I wait for a few seconds. Angleton continues to stare at me, his expression icy. Finally, he thaws—but only by a degree or two.
“Peter Wright.” The way he pronounces the name I’m pretty sure he intends it to rhyme with Wrong. “A dangerous crank.”
“Oh, really? I suppose you knew him?” Never mind that Wright retired in 1976; Angleton’s been with the Laundry for a very long time indeed. “What exactly did Wright do wrong?” What lesson am I meant to draw from this book? in other words. (See, I’m not above cheating at homework.)
Angleton closes his eyes, then leans back in his chair. “Crazies and loose cannons,” he mutters. Then he opens his eyes again. “Bob. The cold war ended in 1991. How old were you?”
Huh? “I was fourteen. I saw it on telly; I remember being scared of a nuclear war when I was a toddler. Afraid of my ma being burned to a crisp if Maggie or Reagan were serious about the ‘bombing in fifteen minutes’ thing.”
“I see.” I see Angleton contemplating the situation from a very different perspective, trying to work out how to explain something to someone so impossibly young that the Vietnam War was ancient history before he was born and men haven’t walked on the moon in his lifetime. “That was indeed one aspect of the confrontation. But only in the later stages. Earlier on, things were, if anything, crazier. And today we are required to work within the constraints established to keep the bad crazy, as you youngsters would call it, from breaking out again.”
“The bad crazy?”
“In the early 1960s—you’ve heard of Philby, Burgess, and Maclean?”
Toothpaste or spy? “Yes.” At least, I’ve heard of them since I read Lockhart’s book.
“Then, in light of recent events you will appreciate just how…crazy…MI5 went in the aftermath of their exposure as Soviet moles. Yes?”
I shudder. “Yes.” Eight months ago our own mole problem broke surface. I rub my right upper arm with my left hand. It aches savagely for a moment, then subsides. Moles are voracious underground predators; they’re poisonous and they’ll eat anything. Some of the latest crop even tried to eat me.
“There were excesses,” Angleton says blandly. “Then they went too far. Wright was on the FLUENCY committee, investigating possible Soviet moles that had been missed. They began seeing spies everywhere, especially after someone upstairs who shall remain nameless gave them access to GREY CADAVER remote viewing intel. Trade union leaders, senior civil servants, television comedians, politicians, cabinet ministers. It went right to the top. They forced out a junior health minister who was suspected of spying for Czech intelligence. Then they branched out into the broader media. They bugged the FBI team who were bugging The Beatles. Some say that Mary Whitehouse got her start as one of their junior inquisitors. By 1968 they’d commissioned a study on installing a pyre in the former Star Chamber in Whitehall so they could burn witches—using North Sea gas, of course. It was a terribly British witch hunt. Their paranoia knew no bounds—they wrangled the BBC into canceling the fifth series of Monty Python because they thought the canned laugh tracks might contain coded messages to KGB sleeper agents.
“Finally, they began to investigate the prime minister, Harold Wilson. Wilson, Wright was convinced, was a KGB agent.” I’m nodding along like a metronome at this point. “There was a group, a cabal if you like, of MI5 officers. About thirty of them. They actually planned a coup d’état in 1972. They were going to stick Lord Louis Mountbatten in charge of a provisional military government, herd all the suspected spies into Wembley Stadium, and shoot them. They were even going to replace the House of Commons with Daleks.”
I roll my eyes. I can tell when Angleton is yanking my chain: “Even the tea lady?”
“Yes, Bob. Even the tea lady.” Angleton looks at me gravely. “When will you learn to read your briefing documents?”
“When they don’t land on my head disguised as a pulp bestseller when I’m in the middle of an intensive training course.” I sit up. “So, the 1960s and early 1970s: deeply paranoid, or merely full of obsessive-compulsive witch hunters? How does this affect us now?”
Angleton leans across his desk and makes a steeple of his fingers: “The point, boy, is that ever since that time of unbound paranoia the one unbreakable law of the British secret services has been: Thou shalt not snoop on Number Ten. Because we are not in the business of generating policy—it’s not a task for which agencies like ours are suited, and in those countries where spooks set policy, it always ends in tears. We vet politicians on the way up—that’s an entirely different matter—but by the time they’re moving into Number Ten they should already be above suspicion; if they aren’t, we haven’t been doing our job properly. And that’s very important because we are ultimately answerable to them. Our loyalty is to the Crown; the Prime Minister, as leader of the government, is the person in whose office that authority is vested. He or she issues our marching orders. So we obey Rule One at all times. Are you with me so far?”
“Um. I guess so. All very sensible, I suppose. Except…” I frown. “What has this got to do with me?”
“Well, boy…” Angleton fixes me with a bright, elfin smile—and I am abruptly terrified. “What do you think happens when an investigation in progress runs into the Prime Ministerial exclusion zone?”
TWO HOURS LATER AND TWO FLOORS UP IN ANOTHER WING OF the New Annex I knock on another door. It’s a wider and much more imposing door, with a brass nameplate screwed firmly to the wood: LOCKHART, G. And there’s a red security lamp and a speaker beside it.
The speaker buzzes. “Enter.” It’s like a visit to the dentist. I go inside, unsure of the ailment I’m here to have diagnosed—just gripped by an unpleasant certainty that it’s going to hurt.
Gerry Lockhart rates a big corner office with a window, decent carpet, and oil paintings. I have no bloody idea where those come from—presumably Facilities have a sharing arrangement with the Government Art Collection—but it’s a new one on me; aside from the always-empty offices on Mahogany Row, nobody in this organization rates any kind of eyeball candy unless it’s a Health and Safety or Security poster. When the door opens he’s sitting, poring over some papers on his desk; he hastily flips a black velvet cloth over the documents, slips off his half-moon reading glasses, then stands and extends a hand.
Gosh. He’s offering to shake hands. For a moment I hesitate and almost glance over my shoulder to see who’s behind me: then we shake.
“I trust you had a good weekend, Mr. Howard? Recovered from last week’s dog and pony show?”
I roll my eyes. “It was very educational.” I am officially educated: it says so right there on my personnel record. I’m not sure I learned anything, but that wasn’t exactly the object of the exercise. “It’s good to be back at work.”
He gestures at one of the visitor chairs—opposite his desk, not off to one side, I note. “Have a seat.” I sit down; it’s better than standing. “I suppose you’re probably wondering what this is about. And if you’ve got any sense, you’re wondering why it involves you. Aren’t you?”
His manner is precise, fussy with an edge of ex-military discipline to it. But thanks to last Monday evening’s encounter I knew what to expect, so I ironed my trousers and wore a clean and un-scuffed pair of trainers. I see the ghost of a frown of disapproval at my lack of a tie, but he’s almost making a point of not mentioning it. Which is interesting in its own right. “Yes, I’m curious. I’ve never been assigned to Externalities before. Or worked with your people.” I draw the line at asking What exactly is it that you do? Sometimes people can be a bit touchy about that sort of thing.
“Your reluctance to sound ignorant does you credit, but there really is no reason to dissemble, Mr. Howard.” Lockhart’s cheek twitches, nudging the hindquarters of the hairy caterpillar that is sleeping on his upper lip. “There’s no reason for you to have heard of Externalities, and every reason why you shouldn’t; need to know and all that.” He clears his throat. “You’ve been to see Angle
ton, of course. What did he tell you about me?”
That’s easy: “He didn’t.”
“Good.” Lockhart’s sudden smile is feral. “And what does that tell you? Feel free to speculate.”
“Oh?” Now I glance round, just in case a couple of blue suits from Operational Oversight have sneaked in behind me. “Well…Externalities is a really suggestive name for a small subdepartment, isn’t it? Utterly ambiguous—meaningless, really. There’s a box on the org chart under Facilities, and a couple of dotted lines leading to Ways and Means and Human Resources, and that’s it. Small staff, boringly mundane subdivision of the paperclip police. Nobody would ever look twice at it, except…”
“Yes?”
I take a deep breath. “You’re borrowing Angleton’s assistant. I think that says it all, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t get above yourself, Mr. Howard.” His smug expression belies his tone. “Just so that you know where you stand, everything I am about to tell you about this particular asset is classified BASHFUL INCENDIARY. Dr. Angleton is on the approved list, and—now—so are you. Your line manager (that would be Mr. Hinchliffe this month, would it not?) is not so cleared. Neither are your barber, your wife, or your pet cat, and I’d appreciate your cooperation in not spreading the magic circle. Under pain of your oath of office.”
I nod, jerkily. This is some heavy shit he’s drawing down. The oath of office here in the Laundry is rather draconian: forfeiting your eternal soul is only the beginning. “Uh. You asked for me for a reason. Can I ask why?”
“Hmm. I did not ask for you. You were recommended, and after due discussion it was agreed that you were eminently qualified for, and in need of the management experience that you can gain in, this posting.”
Management experience? I feel an oh-shit moment coming on. “Um. Question mark?”
“Here in Externalities, we monitor organizational assets that are largely outside the usual lines of control—beyond regular management.” Lockhart smiles blandly.
“Paperclips? Attached to interdepartmental memos?” That’s improbable enough on the face of it. Most intelligence agencies are fanatical about locking down the hardware, banning phones and USB sticks and iPods from the premises. The Laundry takes a different approach, and focuses on securing the people, not the property—although sometimes this leads to, shall we say, misunderstandings in our dealings with other agencies.
“Paperclips, other assets.” Lockhart waves dismissively. “People on external assignment, for example. We provide support for senior executives on request. And it goes both ways. We also keep track of external contractors.”
“External what?” I stumble into disbelieving silence. External contractors? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Not here, not in an agency that promiscuously hires anyone and everyone who stumbles across the truth—makes them a job offer they can’t refuse, inducts them under the authority of an appallingly strong geas, and keeps them busy chasing paper until it’s time to retire. “But we don’t employ external contractors! Do we?”
“No, we don’t. Not as such.” His expression is so arch you could hang a suspension bridge from it. “Tell me, Mr. Howard, have you eaten recently?”
“No—”
“Then you’ll have no objection to accompanying me to lunch at a restaurant, will you? The organization’s paying.”
I boggle. “Isn’t that against accounting regs or something?”
“Not when I’m briefing a pair of contractors, Mr. Howard. Your job is to sit tight, ears wide, and listen. When we get back here afterwards there will be an exam. If you pass, then I shall explain what I want you to do for the next couple of weeks.”
“And if I don’t pass?”
“Then you go back to Dr. Angleton with a recommendation for some more training courses. And I shall have to do the job myself.” His cheek twitches at the prospect. I am beginning to get a handle on the code. That is an unhappy twitch: the caterpillar has indigestion. “However, that would not be an ideal outcome, because the job in question appears to be well-matched to your strengths.”
Damn him, he’s clearly been taking lessons from Angleton on best practice for baiting the Bob-hook. “Okay, I’ll bite. Lunch with a contractor, then an exam. Where do I start?”
“Right here.” And Lockhart folds back his black cloth, picks up a slim dossier headlined BASHFUL INCENDIARY, and watches vigilantly while I read it.
AFTER AN HOUR’S READING, MY HEAD IS SPINNING. MIDWAY through the dossier, Lockhart—evidently satisfied by my absorption—tiptoes out of the office for a quick fag or something. I hear the door lock click behind him. Luckily I don’t need a toilet break. The file is quite slim, but the contents—or rather, their implications—are explosive.
Here’s the rub. The Laundry runs on three inviolate rules:
1) We make a point of recruiting—conscripting, really—everyone who learns the truth. That’s how I ended up here. We have a place for everyone (and make sure everyone knows their place).
2) It is a corollary of the preceding rule that we never employ external contractors. There are no independents.
3) Finally, and most importantly, the security services—of which we are one—do not snoop on Number Ten.
But all of these rules come with a sanity clause.
Take the first rule. It’s how everyone I know (Angleton excepted) came to work for the Laundry. We stumbled across something ghastly that we couldn’t handle, and before it could apply the Tabasco sauce and find us crunchy but good with fries the Laundry came and rescued us, then made us a job offer we weren’t allowed to refuse.
In my case, I nearly landscaped Wolverhampton with an unfortunate experimental rendering algorithm. (For my sins, they stuck me in IT Support for three years; on the flip side, I didn’t die.)
The B-team players we hire so we can keep an eye on them and protect them from the consequences of their own actions. The A-team players end up doing the protecting—both for the second-raters and for the Crown—defending the realm against things with too many tentacles and eye-stalks.
As for the second rule: if we employ everyone in the field, so to speak, then it follows that there are no external contractors. Anyway, external contractors would be a security risk. So even if there were external contractors, we couldn’t put them on the payroll without them taking the oath of allegiance, going the whole nine yards, etcetera. At which point, they wouldn’t be external.
As for the third rule…I’m guessing that’s where I come in. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself at this point.
HALF AN HOUR LATER LOCKHART COMES BACK AND REMOVES the dossier from my nerveless fingers: “Are you coming?”
“Uh? Lunch? Sure.” I struggle to my feet. “I’ll just get my coat.”
He picks up the dossier, adds it to another that he’s carrying—I spot the subject JOHNNY PRINCE on the cover before I force myself to stop—and turns to stash them in his large and exceedingly secure-looking office safe. I make myself scarce.
We meet downstairs, just outside the empty department store window. Lockhart flags down a passing taxi. We ride in silence: fifteen or twenty minutes to Wardour Street, in the heart of London’s Chinatown. Pocketing a receipt, Lockhart leads me through the crowd of shoppers to a surprisingly familiar destination, if only because it’s infamous: the Wong Kei. “We’re meeting here?” I ask.
“Where better?” Lockhart says ironically as he leads me inside. It’s lunchtime and deafeningly loud inside the landmark restaurant. I’m expecting us to end up queuing, but no: as if by magic Lockhart flags down a waiter, mutters something, and we’re whisked through a Staff Only door, into a cramped lift that squeals and grinds its way up to the third floor, then along a narrow passageway to a private dining room. He pauses before we enter. “The budget will only stretch so far.” But my reading of his mustache is getting better, and right now it spells: caterpillar is hungry for Cantonese.
The room is cramped, illuminated by flickering fluorescent tube
s and a tiny window outside which throbs a bank of kitchen extractor fans. But the table is already laid out with chairs for four and a pot of jasmine tea on the lazy Susan. “Remember what I said,” Lockhart warns me, “keep your ears open and your mouth shut. Within reason. Understood?”
I nod, and mime a zipper. I’d normally put up more of a fight, but after reading the BASHFUL INCENDIARY file I find myself curiously uninterested in making a target of myself: she might turn me into a toad or something.
A minute later—I’ve just filled both our cups with steaming hot tea—the door opens again. Lockhart stands, and I follow suit. “Good afternoon, Ms. Hazard.” The caterpillar is delighted. “Ah, and the estimable Mr. McTavish! How are you today?”
Handshakes and smiles all round. I take stock, then succumb to a brisk flashback: a disturbing sense that I’ve met these people before.
McTavish is easy to pigeonhole, hence doubly dangerous: in jeans and a hooded top he looks like a brickie, except I know what the sidelong flat stare and the ridges on the sides of his hands mean. He reminds me of Scary Spice, one of Alan Barnes’s little helpers—specialty: ferreting down rabbitholes full of blood-drenched cultists and undead horrors. The resemblance isn’t perfect, but I’ve met NCOs in special forces before and he’s got that smell. Although there is a slight something else about him as well: he punches above the weight.
She, however—
“Charmed to meet you,” she says, and smiles, impish and vampish simultaneously. “I have heard so much about you, Mr. Howard! May I call you Bob?”
“I’m Bob to my friends,” I drone on autopilot as my brain freezes in the headlights. Stunning beauty in a minidress over black leggings, studiously casual yet somehow managing to send a bolt of electricity straight down my spine and drop my IQ by about fifty points on the spot…Yes, I’ve seen her like before. “That’s a nice glamour. Class two?”
Her smile freezes for an instant. “Class three, actually.” Then she lets it slip slightly and the starry soft-focus dissolves, and I’m merely shaking hands with a strikingly pretty dark-haired woman of indeterminate years—anything between twenty-five and forty—with Mediterranean looks and a dance instructor’s build, rather than a sorceress with a brain-burning beauty field set to Hollywood stun. “You have much experience of such things?”
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