Lecter is bound by geas to serve the Laundry, and my superiors have entrusted him to me because they think I’m a safe pair of hands. I’m responsible unless and until I can find a new bearer to hand him over to, and I can’t in all good conscience condemn someone else to what he’ll inevitably do to their mind. So I’m stuck with him unless I can find a legitimate reason to destroy him. But one does not go cap-in-hand to the Board of Directors to request the destruction of an irreplaceable offensive artifact just because of a spot of relationship trouble. Short of obtaining clear evidence that Lecter has become a danger to the organization, getting the SA to agree to sign off on a formal request for his destruction, and running it up the chain to the board, I don’t see any permanent way out of my present fix.
On the other hand, a nice relaxing swim in the Channel doesn’t have to be permanent.
Thinking these thoughts I walk upstairs, unseal the ward on the wardrobe, remove the violin case, and carry it back down to the kitchen table. Then I open the lid and stare at the thing inside.
“Do you know what I’m thinking?” I ask.
The violin lies still, quiescent and inert in its coffin lined with ivory silk.
“I went to the opera today,” I tell him. “I went outside without you. For the second time this week.” It’s true: the meeting at ACPO and my afternoon with Jim and Sally are the only times this year that I’ve allowed myself to get more than a hundred meters away from him. “I’m still mad at you. But now I know something else: I can live without you.” Modulo some withdrawal symptoms, but… “What do you think of that?” I’m not sure that I can live without my instrument, but I’m not prepared to live with him if we can’t establish exactly who’s in charge of our relationship. “What do you say?”
***Sorry.***
“I’ve been thinking,” I muse aloud: “Destroying you, unbinding you, would be difficult. Not to mention extremely hard to obtain authorization for. I can send you to sleep with the fishes for a while, but that wouldn’t stop you finding a new host, would it? Maybe the best thing would be if I just admit defeat and surrender you. I can tell Dr. Armstrong I can’t carry you any longer. I can tell him why, and I can tell him, warn him that you’re growing stronger. They’ll need a more powerful player to control you. And those don’t come along very often, do they? So they’ll carry you back to that humidity-controlled safe in the basement of Dansey House and seal you up alone in the dark again, and this time it’ll be for months or years. Maybe decades. All alone in the dark.”
***Please don’t do that.***
“So it’s please now, is it?” I shout, thumping the kitchen table so that the violin case bounces. “Well, tough!” I take a deep breath. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I am going to get a warded gun locker installed here and another at the office. You’re going to live in them when I don’t need you. At night, for example, when I’m sleeping. You’ll come out of your box when I need to practice and when I need to deploy you and for transport. That’s all. If you try to escape or slither into my dreams, that’s it. It’s the safe for you. I’m through with this. You’ve had your chance. You tried to kill Mhari, you tried to kill Bob, you tried to force me to play you. No more. No more chances, no more apologies. That stuff is over for good. Do you understand?”
***Yes.***
“Good.” I close the violin case. “Back in your box.” I carry him back upstairs and stash him in the wardrobe again.
***So hungry,*** I hear him whisper in my head as I close the door and then turn the key in the lock. His voice is like contaminated engine oil floating on the surface of a river at night. A sharp stab of anxiety grips me: Is he lying to me? Something about his supine display of remorse rings false. Well, fuck you, I think. “Sleep tight.”
***Need food —*** I activate the ward: blissful silence descends.
The rest of the weekend is uneventful. If only I could relax and enjoy it.
It’s Tuesday, and pigeons released weeks ago are coming home to roost.
Monday started with an all-hands meeting to introduce our four new hires to the analysts, HR, and support folks. That kind of event is always risky, teetering on the edge of embarrassment. For quiet, gawky Billy, aka The Torch, it’s his first-ever job in a workplace with carpet, much less indoor plumbing and co-workers who wear suits. There’s a 150 percent pay rise hanging over him like the Sword of Damocles: What is he supposed to do to earn it? He’s silently terrified, even though he has enough firepower in his right index finger to take out a main battle tank. For my part I’m just glad that his hoodie, combats, and trainers are clean enough he doesn’t look as if he’s walked in off a construction site. Bee, aka Lucy Teller, is infinitely more mature – if by mature you mean sassy: with her dark hair gathered in pigtails and wearing a ’50s style yellow dress with black horizontal stripes, she could pass for a hipster on speed, if hipsters had a permanent caffeine buzz and metaphorical stingers. She’s excited, energized, eager to make a difference. This poise has Billy, unsurprisingly, caught somewhere between fascination and terror, so he’s pointedly ignoring her. Great way to start building a team, team.
Our two other new hires aren’t here yet, but I can at least show everyone their mugshots and order that they be made welcome on arrival. Speaking of which:
“I’d like you all to welcome Billy and Lucy to the Transhuman Police Coordination Force. They’ve got a steep learning curve ahead of them and lots of training courses before they can represent the Force in public – along with our two other front-line superpowers, Lollipop Bill and Captain Mahvelous, who will be arriving next week. Billy and Lucy: Mhari Murphy will start you on your basic orientation today and introduce you to everyone this afternoon so you don’t need to memorize their names right now. I know this is all a lot to take in at once” – I suddenly realize that even though Jim’s elsewhere and Sam is visiting a sick relative, there are nearly a dozen people present – “but don’t worry, you’ll get used to it in no time.”
The formal introductions done, I beat a hasty retreat into my office. There’s plaster dust on the carpet and an unpleasant oily smell in the air, courtesy of the hulking gun safe in the corner.* I check my chair carefully for plaster dust before I sit down – I’m wearing my smart suit today, in anticipation of spending the afternoon at a Home Office briefing session – and am about to bury myself in prep for the anticipated grilling (on anything we can contribute to the Freudstein problem) when Ramona motors in.
“Hi, Mo,” she says. “I’ve got a surprise for you!”
“What kind?” I ask cautiously.
“Nothing bad.” She smiles gleefully as she whirrs forward, holding up a USB key.
“What’s that?”
“First cut at a promo video. Want to watch it together?”
I suppress my first reflexive response (a groan), force a smile, and say, “Can do.” Then I shove the memory stick into the front of my newly chained-to-the-desk PC. We’ve recently acquired new software that locks everything down, only lets data in (not out) when you plug in a dongle, and refuses to run software that hasn’t been installed and authorized centrally by IT Support. In my opinion (and everyone else’s) it turns our PCs into single-function boat anchors, but two months and ten employees on, our organizational threat surface has expanded until it’s too dangerous for us to risk laptops. Also, we now have to play by civil service regs, not Laundry rules. “Let’s see what they’ve come up with.”
“Move over.”
I shove my chair sideways to make room for Ramona. There is indeed a movie file on the stick. I double-click, wait for the obligatory three virus scanners to do their stuff, then sit back while the video player fills the screen with the first thing the organizational PR agency’s collective subconscious has come up with.
START ANIMATION SHOWREEL:
THE SCENE: A boringly normal-looking suburban street in Anytown, England. Dogs bark, children shout, a delivery van drives slowly past.
CUT TO: A different st
reet, more densely urban: houses on one side, a big new charter school campus on the other. Uniformed kids hang around outside the gates and in the playground…
VOICE-OVER: Keeping our schools and homes safe.
PAN RIGHT: A street corner adjacent to the school. Just round the corner, past more buildings, the camera zooms in to frame a man in a lime-green PERVERT SUIT and cloak, crouching in front of a house. He brandishes a teddy bear at the camera.
PERVERT SUIT: Arr, I am NONCE-BOY! I hang out on street corners near schools and ’ipnotize your kids! ’Oo knows what hideous perversions I fantasize about perpetrating on their smooth underage flesh, what nightmarish pedobear-related fantasies I intend to corrupt their innocent little souls with —
ZOOM OUT: A posse of SUPERHEROES are racing down the side street towards PERVERT SUIT.
SUPERHERO 1: It’s NONCE-BOY! Get ’im!
SUPERHERO 2: On my way!
SUPERHERO 3 (female): Flying scissor kick! Oh Piroge jump!
They Fight.
CUT TO: NONCE-BOY lying prone on the pavement with his hands and feet hog-tied in elaborate Japanese rope bondage style. The SUPERHEROES stand over him. He grins horribly at the camera.
NONCE-BOY: They’re making a big mistake.
CUT-TO: A Police interview room. TWO INSPECTORS are cross-examining NONCE-BOY.
INSPECTOR 1: And what exactly did SUPERHERO 1 say?
NONCE-BOY: I heard him distinctly say, “It’s NONCE-BOY! Get ’im!” Then he attacked me without provocation.
INSPECTOR 2: Are you denying your previous? You’ve done time for hideous crimes of hideousness! He obviously thought you were about to get up to your old tricks again.
NONCE-BOY: Nevertheless, I has my Human Rights! Including the right not to be beaten up by random vigilantes! (Confidingly): And there’s more.
INSPECTOR 1: What else?
NONCE-BOY: SUPERHERO 3 used her Oh Piroge jump on me. That’s sexual assault, that is!
CUT-TO: A Police briefing room with the TWO INSPECTORS.
INSPECTOR 2: It’s no good. He’s got us bang to rights.
INSPECTOR 1: We can’t let him go! He’s a pervert —
INSPECTOR 2: But he’s right about one thing. The SUPERHEROES who took him down are vigilantes. They didn’t observe due process, they didn’t identify a suspect in the process of committing or preparing a crime, they aren’t sworn officers of the law like you and me, they used dubious or outright illegal methods, and they inadvertently handed his defense a watertight case. In fact, they’ll be lucky if he doesn’t sue them.
INSPECTOR 1: All we can do is let him go and hope he falls downstairs on his way out of the cell block.
INSPECTOR 2: And this is a one-story-high police station, so that’s not terribly likely.
INSPECTOR 1: (Addresses the camera): So NONCE-BOY walks free, all because those SUPERHEROES acted like idiots.
ZOOM IN: INSPECTOR 1
INSPECTOR 1: Want to be a SUPERHERO? Don’t be like these numpties! Join up with TPCF. Get wise, get trained, get your villain.
FADE TO: Home Office Logo, Transhuman Policy Coordination Force contact information.
“Well, what do you think?”
“Hmm. I think that was pretty good, actually. It compared favorably with Plan 9 from Outer Space. Three rotten tomatoes?”
“I was thinking Surf Nazis Must Die.”
“Actually, if they ham it up a bit more, say if they turn the dial from nine to eleven and switch from animation to human actors, it might hit Adam West Batman values of kitsch. Who knows? We might be on course to be the first government agency to win a Golden Oyster award.”
“But it got the key points across, didn’t it?”
“I know it’s meant to be funny, but there’s a fine line between being laughed with and being laughed at. If we go public with this, we’ll be a laughing stock.”
“So that’s a no, Mo?”
“Remember the search for the HomeSec’s sense of humor? They had to ground the rescue choppers for maintenance checks, they’d been airborne so long. If we take this to the Home Office, someone’s going to have to explain all the jokes to her, and I don’t want that someone to be me. I’m pretty sure she’s got Medusa DNA.” Pause. “Unless, hmm. Unless we make it look like a leak. What if we let it show up on YouTube with a disclaimer saying it’s an unreleased rough treatment?”
“You mean it’s kitsch enough it might just go viral? But we could disclaim it if it backfires? Holy Batman, that’s brilliant, Mo!”
“Who knows? It’s a long shot, but it just might work.”
16: DEMOCRACY IN ACTION
The amusement afforded me by the first of our promo video treatments is short-lived, because after a lunchtime raid on Pret A Manger I have to return to Marsham Street and the Home Office for the long-dreaded grilling about, well, everything.
This session is somewhat smaller than the previous one: but it will be chaired by the Right Honorable Jessica Greene herself. Luckily Jim is coming along, fancy uniform and all, so I’m not the only sacrificial rodent entering the snake pit. But I confess to feeling some trepidation – almost enough to make me dial in the combination on my safe and remove Lecter. (But not quite. If it’s a really hostile session and I get upset, there is a very remote chance that I will undergo a stress reaction, and if Lecter is present the potential for certain defensive reflexes to cut in is also present, and it would be a very bad idea to eat the soul of the fourth ranking minister in the cabinet – even though some of her harsher detractors would laugh in disbelief at the very idea that she has a soul in the first place).
I meet Jim in the concourse outside. He looks the very model of a modern police major-general. “Afternoon, Mo. How do you want to play this?”
I shrug. “I think we should be blunt but honest. Aside from operational work-up, our biggest priority is the search for Freudstein. Message is: we are working on building a profile of him, but we are handicapped by a lack of resources and information. Freudstein is a canny opponent and he is clearly attempting to manipulate us. We intend to get inside his decision loop and outmaneuver him, but so far we have very little data upon which to build a predictive model of his activities because they are cunningly arranged to be maximally flashy but effectively random.”
Jim nods but looks withdrawn. “She’s not going to like that.”
“No, but what else —”
The door opens and a Junior Undersecretary beckons us forward.
“Remember it’s not all about Freudstein,” Jim warns me quietly, and then we go in.
This conference room has natural light, courtesy of a row of high windows opposite the doorway. There’s a U-shaped set of tables for the Home Secretary and her staff, and a table set across the end for people giving evidence or testimony or confessions. That would be us, I guess from the semicircle of a dozen faces opposite. Mrs. Greene sits at the far end of the U, chatting affably to a senior departmental secretary to her right. Our usher directs us to the seats in the hot spot, then closes the door, and we’re off.
“Dr. O’Brien. It has been nearly eight weeks since the individual or group identifying themselves as Professor Freudstein first came to our attention. Why haven’t you caught him? Or her?”
Mrs. Greene is as direct and friendly as the business end of a machine gun. But it’s not personal, and I know how to handle this sort of interrogation. Years of performing in front of the Auditors have hardened me.
“With all due respect, one might ask why the security guards at the Bank of England, SCO19 at the British Library on Euston Road, or the Civil Nuclear Police at Sellafield all failed to capture him. I don’t want to play the blame game, but they were on-site during his previous appearances; my unit was not, and furthermore, we’re still working up towards an operational capability which we have not yet achieved. Let me emphasize that: we’re not fully operational yet. We’re still recruiting and training personnel. The real problem with Freudstein is that we’re not dealing
with a normal criminal here.
“As I said, I don’t want to play the blame game. Freudstein doesn’t fit any of the threat profiles those forces are designed to deal with. In fact, from the planning he’s demonstrated so far, he’s operating more at the level of a hostile government agency rather than a criminal gang or terrorist cell. He – or they: I think there’s a very high probability that we’re dealing with an organization here – have access to trained special forces people, automatic weapons, helicopters, vehicles, and inside intelligence on some of the nation’s most tightly guarded facilities. That’s before we mention enough plutonium to credibly threaten us with multiple nuclear weapons. What we don’t have is any kind of clue about his identity, real or purported, nor do we know what he wants.” Although, I fail to say aloud, there’s probably a clue buried in what he stole from the library. If only we knew what he was really after and what were the decoy thefts!
“Freudstein is our number one priority, and if we develop a source, or if a sister agency can give us a lead in time to deploy, we will engage him immediately. My analysts are currently creating a database of all known superpowers in the UK, and we are developing a profile for Freudstein and looking for possible leads on his real-world identity if he is indeed a five-sigma evil genius – but we’re still dependent on leads from other forces. Nobody saw fit to inform us of the Sellafield incident until three days after it took place: that’s typical of the level of cooperation we’re currently getting. Again, I do not want to attribute any blame for this. In many cases the forces concerned don’t even officially know we exist, much less have a set of criteria for referring incidents to us. But it’s not helping us do our job.”
The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files) Page 32