near the front of the stage there’s a roped-off VIP area, accessed via a red-carpeted subway. The Duchess is down there now, chatting and laughing with the others on the restricted guest list: company directors with sick wives and children, wealthy widows, the children of the idle rich come in search of some additional meaning for their lives. Potential deep-pocket donors for Christ.

  Back here in the bleachers it’s another matter. It’s an everyman (and everywoman) cross-section of London, emphasis on the cross. Family groups with children, some couples without, fewer men and women on their own, and larger groups—church trips, youth groups, some that Johnny can’t identify or can’t credit. (A hen night? he jots discreetly in his notepad.) There are a lot of non-white faces: religion is a minority pursuit in England these days. They come from all walks of life: builder, trader, website-maker. They’re here for the music, the pizzazz, the excitement, the joy, and the sense of common purpose. It’s like a reflection of his misplaced childhood, cut off behind the broken mirror of his adult cynicism.

  Johnny watches with studied detachment as the show begins. People are still arriving, filtering in in knots and clumps and talking in quiet, excited tones as the warm-up man starts on stage, a younger preacher from Golden Promise Ministries’ Mission to Miami: “Welcome, Welcome! Open your hearts to the golden promise of a love that will make everything right—”

  He’s an inspiring speaker, and he promises joy on a plate, heaven on a stick. There is a prayer. Everybody joins in. There is a chant. It’s impossible not to stand and clap in time with twenty thousand other sweaty, excited pairs of hands, as Johnny rediscovers: they’ve got the script letter-perfect. Then the warm-up man segues into an introduction for the first act, a squeaky-clean rock band who are impossibly young and skinny behind the electric guitars they grip as tightly as their faith. There follows half an hour of power ballads where the punch line is Jesus.

  Johnny gives up on the notepad, and settles down to wait. An old professional, he gives no outward sign of his irritation. Three more hours of this shit, he thinks disgustedly. Amanda’s banker was stuck overnight in Zurich; he won’t be home for hours yet. What price an immortal soul, when booty beckons? He makes a private guess with himself, and wins a fiver when the band give way to Warm-Up Man in his shiny electric-blue suit, who invites the audience to pray with him and starts the workup towards the main act. Johnny’s boredom is just beginning to strengthen towards anomie when Raymond Schiller strides on stage, arms spread in benediction, a larger-than-life figure.

  Johnny forgets everything else and focuses on the stage with the total nerveless calm of a sniper.

  The Duchess was absolutely right to bring him here. He realizes, to his dismay, that Lockhart was also right to finger him for this caper: you can take the boy out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the boy. And like the devil (in whom Johnny does not believe), the boy will know his own.

  4. EXTERNAL ASSETS

  THAT MONDAY MORNING I MAKE A POINT OF SETTING MY ALARM fifteen minutes early, bolting my bowl of muesli, and skidding out the house fast enough to leave trainer burns in the hall carpet. I’m pulling my coat on while Mo is still half-asleep at the cafetière, working on her second mug of the morning. “What’s the big hurry?” she asks blearily.

  “Departmental politics,” I tell her. “I’ve been told I’m being temporarily reassigned and I want to get the skinny from Him Downstairs, just in case.”

  “Him Downstairs? At nine a.m.?” She shudders. “Rather you than me. Give him my regards.”

  “I will.” And with that I’m out the door and double-timing it up to the end of the street and the hidden cycle path which runs along the bed of the former Necropolitan Line that transported corpses to London’s largest graveyard in the late nineteenth century. It’s a useful short-cut, affording those who know how to use it a one-kilometer journey between points that are five kilometers apart on the map. I’d normally get the tube—the ley lines are best used sparingly: human traffic is not all that they carry—but I want to beard the lion in his den before I get sent up to groom the tiger.

  Fifteen minutes later I surface in a back alley off a side street a block from the New Annex. I look both ways for feral taxi drivers, cross the road briskly, and insert my passkey in the drab metal panel beside a door at one end of an empty department store frontage.

  Welcome to my work.

  My department of the Laundry is based in the New Annex for the time being. Dansey House, our headquarters building, is currently a muddy hole in the ground as a public-private partnership scheme rebuilds it. Despite the current round of cuts, our core budget is pretty much inviolate. I heard a rumor that our unseen masters in Mahogany Row found it quite difficult to get the message across to the treasury under the current bunch of clowns, but once fully briefed not even a cabinet of sadomasochistic monetarists would dare downsize the department charged with protecting their arses from CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. Unfortunately neither Mahogany Row nor the Audit Department can do anything to make Bob the Builder complete a major new inner-city property development on time. And so we’re nearly two years into a twelve-month relocation, and it’s beginning to feel painfully permanent.

  I’m early. The night watchmen have retreated to their crypts in the subbasement, but most of the department are still on their way in to work. I trudge to my office—I have an office all of my own these days, with a door and everything—collect my coffee mug, shuffle to the coffee station, fill it with brown smelly stuff, then head down the back stairs and along a dusty windowless passageway towards an unmarked green door.

  I pause for a moment before I knock, and a hollow voice booms from within: “Enter, boy!”

  I enter.

  Angleton is sitting behind his desk, a huge gunmetal-gray contraption surmounted by something that looks like a microfiche reader as hallucinated by Hieronymus Bosch. (Or perhaps, going by the fat cables that snake under its hood, H. R. Giger.) Tall, pallid, with skin
like parchment drawn tight across the bones beneath, he’s the spitting image of every public school master who held the upper fifth in an iron grip of disciplined terror on TV in the 1960s. Which is appropriate, because for some years in what passed for his youth he was indeed a public school master. Only now he’s my boss, and even though I’m well into my third decade he still calls me boy.

  “Hi, boss.” I pull out the creaky wooden guest chair and sit down.

  It’s a funny thing, but ever since the clusterfuck last summer I’ve lost some of my fear of Angleton. I don’t mean to say that I don’t treat him with respect—I give him exactly the same degree of respect I’d give a live hand grenade with a missing safety pin. It’s just that now that I know exactly what he is, I’ve got something concrete to be terrified of.

  Eater of Souls.

  “Make yourself at home, Bob, why don’t you.” His glare is watery, a pro forma reprimand delivered with sarcasm but no real sting. “To what do I owe the honor of your presence?”

  “Interesting training course at Sunningdale Park.” I bounce up and down on the rusty mainspring of the chair. It must be the coffee, or something. “I ran into an interesting fellow. Name of Gerry Lockhart.” I grin. “He gave me a book.” Bounce, squeak, bounce, squeak.

  I’m bluffing, of course. They kept me so damn busy I didn’t have time to read more than the first couple of chapters—but I checked the Wikipedia entry, just in case.

  “Do stop that, there’s a good boy.” The wrinkles around his eyes deepen into a scowl. “What precisely was the book, may I ask?”

  “Oh, some potboiler about a wild man who used to work for the Dustbin, back in the day.” MI5. “Reds under the bed, that kind of thing.”