“Understood, boss.” Garry makes a note on his BlackBerry. “Will that be all?”
Schiller’s smile is thin as a paper-cut. “Howard and his fellows will get their just reward in heaven; with our Lord’s strength and the cooperation of our fellow Americans we will prevail.” For a moment his eyes flash emerald with a glowing, unhuman fervor. “Victory is near; let’s not mess it up this time.”
*
As it turns out, Mo and I do not get a chance to put our heads together in my office right after Ms. Womack drops the bomb, because we both get dragged off to different crisis meetings. In my case it’s a session with Vik and ’Seph to discuss how we’re going to cover the long-term absence of several senior personnel from External Assets and Active Ops (let’s not use phrases like “suspended on full pay pending a public enquiry, possible criminal charges to follow”). We also discuss how best to shelter certain lower-level personnel who may have inadvertently come to the attention of Very Important People—we don’t want them to be called to account for stuff they’re not responsible for.
Consider the salutary example of Dr. Alex Schwartz, former pencil-necked geek, now vampire. I will freely admit that I don’t like the little toe-rag—the first time we met he nearly punched me through an office wall, and he’s a bloodsucking fiend—but some of the more excitable tabloid columnists are calling for him to be tried for treason, which is a bit rich for my taste. Even if sanity prevails he can expect a long and promising career as a political punch-bag and an object lesson in why we do not allow junior officers to negotiate peace treaties with hostile alien empires. But hanging him out to dry won’t save us from a witch hunt, won’t set any kind of good example for the rest of us, and will deprive the organization of a little toe-rag who made the best of a really bad job and shows considerable promise for the future. And so on.
I stumble out of the meeting room with a list of bullet points echoing around the inside of my skull, the beginnings of a really special headache, and a rumbling stomach. As soon as I get past the Faraday-shielded wallpaper and into the corridor my phone vibrates. It’s a text from Mo. She’s running late too, and suggests catching up in the canteen. I groan.
Actually, I groan prematurely. When I get there I discover that it has been upgraded since the last time I was in town, in a desperate attempt to staunch the lunchtime exodus and thereby make life easier for the guards on the front door. They’ve repainted the walls, replaced the chairs and tables with ones that date to the current century, laid carpet (Facilities are clearly living dangerously), and as for the menu … oh my goodness, it’s come over all gastropub. Of course you still can’t have a beer or a glass of wine with your lunch, but the food itself is subsidized and the portions are plentiful. Being under siege by eldritch horrors clearly has a silver lining, so I go and fetch myself a latte and something that claims to be bruschetta with a topping of mozzarella and rosemary, then go find a corner to lurk in.
Ten minutes later I’m doing my daily updates to my Twitter feed—we’re required to maintain a boringly vague social media presence these days, just so we don’t stand out like a sore thumb when foreign agencies sweep the net in search of spies—when Mo approaches. She puts her tray down and pulls out her chair as I try and think of something to say. “Well?” she asks, unwrapping the paper serviette from around her cutlery.
I shrug and bite off a mouthful of flatbread and smashed tomatoes in olive oil while I put my brain in gear. It buys me a couple of seconds. “I gather congratulations are in order,” I try.
A frown flickers across her face, just a microexpression but enough to make me wince. “Not you, too?”
I mime thumping the side of my head. “A knight’s move up the org chart is usually considered grounds for congratulation, but given the square you’ve landed on, I can see why you might be conflicted about it.” It’s not much of an apology but she nods warily, then takes a sip of her mineral water, and pokes at her chicken Caesar salad, checking it for threats. I try not to twitch. She may be back from medical leave but she’s still broadcasting WHOOP WHOOP RED ALERT stress signals on all the emergency frequencies I can pick up. “Bad meeting?”
She nods and swallows convulsively, leaving her fork hanging in front of her mouth. “You could say that.” She pauses a moment, makes the food disappear—a very good sign—then continues: “Dealing with a lot of follow-up and loose ends left over from Operation INCORRIGIBLE, to say nothing of Leeds.” She dry-swallows, then reaches for her mineral water. “I’m not looking forward to that,” she adds; “my first time on an Audit Committee and it has to be that one.”
Oh yes, that would explain her mood. The Auditors will be all over the mess in Leeds. Power to bind and release, enforcement of oath of office, that sort of thing. Authority to lay charges before the Black Assizes, our very own Star Chamber, potentially unlimited penalties: sobering stuff to say the least. Never mind the House of Commons Select Committee on Intelligence. “There’s a difference between intentional malfeasance and failure to recognize and respond to an unprecedented threat optimally,” I remind her. One’s a soul-stripping offense, at least potentially; the other is just grounds for additional training and supervision. “This isn’t an Iris Carpenter scenario.”
I was trying to reassure her but I’ve obviously said something wrong because Mo jolts as if I just kicked her under the table and glares, eyes narrowed. “What did you just say?”
“Uh?” I boggle. Iris was my manager from hell a few years ago: very good at her job, except she’d somehow fooled her oath of office (the geas by which all Laundry staff are bound) into letting her lead a congregation of the Church of the Black Pharaoh. I rub my upper right arm self-consciously; it still aches occasionally where her hellspawn offspring took a chunk out of me and ate it, consuming Bob sashimi as a kind of unholy communion. (I survived: that’s enough.) “I’m just saying, this isn’t an Iris situation: we have met the enemy and it ain’t us. There is no treason here, the SA is breaking you in gently.” Iris disappeared into one of the organization’s deeper oubliettes shortly after her abortive summoning turned the UK’s largest graveyard into a zombie rave. I haven’t heard anything about her since I got pulled off the COBWEB MAZE committee, so I suppose she’s still in prison. I’m not generally vindictive or vengeful, but if she’s on the outside she’d better hope she never bumps into me, is all.