Of course, this assumes that the organization’s assets haven’t fallen into enemy hands already. My binding geas’s absence is a horrible sphincter-tightening hole in my defenses when I realize this. Oversight might have decided to burn me, but you don’t burn a senior officer, much less a designated Unique External Asset, trivially. More likely the undertow that sucked me down to the cells under Belgravia is the very edge of a cat-5 hurricane of enemy action. If we’re being attacked by the highest levels of government in a horrible kind of Civil Service autoimmune disease, if the enemy has uploaded my face to the basilisk guns of the national SCORPION STARE network, then my first warning is likely to come when I burst into flames like a magnesium flare and burn down to a human-shaped cinder in the middle of the pavement.
I realize this as I walk the upper floor of a department store, checking mirrors for secret shoppers following me. But I also realize that it’s unlikely at this stage, a rapid and drastic escalation. If they’re arresting and holding potential threats, then they’re assuming some degree of cooperation; they won’t switch to gunning agents down in the streets instantly. When they do … well, if I have sufficient warning there are countermeasures. On my way out I look thoughtfully at the cosmetics counters on the ground floor, wondering if they’ve got the basics for CV Dazzle. (It’s a set of makeup patterns designed to bamboozle computer vision systems—although they really don’t go with my current Gray Man suit-and-tie disguise: computers and humans recognize anomalies in entirely different ways, unfortunately.) But I’m not willing to half-kill a shop assistant and steal some face paint just on the off chance, so I slip my stolen ID badge into an inner pocket and slip out onto the street again, crossing my fingers and hoping I’m right about the escalation lag.
My hair doesn’t catch fire as I amble along the side streets near Victoria, then double back towards Westminster with my hands in my pockets and my shirt glued to my back by a sheen of cold sweat, so I suppose I’m right. It’s even conceivable that the police haven’t realized I’m missing—nobody but Jo, the SA, and the custody sergeant knew I was meant to be in the secure cell, and Jo won’t be talking for a while—but I’m not betting on it.
I walk for nearly an hour and my feet are beginning to ache—polished leather dress shoes feel like shit compared to my normal trainers or insole-padded combat boots—as I turn down a familiar tree-lined crescent and walk past Persephone’s front door. If I close my eyes it looks like a beacon of occult power, a giant T-shape with the upper floor spreading along the entire block to either side. I tense up and unleash my will to one side, rattling the wards on her front door. The returning zinger is painful even though I’m prepared for it, like having my forebrain stung by an angry cognitive wasp. I nearly stumble, but manage to recover and keep going. Nothing happens immediately so I walk on, then begin to work my way back around until I can pass her front door again. There’s no block pattern in central London, no rhythm or rhyme to the layout and geometry of streets, so it takes me about five minutes (and a couple of embarrassing dead-end cul-de-sac excursions) before I find myself there. And that’s when I realize I’ve picked up a tail, to my utter relief.
“Wotcher, Bob.” Johnny falls into step a couple of paces behind me. He speaks quietly, casting his voice just above the background traffic noise. “Sitrep.”
“Warrant card burned, arrest warrant out with the Met, broke out of Belgravia and need to go to ground. So how was your morning, Mr. McTavish?”
“Fucking awful, mate, it’s not just you who’s having a bad day. ’Seph isn’t home, by the way: spot of bother with the boys from the Border Force, something about her permanent Leave to Remain being revoked and them wanting to haul her off to Yarl’s Wood for deportation to Serbia. You may imagine just how well that went down, especially on account of her actually being an Italian citizen hence not needing that paperwork to live here. Someone, we surmise, has been hacking government databases. Walk on and take the second left, Zero’ll be along in a sec and will pick you up. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to check yer arse for cling-ons.”
Johnny stops following me abruptly, turning to check the pavement behind me for signs of a tail. I could tell him not to bother—I’ve been tasting the minds around me for the past half hour, they all have distinctive aromas and they’re all new since last time I came this way—but I humor him.
Another couple of minutes of aimless dogshit dodging later, I’m walking past a somewhat less up-market row of town houses when a car pulls in ahead of me and pops the passenger door open. “Bob?” It’s Zero, Persephone’s butler, chauffeur, and somewhat spurious bodyguard. “Hop in.”
I don’t even break stride. Moments later I’m belting myself in as Zero pulls away from the curb. It’s a boringly plain silver Peugeot hatchback, so down-market I’m astonished Persephone’s driver would be seen dead in it. “There’s a mask in the glove compartment. Put it on,” he tells me.
I don’t need to be told twice: I open it and grab the horrible, floppy, rubbery Archie McPhee face—Ronald Reagan, if I’m not very much mistaken. “What the fuck.” I pull it on. “Mind telling me why?” I ask.
“ANPR cameras also do face recognition these days,” he tells me. “We don’t want to burn the car.”
“But what about—”
“Relax, Bob, there’s a class five glamour on it to take care of the human factor. Now sit back and enjoy the ride or something. I’m taking you to see the boss lady…”
*
Mo doesn’t keep many personal effects in her office. Partly it’s that she’s only had an office in the New Annex for the past month, and partly because she doesn’t believe in mixing personal and public personas; as it is, there’s just a framed photo of her parents and sister, another of her husband, and a box of antihistamines. She scoops them all into her handbag along with the phone, card, and the SA’s letter, then pauses in the doorway to look back at the room for a moment.
Which is when Mhari clears her throat.
“What?” Mo turns. Mhari waits in the corridor, looking slightly lost, her boardroom shell cracked wide open by the cardboard box she holds in the crook of one elbow.
“Mo? Can I have a word?”
“Sure. Come right in; my door is open.” Mo chuckles wearily and leads her back inside. It feels very unsettling to sit down in her office chair again, so soon after having steeled herself to stand and leave it for the last time. “Is it about…”
Mhari makes eye contact as she takes the visitor chair, smoothing her skirt over her knees neatly. A sign of tension, Mo realizes. “Yes.” Mhari’s face is expressionless, a white doll-mask with crimson lip gloss and perfect wingtip eyeliner hiding the vulnerable skin beneath, but Mo sees the underlying tension, a steel cable wound so tight it’s close to snapping in a whiplash of mayhem that will slice through the flesh and blood of anyone who gets in its way. “About that.”
Mo bites her lower lip. “When did you last feed?” she asks. She’s proud of herself for being able to ask without hesitation or any sign of fear. She doesn’t even bother to scribe the glyph of protection unseen below the edge of her desk, because she trusts Mhari implicitly to a degree that would have been impossible a year ago.
“Friday.” Mhari shrugs. “I can go a while. But the others…” She shakes her head. “No idea, frankly. And that worries me.”