“Jesus, Brains,” I murmur. “Is it something in the water?” I poke at the Options set up in OFCUT admiringly. He’s done a thorough job of porting it—this is almost as tightly integrated as the old version I used to have on my Treo, before they pulled it because it violated our RoHS waste disposal statement.
HALF AN HOUR LATER, MY OLD AND UNWANTED MOTOROLA rings. I pick it up and see WITHHELD on the display. Which means one of two things: a telemarketer, or work, because I’ve put my unclassified desk phone on call divert.
“Yes?”
“Bob?” It’s Andy, my onetime manager. Nice guy, when he’s not stabbing you in the back.
“What’s up? You know I’m on—”
“Yes, Bob. Er, it’s about Mo.” I sit down hard. “She’s flying into London City from Amsterdam on KL 1557”—my heart starts up again—“and I think it would be a really good idea if you were to meet her in. She’s due to land around nine, you can just get there if you leave in the next ten minutes—”
“What’s happened to her?” I realize I’m gripping the phone too hard and force myself to open my fist. It wouldn’t do to break the bloody thing before I’ve ported my number across—
“Nothing,” he says, too quickly. “Look, will you just—”
“I’m going! I’m going! I’m dragging myself from my sickbed groaning and limping in my nightgown to the airport, okay?” I look round, trying to locate my shoes: I dumped them in the hall the night before—“Are you sure she’s okay?”
“Not entirely,” he says quietly, and hangs up.
I’m dressed and out of the house like a greased whippet, round the corner to the tube station and the train to Bank and then the DLR line to London City Airport, out in the east end near Canary Wharf. I remember to grab the JesusPhone at the last minute, shoveling it into an inside zippered pocket in my fishing vest. I’m at the DLR platform waiting for a train before I realize I’ve forgotten to shave. If Andy is yanking my chain . . .
All doubts fade when I get to Arrivals at ten to eleven and see KL 1557 on the board, on schedule for fifteen minutes hence. If she’s hurt—
But she won’t be. At least, not physically. In her line of work, if something goes wrong, it’s probably fatal; at best she’d be clogging up a hospital high dependency unit, and I’d be on my way out to see her with many hand-wringing apologetics and a complimentary budget-price ticket from Human Resources.
Hanging around in an airport Arrivals hall is not a good thing to do if you’re nervous. I can feel the cops’ eyes on the back of my neck, wondering what the unshaven agitated guy who can’t keep his feet still is doing. The minutes and seconds trickle by with glacial, infuriating slowness. Then the Arrivals board changes the flight status to arrived, and—
There she is. Coming out of the door from baggage claim in the middle of a clot of suits, violin case slung over her shoulder. Freckled skin stretched over high cheekbones, long red hair tied back out of her face, uncharacteristically dressed in office drag: that’s unusual, must be urban camouflage for whatever she’s been sent to do. Something about her gait, or the set of her shoulders, tells me she’s bone-deep weary. I wave: she sees me and changes course and I move towards her and we collide in a deep embrace that ends in a kiss.
She pulls back after a couple of seconds. “Get me home. Please.” She sounds—low.
“Andy said—”
“Andy is a wee bawbag and we’re going home. Taxi. Right now.” She’s leaning on me, swaying slightly.
“Mo? What’s wrong?”
“Later.” She draws a deep, shuddering breath. “Right now, let’s go home.”
“Can you walk?” She nods. “Okay, we’ll get a taxi.” It’ll be about twenty quid: I can’t afford to make a habit of it. But scratch worrying about money for the time being. If she feels too crap to face the tube . . .
We ride home in silence, wincing in synchrony as we bump over speed pillows and sway through chicanes and suffer all the other traffic-annoying measures that slow down ambulances and cost lives and triple the price of a simple taxi ride. I pay the driver and hold the door open for her and then we’re inside our front hall again, the door shut behind us, and she slumps against the wall as if she’s just run a marathon. “Coffee, tea, or something stronger?” I ask.
“Coffee.” She pauses. “With something stronger.” After a moment she levers herself up and shuffles into the living room, then collapses on the overstuffed sofa we inherited from her sister Liz when she emigrated.
I hurry back into the kitchen and refill the caff, then add a generous shot of cooking whisky to her mug. When I get back to the living room she’s still on the sofa, her violin case sitting on the pile of magazines on the coffee table. She seems to be shaking at first, in silent laughter: then I realize she’s crying.
I put the coffee mugs on the table and sit down next to her. After a moment she shuffles round and I pull her against my shoulder, so that her tears trickle down the base of my neck.
Mo cries helplessly, almost silently, pausing every few seconds to take a little hiccuping gasp of air. She’s so quiet—almost as if she’s afraid to make a sound. I hold her gently, and murmur inanities over the top of her head, stroking her shoulders. I’m angry at my own helplessness: I’ve seen her upset before, but never anything like this—
“What happened?” I ask, eventually, after the shudders give way to an occasional twitch.
“You don’t need to know.” She sniffles. “God, I’m a mess. Fetch the tissues?” We disentangle and I go in search of something for her to wipe her nose on. When I get back she’s sitting up, clutching her coffee mug and staring at the brick-surround fireplace we’ve been meaning to get rid of ever since we moved in, with eyes like wrecking balls.
I put the tissues in front of her on the table. She ignores them. “Was it wet?” I ask.
“You have no need to—” She shudders slightly, puts the mug down, and grabs a tissue. I notice her hands are a mess, reddish-brown grime ingrained around her nail beds: Jonathan Hoag territory. Holding the kleenex to her face she blows her nose once, twice: a peal of bloody trumpets. “It was ghastly. They made me—I think I can say this—Bob, remember the Plumbers?”
I nod. Deep in the pit of my stomach, I feel dread. “The job in Amsterdam. They shut you up with a geas afterwards, didn’t they? Was it that bad? No, don’t try to tell me. You just stay right there.”
She nods convulsively. “I can’t talk about it.” Emphasis on the can’t. I stand up. “I’m going to make a call.” I go through to the kitchen and speed-dial Andy.
“Hello?” Andy sounds distracted.
I take a deep breath. “Pay attention now, I will ask this only once: Who should I blame for this? You? Or that motherfucker Tom in Conflict Resolution? Or someone else? Because I’ve got a situation here.”
“What—” Andy pauses. “Bob? Is that you?”
“Mo is home from Amsterdam,” I say carefully. “She’s in a state, and she can’t unload on me because some cretin in Plumbing has drawn the magic circle too tight. I don’t know what happened out there, but she’s about two millimeters away from a nervous breakdown. I can’t help her if she’s blocked from talking to me, so let me explain the situation in words of one syllable: you are going to get the geas relaxed so she can vent about whatever happened yesterday, or the Laundry is going to have to replace a valued employee. No, make that two—no, three new employees they’ll be needing, by the time I’m through with whoever’s responsible. Capisce?”
“It wasn’t me!” Andy sounds shocked. “Stay on the line. Where are you, exactly?”
“I’m in the kitchen at home, that’s on file as safe house Lima Three Six. Mo was in the living room, last time I looked. Is that exact enough for you?”
“Probably . . .” I hear keys clicking hastily, a keyboard on a desk near his phone. “Listen, you aren’t cleared for this, and I can’t do it over the phone. Normally you would be cleared but that enquiry that’s pending ha
s screwed up your—look, I’m tied up right now, but I’ll send someone round immediately, as soon as I can find a warm body. Can you hold the fort for an hour?”
“Who are you going to send, exactly?”
“The office bloody intern if I have to, as long as they’ve got an Oyster card and can carry a Letter of Release, will that do you?”
I sigh. “It’ll have to. Better hurry, though, or you’re going to be short-staffed next week.”
I go back to the living room. Mo is sitting on the sofa, immobile, in exactly the position she was in when I left. I shove the coffee table aside and kneel in front of her. “Mo? Talk to me?”
She’s staring right through me at the fireplace, vague and unfocused. “Can’t,” she says.
“I called Andy. The reason it won’t let you talk to me is the pending enquiry on my record.” It being the simpleminded geas someone in Plumbing dropped on everyone who witnessed the scene in Amsterdam. “I threatened to kick his arse and he’s sending a courier with a Letter of Release just for you.” A physical token that will release her from the geas. “He said it’ll take about an hour, maybe a bit longer. Can you wait that long?”
Abruptly, she makes eye contact. “Oh thank God,” she says. Then she slowly slumps forward, like a puppet whose strings have just been cut.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, THE DOORBELL RINGS. I’m upstairs in the bedroom, sitting up with Mo, when I hear the chimes. It took a while to get her up there and into bed, propped up on pillows with the duvet pulled up to her chin—still wearing most of her street clothes—and a mug of coffee to hand. She’s shivery and a bit shocky but the color has begun to return to her cheeks, and ten minutes ago she asked me to bring her violin. She doesn’t like to leave it unattended, and she’s right—fuck knows what would happen if one of the local lowlifes put a brick through the window and snatched it, the thing’s about as safe as a loaded machine gun with no safety catch. So it’s sitting on the bed, and she’s got one hand on it, just to maintain contact.
We’re talking inconsequentialities, waiting for the letter to arrive. “A weekend would be good,” she agrees.
“If I can find a bed and breakfast—”
“In Harrogate? It won’t be cheap but it’ll be quiet and there are places to walk, and it’s not far off the East Coast Main Line.”
“Maybe York, instead?”
“York, in summer? It’ll be sunny, but the river smells—”
Ding-dong.
“That’ll be the letter,” I say, rising. “Back in a minute.” I’m through the door and taking the stairs two at a time. That was fast, I think, eagerly reaching for the door handle.
My head hurts. Then the next thing I think is, That’s funny. Why am I on the floor?
I’m looking up and my vision is blurred, like a migraine. Uncle Fester leans over me, pointing a gun with a fat barrel at my face.
“Где же она?” he says.
“Uh?”
Actually, my face feels like it’s split open. The bastard shoved the door in my face, hard.
Uncle Fester pokes my forehead with the gun, provoking a bright metallic flash of pain. “Скажи мне сейчас, или я буду убивать вас.”
He looks like Niko Bellic’s mad uncle, the bad one with the child abuse convictions and the questionable personal hygiene, not to mention a bright red-glowing zit in the middle of his forehead. And I am utterly fucked, because I don’t understand a word he’s saying: but I’ll swear I saw him or his twin brother at the bus stop yesterday—
He’s pulling back the gun. I can see its barrel looking huge and dark, and if I knew where my hands were there’s this neat trick you can do when some idiot points an automatic at you at short range, you grab the slide by laying your hand on top of the barrel and pushing back to stop the breech closing, which is a great secret agent stunt if you’re not lying on the floor of your own front hall with one arm trapped under you and blood trickling down your face.
“Do you speak English?” I ask.
Uncle Fester looks annoyed. “Waar is ze?”
I look him in the eyes and feel my guts freeze. I’ve been here before, staring at the luminous green worms swirling behind the glazed surface of his eyes, writhing in the muddy waters of a mind that’s been sucked into a place where human consciousness melts like grease on a hot frying pan—
There is a noise behind me like a cat the size of a bus yowling rage and defiance at a rival who has dared to enter his territory.
Uncle Fester (or whatever it is that wears the mortal skin of a dead man walking) raises his gun to bear on the staircase. My left arm twists almost without me willing it and I push at his right leg just above the ankle, shoving as hard as I can at his trousers don’t think about what happens if you touch his flesh because that would be as bad as not forcing him off balance while he’s aiming at Mo—
And he topples across me.
These things are never terribly good at coordinating a tensegrity structure like a mammalian musculoskeletal system: even when they’re in the driving seat they’re trying to work a manual transmission with automatic-only training. His gun bangs, a curiously muffled thudding sound as the feedback howl from the top of the staircase rises to a pitch that makes my teeth ache and overflows into an ear-numbingly harsh chord, music to snap necks to.
Uncle Fester goes abruptly limp as he falls on my legs. There’s a horrid sigh and a smell I don’t want to think about as unlife and animation departs.
“Bob?” Her voice is small and terrified.
“I’m okay!” I call. “Are you?”
Pause. “Check.” She advances down the stairs, instrument raised and bow poised, wearing an intent, emotionless expression utterly at odds with her voice. As she comes closer I see a trickle of blood emerging from her fingertips where she grips the neck of the bone-colored violin. There’s always a cost to being entrusted with such instruments, and she’s half-past overdrawn at the bank of life, her hands spidering twitchily as she stalks the house room by room, confirming that Uncle Fester was alone.
My forehead’s damp and I feel sick. I reach out to push myself up so I can shut the front door in case a curious neighbor sees something that might damage their house valuation, and my vision blurs again. I try to wipe my face and my hand comes away red and sticky. That’s odd, I tell myself, I’ve never been shot before. Then everything gets very hazy and far away for a while.
4.
PROMPT CRITICAL
HOSPITALS ARE BORING PLACES: MY ADVICE IS TO AVOID THEM wherever possible, unless you happen to work there. Unfortunately I’m not always good at taking my own advice, which is why I spend three hours in the A&E unit, having my head bolted back together.
Actually, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s just a bash and a scrape to my scalp: but head wounds bleed like crazy and they wanted to make sure I wasn’t concussed and didn’t have a fractured skull or a subdural hematoma or something. Then it was time for about a million butterfly sutures and I’m told I may never be able to take the paper bag off in public again, but that’s okay because they let me go home with Mo and the nice folks from Plumbing who look like extras from The Matrix.
Being attacked by a demonically possessed Russian with a silenced pistol is unusual but not exceptional in my line of work; sloppy of me not to have replaced my ward, though, or to have checked the spy lens in the door before opening up. Inexcusable not to have noticed that Andy’s messenger was at least half an hour early, too . . . but in my defense, I wasn’t exactly expecting to be attacked by a demonically possessed Russian with a silenced pistol. (At least, I assume he was Russian. He was speaking Russian, wasn’t he? I have some broken schoolboy French: therefore I’m from Quebec. Such are the perils of inductive logic. It was certainly demonic possession: probably class two, one of the minor feeders in the night. Otherwise I’d be worse than dead.)
Anyway. The point is, that sort of thing is just not done, at least not without some degree of warnin
g, especially to someone who’s signed off sick for the rest of the week—I’m feeling distinctly peeved. It’s unprofessional . I’m just lucky Mo realized something was wrong and grabbed her violin in time to switch him off. She may be pale and shaking in the aftermath of—something very bad, I guess—but she’s a trouper, or trooper, or something, and her reflexes are everything that mine are not.
When we get home, our house has been invaded by spooks. An entire team of Plumbers are at work, rewiring the perimeter defenses and daubing exclusion sigils on the window frames. Andy is sitting at the kitchen table, tapping his fingers, briefcase open, which makes it official: it’s serious enough to drag management off-site. “Bob, Mo, good to see you!” He sounds relieved, which is worrying.
“Letter of Release.” I cross my arms.
“You don’t need it.” Andy glances at Mo. “Whether we like it or not, Bob is now involved in CLUB ZERO. At least, I’m assuming that’s what followed you home . . .”
“Oh dear,” she says heavily, and pulls out a chair. “Bob, I really didn’t want—”
“Too late, whatever it is.” I grimace. I still feel a little sick, but it’s mostly overspill from the music—not concussion, just a little totenlied—and I’m heartsick for her, too. “Andy, what’s going on?”
“Angleton’s missing,” he says, with a curious little half smile, as if he’s just cracked a really filthy joke and is wondering if you’ve even heard of the perversion he’s alluding to.
“Angleton’s what?” says Mo, just as I open my mouth to say exactly the same thing.
“He’s missing. Do you have any information . . . no, I guess not.” His cheek twitches.
Mo reaches across the table and takes my hand. I barely notice.
Angleton is just about the bedrock of the department. Yes, his position is shrouded in rumor and misinformation—to some, he’s simply a DSS, a Detached Special Secretary doing boring and esoteric work in Arcana Analysis; to others he’s involved in the occult equivalent of counterespionage: but the truth is a lot weirder. Angleton actually gets to talk to the Board, who nobody has actually seen in the flesh in forty years. He’s the whetstone that sharpens the cutting edge of the blade our political masters fancy they wield when they tell us what to do: the dog’s bollocks, in other words. He’s not the heart of the Laundry—no one person is ever indispensable to any well-run agency—but he’s probably important enough that if he is indeed missing, things are going to get unpleasantly exciting.
The Fuller Memorandum Page 6