Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

"After this." I pour a mug, add milk, shudder, yawn again, and begin to work on it. "Somehow I'm not hungry this morning."

"I think that place goes on the visit-again list," she agrees. "I must try the couscous next time…" She mounts another attack on her mug and I decide that she's just as attractive wearing jeans and sweat shirt and no warpaint first thing in the morning as in the evening. I'll pass on the red eyes, though. "Got your passport?"

"Yeah. And the tickets. Shall we go?"

"Lead on."

Some hours later we've emerged from Arrivals at Schiphol, caught the train to the Centraal Station, grappled with the trams, and checked into a cutesy family-run hotel with a theme of hot and cold running philosophers-Hegel on the breakfast room place mats, Mo in the Plato room on the top floor, and myself relegated to the Kant basement. By early afternoon we're walking in the Vondelpark, between the dark green grass and the overcast grey sky; a cool wind is blowing in off the channel and for the first time I'm able to get the traffic fumes out of my lungs. And we're out of sight of Nick and Alan who, until the hotel, tailed us all the way from the safe house to the airport and then onto our flight-I suppose they're part of the surveillance team. It's bad practice to acknowledge their presence and they made no attempt to talk to me; as far as I can tell, Mo doesn't suspect anything.

"So where is this museum then?" asks Mo.

"Right there." I point. At one end of the park, a neoclassical lump of stonework rears itself pompously toward the sky. "Let's check in and get our restricted area passes validated, huh? Give it an hour or so and we can try and find somewhere to eat."

"Only a couple of hours?"

"Everywhere closes early in Amsterdam, except the bars and coffee shops," I explain. "But don't go in a coffee shop and order a coffee or they'll laugh at you. What we call a café is an Eethuis , and what they call a café we call a pub. Got it?"

"Clear as mud." She shakes her head. "Good thing for me everyone seems to speak English."

"It's a common affliction." I pause. "Just don't let it make you feel too secure. This isn't a safe house."

We walk past a verdigris-covered statue while she considers this. "You have another agenda for coming here," she says finally.

My guts feel cold. "Yes," I admit. I've been dreading this moment.

"Well." Unexpectedly she reaches out and takes my hand. "I assume you're prepared for the shit to hit the fan, right?"

"All feco-ventilatory intersections are covered. They assure me."

"They." She shrugs, uncomfortably. "This was their idea?"

I glance round, keeping a vague eye on the other wanderers in the park; a couple of elderly pensioner types, a kid on a skateboard, that's about it. Of course that doesn't mean we aren't being tailed-a raven that's had its central nervous system hijacked by a demonic imperative, a micro-UAV cruising silent a hundred metres overhead with cameras focussed-but at least you can do something about human tradecraft, as opposed to the esoteric or electronic kinds.

"They're not keen on letting whoever's tracking you get a chance to say 'third time lucky,' " I try to explain. "This is a setup. We're on friendly territory and if anyone tries to grab you, I'm not the only one on your case."

"That's nice to know." I look at her sharply but she's got her innocent face on, the absent-minded professor musing over a theorem rather than focussing on the world, the flesh, and the devils of Interpol's most-wanted list.

"You never did tell me about the Thresher ," I comment as we cross the road to the museum.

"Oh, what? The submarine? I didn't think you were interested."

"Huh." I lead her along the side of the building instead of climbing the steps, and I keep an eye open for the side entrance I'm looking for. "Of course I'm interested."

"I was kidding, you know." She flashes me a grin. "Wanted to see if it would make you pull your finger out. You spooks are just so focussed. "

There's a blank door set between two monolithic granite slabs that form one flank of the museum; I rap on it thrice and it opens inward automatically. (There's a camera in the ceiling of this entrance tunnel: unwanted visitors will not be made welcome.) "What is this?" Mo asks, "Hey, that's the first secret door I've seen!"

"Nah, it's just the service entrance," I say. The door closes behind us and I lead her forward, round a bend, and up to the security desk. "Howard and O'Brien from the Laundry," I say, placing my hand on the counter.

The booth is empty, but there are two badges waiting on the counter and the door ahead of us opens anyway. "Welcome to the Archive," says a speaker behind the counter. "Please take your ID badges and wear them at all times except when visiting the public galleries."

I take them and pass one to Mo. She inspects it dubiously. "Is this solid silver? What's the language? This isn't Dutch."

"It probably came from Indonesia. Don't ask, just wear it." I pin mine on my belt, under the hem of my T-shirt-it doesn't need to be visible to human guards, after all. "Coming?"

"Yeah."

THE CELLARS UNDER THE RIJKSMUSEUM REMIND me of an upmarket version of the Stacks at Dansey House-huge tunnels, whitewashed and air-conditioned, chock-full of shelves. There's a difference: almost all the contents at Dansey House are files. Here there are boxes, plastic or wooden, full of evidence, left over from the trials that followed a time of infinite horrors.

The Ahnenerbe-SS collection is in a subbasement guarded by locked steel doors; one of the curators-a civilian in jeans and sweater-takes us down there. "Don't you be staying too long," she advises us. "This place, it gives me creeps; you not sleeping well tonight, yah?"

"We'll be all right," I reassure her. The Ahnenerbe collection has about the strongest set of guards and wards imaginable-nobody involved in looking after it wants to worry about lunatics and neo-Nazis getting their hands on some of the powerfully charged relics stored here.

"You say." She looks at me blackly, then one eyebrow twitches. "Sweet dreams."

"Just what are we looking for?" asks Mo.

"Well, to start with-" I clap my hands. We're facing a corridor with numbered storage rooms off to either side. It's well lit and empty, like a laboratory where everyone has just nipped out for afternoon tea. "The symbols painted on the walls of the apartment in Santa Cruz," I say. "Think you'd recognise them if you saw them again?"

"Recognise? I, uh… maybe," she says slowly. "I wouldn't like to say for sure. I was half out of my head and I didn't get a real good look at them."

"That's more than I got, and the Black Chamber didn't send us any postcards," I say. "Which is why we've come here. Think of it as a photo-fit session for necromancy." I read the plaque on the nearest door, then push it open. The lights come on automatically, and I freeze. It's a good thing the lights are bright, because the contents of the room, seen in shadow, would be heart-stopping. As it is, they're merely heart-breaking.

There's a white cast-iron table, a thing of curves and scrollwork, just inside the doorway. Three chairs sit around it, delicate-looking white assemblies of struts and curved sections. I blink, for there's something odd about them, something that reminds me of the art of Giger, the film set of Alien. And then I realise what I'm looking at: the backs of the chairs are vertebrae, wired together. The chairs are made of scrimshaw, carved from the thigh bones of the dead; the decorative scrollwork of the table is a rack of human ribs. The table-top itself is made of polished, interlocking shoulder blades. And as for the cigarette lighter-

"I think I'm going to be sick," whispers Mo. She looks distinctly pale.