A minute later, phone in hand, he waited for the call to connect. “Hi. Evan? Yes, it’s me. Sorry I couldn’t come in. I was still throwing up everywhere. No, really. You wouldn’t thank me. No, I wasn’t drinking. Rotavirus, I told Mhari—oh? She said what? The cow! Look, I’m a bit better now and I’m going to come in this evening, work the late shift to make up for lost hours. Thing is, I was hoping you could stay so I could talk you through my last commit. What, you didn’t understand—look, I’m not surprised, I was already feeling ill so I didn’t doc it very clearly. I’ll talk you through it, okay? This evening.”
Without ever saying so in so many words, Evan made it clear that he’d had other plans for the evening. No matter: Alex was at his most implausibly persuasive, and kept at it until he could feel Evan’s resistance crumbling. Bastard’s probably got a hot date, he thought resentfully. Evan had a way with the talent that Alex, despite diligent study, had never been able to emulate: something that enabled him to speak to pretty women without derping out like a refugee from the Island of Dr. Moreau. (Single-sex school followed by a de facto single-sex faculty and an obsessive-compulsive work ethic had left Alex with few opportunities to socialize with the opposite sex since the age of ten.) “See you there,” Alex insisted. “You are going to stay, aren’t you?” The same sense of assurance filled him: “You can go after we’ve gone over that visualization. Bye!”
• • •
SUNSET.
Alex left the hotel, not bothering to check out. A taxi to the office and a badge-swipe through the turnstile: he took the stairs to the office, intrigued to note that he didn’t feel particularly breathless after sixteen flights. Passing through the airlock and into the Scrum’s office, he had to narrow his eyes against the glare of the screens.
The office was empty but for Evan, who was waiting for him with a pained expression, as if desperate for the toilet. “Couldn’t you have left this until tomorrow morning?” he demanded. “I had to bail on Candace and she’s going to be—”
“Trust me.” Alex leaned over his teammate: “If my hypothesis is correct, it’s going to be totally life-changing . . .”
• • •
. . . AND THEN THERE WERE TWO.
3.
KGB.2.YA
MO AND I HAVE BEEN MARRIED FOR YEARS: ONE OF THE SECRETS of our success is that we don’t harbor grudges in silence. If Mo figures I deserve it, she vents at me and we hammer out an apology or an agreement or a peace treaty or whatever it takes immediately. So it’s a sign of how serious this quarrel is that she sat on it for nearly a month. And when she finally decides it’s time to draw it to my attention, it’s very ripe and stinky.
“You shouldn’t have dragged Pete into it,” she tells me one midweek evening as I’m clearing the kitchen table of the remains of a passable lasagne, and topping up our wine glasses. “It wasn’t fair on Sandy. Or the kid.”
“I—”
She raises her hand, and that’s when I work out she still needs to vent. “I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to insist that it was time-critical, that you didn’t think we had anyone on tap who could do whatever it was you needed Pete to do, and that the survival of the human race depended on it. And you’re ready to back up those talking points with a well-reasoned, sensible explanation. But I’m still angry.”
The worst part of it is, she’s right about everything except my having an arsenal of well-reasoned, sensible explanations to back this up. The sad fact is, Gerry Lockhart emphasized the level of confidentiality attached to that last job by ordering me not to talk about it to anyone. And the geas that’s part of my oath of office won’t let me break that order. It’s extremely heavy-handed of him: Mo has been working as an external asset since before I heard the term, and I’ve been part of her support framework, and hitherto it’s been mutual. However, I can’t tell her a word about GOD GAME BLACK without his permission unless I want my hair to catch fire and my brains to leak out of my nose. The geas is intended to maintain internal security, but sometimes it has unpleasant consequences.
So I just sit there and take it, with a defensive grin on my face.
“It was grossly irresponsible of you to drag him into—whatever.” (So Pete hasn’t told her exactly what I asked him to do for me, which was to read a stolen scan of the appendices of a rather variant version of the Bible, and give me an opinion on the sanity of the cult who were using it. It turned out to be a road map for engineering the Second Coming—not of Jesus, but of an ancient undead nightmare from the deep cosmological past. The cult was a mega-church in Colorado Springs, yours truly was part of the team trying to stop them, and the consequences are classified GOD GAME BLACK.)
“Sandy depends on him. The kid”—due in three months—“depends on her. And he’s a vicar. You just casually poked a hole in his universe. Didn’t you expect that to have any consequences? He’s got a family and several hundred parishioners to look after, and regardless of what you think of his belief system”—misguided at best, because regular Christianity doesn’t have much space for the Black Pharaoh or the Sleeper in the Pyramid, or even the normal run-of-the-mill tentacular horrors we deal with—“he fills an important niche in delivering hope, comfort, and support to vulnerable people.
“And you tore down the curtain and exposed him to our world. Which is inevitably going to screw him up, and, indirectly, screw up hundreds of other people. Some of whom might go talk to the vicar if they’re feeling depressed or suicidal. Drop that stupid grin, Bob. By destabilizing Pete you could have killed people. Civilians. The people we’re supposed to be protecting.”
The skin on my face feels taut. I cross my arms. How much can I say? “Remember Amsterdam?”
“What, the first time? Or—” she pauses. “You aren’t allowed to talk about it?”
I manage to nod. My internal censor approves. “You can ask”—I check with my censor—“Gerry Lockhart, in External Assets. Please, Mo? I can’t defend myself. I can’t even apologize. I am not allowed to talk about this.”
“Well shit!” This is strong language for Mo. Her gaze flickers away from me, some of her electric anger seeking a new channel to earth. She knows about the geas, the binding compulsion to silence. We usually have a waiver that allows us to talk about work. A year or so ago she had to do a job in Amsterdam—wet work, because that’s what Agent CANDID sometimes does—and came home in pieces, because some idiot up the line had explicitly forbidden her from talking to me. I’m her support system: I’m not in the same line of work exactly, but I’m close enough to understand what she goes through and help her deal with it. That time I hunted down the idiot in question and sorted it out, probably saving our employers a very expensive medical leave bill. This time the boot is on the other foot. If I could tell her what happened in Colorado Springs she’d . . .
(Well, no, she probably wouldn’t forgive me. But she’d understand why, and take it into account, which amounts to much the same. Hate the sin, love the sinner: it’s hard to stay pissed off at someone for doing something wrong if you know you’d have done exactly the same thing if you’d been standing in their shoes.)
I shove a topped-up wine glass across the table towards her. “You need Pete and Sandy for your own reasons.”
She nods. Her neck muscles are still tense, but she takes the glass. “I can’t afford to lose track of normal, Bob. Most of our friends aren’t normal anymore—neither are we.”
I take a sip (okay, a mouthful) of pinot noir and swallow. “Dead right.” Pete (vicar) and Sandy (teacher) are some of our few remaining friends outside the organization. If I was a Harry Potter fan (and offensively stupid besides) I’d call them “muggles.” But that’s exactly the wrong way to look at the picture. Those of us who have too much to do with the supernatural aren’t wizards, but monsters. Or in danger of becoming monsters.
Over time, most of our circle have either moved away or started fami
lies; we increasingly socialize with workmates because it’s safe and easy. They understand why we can’t talk about certain parts of our office days, and we don’t risk endangering their world view by accidentally exposing them to the nihilistic truth. Our grip on everyday normality is, shall we say, eroding like the cliffs north of Aldeburgh. Lose that grip, and . . .
“We need more normal in our life,” I say. “Especially now that I’ve been roped into, into . . .” I can’t say it. Into the irregular twilight at the edge of the organization that she’s been quietly slipping in and out of for so long, carrying that damned violin.
“Easier said than done.” She takes in some wine, then slowly twirls the stem of the glass between her fingers, staring at the film of red washing up the sides of the bulb. I’ve seen this often enough to realize that right now she’s in danger of tipping from anger into bitterness. “We haven’t been normal since—”
“We could go out more often,” I suggest. “Do normal things, meet normal people. Take up”—I search for a good idea, come up blank—“going to the theater? Opera?” (I detest opera and have no time for classical music in general, but Mo is rather a keen violinist.) “Bingo?”
Her cheek twitches. “We’re a bit young for that, dear.”
“We could get a cat.” I’m not sure where that idea comes from, but it’s an ordinary people kind of thing to do. Normal folks can also have children, but in our line of work that would be highly inadvisable. Even if we wanted kids, knowing the nature of the world we’d be bringing them into would give us second thoughts. But a cat . . . what could possibly go wrong with that?
“Are you volunteering for litter tray duties?”
I shrug. “It can’t be worse than riding herd on software updates for six computers, two phones, and a tablet. Can it?”
“If you’re sure—” Her eyes narrow. “Hmm. A cat.” Pause. “Have you ever lived with a cat before?”
Vague memories of a purring warm lump sitting on my lap during family visits to my great-aunt percolate to the surface. (Ellis Billington’s Fluffy I can safely discount. We are discussing standard-issue, non-supernatural felines, after all, not the alien-in-a-cat-suit kind.) “Not personally, but I’ve had visiting rights—”
“Oh, good. Well, I think it’d be really nice to know that when things go bump in the night it’s just a cat knocking over the glassware to hear it shatter, so why not?” She knocks back half the contents of her wine glass in one. “Yes, let’s do that.”
It suddenly dawns on me that I know about as much about looking after a pet cat as I know about flying a jet fighter: it’s all MEOW DAKKA-DAKKA ZOOM to me. “Um. I think we need to do some research first. Vets, food, that sort of thing?”
“No, Bob.” She smiles at last. “You need to do some research. Litter tray duties, remember?”
“Oh bloody hell.” It slowly dawns on me that while she can’t justify berating me over Pete anymore, she can still extract a cold revenge: making me responsible for a small furry life-form’s well-being, meanwhile adding an extra kilogram or two of ballast to help anchor her fraying connection to normality. “Well, I suppose so . . .” I finish my wine. “But if I’m looking after it, I get to choose what we adopt. Okay?”
• • •
AFTER WE DO THE WASHING-UP, I GET TO SPEND THE REST OF the evening reading FAQs on cat maintenance on the web. It takes about half an hour to come to the unwelcome realization that they’re almost as complex as home-brew gaming PCs, and have even more failure modes. (When your gaming PC malfunctions it doesn’t stealthily dump core in your shoes.) But I have made my bed and I must lie in it, so I pencil in a date at the nearest RSPCA shelter for next Saturday.
On the other hand, for the first time in nearly a month I don’t get to sleep on the sofa-bed in the spare room. So perhaps the worst is over.
• • •
TWO DAYS LATER I’M IN THE OFFICE, WORKING ON A PILE OF virtual paperwork (you would not believe how many hoops you have to jump through to gain access to the NHS’s core statistical data warehouse if you’re not a sixteen-headed committee from a designated Strategic Health Authority), when there’s a knock on my door. I hit “save” and look up, then mash my finger on the button that flips the red “secret” light to green. (What I’m working on isn’t actually secret in the first place; just mildly embarrassing. But secrecy is a reflex.)
“Come in,” I call as the door opens, then I do a double take. “Pete?”
His head is swiveling like a bird-scarer, taking in my twelve square meters of squalor. “Bob? They told me you worked here, but I didn’t quite realize . . .”
“Come in, sit down.”
I suddenly realize there’s nowhere to sit—the visitor’s chair is currently occupied by three broken computers. The uppermost one is a floppy-disk-only 286 lunchbox that somebody forgot to check back into inventory in 1994: I’ve already spent a couple of days trying to figure out a way to legally decommission it, because current regulations insist that all computers must have their hard disk or SSD shredded and disposed of securely, and any exceptions require sign-off by a security audit team which was unfortunately dissolved two years ago. I sweep the detritus onto the floor and turn the chair to face him. “You’re, uh, well, you’re here now . . .”
Pete sits on the edge of the chair, his expression somewhere between mildly puzzled and pained. “Yes,” he says, and waits.
That’s when the oh shit moment hits me.
“This is my fault,” I say in a small voice.
“Is it really?” His expression brightens abruptly. “I thought you probably came into it somewhere along the line. Was it that fragment you sent me?”
I sigh. “How long since they swept you up?”
“About three weeks. I had a visit from a couple of polite gentlemen who asked me to sign the Official Secrets Act. In blood.” Pete is clearly mildly perturbed by this, as so he should be: his faith doesn’t have much room for sanguinary magic, unless you count holy communion. “Then they explained that you do secret work for the government and if I talk about it to outsiders without permission my eyeballs will boil. Is it true, Bob? I mean, how true is it?”
I oscillate for a moment between a frantic urge to run for the hills, a residual instinctive urge to flannel Pete with half-truths, and the doleful realization that it’s probably best to tell him the unvarnished truth. That way there’s no room for misunderstandings later.
“It’s mostly true, I’m afraid. This organization, the Laundry”—I’m watching his eyes for any sign of surprise, and I don’t see anything, which means he already knows too much for his own good—“is the part of the secret service that deals with occult and magical threats. I’ve worked here for some time. Since before I met Mo, actually.” (About twelve years ago.) “I’m a, a specialist.” I can’t quite bring myself to say necromancer to a vicar.
“Well, I suppose that brings me to my next question. Mo—does she work here, too?”
“Part-time,” I admit. “Yes, we’ve been holding out on you. We were required to, actually. We deal with stuff that’s best not talked about in public.”
I watch him, but he doesn’t look surprised. He just sits there, marinating in the ambiance of my most secret office, nostrils flaring at the faint pong of essence de spook.
I crack first. “If we talked about it, it would scare people,” I tell him.
“Stuff like that piece of apocrypha you emailed me last month?” he asks.
“Yes.” I unwind infinitesimally. “It’s our job to protect people from, from that sort of thing. And worse.” I instinctively glance towards my bookcase. There, sitting in front of a pile of CS textbooks, is a Bible. It’s the one the Golden Promise Ministries used, with added special sauce in the apocrypha. I make a judgment call and pass it to him. “I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to talk about what happened out there, but here’s the original s
ource material.” Or rather, a copy we bargained with the Black Chamber—our American opposite numbers—for. Not that they had any reason to withhold it after we saved their ass.
Pete holds the Bible uncertainly, as if he’s afraid its cover is coated in contact poison. “They told me their last expert on Aramaic studies and Biblical apocrypha died some years ago. And would I mind very much taking on that role on a part-time consultative basis, as and when.”
“Yes.” I didn’t know about the last expert angle, but it sets my mind at rest somewhat. “How about we get a mug of coffee and I show you around?” Whatever you’re cleared for, once I’ve established your access controls, I add silently, for my own benefit.
“Coffee would be great. But as for the tour . . . I’m not sure it’s necessary.” He looks slightly sheepish. “They told me they won’t be needing me here routinely; I’m supposed to look at your archives and learn the procedures for accessing files and, um, that’s all for now and they’ll call me if anything comes up.” He makes a dust-off gesture with his left hand.
“That’s probably all for the best.” I stand and lead the way towards the coffee station. “It’s not as if you don’t already have a job, is it?”
“A vocation, actually. But yes.”
He ambles along behind me like an oversized penguin, glancing amiably from side to side, taking it all in: the heart of the secret state, all puke-green paint, chipped lino, and LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS posters left over from the last war but one. (Our decor is so cheesy it’s almost regained a hipster-ish modicum of cool.)
“So is it true, then? That you single-handedly turned back an alien invasion of tentacle monsters who were being summoned by our dispensationalist brethren with the non-standard user manual?”
I wince. “Is that what they told you? Because if—”
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