"What makes you think it wasn't your ex-husband?" I ask.
"Nothing, at the time. He just turned round from the counter and smiled at me and said, 'Can I give you a lift home?' and I sort of . . ." she trails off.
"It offered you a lift home," I echo.
"What do you mean, it?"
I close my eyes. "You got yourself into some really smelly shit there. Say some son of a bitch wants to abduct somebody. They have to get a victim profile, samples from the victim–it's not simple, not just messing around with hair or fingernail clippings for the DNA–but suppose they get it. Then they invoke, um, generate a vector field oriented on the victim's–"
"Yeah, yeah, I'll take that bit on trust."
"Okay then. I'll give you some references tomorrow. Basically it's what used to be called an incubus: a demon lover. Something the victim won't resist because they don't want to resist. It's not actually a demon; it's just a hallucination, like a website generated by customer relationship management software from hell."
"A lure?"
"Yes, that's it exactly. A lure." I placed my unfinished mug down between my feet.
She shudders, looks worried. "Maybe I wasn't over him as thoroughly as I wanted to be."
"I know the feeling," I say, thinking of Mhari.
She shakes herself. "Anyway. Next thing I know I'm sitting in the back of a Lincoln and some guy I don't know who's wearing a Nehru suit and a beard is sticking a pistol in my side. And he says something like, 'American bitch, you have been selected for a great honour.' And I say, 'I'm not American,' and he just sneers."
Her hand is shaking so badly that coffee slops on the floor.
"He just–"
"It doesn't matter, what happens next?" I ask, trying to get her over the emotional hump. Over there they hold grudges for a long time. Some of the Pathans are probably still plotting their revenge for Lord Elphinstone's expedition.
"We drive around for a bit and head out of town, northbound on Highway 1, then the car pulls up to this house and the driver opens the door and they push me in through a side door into the house. The driver's wearing that long, baggy shirt and trousers you see on TV, and a scarf around his head, and he's got a beard, too. They push me through the kitchen and into a closet with a light then shut the door, and I hear them chain the door handles together. Someone else comes in and they talk for a bit, then I hear a door slam. That's when I pulled out my mobile phone and called you."
"You overheard them talking. What about?"
"I–wasn't concentrating much. Tell the truth"–she puts the cup down on the floor; its saucer is swimming in coffee–"I was afraid they were going to rape me. Really afraid; I mean, this was kidnapping, what would you expect? When they didn't, when they were talking, it was almost worse. Does that make any kind of sense? The waiting. But he–the one I didn't see–he had a deep voice, some accent–sounded German to me. Thick, gravelly, lots of sibilants. Had to keep repeating himself to the others, the Middle Eastern men. 'The Opener of the Ways requires the wisdom,' he kept saying. 'It needs information.' I think one of the Middle Eastern guys was objecting because after a bit there was a noise like–" She pauses, and swallows. "Like downstairs. And I didn't hear him again."
I shake my head. "This isn't making any sense so far–" Hastily: "No, I'm not saying you're wrong, I just can't figure out how it fits together. That's my problem, not yours."
I drain my coffee and wince as it hits my stomach and sits there, burning like a lump of molten lead. "Sounds like they were talking about a blood sacrifice. That's the Sacrifice of Knowledge rite. Middle Eastern guys. An incubus. German accent. You're sure it was German?"
"Yes," she says gloomily. "At least, I think it was German; Middle European for sure."
"That really is odd." Which distracts me and catapults my train of thought right into terra incognita because there are no usual suspects in the occult field in Germany; the Abwehr's Rosenberg Gruppe and any survivors of the Thule Gesellschaft were "shot trying to escape" by late June 1945. The camp guards were mostly executed or pulled long prison sentences, the higher-ups responsible for the Ahnenerbe-SS were executed, the whole country turned into a DMZ as far as the occult is concerned. After the Third Reich's answer to the Manhattan Project came so close to completion, that was about the one thing that Truman and Stalin and Churchill all saw eye-to-eye on–and the current government shows no desire to go back down that route of blood and madness.
"He went on a bit," Mo adds unexpectedly.
"Really? What about?"
"He wanted to go home, to take help home, something like that. I think."
I sit up, wince as my ribs remind me not to move too fast. "Help. Did he say what kind?"
Mo frowns again. Her thick, dark eyebrows almost join in the middle, looming like thunderclouds. "He went on about the Opener of the Ways a bit more. Oddly, as if he was talking about me. Said that help for the struggle against the Dar-al-Harb would wait until the ceremony of, uh, 'Unbinding the roots of Ig-drazl'? Then he would 'Open the bridge and bring the ice giants through.' He was very emphatic about the bridge, the bridge to living space. That was his term for it: living space. Does that make any sense?"
"It makes an oh-shit kind of sense." I watch as she picks up her mug and rolls it round between her hands. "Was that all?"
"All? Yes. I waited until I heard them go out, then I phoned you. I obviously got things wrong, though, because the next thing I knew they yanked open the door and the one with the gun grabbed the phone and stamped on it. He was angry, but the other–with the accent–" She judders to a stop.
"Can you describe him?"
She swallows. "That's the crazy thing. From the voice I kind of expected Arnie Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, except he wasn't. There were just these four Middle Eastern guys, and one of them had–I can't, uh, can't remember his face. Just those eyes. They seemed to glow, sort of greenish. Like marbles. Like there was something luminous and wormy behind his face. He–the one with the eyes and this weird German accent–he was angry and yelled at me and I was so afraid, but they just smashed my phone then shut the door on me again. Chained the door shut and overturned a table or something against it. And I–hell." She finishes her coffee. "That was about the worst hour of my life." Pause. "It could have been worse." Pause. "They could have." Pause. "You might not have answered." Pause. "They might not have found me."
"All in a day's work," I say with forced lightheartedness, which has nothing to do with the way I feel. "When the cops brought you out, did you see anything?"
"I wasn't paying much attention," she says shakily. "There were gunshots, though. Then what looked like a whole SWAT team kicked the cupboard door in and pointed their toys at me. You ever had two guys point assault rifles at your head, so close you can see the grooves on the inside of the barrels? You just lie there very still and try very hard not to look threatening." Pause. "Anyway, one of the agents in charge figured out I was the hostage in about three seconds flat and they led me out through the front. There was blood everywhere and two bodies, but not the guy with the weird eyes. I'd recognize him. Thing is, there were strange symbols all over the wall; it was whitewashed and it looked like they'd been painting on it in thick black paint, or blood, or something. A low table under it, with a trashed laptop and some other stuff. Candlesticks, an arc-welding power supply. It was weird, I guess you'd know how weird it looked. Then they drove me away."
My bad feeling is getting worse. In fact, it's not setting off alarm bells in my head anymore: it's sounding the Three Minute Warning. "Mind if I use your phone?" I ask, carefully nonchalant. "I think we still need the Plumbers."
* * * *
Due to the miracles of matrix management Bridget is my head of department and writes my personal efficiency assessments, and Harriet is her left hand of darkness and handles administrative issues like training; but since I moved to active service, Andy is now my line manager with overall responsibility for my effectiveness and work as
signment, and Angleton is just the guy I'm acting as temporary private secretary for. I decide to start at the bottom of the seniority queue, consign Harriet to the pits of operational ineffectiveness–I mean, this is a woman who would give you a written reprimand for wasting departmental funds if you used silver bullets on a werewolf–and conclude that my best chance of survival is to throw myself on Andy's mercy.
Which means I nobble him absolutely as soon as I can, first thing in the morning.
"Mind if I have a word?" I ask, sticking my head around his door without asking–the red light is off.
Andy is slumped behind his desk, nursing his starter-motor coffee mug. He raises an eyebrow at me. "You look–" He stabs a finger at his keyboard, raises another eyebrow at his email. "Oh. So it was you who called the Plumbers out last night."
I sit down in the chair opposite his desk without asking permission. "Angleton told me to pump Mo after work"–I see his expression–"for information, dammit!"
Andy hides behind his coffee. "Do go on," he says warmly, "this is the best entertainment I'm going to get all morning."
"Then you must be hard up. We ate out, then went back to her place for some more sensitive discussions about the, uh, non-events last month. Something was waiting for us in the lobby."
"Something." He looks sceptical. "And you called out the Plumbers for that?"
I yawn: it's been a long night. "It tried to rip her fucking head off and I've got a cracked rib to show for it. If you'd read that goddamn report you'd see what forensics found in the carpet; they're never going to get the ichor stains out–"
"I'll read it." He puts his coffee mug down. "First, give me the basics. How did you deal with it?"
I produce the wreckage of my Laundry-issue palmtop. "I'll be needing a new PDA, this one's fucked. Mind you, it's not as fucked as the malevolent mollusc from Mars that jumped us; I bumped the fuzz diffuser up to full power and piped the entire entropy pool into it over wide-spectrum infrared. It decided it didn't like that and discorporated instead of sticking around to finish the job, otherwise you'd be spending this morning watching them hoover me off the walls and ceiling."
I take as deep a breath as the strapping around my ribs will permit. "Anyway, afterward I got the whole story out of Mo. The bits she was afraid of telling anyone for fear they wouldn't believe her. And that's why I called the Plumbers. See, the Yank field group who rescued her didn't tell us what the hell was going on. The leader was some Arab guy with a German accent, talking about help for the struggle with the Dar-al-Harb once the roots of Yggdrasil are unbound. Only they didn't get him–or she didn't see his body. Boss, do we have anything on German terror groups using Beckenstein-Skinner actor theory to possess their victims? Hell, anything about any German terror groups more recent than the Ahnenerbe using occult techniques?"
Andy looks at me with a stony expression. "Wait here. Do not move." He pushes the DNI button (turning on the red warning light outside the door–WARNING: CLASSIFIED ACTIVITIES: DO NOT INTRUDE) then stands up and hurries out.
I sit there and let my eyes roam around Andy's cubbyhole. The contents are prosaic: one institutional desk (scratched), one swivel chair (used), two armless visitor chairs (ditto), one bookcase, and a classified document safe (basically a steel cabinet with lockable metal doors on it). His PC is five years old and running a password-locked screensaver, and his desk is clear–no papers lying around. In fact, if it wasn't for the classified document safe and the lack of papers it could be a low-level manager's office in any cash-pinched business in corporate Britain.
I'm leaning back in my chair and inspecting the flecks of institutional paint smeared on the frosted glass in the high window when the door opens again. Andy enters, closely followed by Derek and–shock, horrors–Angleton. I'm surrounded! "Here he is," says Andy.
Angleton claims Andy's chair behind the desk–the privilege of the senior inquisitor–and Andy sits down next to me, while Derek stands at parade rest in front of the door, as if to stop me escaping. He's got some kind of box like a small briefcase, which he parks on the floor next to his feet.
"Speak," says Angleton.
"I did as you told me. Mo and I were talking. I kept it to non-classified while we were in public; I convinced her I needed to hear the full story, not just the official version, so we went back to her place. We were jumped in the hallway. Afterward, she told me enough that I thought there was a clear and present danger to her life. Did Andy tell you–"
Angleton snaps his fingers at Derek. Derek, who is not my idea of an obedient flunky, nevertheless obediently passes him the briefcase, which he opens on the desk. It turns out to contain a small mechanical typewriter with a couple of sheets of paper already wound around the roller. He laboriously taps out a sentence, then turns the typewriter toward me: it says SECRET OGRE CARNATE GECKO, and I get an abrupt sinking feeling in my stomach.
"Before you leave this office you will write down everything you remember about last night," he says tersely. "You will not leave this office until you have finished and signed off on the report. One of us will stay with you until the job is done, and countersign that this is a true transcript and that there were no uncleared witnesses. Once you leave this office you will not see this document again. You will not, repeat not, discuss last night's events with anyone other than the participants and the people in this room without first obtaining written permission from one of us. Do you understand?"
"Uh, yeah. You're classifying everything under OGRE CARNATE GECKO and I'm not to discuss it with anyone who isn't cleared. Can I ask why the typewriter? I could email–"
Angleton looks at me witheringly: "Van Eck Radiation." He snaps his fingers. But we're in the Laundry, I protest silently, the whole building is Tempest-shielded. "Start typing, Bob."
I start typing. "Where's the delete key on this–oh."
"You're typing on carbon paper. In triplicate. Once you finish, we burn the carbons. And the typewriter ribbon."
"You could have offered a quill pen: that'd be more secure, wouldn't it?" I peck away at the keyboard in a purposeful manner. After a minute or two Angleton silently rises and ghosts out of the room. I peck on, occasionally swearing as I catch a fingernail under a key or jam a bunch of letters together. Finally I'm done: one page of single-spaced, densely printed text, detailing the events of last night. I sign each copy and present them to Andy, who countersigns, then carefully inserts them into a striped-cover folder and passes it to Derek, who writes out receipts for them and hands a copy to each of us. He leaves without a word.
Andy walks round the desk, stretches, then looks at me. "What am I going to do with you?"
"Huh? What's wrong?"
Andy looks morose. "If I'd known you'd show such a well-developed talent for raking up the mud . . ."
"Comes of my hacking hobby before I came to the attention of . . . look. I called the Plumbers because I had reason to be afraid that Mo–Professor O'Brien–was in serious danger. Would you rather I hadn't?"
"No." He sighs. For a moment he looks old. "You did the right thing. It's just that the Plumbing budget is chargeable to departmental accounts. That leaves us open to some rather nasty maneuvering if the usual suspects decide it's an opportunity to extend their little empires. I'm wondering how the hell we're going to spin it past Harriet."
"Why don't you just tell–oh."
"Yes." He nods at me. "You're beginning to catch on. Now run along and get back to work. I'm sure your in-tray is overflowing."
* * * *
I'm working my way through that overcrowded in-tray late in the afternoon when Harriet stalks in without knocking. (Actually, I'm up to my eyeballs in a clipping from the Santa Cruz County Sentinel. It makes for fascinating reading: TWO DEAD IN MURDER, SUICIDE. Two unidentified males, one believed to be a Saudi Arabian national, found dead in a house out toward Davenport. Police investigating weird occult symbols smeared on the walls in blood. Drugs suspected.) "Ah, Bob," she coos with malevolent solicitude. "
Just the person I was looking for!"
Oh shit. "What can I do for you?" I ask.
She leans over my desk. "I understand you called out the Plumbers last night," she says. "I happen to know that you're currently assigned to Angleton as JPS, which is a nonoperational role and therefore doesn't give you release authority for wet-and-dry issues. You are no doubt aware that cleanup funds are allocated on a per-department basis, and require prior authorisation from your head of department, in writing. You didn't obtain authorisation from Bridget, and funnily enough, you didn't approach me for a release either." She smiles with chilly insouciance. "Would you like to explain yourself?"
"I can't," I say.
"I–see." Harriet looms over me, visibly working on her anger. "You realise that last night you cost our working budget more than seven thousand pounds? That's going to have to be justified, Mr. Howard, and you are going to justify it to the Audit Commission when they come round next month. Let's see"–she flips through what looks for all the world like a commercial invoice–"cleaning up Professor O'Brien's front door, sweeping her apartment for listeners and actors, rehousing Professor O'Brien in a secure apartment, armed escort, medical expenses. What on earth have you been up to?"
"I can't tell you," I say.
"You're going to tell me. That's an order, by the way," she says in conversational tones. "You're going to tell me in writing exactly what happened there last night, and explain why I shouldn't take the expenses out of your pay packet–"
"Harriet."
We both look round. Angleton's door is ajar; I wonder how long he's been standing there.
"You don't have clearance," he says. "Let it drop. That's an order."
The door shuts. Harriet stands there for a moment, her jaw working soundlessly as if she's forgotten how to speak. I commit the spectacle to memory for future enjoyment. "Don't think this is the last you'll hear of this," she snaps at me as she leaves, slamming the door.
The Atrocity Archives Page 12