“Thank you. I’m sorry to spring this on you like this, but Cabinet Office has prepared an order in council that came into effect this morning. As of today, Q-Division is dissolved. A new Cabinet Portfolio for Paranormal Activities is being established, and will take over responsibility for all activities previously under the agency’s aegis when it becomes active next Monday. You will return to your departments, return all classified materials to storage no later than five o’clock today, and inform any personnel working under your direction that they are being made redundant. HR is distributing out-processing packs and hard-copy paperwork to your offices right now; all IT logins are revoked as of ten minutes ago. Everyone is to leave in good order, take personal effects only, return all wards and inventory items to their designated secure storage area, and deposit their warrant cards at the front desk. Personnel will be paid through to the end of the current calendar month and there will be statutory redundancy pay and pension and social security contributions. In addition, HR are required to take onward contact details for all out-processed personnel on behalf of the new agency that will come into existence next Monday. The new agency will not continue our obligation under Article 4 to provide supervisory employment for all researchers who independently discover the key theorems. Are there any questions?”
Mo sags in her chair for a moment, then sits up straight again. She feels breathless, as if gut-punched. Around her there’s a buzz, not of conversation but of shock and disbelief and denial. Mhari, to her left, is quietly swearing. To her right, Vikram is shaking his head: no, no. She looks around, but there’s no sign of the Senior Auditor anywhere. She raises her right hand.
“Yes?” Mr. Hastings is looking at her.
“What happens to operations in progress?” she demands, a sense of anger and injustice settling over her. “We’ve got people working in the field! Who’s going to take over the agency’s ongoing business processes? What about remote sites and facilities?” She doesn’t stoop to mentioning personnel living in subsidized key worker accommodation or relying on regular supplies of biohazardous material for their sustenance; everybody present can figure it out for themselves. “This is totally irresponsible!”
Hastings frowns thunderously. “I don’t know,” he says, voice cracking with frustration. “This came down from the Cabinet Office last night. All I know is what I’ve been told, which is that SOE is being dissolved with immediate effect—”
“Reckless!” someone at the back interrupts, and it’s as if a dam has burst: within seconds almost everyone—and they’re all senior enough to be able to keep a grip on their tongues—is trying to get their word in.
“Please! Let me speak! Please!” Hastings is turning pink at the podium. For a moment Mo wonders if he’s about to have an aneurysm, but gradually the immediate hubbub subsides. “I’m in this with you,” he adds, and suddenly everyone stops talking. A pin could drop with the reverberation of a kettle drum. “The government, for better or worse, has decided to dissolve the agency with immediate effect and, to the best of my knowledge, no active replacement to hand. We, as the agency’s management, are tasked with shutting everything down in an orderly manner and turning out the lights. What happens next”—he looks at the upturned faces, an expression of something like desperation on his face—“let’s just hope they know what they’re doing,” he ends on a near-whisper.
*
It’s a quarter to one and I’m sitting in the break room of the underground custody suite with an empty mug of coffee and the television for company, when a sense of dread steals over me, as if an entire colony of black cats just used my future grave as an outdoor toilet.
I shuffle uncomfortably on the threadbare sofa. Cold sweat begins to prickle on my spine and my pulse is suddenly audible, a drumbeat in my ears. The rolling news has revolved back to today’s human interest story, something about a goat at a petting zoo adopting one of the feral parrots of Regent’s Park, but every nerve is shrieking at me that something is wrong and I need to get out of here now.
Then the door opens. I look up. It’s Jo Sullivan. She doesn’t look happy. “Bob?” She beckons towards me.
“Yeah?” I stand. “Has the duty solicitor—”
She shushes me urgently. “Bob, something’s wrong.”
“Wha—”
She holds up the melted wreckage of a ziplock evidence baggie. Something that might have been my warrant card has gathered in one corner, and the whole thing is dripping wet. “I dunked it in the sink when it went up. Bob, what’s going on?” My expression must be sufficiently eloquent, because before I can put my mouth in gear she adds: “It just went up in flames like a broken cell phone battery. Right after I got word that I’m being called in by the chief super this afternoon. Something about a new desk assignment, new responsibilities.” She focuses on me like a kestrel that’s spotted a field mouse. “Do you know anything about this?”
The skin-crawling sensation is back, extra intense. I extend a finger towards the baggie: “May I—shit.” It doesn’t feel like my warrant card; it feels dead. And I feel adrift. That’s what this is: it’s a lack of certainty, a sense of something missing, like I’m a homing pigeon in a Faraday cage who suddenly can’t sense which way points to magnetic north. “Didn’t Dr. Armstrong say he was sending the duty solicitor round? Like, about two hours ago?”
“Bob. Listen to me.” Jo leans close and drops her voice. She’s putting on the trust-me-I’m-a-police-officer vibe, trying to take control of the situation, or maybe she’s afraid I’ll panic. “Can they revoke your warrant card?”
Huh? “I d-don’t—” I stop speaking and force myself to take a breath. My hands are clammy with a near-panic reaction. Rudderless. Oh, this is bad, very bad indeed. “They wouldn’t do that,” I say, with every microgram of certainty I possess, realizing as I say it that it’s absolutely true. “Jo, you remember Dr. Angleton?” She nods. “You remember I was his understudy?” Another nod, slower this time. “These days I’m not his deputy anymore. They wouldn’t cut me loose any more than the Navy would ignore it if one of their Trident warheads went missing. B-but I-I-I-can’t feel it anymore.”
It’s not like me to have a panic attack, not like me at all, but I’m not sure what’s going on. I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if a million bureaucratic org chart boxes suddenly became vacant. Or maybe like someone with admin rights tried to drunk-empty the Recycle folder across an entire storage area network without warning the users. A huge and reassuring weight at the back of my mind has vanished, taking with it a sense of certainty. I probe at it, like exploring the socket where a tooth has just been removed, and realize what it is. There’s still something there—I have more than one tooth, more than one binding geas—but my regular oath of office is missing.
“I’m not bound anymore,” I tell her, with rising incomprehension. “Jo, have they sacked me?”
“Don’t know,” she says tersely. “But you’re supposed to be in the secure lock-up next door and I’m not allowed to leave you here if you’re, if—” She swallows. Suddenly she looks a lot less raptorial. “Would you mind moving next door?” she asks, almost diffidently. “While we sort this out?”
I look her in the eye, wondering if I can do this. I know Jo. She’s not a friend exactly, but I trust her and respect her judgment and I think she’s a very solid police officer, and normally I’d do as she says without asking questions. Well, more questions than usual. But something about this situation doesn’t strike me as normal, even for being arrested and held in supervillain nick. “I’d like to call the SA again,” I tell her.
She glances sidelong at the door. “There’s no signal down here. Promise to go back in the box afterwards if I take you up to the yard?”
Fuck me, I’m going to hell for this, and I don’t even believe in hell. “I promise. Scout’s honor, on my oath of office.”