“Enjoy it while you can.” I’ve got plans for the weekend that include blowing a week’s salary on stuff we might not need: brown rice, lentils, canned beans, camping gas cylinders. I can make room for it in our abbreviated joke of a cellar if I toss the rusting bicycle and a bunch of other crap that’s taking up space . . . “I was thinking about going into the office this afternoon.”
“But you’re signed off sick,” Mo points out.
“Yeah, that’s the trouble.” I refill my coffee mug from the cafetière.
“After what Andy said, I figure I ought to at least poke around Angleton’s office. See if I can spot something that everyone else has missed, before the trail goes cold. And there are some files I want to pull so I’ve got something to read over the weekend.”
“You are not bringing work home.” She crosses her arms, abruptly mulish.
“The thought never crossed my mind.” I play the innocent expression card and she raises me one sullen glare. I fold. “I’m sorry, but there’s also some reading matter I want to pick up.”
“You’re not bringing work home! We’re not certified, anyway.”
“Yes we are—as of yesterday, this is a level two secure site,” I point out. “I’m not bringing anything secret home, just archive stuff from the stacks. It’s tagged ‘confidential’ but it’s so old it’s nearly ready to claim its pension. Strictly historical interest only.”
“Um.” She raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Angleton”—I swallow—“when he sent me to Cosford he forgot to give me the backgrounder first. But he gave me a reading list.”
“Oh fucking hell.” She looks annoyed, which is a good sign. But then her eyes track sideways and I realize I’m not off the hook yet. “What’s that?”
“That?” I ask brightly, suppressing the impulse to squawk oh shit. “It appears to be a cardboard box.”
“A cardboard box with a picture of an iPhone on it,” she says slowly.
“It’s empty,” I hurry to reassure her.
“Right.” She picks up her coffee and takes a mouthful. “Would I be right in thinking it’s empty because it used to contain an iPhone? Which is now, oh, I dunno, in your pocket?”
“Um. Yes.”
“Oh, Bob. Don’t you know any better?”
“It was at least a class four glamour,” I say defensively, resisting the urge to hunch my shoulders and hiss preciousss. “And I needed a new phone anyway.”
She sighs. “Why, Bob? Has your old phone started to smell or something?”
“I left my PDA in Hangar Six at Cosford,” I point out. “It’s slightly scorched around the edges and I don’t have room for half my contacts on my mobile.”
“So you bought an iPhone, rather than bugging Iris to sign off on a replacement PDA.”
“If you must put it that way . . . yes.”
Mo rolls her eyes. “Bob loses saving throw vs. shiny with a penalty of −5. Bob takes 2d8 damage to the credit card—just how much did it cost? Will you take it back if I guilt-trip you hard enough? Do pigs fly?”
“I was considering it,” I admit. “But then Brains came round and installed something.”
“Brains installed—”
“He’s working on a port of OFCUT to the iPhone platform at work. I think he thought mine was an official phone . . . I’ve got to take it into the office and get it scrubbed before I even think about trading it in, or the Auditors will string us both up by the giblets.” I shudder faintly, but Mo is visibly distracted.
“Hang on. They’ve ported OFCUT to the iPhone? What does it look like?”
“I’ll show you . . .”
Fifteen minutes later I am on my way to the office, sans shiny. Mo is still sitting at the kitchen table with a cold mug of coffee, in thrall to the JesusPhone’s reality distortion field, prodding at the jelly-bean icons with an expression of hapless fascination on her face. I’ve got a horrible feeling that the only way I’m going to earn forgiveness is to buy her one for her birthday. Such is life, in a geek household.
ACTUALLY, I HAVE A MOTIVE FOR GOING IN TO WORK THAT I don’t feel like telling Mo about.
So as soon as I’ve stopped in my office and filled out a requisition for the file numbers Angleton scribbled on that scrap of paper for me—we can’t get at the stacks directly right now, they’re fifty meters down under the building site that is Service House, but there’s a twice-daily collection and delivery run—I head down the corridor and across the walkway and up the stairs to the Security Office.
“Is Harry in?” I ask the guy in the blue suit behind the counter. He’s reading the afternoon Metro and looking bored.
“Harry? Who wants to know?” He sits up.
I pull my warrant card. “Bob Howard, on active. I want to talk to Harry—or failing that, whoever the issuing officer is—about personal defense options.”
“Personal def—” He peers at my warrant card: then his eyes uncross and he undergoes a sudden attitude adjustment. “Oh, you’re one of them. Right. You wait here, sir, we’ll get you sorted out.”
Contrary to popular fiction, there is no such thing as a “license to kill.” Nor do secret agents routinely carry firearms for self-defense. Me, I don’t even like guns—I mean, they’re great fun if all you want to do is make holes in paper targets at a firing range, but for their real design purpose, saving your ass in a life-or-death emergency, no: that’s not on my list of fun things. I’ve been trained not to shoot my own foot off (and I’ve been practicing regularly, ever since the business on Saint Martin), but I feel a lot safer when I’m not carrying a gun.
However, two days ago my primary defensive ward got smoked in a civilian FATACC, yesterday I got doorstepped by a killer zombie from Dzerzhinsky Square, and I now have a dull ache in the life insurance policy telling me that it’s time to tool up. Which in my case means, basically, dropping in on Harry, which means—
“Bob, my son! And how’s it going with you? Girlfriend glassed your head up?”
Harry the Horse is our departmental armorer. He looks like an extra from The Long Good Friday: belt-straining paunch that’s constantly trying to escape, thinning white hair, and a piratical black eye-patch. Last time I saw him he was explaining the finer details of the care and feeding of a Glock 17 (which we’ve standardized on, damn it, because of an ill-thought requirement for ammunition and parts commonality with the Sweeney); I responded by showing him how to take down a medusa (something which I have unfortunately too much experience at).
I recover from the back-slapping and straighten up: “It’s going well, Harry. Well, kinda-sorta. My ward got smoked a couple of days ago and I’m on heightened alert—there’s been an incident—”
“—As I can see from your head, my son, so you’re thinking you need to armor up. Come right this way, let’s see what we can kit you out with.” He yanks the inner door open and pulls me into his little shop of—
You know that scene in The Matrix? When Neo says: “We need guns,” and the white backdrop turns into a cross between Heathrow Airport and the back room at a rifle range? Harry’s temporary office in the New Annexe Third Floor Extension Security Area is a bit like that, only cramped and lit by a bare sixty-watt incandescent bulb supervised by a small and very sleepy spider.
Harry pulls something that looks like an M16 on steroids off the wall and picks up a drum magazine the size of a small car tire. “Can I interest you in an Atchisson AA-12 assault shotgun? Burst-selectable for single shot or full auto? Takes a twenty-round drum full of twelve-gauge magnum rounds, and I’ve got a special load-out just for taking down paranormal manifestations—alternate FRAG-12 fin-stabilized grenades, white phosphorus rounds, and solid silver triple-ought buck, each ball micro-engraved with the Litany of Khar-Nesh—right up your street, my son.” He racks the slide on the AA-12 with a clattering clash like the latch on the gates of hell.
“Er, I was thinking of something a little smaller, perhaps? Something I could carry concealed without looking
like I was smuggling antitank guns on the bus?”
“Wimp.” Harry puts the AA-12 back on the rack and carefully stows the drum magazine in a drawer. I can tell he’s proud of his new toy, which from the sound of it would certainly blast any unwanted visitor right off my doorstep—and the front path, and the pavement, and the neighbors opposite at number 27, and their back garden too. “So tell me, what is it you really want?”
That’s the cue for business: “First, I need to indent for a new class four- certified defensive ward, personal, safe to wear 24x7.” I pause. “I also want to draw a HOG, cat three with silvered base and a suitable carrier. And—” I steel myself: “I’ll take your advice on the next, but I was thinking about drawing a personal protective firearm—I’m certificated on the Glock—and a box of ammunition. I won’t be routinely carrying it, but it’ll be kept at home to repel boarders.”
“You don’t need a Glock to get rid of lodgers, my son.” He spots my expression. “Had a problem?”
“Yeah, attempted physical intrusion.”
“Hmm. Who else will have access to the weapon?”
I choose my next words carefully: “The house is a level two secure site. The only other resident is my wife. Dr. O’Brien isn’t certificated for firearms, but she has other competencies and knows not to play with other kids’ toys.”
Harry considers his next words carefully: “I don’t want to lean on you, Bob, but I need more than your word for that. Seeing as how it’s for you and the delectable Dominique—give her my regards—I think we can bend the rules far enough to fit, but I shall need to put a ward on the trigger guard.”
“A—How?” That’s new to me.
“It’s a new technique the eggheads in Q-Projects have come up with: they take a drop of your blood and key the trigger guard so that the only finger that’ll fit through it is yours. Of course,” his voice drops confidingly, “that doesn’t stop the bad guys from chopping your finger off and using it to work the trigger; but they’ve got to take the gun and the finger off you before they can shoot you with it. Let’s just say, it’s more about stopping pistols from going walkies in public than about stopping your lady wife from offing you in a fit of jealous passion.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, I can live with that.”
He brightens: “Also, we can make it invisible, and silent.”
“Wha—hey! You mean you’ve got real concealed carry?”
He winks at me.
“Okay, I would like that, too. Um. As long as it’s not invisible to me, also. And, um, the holster. An invisible gun in a visible holster would be kind of inconvenient . . .”
“It’ll be invisible to anyone who doesn’t have a warrant card, my son, or your money back.”
“Will you match my life insurance, if it isn’t and some bright spark sets an SO19 team on me?” (One of the reasons I am reluctant to carry a handgun in public is that the London Metropolitan Police have a zero-tolerance approach to anyone else carrying guns, and while their specialist firearms teams don’t officially have a shoot-to-kill policy, you try finding a Brazilian plumber who does call-out work during a bomb scare these days.)
“I think we can back that, yes.” Harry sounds amused. “Is that your lot?”
“It’ll do.” A new ward for myself, a Hand of Glory if I need to make a quick strategic withdrawal, and a gun to keep at home that I can carry in public if I absolutely have to: What more could an extremely worried spook ask for? Ah, I know. “Do you have any alarms?” I ask.
“I thought you was dead-set on home defense the DIY way.” Harry looks momentarily scornful, then thoughtful: “Things ain’t that bad yet, are they?”
“Could be.” I shove my hands deep in my pockets and do my best to look gloomy. “Could be.”
“Whoa.” Harry’s forehead wrinkles further. “Listen. There could be a problem: you drawing a HOG and a gun, and your good lady wife’s violin, that makes you a regular arsenal, dunnit? Now, if I was signing out an alarm to, oh, that nice Mrs. Thompson in Human Resources”—I shudder—“there’d be no problem, on account of how she and her hubby and that no-good son of theirs ain’t certificated for combat and wouldn’t know a receiver from a slide if they trapped their fingers between them. Right? But let me just put it to you: suppose I sign an alarm out to you, put you and your missus on the watch list, and a bad guy comes calling at your front door. You and Dr. O’Brien go to the mattresses, and you activate the alarm, and being you and the missus you give as good as you get. Thirty seconds later the Watch Team are on your case and zoom in. Heat of battle, heat of battle: How do the Watch Team know that the people shooting from inside your house are you and your wife? What if you’ve gotten out through the back window? That’s how blue-on-blue happens, my son. I figure you ought to think this one through some more.”
“Okay.” I look around the compact armory. “Guess you’re right.”
We’ve got a panic button, it’s part of the kit the Plumbers fitted us out with; but an alarm of the kind I’m talking about is portable, personal, you carry it on your body and there’s a limited list of folks who carry them—that kind of cover is computationally expensive—and if you’re on the watch list and you trigger the alarm, SCORPION STARE wakes up and starts looking for you. And for everyone who might be threatening you. You don’t want to press that button by accident, believe me.
“One ward, one HOG, and a +2 magic pistol of invisible smiting. Anything else I need to know?”
“Yeah. Come back in an hour and I’ll have all the paperwork waiting for you to sign. The HOG and the ward I can give you once I get your chop; the pistol will take a little longer.” Harry shrugs. “Best I can do, awright?”
“You’re a champ.” I make my good-byes, then head off. I’ve got other things to do before I go home.
I’M ON MY WAY TO ANDY’S OFFICE WHEN IRIS RUNS ME down.
“Bob! What are you doing here? I thought I told you to take the week off?” She sounds mildly irritated, and a little out of breath, as if she’s been running around looking for me. “Hey, what happened to your head?”
I shrug. “Stuff came up.”
She looks concerned. “In my office.”
I demur: her office is her territory. “Look, Mo came back from . . . a job . . . in pieces, really rattled. Then the job followed her home, and that’s a full-dress panic—”
Her eyes narrow: “How bad?”
“This bad.” I point to the row of butterfly closures on my head and she winces. “Have you heard anything about—about upswings in non-affiliated agency activity in London this week?”
“My office,” she says, very firmly, and this time she means it.
“Okay.”
Once inside her office, she locks the door, switches on the red DND lamp, then lowers the blinds on the glass window that lets her view the corridor. Then she turns to me. “What codewords do you know?”
“I’ve been approved for CLUB ZERO”—she gives a sharp intake of breath—“and CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. Not to mention MAGINOT BLUE STARS, but Harry the Horse wouldn’t give me an alarm buzzer without your chop on the order form. And Angleton just told me to deputize for him on BLOODY BARON, although I haven’t been briefed on that yet.”
“Wow. That’s a bundle.” She eyes me warily. “Angleton dumps a lot on your shoulders.” For someone so junior, she leaves unsaid.
“Yes.” I focus on her more closely: wavy chestnut hair that is currently unkempt and beginning to show silvery roots, crow’s-foot worry lines at the edges of her eyes, a restlessness to her stance that suggests she’s far busier than she wants me to see. “Your turn.”
“Wait, first—what happened yesterday?”
“Andy was with the Plumbers on cleanup; it should be on today’s overnight events briefing sheet.”
“That was”—her eyes widen—“you? Active incursion and assault by a class three, repelled by agents? Those stitches, it was that?”
“Yeah.” I flop down on her visitor’s chai
r without a by-your-leave.
“They tried to rearrange my features: it was a close call. I came in today to draw a personal defense item, but also to ask what the hell is going on? And this business about Angleton—”
“You saw him the day before yesterday.”
“Yes.” I pause. “He’s still missing. Right?”
She nods.
“Do you want me to look round his office? In case he left anything?” Iris sniffs. “No.” I think she’s a poor liar. “But if you know anything . . . ?”
“I don’t like being kept in the dark.” Coming over all snippy on the person who is my nominal manager isn’t clever, I know, but at this point I’m running low on self-restraint. “It seems to me that a whole bunch of rather bad things are happening right now, and that smells to me like enemy action.” I’m echoing Andy. “Whoever the enemy is, in this context. Right, fine, you keep on playing games, that’s all right by me—except that it isn’t, really, because one of the games in question just followed my wife home and tried to kill her. Us.” I point to the row of butterfly sutures on my forehead, and to her credit, she winces. “Remember, it costs.”
“You’ve made your point,” she says quietly, sitting down behind her desk. “Bob, if it was just up to me, I’d tell you—but it isn’t. There’s a committee meeting tomorrow, though, and I’ll raise your concerns. Ask me again on Monday and I should be able to pull you in on the BLOODY BARON committee, and at least add you to the briefing list for CLUB ZERO. In the meantime, if you don’t mind me asking—what items did Harry sign out to you?”
“He’s processing them now.” I enumerate. “We’ve also had our household security upgraded, in case there’s a repeat visit, although I think that’s unlikely. We’re alerted now, so I’d expect any follow-ups to happen out in public: it’s riskier for them than it was, but right now the house is a kill zone so if they want Mo badly enough they’ll have to do it in the street.”
The Fuller Memorandum Page 8