Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

"I suppose we can consider this to be substantiated, then," says the talking corpse. "Please continue where you left off."

I sigh. "I woke up in a hospital room with a needle in my arm and a goon from one of their TLAs baby-sitting me. After about an hour someone who claimed to be running Plaid Shirt turned up and started asking pointed questions. Seems they were already running a stakeout. After the third time that I explained what happened at the motel he agreed that I hadn't waxed their asset and demanded to know why I'd been round at the house. I told him that Mo phoned me and asked for help and it sounded urgent, and after I repeated myself another couple of dozen times he left. The next morning they shipped me to the airport and stuck me on the plane."

The battle-axe from Accounting who's sitting next to Derek glares at me. " Business class," she hisses. "I suppose that was your idea of a good ride home?"

Huh? "That was nothing to do with me," I protest. "Did they bill-"

"Yes." Andy twirls his pen idly as a fly batters itself against the energy-saving lightbulb overhead.

"Uh-oh." Unsanctioned expenditure isn't quite a hanging offense in the Laundry, but it's definitely up there with insubordination and mutiny. During the Thatcher years they were even supposed to have had paper clip audits, before someone pointed out that the consequences of poor employee morale in this organisation might be a trifle worse than in, say, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food. "Not guilty," I say automatically, before I can stop myself. "I didn't ask them for that, it happened after the assignment went pear-shaped, and I wasn't conscious at the time."

"Nobody's accused you of authorising budgetary variances beyond your level of authorisation," Andy says soothingly. He casts a quelling glance at Derek from Accounting, and then asks: "What I'd like to know is why you went after her, though. SOP was to leave the area as soon as you were blown. Why did you stick around?"

"Uh-" My lips are dry because I've been expecting this one. "I was going to leave. I was in the rental car and heading for the road out of town back to the airport, just as soon as I got out of the kill zone. I'd have done it too, except that Mo rang."

I lick my lips again. "I was sent to see if I could facilitate an extraction. I figured that meant someone thought Mo was worth extracting. My apologies if that isn't actually the case, but what I heard on the phone sounded like Mo had been abducted, and in the wake of the shooting I figured this was an even worse outcome than a blown mission and withdrawal. So I improvised, went round to her house and used my locator on her.

"I've been thinking about it a lot since then. What I should have done, I mean. I could have found where she was being held then driven back to the motel to find whoever was running that spy. Or something. Or headed for the airport and phoned from the departure lounge. All I can say is I was too involved. Some bastard had just tried to kill me; I mean, ONI was bugging Mo. When I phoned, they had put a diversion on her line, which is how come I was able to tell them where to look. But they probably already knew, I mean, when Mo called me on her pocket mobile that would have tipped them off."

I empty the glass of water down my throat and put it back on the table in front of me.

"Look, I figure ONI or some other TLA outfit-say, the Black Chamber pretending to be ONI investigators-was watching Mo and picked up on me as soon as we made contact. It was a stitch-up. Whoever tried to shoot me and snatch her took them by surprise. That wasn't in the script. I know I should have come home then, but at that point I think everyone was off balance. Who the fuck were those loons, anyway? A major summoning in public-"

"You have no need to know," Derek says snippily. "Drop it!"

"Okay." I lean back in my chair, tipping it on two legs; my head aches abominably. "I get the picture."

My third interrogator pipes up in a reedy voice: "This isn't the whole story, is it, Robert?"

I stare at her, annoyed. "Probably not, no."

Bridget is a blonde yuppwardly-mobile executive, her sights fixed on the dizzying heights of the cabinet office in seeming ignorance of the bulletproof glass ceiling that hovers over all of us who work in the Laundry. Her main job description seems to be making life shitty for everybody farther down the ladder, principally by way of her number one henchperson, Harriet. She holds forth, strictly for the record: "I'm unhappy about the way this assignment was set up. This was supposed to be a straightforward meet-and-pitch session, barely one rung up from having our local consul pay a social call. With all due respect, Robert is not a particularly experienced representative and should not have been sent into such a situation without mentoring-"

"It's friendly soil!" Andy interrupts.

"As friendly as it gets without a bilateral arrangement, which is to say, not an active joint-intelligence-sharing, committee-sanctioned, liaison environment. Foreigners, in other words. Robert was pushed out in the cold without oversight or adequate support from higher management, and when things went off the rails he quite naturally did his best, which wasn't quite good enough." She smiles dazzlingly at Andy. "I'd like to minute that he needs additional training before being subjected to solo exercises, and I'd also like to say that I think we need to review the circumstances leading up to this assignment closely in case they are symptomatic of a weakness in our planning and accountability loop."

Oh great. Andy looks almost as disgusted as I feel. Bridget has just damned us-everyone else, in fact-with faint praise. I did "as well as could be expected" and need extra supervision before I can be let out of the kindergarten to go pee-pee. Derek and Andy and everyone else involved get to have Bridget poke her long, inquisitive nose into their procedural compliance and see if they're exercising due diligence. As for Bridget, if she turns up anything that even whiffs of negligence she gets to look good to the top brass by cleaning shop, and anyone who disagrees is being "grossly unprofessional." Office politics, the Laundry remix.

"My head aches," I mutter. "And my body is telling me that it's two in the morning. Do you have any more questions? If you don't mind, I'm going to go home and lie down for a day or two."

"Take all week," Andy says dismissively. "We'll have everything sorted out when you get back." I stand up fast; in my current state I don't think to ask what strange and perverted definition of "sorted" he's using.

"I'd like to see a written report of your trip," Bridget adds before I can close the door behind me. "Documented in accordance with Operations Manual Four, chapter eleven, section C. No need to hurry, but I want it on my desk by the end of next week."

Evidence, Written, Bureaucrats for the Malicious Use of. I head for home, anticipating a long hot bath and then eighteen hours in the sack.

HOME IS MUCH AS I LEFT IT SEVEN DAYS AGO. There's a pile of bills slowly turning brown at the corner propping up one of the kitchen table legs. The bin is overflowing, the kitchen sink likewise, and Pinky hasn't cleaned out his bread-maker since the last time he used it. I look in the fridge and find a limp tea bag and a carton of milk that's good for another day or so before it starts demanding the vote, so I make myself a mug of tea and sit at the kitchen table playing Tetris on my palmtop. Coloured blocks fall like snowflakes in my mind, and I drift for a while. But reality keeps intruding: I've got a week's washing in my suitcase, another week of washing in my room, and while Pinky and the Brain are at work I can get to the washer/dryer. (Assuming nobody's left a dead hamster in it again.)