“Him Downstairs? At nine a.m.?” She shudders. “Rather you than me. Give him my regards.”
“I will.” And with that I’m out the door and double-timing it up to the end of the street and the hidden cycle path which runs along the bed of the former Necropolitan Line that transported corpses to London’s largest graveyard in the late nineteenth century. It’s a useful short-cut, affording those who know how to use it a one-kilometer journey between points that are five kilometers apart on the map. I’d normally get the tube—the ley lines are best used sparingly: human traffic is not all that they carry—but I want to beard the lion in his den before I get sent up to groom the tiger.
Fifteen minutes later I surface in a back alley off a side street a block from the New Annex. I look both ways for feral taxi drivers, cross the road briskly, and insert my passkey in the drab metal panel beside a door at one end of an empty department store frontage.
Welcome to my work.
My department of the Laundry is based in the New Annex for the time being. Dansey House, our headquarters building, is currently a muddy hole in the ground as a public-private partnership scheme rebuilds it. Despite the current round of cuts, our core budget is pretty much inviolate. I heard a rumor that our unseen masters in Mahogany Row found it quite difficult to get the message across to the treasury under the current bunch of clowns, but once fully briefed not even a cabinet of sadomasochistic monetarists would dare downsize the department charged with protecting their arses from CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. Unfortunately neither Mahogany Row nor the Audit Department can do anything to make Bob the Builder complete a major new inner-city property development on time. And so we’re nearly two years into a twelve-month relocation, and it’s beginning to feel painfully permanent.
I’m early. The night watchmen have retreated to their crypts in the subbasement, but most of the department are still on their way in to work. I trudge to my office—I have an office all of my own these days, with a door and everything—collect my coffee mug, shuffle to the coffee station, fill it with brown smelly stuff, then head down the back stairs and along a dusty windowless passageway towards an unmarked green door.
I pause for a moment before I knock, and a hollow voice booms from within: “Enter, boy!”
I enter.
Angleton is sitting behind his desk, a huge gunmetal-gray contraption surmounted by something that looks like a microfiche reader as hallucinated by Hieronymus Bosch. (Or perhaps, going by the fat cables that snake under its hood, H. R. Giger.) Tall, pallid, with skin like parchment drawn tight across the bones beneath, he’s the spitting image of every public school master who held the upper fifth in an iron grip of disciplined terror on TV in the 1960s. Which is appropriate, because for some years in what passed for his youth he was indeed a public school master. Only now he’s my boss, and even though I’m well into my third decade he still calls me boy.
“Hi, boss.” I pull out the creaky wooden guest chair and sit down.
It’s a funny thing, but ever since the clusterfuck last summer I’ve lost some of my fear of Angleton. I don’t mean to say that I don’t treat him with respect—I give him exactly the same degree of respect I’d give a live hand grenade with a missing safety pin. It’s just that now that I know exactly what he is, I’ve got something concrete to be terrified of.
Eater of Souls.
“Make yourself at home, Bob, why don’t you.” His glare is watery, a pro forma reprimand delivered with sarcasm but no real sting. “To what do I owe the honor of your presence?”
“Interesting training course at Sunningdale Park.” I bounce up and down on the rusty mainspring of the chair. It must be the coffee, or something. “I ran into an interesting fellow. Name of Gerry Lockhart.” I grin. “He gave me a book.” Bounce, squeak, bounce, squeak.
I’m bluffing, of course. They kept me so damn busy I didn’t have time to read more than the first couple of chapters—but I checked the Wikipedia entry, just in case.
“Do stop that, there’s a good boy.” The wrinkles around his eyes deepen into a scowl. “What precisely was the book, may I ask?”
“Oh, some potboiler about a wild man who used to work for the Dustbin, back in the day.” MI5. “Reds under the bed, that kind of thing.”
I wait for a few seconds. Angleton continues to stare at me, his expression icy. Finally, he thaws—but only by a degree or two.
“Peter Wright.” The way he pronounces the name I’m pretty sure he intends it to rhyme with Wrong. “A dangerous crank.”
“Oh, really? I suppose you knew him?” Never mind that Wright retired in 1976; Angleton’s been with the Laundry for a very long time indeed. “What exactly did Wright do wrong?” What lesson am I meant to draw from this book? in other words. (See, I’m not above cheating at homework.)
Angleton closes his eyes, then leans back in his chair. “Crazies and loose cannons,” he mutters. Then he opens his eyes again. “Bob. The cold war ended in 1991. How old were you?”
Huh? “I was fourteen. I saw it on telly; I remember being scared of a nuclear war when I was a toddler. Afraid of my ma being burned to a crisp if Maggie or Reagan were serious about the ‘bombing in fifteen minutes’ thing.”
“I see.” I see Angleton contemplating the situation from a very different perspective, trying to work out how to explain something to someone so impossibly young that the Vietnam War was ancient history before he was born and men haven’t walked on the moon in his lifetime. “That was indeed one aspect of the confrontation. But only in the later stages. Earlier on, things were, if anything, crazier. And today we are required to work within the constraints established to keep the bad crazy, as you youngsters would call it, from breaking out again.”
“The bad crazy?”
“In the early 1960s—you’ve heard of Philby, Burgess, and Maclean?”
Toothpaste or spy? “Yes.” At least, I’ve heard of them since I read Lockhart’s book.
“Then, in light of recent events you will appreciate just how…crazy…MI5 went in the aftermath of their exposure as Soviet moles. Yes?”
I shudder. “Yes.” Eight months ago our own mole problem broke surface. I rub my right upper arm with my left hand. It aches savagely for a moment, then subsides. Moles are voracious underground predators; they’re poisonous and they’ll eat anything. Some of the latest crop even tried to eat me.
“There were excesses,” Angleton says blandly. “Then they went too far. Wright was on the FLUENCY committee, investigating possible Soviet moles that had been missed. They began seeing spies everywhere, especially after someone upstairs who shall remain nameless gave them access to GREY CADAVER remote viewing intel. Trade union leaders, senior civil servants, television comedians, politicians, cabinet ministers. It went right to the top. They forced out a junior health minister who was suspected of spying for Czech intelligence. Then they branched out into the broader media. They bugged the FBI team who were bugging The Beatles. Some say that Mary Whitehouse got her start as one of their junior inquisitors. By 1968 they’d commissioned a study on installing a pyre in the former Star Chamber in Whitehall so they could burn witches—using North Sea gas, of course. It was a terribly British witch hunt. Their paranoia knew no bounds—they wrangled the BBC into canceling the fifth series of Monty Python because they thought the canned laugh tracks might contain coded messages to KGB sleeper agents.
“Finally, they began to investigate the prime minister, Harold Wilson. Wilson, Wright was convinced, was a KGB agent.” I’m nodding along like a metronome at this point. “There was a group, a cabal if you like, of MI5 officers. About thirty of them. They actually planned a coup d’état in 1972. They were going to stick Lord Louis Mountbatten in charge of a provisional military government, herd all the suspected spies into Wembley Stadium, and shoot them. They were even going to replace the House of Commons with Daleks.”
I roll my eyes. I can tell when Angleton is yanking my chain: “Even the tea lady?”
“Yes,
Bob. Even the tea lady.” Angleton looks at me gravely. “When will you learn to read your briefing documents?”
“When they don’t land on my head disguised as a pulp bestseller when I’m in the middle of an intensive training course.” I sit up. “So, the 1960s and early 1970s: deeply paranoid, or merely full of obsessive-compulsive witch hunters? How does this affect us now?”
Angleton leans across his desk and makes a steeple of his fingers: “The point, boy, is that ever since that time of unbound paranoia the one unbreakable law of the British secret services has been: Thou shalt not snoop on Number Ten. Because we are not in the business of generating policy—it’s not a task for which agencies like ours are suited, and in those countries where spooks set policy, it always ends in tears. We vet politicians on the way up—that’s an entirely different matter—but by the time they’re moving into Number Ten they should already be above suspicion; if they aren’t, we haven’t been doing our job properly. And that’s very important because we are ultimately answerable to them. Our loyalty is to the Crown; the Prime Minister, as leader of the government, is the person in whose office that authority is vested. He or she issues our marching orders. So we obey Rule One at all times. Are you with me so far?”
“Um. I guess so. All very sensible, I suppose. Except…” I frown. “What has this got to do with me?”
“Well, boy…” Angleton fixes me with a bright, elfin smile—and I am abruptly terrified. “What do you think happens when an investigation in progress runs into the Prime Ministerial exclusion zone?”
TWO HOURS LATER AND TWO FLOORS UP IN ANOTHER WING OF the New Annex I knock on another door. It’s a wider and much more imposing door, with a brass nameplate screwed firmly to the wood: LOCKHART, G. And there’s a red security lamp and a speaker beside it.
The speaker buzzes. “Enter.” It’s like a visit to the dentist. I go inside, unsure of the ailment I’m here to have diagnosed—just gripped by an unpleasant certainty that it’s going to hurt.
Gerry Lockhart rates a big corner office with a window, decent carpet, and oil paintings. I have no bloody idea where those come from—presumably Facilities have a sharing arrangement with the Government Art Collection—but it’s a new one on me; aside from the always-empty offices on Mahogany Row, nobody in this organization rates any kind of eyeball candy unless it’s a Health and Safety or Security poster. When the door opens he’s sitting, poring over some papers on his desk; he hastily flips a black velvet cloth over the documents, slips off his half-moon reading glasses, then stands and extends a hand.
Gosh. He’s offering to shake hands. For a moment I hesitate and almost glance over my shoulder to see who’s behind me: then we shake.
“I trust you had a good weekend, Mr. Howard? Recovered from last week’s dog and pony show?”
I roll my eyes. “It was very educational.” I am officially educated: it says so right there on my personnel record. I’m not sure I learned anything, but that wasn’t exactly the object of the exercise. “It’s good to be back at work.”
He gestures at one of the visitor chairs—opposite his desk, not off to one side, I note. “Have a seat.” I sit down; it’s better than standing. “I suppose you’re probably wondering what this is about. And if you’ve got any sense, you’re wondering why it involves you. Aren’t you?”
His manner is precise, fussy with an edge of ex-military discipline to it. But thanks to last Monday evening’s encounter I knew what to expect, so I ironed my trousers and wore a clean and un-scuffed pair of trainers. I see the ghost of a frown of disapproval at my lack of a tie, but he’s almost making a point of not mentioning it. Which is interesting in its own right. “Yes, I’m curious. I’ve never been assigned to Externalities before. Or worked with your people.” I draw the line at asking What exactly is it that you do? Sometimes people can be a bit touchy about that sort of thing.
“Your reluctance to sound ignorant does you credit, but there really is no reason to dissemble, Mr. Howard.” Lockhart’s cheek twitches, nudging the hindquarters of the hairy caterpillar that is sleeping on his upper lip. “There’s no reason for you to have heard of Externalities, and every reason why you shouldn’t; need to know and all that.” He clears his throat. “You’ve been to see Angleton, of course. What did he tell you about me?”
That’s easy: “He didn’t.”
“Good.” Lockhart’s sudden smile is feral. “And what does that tell you? Feel free to speculate.”
“Oh?” Now I glance round, just in case a couple of blue suits from Operational Oversight have sneaked in behind me. “Well…Externalities is a really suggestive name for a small subdepartment, isn’t it? Utterly ambiguous—meaningless, really. There’s a box on the org chart under Facilities, and a couple of dotted lines leading to Ways and Means and Human Resources, and that’s it. Small staff, boringly mundane subdivision of the paperclip police. Nobody would ever look twice at it, except…”
“Yes?”
I take a deep breath. “You’re borrowing Angleton’s assistant. I think that says it all, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t get above yourself, Mr. Howard.” His smug expression belies his tone. “Just so that you know where you stand, everything I am about to tell you about this particular asset is classified BASHFUL INCENDIARY. Dr. Angleton is on the approved list, and—now—so are you. Your line manager (that would be Mr. Hinchliffe this month, would it not?) is not so cleared. Neither are your barber, your wife, or your pet cat, and I’d appreciate your cooperation in not spreading the magic circle. Under pain of your oath of office.”
I nod, jerkily. This is some heavy shit he’s drawing down. The oath of office here in the Laundry is rather draconian: forfeiting your eternal soul is only the beginning. “Uh. You asked for me for a reason. Can I ask why?”
“Hmm. I did not ask for you. You were recommended, and after due discussion it was agreed that you were eminently qualified for, and in need of the management experience that you can gain in, this posting.”
Management experience? I feel an oh-shit moment coming on. “Um. Question mark?”
“Here in Externalities, we monitor organizational assets that are largely outside the usual lines of control—beyond regular management.” Lockhart smiles blandly.
“Paperclips? Attached to interdepartmental memos?” That’s improbable enough on the face of it. Most intelligence agencies are fanatical about locking down the hardware, banning phones and USB sticks and iPods from the premises. The Laundry takes a different approach, and focuses on securing the people, not the property—although sometimes this leads to, shall we say, misunderstandings in our dealings with other agencies.
“Paperclips, other assets.” Lockhart waves dismissively. “People on external assignment, for example. We provide support for senior executives on request. And it goes both ways. We also keep track of external contractors.”
“External what?” I stumble into disbelieving silence. External contractors? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Not here, not in an agency that promiscuously hires anyone and everyone who stumbles across the truth—makes them a job offer they can’t refuse, inducts them under the authority of an appallingly strong geas, and keeps them busy chasing paper until it’s time to retire. “But we don’t employ external contractors! Do we?”
“No, we don’t. Not as such.” His expression is so arch you could hang a suspension bridge from it. “Tell me, Mr. Howard, have you eaten recently?”
“No—”
“Then you’ll have no objection to accompanying me to lunch at a restaurant, will you? The organization’s paying.”
I boggle. “Isn’t that against accounting regs or something?”
“Not when I’m briefing a pair of contractors, Mr. Howard. Your job is to sit tight, ears wide, and listen. When we get back here afterwards there will be an exam. If you pass, then I shall explain what I want you to do for the next couple of weeks.”
“And if I don’t pass?”
“Then you go
back to Dr. Angleton with a recommendation for some more training courses. And I shall have to do the job myself.” His cheek twitches at the prospect. I am beginning to get a handle on the code. That is an unhappy twitch: the caterpillar has indigestion. “However, that would not be an ideal outcome, because the job in question appears to be well-matched to your strengths.”
Damn him, he’s clearly been taking lessons from Angleton on best practice for baiting the Bob-hook. “Okay, I’ll bite. Lunch with a contractor, then an exam. Where do I start?”
“Right here.” And Lockhart folds back his black cloth, picks up a slim dossier headlined BASHFUL INCENDIARY, and watches vigilantly while I read it.
AFTER AN HOUR’S READING, MY HEAD IS SPINNING. MIDWAY through the dossier, Lockhart—evidently satisfied by my absorption—tiptoes out of the office for a quick fag or something. I hear the door lock click behind him. Luckily I don’t need a toilet break. The file is quite slim, but the contents—or rather, their implications—are explosive.
Here’s the rub. The Laundry runs on three inviolate rules:
1) We make a point of recruiting—conscripting, really—everyone who learns the truth. That’s how I ended up here. We have a place for everyone (and make sure everyone knows their place).
2) It is a corollary of the preceding rule that we never employ external contractors. There are no independents.
3) Finally, and most importantly, the security services—of which we are one—do not snoop on Number Ten.
But all of these rules come with a sanity clause.
Take the first rule. It’s how everyone I know (Angleton excepted) came to work for the Laundry. We stumbled across something ghastly that we couldn’t handle, and before it could apply the Tabasco sauce and find us crunchy but good with fries the Laundry came and rescued us, then made us a job offer we weren’t allowed to refuse.
In my case, I nearly landscaped Wolverhampton with an unfortunate experimental rendering algorithm. (For my sins, they stuck me in IT Support for three years; on the flip side, I didn’t die.)
The Apocalypse Codex Page 6