“It’s very nice,” I say carefully. “What did VEVAK want?”
“They had a problem. I fixed it. Did anything interesting happen while I was away?” I noticed a faint tremor in her voice when she said fixed.
“Oh, I called in a Code Blue, but what I’d found turned out to be an internal op. Supposedly, anyway. It nearly turned into fratricide but we stopped in time.” I grimace and try not to rub my right arm too obviously.
Mo sits up, looking almost interested. “Really?” She asks: “Can you tell me about it?”
A quick check with my internal censor reveals that I can, indeed, tell Mo everything about my ten-percenter project. Although I suddenly begin to wonder if it was wise to mention this at all, bearing in mind the Mhari angle. On the other hand, Mhari and I split up almost before I ever met Mo in the first place, and on the third hand, being caught later trying to conceal Mhari’s sudden reappearance would be vastly more incriminating than coughing to the true situation right now. I make a snap decision that sometimes honesty really is the best policy—even between spies—but paranoia about the ex from hell can wait until Mo’s a bit less stressed out.
So I stand up to pour the tea, and begin to explain what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks, with a focus on Andy’s fucked-up summoning and subsequent search for a new office, and Pete’s MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY project. Who knows? Maybe it’ll help her stay awake until she’s over the jet lag. And maybe hearing about someone else’s woes will distract her from whatever the bad thing is that happened in Iran that she’s trying to avoid telling me about.
10.
DEATH CHAMBERS
THERE ARE SOME TRADITIONAL PROPRIETIES THAT MUST always be upheld, except in the direst of emergencies. The current situation does not—yet—amount to such an emergency. And so it is that when George decides to inform another of his ilk of Sir David’s worrying news, he does so by invoking a protocol steeped in antiquity.
Not that Sir David himself realized that his news would be cause for concern: he saw nothing wrong with directing a tenth of a billion pounds into an untried research project, and indeed, that sum is only a small fraction of the bank’s asset reserve. But George’s nostrils flare and his lips involuntarily crease into something like a sneer at the unwelcome memory dredged up by the miasma of meddling that Sir David trailed into his club. Sir David has been touched by a will not his own, and George cannot abide the stink of soiled goods, much less the threat that it brings.
It’s time for a parlay with a rival. On neutral ground and in the absence of minions—of course—for this marks a diminuendo in the century-long symphony of killing dictated by the law of vampires.
Exactly an hour after midnight, a cast-iron gate creaks open and a man steps through it, onto the gravel path beyond. Old George is shrouded against the chill of the night, his overcoat buttoned and hat brim drawn low to partly conceal his face. His driver and regular bodyguard close and lock the gate behind him, then wait in the car. His possession of the keys to this venerable institution does not surprise them, for they are far beyond such a mental state after so long in his service. They will await his return patiently, and they will bite off their tongues and drown in their own blood before they speak of this to any man or woman now alive.
Beyond the gate it is as dark as a London night ever gets in this electrified age. A ruddy sky-spattered glare deepens the shadows cast by woodland vegetation. The trees and bushes still sport autumnal leaves, but they rustle as drily as any crypt-bound bones. His heels crunch quietly on the path as he walks between lichen-stained monuments, corroded by decades of acidic soot before coal fires were banished from the capital. He remembers the choking, acrid fog as it once saturated the graveyard air around him, providing concealment and dampening sounds. It was a comfort, of sorts, rendering these approaches slightly less fraught. Now there’s no night and mist to hide in if his contact has come adrift, hissing and snarling at the corrosive winds of time and determined to drag George down with him when he goes. He has only the trees and the overgrown tombs and mausoleums to hide amidst. Well, those and his own defensive preparations.
Even without consciously commanding the movement, his hand steals to his left pocket and pats it, outlining the slim black box within. It’s a dead man’s handle: if he does not press the button whenever the box vibrates, certain messages will be sent to trusted subordinates. The adversary will expect nothing less of him, and can be expected to conduct his affairs accordingly. He, too, probably carries a dead man’s handle. It’s just another step in the intricate and lethal waltz they’ve been dancing for decades.
George stalks the familiar, tree-shrouded avenues and paths of Highgate Cemetery, past so many people he vaguely knew (and in many cases despised) in life. He belongs here, and indeed his will once specified that this should be his final resting place, but they have long since closed his preferred section to new burials.
Coming to the impressive column-flanked entrance to Egyptian Avenue (its mouth pitch-dark to regular human eyes, although George’s night vision is preternaturally good, as sensitive as any cat’s), he pauses and waits for a few seconds, closing his eyes and clearing his mind. One of his kind has been this way, and recently. They took no pains to conceal themselves, which is a good sign. He opens his eyes again and straightens his back as he steps forward into the pool of night between the tree-shadowed lintel.
The older parts of Highgate Cemetery are preserved as woodland these days, overgrown with ivy-clad sycamore and ash trees, limestone and marble walls of gape-mouthed crypts gently aging into the landscape. Old George paces along a gravel-strewn path past a wall set in a gentle hillside, pierced by classical columns and open doorways. His nostrils flare once more as he nears his destination: a wealthy Victorian family’s final resting place. Not all of their niches are occupied. Indeed, one remains empty for it is the one that had his name—an earlier name—earmarked for it. But it’s not empty now. He pauses outside the entrance and speaks aloud, the words galling: “May we speak in peace?”
“Yes, subject to the usual caveats.”
The other is male, and speaks with an old London accent tainted with mannerisms that strike George as modern affections—even though they predate the deplorable Americanisms that crept into everyday usage after the Second World War. George relaxes his facial musculature to an almost sheepish droop, carefully suppressing any expressive signatures.
“Very well. I shall speak from out here,” he says carefully. “I will caution that I did not request this rendezvous without reason. If you try to kill me you will remain ignorant of a threat to your life. And mine, which is why I seek to make common cause.”
The tomb’s occupant is silent for almost a minute. Then: “You mentioned a threat. Please describe it. Then we can discuss the possibility of cooperation.”
• • •
“LISTEN UP, PEEPS,” SAYS MHARI. “THIS IS CRITICALLY important. There will be an exam, and if you fail, the consequences could be, shall we say, worse than career-limiting.”
A lot can happen in a couple of days. In this case, there has been a drastic realignment of status among the Scrum. All the status markers are scrambled, for one thing, because a Casual Friday dress code applies—today being Saturday, and the office theoretically being closed. Mhari sits at the head of the table, in leggings and a little black dress accessorized out of the spectrum of regular office-wear; Oscar is off to one corner, kicked back in chinos and a polo shirt bearing the bank’s logo, one loafer crossed over an immaculately creased leg. The others are variously attired in jeans and button-down shirts except for Dick, who has accessorized his usual Oxfam-surplus tweed suit with an ancient Cradle of Filth tee shirt, lovingly tie-dyed using his own vomit. (This is Dick’s unique interpretation of Office Casual.)
“You’re doubtless wondering what the hell is going on and what this bunch of government crap is about and what it’s got to do with y
ou. So let me explain.
“Our power, talent, what-have-you does not exist in a vacuum. The government got there first, back during the war. Apparently Alan Turing had something to do with it. Anyway: there’s a field of applied mathematics that lets you contact extradimensional beings, and a whole side-field called applied computational demonology—stop picking your nose and pay attention, Dick, you animal—and during the war a division of SOE, that’s the Special Operations Executive, was set up to perform Occult Operations. Turns out we live in a multiverse and there are things with too many tentacles—yes, Evan, I’m talking about Cthulhu here. Yes, yes, I know. The Laundry (they were originally headquartered above a Chinese laundry in the West End) is the branch of the secret service for protecting the UK from the scum of the multiverse. And that means us. Do you understand?”
Mhari glances around the motley gaggle of mathematicians, system administrators, and bankers. Out of pin-stripe uniform they could be a bunch of Saturday-afternoon role players or canal-boating enthusiasts. Superficial appearances are misleading precisely because, so much of the time, they’re accurate. And it is a very good thing indeed that the Scrum’s appearance is at odds with its nature.
“We can’t go out in daylight, we’re super-strong, we have a taste for blood, and we can make people do what we want. Oh, and we got there by way of Dick and Evan’s sterling work in visualization and Alex’s five-dimensional group isomorphism, which is, shall we say, Laundry territory. We are the sort of things they have nightmares about. And because it’s their job to spot things like us, it was pretty much inevitable that sooner or later we would come to their attention. If we come to their attention in a bad way, that would be very bad—they play for keeps and they have kissing cousins in the military, never mind the police. The least-bad outcome would involve padded cells and a lot of intrusive medical tests. The worst . . . you don’t want to know about the worst. Just think how every vampire movie you’ve ever seen ends, then imagine that instead of a handful of half-assed vampire-hunting heroes you’re up against a Cold War–era government agency.
“However, there’s an escape clause. If you’re on the inside, pissing out, they will find a pigeonhole to put you in. Practitioners end up in very odd places all the time, and the Laundry has a habit of recruiting anyone with any remotely non-deniable exposure to the real no-shit occult. Fifteen years ago that was me; I spent a couple of years in there before convincing them to put me on permanent unpaid sabbatical with an employment placement thrown in. Which is why I had the contacts in place with Human Resources to get you all listed as new personnel acquisitions earlier this week, before our visitor dropped in for a chat.”
She pauses to take a drink from the water glass on the table. This not being a meeting organized by their employer, the glass contains a liquid other than water: a Bloody Mary would be gauche but a G&T goes down fine.
“Unavoidable side effects: you will all have to accept that for the foreseeable future you are going to be inducted into an annoyingly sluggish and overstaffed part of the civil service, and they will expect to have first call on your time. You are going to have to sign a schedule to the Official Secrets Act that most people don’t even know exists, and fill out a lot of paperwork. You will then spend at least a month on evaluation and training on their premises—indoctrination is more like it—while they assess your personality and aptitudes and make you jump through hoops, then give you a whistle-stop tour of the organization’s divisional structure and a couple of training-wheels assignments. Luckily we are all classified as key workers because the bank is a strategic national asset, so they don’t get to keep us forever; it’s a bit like a Territorial Army enlistment. They can grab us for a month every year, but they have to square it with HR, and management won’t be allowed to ask any irritating questions or fire us for being out of the office. If you do precisely what I tell you to do, say the right things, and refrain from scaring the crap out of them by showing what you’re capable of, Oscar and I will do our best to get this organization recognized within the Laundry as a semi-autonomous research cell, part of a strategic national asset, hands-off, etcetera. Do you understand?”
Janice has been getting visibly spikier throughout the entire briefing, and now she sounds off. “You’re talking Men in Black, the Van Helsing remix, aren’t you? And you think you can make them take us in? Are you out of your fucking tree?”
“Now wait a—” Oscar starts up, but Mhari overrides him.
“I spent three years in human resources in the Laundry,” Mhari says evenly. “Yes, secret government agencies have HR departments and Facilities and office management issues. It’s not James Bond territory over there. Yes, there are autonomous research cells. I’ve handled payroll for them. Yes, there is a mandatory one-month induction course. Yes, you will be subjected to a Myers-Briggs test, an interview under polygraph—except it’s not a skin galvanometer, they’ve got a tame sub-sentient class two emanation, a demon to you, that feeds on mendacity: if you knowingly tell a lie it will snitch on you—not to mention undergoing a graphologist’s report, a medical, and a bunch of spurious make-work. You’ll be given a mentor, another recent inductee, who will show you around the offices. But as long as you manage not to shit the bed by ripping your line manager’s throat out and drinking their blood, you will very likely pass muster. And if you manage to look bumblingly useless, they’ll get bored and let you go after a while. Are we clear?”
Evan raises his hand. “Why?” he asks, succinctly.
“What are the benefits?” Mhari glances at Oscar, who nods minutely. She begins counting off points on her fingers. “Firstly, they can’t do the whole monster-hunting thing on our ass and kill us, because we’re inside the magic circle. Or did you miss our visitor the other night?” (Her expression of disdain looks theatrically exaggerated to those of her audience who are unaware of her former relationship with Mr. Howard, aka your humble narrator.) “Secondly, we gain access to their resources and knowledge base. Thirdly, we are in a position, once we all know what we’re doing, to leverage their connections to our collective advantage. Fourthly, Oscar is working on a Plan.” She smiles tightly. “Oscar?”
Oscar nods and scoots his chair forward as Mhari pulls back. “I’m not going to tell you the details just yet,” he says. “Hell, I haven’t made my mind up yet—there’s the polygraph test and loyalty oath stuff coming up: what you haven’t decided to do yet you can deny planning. In any case, it’s somewhat speculative at this point. But Mhari and I have been examining our options and we have identified a possible exit strategy from this scenario. If we can—if we decide to—develop it, we will generate a narrative and execute in due course. Those who decline to opt in will merely get left behind with a sinecure in the civil service or the bank, whichever you choose. I want to stress that we have not yet confirmed this is going to happen and if it does you don’t have to join us. I believe if you do join us there will be sacrifices to be made. Plastic surgery, false identities, exile from the UK for the foreseeable future. But on the other hand, we won’t execute unless the payoff is in excess of ten billion. And a billion-plus pounds for each of us should make up for a lot of inconvenience, shouldn’t it?
“Anyway. Whether you want to join in the bust-out or not, we’re all going to need to go through this Laundry organization’s induction process in the next few weeks, and do so without incriminating ourselves. I’ve asked Mhari to develop a story list around the theme of setting up a successful presentation of the Scrum to the Laundry as an autonomous unit, and we’re going to work through it and use the rest of this session to take our sprint assignments. During induction we’ll meet each evening after work, to discuss progress and conduct backlog grooming. The Laundry has no need to be aware of this; I don’t think it’s a hanging offense, but it would certainly alarm any competent counter-intelligence officer if they knew we were approaching our in-sourcing with systematic coordination. So: I’m calling a fifteen-
minute break for refreshments, and then we begin. Item one: how to pull the wool over an intelligence agency’s eyes . . .”
• • •
WORDS ARE EXCHANGED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD OF A CRYPT.
“A quantitative research group operating within one of the major investment banks appears to have transcended their humanity. Unfortunately, the outbreak was not confined to an individual. Worse, these people, who include a number of gifted mathematicians, are not practitioners of the art. They had no context within which to understand their new state, other than that provided by the mass media.”
“Oh dear.”
“I believe they may have drawn unwanted attention to themselves already.”
“Unconscionable.”
“I agree completely. It is interesting to speculate as to what might have prompted them to pursue such an unfortunate line of research.”
“. . . Yes, yes it is. What sort of scrutiny do you think they’ve attracted?”
“The heirs of the Invisible College have taken a direct interest. There was a visit. As our very own insider, that would make them very emphatically your problem.”
There is a muffled thud from within the crypt, as of a fist striking a stone-hard palm in frustration. “Intolerable!”
“I quite agree.”
“What is to be done? In your opinion.”
“I am too closely associated with the source of this information to act without risk of coming to the attention of the investigators. The new data mining techniques . . .”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Also, your connections . . .”
“That, too. What do you have for me?”
Old George unfastens the top two buttons of his overcoat. “One of my people in the bank provided my servant with the necessary passwords to connect his PC to the bank’s network. I confess I don’t fully understand such things, but it proved sufficient. I brought a summary of their personnel files for your edification.” He withdraws a cardboard folder from his coat, then kneels and carefully places it before the tomb, then stands and buttons his coat up.
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