Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

"You overheard them talking. What about?"

"I-wasn't concentrating much. Tell the truth"-she puts the cup down on the floor; its saucer is swimming in coffee-"I was afraid they were going to rape me. Really afraid; I mean, this was kidnapping, what would you expect? When they didn't, when they were talking, it was almost worse. Does that make any kind of sense? The waiting. But he-the one I didn't see-he had a deep voice, some accent-sounded German to me. Thick, gravelly, lots of sibilants. Had to keep repeating himself to the others, the Middle Eastern men. 'The Opener of the Ways requires the wisdom,' he kept saying. 'It needs information.' I think one of the Middle Eastern guys was objecting because after a bit there was a noise like-" She pauses, and swallows. "Like downstairs. And I didn't hear him again."

I shake my head. "This isn't making any sense so far-" Hastily: "No, I'm not saying you're wrong, I just can't figure out how it fits together. That's my problem, not yours."

I drain my coffee and wince as it hits my stomach and sits there, burning like a lump of molten lead. "Sounds like they were talking about a blood sacrifice. That's the Sacrifice of Knowledge rite. Middle Eastern guys. An incubus. German accent. You're sure it was German?"

"Yes," she says gloomily. "At least, I think it was German; Middle European for sure."

"That really is odd." Which distracts me and catapults my train of thought right into terra incognita because there are no usual suspects in the occult field in Germany; the Abwehr's Rosenberg Gruppe and any survivors of the Thule Gesellschaft were "shot trying to escape" by late June 1945. The camp guards were mostly executed or pulled long prison sentences, the higher-ups responsible for the Ahnenerbe-SS were executed, the whole country turned into a DMZ as far as the occult is concerned. After the Third Reich's answer to the Manhattan Project came so close to completion, that was about the one thing that Truman and Stalin and Churchill all saw eye-to-eye on-and the current government shows no desire to go back down that route of blood and madness.

"He went on a bit," Mo adds unexpectedly.

"Really? What about?"

"He wanted to go home, to take help home, something like that. I think."

I sit up, wince as my ribs remind me not to move too fast. "Help. Did he say what kind?"

Mo frowns again. Her thick, dark eyebrows almost join in the middle, looming like thunderclouds. "He went on about the Opener of the Ways a bit more. Oddly, as if he was talking about me. Said that help for the struggle against the Dar-al-Harb would wait until the ceremony of, uh, 'Unbinding the roots of Ig-drazl'? Then he would 'Open the bridge and bring the ice giants through.' He was very emphatic about the bridge, the bridge to living space. That was his term for it: living space. Does that make any sense?"

"It makes an oh-shit kind of sense." I watch as she picks up her mug and rolls it round between her hands. "Was that all?"

"All? Yes. I waited until I heard them go out, then I phoned you. I obviously got things wrong, though, because the next thing I knew they yanked open the door and the one with the gun grabbed the phone and stamped on it. He was angry, but the other-with the accent-" She judders to a stop.

"Can you describe him?"

She swallows. "That's the crazy thing. From the voice I kind of expected Arnie Schwarzenegger in The Terminator , except he wasn't. There were just these four Middle Eastern guys, and one of them had-I can't, uh, can't remember his face. Just those eyes. They seemed to glow, sort of greenish. Like marbles. Like there was something luminous and wormy behind his face. He-the one with the eyes and this weird German accent-he was angry and yelled at me and I was so afraid, but they just smashed my phone then shut the door on me again. Chained the door shut and overturned a table or something against it. And I-hell." She finishes her coffee. "That was about the worst hour of my life." Pause. "It could have been worse." Pause. "They could have." Pause. "You might not have answered." Pause. "They might not have found me."

"All in a day's work," I say with forced lightheartedness, which has nothing to do with the way I feel. "When the cops brought you out, did you see anything?"

"I wasn't paying much attention," she says shakily. "There were gunshots, though. Then what looked like a whole SWAT team kicked the cupboard door in and pointed their toys at me. You ever had two guys point assault rifles at your head, so close you can see the grooves on the inside of the barrels? You just lie there very still and try very hard not to look threatening." Pause. "Anyway, one of the agents in charge figured out I was the hostage in about three seconds flat and they led me out through the front. There was blood everywhere and two bodies, but not the guy with the weird eyes. I'd recognize him. Thing is, there were strange symbols all over the wall; it was whitewashed and it looked like they'd been painting on it in thick black paint, or blood, or something. A low table under it, with a trashed laptop and some other stuff. Candlesticks, an arc-welding power supply. It was weird, I guess you'd know how weird it looked. Then they drove me away."

My bad feeling is getting worse. In fact, it's not setting off alarm bells in my head anymore: it's sounding the Three Minute Warning. "Mind if I use your phone?" I ask, carefully nonchalant. "I think we still need the Plumbers."

DUE TO THE MIRACLES OF MATRIX MANAGEMENT Bridget is my head of department and writes my personal efficiency assessments, and Harriet is her left hand of darkness and handles administrative issues like training; but since I moved to active service, Andy is now my line manager with overall responsibility for my effectiveness and work assignment, and Angleton is just the guy I'm acting as temporary private secretary for. I decide to start at the bottom of the seniority queue, consign Harriet to the pits of operational ineffectiveness-I mean, this is a woman who would give you a written reprimand for wasting departmental funds if you used silver bullets on a werewolf-and conclude that my best chance of survival is to throw myself on Andy's mercy.

Which means I nobble him absolutely as soon as I can, first thing in the morning.

"Mind if I have a word?" I ask, sticking my head around his door without asking-the red light is off.

Andy is slumped behind his desk, nursing his starter-motor coffee mug. He raises an eyebrow at me. "You look-" He stabs a finger at his keyboard, raises another eyebrow at his email. "Oh. So it was you who called the Plumbers out last night."

I sit down in the chair opposite his desk without asking permission. "Angleton told me to pump Mo after work"-I see his expression-"for information, dammit!"

Andy hides behind his coffee. "Do go on," he says warmly, "this is the best entertainment I'm going to get all morning."

"Then you must be hard up. We ate out, then went back to her place for some more sensitive discussions about the, uh, non-events last month. Something was waiting for us in the lobby."

"Something." He looks sceptical. "And you called out the Plumbers for that?"

I yawn: it's been a long night. "It tried to rip her fucking head off and I've got a cracked rib to show for it. If you'd read that goddamn report you'd see what forensics found in the carpet; they're never going to get the ichor stains out-"

"I'll read it." He puts his coffee mug down. "First, give me the basics. How did you deal with it?"

I produce the wreckage of my Laundry-issue palmtop. "I'll be needing a new PDA, this one's fucked. Mind you, it's not as fucked as the malevolent mollusc from Mars that jumped us; I bumped the fuzz diffuser up to full power and piped the entire entropy pool into it over wide-spectrum infrared. It decided it didn't like that and discorporated instead of sticking around to finish the job, otherwise you'd be spending this morning watching them hoover me off the walls and ceiling."