“Do you want some water?” Her face is instantly concerned. I try to nod. She gets the message. “Julian, fetch Mr. Howard some water.” She doesn’t look at Mr. Headless-Shotgun as she issues the order: she’s focusing on me, with a strangely concerned look. “We wouldn’t want him to get dehydrated.”
“Yah. Er, Jonquil, should I fetch . . . ?”
His hesitant question brings a smile to her face. “Yes, a little aperitif would be good. Bring it.”
Aperitif? I clear my throat as Julian Headless-Shotgun leaves through a door I can’t see. “Drinking before you take me to the All-Highest? Isn’t that a bit unwise?” It’s a calculated risk, but her pink court shoes are a bit less likely to do Mr. Kidney an injury than Julian’s size-twelve DMs.
“Oh, I’m not going to get drunk.” She gives a little giggle.
Mr. Blond clears his throat: “You’re the one who’s going to be drunk.”
“Oh do shut up, Gareth,” Jonquil says tiredly.
“I’m just trying to explain—”
“Yes, you’re very trying.” Her world-weary tone suggests to me that Mr. Blond is definitely from the B-Team—unlike Jonquil, who has proven frighteningly competent, so far. “Why don’t you go through Mr. Howard’s jacket pockets instead, in case he’s carrying any nasty surprises for us?”
“Yes, Dark Mistress. I live only to obey.”
I must be slow today because it takes several seconds for the coin to drop. “You’re not vampires, are you?” I ask, trying to stay calm; the prospect of falling into the clutches of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh is quite bad enough without accidentally crossing the streams with a bunch of live-action Vampire: The Masquerade fans—and you can never be too sure. (Cultists aren’t usually noted for their tight grip on reality.)
“No!” She giggles again. “Vampires don’t exist! We’re just going to drink your blood and eat a teeny-tiny bit of your flesh, silly.”
I can’t help myself: I try and wriggle away from her. Which is fine as far as it goes, but as there’s a wall about half a meter behind my back I don’t get very far. “Why?” I manage to ask as Julian the Blood-Drinking Shotgun-Toting Cultist reappears with a bottle of Perrier, a scalpel, and a pair of unpleasantly fat syringes.
“Transubstantiation: it’s not just for Christians anymore!” She sits on my back to stop me squirming away from Julian, then takes the scalpel and lays my left sleeve open from cuff to elbow. “Be a good boy and I’ll let you have the water afterwards. This won’t hurt much, if you don’t struggle.”
She sticks me on the inside of the elbow with the first needle, and pokes around for a vein with expertise that is clearly born of much practice. I grit my teeth. “Won’t your All-Highest take exception to you sampling the buffet?”
“Mummy won’t mind,” she announces airily. “Next tube, Julian darling.” She stabs me again, and this time there’s a brief spark of searing pain as she nails a nerve. “It was her idea, actually,” she says confidingly. “If your active service units find us and try to set up a geas to immobilize everyone but you, the law of contagion will keep us moving.”
“Yeah,” echoes Gareth from the other side of the room, doing his dimwitted best to keep up with the program.
I boggle slightly. “Would it change your mind if I said I was HIVPOSITIVE?”
She pauses for a moment, then points her nose in the air. “No,” she says dismissively. “Mummy’s seen your medical records, she’d have said. Don’t tell lies, Mr. Howard, it will only get you into trouble.” She passes the second syringe—turgid with purplish-red blood—up to Julian, then raises the scalpel. “Now this will hurt!” she announces as she bends over me with a curiously intent expression.
I swear for a few seconds. Then I give in and scream.
13.
THINGS THAT EAT US
AT SIX O’CLOCK , ANGLETON EMERGES FROM HIS OFFICE— where he has been inexplicably overlooked by the searchers for the entire duration of his “disappearance”—and stalks the darkening corridors of the New Annexe like the shade of vengeance incarnate. A humming cloud of dread follows him as he passes the empty offices and the taped-over doorway in the vaguely titled Ways and Means Department. My office is, of course, empty: Angleton has rearranged meeting schedules in the departmental Exchange database to ensure that certain players will be elsewhere when he makes his way to Room 366.
There’s a red light shining over the door, and a ward inscribed on the wood veneer beneath it glows gently green in defiance of the mundane rules of physics. Angleton ignores the DND light and the ward and enters. Faces turn. “James.” Boris’s face is ashen. “What are happen?”
(Boris isn’t Russian and the accent isn’t a fake; it’s a parting kiss from Krantzberg syndrome, brain damage incurred by performing occult operations on Mark One Plains Ape computing hardware—the human cerebral cortex. Magicians use computers because chips are easier to repair than brains which have had chunks scooped out by the Dee-space entities they accidentally let in when they began to think too hard about those symbols they were manipulating.)
“The baited trap has been sprung,” Angleton says lightly. He pulls out a chair and collapses into it like a loose bag of bones held together by his dusty suit. “Trouble is, our boy was holding the bait when they grabbed it.”
“Oh bugger.” Andy, tall and dandelion-haired as the famous graphic artist whose name he uses as an alias, looks distinctly displeased. “Do we know who they are yet?”
“Not yet.” Angleton plays a scale on the invisible ivories of the tabletop, his fingertips clattering like drumsticks. “I was expecting to reel them in at tomorrow’s BLOODY BARON meeting, but that might be too late.”
“Where’s Agent CANDID?”
Angleton grimaces. “I sent her on a little errand, en route to hook up with Alan Barnes and the OCCULUS unit. They’re on station in Black-heath, ready to hit the road as soon as we give them a target. I’ve gone to the Board: they authorized an escalation to Rung Three. I have accordingly put CO15 on notice to provide escort and routing.” CO15 is the Traffic Operational Command Unit of the London Metropolitan Police.
“MAGINOT BLUE STARS are in the loop and ready to provide covering fire if we need to go above Rung Five.” The notional ladder of escalation’s rungs are denominated in steps looted from Herman Kahn’s infamous theory of strategic conflict: in a good old-fashioned war, Rung Five would mark the first exchange of tactical nuclear weapons.
“Is it that bad?” Boris asks, needy for reassurance. Even old war horses sometimes balk in the face of a wall of pikes.
“Potentially.” Angleton stops finger-tapping. “CLUB ZERO is definitely getting ready to perform in London. The new research ‘findings’”—Andy flushes—“are out in the wild and widely believed, and with any luck they’ve swallowed them whole and are going for broke this time. They successfully stole a report on Agent CANDID’s weapon, which I admit I did not anticipate, and they think they’ve stolen the Fuller Memorandum.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath from Choudhury, whose previous stuffed-shirt demeanor has evaporated. “That’s what the break-in was about?”
Angleton nods. “As I said, the baited trap has been sprung. They’re going to try and steal the Eater of Souls, bind him to service and use him as a Reaper. I cannot be certain of this, but I believe their logical goal would be to break down the Wall of Pain that surrounds the Sleeper in the Pyramid. With the Squadron grounded we’ve had perilously little recon info on the state of the Sleeper for the past two years—the drone over-flights had to be suspended due to erratic flight control software glitches—and during CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, awakening the Sleeper will be an obvious goal for the cultists. Of course, the logical flaws in Dr. Ford’s report will take somewhat longer to come to light, and I am confident that even if they mounted such an attack it would fail, but the collateral civilian damage would be unacceptable to our political masters.” His smile is as ghastly as any nuclear war planner’s.
“Why has nobody nuked the pyramid?”
Angleton inclines his head as he considers Choudhury’s question. “There is a contingency plan for the Squadron to fly such an operation,” he admits. “But it probably won’t work, and it might disrupt the Wall of Pain. Can we take this up later? I believe we have an operation to mount—tonight.”
“Tell us what to do.” Andy lays his hands on the table. They’re white with tension. “Are we going to be able to recover Bob?”
“I hope so.” Angleton reaches into his pocket and produces a small cardboard box. “Here is a standard paper clip. Until yesterday, it spent nearly five years at the back of a drawer, in close proximity to another paper clip, which is currently attached to the false Fuller Memorandum. The clips were stored in close proximity inside a Casimir amplification grid designed to boost the contagion field. It should be quite receptive right now.” He places it on the conference table and produces a conductive pencil from his breast pocket. “If you will excuse me?”
Angleton places a sheet of plain paper on the tabletop, then rapidly sketches an oddly warped pentacle, with curves leading off from its major vertices. Next, he shakes the paper clip from its box into the middle of the grid. Then he produces a sterile needle and expresses a drop of blood from his left little finger’s tip, allowing it to fall on the paper clip. Finally he closes his eyes.
“Somewhere on Norroy . . . Road,” he says slowly. “Off Putney High Street.” Then he opens his eyes. The glow from his retinas spills sickly green across the paper, but fades rapidly.
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to use a GPS tracker?” carps Andy.
MEANWHILE: A WOMAN WITH A VIOLIN WALKS INTO A PUB.
An hour and a half has passed since Mo spoke to Angleton. She’s been home to get changed and collect her go-bag, but still makes the meeting in a popular wine bar off New Oxford Street with time to spare, thanks to her warrant card and a slightly confused police traffic patrol. (External Liaison will raise hell about it tomorrow, but tomorrow can fend for itself.)
The middle-aged man in the loose-cut Italian suit is already there and waiting for her, sitting in the middle of a silent ring of empty tables while his dead-eyed bodyguards track the access routes.
“Mrs. O’Brien,” says Panin. “Welcome.”
She pulls out a chair and releases her bulky messenger bag, dropping it between her feet as she sits. She has her violin case slung across her chest, like a soldier’s rifle.
“Добрый вечер, как ты?”
Panin’s lips quirk. “Quite well, thank you. If you would prefer to continue in English ...”
“My Russian is very limited,” Mo admits. “My employers are more interested in Arabic—not to mention Enochian—these days.”
“Well, let us consider drinking to the bad old days, may they never return.” He raises an eyebrow. “What’s your poison?”
His English is very good. Mo shakes her head. “A lemonade. I don’t use alcohol before an operation.”
Panin glances over his shoulder. “A lemonade for the lady. And a glass of the house red for me.”
“I didn’t know they had table service here.”
“They don’t. Rank has its privileges.”
They wait for a surprisingly short time. The minder delivers the drinks, as ordered, and retreats to his stool in the corner. “Angleton told you he was sending me,” she says, tentatively laying out the terms of discussion.
“He did.” Panin nods. “We share a common interest. Other agencies of our two great nations continue to bicker like bad-tempered children, but we must rise above, perforce. Alas, all is not always clear-cut.” He reaches into his inside pocket and brings out a wallet, then produces a small portrait photo. “Do you recognize this man?”
Mo stares at the frozen face for several seconds, then raises her eyes to meet Panin’s gaze.
“I’m not going to start by lying to you,” she says.
Panin relaxes minutely—it is not evident in his face, but the tension in his shoulders slackens slightly. “He left a widow and two young children behind,” he says quietly. “But he was dead before you met him.”
“Before . . . ?”
“He was one of ours. I emphasize, was. Abducted two weeks ago, not thereafter seen until he appeared on your doorstep, possessed and controlled—we would say превратилась, turned—a tool of the enemy.”
“Whose enemy?”
Panin gives her a look. “Yours. And mine. James advised me to tell you that I have been involved in CLUB ZERO from another angle. The Black Brotherhood do not only fish in British waters.”
“That’s not news. Nevertheless, I hope you will excuse me for saying that if your illegals are taken while working overseas, blaming the local authorities is not—”
“He disappeared in St. Petersburg.”
“Oh. Oh, my sympathies.”
“I take it you can see the problem?”
“Yes.” Mo takes a sip of lemonade, looks apprehensive. “I’d be very grateful if you could tell me everything you know about this particular incident. Did Ang—James—explain why it’s of particular interest to us right now?”
“One of your mid-level controllers has been taken, no?”
“Not definitely, yet.” Her fingers tense on the glass. “But he’s out of contact, and there are indications that something has gone badly wrong, very recently. We’ve got searchers looking for him right now. Anything you can tell me before I brief the extraction team ...”
“You are briefing—” Panin’s eyes unconsciously flicker towards her violin case. “Oh, I see.” He eyes her warily. “What do you know of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh?”
“As much as anybody on the outside—not enough. Let’s see: the current group first surfaced in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the establishment of the monarchy there, but their roots diverge: White Russian émigré radicals, freemasons from Trieste, Austrian banking families with secrets buried in their family chapels. All extreme conservatives, reactionaries even, with a basket of odd beliefs. They’re the ones who reorganized the Brotherhood and got it back in operation after the hammering it took in the late nineteenth century. They’re not based in Serbia anymore, of course, but many of them fled to the United States immediately before the outbreak of war; that’s the trouble with these cults, they fragment and grow back when you hit them.”
“Let me jog your memory. In America, they infiltrated—some say, founded—the Free Church of the Universal Kingdom as a local cover organization. They do that everywhere, taking over a splinter of a larger, more respectable organization; in Egypt they use some of the more extreme mosques of the Muslim Brotherhood. In America . . . the Free Church is a small, exclusionary brethren who are so far out of the mainstream that even the Assembly of Quiverful Providentialist Ministries, from whom they originally sprang, have denounced them for heretical practices. Some of the Church elders are in fact initiates of the first order of the Black Brotherhood; the followers are a mixture of Christian believers, who they see as dupes, and dependents and postulants of the Brotherhood. The Church is mostly based in the United States—it is very hard to move against a church over there, even if it is suspected of fronting for another organization, they take their religious freedom too seriously—but it has missions in many countries. Not Russia, I hasten to add. The nature of the Church doctrine makes the personal cost of membership very high—they tend to be poor, with large families—and discourages defection from the ranks; additionally, the Brotherhood may use low-level glamours to keep the sheep centered in the flock. We hear little more than rumors about the Brotherhood itself; despite fifty years of attempted insertions, we’ve been unable to penetrate them. Their discipline is terrifying. We have heard stories about ritual murder, incest, and cannibalism. I would normally discount these—the blood libel is very old and very ugly—but complicity in war crimes has been repeatedly used to bind child soldiers into armies in the Congo, and I have some ev
idence that those practices were originally suggested by a Brotherhood missionary ...”
Mo shudders. “Whether they eat their own children or not, they have no problem eating somebody else’s.”
“You have evidence of this?” Panin leans towards her eagerly.
“I’ve seen it.” Panin flinches at the vehemence of her response. “Although they may not have been strictly human anymore, by that point—they had been thoroughly possessed—”
“That was the Amsterdam business, was it not?”
Mo freezes for several seconds. Then she takes another deep breath, and a hasty mouthful of lemonade, then wipes her mouth. “Yes.”
“Cannibalism is a very powerful tool, you know. The transgression of any strong taboo—it can be used for a variety of purposes, bindings, and geases. The greatest taboo, murder, provides two kinds of power, of course, both the life of the victim and the murderer’s own will to violate—”
Mo shakes her head, raises a hand. “I don’t need that lecture right now.”
“All right.” Panin sips at his wine. “Excuse me, but—there is a personal connection?”
“What?”
“You appear unduly upset ...”
“Yes.” She looks at her hands. “The missing officer is my husband.”
Panin puts his glass down and leans back, very slowly, with the extreme self-control of a man who has just realized he is sharing a table with a large, ticking bomb. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Yes.” She raises her glass and drains it, then puts it back on the table with a hard clack. “You can tell me anything you’re at liberty to say, about why the Free Church attracted your attention. And what you think they’re doing.” She glances round. “Now might be a good time to check your wards.” The bar is filling up, but the other after-hours drinkers are all crowding away from the table Mo and Panin share, as if a glass sphere encloses them.
The Fuller Memorandum Page 24