“We met,” I say before I can bite my tongue, and McKracken’s eyebrows rise.
“Welp, that’ll make this easier. He disappeared a while ago, but his corporation is still rolling and they’re taking point for a series of operations the Nazg?l appear to be running, and apparently the Nazg?l are willing to burn about three billion bucks just to shut down the US Postal Service Inspectorate’s Occult Texts Division.” He taps his briefcase. “As to why they’re making a play so big right now … it’s part of a grand strategy. The Black Chamber’s true master is finally stepping out of the shadows and moving to consolidate power. And you need to tell your bosses that my agency is burned. Steps are being taken to ensure that the Black Library doesn’t fall into their hands, and a bunch of us are taking retirement, all kinda ensuring that continuity of institutional experience is lost, if you follow my drift. At this point that’s all we can do, unless you know a way to unroot a congressman who’s been got to by the Nazg?l…? No? Didn’t think so. Anyway, we can’t fight back actively, but that envelope contains a synopsis of everything we know about how they made their play, everything about the relationship between GP Services and the Operational Phenomenology Agency that we’ve been able to dig up, and how they’re trying to take over the governments. Ours first, then yours. It’s our worst-case scenario. The monsters have taken over the Black Chamber, and their dread master is using a fake outsourcing bid as a lever to liquidate the opposition agency and pave the way for his return as we approach the Grand Conjunction.”
“Are you—” I swallow. Unaccountably, my throat is dry: I chug my beer. “—are you going to be all right? Do you want to talk to someone about asylum?” Although fuck knows how much standing we’ve got on that subject since Alex pulled that stunt with the Host …
McKracken snorts. “I’ve got my pension; Friday is officially my last day on the job. Figure I’ll move out somewhere cheaper to live, catch up on all the fishing I haven’t had time for. Montana maybe. Somewhere where”—his voice drops to a confidential murmur—“there’s a survivalist community who have an inkling about what’s coming, if you know what I mean.”
*
We finish our drinks and I escort Bill to Paddington—which is well out of my way home to my digs—and see him onto the Heathrow Express. Back to the gathering storm on the East Coast. I wish him luck, but if half of what he said is true, then he might have been wiser to ask for asylum.
The idea that the Black Chamber is willing to spend billions to take out a minor and eccentric rival agency leaves me shaken. That they’re using Raymond Schiller’s outfit as a front to do so is even worse. Schiller’s dead, but the thought of the thing he served gives me the cold shudders. The idea that the Nazg?l are working with the Sleeper cultists in service to a greater evil … well fuck me, and here I was hoping to catch some sleep tonight. Instead, it looks like I’m heading back to the office to type up an urgent report about the end of the world. Again.
The pavement is nearly deserted and the traffic has thinned out from the usual rush hour rumble and daytime congestion. It’s getting into summer so the London air is the usual oppressive mixture of humidity, dust, diesel fumes, and the collective body odor of ten million people crammed in a city that hasn’t discovered air-conditioning. Or maybe that’s just me, impatient and looking forward to a hotel shower. But in any case, I’m shaken and worried and not paying nearly enough attention to the overfamiliar streets around the New Annex.
Which is why it takes me way too long to realize I’m being followed.
I am enough of a native to catch the bus where possible, to avoid the stifling summer congestion of the Tube (no air-conditioning and worse crowding than the Tokyo subway) and the wallet-bleeding cost of taxis (which seem to burn pure single malt Scotch, judging by what they charge). The nearest stop is a quarter mile from the New Annex, so I get off along with a couple of other passengers and walk briskly towards the corner of the high street. It’s late enough that the pavement is nearly deserted. My thoughts are with the suitcase in the left-luggage lockup at last night’s hotel. I’m not sure what I was hoping for: another short-notice assignment out of country, perhaps, or maybe an overnight invitation from Mo. Either way it was a wash, so I might as well sleep under my desk tonight, grab the bags tomorrow, hit Expedia for a last-minute hotel bargain, and check myself in somewhere for a couple of nights—
That’s funny, the part of me that never sleeps registers, didn’t I see that guy before—
Fuck it, what do I have to do to get away from work?
Two men about fifty or sixty meters behind me on the other side of the road cross over hastily to keep me in view when I turn the corner. One of them is unfamiliar but something about the other reminds me of somebody I half-noticed back in the pub. Or maybe it was earlier this evening; I didn’t really register it at the time. Now there’s a woman with a pram twenty meters ahead, and that’s when I know I’m in trouble because something is wrong with the baby: I can’t hear its mind. The thing about babies is that what they see is what you get: a constant stream of random sensory impressions and emotions with the volume cranked up to eleven as long as they’re awake. While they’re asleep? Violent, chaotic dreams. Adults are much quieter. This one’s either in a coma or dead or warded up to the eyeballs, or, and I know this is paranoid, it makes me feel like something I encountered in a hotel in Denver a few years ago—
I open my inner ear and hear the sleepy crunching half-thoughts of blind, segmented nightmare parasites possessed by a vast and bottomless well of faith.
Fuck, it is them. And I pick up on something else at the same time—
Fuck. They’re tailing me.