In this case, Johnny is working to a countdown timer and knows exactly what he’s going to dress me in. Which is why precisely sixteen minutes after we walked in the door we walk out again with a cheap backpack slung over my shoulder, which includes all the elements to make up No. 13 temperate barrack dress (Army Legal Services Branch) in my size, along with appropriate insignia for a major with a law degree, and a few extras. Some of it is secondhand, some of it is new, but it all fits, and between the glamour Persephone’s working up for the rubber mask and Johnny’s coaching on how to Talk Officer it might just work.
Back at the safe house I discover that the SA has already left. While Persephone is doing something unspeakable to the rubber mask in the kitchen, Johnny sets me to work with spray starch and a steam iron, explaining the requirement for razor-sharp creases with a sergeant major’s sarcasm while he blacks up both pairs of boots. His own costume is, unsurprisingly, already hanging in the wardrobe; I’m pretty certain that when Johnny impersonates an NCO he’s doing so from firsthand experience.
I’ve just about finished the shirt when Persephone walks in. “Try this for size,” she says, holding out a flaccid mask.
“Must I?” I take the thing and pull it on over my face.
“Great work, Duchess!” Johnny seems to approve.
Persephone cocks her head to one side as she inspects me. “Yes, I think it’ll do,” she says after a bit. “All right, my work here is done.” A brief flicker of concern as she glances at Johnny: “Bring them back alive, please, I’ll be too far away for backup if it goes pear-shaped.”
“What?” I say, but it comes out muffled because the mask is half-covering my face, and she’s already out the door by the time I wrestle my spare face into submission. “Where’s she going?” I demand.
Johnny gives me a very odd frown. “Ye dinna wanna ken,” he says, accidentally dropping out of his usual fake two-bob Cockney and into something not unlike his original Highlands dialect.
“Well that’s okay then,” I say, and get back to ironing.
*
Early the next morning I dress in my new duds, mask and all, and follow Johnny—turned out as a sergeant in the Military Provost Guard Service—down to the car park, where we take Zero’s Peugeot hatchback out for a spin. Johnny is carrying a bunch of paperwork that arrived by courier overnight; the SA’s little helpers have been busy, and I get a nice warm glow of reassurance from knowing that not everyone’s hand is raised against us—at least, not yet. For my part, I’m trying to look like a major in the Service Prosecuting Authority, which is to say, an army prosecutor. They’re both plausible roles for visiting a prison, and as we barrel along the M5 towards Bristol Johnny drills me in what I’m going to say to get us inside the fence and I drill Johnny in what we’re going to say in order to get out again.
(What I’m going to say to get us out again is another matter entirely, but we’ll worry about that when we get there, shall we?)
Dartmoor is both a national park and a big steaming pile of moorland in the southwest of England. It’s piled on top of the largest granite extrusion in the country, and is dotted with tors—low hills—where the underlying rock peeps through the low scrubby cover. Finally, despite much of it being the aforementioned national park, other areas are reserved for use by the army as firing ranges. Right now we’re on our way to one of those firing ranges where I am led to understand the Royal Artillery have an MLRS rocket launcher and a gang of howitzers set up and zeroed in on a target area just on the other side of one of those granite tors, which some asshole with a warped sense of humor has named Camp Tolkien.
There are wards around the camp. There are guards with machine guns and dogs and a razor wire fence bearing signs in Elvish—ahem, in the alf?r Low Tongue script—saying DANGER OF DEATH. There are also trip wires and searchlights and other defenses I know better than to ask about. The artillery is there in case of a mass jailbreak attempt, but nobody is taking any chances, even though the Host surrendered to us unconditionally. Their hierarchical social order is rigidly controlled by geas, which means there is a single point of failure, and if All-Highest accidentally chokes on her Cheerios … well, incoming fire has right of way, as they say.
Okay, so the Daily Mail would be really happy to put them all in a field and bomb the bastards, to quote the immortal Kenny Everett; or failing that, to ship them back where they came from because hanging’s too good for them. The usual engines of public outrage over-revved and burned out completely in the wake of the events in Leeds. We’re so used to shrieking and wailing displays of grief over the military equivalent of an ingrown toenail that a real attack left the media speechless. As for the surrender immediately afterwards …
I am merely a DSS. I do not personally report to the Board of Directors. (The SA reports to them via an intermediate level; people at my level are reported on.) But I am led to believe that obtaining this fragile peace required a personal visit to Number Ten by the entire Board, who explained to the PM in words of one syllable the likely consequences if he followed his first (public relations) instinct and repudiated the acceptance of their surrender. (Hint: immediate resumption of unconditionally hostile action by the survivors of the alf?r Host. Hint: the undermining of every occult binding ever actioned by agents of the government. Hint: violation of the Benthic Treaties and other binding agreements with the Great Powers we do not speak of in public.)
And so to Camp Tolkien, where we keep the elven equivalent of the SS Panzer division that just parked itself on our doorstep, while the people who are paid to deal with the hard questions figure out just what to do with them. (Best non-self-destructive proposal so far: send them to Syria and set them on the Islamic State nutjobs.)
We get through an outlying perimeter checkpoint five miles up the road on the basis of our paperwork and Johnny’s rottweiler growl, but we’re not allowed to get any closer to the camp than the outer fence. Johnny parks up outside the outer fence between an Army Land Rover and a tank transporter. The guard hut by the gate is a converted freight container that looks as if it just came back from Camp Bastion in Helmand. “We have to walk from here, sir,” he tells me, deadpan in character. Typically, the drizzle in Exeter has graduated to a steady cold spring rain.
“Lead on,” I say, and he’s off at a quick march to the human-sized door beside the main vehicle gates.