The Atrocity Archives

by Charles Stross

  * * * *

  Two dead in murder, suicide. Hmm. Ahnenerbe. Thule Gesellschaft. Incubi. German accents. Opener of the Ways. Double-hmm. I pull my terminal closer; it's only got access to low-classification and public sources, but it's time to do some serious data mining. I wonder . . . just what have Yusuf Qaradawi's friends and the Mukhabarat got to do with the last and most secret nightmares of the Third Reich?

  * * * *

  The next day I go into the office and find Nick waiting for me at my desk like an overexcited trainee schoolmaster. This is an unscheduled intrusion in my plans, which mostly revolve around applying some security patches to the departmental file server and digging out the maintenance schematics to Angleton's antique Memex.

  "Come along now! I've got something to show you," he says, in a tone that makes it clear I don't have any choice. He leads me up a staircase carpeted in a thick bottle-green pile that I haven't seen before, then along a corridor with dark, oak-panelled walls like a provincial gentlemen's club from the 1930s, except that gentlemen's clubs don't come with closed circuit TV cameras and combination locks on the doors.

  "What is this place?" I ask.

  "Used to be the director's manor," he explains. "When we had a director." When we had a director: I don't ask. He stops at a thick oak door and punches some digits into the lock, then opens it. "After you," he says.

  There's a conference table and a modern–by Laundry standards–laptop set up at one end of it. A whole shitload of electronics racked up on shelves behind, along with some thick leather-bound books and a bunch of stuff like silver pencils, jars of mouldy dust, and what looks for all the world like a polygraph. As I go in I notice that the doorframe is unusually thick and there are no outside windows. "Is this shielded?" I ask.

  Nick nods jerkily. "Well spotted, that man! Now sit down," he suggests.

  I sit. The top shelf of the equipment rack is dominated by a glass bell jar with a human skull in it; I grin back at it. " 'Alas, poor Yorick.' "

  "Carry on like you have been and maybe your head will fetch up in there one day," Nick says, grinning. "Ah." The door opens. "Andy."

  "Why am I here?" I ask. "All this cloak and dagger shit is–"

  Andy drops a fat lever-arch file on the table in front of me. "Read and enjoy," he says dryly. "One day you, too, can have the fun of maintaining this manual."

  I open the cover to be confronted by a sheet which basically says I can be arrested for so much as thinking about disclosing the contents of the next page. I flip to page two and read a paragraph that essentially says "Abandon hope all ye who enter here," so I turn that one over and get to the title page: FIELD OPERATIONS MANUAL FOR COUNTER-OCCULT OPERATIONS. Below it, in small print: Approved by Departmental Quality Assurance Team and then Complies with BS5750 standard for total quality management. I shudder. "Since when have we been into mummification?" I ask.

  "Embalming–" Andy frowns for a moment. "Oh, you mean total quality–" He stops and clears his throat. "One of these days your sense of humour is going to get you into trouble, Bob."

  "Thanks for the advance warning." I look at the manual gloomily. "Let me guess. I'm to do as we discussed earlier–by the book. This book, right? Why wasn't I issued it before Santa Cruz?"

  Andy pulls out the chair beside me and flops down in it. "Because that wasn't officially an operation," he says in tones of sweet reason. "That was an informal information-gathering exercise involving a nonclassified source. Operations require sign-off at director level. Informal information-gathering exercises don't."

  I put the folder down on the table. "Does Bridget have anything to do with this?"

  "Tangentially."

  Nick sniffs, loudly, from his post by the door. "Arse-covering, boy. That was meant to be a risk-free chat. This is about what you do when you're ordered to stick your head in the lion's mouth. Or up its arse to inspect the hemorrhoids."

  I look round at him. "You're planning on sending me on an op?" I ask. "Happy joy. Not."

  Andy glances at Nick. "He's beginning to get it," he comments.

  "Are you planning on involving Professor O'Brien in this?" I ask. "I mean, it seems to me that she's the one under threat. Isn't she?"

  "Well." Andy glances at Nick, then back at me. "You're on active service, so you need to know this stuff inside out and upside down. But you're right, the specific reason for this session is what happened the other night. I can't confirm or deny the identities of anyone else involved, though."

  "Then I've got a problem," I tell him. "I don't know if I should bring it up right now, but if I sit on it and I'm wrong . . . well, way I see it is, Mo is the one who's under threat and in need of protection. Right? I mean, I can cope with being drooled over by things with more tentacles than brains, but it's not exactly part of her job description, is it? You're supposed to be responsible for her safety. If you've got me going over rules of engagement, and she's involved, then when the shooting starts–"

  Andy is nodding. It's a bad sign when your boss starts nodding at you before you finish each sentence.

  "As a matter of fact I agree with your concerns completely," he says. "And yes, I agree we've got a problem. But it's not quite what you think it is." He leans forward and makes a steeple out of his fingers, elbows together on the table. The steeple leans sideways at an architecturally unsound angle. "We can probably keep her safe indefinitely, as long as she's locked down under a protection program and resident in one of our secure accommodation units. That's not in question; if nobody can see or track her, they can't attack her–although I'm not sure about the inability to track given that they must have obtained samples in order to spring that incubus on her last month. What concerns me is that such a posture is essentially defensive. We don't know for sure just what we're defending against, Bob, and that's bad."

  Andy takes a deep breath, but Nick jumps in before he can continue: "We've dealt with Iraqi spies before, boy. This doesn't smell like them."

  "Uh." I pause, unsure what to say. "What do you mean?"

  "He means that the Mukhabarat simply don't have the technology to summon an incubus. Nor do they generally manage incarnations that leave Precambrian slime all over the carpet; about all they're up to is interrogation and compulsion of Watchers and a little bit of judicious torture. No real control of phase-space geometry, no Enochian deep grammar parse-tree generators–at least none that we've seen the source code to. So we can't make any assumptions about the attacks on Mo. Someone tried to grab her for whatever purpose. By now, they must know we're onto them. The next logical step is for them to pull back and switch track to whatever they were working on in the first place–which is extremely dangerous for us because if they were trying to snatch her, they were probably working on weapons of mass destruction. We badly need to get them out in the open and our only bait is Professor O'Brien. But if she knows she's bait, she'll keep looking round for sharks–which will tip them off. So we're assigning you to shadow her, Bob. You keep an eye on her. We'll keep an eye on you. When they bite, we'll reel them in. You don't need to know how, or when, but you'll do well to read this manual so you know how we set up this kind of situation. Clear?"

  I crane my neck round at Nick, whose expression is uncharacteristically flat: he stares right through me with eyes like gunsights. "I don't like it. I really don't like it."

  "You don't have to," Andy says flatly. "We're telling you what to do. Your job is–I shouldn't be telling you this, it should be Angleton, this afternoon, but what the hell–you're going to be assigned to shadow Mo. We'll do the rest. All I want to hear from you now is that you're going to do as you're told."

  I tense. "Is that an order?"

  "It is now," says Nick.

  * * * *

  When I get home after receiving my mission orders and preemptive chewing-out from Angleton I find my key doesn't turn in the lock. It's dark and it's raining so I lean on the doorbell continuously until the door swings open. Pinky stands behind it, one hand on the l
atch. "What took you so long?" I ask him.

  He steps back. "These are yours, I believe," he says, handing me a bunch of shiny new keys. He clanks as he walks; he's wearing black combat boots, matching trousers, what looks like a leather vest, and enough chains to stock a medium-sized prison. "I'm off clubbing tonight."

  "Why the new keys?" I close the door and shake my hair, shrug off my coat, and try to find room to hang it in the hall.

  "They changed the locks today," he says conversationally, "departmental orders, apparently." There's a new mat inside the front door, and when I look closely I see silvery lettering in a very small font stitched into its edges. "They came and swept the house for listeners and actors then renewed the wards on all the windows, the doors, the air vents–even the chimney. Any idea why?"

  "Yeah," I grunt. I head for the kitchen, squeezing past someone's battered suitcases that are parked in the hall.

  "We've got a new flatmate, too," he adds. "Oh, Mhari's fucked off again, but this time she says she's moving into House Orange for good."

  "Ah-hum." Twist the knife in the wound, why don't you? I inspect the kettle, then poke around inside my cupboard to see if there's any food more substantial than a pot noodle.

  "You'll probably like the new flatmate, though," Pinky continues. "She's helping Brains with his omelettes in the front cellar–he's using high-intensity ultrasound, this time."

  I find a pot noodle and a desiccated supermarket pizza base. There's cheese and tomato paste in the fridge, and a pork sausage I can chop up to go on top of it, so I turn the grill on. "Any newspapers?" I ask.

  "Newspapers? Why?"

  "I have to book a flight. I'm taking a week's leave next Monday, and it's already Wednesday."

  "Going anywhere interesting?"

  "Amsterdam."

  "Cool!" There's a pair of fur-lined handcuffs on the bread board; Pinky picks them up and eyes them critically, then starts polishing them on a square of kitchen roll. "Party on?"

  "I have some research to do at the Oostindischehuis. And in the basement of the Rijksmuseum."

  "Research." He rolls his eyes and tucks the handcuffs into a belt clip. "What a boring use for a holiday in Amsterdam!"

  I chop bits of pork sausage up and sprinkle them over my garbage pizza, oblivious. The cellar door swings open. "Did somebody mention Amsterdam–hey, what are you doing here?"

  I drop my knife. "Mo? What are you–"

  "Bob? Hey, have you guys met?"

  " 'Scuse me, would you mind moving? I need to get through–"

  With four people in the kitchen it's distinctly cosy, not to say crowded. I move my pizza up under the grill and switch the kettle on again. "Who put you up here?" I ask Mo.

  "The Plumbers–they said this was a secure apartment," she says, rubbing the side of her nose. She peers at me suspiciously. "What's going on?"

  "It is a secure apartment," I say slowly. "It's on the Laundry list."

  "Bob's girlfriend just moved out for the fourth time," Pinky explains helpfully. "They must have thought the spare room needed filling."

  "Oh, this is too much." Mo pulls out a chair and sits down with her back against the wall, arms crossed defensively.

  "Guys?" I ask. "Could you take it outside?"

  "Certainly," Brains sniffs, and disappears back into the cellar.

  Pinky smiles. "I knew you'd hit it off!" he says, then ducks out of the room hastily.

  A minute later the front door slams. Mo fixes me with a magistrate's stare. "You live here? With those two?"

  "Yeah." I inspect the grill. "They're mostly harmless, when they're not trying to take over the world each night."

  "Trying to–" She stops. "That one. Uh, Pinky? He's out clubbing?"

  "Yes, but he never brings any rough trade home," I explain. "He and Brains have been together for, oh, as long as I've known them."

  "Oh." I see the light bulb go on above her head: some people are a bit slow on the uptake about Pinky and Brains.

  "Brains doesn't get out a lot. Pinky is a party animal, a bit of rubber, a bit of leather. Every few weeks, whenever the moon is in the right phase, hairs burst from the palms of his hands and he turns into a wild bear with a compulsion to terrorise Soho. Brains doesn't seem to notice. They're like an old married couple. Once a year Pinky drags Brains out to Pride so he can maintain his security clearance."

  "I see." She relaxes a little but looks puzzled. "I thought the secret services sacked you for being homosexual?"

  "They used to, said it made you a security risk. Which was silly, because it was the practice of firing homosexuals that made them vulnerable to blackmail in the first place. So these days they just insist on openness–the theory is you can only be blackmailed if you're hiding something. Which is why the Brain gets the day off for Gay Pride to maintain his security clearance."

  "Ah–I give up." She smiles. The smile fades fast. "I've still got to move my stuff in. They're packing up the flat and I didn't have much anyway, most of my furniture is in a shipping container somewhere on the Atlantic . . . Why Amsterdam, Bob?"

  I prod at the pizza, which is beginning to melt on top as the grill strains to heat it up. "I've been doing a bit of digging." I wince: my rib stabs at me. "Things you said last night. Oh, has anyone said anything to you?"

  "No." She looks puzzled.

  "Well, don't be surprised if in the next couple of days Andy or Derek drops by and gets you to sign a piece of paper saying that you'll cut your own throat before talking to anyone without clearance. That's what they did to me; they're taking it seriously."

  "Well that's a relief," she says with heavy irony. "Did you learn anything?"

  The pizza is bubbling away on top; I turn the grill down so that it can heat right through. "Coffee?"

  "Tea, if you've got it."

  "Okay. Um, I did some reading. Did you know that what you overheard is completely impossible? As in, it can't happen because it's not allowed?"

  "It's not–hang on." She glares at me. "If you're pulling my leg–"

  "Would I do a thing like that?" I must look the image of hurt innocence because she chuckles wickedly.

  "I wouldn't put anything past you, Bob. Okay, what do you mean by 'it's not allowed'? As your professor I am ordering you to tell me everything."

  "Uh, isn't it my job to say, 'Tell me, professor'?"

  She waves it off: "Nah, that would be a cliché. So tell me. What the fornicating hell is happening? Why does someone or something try to render me metabolically incompetent whenever I meet you?"

  "Well, it goes back to around 1919," I say, dropping tea bags into a chipped pot. "That was when the Thule Gessellschaft was founded in Munich by Baron von Sebottendorff. The Thule Society were basically mystical whack-jobs, but they had a lot of clout; in particular they were heavily into Masonic symbolism and a load of post-Theosophical guff about how the only true humans were the Aryan race, and the rest–the Mindwertigen, 'inferior beings'–were sapping their strength and purity and precious bodily fluids. All of this wouldn't have mattered much except a bunch of these goons were mixed up in Bavarian street

  politics, the Freikorps and so on. They sort of cross-fertilised with a small outfit called the NSDAP, whose leader was a former NCO and agent provocateur sent by the Landswehr to keep an eye on far-right movements. He picked up a lot of ideas from the Thule Society and when he got where he wanted he told the head of his personal bodyguard–a guy called Heinrich Himmler, another occult obsessive–to put Walter Darre, one of Alfred Rosenberg's protégés, in charge of the Ahnenerbe Society. Ahnenerbe was originally independent, but rapidly turned into a branch of the SS after 1934; a sort of occult R&D department cum training college. Meanwhile the Gestapo orchestrated a pretty severe crackdown on all nonparty occultists in the Third Reich; Adolf wanted a monopoly on esoteric power, and he got it."

  I switch off the grill. "All this would have amounted to exactly zip except that some nameless spark in the Ahnenerbe research arm unearthed Davi
d Hilbert's unpublished Last Question. And from there to the Wannsee Conference was just a short step."

  "Hilbert, Wannsee–you've lost me. What did the calculus of variations have to do with Wannsee, wherever that is?"

  "Wrong question, right Hilbert; it's not one of the Twenty-Three Questions on unsolved problems in mathematics, it's something he did later. Thing is, Hilbert was experimenting with some very odd ideas toward the end, before he died in 1943. He'd more or less pioneered functional analysis, he came up with Hilbert Space–obviously–and he was working toward a 'proof theory' in the mid-thirties, a theory for formally proving the correctness of theorems. Yeah, I know, Gudel holed that one under the waterline in 1931. Anyhow, you know Hilbert's published work dropped off sharply in the 1930s and he didn't publish anything in the 1940s? And yes, he'd read Turing's doctoral thesis. Do I need to draw you a diagram? No? Good.

  "Now, Wannsee . . . that was the conference in late 1941 that set the Final Solution in motion. Before then, it was mostly an alfresco atrocity–Einsatzgruppen, mobile murder units, running around behind the front line machine-gunning people. It was the Ahnenerbe-SS, with the Numerical Analysis Department founded on the back of that unpublished work by Hilbert–he pointedly refused to cooperate any further once he realised what was going on, by the way–which provided the seed for the Wannsee Invocation. The Wannsee Conference was attended by delegates from about twenty different Nazi organisations and ministries. It set up the organisation of the Final Solution. The Ahnenerbe ran it behind the scenes, using Karl Adolf Eichmann–at the time, head of Section IV B4 of the Reich Main Security Office–as organisational head, a kind of Nazi equivalent of General Leslie Groves. In the USA, General Groves was a Corps of Engineers officer; he organised the massive logistical and infrastructure mobilisation needed to build the Manhattan Project. In Vienna, Eichmann, an SS Obersturmbannfuhrer, was in charge of providing raw material for the largest necromantic invocation in human history.

  "The goal of what the Ahnenerbe called Project Jotunheim, and what everyone else called the Wannsee Invocation, was what we'd today designate the opening of a class four gate–a large, bidirectional bridge to another universe where the commutative operation, opening gates back to our own, is substantially easier. A bridge big enough to take tanks, bombers, U-boats. Can you spell 'counter-strike'? We're not sure quite what their constraint requirements were, or what the Wannsee Invocation was intended to accomplish, but they'd have been pretty drastic; Wannsee cost the Nazi state a greater proportion of its wealth than the Manhattan Project cost the US, and would have had similar or bigger military implications if they'd succeeded. Of course, their spell was grotesquely unoptimised; you could probably do it with a budget of a million pounds for equipment and only use a couple of sacrifices if you had a proper understanding of the theory. They tried to do a brute-force attack on the problem, and failed–especially when the Allies got wind of it and bombed the crap out of the big soul-capacitors at Peenumunde. But that's not the point. They failed, and those deaths, all ten million or so of the people they murdered in the extermination camps that fed the death spell, didn't suffice to pull their heads out of the noose."