To spare you Bob’s embarrassment, and to provide a shark’s-eye view of the turbid waters through which he swims, it is necessary to pause for a moment and, as if in a dream—or an oneiromantic stream ripped from the screen of Bob’s smartphone—to cast your gaze across the ocean towards events transpiring at exactly the same time, in an office in London.

Do not fear for Bob. He’ll be back, albeit somewhat moist around the gills.

O’Brien nods amiably at the receptionist, slides a bookmark into the hardback she’s reading, then stands up. This takes some time because the visitor’s chair she’s been waiting in is ancient and sags like a hungry Venus flytrap, and O’Brien is trying to keep her grip on a scuffed black violin case. The receptionist watches her, bored, as she shrugs her khaki linen jacket into place, pats down a straying lock of reddish-brown hair, and walks over towards the closed briefing-room door with the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign above it. She pauses with one hand on the doorknob. “By the way, it’s Professor O’Brien,” she says, smiling to take the sting out of the words. “‘Miss’ sounds like something you’d call a naughty schoolgirl, don’t you think?”

The receptionist is still nodding wordlessly and trying to think of a comeback when O’Brien closes the door and the red light comes on over the lintel.

The briefing room contains a boardroom table, six chairs, a jug of tap water, some paper cups, and an ancient Agfa slide projector. All the fittings look to be at least a third of a century old: some of them might even have seen service during the Second World War. There used to be windows in two of the walls, but they were bricked up and covered over with institutional magnolia paint some years ago. The lighting tubes above the table shed a ghastly glare that gives everybody in the room the skin tint of a corpse—except for Angleton, who looks mummified at the best of times.

“Professor O’Brien.” Angleton actually smiles, revealing teeth like tombstones. “Do have a seat.”

“Of course.” O’Brien pulls one of the battered wooden chairs out from the table and sits down carefully. She nods at Angleton, polite control personified. The violin case she places on the tabletop.

“As a matter of curiosity, how are your studies proceeding?”

“Everything’s going smoothly.” She carefully aligns the case’s neck in accordance with the direction of the wards on Angleton’s door. “You needn’t worry on that account.” Then she exhausts her patiently husbanded patience. “Where’s Andy Newstrom?”

Angleton makes a steeple of his fingers. “Andrew was unable to attend the meeting you called at short notice. I believe he has been unexpectedly detained in Germany.”

O’Brien opens her mouth to say something, but Angleton raises a bony finger in warning: “I have arranged an appropriate substitute to deputize for him.”

O’Brien swallows. “I see.” Fingers drum on the body of the violin case. Angleton tracks them with his eyes. “You know this isn’t about my research,” she begins, elliptically.

“Of course not.” Angleton falls silent for a few seconds. “Feel free to tell me exactly what you think of me, Dominique.”

Dominique—Mo—sends him a withering stare. “No thank you. If I get started you’ll be late for your next meeting.” She pauses for a moment. Then she asks, with the deceptive mildness of a police interrogator zeroing in on a confession: “Why did you do it?”

“Because it was necessary. Or did you think I would send him into the field on a whim?”

Mo’s control slips for a second: her glare is hot enough to ignite paper.

“I’m sorry,” he adds heavily. “But this was an unscheduled emergency, and Bob was the only suitable agent who was available at short notice.”

“Really?” She glances at the black velvet cloth covering the files on his desk. “I know all about your little tricks,” she warns. “In case you’d forgotten.”

Angleton shrugs uncomfortably. “How could I? You’re perfectly right, and we owe you a considerable debt of gratitude for your cooperation in that particular incident. But nevertheless—” he stares at the wall beside her chair, a white-painted rectangle that doubles as a projector screen “—we are confronted with AZORIAN BLUE HADES, and Bob is the only field-certified executive who is both competent to deal with the matter and sufficiently ignorant to be able to, ah, play the role with conviction. You, my dear, couldn’t do this particular job, you’re too well-informed, leaving aside all the other aspects of the affair. The same goes for myself, or for Andrew, or for Davidson, or Fawcett, or any of a number of other assets Human Resources identified as preliminary candidates during the search phase of the operation. And while we have plenty of other staff who are not cleared for AZORIAN BLUE HADES, most of them are insufficiently prepared to meet its challenges.”

“Nevertheless.” Mo’s hand closes on the neck of her case. “I’m warning you, Angleton. I know you entangled Bob with a Black Chamber assassin and I know what the consequences are. I know that unless someone collapses their superposition within about half a million seconds, he’s not coming back, at least not as himself. And I’m not putting up with the usual excuses—‘he was the only round peg we had that fit that particular hole, it was in the interests of national security’—you’d better see he comes back alive and in one body. Or I am going to the Auditors.”

Angleton eyes her warily. O’Brien is one of very few people in the organization who would make such a threat, and one of even fewer who might actually follow through on it. “I do not believe that will be necessary,” he says slowly. “As it happens, I agreed to your request for a meeting because I intended to tap you for the next phase. Contrary to the impression you may have received, I don’t consider Bob to be an expendable asset. But I believe you’re allowing your relationship with him to color your perceptions of the risk inherent in the situation. I assume you’d be willing to help bring him back safe and sound?”

Mo nods sharply. “You know I would.”

“Good.” Angleton glances at the door, then frowns. “I do believe Alan’s late. That’s not like him.”

“Alan? Alan Barnes?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want him for?”

Angleton snorts. “A moment ago you were getting uptight about your boyfriend’s security. Now you’re asking why I asked Captain Barnes—”

The door bursts open, admitting a wiry pint-sized tornado. “Ah, the fragrant Professor O’Brien! How you doing, Mo? And you, you old bat. What do you want now?” The force of nature grins widely. With his owlishly large glasses, leather-patched tweed jacket, and expanding bald spot he could pass for a schoolteacher—if schoolteachers habitually wore shoulder holsters.

Angleton pushes his spectacles up on his nose. “I was explaining to Professor O’Brien that I’ve got a little job for you. Bob’s accepted the starring role in the approach plan for AZORIAN BLUE HADES and now it’s time to set up the payoff. Not unnaturally, Mo has expressed certain reservations about the way the project has been conducted to date. I believe that, in view of her special skills, she can make a valuable contribution to the operation. What do you think?”

While Barnes is considering the question, Mo glances between the two of them. “This is a setup!”

Barnes grins at her: “Of course it is!”

She looks at Angleton. “What do you want me to do?” She grips the neck of her violin case tensely.

Barnes sniggers quietly, then pulls out a chair. Angleton doesn’t deign to notice. Instead, he reaches across the table and switches on the projector.

“You’re going on vacation. Officially you’re on leave, flagged as a home visit to your elderly mother. That’s because we can’t rule out the possibility of an internal security leak,” he adds.

Mo whistles tunelessly between her teeth. “Like that, is it?”

“Oh yes.” A thin blade appears silently between Alan’s fingers, as if it congealed out of thin air. He begins to probe a cuticle on his other hand. “It’s very like that indeed. And we want you to look into it on your way to the main performance.”

“You’ll be on board tomorrow’s flight from Charles de Gaulle to Saint Martin. Your cover identity is Mrs. Angela Hudson, the wife of a tire-and-exhaust magnate from Dorking.” Angleton slides a document wallet across the table towards Mo, who handles it as if it’s about to explode. “This is a weak cover. It’s been cleared with Customs and Immigration at both ends but it won’t hold up to scrutiny. On the other hand you won’t have to use it for more than about forty-eight hours. After this briefing, take yourself down to Wardrobe Department and they’ll set you up with suitable clothing and support equipment for Mrs. Hudson. You may take—” he points at the violin case “—your instrument, and any other equipment you deem necessary. You’ll be staying at a hotel in Grand Case. You should be aware that our local station chief, Jack Griffin, or someone working for him, has been compromised. We want to keep you out of Billington’s sights for as long as possible, so bypassing Griffin’s organization is top of your playlist. If you can identify the source of the leak and deal with it, I’d be grateful. Once you’ve settled in, Alan will be your backup. You’ll be operating without a field controller; if you need a shoulder to cry on you come straight to me.”

He turns to face Barnes. “Alan. Pick two of your best bricks. Make sure they’re happy working with booties, I don’t want any interservice cock-ups. You’ll be flying out pronto and will rendezvous with HMS York, which is currently on APT(N). She’s hosting a troop from M squadron SBS under Lieutenant Hewitt, who has signed Section Three and is cleared for level two liaison. The booties are available if you need additional muscle. Your job is to provide backup for Professor O’Brien, who is point on this mission. In case you were worried about BLUE HADES, Professor O’Brien speaks the language and is qualified to liaise. She’s also completed her certification in combat epistemology and can operate as your staff philosopher, should circumstances require it. I have complete faith in her abilities to complete the mission and bring Bob back.”

Angleton pauses for a moment. Then he adds: “In a real emergency—if HADES cooks off—you’ve got a hot line of credit with HMS Vanguard, although if you have to use a big white one I’m supposed to go to the board and get them to clear it with the Prime Minister first. So let’s not go there, shall we?”

Mo looks back and forth between the two spooks. “Would you mind not speaking in slang? I know about Alan’s men, but what’s a ‘big white one’?”

Barnes looks slightly distracted. “It’s just a necessary backup precaution—I’ll explain later,” he assures her. “For now, the main thing is, you’ll be operating independently but you’ll have backup, starting with my lads and working up through the Royal Navy’s North Atlantic Patrol, right to the top if you need it. Unfortunately we’re dealing with a really powerful semiotic geas field—Billington’s set things up so that we have to play by his rules—and that limits our moves. It would be a really bad mistake for you to come in-frame too soon.” He raises an eyebrow at Angleton. “Are we definitely moving into the endgame?”

Angleton shrugs. “It’s beginning to look that way.” He nods at Mo. “We’d prefer not to have to do it this way, but our hands are unfortunately tied.”

Mo frowns. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to fly out with Alan and his soldiers? I mean, if you’re borrowing a warship, why are you bothering with the undercover stuff? What exactly do you expect me to do?”

Barnes snorts and raises an eyebrow at Angleton: “Are you going to tell her, or am I?”

“I’ll do it.” Angleton picks up the control to the slide projector. “Would you mind switching off the lights?”

“Why the dog and pony show?” O’Brien demands, her voice rising.

“Because you need to understand the trick we’re trying to play on the opposition before you can deal the cards. And it’s best if I illustrate . . .”

While Bob continues to panic over his impending death by drowning, spare a thought for Ramona. It’s not her fault that she’s in the fish tank with Bob; quite the opposite. Given even the faintest shred of an excuse, she’d have managed to avoid this briefing in Texas. Unfortunately her controllers are not interested in excuses. They want results. And that’s why we join her in the front seat of a Taurus, driving up a dusty unsurfaced lane towards a sun-blasted ranch house in the middle of nowhere.

This is so not Ramona’s scene. She’s too smart to be a Valley Girl, but she grew up in that part of the world. She’s happiest when the bright sunlight is moderated by an onshore breeze and the distant roar of the surf is just crowding the edge of the white noise in her ears: ah, the smell of sage-brush. This part of west Texas, between Sonora and San Angelo, is just way too far inland for Ramona’s taste. It’s also too . . . Texan. Ramona doesn’t care for good ol’ boys. She doesn’t much like arid, dusty landscapes with no water. And she especially doesn’t like the Ranch, but that’s not a matter of prejudice so much as common sense.

The Ranch scares her more every time she visits it.

There’s a parking lot up front: little more than a patch of packed earth. She pulls up between two unfeasibly large pickups. One of them actually has a cow’s skull lashed to the front bumper and a rifle rack in the back. She gets out of the Taurus, collects her shoulder bag and her water bottle—she never comes here without a half-gallon can, minimum—and cringes slightly as the arid heat tries to suck her dry. Walking around the parked vehicles, she doesn’t bother to check the cow’s skull for the faint matching intaglio of a pentacle: she knows what she’ll find. Instead she heads for the porch, and the closed screen door, with a wizened figure rocking in a chair beside it.

“You’re five minutes and twenty-nine seconds late,” the figure recites laconically as she climbs the front step.

“So bite me,” Ramona snaps. She hikes her bag up her shoulder and shivers despite the heat. The guardian watches her with dry amusement. Dry. There is no water here, certainly not enough to hydrate the bony nightmare in bib overalls that hangs out next to the door, endlessly rocking its chair.

“You’re expected,” it rasps. “Go right in.”

It makes no move towards her, but the skin on the back of her neck prickles. She takes two steps forward and twists the doorknob. At this point, an unexpected visitor can reasonably be expected to die. At this point, expected visitors also die—if Internal Affairs has issued a termination order. Ramona does not die, this time. The door latch clicks open and she steps inside the cool air-conditioned vestibule, trying to suppress a shuddery breath as she leaves the watcher on the threshold behind.

The vestibule is furnished in cheap G-plan kit, with a sofa and chairs, and a desk with a human receptionist sitting behind it who looks up at Ramona and blinks sheep eyes at her. “Ms. Random, if you’d care to take the second door on the left, go straight ahead, then take the first right at the end of the corridor. Agent McMurray is expecting you.”

Ramona smiles tightly. “Sure thing. Can I use the ladies’ room on the way?”

The receptionist makes a show of checking her desk planner. “I can confirm that you are authorized to use the ladies’ room,” she announces after a few seconds.

“Good.” Ramona nods. “See you around.” She walks through the second door on the left. It opens onto an anonymous beige-painted corridor, which she walks down for some distance. Partway along, she takes time out to hole up in the toilet. She bends over a wash basin and throws water on her face, her neck, and the base of her throat. She notes that there are no windows in the facility: just ventilation ducts high up in the walls.

Back in the corridor she continues towards its end where there are three identical doors. She pauses outside the one on the right, and knocks.

“Come in,” a man’s gravelly voice calls through the door.

Ramona opens the door. The room beyond is spacious, floored in rough-cut timber, and walled in glass-fronted cabinets. The door at the far end is open, a staircase leading down to what Ramona knows to be another corridor with more display rooms opening off to either side. She’s already far enough inside the ranch house that by rights she should be standing with her feet firmly planted in the dirt fifty feet behind it—outside, but that’s not how things work here. Instead, her controlling agent is waiting for her, a tall, slightly pudgy fellow with wire-rimmed glasses, thinning, close-cropped hair, and a checkered shirt. He smiles, faintly indulgently. “Well, well. If it isn’t agent Random.” He holds out a hand: “How was your trip out?”

“Dry,” she says tersely, allowing her hand to be shaken. She squints slightly, sizing McMurray up. He looks human enough, but appearances at the Ranch are always deceptive. “I need to find a pool at some point. Apart from that—” she shrugs “—I can’t complain.”

“A pool.” McMurray nods thoughtfully. “I think we can arrange something for you.” His voice has a faint Irish lilt to it, although Ramona is fairly sure he’s as American as she is. “It’s the least we can do, seeing as how we’ve dragged you all the way out here. Yes indeed.” He gestures at the steps leading down to the passageway. “How well did you understand your briefing?”

Ramona swallows. This bit is hard. As her controlling agent, McMurray has certain powers. He was the key operative who compelled her to service; as long as he lives, he, or whoever holds his tokens of power, has the power of life and death over her, the ability to bind and release her, to issue orders she cannot refuse. There’s stuff she doesn’t want to talk about—but if he suspects she’s holding out on him it’ll be a lot worse for her than confessing to everything. Best to give him something, just hope it’s not enough to raise more suspicions than it allays: “Not entirely,” she admits. “I don’t understand why we’re letting TLA’s chief executive run riot in the Caribbean. I don’t understand why the Brits are involved in this, or what the hell TLA think they’re doing. I mean—” she pats her shoulder bag “—I read it all, but I don’t understand it. Just what’s supposed to be going on?”

This is the point at which McMurray can—if he’s suspicious—make her mouth open without her willing it, and spill her deepest secrets and most personal hopes and fears. Just considering the possibility makes her feel small and contemptibly weak. But McMurray doesn’t seem to notice her discomfort. He nods and looks thoughtful. “I’m not sure anybody knows everything,” he says ruefully.

A rueful apology? From a controlling agent? Stop jerking me around, Ramona prays, a cold knot of fear congealing in her stomach. But McMurray doesn’t raise his left hand in a sigil of command; nor does he pronounce any words of dread. He just nods in false amity and gestures once again at the stairs.

“It’s a mess,” he explains. “Billington’s a big campaign donor and word is, we’re not supposed to rock the boat. Not under this administration, anyway. It would embarrass certain folks if he were exposed—at least on our soil. And just in case anyone gets any ideas about going around Control’s back, he doesn’t set foot on land these days. He’s got the whole thing set up for remote management from extraterritorial waters. We’d have to send the Coast Guard or the Navy after him, and that would be too public.”

“Too public and two bucks will get you a coffee,” Ramona says acidly; then, fearful that she might have gone too far, adds: “But why did you need to bring me out here? Is it part of the briefing?”

She realizes too late that this was the wrong thing to say. McMurray fixes her with a penetrating stare. “Why else do you think you might have been ordered to the Ranch?” he asks, deceptively mildly. “Is there something I should know, agent Random?”

A huge fist grips her around the ribs, squeezing gently. “Nuh—no, sir!” she gasps, terrified.

Merely annoying McMurray can have enormous, terrible consequences for her: there’s nothing subtle about the degree of control the Black Chamber exercises over its subjects, or the consequences of error. The Chamber has a secret ruling from the Supreme Court that citizenship rights only apply to human beings: Ramona’s kin are barely able to pass with the aid of a glamour. For failure, the punishment can be special rendition to jurisdictions where the very concept of pain is considered a fascinating research topic by the natives. But he merely stares at her for a moment with watery blue eyes, then nods very slightly, relaxing the constraint binding. The pressure recedes like the backwash of an imagined cardiac arrest.

“Very good.” McMurray turns and begins to descend the staircase at the end of the room. Ramona follows him, eager to get away from the things in the pickle jars behind the glass display panels. “I’m glad to see that you’ve still got a . . . sense of humor, agent Random. Unfortunately this is no laughing matter.” He pauses at the bottom step. “I believe you’ve been here before.”

Ramona’s hand tightens on the stair rail until her knuckles turn white. “Yes. Sir.”

“Then I won’t have to explain.” He smiles frighteningly, then walks down the corridor towards one of the display rooms. “I brought you here to see just the one exhibit, this time.”

Ramona forces herself to follow him. She feels as if she’s walking through molasses, her chest tight with an almost palpable sense of dread. It’s not as if anything here is aimed at me, she tries to tell herself. It’s all dead, already. But that’s not strictly true.

Most advanced military organizations maintain libraries of weapons, depositories like armories that store one of everything—every handgun, artillery round, mine, grenade, knife—used by any other army that they might face in battle. The exhibits are stored in full working order, with specialist armorers trained in caring for them. Associated with their staff colleges, these depots are a vital resource when training special forces, briefing officers tasked with facing a given enemy, or merely researching future requirements. The Black Chamber is no different: like the Army repository at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, they maintain their own collection. There is a subtle difference, however. The Black Chamber’s archive of reality-warping occult countermeasures is partially alive. Here lie unquiet roadside graves dug by ghoulish reanimators. Over there is a cupboard full of mandrakes, next door to a summoning grid that’s been live for thirty years, the unquiet corpse of its victim dancing an eternal jig within the green-glowing circle, on legs long since worn down to blood-encrusted ivory stumps.

You can die if you get too close to some of the exhibits in the Ranch. And then they’ll add you to the collection.

McMurray knows his way through the corridors and passages of the repository. He threads his way rapidly past doorways opening onto vistas that make Ramona’s hair stand on end, then through a gallery lined with glass exhibit cases, some of them covered by protective velvet cloths. Finally he comes to a small side room and stops, beckoning Ramona towards a glass-topped cabinet.

“You asked about Billington,” he says, his tone thoughtful.

“Yes, sir.”

“You can cut the ‘sir’ bit; call me Pat.” He half-smiles. “As I was saying. Billington’s current actions worry the Dark Commissioners. In fact, they’re extremely concerned that his motive for purchasing the Explorer and moving it to the Bahamas is to make a retrieval attempt on the eastern JENNIFER MORGUE site—that was in your briefing pack, yes? Good. If it turns out that JENNIFER MORGUE is a chthonian artifact, then an attempted retrieval operation could place us—that is, the United States government, not to mention the human species—in breach of the Third Benthic Treaty. That would be a bad place to go. On the other hand, the rewards to be reaped from such an artifact are huge. And your cousins have a very limited presence in the Caribbean. They prefer the deep ocean. It’s possible that they’re not even aware of the location of the artifact.”

McMurray turns to stare at the glass-topped cabinet. “Billington’s not doing this for the good of the nation, needless to say. We’re not sure just what he plans to do with JENNIFER MORGUE if he gets his hands on it, but frankly, CenCom isn’t keen to find out. He needs to be stopped. Which is where we run into an embarrassing problem. He already figured we’d take steps to interdict him, so he’s preempted us.” He glances at Ramona, and her blood freezes at his expression.

“Sir?”

McMurray gestures at the cabinet. “Look at this.”

Ramona peers through the glass warily. She sees a wooden tabletop: perfectly mundane, but for a strange diorama positioned in its center. It seems to consist of a pair of dolls, male and female, wearing wedding clothes; adjacent to them are a pair of engagement rings and a model of a stepped wedding cake. The whole diorama is enclosed within a Möbius-loop design in conductive ink, connected to a breadboard analog-digital converter and an elderly PC.

“This is probably the least dangerous exhibit you’ll find here,” McMurray says calmly, his momentary anger stilled. “You’re looking at a hardware circuit designed to implement a love geas using vodoun protocols and a modified Jellinek-Wirth geometry engine.” His finger traces out the Möbius loop below. “Symbolic representations of the entities to be influenced are placed within a geometry engine controlled by a clocked recursive invocation. There are less visible signifiers here—the skin and hair samples, necessary for DNA affinity matching, and concealed within the dolls—but the intent should be obvious. The two individuals linked by this particular grid have been happily married for sixteen years at this point. It’s a reinforcing loop; the more the subjects work within the framework, the stronger the feedback frame becomes. The geas itself extends its influence by altering the probability gauge metric associated with the subjects’ interactions: outcomes that reinforce the condition are simply rendered more likely to occur while the circuit is operational.”

Ramona blinks. “I don’t understand.”

“Obviously.” McMurray steps back, then crosses his arms. “Try to get your head around the fact that it’s a contagion spell that generates compliant behavior. This couple, for example, started out hating each other. If you were to destroy this generator, they’d be in divorce court—or one of them would be in a shallow grave—within weeks. Now bear in mind that Billington’s cruising around the Caribbean in a huge yacht, plotting some kind of scheme. He isn’t stupid. We figure that about six months ago he created a similar hardware-backed geas engine aboard his yacht, the Mabuse. The precise nature of the geas is not entirely clear to us, but it has been extremely detrimental to our counterforce operations—in particular, attempts to act against him through normal channels fail. Telex requests dispatched to the Cayman police force via INTERPOL get unaccountably lost, FBI agents develop random brain tumors, associates who might plea-bargain their way to giving evidence wake up embedded in concrete foundations, that sort of thing. CenCom’s not convinced, but Sensor Ops believes that Billington has used the geas engine to create a Hero trap—only a single agent conforming to the right archetype can actually approach him; and even then, the geas will screw with their ability to take correct action. And because Billington figured he’s got the most reason to be afraid of us, he picked a goddamn limey as the Hero archetype.”

Ramona shakes her head. “We can’t get to him ourselves?”

“I didn’t say that.” McMurray walks towards the door, then pauses in front of a picture on the wall. “Look.”

Ramona stares at the picture. It’s a photograph of an oriental longhair cat, reposing on a sofa. The cat is well-groomed and white, but lacks the distinctive pinkish eyes characteristic of albinism. It stares at the camera with haughty disdain.

“I’ve seen that cat before,” she murmurs, chewing her lip. She glances at McMurray: “Is this what I think it is?”

McMurray nods. “It’s a show-grade Persian cat, a tom. D’Urbeville Marmeduke the Fourth. Billington acquired this—pet is perhaps too loose a word, perhaps familiar is closer to the truth—some time ago. Probably when he began planning his current venture. He keeps him aboard the Mabuse. Fluffy white cat, yacht cruising around the Caribbean, huge mother ship with a secret undersea module—this geas isn’t powered by some goddamn dolls and a wedding ring, agent Random, it’s got legs. It’d take a miracle for anyone except the Brits to get close to him. One Brit in particular—an agent who doesn’t exist.” Then he stares at Ramona. “Except we’ve figured out a loophole, one that’ll let us reach out and touch Billington where it hurts. You are going to go in through that loophole, you and me. And you will nail Billington’s head to the table to prevent JENNIFER MORGUE Two from falling into the wrong hands.

“Here’s how we’re going to do it . . .”

“Bastard.” Mo’s voice is cold and superficially emotionless.

“We’re going to get him back, Mo, I promise you.” Barnes’s voice is flat and assured.

“But damaged.”

Angleton clears his throat.

“I can’t believe you did this,” she says bitterly.

“We didn’t choose to, girl.” His voice is a gravelly rasp, hoarse from too many late-night meetings this past week.

“I can’t believe you let some snake oil defense contractor get the jump on you. Using it as an excuse. Shit, Angleton, what do you expect me to say? The bait-and-switch you’re planning is stupid enough to start with, and you’ve handed my boyfriend over to a sex vampire and I’m supposed to lie back and think of England? You expect me to tamely pick up the pieces when she’s finished banging his brains out and pat him on the head and take him home and patch his ego up? What am I meant to do, turn into some kind of angel-nurse-child-minder figure when all this is over? You’ve got a fucking nerve!” She’s got the violin case by the neck and she’s leaning across the table towards Angleton, throwing the words in his face. She’s too close to see Barnes staring at her fingers on the neck of the instrument case like it’s the barrel of a gun, and he’s trying to judge whether she’s going to reach for the trigger.

“You’re understandably upset—”

“Understandably?” Mo stands up, shifting the case to the crook of her left arm as she toys with the clamp alongside its body. “Fuck you!” she snarls.

Angleton pushes the file across the table at her. “Your tickets.”

“Fuck you and your tickets!” She’s making chicken-choking motions with the fingers of her right hand, the other hand vaguely patting at the body of the violin case. Barnes slides to his feet, backing away, his right hand half-raised to his jacket until he catches Angleton’s minute shake of the head. “And your fucking grade-six geas!” Her voice is firm but congested with emotion. “I’m out of here.”

She freezes in place for a moment as if there’s something more to say, then grabs the file and storms out of the conference room, slamming the door behind her so hard that the latch fails and it bounces open again. Barnes stares after her; then, seeing the wide eyes and open mouth of the receptionist, he nods politely and pulls the door shut.

“Do you think she’ll take the assignment?” he asks Angleton.

“Oh yes.” Angleton stares bleakly at the door for a few seconds. “She’ll hate us, but she’ll do it. She’s operating inside the paradigm. In the groove, as Bob would say.”

“I was afraid for a minute that I was going to have to take her down. If she lost it completely.”

“No.” Angleton gathers himself with a visible effort and shakes his head. “She’s too smart. She’s a lot tougher than you think, otherwise I wouldn’t have put her on the spot like that. But don’t sit with your back to any doors until this is all over and we’ve got her calmed down.”

Barnes stares at the pitted green desktop. “I could almost pity that Black Chamber agent you’ve hitched Bob to.”

“Those are the rules of the game.” Angleton shrugs heavily. “I didn’t write them. You can blame Billington, or you can blame the man with the typewriter, but he’s been dead for more than forty years. O’Brien’s not made of sugar and spice and all things nice. She’ll cope.” He stares at Barnes bleakly. “She’ll have to. Because if she doesn’t, we’re all in deep shit.”