14. THE MUMMY’S TOMB

PUTNEY HIGH STREET, ABOUT FIFTEEN KILOMETERS SOUTHWEST of the center of the capital, is a bustling shopping and retail area, humming with shops and pubs and other civic amenities: the rail and tube stations, the local magistrate’s court, fire stations. Leafy tree-lined roads curl away behind the high street, host to uncountable thousands of houses and maisonettes, every curb crammed with the parked cars of commuter-land.

Right now it’s early evening. A fire-control truck—bulky and red, its load bed occupied by a boxy control room—is drawn up on the drive-through parking area of the court, its nearside wheels on the pavement, blue lights strobing. A couple of police cars wait nearby, ready to clear the way if the truck starts to roll.

Despite appearances, it isn’t really a fire-control truck: it’s owned by OCCULUS—Occult Control Coordination Unit Liaison, Unconventional Situations—that branch of the military that my employers call in when a situation, to use Angleton’s ladder of apocalypse, escalates above Rung One. And right now, its occupants are doing what soldiers frequently do best: waiting for a call.

A short, wiry fellow with horn-rimmed glasses, wearing a tweed jacket with patched elbows over a green wool sweater, lounges in an office seat in front of a desk with a laptop and a bunch of communications gear bolted to it. He’s prematurely balding—he isn’t forty yet—and his skin is slightly translucent, as if aged beyond his years. There’s an olive-green telephone handset jammed between his shoulder and his right ear, and he’s twiddling his fingers impatiently as he waits on the line.

"Yes? Yes?" he demands busily.

"Connecting you now, sir…" More static. The handset doesn’t lead to a phone, mobile or otherwise, but to a TETRA terminal dedicated to OCCULUS’s use: an early nineties digital radio technology, horribly obsolete, but one that the government has been locked into by a thirty-year contract. "Dr. Angleton is on the line."

"Ah, James! Are you there?"

"Major Barnes?"

"Yes, it’s me! Any word on our boy?"

"We can find him." Angleton’s voice is clear. Barnes sits up unconsciously expectant.

Farther back in the OCCULUS truck, a man wearing a bright yellow HAZMAT suit glances up from the H&K MP5 he’s checking for the third time. Another HAZMAT-suited soldier, shorter and stockier, knuckles him in the back. "Hey, Scary, nobody ever tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?"

"Sorry, sir."

Major Barnes ignores them: Angleton is talking. "I have a preliminary fix and I’m on my way over right now. I should be with you in about five minutes. Once I’m on location I can guide you to the target in person."

"Are you sure that’s advisable?"

"No, but I’ll leave tactical command up to you; the problem is, I don’t have an exact fix to within less than a hundred meters. I need to be on the spot."

Major Barnes swears silently. "All right, we’ll have to work with that. What exactly do you think we’re facing?"

"No idea," Angleton says cheerfully, "but whatever we’re looking at, it’s been set up by a cell of the Black Brethren. If we’re lucky it’ll prove to be a safe house with just a couple of residents. If not… remember the Scouts’ motto?"

"Be prepared," Barnes echoes, wearing an expression of pained martyrdom. "Dib dib dib and all that. I hope this isn’t going to go pear-shaped…"

"The good news is, I’ve raised a SCORPION STARE control order. So once we know what we’re looking at, you should have no trouble containing the outbreak."

"How wonderful," Barnes says sourly. "Are you anticipating mass civilian casualties?"

"Hopefully not." Angleton pauses. "What I’m hoping for is low-hanging fruit. Ah, with you in a moment—"

Another police car pulls up, lights flickering; as Major Barnes glances out of the truck’s side window, he sees the rear door open and Angleton unfolding himself. He looks back at the HAZMAT-wearers behind him. "Showtime coming up. Sitrep, Jim?"

Warrant Officer Howe puts his carbine down and glances back at the seven other members of his half-size troop: "We’re ready, sir." His unspoken question—ready for what?—hangs in the air, but he’s been working with Barnes for long enough that he doesn’t need to say it aloud.

"Angleton’s coming up," says the major. "So look sharp."

The door opens and Angleton steps inside the truck. He smiles, cadaverous. "Ah, gentlemen. I wish I could say it was good to see you again; we really need to stop meeting like this." That gets a chuckle from Sergeant Spice. Angleton walks forward towards Major Barnes’s area, his head bowed to avoid the overhead equipment racks. "We’re very close," he says quietly. "I can smell it."

Barnes knows better than to roll his eyes. Dealing with the spooks often involves playing nursemaid—to a particularly paranoid witchfindergeneral, in this case. "If you could just tell the driver where to go, sir?"

"Certainly." Angleton squeezes past the back of Barnes’s chair, and slides into the front passenger seat.

The driver glances at him sidelong. "Sir?"

"Kill the blues, then pull out. I want you to drive up the high street slowly. I’ll tell you when to pull over."

The truck lurches heavily off the curb, bouncing on its suspension as the driver pulls it through a U-turn—just missing being T-boned by an oblivious minivan driver, her mobile glued to her ear. It rumbles back towards the Richmond Road intersection.

Angleton’s nostrils flare. "Keep going." He peers through the windscreen, searching. The driver tries to ignore his hands—he’s fiddling with something small that seems to bend the light around it. "Slow down, it’s just ahead. On our right. There—no, keep going. That was it. That building… it’s in the library." He swears under his breath, words of painful power that make the driver wince.

"You want us to raid a public library?" Major Barnes is incredulous. "What are we looking for, an overdue book?"

"In a manner of speaking." Angleton sounds weary. "Gentlemen, I believe we may have been led on a wild-goose chase. I am tracking a missing classified document. I was expecting it to lead us to a nest of cultists, but it seems they’ve learned how to use a photocopier and this"—his over-the-shoulder wave conveys world-weary regret—"is their idea of a joke. Unfortunately the document in question is classified, and we can’t ignore it. We can’t ignore the possibility of an ambush, either, but at least it ought to be easy enough to evacuate. Alan, would you mind contacting the local fire control? I think a snap inspection of the library sprinkler system ought to get our feet under the table."

Barnes nods, wordlessly, and starts to call the fire-control room on one of the other handsets. In the back, Warrant Officer Howe nods at his men: "Strip." The HAZMAT suits come off, to reveal regular Fire Brigade overalls underneath. "Okay, as soon as we get the go-ahead…"

Angleton waits tensely in the front passenger seat, fidgeting with something small and dark. Nobody is watching him. But an observer might think, from his behavior, that he’s worried they’re too late.

★★★

WHILE ANGLETON AND THE OCCULUS TEAM ARE GETTING READY to raid a public library in search of a missing document, Mo is midway through her second glass of lemonade in a wine bar with the man who would be Panin, and I am phasing in and out of consciousness, in airless darkness and pain, in the boot of a speeding car.

Regrets: I have them.

For instance, I never wrote to my MP to express my displeasure at the widespread deployment of sleeping policemen around the capital. It never occurred to me to do so: Mo and I don’t own a car, and speed bumps are a rarely sighted problem in our world. But right now I am learning to hate the things with a livid passion usually reserved for broken software installers and lying politicians. My abductors appear to be incapable of slowing for obstructions, and every time we bounce over a speed cushion or crunch down off a raised speed table or swerve through a chicane I take the full force of it on my right arm. That goatfucking cannibal cultist arsehole Julian packed me in the boot damaged side down; I don’t have the strength, the room, or the leverage to turn myself over. I swear, when I get out of this thing I’m going to run for mayor, and the first item on my manifesto will be to order the transport planners to scrape the fucking things off every road in London with their tongues. Second item on the agenda: making it legal to shoot any cultists seen in the city after sundown with a bow and arrow. Sort of like that bylaw York has, the one about Welshmen. Or was it Scotsmen? Where was I—

Oh. I blacked out again. This is bad. My wrist feels damp… think I’m bleeding again.

They got my phone. I don’t have a ward. If I’m lucky Mo or Angleton got my messages and they know I’m in trouble. (If Angleton finds my phone I’ll be in trouble. How much trouble? How much do you think—running classified software on an unauthorized system?) How long will it take them to figure out I’m missing? What time is it, anyway? How long have the Goatfuckers had me? Hey, why am I scrunching up—

Fuck. I hate roundabouts.

When I’m mayor of London I’m going to require all cars to have transparent boot lids, on pain of—on pain of pain. So what if you can’t leave your shopping in the car while it’s parked? Fuck 'em, why won’t they think of the kidnap victims? Oof. That was a bad one.

Where are they… where are they taking me?

To see the mummy. Dust from the mummy’s tomb, ha-ha. A line of bandage-wrapped can-can dancers high-kick in the gallery of dreams. Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh: how strange…

Whoa. We’ve stopped. Engine running—traffic lights, damn it. Maybe that means we’re on a main road? Pull yourself together, Bob: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, rinse, spin, repeat…

I’m facing forward, arms handcuffed behind my back. If there’s an emergency child latch in here, it’ll be behind me. Chance of grabbing it: effectively nil, might be a different story if my right arm wasn’t fucked. Inventory of useful shiny occult tools: zero. Inventory of weapons: zero, unless you count my head. Give 'em head-butt…

Ow, fuck. Speed bump, traffic planners, red-hot pincers, you know the drill. It’s stiflingly hot and noisy in here, and it smells bad. They won’t get my blood out of the carpet in a hurry, hah! Forensics’ll have a field day if… if…

Oh. For a moment there I was hanging on that pole, staring out across the gray wasteland towards a distant pyramid. There’s an eye in the pyramid, but it’s sleeping. I’m terrified that it’s going to open and see me…

They’re taking me somewhere specific. When they get there and open the boot of this car, I’ll be in the open for a while. That’s when I’m going to have to make my run. Won’t get a second chance. Observe, Orient, Decide…

Boris sent me on a course on evasion and escape a couple of years back, after the mess on Saint Martin. Said it might come in handy sometime—I thought it was only going to be useful for keeping out of Human Resources’ sights, but you never know. Trouble is, ninety-nine percent of the game lies in not getting caught in the first place. Once the bad guys get their claws into you everything gets a lot harder.

Harder. How desperate am I to escape? Depends. Because I’m not totally without resources; I’ve still got my head. Yes, but if I start down that road I won’t have it for much longer. I’m an experienced computational demonologist; I can program zombies, plan the perfect Pet Shop Boys album… but running code in your head, that’s a one-way ticket to Krantzberg syndrome. It’s like the Queen, and her magical power over Parliament; she can veto any law she likes, but it’s a card she gets to play once. Am I willing to risk a one-way trip to the secure wing at St. Hilda’s?

Hell, yes—if the alternative is to be the center of attention at a cannibal cultist dinner party.

Ah. Lost it again. Roundabouts—I feel really sick. The smell in here isn’t helping; need to concentrate on not throwing up. What procedures do I know that are simple enough to iterate in my head and effective enough to—

We’re slowing. Too soon. Shit.

It’s hard to deal the imaginary tarot cards when you’re being thrown about the boot of a car that’s braking hard, then turning. The road noises under me change to a crunching of gravel, which goes on interminably. Then there’s a long stationary pause. Just as I’m about certain that we’ve arrived, the car starts moving again, bouncing slowly across more gravel. It goes on and on—if this is a stately home or a public estate it’s huge. But after a brief eternity, we turn through a tight circle and then stop. The engine dies, and in the quiet I hear the ping of cooling metal. Then footsteps.

Fresh air blasts across my back as the boot lid swings open. The interior light comes on, showing me gray carpet centimeters from my nose. "Is he—"

"Yes. Get his legs."

I tense, ready to kick, but they’re too fast for me. They slide something—feels like a belt—around my ankles and I can’t pull them apart. Someone else pulls a canvas bag, smelling faintly of decaying vegetables, over my head. Then too many hands grab me and lift, and drop, with predictable consequences.

When I surface in the sea of pain, I find I’m lying on my left side—a small mercy. I’m not sure what I’m lying on: it feels like a trolley, or possibly a stretcher. It’s cold and smells of disinfectant and it’s rolling over a hard, smooth surface. I can’t see: my arm is a monstrous, distracting wall of ache, I’m still handcuffed, and now they’ve hooded me and pinioned my ankles. So much for making a run for it. They’re obviously taking me somewhere indoors—

Indoors?

Something tells me that, yes, we are indoors now. Maybe it’s the lack of fresh air, or the echoes, or the ground beneath this trolley’s wheels. We must be nearly there. I distract myself, trying to recall the transition table for Cantor’s 2,5 Universal Turing Machine—the one with the five chess pieces and the board. I was always crap at chess, never really got into it deeply enough at school, but I understand UTMs, and if I can hold enough moves in my head before the gray stuff turns to Swiss cheese I might be able to code something up. Damn it, Bob, you’re a magician! Think of something! But it all blurs, when you’re in pain. Like most of my ilk I work best in a nice warm office, with a honking great monitor on my desk and a can of Pringles in front of me. I start swearing, under my breath, in Middle Enochian: cursing is the only thing that language is good for. (That, and ordering the walking dead around.)

We stop, then there’s a scrape of doors opening. I bounce across a threshold—a lift, I think. Then we begin to descend. Shit, a lift. We’re underground. That’s all I need. I’m angry. I’m also terrified, and in pain, and light-headed, and dizzy. My heart’s hammering.

"Are you awake, Mr. Howard?" chirps Jaunty Jonquil, the demon princess of Sloane Square.

"Nnnng," I say. Fuck you, would be more appropriate, but in my current position I’m feeling kind of insecure.

"Praise Pharaoh!" That’s someone else: a male voice, not Julian. Observe, Orient—okay, you’re tentatively designated Goatfucker #3. "What happened to his arm?"

"Midnight snack, don’t you know," Julian replies from somewhere near my feet. "Is All-Highest in residence yet?"

"Yes," says #3. "You are expected."

"Ooh!" squeals Jonquil. She pokes me in the ribs, harder than necessary: "You’re going to see Mummy now! Isn’t that exciting?"

I realize that a "no" might offend, and keep my yap shut. I’m trying to string together Words of Command for making the undead repeat a behavioral loop—hey, Mummy? Visions of a can-can line of cadavers in windings bounce through my imagination. Fool, they’re going to kill you. Focus! The part of me that’s on-message and plugged-in to this very unpleasant reality game is panicking at the languid detachment that’s stealing over the rest of me. He makes a bid for my lips: "Where… are…?" I hear myself croak.

The lift grinds to a halt and I feel a cool draft as the doors open.

"Brookwood cemetery. Have you been here before? It’s really marvelous! It’s the biggest necropolis in England, it covers more than eight square kilometers and more than a quarter of a million people are buried here! This is our section—it used to belong to the Ancient and Honourable Order of Wheelwrights, back in the eighteen hundreds—"

"Quiet," says #3. "You shouldn’t tell him this thing."

"I don’t see why not," Jonquil says huffily: "It’s not as if he’s going to escape, is it?"

That’s right, remind me I’m doomed, see if I care. Hey, isn’t Brookwood where the Necropolitan line used to terminate? Oh, that figures. The cultists have built their fucking headquarters right on top of the power source for that ley line they trapped me with. And, let’s face it, it’s a nice neighborhood. There isn’t much of a crime problem here, community policing keeps a low profile, it’s dead quiet—

They wheel me out into what I’m pretty sure is a sublevel. A lift, in a mausoleum? Doesn’t make sense. So this is probably a mortuary building, abandoned and re-purposed. I try to give no sign of the cold shudders that tingle up and down my spine as they roll me along a short passage, then stop.

"Greetings, Master," says Jonquil, an apprehensive quaver in her voice for the first time: "We have brought the desired one?"

I can feel a fourth presence, chilly and abstracted. I have a curious sense that I am being inspected—

"Good. The All-Highest will see you now." The voice is as cold as an unmarked grave.

I hear a door open, and they wheel me forward in silence. Abruptly, someone leans close to me and pulls the canvas bag up and away from my head. It’s dark down here, the deep twilight of a cellar illuminated only by LED torches, but it’s not so dark that I can’t see the All-Highest.

And that’s when I realize I’m in much worse trouble than I ever imagined.

MO LISTENS TO HER PHONE IN DISBELIEF. "THEY WHAT ? " SHE demands.

"They left the paper clip attached to a book in Putney Library," says Angleton, with icy dignity. "A copy of Beasts, Men and Gods by Ferdinand Ossendowski."

"Then you’ve lost him."

"Unless you have any better ideas."

"Let me get back to you on that." She snaps her phone closed and glances across the table. An idea is taking hold.

"Who was that?" asks Panin. "If you do not mind…"

"It was Angleton. The memorandum is still missing. The enemy identified his tracer and neutralized it."

"You have my sympathies."

"Hmm. Do you have a car? Because if so, I’d appreciate a lift home. If you don’t mind."

Ten minutes later, the black BMW with diplomatic plates is slowly winding its way between traffic-calming measures. Mo leans back, holding her violin case, and closes her eyes. It’s a big car, but it feels small, with the driver and a bodyguard up front, and Panin sitting beside her in the back.

"Do you have anything in mind?" Panin asks quietly.

"Yes." She doesn’t open her eyes. "Angleton drew a blank, trying to trace the missing document. But that’s not the only asset the cultists have got their hands on."

"Your husband." Panin’s nostrils flare. "Do you have a tracer on him, by any chance?"

"No." She doesn’t bother to explain that Laundry operatives don’t routinely carry bugs because what one party can track, others may pick up. "However, he has a mobile phone."

"They’ll have switched it off, or discarded it."

"The former, I hope. If so, I can trace that." The shiny, beetle-black car double-parks outside a nondescript row of terrace houses. "Please wait. I’ll only be a minute," she adds as she climbs out.

Ninety seconds later she’s back, her go-bag weighing slightly more heavily on her shoulder. "Laptop," she explains.

"Your superiors let you take classified documents home?" Panin raises an eyebrow.

"No. It’s his personal one. He paired it with his phone. Which is also a personal device." She belts herself in, then opens the laptop screen. "All right, let’s see." She slides a thumb drive into the machine, rubs her thumb over a window in it: "Now this is a secured memory stick, loaded with execute-in-place utilities. Nothing exotic, mind you, strictly functional stuff. Ah, yes. At the end of the road, turn left…"

The driver doesn’t speak, but he has no trouble understanding her directions in English. The car heads south, slowly winding its way through the evening streets. Mo busies herself with the laptop, a route finder program, and a small charm on the end of a necklace, which she dangles above the screen: a ward, taken from around her neck. "It’s along here, somewhere," she says as the car cruises yet another twisting residential street, where large houses are set back behind tall hedges. "Whoa, we’ve gone past it. Okay, pull in here." She pulls out her phone and speed-dials a number.

"Yes?" Angleton is alert.

"I’m in Hazlehurst Road, near Lambeth cemetery, with Nikolai and his driver. Tracking Bob’s personal phone. How soon can you meet me here?"

"Hold on." Pause. "We’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Rolling now. Can you wait?"

Mo glances sidelong at Panin, who shakes his head slowly. "I don’t think so," she says. "Nikolai has urgent business elsewhere." She pulls the door latch, and it swings open with the sluggish momentum of concealed armor plate. She extends one foot to touch the pavement: "I’ll be discreet."

"Good-bye, Dr. O’Brien. And good luck."

Most of the houses on this road are detached, sitting in pricey splendor on plots of their own, a few down-market Siamese-twin semis lowering the millionaire row tone. It’s London, but upmarket enough that the houses have private drives and garages. Mo walks slowly back along the pavement until she comes level with the hedge outside a semi with a built-in garage, probably dating to the mid-1930s. The ward throbs in her hand as she reluctantly fastens the fine silver chain around her neck and tucks it in. This is the place. She’s sure of it.

She pulls out her phone, dials again, says, "Number thirty-four," then puts it away. Then she opens her go-bag and pulls out a pair of goggles. She pulls them on and flicks a switch. Then she stalks around the side of the house.

There is a bad smell from the drains out back, and the lawn is un-mown. The hedge has not been trimmed: it looms over the over-long grass like the dark and wild beard of the god of neglect. The windows of the house are dark, and not merely because no lights shine within. It’s strangely difficult to see anything inside. Mo stares at the flagstoned patio beneath the French doors through her goggles. They are goggles of good and evil, part of the regular working equipment of the combat epistemologist, and their merciless contrast reveals the stains of an uneasy conscience mixed with the cement that binds the stones: it’s an upmarket Cromwell Street scene, she realizes, her stomach churning. The police forensic teams will be busy here later in the week, as the tabloid reporters buzz round their heads like bluebottles attracted to the rotting cadavers beneath their feet.

Mo moves farther around the house. A sense of foreboding gathers like static beneath the anvil cloud of a thunderstorm. Her heart is beating overly fast and her palms are clammy. She is certain that Bob’s phone is here, and where goes the phone goes the Bob. But this is not a good place. Suddenly she is acutely aware that she is on her own, the nearest backup ten minutes away.

Well, then.

There is a quiet click as she unfastens the latches of her instrument case. Moments later the bow is in her hand, the chinrest clamped between her jaw and shoulder. The case dangles before her chest, two compact speakers exposed. There’s a sticker on the back of the instrument. It reads: THIS MACHINE KILLS DEMONS.

Mo walks towards the glass doors, on the indistinct shadows behind them, and touches her bow to the strings of the pallid instrument. There is a sound like a ghost’s dying wail as the strings begin to vibrate, blurring and glowing as they slice the air to shreds. "Open," she says quietly, and as she sounds a chord the glass panes shatter simultaneously and the door frame warps towards her. She advances into the suburban dining room, playing raw and dissonant notes of silence to confront the horrors within.

THE BMW IS HALF A MILE AWAY WHEN PANIN LEANS FORWARD and taps his driver on the shoulder.

"Sir?" The driver glances at Panin’s reflection in his mirror.

A blank business card appears between Panin’s fingertips, twin to one Panin passed to an unwitting contact a couple of days ago. "Track this," he says.

"Yes, sir." The driver reaches back and takes the card, then places it on the dashboard in front of him. It glows faintly in the darkened interior of the car.

After a moment, they pull over, then the driver performs a U-turn and accelerates. "If you don’t mind me asking, sir…"

"Yes?" Panin looks up from the map book on his lap.

"Do you want me to call for backup?"

"When we know where we’re going, Dmitry. Patience."

"Sir. Shouldn’t you have told…?"

"The wolf may not bite the hound, but that doesn’t make them friends. I intend to get there first, Dmitry. Wherever 'there’ is."

"Then I shall drive faster. Sir." The saloon accelerates, heading south.

"HELLO, BOB, " SAYS JONQUIL’S MUMMY, A SMILE CRINKLING the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes. "Oh dear, what did you do to your arm? Let me have a look at that." She tuts over the state of Julian’s first-aid—very rough and ready, a wadded-up rugby sock held in place by tubigrip, now black with clotted blood. "You really ought to have taken the week off sick: overwork will be the death of you, you know."

"Fuck off!" Fury and pain give way to a mix of disgust and self-contempt. I should have seen this coming.

"Do feel free to let it all hang out," she tells me: "It’s not as if you’ve got anything to lose, is it?"

Damn Iris. She knows me well enough to get under my skin.

"You’ve been studying me, haven’t you?"

"Of course." She glances over her shoulder. "You. Fetch the first-aid kit at once." Back to me: "I’m sorry about… that."

"Does your idiot daughter always go around chopping up strangers when you’re not around?"

"Yes," she says calmly. "It runs in the family. I don’t think you have any grounds to complain, given what you did to poor Gareth. Would you like me to take those handcuffs off you? Don’t get any silly ideas about escaping: the guards upstairs will shoot anyone they don’t recognize."

"I didn’t do anything to Gareth," I say as she pulls out a key and holds it up in front of me between two black-gloved fingers: "If he hadn’t meddled—" I stop. There’s no point arguing. "What do you want from me?"

"Your cooperation, for the time being. Nothing more, nothing less." There’s a click, and my right wrist flops free. My arm flares for a moment, and I nearly black out. "That looks painful. Would you like something for it?" I don’t remember nodding, but a subjective moment later I’m sitting up on the trolley and someone I can’t see is leaning over me with a syringe. It stings, cold as it goes in—then my arm begins to fade, startlingly fast. "It’s just morphine, Bob. Say if you need some more."

"Morph—" I’m nodding. "What do you want?"

"Come and sit with me," she says, beckoning. An unseen minion lifts me with an arm under my left shoulder and guides me towards one of two reclining leather armchairs in the middle of a dim pool of light on the flagstones—Flagstones? Where are we? "And I’ll explain."

I fade in and out for a bit. When I’m back again, I find I’m sitting in one of the chairs. There’s a tight bandage on my right arm, with something that isn’t a rugby sock under it. My hands are lying on the armrests, un-cuffed, although I’ve got sore red bands where the metal cut into my wrists. I can feel my fingers, mostly—I can even make them flex. And for the first time in hours, my arm isn’t killing me. I’m aware of the pain, but it feels as if it’s on the other side of a thick woolen blanket.

Iris is sitting in the other chair, holding an oddly shaped cup made of what looks like yellow plastic, watching me. She’s put her hair up and changed from her usual office casual into what my finely-tuned fashion sense suggests is either a late-Victorian mourning gown or a cultist priestess’s robes. Or maybe she’s just come from a goth nightclub with a really strict dress code.

I stare past her. We’re in a cellar, sure enough—one designed by an architect from the C of E school of baroque cathedral design. It’s all vaulted arches and flying buttresses, carved stone and heavy wooden partitions cutting us off from darkened naves and tunnels. Just like being in church, except for the lack of windows. Putti and angels flutter towards the shadowy ceiling. There are rows of oak pews, blackened with age. "Where are we?" I ask.

"We’re in the underground chapel of the Ancient and Honourable Order of Wheelwrights," she says. "They had an overground chapel, too, but this one is more private."

"More p—" I stop. "Were the ancient whatevers a cover organization by any chance? For a brotherhood of a different hue?"

Iris seems amused by the idea. "Hardly! They were purged in the 1890s, but nobody found the way down to this cellar. We had rather a lot of cleaning up to do, interminable reconsecrations and exorcisms before we could dedicate the chapel to its true calling." She pulls a face. "Skull worshipers."

Skull worshipers? Does she mean…? Oh dear. There are as many species of cultists as there are dark entities for them to wank over. If this place has a history of uncanny worship going back a century and a half, then it’s a place of power indeed—and that’s before you take into account its location inside a huge graveyard, at one end of a ley line leading into the heart of London that was traversed by tens of thousands of dead over a period of nearly a hundred years. The whole thing has got to be a gigantic necromantic capacitor. "So it was vacant and your people moved in?"

"More or less, yes."

"You people being, hmm. Officially, the Free Church of the Universal Kingdom? Or unofficially…?"

She shakes her head. "The Free Church aren’t terribly useful over here—the British aversion to wearing one’s religion on one’s sleeve, you know. We’d get lots of very funny looks indeed if we went around fondling snakes and preaching the prosperity gospel—even though that sort of thing is de rigueur for stockbrokers. No: on this side of the pond we mostly use local Conservative and Unionist Party branches. And some Labour groups, we’re not fussy."

Enlightenment dawns, and it’s not welcome. Firstly, the Tory grass-roots are notorious for their bloody-minded independence—their local branches pretty much run themselves. And secondly, political leverage… Isn’t the Prime Minister very big on community and faith-based initiatives? Oh dear fucking hell…

I blink owlishly. Iris leans forward, concerned. "Would you like a can of Red Bull? I’m sure you could do with a pick-me-up."

I nod, speechless. "Why me?" I ask, as a male minion—wearing a long black robe, naturally—sweeps forward with a small silver tray, on which is balanced a can of energy drink. I stare at it and twitch my right hand. He opens the ring-pull and holds the tray in front of my (functioning) left hand. I take the can gratefully, and manage to get most of a mouthful down my throat rather than down my tee shirt. As he steps back, I repeat my question: "Why did you abduct me? Because I’m quite clear now that this little charade is all about me. We’ve all been suckered. Iris is one of the two sharpest managers I’ve ever had—the other being Angleton—and she’s been one step ahead of us all along. She probably swiped Mo’s report, too. "Why? I’m a nobody."

"You underestimate your value, Bob." She raises her cup, and smiles over its rim as she takes a sip of something dark. I blink, focusing on it. (That’s not a cup, I realize with a sense of detachment. Why is she drinking from a—because she’s a cultist, idiot.) "You’ve been fast-tracked for senior management for the past eight years. You knew that, didn’t you? But you’re only graded as an SSO 3. That’s a bit low for someone who’s reporting directly to a DSS, so I did some digging. You’re not being held back; it’s just that the Laundry operates a Y-shaped promotion path—administration and line ranks diverge above a very low level. You’re due for regrading later this year, Bob. If you pass the board, they’ll make you an SSO 4(L). Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the first step up from the fork into the line hierarchy, and it’ll entitle you to boss Army majors around. Or police superintendents. I’m an SSO 6(A) but you’d be able to tell me what to do. And a year after that, unless you really go off the rails, they’ll be coaching you for SSO 5(L)."

I try not to boggle openly. I haven’t been paying too much attention to my grade, frankly: I get regular yearly pay raises and rung increments, and I knew I was up for promotion sooner or later, and I knew about the Y-path, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I might be about to effectively jump three grades.

"I’ve seen your confidential record, Bob. It’s impressive. You get stuff done, and Angleton thinks very highly of you. Angleton. You know what that means, don’t you?"

I nod. My mouth is dry and I feel my pulse fluttering. "You didn’t infiltrate the Laundry just to get close to me. Did you?"

She chuckles. "No, Bob, we didn’t." We. Oh holy fuck. There’s more than one cultist infiltrator in the Laundry? I swallow. "But I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time. You’re on track for executive rank when the stars come right. You lucky, lucky man." Her voice drops to a low croon as she raises the baby’s skull and drains it, then holds it out for a refill. "It won’t work, of course."

"It won’t—excuse me?"

"Everything." She shrugs. The effect is rather fetching, if you have a goth fixation. "Go on, tell me what you think is coming up next."

Oh hell. "This is the point," I say guardedly, "where the evil cultist monologues at the captive agent and tries to convert him to her way of thinking. It never works. Does it?"

Iris shakes her head. "You’re probably right, but I ought to give it a go. Okay, here’s my pitch. If I thought for a moment that official policy as set forth in CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN stood a chance of success—if it was remotely possible that we, the human species, could stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the elder ones and build a shield against our Dark Emperor, do you think for a split second that I wouldn’t go for it?" She looks at me speculatively. "You know just how high the odds are stacked against us. There are just too damned many people—we’re damaging the structure of reality by over-observing it! And we can’t kill them either, not without releasing a pulse of necromantic energy that will have every brain eater for a thousand lightyears in all directions homing in on us. The latest research"—she bites her lower lip—"it means the breakthrough is inevitable, and soon. The dead things quicken, and the harder we fight against the inevitable, the worse it will be."

She falls silent. Despondent? Or resigned?

"What you’re saying is, if rape is inevitable, lie back and try to enjoy it. Right?"

She glares at me, blood in her eye for an instant: "No! I’m not into, into enjoying this. I’m interested in survival, Bob, in reaching an accommodation. Survival at all costs and ensuring the continuity of the human race, that’s what the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh is about these days. I won’t lie to you by denying that our history is ghastly, but we change with the times. Our goal is actually your goal, if you think about it for a moment."

Which, for me, is an Oh hell statement with brass bells on. It’s not as if I haven’t had my quiet nagging doubts about the Laundry’s methods and goals, and its intermittent self-thwarting tendency to substitute circular arse-kicking routines for progress. Iris is goddamn good at what she does. Wasn’t I thinking earlier that I’d follow her to hell if—

—If I couldn’t hear an echo of Mo’s voice, reminding me: the things in the cultists’ bodies had already eaten the blonde teacher’s face and most of her left leg, but the Somali boy-child was still screaming—

"You used a phrase there," I say quietly. "I don’t think it means quite the same thing to you that it means to me. At all costs." I put my energy drink can down. I’ve emptied it but I’m still exhausted and the pain is still lurking, just beyond the edge of my awareness. Plus, I feel drained, countless years older than my age. "Implying that the ends justify the means."

"Just so." Iris nods. "So. Will you join us of your own free will?"

I give her question the due weight of consideration it deserves. "Piss off."

She sighs. "Don’t be childish, Bob. I like you, but I’m not going to let your selfish little fit of pique stand in the way of human survival." She stands up, gathers her robe around her, and walks past me. "Bring him," she commands.

Strong-armed cultists seize me under the shoulders and lift. I’m in no position to put up a fight as they frog-march me after her. "What are you going to do with me?" I call after her.

She pauses before an oak door studded with heavy iron nails. "I’m afraid I’m going to have to sacrifice you," she says apologetically, "so that the Eater of Souls can stalk the corridors of the Laundry wearing your promotion-fast-tracked skin. I’m really sorry, dear. I promise I’ll try to make sure it hurts as little as possible."

The door opens before her, and they drag me down into the catacombs.