“I’ve lost—” She takes a deep breath. “Fuck.” It trips off her tongue more easily than the alternative, the explosive, everything.
“Yes.” He looks at her, stone-faced. “I take full responsibility.”
“Why?” she cries quietly.
“Iris. Look at me.” Dr. Armstrong reaches across the table and takes her beer-sticky hand in his. “Listen to me. Grimalkin, Septangle, Concorde, Wolf. Execute Sitrep One, Mrs. Carpenter.”
Iris defocuses. The world around her loses texture as she hears herself reciting words from a very great distance, as far away as Camp Sunshine. “Subjective integrity maintained. Subjective continuity maintained. Subject observes no tampering.”
“Exit supervision.” Armstrong glances at her whisky, deceptively casually. “That concludes your role in Operation CONSTITUENCY. You might want to drink that now.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because it’s the best they had in the house, and shouldn’t go to waste. Nothing less than you deserve.”
Iris looks at the glass for a moment, then glares at him and tosses the entire measure back in one defiant, convulsive gulp. Dr. Armstrong watches for the entire duration of the ensuing coughing fit, but holds his counsel.
“What now?” she finally asks hoarsely. “Why now? Why me?”
The SA makes a steeple of his fingers. “Are you up to date on the news from Yorkshire?”
“I think—I read the papers on the train down—is it as bad as it looks?”
“It’s worse. Infinitely worse. Everything we’ve been working for, all the sacrifices you made—it’s all going to be in vain. The idiots in Whitehall are trying to sell us down the river. They liquidated the agency and they’re trying to outsource the remains of ops to a fellow called Raymond Schiller, who just happens to be the current host of the Sleeper in the Pyramid. The Prime Minister belongs to him. The Cabinet Office is his plaything. His followers have riddled the Black Chamber like maggots in a coffin, they’re making a power play in Washington, DC, and now it very much looks as if they’re trying to take over here as well.”
“No. That can’t be. It’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is,” he says gently. Her shoulders are shaking as she reaches for her other glass. “All the good work you did, all the sacrifices you made—running the CONSTITUENCY honeypot, all the sanctioned horrors—all thrown away by the idiots who run the country.”
Iris begins to tear up. “Not possible. Damn them!”
“I am informed that there’s still time to turn it around, but we’re going to have to act fast and it’s going to be very ugly indeed. There are some delicate negotiations to be undertaken, and the question of a new chain of command. The agency has provisions for Continuity, but for now most hands are raised against us.”
“Well fuck … what do you want me to do? I assume that’s why you brought me here? Do you want to swear me in again, bind me to this Continuity thing? You know there’s no love lost between my Master and the Sleeper?”
“Yes, and you are correct: you’re an escaped detainee, on the blacklist if any of the bumbling cretins who’re going through the agency’s files think to look: clearly not one of us. So I’m going to administer a new oath—there’s no conflict of interest—and tonight you’re going to check into a hotel. Your choice, I don’t need to know which. There’s a clean credit card, ID, a smartphone, and a few little extras, and a PIN for the card in here”—Dr. Armstrong hands her an envelope—“and you’re going to catch some sleep, because tomorrow you’re going to play tourist.” He gives her a crooked smile. “Have you ever visited the Tower of London? There’s some fascinating history there—some of it still in the making.”
*
It has been a busy month for Raymond Schiller. Organizing and supervising the special parties at Nether Stowe House is a grind, even after his direct oversight is no longer required all the time. Bernadette McGuigan, herself now a handmaid and initiate of the Inner Temple, is able to run most of the proceedings, with the assistance of security supervisor Dan Berry and Phil in the Events Management Department, but Schiller is the prize draw, the golden handshake that attracts the guests like moths to a flame as word about the private prayer sessions gets around—and a certain amount of seduction and flesh-pressing still falls to him.
This is as nothing compared to the mechanics of setting up the UK arm of GP Security to handle the operational responsibilities of the vanquished enemy, and to contain the damage spreading from the rogue occult intelligence agency that has been allowed free rein for too long. The mop-up is proceeding to plan, although a worrying proportion of the target’s senior personnel are still missing, having scuttled into dark corners like vermin; but with their lines of funding severed at the source they won’t remain effective for long. Schiller has been spending too much of his precious time at the complex near Heathrow, chairing committee meetings and establishing lines of control. Luckily he has been able to delegate: Anneka, busy working with Minister Grove, has actually inserted herself into his staff as a special advisor (with a nod and a wink to Adrian Redmayne in the Cabinet Office for seeing to it). Greedy, ideologically driven, and a fellow traveler by inclination, Grove is almost too good to be true; the sooner Anneka initiates him into the Inner Temple the better. But they have hit an obstacle: Anneka has determined that Grove is not going to be an easy initiation. Political zeal and shared interest in turning a profit is all very well, but personal matters have stalled progress towards his induction—
“It’s not my fault he’s a sodomite,” Anneka interrupts Schiller’s musing from the other side of the enormous and luxuriously appointed living room. She leans back on the sofa and stretches, then smiles a come-hither smile. Pencil skirt, high heels, silk-sheathed legs converging: Schiller forces himself to look away, his pulse speeding. “You see?” she adds. “Most men can’t help it, the pupillary reaction is there even if they point their gaze somewhere else. Grove simply isn’t interested. But when he sees a hunky young man—”
“Enough, please.” Schiller waves his hand as if attempting to disperse a foul odor. “1 Corinthians 6:9 is incontrovertibly—”
“Superseded by the Third Revelation of St. Enoch?” Anneka smiles lasciviously and slowly spreads her knees.
Schiller takes a deep breath. “Now is not the time, for the mortification of the flesh draws near…”