By midnight, the reception at Nether Stowe House is in full fling. While Cassie was taking a five-minute toilet break it surged past raucous, and as she exits the below-stairs quarters with a new drinks tray—this one loaded with vodka martinis—she finds the party well on the way to orgiastic excess.
A younger, glitzier crowd arrived after the capital’s more of-the-moment venues closed for the night. They’re bright young things with connections to the older and wealthier fixers Schiller invited as his primary guests: trust fund kids and heirs to family fortunes, here to party and not ashamed to let it all hang out. They’re less likely to grope but more inclined to stumble drunkenly into Cassie’s path, forcing her to swerve: servants are simply part of the furniture. She’s expended all her bugs now, but she can’t leave until her shift ends at three o’clock. “Schiller is going to throw at least two more of these gala evenings,” Mr. Howard told her during the briefing the day before. “We really need you inside all of them, if possible. I know it’s a tough job: can you do it?”
Should have said no, shouldn’t I? she tells herself as she reaches the side table in the Ballroom and starts methodically swapping full glasses for empties. Too late now.
The band has packed up for the night, leaving a sound system playing old eighties synthpop hits, and the air smells of sweat and weed. She’s just finishing with her tray when something catches her attention. An older man with immaculately coiffed silver hair walks past her, chatting over his shoulder to another fellow, portly and balding, with a nose that bespeaks a fondness for spirits. “… don’t care if it’s proving difficult to find a workaround,” the silver-haired man is saying, “I need them available as soon as possible, in this country, regardless of how you go about the import arrangements. Tell Major Riley if you encounter any difficulties, logistics is his speciality…”
The fine hairs on the back of Cassie’s neck rise, but not because of his words: the silver-haired male reeks of mana, and as she turns her inner eye on him she sees huge reserves of thaumic power bound at the cardinal points of his body, at heart and tongue and crotch. It has the same subtly unclean taste-feel-look to it as McGuigan’s. He walks past Cassie, deep in conversation with his colleague, and she pretends not to notice, focusing on her tray—but she notes the direction his feet take, and feels a sharp pang of regret for having spent her last listening tag on a random piece of glassware. “Yes sir, Mr. Schiller,” says the fat man, “I’ll get them here in plenty of time, don’t you worry. There’ll be enough hosts to go round when you need them.”
Cassie shakes her head, then follows the pair at a discreet distance. They head towards the west wing of the building, at ground level, approaching a door marked PRIVATE. Cassie approaches it, steeling herself—
“Where do you think you’re going?” Cassie startles, nearly shedding her load but getting it under control herself at the last second. It’s Ms. McGuigan.
“Lisa said to collect all the empty glasses,” she says artlessly, “I thought…”
“You don’t go in there.” McGuigan’s tone is chilly. “Leave that area alone. I’ll arrange for it to be cleaned. Is that understood?”
“Yes, miss.” Cassie bobs in place, avoiding the woman’s eyes. “Where should I—”
But the security supervisor is already off, heading up the main staircase. That was close, Cassie thinks. The PRIVATE doors are off-limits to hired help? Mr. Howard will be interested, she decides as she turns to take her tray back to the kitchen, paying no attention to the pair of discreet CCTV camera balls overlooking the entrance to the off-limits area of the west wing.
*
“Yes, but what is he doing in those back rooms?” demands the Senior Auditor.
We’re in a no-shit formal meeting of the GOD GAME INDIGO management team, convening in a safe house I’ve never visited before and will never see again.
“I can make a guess,” I say. “So Schiller’s spraying cash like there’s no tomorrow. And there’s the matter of these new leech-things he’s come up with, and it’s pretty clear he’s got something to do with the Cabinet Office decision to shut down the agency. But what about the business contacts from other industries? And the bright young things? Is there something more to this? Because it goes beyond that DELIRIUM playbook the Comstocks leaked to us.”
“Stop speculating, Bob,” Persephone tells me. “Unless you’ve got anything concrete—Doctor?”
Dr. Armstrong shakes his head. “Bob’s right in that it goes beyond simply shutting down a rival agency. This has got to be some sort of major power play. His burn rate is unsustainable, and that’s the smoking gun. The question is, what kind of power play is it? He’s already in a good position to mop up a hugely lucrative outsourcing deal and replace the agency. But is he after political power, or something else? Could he be piloting an endgame run for the Sleeper in the UK rather than on his home ground?”
We’re sitting in a hunched-over circle inside a temporary summoning grid that has locked us into an isolated pocket universe of our own for an hour, a camping lantern on a tripod in the middle providing lighting. The glow of LEDs gives everybody a weirdly washed-out, bleached appearance, underlit with the tops of heads in shadow. It’s just the SA, Persephone, me, and Mo this time around. Vikram’s fighting administrative fires—money laundering rules make it surprisingly hard to boot up a small covert agency without anyone noticing, even if you’ve got access to the House of Lords black budget—Mhari is keeping Alex out of trouble and riding herd on Cassie—an unenviable job—and Boris is running the monitoring suite upstairs from Schiller’s city apartment.
“Let’s see.” Mo flips open the paper organizer she’s carrying around and consults her notes. “He’s on the hook for a million and a half so far for the use of Nether Stowe House. Based on the contract caterers’ invoices it looks like he’s paying just under three hundred thousand for each party—but that’s just the official entertainments budget; the hookers and blow probably cost twice as much on top.” Her lower lip curls in concentration. “Two so far, another planned for next week, it’s ridiculous—if he kept it up for a year his spend would exceed fifty million quid on partying. Let’s see. Add another fourteen thousand a week for the Docklands apartment, and ten thousand for personal transport—three armored luxury limos, helicopter on call to the tune of eight flying hours per week, plus drivers and flight crew—yes, this is all petty cash by Schiller’s standards, but it adds up. Salary and wages for his entourage: he has at least three senior female PAs and four male bodyguards or minders with him. Plus the chauffeurs. As he brought them with him they’re presumably members of his Church, but even so, on American pay scales, ten bodies plus payroll overheads adds up to at least another eight thousand a week.”