The rest of her isn't bad, either. She has the kind of figure that most models dream about — if indeed that isn't what she does for a living when she isn't sticking guns in civil servants' backs — and whatever the label on her strapless silk gown says, it probably costs more than I earn in a year before you add in the jewelry dripping from her in incandescent waves. Real physical perfection isn't something a guy like me gets to see up close and personal very often, and it's something to marvel at — then run away from, before it hypnotizes you like a snake staring into the eyes of something small, furry, and edible.
She's beautiful but deadly, and right now she has one slim hand in her black patent-leather evening bag: judging from the slight tension at the corners of her eyes I'll bet hard money she's holding a small, pearl-handled automatic pistol just out of sight. One of my wards bites me on the back of my wrist and I realize what's come over me: it's a glamour. I feel a sudden pang of something like homesickness for Mo, who at least comes from my own planet, even if she insists on practicing the violin at all hours.
"Fancy meeting you here like this, darling!" Ramona adds, almost as an afterthought.
"How unexpected," I agree, taking a step sideways and reaching for the glass and bottle. The bartender, dazzled by her smile, is already reaching for a shot glass. I manage an experimental grin. Ramona reminds me of a certain ex-girlfriend (okay, she reminds me of Mhari: I admit it, try not to wince, and move on) done up to the nines and in full-on predator mode. As I get used to the impact of her glamour I begin to get an edgy feeling I've seen her before. "Is that your red Audi in the car park"
She turns the full force of her smile on me. "What if it is"
Glub glub ... chink. Ice cubes sloshing into gin. "That'll be sixteen euros, man."
"Put it on my room tab," I say automatically. I slide the card over. "If it is, you nearly rubbed me out on the A45."
"I nearly — " She looks puzzled for a moment. Then even more puzzled. "Was it you in that ridiculous little tin can"
"If my office would pay for an Audi TT I'd drive one, too."
I feel a stab of malicious glee at her visible disquiet. "Who do you think I am? And who are you, and what do you want"
The bartender drifts away to the other end of the bar, still smiling blissfully under her influence. I blink back little warning flickers of migraine-like distortion as I look at her.
That's got to be at least a level three glamour she's wearing, I tell myself, and shiver. My ward isn't powerful enough to break through it so I can see her as she really is, but at least I can tell I'm being spoofed.
"I'm Ramona Random. You can call me Ramona." She takes a chug of the G&T, then stares down her nose at me with those disquietingly clear eyes, like an aristocratic Eloi considering a shambling, half-blind Morlock who's somehow made it to the surface. I take a preliminary sip of my beer, waiting for her to continue. "Do you want to fuck me"
I spray beer through my nostrils. "You have got to be kidding!" It's more tactful than I'd rather bed a king snake and sounds less pathetic than my girlfriend would kill me, but the instant I come out with it I know it's a gut reaction, and true: 'What's under that glamour? Nothing I'd want to meet in bed, I'll bet.
"Good," says Ramona, closing the door very firmly on that line of speculation, much to my relief. She nods, a falling lock of flax-colored hair momentarily concealing her face: "Every guy I've ever slept with died less than twenty-four hours later." It must be my expression, because a moment later she adds, defensively: "It's just a coincidence! I didn't kill them. Well, most of them."
I realize I'm trying to hide behind my beer glass, and force myself to straighten up. "I'm very glad to hear it," I say, a little too rapidly.
"I was just checking because we're supposed to be working together. And it would be real unfortunate if you slept with me and died, because then we couldn't do that."
"Really? How interesting. And what exactly is it you think I do?" She puts her glass down and removes her hand from her bag. It's deja vu all over again: instead of a gun she's holding a three-year-old Palm Pilot. It's inferior tech, and I feel a momentary flash of smugness at knowing I've got the drop on her in at least one important department. She flips the protective cover open and glances at the screen. "I think you work for Capital Laundry Services," she says matter-of-factly.
"Nominally you're a senior scientific officer in the Department of Internal Logistics. You're tasked with representing your department in various joint committees and with setting policy on IT acquisitions. But you really work for Angleton, don't you? So they must see something in you that I — " her suddenly jaundiced gaze takes in my jeans, somewhat elderly tee shirt, and fishing vest stuffed with geek toys " — don't."
I try not to wilt too visibly. Okay, she's a player. That makes things easier — and harder, in a way. I swallow a mouthful of beer successfully this time. "So why don't you tell me who you are"
"I just did. I'm Ramona and I'm not going to sleep with you."
"Fine, Ramona-and-I'm-not-going-to-sleep-with-you.
What are you? I mean, are you human? I can't tell, what with that glamour you're wearing, and that kind of thing makes me nervous."
Sapphire eyes stare at me. "Keep guessing, monkey-boy."
Oh, for fuck's sake — "Okay, I mean, who do you work for"
"The Black Chamber. And I always wear this body on business. We've got a dress code, you know." The Black Chamber? My stomach lurches. I've had one runin with those guys, near the outset of my professional career, and everything I've learned since has taught me I was damned lucky to survive. "Who are you here to kill"
She makes a faint moue of distaste. "I'm supposed to be working with you. I wasn't sent here to kill anyone."
We're going in circles again. "Fine. You're going to work with me but you don't want to sleep with me in case I drop dead, Curse of the Mummy and all that. You're tooled up to vamp some poor bastard, but it's not me, and you seem to know who I am. Why don't you just cut the crap and explain what you're doing here, why the hell you're so jumpy, and what's going on"
"You really don't know?" She stares at me. "I was told you'd been briefed."
"Briefed?" I stare right back at her. "You've got to be kidding!
I'm here for a committee meeting, not a live-action role-playing game."
"Huh!" For a moment she looks puzzled. "You are here to attend the next session of the joint-liaison committee on cosmological incursions, aren't you"
I nod, very slightly. The Auditors don't usually ask you what you didn't say, they're more interested in what you did say, and who you said it to.[1 Blabbing secrets to beautiful femme fetale agents is frowned upon, especially when they're not necessarily human.] "You're not on my briefing sheet."
"I see." Ramona nods thoughtfully, then relaxes slightly.
"Sounds like a regular fuck-up, then. Like I said, I was told we're going to be working together on a joint activity, starting with this meeting. For the purposes of this session I'm an accredited delegate, by the way."
"You — " I bite my tongue, trying to imagine her in a committee room going over the seventy-six-page agenda.
"You're a what"
"I've got observer status. Tomorrow I'll show you my ward," she adds. (That clinches it. The wards are handed out to those of us who're assigned to the joint committee.) "You can show me yours. I'm sure you'll be briefed before that — afterward we'll have a lot more to talk about."
"Just what — " I swallow " — are we supposed to be working on"
She smiles. "Baccarat." She finishes her G&T and stands up with a swish of silk: "I'll be seeing you later, Robert.
Until tonight..."
I buy another beer to calm my rattled nerves and hunker down in a carnivorous leather sofa at the far side of the bar. When I'm sure the bartender isn't watching me I pull out my Treo, run a highly specialized program, and dial an office extension in London. The phone rings four times, then the voice mail picks it up. "Bos
s? Got a headache. A Black Chamber operative called Ramona showed up. She claims that we're supposed to be working together. What the hell's going on? I need to know." I hang up without bothering to wait for a reply. Angleton will be in around six o'clock London time, and then I'll get my answer. I sigh, which draws a dirty look from a pair of overdressed chancers at the next table. I guess they think I'm lowering the tone of the bar. A sense of acute loneliness comes crashing down. What am I doing here?
The superficial answer is that I'm here on Laundry business.
That's Capital Laundry Services to anyone who rings the front doorbell or cold-calls the switchboard, even though we haven't operated out of the old offices above the Chinese laundry in Soho since the end of the Second World War. The Laundry has a long memory. I work for the Laundry because they gave me a choice between doing so ... or not working for anyone, ever again. With 20/20 hindsight I can't say I blame them. Some people you just do not want to leave outside the tent pissing in, and in my early twenties, self-confident and naive, I was about as safe to leave lying around unsupervised as half a ton of sweating gelignite. These days I'm a trained computational demonologist, that species of occult practitioner who really can summon spirits from the vasty deep: or at least whatever corner of our local Calabi-Yau manifold they howl and gibber in, insane on the brane. And I'm a lot safer to have around these days — at least I know what precautions to use and what safety standards to obey: so call me a bunker full of smart bombs.
Most Laundry work consists of tediously bureaucratic form-filling and paper-pushing. About three years ago I got bored and asked if I could be assigned to active service. This was a mistake I've been regretting ever since, because it tends to go hand-in-hand with things like being rousted out of bed at four in the morning to go count the concrete cows in Milton Keynes, which sounds like a lot more fun than it actually is; especially when it leads to people shooting at you and lots more complicated forms to fill in and hearings in front of the Audit Committee. (About whom the less said the better.) But on the other hand, if I hadn't switched to active service status I wouldn't have met Mo, Dr. Dominique O'Brien — except she hates the Dominique bit — and from this remove I can barely imagine what life would be like without her.
At least, without her in principle. She's been on one training course or another for months on end lately, doing something hush-hush that she can't tell me about. This latest course has kept her down at the secure facility in Dunwich Village for four weeks now, and two weeks before that I had to go to the last liaison meeting, and frankly, I'm pining. I mentioned this to Pinky at the pub last week, and he snorted and accused me of carrying on like I was already married. I suppose he's right: I'm not used to having somebody wonderful and sane in my life, and I guess I'm a bit clingy. Maybe I should talk about it with Mo, but the subject of marriage is a bit touchy and I'm reluctant to raise it — her previous matrimonial experience wasn't a happy one.
I'm about halfway down my beer and thinking about calling Mo — if she's off work right now we could chat — when my phone rings. I glance at it and freeze: it's Angleton. I key the cone of silence then answer: "Bob here."
"Bob." Angleton's voice is papery-thin and cold, and the data compression inflicted by the telephone network and the security tunnel adds a hollow echo to it. "I got your message.
This Ramona person, I want you to describe her."
"I can't. She was wearing a glamour, level three at least — it nearly sent me cross-eyed. But she knows who I am and what I'm here for."
"All right, Bob, that's about what I expected. Now this is what I want you to do." Angleton pauses. I lick my suddenly dry lips. "I want you to finish your drink and go back to your room. However, rather than entering, I want you to proceed down the corridor to the next room along on the same side, one number up. Your support team should be checked in there already. They'll continue the briefing once you're in the secure suite. Do not enter your room for the time being. Do you understand?"
"I think so." I nod. "You've got a little surprise job lined up for me. Is that it"
"Yes," says Angleton, and hangs up abruptly.
I put my beer down, then stand up and glance round. I thought I was here for a routine committee meeting, but suddenly I find I'm standing on shifting sands, in possibly hostile territory. The middle-aged swingers glance disinterestedly at me, but my wards aren't tingling: they're just who they appear to be. Right. Go directly to bed, do not eat supper, do not collect... I shake my head and get moving.
To get to the elevator bank from the bar requires crossing an expanse of carpet overlooked by two levels of balconies — normally I wouldn't even notice it but after Angleton's little surprise the skin on the back of my neck crawls, and I clutch my Treo and my lucky charm bracelet twitchily as I sidle across it. There aren't many people about, if you discount the queue of tired business travelers checking in at the desk, and I make it to the lift bank without the scent of violets or the tickling sense of recognition that usually prefigures a lethal manifestation. I hit the "up" button on the nearest elevator and the doors open to admit me.
There is a theory that all chain hotels are participants in a conspiracy to convince the international traveler that there is only one hotel on the planet, and it's just like the one in their own home town. Personally, I don't believe it: it seems much more plausible that rather than actually going somewhere I have, in fact, been abducted and doped to the gills by aliens, implanted with false and bewildering memories of humiliating security probes and tedious travel, and checked in to a peculiarly expensive padded cell to recover. It's certainly an equally consistent explanation for the sense of disorientation and malaise I suffer from in these places; besides which, malevolent aliens are easier to swallow than the idea that other people actually want to live that way.
Elevators are an integral part of the alien abduction experience.
I figure the polished fake-marble floor and mirror-tiled ceiling with indirect lighting conspire to generate a hypnotic sense of security in the abductees, so I pinch myself and force myself to stay alert. The lift is just beginning to accelerate upwards when my phone vibrates, so I glance at the screen, read the warning message, and drop to the floor.
The lift rattles as it rises towards the sixth floor. My guts lighten: we're slowing! The entropy detector wired into my phone's aerial is lighting up the screen with a grisly red warning icon. Some really heavy shit is going on upstairs, and the closer we get to my floor the stronger it is. "Fuck fuck fuck," I mumble, punching up a basic countermeasure screen. I'm not carrying: this is supposed to be friendly territory, and whatever's lighting up the upper levels of the Ramada Treff Page Hotel is — I briefly flash back to another hotel in Amsterdam, a howling wind sucking into the void where a wall should be — Clunk. The door slides open and I realize at the same instant that I should have leapt for the lift control panel and the emergency stop button. "Shit," I add — the traditional last word — just as the flashing red dial on my phone screen whisks counterclockwise and turns green: green for safety, green for normal, green to show that the reality excursion has left the building.
"Zum Teufel!"
I glance up stupidly at a pair of feet encased in bulletproof-looking, brown leather hiking boots, then further up at the corduroy trousers and beige jacket of an elderly German tourist. "Trying to get a signal," I mutter, and scramble out of the lift on all fours, feeling extremely stupid.
I tiptoe along the beige-carpeted corridor to my room, racking my brains for an explanation. This whole set-up stinks like a week-old haddock: What's going on? Ramona, whoever the hell she is — I'd put hard money on her being mixed in with it. And that entropy blip was big. But it's gone now. Someone gating in? I wonder. Or a proximal invocation?
I pause in front of my door and hold my hand above the door handle for a few seconds.
The handle is cold. Not just metal-at-ambient cold, but frigid and smoking-liquid-nitrogen cold.
"Oops," I say very q
uietly, and keep on walking down the corridor until I arrive at the next room door. Then I pull out my phone and speed-dial Angleton.
"Bob, Sitrep."
I lick my lips. "I'm still alive. While I was in the elevator my tertiary proximity alarm redlined then dropped back. I got to my room and the door handle feels like it's measuring room temperature in single-digit Kelvins. I'm now outside the adjacent door. I figure it's a hit and unless you tell me otherwise I'm calling a Code Blue."
"This isn't the Code Blue you'te here to deal with."
Angleton sounds dryly amused, which is pretty much what I expect from him. "But you might want to make a note that your activation key is double-oh-seven. Just in case you need k later." I "You what?" I glare at the phone in disbelief, then punch the number into the keypad. "Jesus, Angleton, someday let me explain this concept called password security to you, I'm not meant to be able to hack my own action locks and start shooting on a whim — "
"But you didn't, did you?" He sounds even more amused as my phone beeps twice and makes a metallic clicking noise.
"You may not have time to ask when the shit hits the fen.
That's why I kept it simple. Now give me a Sitrep," he adds crisply.
"I'm going live." I frantically punch a couple of buttons and invisible moths flutter up and down my spine; when they fade away the corridor looks darker, somehow, and more threatening. "Half-live. My terminal is active." I fumble around in my pocket and pull out a small webcam, click it into place in the expansion slot on top of my phone. Now my phone has got two cameras.
"Okay, SCORPION STARE loaded. I'm armed. What can I expect"
There's a buzzing noise from the door lock next to me and the green LED flashes. "Hopefully nothing right now, but ... open the door and go inside. Your backup team should be in place to give you your briefing, unless something's gone very wrong in the last five minutes."
"Jesus, Angleton."
"That is my name. You shouldn't swear so much: the walls have ears." He still sounds amused, the omniscient bastard.
The Jennifer Morgue l-3 Page 3
