Long ago, in the late nineteenth century, there lived a certain American Postal Service inspector named Anthony Comstock. While serving in the Union army during the US Civil War, Comstock was shocked—shocked!—to discover the profanity and ungodly behavior of his fellow soldiers. He responded like any other self-righteous, bluenosed killjoy by creating the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which did exactly what you’d expect it to: lobby for a law to criminalize the transport by mail of “lewd materials” including anything to do with sex education, abortion, contraceptives, or the prevention of sexually transmissible diseases. And, having gotten his law passed by Congress, Comstock was given a commission by the Inspector General of the Postal Service to enforce it, which he did with enthusiasm, acquiring for himself and his inspectors the status of federal agents with the right to open the mail.
While the original Comstock Law was overturned some time in the 1950s, the US Postal Service Inspectorate still exists to this day. It’s a small federal agency with obscure but remarkably far-reaching powers, who mostly keep an eye out for people stealing from the mail or using it to transport narcotics, child pornography, and other contraband. And one particular task that Comstock took on is still an active part of their remit—although not many people know that the Occult Texts Division goes back that far.
Now, here’s a very weird thing: the defense establishment of the United States of America is so complicated, not to say baroque, that many different agencies can accomplish any given task. Want to invade a small Caribbean island? Who you gonna call: the Army or the Navy’s Army, which is to say, the Marine Corps? Want to call in an air strike? You could ask the Air Force … but the US Navy has lots and lots of fighter jets and tends to get annoyed if they’re left out. And the Army of the Navy has its own Air Force, the USMC Air Corps, and they’ve got aircraft carriers. It’s the same, if not worse, in the world of covert operations and intelligence. Nobody is quite sure how many espionage and counterespionage agencies the US government runs, but there are at least nineteen and, by some accounts, more than thirty.
And then we get into the superblack world of occult intelligence agencies like the Laundry.
Generally, when we deal with the US government, we find ourselves dealing with the Operational Phenomenology Agency, also known as the Black Chamber—the original 1920s organization, of which the NSA is a spin-off—and known to their detractors as the Nazg?l. The OPA are not nice people. In fact, mostly they’re not people at all, except in the loosest sense of the word. OPA doctrine calls for the binding and control of “occult intelligence assets,” demons by any other name, and their deployment as agents of the state, loyalty guaranteed by the choke chain of a fate worse than death should they ever fall short of instant unthinking obedience to their handlers.
The OPA are not the only American OCCINT agency. Comstock’s office began finding copies of the Necronomicon in the mail during the 1880s. With the growing popularity of theosophy and Eastern traditions in the late nineteenth century, the Occult Texts Division took a proprietorial interest in the spread of esoteric materials, seeking to track and prosecute the exiled spawn of Innsmouth, the masked followers of the Liber Facierum, the True Initiates and Hidden Seekers of the hairy stars and the final conjunction of the heavens. They don’t discuss their successes, but some say that they were instrumental in preventing the serial killer H. H. Holmes from completing his necromantic murder palace in Chicago. Their fingerprints have been found on correspondence relating to the cases of Albert Fish and the Manson Family. If the OPA are a ghastly hybrid of all the worst elements of the CIA and the NSA, with a strong stench of demonology on top, then the OTD is the counter-OCCINT air freshener in the room. But a bathroom air freshener can only do so much to stave off the stink of a pile of rotting corpses, and the OTD is so small and beleaguered that many people doubt they even exist any more.
*
I stumble bleary-eyed onto the pavement outside the New Annex just before seven, late enough that even the police on the door have gone home. I have my messenger bag slung over one shoulder; the suit carrier I left to fend for itself in my office. I hang a left along the high street, catch a bus most of the way back to my hotel, then detour into the hole-in-the-wall pub where, per the SA’s instructions, I can expect to find my contact from the US Postal Service Inspectorate’s Occult Texts Division.
It’s becoming extremely hard to find a good pub in London these days. Partly it’s the housing market: real estate speculators love to buy up the title deeds to a pub and redevelop the land it sits on as something more profitable. And partly it’s the knock-on effect of smoking bans and drunk-driving laws. Pubs have to make their money somehow, so they can either go gastro and turn into a boutique restaurant dining experience, or go swill-house and pack in the inebriate herd. The upshot is that you can’t find a decent, quiet hole-in-the-wall where you can have a low-key conversation: either they’re trying to upsell you a fifty-quid-a-head artisanal pork pie (serving this week: Peppa Pig’s Uncle Bertie’s left haunch, marinaded in a drizzle of preschoolers’ tears) or it’s so packed you need an oxygen mask to breathe and are reduced to texting your neighbor by way of conversation.
The SA’s note directs me to one of the former. The bar is pointedly stool-less and the tables all boast clipboards with multipage menus changing by the hour, and the kind of incredibly hard seating that causes your legs to go to sleep within half an hour if you’re there for a leisurely drink rather than to gobble and go. The tables are, predictably, crammed, but the bar isn’t too bad, and there’s a guy standing there who fits the description. He’s wearing an airline-rumpled nondescript suit that shouts Fed in an American accent, with buzz-cut hair, six o’clock stubble, and a despondent expression. A fiftyish face that’s been lived in for too long, like a once-handsome shopping mall on the downslope to demolition. He’s swaying gently over his pint of London Pride but it’s not drunk swaying, it’s I-can’t-stay-awake wobbling. Every minute he gives a little myoclonic jolt and stretches his back, as if forcing himself not to fall asleep. Poor bastard probably shipped over in cattle class and has been awake for going on forty-eight hours. Oh, and the cheap briefcase at his feet is wearing a level six ward, which seals the deal.
I wander up beside him and wave a purple drinking voucher at the manager. “Pint of Spitfire,” I say, then turn to see my barside companion’s eyelids fluttering. “You must be Bill. Dr. Armstrong sent me.”
My contact twitches wildly, nearly knocking his half-full glass over, then glares at me. “Who?” he demands.
“Are you Bill McKracken?” I ask, flipping open my wallet so he can see the warrant card.
“I”—I can see his brain strip a cog as he hesitates on the edge of a stutter—“yeah, I am.” His watery blue eyes focus on the card and flicker alert. “Mr. Howard. Huh. I’ve heard of you.” He glances at my face, his expression shuttered. “Who did you say sent you?”
I slide the wallet away as the bar manager shoves a pint of Spitfire in front of me and makes my twenty vanish. “Dr. Armstrong, our Senior Auditor. He sends his regrets but he’s tied up in a meeting this evening. I’m here in his place.” I raise my pint to him. “To see you don’t miss your flight home. Cheers.”