“But I’m not a covert ops asset—” She stops, then looks around apprehensively. Right. The vampire has just realized she’s in a meeting populated exclusively by spooks and people who go bump in the night. (What she hasn’t clocked yet is that she’s not out of place in this company.) “What?”
“Short of widening the magic circle, Bob’s running short of bodies,” Persephone points out. “Continuity Ops is already almost fully committed—at least, the part of it the SA has given me to play with while he’s busy doing other things. If we hit a billionaire condo in London’s Docklands with an OCCULUS team, somebody might notice, not to mention the other parallel ops going shorthanded. So we’re going to work out how to get you in and out under cover. Don’t worry, if it goes off the rails I’ll come and fetch you.” She grins. “It’s going to be fun.”
*
Q-Division SOE was not the Prison Service. While we sometimes had to detain people subject to our terms of operation, and sometimes provided security for the Black Assizes, who are called upon to rule in criminal cases dealing with the occult, we didn’t actually run any prisons as such. (Camp Sunshine was a special case—it’s a detention center, but most of the people there are theoretically on remand until they can be deprogrammed and released. And Camp Tolkien is less than a month old.) But sometimes needs must, and when that happened, when it became necessary to lock up someone who we can’t simply bind to silence with a geas and place in the general prison population, we have access to a very special facility indeed, operated by the Prison Service with staff trained by us. And even after Q-Division’s windup, this particular lockup is still in business.
Let me give you a clue: it’s the oldest still-functioning prison building in the UK, if not Europe. (Built in the thirteenth century, in fact.) It has hosted a number of extremely famous prisoners, although it fell out of regular use in the 1950s; its last inmates were the Kray twins, who were banged up in 1952 for a couple of days for ignoring their national service papers. While it has a bloody reputation, only a couple dozen people have been executed on the premises since 1900—most notably spies and traitors during both world wars. Today, it’s mostly preserved as a museum (and the headquarters of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers), but Her Majesty’s prison in the Tower of London still has a couple of cells tucked away in Beauchamp Tower, for our occasional use.
For the past six months, Cell Block Q (as it is unofficially known) has been occupied by a single guest. He’s in solitary confinement, on lockdown twenty-three hours a day, no visitors allowed—and if you think that’s harsh, it gets worse. The prisoner is guarded by four very special Prison Service employees. They’re not youngsters (one of them is over seventy), and the one thing they have in common is that they’re profoundly deaf. Two of them have cochlear implants; but they’re required to physically remove their microphones and leave them at the door before reporting for work. Our prisoner is not allowed paper or writing materials, or internet access, or any way of communicating more complex than a board with carefully preselected words to point to: food, water, heat, light, toilet paper, TV remote, batteries.
Communication is a basic human need. Deprive us of the ability to make a connection with our fellow people and we become depressed or upset within a day or two. Solitary confinement prolonged for more than two weeks is viewed as torture in many enlightened nations. We don’t keep the special prisoner in Cell Block Q incommunicado and under lockdown lightly. But if we don’t, he’ll slip through our fingers within hours, and questions will be asked.
So it causes no little consternation when, one evening, Dr. Armstrong signs himself in and communicates to the shift supervisor his intention of visiting with the prisoner.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t do that.” The senior prison officer crosses his arms uneasily. “We’ve got strict orders here that direct communications aren’t permitted under any circumstances. I’m sure you know why that is.” Prison officers are trained to be assertive, to own any confrontation just as police officers are, but Mr. McCubbin—midfifties, graying, a veteran of Wandsworth and Pentonville—clearly finds the Senior Auditor an intimidating figure. “No exceptions, I’m afraid.”
Dr. Armstrong nods. “The segregation order was made at my suggestion, and signed off by Mr. Justice Gilpin. As you can confirm from the prisoner’s file, if you double-check it. Now, unfortunately a situation has arisen in which it is necessary for somebody to ask the prisoner some questions. I’m here because I have some, ah, natural resistance to the prisoner’s wiles.” He pushes his warrant card across the tabletop, in the direction of Prison Officer McCubbin, who reacts to it as if to a bird-eating spider. “I propose to go in there under your officer’s supervision, for a thirty-minute period, after which I shall leave. Your officer will ensure that I do not pass anything to the prisoner and that I leave alone.” He touches the legal document he brought to back up his warrant card. “As you can see, Mr. Justice Gilpin has signed off on this waiver, as has the Intelligence Services Commissioner. So an exception does exist—for me, and me alone, for a period of half an hour.”
McCubbin picks up the court order and sighs heavily as he rereads the first page. “I’ll need to read this all, and verify its authenticity,” he warns Dr. Armstrong.
“Take your time.” The SA smiles faintly as he picks up his warrant card. “I believe there’s a cafe adjacent to the gift shop. Will an hour be sufficient, do you think?”
(The court order is indeed genuine, although the signature on the ISC waiver is somewhat questionable; it’s certainly the Commissioner’s scrawl, and a copy is on file at the MOD, but if asked he’d swear blind he can’t recall signing it. But in the absence of an actual operational OCCINT agency, it is distressingly easy for a former SOE Auditor to walk in off the street and charm the right executive assistant, literally as well as figuratively—especially with the extraordinary powers vested in him by virtue of his oath under Continuity Ops.)
An hour and a half later the visitor’s cafe has closed for the evening and the lights are on in the supervisor’s office as Dr. Armstrong returns to a more obliging reception. “Good evening, sir. You’ll be pleased to know that it all checks out. If I can see your ID again…? I’ll log you in, then Barry can show you to the visiting room. We’ll still have to search you, I’m afraid…”