“But they’re dead and you’re not, me old mate. So what’s wrong?” He pauses expectantly.
I close my eyes. “Their souls had third-degree god burns. Also, one of them tried to shoot me when the snatch failed.” I can’t stop hearing gunfire, feeling the sharp tug at my collar and the hot burn on my neck. I swallow. “They bungled it, but they nearly had me. I think they followed me all the way to and from the pub, but I was too dozy to notice until it was nearly too late.”
I hate guns. I can use them, but I don’t like being around them; they add this terrible random-act-of-no-god-at-all angle to any fight. Bang, you’re dead, even if you weren’t the person the shooter was aiming for, even if it’s an accidental discharge. At least I only kill people I mean to kill, when I grab them with one or another of the Eater of Souls’ notional appendages.
Johnny looks at me warily, as if I’m made of fine bone china and he’s afraid I’ll break. He’s got this rough-diamond-geezer pose that I think he copied from a Bob Hoskins gangster movie. It’s actually about as authentic as a three-pound note. He’s got a chip on his shoulder a mile high about not being middle or upper class, but there’s a very sharp mind behind the abrasively casual exterior, and you don’t get to be a staff sergeant in the Légion étrangère without a good working grasp of how people are put together, and more importantly, how they fall apart under stress … much less rise to be ’Seph’s Number Two. Right now the way he’s looking at me is setting alarm bells ringing in my head. “What do you think is going on?”
Now a second set of alarms go off. Johnny is an External Asset, kept at arm’s reach from the agency, officially deniable and off-the-books but working directly for Mahogany Row. He and ’Seph turn up for meetings in the New Annex but they’re not on our regular payroll and they don’t carry warrant cards. Ostensibly retired, ’Seph founded and ran the Hazard Organization, about the most terrifying private sector occult intelligence organization I’ve ever heard of (and one I’m very glad I never ran up against in an adversarial capacity). ’Seph and Johnny retired a decade ago, winding up the company and moving to a life of comfortable luxury in London, and today they’re part of the organization’s plausible deniability capability, so if they’re being dragged into this something deeply alarming is going down.
“The agency is under attack, isn’t it?” I dry-swallow. “The Black Chamber are making some kind of move on a global scale. How long have you known? And for how long?”
“Long enough.” Johnny walks over to the floor-to-ceiling picture window and stares moodily out at the darkness. He’s backlit, and I’m momentarily aghast at his reckless self-exposure until I realize he’s not the real target here. He turns to face me. “Interesting you say it’s the Nazg?l. Productive meeting?”
I nod. “The SA sent me. They’re making a move on the Comstock office—details are all in the bag.” I nod wearily towards the sofa. “Big wheels turning. Do you know what’s going on?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences.” His tone is flat. “This Monday at nine eighteen a Falcon 7X landed at the general aviation terminal at STN and was glad-handed by a reception party: full red carpet, small armored convoy, very select VIP treatment you may be assured. The Money gets to side-step the e-borders palaver although the Border Force still checks their passports and visas. And let’s not mention the State Department hitchhiker they had along for the trip, whisked off to Grosvenor Square before you could snap your fingers. But of course we don’t get notified routinely because we’re not the police or Security Service. So today’s cock-up is that it turns out we can keep penniless Syrian war refugees out but when Raymond Fucking Schiller knocks on the door he’s given a posh handshake and the keys to the kingdom and nobody tells us for days.”
“But he’s dead,” I say, mouth on autopilot, or maybe it’s the shock talking.
“Turns out he isn’t, not so much. Pete’s been keeping an eye on the Golden Promise Ministries as part of his brief. They toned down the rhetoric and Schiller hasn’t been seen in public pounding the pulpit; it’s been one aspiring guest preacher after another. And there’s been a significant internal reorganization of his Church’s innermost circles, dissolutions and reformations and restructurings and suchlike. Some of it’s our fault for killing off his brain-parasites’ brood-mother. But he’s had time to procure another egg-layer so he could be up and running again in the ole tongue-eating game by now. Or worse. Meanwhile his compound is still active and there are certain interests he invested in and they’re … well, he hasn’t been declared dead so his corporations go marching on.”
“That’s what Bill was saying. GP Services is fronting for the OPA.” I lick my lips. “But surely Schiller himself is out of the game? I mean, we—”
I do not say we killed him, because, firstly, that’s not something you say in a nonsec location you haven’t personally swept for listening devices and warded against some of the more irritating occult bugs. Secondly, I didn’t personally verify cessation of metabolic activity or put a stake through his heart. I was flash-blind from taking out Schiller’s guards when Persephone went for the man himself. According to the RAINBOW appendix, ’Seph closed the gate he’d opened to an alien world while Schiller was still on the wrong side of it, in the Temple of the Sleeper in the Pyramid. The world in question lacks a human-compatible biosphere, so it’s not unreasonable to assume he died. But another thought strikes me immediately after I realize all this, and it’s not a welcome one:
“If Schiller’s back over here and the tail was his work? And the Nazg?l are involved? It’s not just the American government that’s under attack, is it?”