*
Dinner is a stack of takeaway pizzas, escorted to the doorway by an apologetic cop. Johnny pays for it. Mo and I take time off from writing our reports to eat, hunched like vultures around a breakfast bar the size of an aircraft carrier in a kitchen that’s all Italian marble and chromed steel. We gossip uneasily and try to avoid speculating about the evening’s events. But eventually Johnny’s phone rings and after a brief call he tells us that ’Seph isn’t coming round to brief us after all: we’re to finish the reports and he’ll see they get to the SA by midnight. So we do just that, and after I turn in I spend a couple of sleepless hours staring at the ceiling before somehow my eyes close and it’s morning again.
Mo, as was pretty much inevitable, took the spare bedroom. When I surface for breakfast I’m chagrined to see she’s drawn an alarmingly comprehensive ward on the door in conductive ink, augmenting the already-more-than-adequate defensive grid embedded in its frame. Mo’s boundary issues with the Eater of Souls raise their ugly head: she’s terrified of me sleepwalking and mistaking her for a midnight snack. I wish I could say this was unreasonable of her. She’s left a circle labelled KNOCK HERE, so I do, and ask, “Coffee?”
“Did someone say coffee?” she mumbles.
“It’s in the kitchen,” I tell her, then shuffle through the living area to the breakfast bar, where I start hunting for the wherewithal to deliver on the promise.
Typical. This furnished flat, renting for something north of ￡2000 a night, comes with a cheap filter machine and no coffee or other supplies in the spotless walk-in refrigerator. Luckily there is a Caffè Nero across the street, so after checking on our guards Johnny nips out. Breakfast consequently consists of reheated bacon and egg rolls, coffee in cardboard cartons, and stomach acid. I’m rubbing my itching chin and cheeks (furnished flats don’t come with shavers either) and Mo is futilely trying to fix her bed hair when my phone rings.
“’Lo,” I say.
“Mr. Howard.” I sit up: it’s the SA. “Are Dr. O’Brien and Mr. McTavish with you?”
“Yes”—they’re both looking at me—“they’re here.”
“Good. I’ve read your report and the briefing Mr. McKracken gave you. I’ll be round shortly to explain what’s going on. In the meantime, please don’t leave the flat.”
“What?” demands Mo as soon as I hang up.
“It’s the SA. He’s coming here.” Why does she look momentarily appalled? It’s a sign of yet more history we don’t share: is it something dodgy about the Auditors, or else a deeper unease…? “We’re to stay indoors until he arrives.”
“Right…” Johnny regards the Caffè Nero paper bag and the remains of its contents with distaste verging on resignation. “Like that’s going to work. Ah well.” He drains his coffee cup. “I made sure the neighbors didn’t see me, anyway.”
“Neighbors?” Mo asks.
“Neighbors.” Johnny grimaces. “I didn’t want to worry you last night and I’d rather leave it to ’isself to fill you in this morning.”
The entryphone buzzes for attention, and Johnny marches off to negotiate with building security and the armed guard on our front door. Mo looks at me looking at her. “What?” we ask each other simultaneously. I shrug, and she looks archly amused. It’s one of those marital telepathy moments that you start getting after a few years together, and I feel a sudden pang of acute isolation. “Johnny’s holding out,” I say, just as she tells me, “We’re about to find out.”
She’s right: Dr. Armstrong marches in, and he’s carrying a Caffè Nero paper bag too. “Good morning!” He smiles and places it on the breakfast bar. Then he sees the detritus: “Johnny?”
“Before you rang, guv, I took precautions.” Johnny, padding after him, slides onto a leather-topped barstool.
“Jolly good.” The SA manages to sound like an absentminded head teacher when he does that; it makes me wonder how deep Angleton’s influence on the organization ran, but he doesn’t give me time to woolgather. “I brought croissants and coffee, so dig in,” he says. “All right. You’ve probably worked it out already, haven’t you?” he asks Mo.
“What? The reason for this unaccustomed … luxury?” An ironic shoulder waggle (she’s holding a fresh coffee cup) takes in the apartment as a whole.
“I’m guessing a room in the Ibis was out of your price range,” I joke.
It falls flat. “Not exactly.” The SA glances at Johnny. “Incursions? Probes?”
“Nothing. It’s as if ’e ain’t even here.”
“Well then.” The SA stares at his coffee cup as if he can’t remember what to do with it. Then he glances at me. “We leased this apartment in a hurry yesterday, when we first learned Schiller was in London. We had no indications his people—or anyone else—would attempt to snatch you. But”—he’s watching Mo, I realize—“it was the logical place to put you under the circumstances.”
“Wait. What circumstances?”
Johnny recoils slightly and Mo’s eyes widen; the SA looks as imperturbable as ever. “The entity identifying itself as Raymond Schiller is very unlikely to suspect that you are in the very same building, two floors up, wouldn’t you say? In a secure, heavily warded apartment with another empty secure suite between your floor and his ceiling.” The old bastard actually looks pleased with himself.
“How is this a good thing?” I ask tensely.
“Well”—Johnny raises an eyebrow at the SA, who tips him the nod—“seems to me, guv, that what we’re dealing with probably isn’t exactly the same old Raymond Schiller, is ’e?”
The SA looks away. “We haven’t confirmed that yet,” he says quietly. “We do know that Persephone shut down the gate he used to get to the Temple of the Sleeper, presumably trapping him in a pyramid on a lifeless world with only his undead god for company. There is no evidence of him being present anywhere on Earth during the next four months. Some bits of the UKUSA intelligence arrangement still work normally for us, even though the OCCINT community weren’t wired into the treaty process, and according to our colleagues in the Doughnut his metadata logfile simply flatlined during that period. No mobile phone usage, no personal bank or credit card activity, no appointments with his visiting hairdresser, nothing to indicate he was alive.”
He clears his throat. “But then, eighteen months ago, signs of electronic life reappeared. Schiller doesn’t carry his own phone, but his social graph, the pattern of calls he places, is distinctive. For the previous four months a law firm owned by Golden Promise Ministries handled his affairs under power of attorney; as soon as the calls started, power of attorney went back in its box. Cards unfrozen, private appointments resumed. Just like returning to everyday life after a long stay in hospital or a stretch in prison.”