“Good evening.” She pumps a little more sincerity into her smile as she hands over the card and the officer stands to attention. “At ease.” She’s still on the roster as a director at the Transhuman Police Coordination Force. The officer—he’s from the Diplomatic Protection Group at the Met, she sees, but in dress uniform and not carrying—doesn’t have to know that she’s a nonexec now, and on indefinite leave, sliding sideways into irrelevance as the Home Office digests the TPCF and replaces its original staff with their own loyalists. Might as well see what he knows, she thinks. “How’s everything shaping up this evening?” she asks as she climbs out of the Bentley.
“It’s fine so far. The perimeter’s secure, the contract staff passed their checks, and none of the VIPs have kicked off; we’re here for Number Ten and Number Eleven, and once they’ve been and gone we can pack up and go home.”
“Good luck.” She smiles again, then turns and heads towards the open front door and the uniformed but clearly civilian greeters waiting for her.
The distinguished-looking man in the thousand-dollar haircut who is greeting everyone who enters must be Schiller himself, she decides; the photos in the briefing pack don’t do him justice. He’s wearing a wire with his tuxedo, and as she approaches him he rolls out a smile that displays dentistry as expensive as a Porsche. “Dr. O’Brien, from the TPCF? I’m so pleased you could be here tonight! Wonderful to meet you, I’ve heard a lot about your agency. Perhaps we could talk later?”
Mo smiles and nods disingenuously, then says something politely noncommittal; of course TPCF will be on Schiller’s hit list, but it’s a much smaller and less important target than the Laundry, one for the mopping-up round. Another car is already drawing up outside the door and from the stance of Schiller’s companions—an ice-blonde in a designer gown and a shaven-headed mook whose dinner jacket fails to conceal his assault-course muscles—it’s somebody important. “Later,” she adds, and Schiller is already turning back to the red carpet as she slides sideways around the welcoming committee. There is no reason to be resentful. She’s definitely B-list in this glittering company, and very glad of it. Schiller has managed to rope in the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary of State for Defense, and half the cabinet (including the new Minister of Magic). Mere directors of supercop agencies and GovCos are small fry compared to the rock stars of national politics. For which she is deeply grateful. It makes her job much easier, which is to remain invisible until she’s needed.
Mo has done enough formal events in her other role as an academic—and a couple as a diplomat—to be familiar with the drill. You swipe a glass of bubbly, mingle and smile and chat politely, identify targets of interest for later, do not grimace when your feet remind you that you don’t normally wear high heels on marble floors for hours on end, and above all do not mistake the refreshments for hydration fluid or vitamin supplements.
The house is hopping tonight, if somewhat sedately—if you ignore the arm candy and the hospitality staff, the average age would be somewhere north of fifty—and the party has spread out through the linked rooms of the building. It’s old enough that with the exception of the grand hallways the only corridors seem to be for servants; the ballroom and the drawing room and the dining room are all linked by wide doors, currently open, and there’s a pavilion on the lawn where a band is playing. There’s a finger buffet and standing space to one side, seats and low tables for conversation to the other, and dancing in the central ballroom—although whether the pretty young things shaking their moves are hired dancers, escorts, or the children of some of the older guests is hard to tell. Mo glances at the ceiling, past the enormous chandelier and baroque cornices, and spots a musician’s gallery upstairs. As Cassie indicated, it has been turned into a discreet retreat with an overview of the dance floor.
Mo makes her way around the big public rooms, fading in to smile and chat briefly with those she wants to investigate, then stepping back gracefully and allowing them to forget her presence. She makes sure never to stand still for more than a couple of minutes, and she is on guard constantly: while her singular talent for enhanced middle-aged invisibility works perfectly face-to-face, the house is certain to be under continuous CCTV monitoring and if she slips out of character one of the supervisors might notice. This sixtyish fellow here, who is friendly enough if you make allowances for eyeballs that point thirty centimeters below your face, is the managing director of one of the bigger outsourcing contract agencies—Mo gives him an extra-ingratiating smile before she makes herself scarce and moves on—while the seventyish balding gentleman there, with a stunning Italian or Brazilian companion clinging to each of his arms like it’s their life savings, owns at least sixteen regional newspapers. That man there has something to do with investment banking, a half-familiar face from the financial pages. The party is like a Who’s Who of the new elite, the ascendant stars of the British constellation within the global capitalist firmament. Not a composer, artist, or academic among them—that’s for little people—although going by the sounds emanating from the pavilion Schiller has paid a globally renowned chanteuse for the evening.
Mo moves on, quietly dictating notes. Her gaudy earrings are there to distract attention from a minor technological miracle, a Bluetooth headset so small that it resembles a pair of hearing implants. The flesh-colored earplugs pick up everything she says via bone conduction, and her phone is running a background app that relays her comments to Brains in real time and records them locally in event of loss of signal. With the gain turned up even subvocalized comments work. “—Sleazebag Number Three is the chief financial officer of Telereal Trillium, who handles—”
Her chain of thought is rudely interrupted by an excited crackle in her ears: “CHIPMUNK to CANDID! CHIPMUNK to CANDID! Whee, does this thing work?”
Mo manages not to startle as she does a hasty scan. Nobody is watching her. “CANDID here,” she subvocalizes. Then she remembers to pull out her phone and hit the button for push-to-talk. “CANDID to CHIPMUNK, you really don’t need to use the silly code names all the time, Cassie. Sitrep, please.” She holds the phone to her head and fades back against the drawing room wall, between a concealed servants’ doorway and a swag of curtain, as if deep in conversation.
“I’m fine! There’s a new woman in charge of the kitchen tonight, instead of Lisa; I like her, she’s much calmer and easier to work for. Oh, I just saw Ms. Overholt go inside the private corridor under the main staircase! I caught her PIN!”
Mo is instantly on full alert. “What was it?” she asks aloud.
“1-3-3-7! YesYes!”
Someone is not as smart as they think they are, and it’s not the Queen of Air and Darkness. Maybe Schiller’s security think the presence of a PIN-pad lock on the door will deter intruders, or perhaps they just don’t care, but using LEET as the password for a secure installation is just dumb. The nasty possibility that perhaps they want to sucker intruders inside occurs to Mo barely a second later. “Uh-huh,” she says aloud, then, subvocalizing: “CANDID to MADCAP, did you copy that?”
“Copy that,” Brains replies.