“Which ones?”
“You know perfectly well—” She stops dead and squints at him, red-eyed, then takes a deep breath. “Dr. Angleton, for one, and his gofer Bob, for another. They think I—” She stops again. “What?”
“I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you.” Dr. Armstrong glances down at the table. “Angleton’s dead. Nothing to do with your—I mean, it was an entirely different threat situation. There were other changes, while you were away.”
“Other changes.” Iris frowns. “Such as?”
“Mr. Howard is James’s successor.” At her double take, Armstrong adds, “Not only in post but in practice—he’s coming along very nicely.” While she’s absorbing this, he continues: “Andy Newstrom, Doris Greene, Judith Carroll, and a bunch of others died during an incursion last year. Gerry Lockhart is suspended—arrested, in prison on remand awaiting trial—following events in Leeds. Most of our senior personnel—Mahogany Row—are currently avoiding spurious arrest warrants arranged by the enemy. Dr. O’Brien, Bob’s other half, is our newest Auditor. Right before we came under attack we were integrating new and unexpected add-ons on the org chart: vampires and elves and other strange creatures out of legend. Dragons, even. And that’s barely scratching the surface.”
Iris snorts dismissively. “Next you’ll be telling me werewolves are real.”
“No, of course”—he shakes his head—“that is to say, I really hope not.” For a moment he almost musters up a smile, but it slips away. “But we’re currently running Continuity Operations in the absence of a mandate from Parliament. We’re very short-staffed. The enemy attacked us from the top down, very suddenly, while operations were already disrupted by the crisis in Yorkshire. If a sister agency in the United States hadn’t tried to warn us we might have missed it completely. First they destroyed our legal standing with the rest of the Civil Service by getting the PM and the Cabinet Secretary to announce our dissolution, then they attacked our budget via the Treasury—not just cutting off our funding overtly, but aiming the Serious Fraud Office anti–money laundering teams at our fallback resources. They generated spurious crime reports targeting individual members of Mahogany Row, starting with those who were already known to them and then adding names from the files they obtained when their subcontractors went into our recently vacated offices. They already did this once, in the United States—they used the same protocol against the Comstock Office, and only the fact that a very brave man leaked their transcripts to us has enabled us to keep ahead of the ball.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “It’s hard to credit. You’re certain the attackers all work for that thing? The Sleeper in the Pyramid?”
“As certain as can be.”
“Well,” she mumbles, “now nothing makes sense.”
The SA sighs. “There’s a historical precedent.”
“Oh? Do explain, please.”
“Japan, in August 1945.” He frowns. “The popular wisdom is that after the USA dropped two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered to avoid being nuked into oblivion. But that’s not actually the whole story. A few days before the first atom bombing, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and within days the Red Army had shattered the Japanese army in Manchuria. It’s hard to exaggerate how devastating the attack was: it was one of the biggest, most successful land offensives of the Second World War, although it’s virtually unknown in the West. The Americans and British were preparing to invade Japan in November, which was bad enough, but the Japanese government was even more frightened of the prospect of an invasion by the USSR. The atom bombs allowed them—gave them an adequate excuse—to make their peace with the lesser evil.”
“You’re telling me—”
The SA straightens, his eyes angry. “The Sleeper is not the lesser evil! It’s—” He catches himself. “There are no good guys in this war,” he says, forcing himself to measure out his words calmly, “but at least your master wants us alive. Some of us,” he corrects himself grimly. “Your master is happy to indulge his willing servants with a semblance of freedom, and to ignore the rest; the Sleeper leaves only soul-raped slaves and walking corpses behind.”
Iris gives him a sidelong look. “Trust me, Doctor, currying favor isn’t going to work. He’ll see right through you. He’s not just a sharp suit and a witty quip for the cameras, he’s one of them. He’s totally out of your league. If you try and play games…”
“He’ll win, yes, I know. We’re not stupid, Iris, we are Mahogany Row and we are aware that the only way to win this game is not to play. Nevertheless.” He tilts his head towards her. “We have been dragged, kicking and screaming, all the way to this scaffold; all that is left is to do the thing gracefully. Take the house and the money, Iris. Think about what I said. The new agency is going to need sound leadership, and you, at least, have no particular reason to fear our new Lord and master.”
*
It’s the Friday before HUMMINGBIRD and Mo and I have sallied forth from the safe house together to attend a meeting. I am in a good mood, and even the constant urge to look over my shoulder and cringe at the sight of CCTV cameras can’t dampen it. She holds my hand; she’s in a good mood too, I think.
So I book us an Uber to the railway station, then take a taxi for a trip around the block fetching back up at a bus station, then take a beaten-up old Stagecoach over to the next town, then she orders an Uber on her account to break continuity … and eventually we fetch up in a rented hotel office with the other waifs and strays (Mhari, Johnny, and Persephone), drinking coffee from a thermos and chatting about nothing in particular while Johnny checks the room out for listeners and other occult bugs. The jitters only cut in when he gives us the all-clear and then nerd-boy vampire and his maniac pixie dream girl slip through the door; she gives me the stink-eye for no reason I can establish, and Mo raises an eyebrow at me. She looks tense now. The gang’s almost all here, for values of gang that approximate to the active members of the INDIGO HUMMINGBIRD team. A couple of other bodies filter in and stack against the wall—we’re up to standing room only—then the SA arrives, closes the door, and bars it with a word that makes my back teeth ache and my vision blur. He clears his throat.
“Johnny, would you mind pulling back the curtain? Yes, it’s just the television, if you please.”
Dr. Armstrong looks as tired as I feel, as if he’s been up all night struggling with his conscience. Mo takes hold of my wrist. “This is going to be tough,” she whispers in my ear. “Try not to sound off until you’ve heard him through, okay?” She sounds tense, and that in itself is enough to curdle my stomach.