The electronic card reader beeped invitingly green as I slid my ID through it and the DNA checkers read my palm as I held the handle and pulled the door open. Inside, specially-bred attack dogs examined me with all six of their senses before deciding that I shouldn’t be torn into a hundred easily-digestible pieces. The threat registers were obviously low since security was at its most relaxed setting.
“Mr Ward,” Mettles, once a drill sergeant in the Agency’s footsoldier elite, a private army trained and armed to the teeth to fight invasion from the Otherworlds, summoned me over to the security desk with a polite inclination of his slightly misshapen head. During one nasty confrontation with a trans-dimensional army that was trying to break through the Nazca Deformation, he had been caught in the grip of a Heavy Infantry Howler Demon that had crushed the bones of his skull out of alignment. He had only been saved from death by one of the other grunts hacking the Howler’s hand off at the neck and even then he had been forced to wait until the end of the battle before the medics could come and prise the hand off with hydraulic jacks. He was lucky to be alive and his service had been rewarded with a job behind the security desk that was rumoured to be only slightly less dangerous than the job of being out in the field with the troops. Agency Central housed probably the biggest concentration of occult nasties in the world and the security against them getting out was even tighter than that governing people getting in. There was also the fact that the sight of that oddly-shaped head was a visual reminder each morning to the staff passing through of just how important and dangerous the work that they were doing was. There were times when I could actually respect Director Grayson, whose decision it had been to give Mettles the job. Never actually like him, you understand, but grudgingly respect him. If Mettles had a first name then nobody knew what it was. Someone had peeked at his personnel file once and found that there was nothing entered into the appropriate box in there either. “Could I have a word?”
“Do I get to choose the word?” Since the Chief of Security didn’t often take time out from his full-time scowling at the more nervous employees to speak directly to people, I immediately went over to the desk.
“Mr Grayson said that you should go straight up to his office on your arrival,” Mettles said, almost apologetic for passing on an order to someone who was higher up the Agency structure than he was. The fact that, as Head of Security, he outranked me didn’t seem to occur to him. Even so, his tone was one that brooked no opposition in that very specific way that all military non-commissioned officers have. “He was quite specific about that.”
“I’m sure he was,” I replied. There was certainly no point getting Mettles caught up in the petty feud that I had going with the Agency’s head. “I’ll make my way up there directly.”
‘Directly’ is an interesting word. Like most words it’s open to interpretation and my interpretation was ‘after I’ve been to my office, written my report on the previous day’s altercation and when I feel that I’ve kept him waiting enough to make my point’. You won’t find it in any dictionary, but I think that it’s as valid as most of the definitions that are included.
The lifts were out of Mettle’s line of sight, which was just as well since I was sure that he would have felt it his duty to watch the floor indicator to make sure that it rose smoothly to the penthouse office. As it was, I dialled for the third sub-basement, which was as low as it was possible to go in the building without getting authorisation from three department heads and then having the request rubber-stamped by Grayson himself. Below the third sub-basement were the cells and that way madness lies.
My office is as far away from the lifts as it was possible to get, which is just the way I like it. I picked it out especially for that very reason. Firstly, the windows of the shining spire above ground might give gorgeous views over the city, but they had proven on two occasions not to be as impervious to attack as the designers had promised. In ’81 a missile tipped with an experimental chemical corrosive weakened the glass just enough for an enraged flying reptile to smash through and eat eight unfortunates from the typing pool before it could be subdued. The reprisals for that attack had been swift and unrelentingly bloody, but recruiting replacement typists had been understandably difficult and some people were still being forced to type their own reports as a result. On the second occasion, half the 17th floor had simply vanished along with everyone who had been working there at the time. That one was still under investigation.
By contrast, nobody had ever gotten past the giant boreworms that patrolled around the building’s foundations. If you placed your hand against the outside wall of the office at the right time you could just make out the faint vibrations of their passage.
The other main advantage to having office space in the furthest part of the most distant level of the building is that nobody comes to visit unless they have a very good reason to and a good few of those that do have good reasons get lost amongst the storerooms and heating systems and give up. That means that I don’t have to put up with constant trivial interruptions.
Getting a cup of instant cappuccino from the machine that is the only piece of personal equipment in the office, I slipped on the headset and activated the computer with a simple “computer on”. The coffee wasn’t a patch on the cinnamon confection I had bought the previous evening, but it did come without the annoying peddler of street visions. Settling into the chair that had long since moulded itself to the shape of my backside, I then dictated my report on the early events of the previous day. Grayson had wanted a report with measurements in it, so I gave approximate measurements of just about everything from the size of the demon to the smog count in the city that day. I also added on our conversation at the end of the day to the report so that I could give a disparaging assessment of Grayson’s height. Childish I know, but I was in that sort of a mood.
When the report was done I filed it with the central servers and then wandered up to Qoppa Branch.
“Is she in?” I asked as I exited the lift on the second sub-basement level. The ‘she’ I was referring to was Irene Freidriksen, an icy Norwegian woman who could easily have passed the entry criteria for the Amazon corps, but who was instead in charge of the research and development branch of the Agency. Although a very successful department head in her own right, Freidriksen had her sights set much higher than the subterranean labs of R&D and blamed her lack of advancement into the chair that Grayson’s backside now graced on field agents like me. It was her unspoken opinion that we were incapable of using the equipment that she provided us with in the controlled and safe manner that the instruction manuals always suggested and it was the unfortunate events that happened as a result that kept her from the promotion that she so badly desired. The fact that those ambitions had been stalled when an agent reduced the number of faces on Mount Rushmore to just two with a misplaced shot from an experimental portable particle accelerator whilst chasing a banshee just one week before the start of the last round of interviews had given credence to that belief. She was now frostier to field agents than the cold spot in a haunted house.
“No, she’s out,” Freidriksen’s altogether more approachable personal assistant Penny Kilkenny assured me with a bright smile. Penny was only more approachable if you didn’t make fun of her name and new recruits who didn’t learn that fact quickly enough learned instead that there is no protection against the damage that the pointed toes of her shoes could do to their future family prospects.
“Out where?” If Freidriksen was likely to walk back in any time before I had finished my business here then I wasn’t going to bother starting it. It wasn’t worth the chilblains.
“There’s a conference on the transference wave patterns of astral projection,” Penny rattled the phrase off as though she hadn’t been practicing it ever since the trip was booked to make sure that she got it right.
“I don’t think I even know what that means,” I said sympathetically.
“It’s a very small conference,” s
he agreed before turning all businesslike, “I have your equipment issue sheet here.” From one of the drawers of her desk, she produced a clipboard with a single pink form held firmly in place on its face. She handed it over to me with another smile.
“I see that the repeller made it back in one piece,” I commented, checking that the clean up crew had correctly noted all the equipment that I had signed over to them on site. I removed the two job-issue protective amulets from around my neck and the ring that had anchored me to this plane of existence against the pull of the Squid God’s interdimensional portal and placed them all on her ink blotter. Penny was old school and had no truck with these ballpoint things. If a pen didn’t have a nib then Penny didn’t use it. She scooped the items across the surface of the desk and into her top drawer. They were checked off on the sheet automatically as she did so. The sheet also turned green to signify that all the equipment issued under the job’s unique reference number had been returned and in full working order. I handed it back to Penny who gave it a cursory glance and then put it in the same drawer that had received the amulets and ring. I noticed that they were no longer there.
“That makes a refreshing change,” she commented as she closed the drawer. “I usually have to fill out a miscellaneous damage form after a visit from you.”
“Penny, I’m hurt,” I pulled an appropriately hurt face for her. As usual, I got no sympathy at all.
“Not anywhere that it shows,” she pointed out. “You do realise that Mr Grayson is expecting you in his office don’t you?”
I sighed, a bit theatrically, but only a bit, “Is there anyone he hasn’t told that to?”
“I suspect he has only told those of us that you are most likely to use as excuses for avoiding him,” Penny suggested with a twinkle in her eyes behind spectacles that were so severe a certain section of the community would have paid good money to have been disciplined by them. The glasses did nothing to dim her good looks and I was fairly sure that she only affected them during working hours to focus people on her job rather than on her face. The same was probably true of the plain black, high necked dresses that she wore, since an open-necked blouse probably would have ruined productivity amongst the entire male population of the Agency. She shuffled a couple of the papers on her desk. “Oh dear, it looks like someone’s been speed-growing alligators in New York’s sewers again. I’d hate to have to be the one to go down and sort them out.”
“All right, I get the message,” I complained. And I did get the message. Hunting genetically-enhanced alligators through the noisome tunnels of a major city’s sewage system was about as alluring as the Morecambe Bay Sludge Demon detail. “You should be on my side.”
She gave me the kind of disparaging look that she imagined my secondary school english teacher might have given me when I made excuses about forest imps eating my homework, but since I had to admit to a very large crush towards my secondary school english teacher as well as for Penny it was a completely counterproductive exercise. “I wasn’t aware that there were sides to be on. You can’t duck him forever,” she pointed out. “I’m surprised that he hasn’t taken punitive action against you already.”
The last time that Grayson had taken ‘punitive action’ against someone for tardiness, the luckless bureaucrat in question had been left clinging to the face of the building on the ledge just outside the Director’s penthouse office. The cowing effect of the clouds is so much greater when there is no sheet of safety glass between you and them and a strong wind is blowing. The imminent plunge to the cold, hard and unyieldingly concrete streets below also has a sobering effect.
“Fine,” I surrendered will ill grace because, quite frankly, I don’t know any other way to surrender. “I’ll go. I’m on my way. See, look I’m going.”
As the lift door slid silently shut behind me I could imagine the tolerant shaking of her head. It would be the same gesture she would have used in response to the antics of a recalcitrant child.
“Grayson’s office,” I told the lift, but it remained steadfastly in its place. Gritting my teeth ever so slightly I tried again, “Director of Operations Grayson’s office, please.”
The lift chimed once in response to Grayson’s full title and started to ascend. When the doors opened again, they opened onto Grayson’s office. If you managed to get past the front door, security desk and the lift voice recognition systems then it was presumed that you had business with the man that was logged in his diary, so there was no need for a personal secretary to get in the way. Grayson no doubt possessed a personal assistant, but he never flaunted them as a symbol of his status as others might.
Despite being at the apex of the building’s pointy bit, the office was spacious and the ocean of polished marble between the lift and the man’s desk was designed to shine in a fashion to impress newcomers. It was wasted on me, but I did enjoy the view through the huge sheets of glass that took the space that was normally reserved for walls and the like. Oxford retained the beauty of its sequestered history despite the Agency’s arrival thrusting it into the forefront of the 21st century. The futuristic buildings of the European Advanced Science Park (relocated to the edge of the city just beyond the ring road after the Rutherford Laboratory closed its doors and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN imploded) were visible over Grayson’s right shoulder, but it was the old stone buildings of the colleges in the city centre with their leafy central courtyards and grinning grotesque gargoyles that held the eye. Despite the hustle and bustle of a city that had been dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age, the university quarter aggressively defended its sense of quaintness, slowly settling under the dusty cover of its illustrious history. Down there, absent-minded Dons still rode around on bicycles wearing their mortar boards with their gowns streaming out behind them, seemingly as unaware of the world moving ahead without them as they were of the traffic that surged all around them.
I had time to drink all this in as I marched across the marble to Grayson’s desk, annoyed as always that the housekeeping spells on the floor prevented my shoes from making impatient clicking noises with each step. I dropped into one of the plush leather seats in front of the desk without waiting for permission. Grayson’s own seat was upright and uncomfortable-looking, modelled in tubular chrome and plastic. The man himself was making notes in a file that was marked with the yellow flash that denoted the highest level of security that the Agency operated under. The information inside it was accessible only to the Director and authorised Section Heads. Heads of government didn’t even rank highly enough to read those files. Reading it so openly was possibly another way for Grayson to flaunt his superiority over me. I ignored it, but after a few more seconds I got heavily to my feet again and headed for the door with a parting, “You’re clearly busy, so I’ll leave you to it.”
“Sit down,” he said, and though he was still reading the report there was no doubt about the command in his tone. Reluctantly, I turned back and retook my seat.
After a few more seconds, and a couple of more annotations, he closed the file and set it aside. “I wasn’t being officious,” he told me, looking at me for the first time. I noted that he looked a bit tired, but that was probably due to the time he wasted winding up the likes of me. “I just needed to finish that. If you had come up here when you first arrived, as I asked you to, then I would not have been distracted.”
Which was probably fair comment, but I wasn’t about to tell him that, so I stayed silent.
“I read your report on the Thaitown incident,” he continued, indicating another file on his desk. “The outcome seems satisfactory.”
Satisfactory? A major cephalopod incursion not only detected, but averted with not a single member of the population at large put at risk and no collateral damage beyond a bunch of acolytes who, let’s be honest, pretty much had it coming to them for summoning up squid gods in the first place and all he assessed it as was ‘satisfactory’? I assessed it as bloody brilliant at the very least.
; “Read this,” he slid another folder across the desk with a practised hand so that it came to a stop in front of me just on the edge of tipping onto the floor. The buff cover carried the same yellow flash as the one that he had been reading when I arrived, but this one had a blue line through its centre. Blue was my level of clearance and the colour scheme denoted that I could read the file only in the presence of someone with yellow clearance. I sat up and took notice. This was important. Files like this didn’t get thrown around every day.
There wasn’t much inside the file, but there didn’t need to be. The first page was a standard report from the Intelligence Department. One of the data analysers had picked it out from the flood of information that the Agency’s intelligence gatherers were able to divine daily from their phone intercepts, email monitoring, scrying bowls, crystal balls and animal offal. It seemed, on the face of it, to be a simple missing person’s case, something that the Agency shouldn’t be dealing with at all. A chemist’s sister hadn’t heard from him for a while and so she wanted help in finding him. This was the sort of stuff the police ought to be handling, not us.
The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D. - the Curious Case of the Kidnapped Chemist Page 3