*
Mo takes another seventy minutes to ghost around the perimeter of the party, kibitzing on a conversation here, exchanging a smile and pleasantry there, graceful and courteous and forgotten within seconds everywhere she goes. She’s working the middle-aged invisibility field—carefully nursing her power, feeding it with all the skill she’s learned over years as a practitioner of the eldritch arts. It’s a talent she first mastered during the previous year’s close encounter with a nervous breakdown. Women of a certain age tend to be overlooked, unless they go out of their way to make themselves look younger or kick up a stink. Normally it’s a nuisance, but when you have the ability to amplify it to the level of a preternatural power it’s even better than a cloak of invisibility. True invisibility would be a disastrous nuisance (people walk into you; photons travel right through your retinas without stopping, rendering you effectively blind), but Mo’s self-effacing superpower renders her anonymous and uninteresting. Onlookers simply dismiss her and walk on by. Burglars would view her with envious regard—if their eyeballs didn’t slide past her without stopping.
It’s probably a good thing that she’s socially invisible at this event, Mo decides as she pauses to pick up a glass of unadulterated orange juice; the risk of running into people who know her professionally would otherwise be unacceptably high. The Home Secretary isn’t on the guest list—she’s probably at home in her burrow, laying eggs in a paralyzed illegal immigrant or something—but Mo recognizes a deputy commissioner from the Met, the Dean of Music from one of the second-tier London University colleges, several knights and dames and sundry other members of the House of Lords, and a couple of other hangers-on and power groupies. She slinks around in the shadows, avoiding eye contact with intent. Anyone who is here at Schiller’s invitation must be considered a potential recruit for the enemy, if not yet actually possessed. That excludes Cassie, with whom she exchanges a quiet smile and nod in the gallery overlooking the ballroom, then carefully avoids. Mo is the invisible woman, wryly amused—or perhaps just slightly bitter—about the way the world passes her by (although that’s all to the good right now). Having confirmed that everything is in place, Mo continues to whisper her running narrative to the analysts back in the safe house. And as she does so she realizes with sinking heart that Schiller has woven a sticky spider’s web indeed.
He’s not just after power brokers, ministers, and business contacts in the outsourcing and security sectors; the newspaper magnates are a clue, and as the evening rolls on a sprinkling of reality TV stars, actors, and pop celebrities arrive to leaven the mix. Mouthpieces, she thinks. What are the consequences when the government, the media, and the leaders of commerce all speak with one voice? Why, it means that if you hold opinions other than the ones you are told to, you are out of step, and if so, it is best to bite your tongue and be silent. The most efficient kind of censorship isn’t the heavy-handed black inking of the secret policeman; it’s the self-censorship we impose on ourselves when we’re afraid that if we say what we think everyone around us will think us strange.
Mo looks around, and what she sees is the embryonic outline of a new national order taking shape in a salon hosted by a charming, magnetic personality who intends—somehow—to weld them into an establishment that serves his will. It wouldn’t work under normal circumstances (politicians and celebrities are as easy to herd as cats: that’s how the Chief Whip earns the residence on Downing Street), but these are strange days indeed, and if Schiller is the channel that brings the Sleeper’s power to bear on a couple hundred movers and shakers …
She’s making a second, more leisurely pass along the second-floor corridor when she notices a gaggle of discreet private security staff and police officers forming in the grand hallway at the bottom of the staircase. This is of interest: it’s unlike anything she’s seen so far. “CANDID to MADCAP, do we have any VVIPs inbound?”
“Please hold—yes, we have the PM and the Chancellor’s motorcade about two kilometers out. Four cars and four police outriders. Why?”
“I’m seeing preparations at reception. Will update on arrival. CANDID out.” The police and security are dispersing. Most of them exit through the front door, but two take up discreet positions below her, and one armed officer turns and briskly climbs the stairs.
Mo comes to a halt near the top of the staircase, opens her clutch, and palms her warrant card. The uniform has seen her—she makes no attempt to conceal herself from him—but as he sizes her up she pulls her ID. “Security Service,” she tells him, pushing power into the card from Continuity Ops. “Should I assume the PM is arriving?”
Suspicion dissolves instantly beneath the impact of the warrant card’s geas, backed up by Mo’s conviction that she is, in fact, supposed to be here: it’s the unvarnished truth, in fact, for there’s still a Mo-shaped box on MI5’s org chart. “Yes, ma’am. If I can ask you to clear the landing for a few minutes while we conduct our sweep?”
“Certainly. I’ll be in the viewing gallery above the ballroom if you need me.” She turns on her heel and walks towards the balcony, having installed herself in the officer’s awareness as a member of the home team. She sits at one of the tables to take the weight off her feet for a few minutes while a pair of SO6 officers discreetly check the upper floor of the house before taking up positions at the top of the stairs. They’re carrying the usual—MP5s, Glock 17 sidearms, and bulletproof vests—just in case Hans Gruber decides to crash the party. Neither of them notices when Mo pushes back her chair, wraps herself in night and magic, and walks back towards the landing. She leans against the wall behind their backs, smiling at a private joke, as the front door opens and Schiller and his gowned and tuxedoed greeters move in to welcome the two high-value assets and their attendants.