Charles Stross - The Fuller Memorandum

Nine folders.

I rummage around on my desk for the original paper Angleton gave me. Weren’t there ten files there? Ten sets of numbers? I can’t find the note, damn it, but I know where I entered the document retrieval request. I wake my computer and call up the transaction log. Yup, ten files requested.

I look under my desk. Then I look behind my desk. Then I look in the circular filing cabinet, just in case. I recount the folders, double-checking inside them just in case the missing file has been interleaved.

Nine folders. Shit.

Have you ever found yourself in a cold sweat, your palms clammy and your clothes sticking to the small of your back? Heart hammering, even though you’re sitting down? Mouth dry as a mummy’s tomb?

I am a rough, tough, hardened field agent (yeah, right). I have been in the Laundry for nearly a decade. I’ve met gibbering horrors from other universes, been psychically entangled with a serial killer fish goddess, stalked by zombies, imprisoned by a megalomaniac billionaire, and I’ve even survived the attention of the Auditors (when I was young, foolish, and didn’t know any better). But I’ve never lost a classified file before, and I don’t ever want there to be a first time.

I force myself to sit down and close my eyes for what feels like an hour, but is actually just under two minutes according to the clock on my computer’s screen. When I open my eyes, the problem is still there, but the sweat is beginning to dry and the panicked feeling has receded… for now. So I get down on my knees and start picking up the photographs, working through them until I am certain I’ve got them all in sequence, and then I put them in the correct envelope and very carefully stack it on my chair.

I pick up a Post-it pad and copy the number on the front of the envelope. Then I repeat, eight times, for the remaining envelopes. Then I hunt across my desk until-aha!-I find Angleton’s original spidery scrawl, numbers swimming before my eyes like exotic fish.

Ten numbers. I go through them checking off the files I’ve got, until I identify the number that’s missing. 10.0.792.560. Right.

I call up the requisition and look for 10.0.792.560. Sure enough, it’s there. So I ordered it, but it isn’t in my office. Double shit. I dumpster-dive the transaction file, looking for my request: Did they fill it? Oh. Oh my. DOCUMENT NOT FOUND ON DESIGNATED SHELF.

I just about faint with relief, but manage to force myself to pick up the phone and dial the front desk number. “Hello? Archives?” The voice at the far end is female, distracted, a little squawky, and all human-for which I am grateful: not all the archive staff are warm-blooded.

“Hi, this is Bob Howard in Ops? Back on Thursday I requested an archival document retrieval, ten dead files. I’m going through them now, and one of them is missing. I’ve got a file number, and an annotation saying DOCUMENT NOT FOUND ON DESIGNATED SHELF. Can you tell me what that means?”

“It means”-she sounds irritated-“the librarian couldn’t find your file. They looked where it was supposed to be and it wasn’t there.”

“Oh. Is there a direct mapping between the document reference number and a given shelf?”

“Yes, there is. You should really use code names and the index in case the file’s been assigned a new number, you know. It happens sometimes. Do you have a codeword for me? I could look it up for you…”

“I’m sorry, my colleague just gave me a list of document reference numbers,” I explain. “And he’s, uh, off sick. So I’m trying to figure out what’s missing. I was worried that the file had been sent over and got misplaced, but if it’s missing in the stacks I suppose that just means it’s been renumbered. Or he wrote down the wrong reference. Or something.” I don’t believe that last one for a split second-no way would Angleton get a file number wrong-but I don’t want some nosy librarian poking her nose into my investigation. “Bye.” I put the phone down and lean back, thinking.

Let’s see: Angleton was working on BLOODY BARON. When I came back to the office he gave me a list of ten files to read, then he went missing. This coincides with an upswing in Russian activity, including a marked willingness to use extreme measures. Nine files came from the stacks, and they turn out to be tedious backgrounders relating indirectly to the historical investigation side of BLOODY BARON. The tenth file isn’t on its shelf. All I’ve got is a number, not a name.

I think it’s time to do some unofficial digging…

MEANWHILE, BACK TO THE HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION:

It is nearly six o’clock when Mr. Dower finishes typing his report.

He’s lost track of the time, his head locked inside the scope of his postmortem on the instrument. He’s read about its like before. Their design is attributed to a deaf-mute German violinist in Paris in the early 1920s, but nobody actually built one until the ghastly Dr. Mabuse commissioned an entire string section from a certain Berlin instrument maker in 1931. (It should be no surprise that the instrument maker prospered under the subsequent regime, but was executed after a summary trial by SMERSH investigators in 1946.) This particular instrument made its way to the West in the luggage of a returning GI, was retrofitted with electric pickups during the 1950s, and after a spectacular run of accidents was acquired by a reclusive collector in 1962-believed by some to be a front for a British government department who, as a matter of state policy, did not like to see such instruments in the wrong hands.

He dreads to think what its reappearance portends. On the other hand, the young woman who brought it to him-Mr. Dower thinks of everyone aged under fifty as “young”-seemed to have a sober appreciation of its lethality.

He shudders fastidiously as the last of five pages of single-spaced description hisses out of the ink-jet printer. It joins the half dozen contact pages of photographs, including his fiber-optic examination of the interior of the instrument, and an invoice for just over two thousand pounds. He shakes the bundle of pages together, and binds them neatly with a paper clip from a desk drawer. Then they go inside the envelope the woman who called herself Cassie May gave him. He licks the flap and seals it, then, in a moment of curiosity, he switches on the anti-counterfeit lamp he keeps by the cash register and examines it under ultraviolet light. Nothing shows up: it bears none of the UV-fluorescent dots the Post Office prints on envelopes to control their routing.

If “Cassie May” thinks she can retrieve an unmarked envelope from the postal system she’s welcome to it, in Mr. Dower’s books. He turns back to the computer and deletes his work, then sighs and glances at the clock. Five minutes to closing time: no point keeping the shop open any longer. He stands and stretches, switches the computer off, and goes through an abbreviated version of his regular closing routine; no point banking the cash register contents (his takings before the woman’s visit barely amounted to petty cash). He pulls on his coat, turns his coffee mug upside down on the draining board, switches off the lights, and opens the front door.

The woman is waiting for him. She smiles. “Have you finished your report?” she asks.

Mr. Dower nods, confused. “I was going to post it, as you requested.” He pats his coat pocket.

“I’m in a hurry. There’s a rush on. If you don’t mind…?” She looks at him impatiently.

“Of course.” He pulls out the envelope and hands it to her. “My invoice is enclosed.”

“You don’t need to worry about that side of things.” She slides the envelope into her black patent leather handbag and smiles.

“I suppose not. You people always pay your debts eventually.”