Charles Stross: The Atrocity Archives

Andy stubs out his cigarette and sits up. "Well, now we're here…" He looks at Boris enquiringly. Boris nods. I try to keep a straight face: I hate it when the old guard start playing stiff upper lip.

"Jackpot." Andy grins at me. I nearly have a heart attack on the spot. "You're coming to the pub tonight, Bob. Drinks on me. That was a straight A for results, C-plus for fieldwork, overall grade B for execution."

"Uh, I thought I made a mess going in-"

"No. If it hadn't been a semicovert you'd have had to burn your shoes, but apart from that-well. Zero witnesses, you found the target, there's nothing left, and Dr. Denver is about to find himself downsized and in search of a job somewhere less sensitive." He shakes his head. "Not a lot more to say, really."

"But the security guard could have-"

"The security guard was fully aware there was going to be a burglary, Bob. He wasn't going to move an inch, much less see anything untoward or sound the alarm, lest spooks come out of the woodwork and find him crunchy and good with ketchup."

"It was a set-up?" I say disbelievingly.

Boris nods at me. "Is a good set-up."

"Was it worth it?" I ask. "I mean, I just wiped out some poor bastard's last six months of work-"

Boris sighs mournfully and shoves an official memo at me. It's got a red-and-yellow chevron-striped border and the phrase MOST SECRET DESTROY BEFORE READING stamped across its cover. I open it and look at the title page: Some Notes Toward a Proof of Polynomial Completeness in Hamiltonian Networks. And a subtitle: Formal Correctness Report. One of the departmental theorem-proving oracles has been busy overnight. "He duplicated the Turing result?"

"Most regrettably," says Boris.

Harriet nods. "You want to know if last night was worth it. It was. If you hadn't succeeded, we might have had to take more serious measures. That's always an option, you know, but in general we try to handle such affairs at the lowest possible level."

I nod and close the folder, shove it back across the table toward Boris. "What next?"

"Timekeeping," says Harriet. "I'm a bit concerned that you weren't available for debriefing on schedule this morning. You really need to do a bit better," she adds. (Andy, who I think understands how I tick, keeps quiet.)

I glare at her. "I'd just spent six hours standing in a wet bush, and breaking into someone else's premises. After putting in a full day's work in preparation." I lean forward, getting steamed: "In case you've forgotten, I was in at eight in the morning yesterday, then Andy asked me to help with this thing at four in the afternoon. Have you ever tried getting a night bus from Croxley to the East End at two in the morning when you're soaked to the bone, it's pouring wet, and the only other people at the bus stop are a mugger and a drunk guy who wants to know if you can put him up for the night? I count that as a twenty hour working day with hardship. Want me to submit an overtime claim?"

"Well, you should have phoned in first," she says waspishly.

I'm not going to win this one, but I don't think I've lost on points. Anyway, it's not really worth picking a fight with my line manager over trivia. I sit back and yawn, trying not to choke on the cigarette fumes.

"Next on the agenda," says Andy. "What to do with Malcolm Denver, Ph.D. Further action is indicated in view of this paper; we can't leave it lying around in public. Cuts too close to the bone. If he goes public and reproduces it we could be facing a Level One reality excursion within weeks. But we can't do the usual brush and clean either, Oversight would have our balls. Ahem." He glances at Harriet, whose lips are thin and unamused. "Could have us all cooling our heels for months in a diversity awareness program for the sensitivity-impaired." He shudders slightly and I notice the red ribbon on his lapel; Andy is too precious by half for this job, although-come to think of it-this isn't exactly the most mainstream posting in the civil service. "Anyone got any suggestions? Constructive ones, Bob."

Harriet shakes her head disapprovingly. Boris just sits there, being Boris. (Boris is one of Angleton's sinister gofers; I think in a previous incarnation he used to ice enemies of the state for the Okhrana, or maybe served coffee for Beria. Now he just imitates the Berlin Wall during internal enquiries.) Andy taps his fingers on the desk. "Why don't we make him a job offer?" I ask. Harriet looks away: she's my line manager-nominally-and she wants to make it clear that this suggestion does not come with her approval. "It's like-" I shrug, trying to figure out a pitch. "He's derived the Turing-Lovecraft theorem from first principles. Not many people can do that. So he's bright, that's a given. I think he's still a pure theory geek, hasn't made any kind of connection with the implications of being able to specify correct geometric relations between power nodes-maybe still thinks it's all a big joke. No references to Dee or the others, apart from a couple of minor arcana on his bookshelf. This means he isn't directly dangerous, and we can offer him the opportunity to learn and develop his skills and interests in a new and challenging field-just as long as he's willing to come on the inside. Which would get him covered by Section Three at that point."

Section Three of the Official Secrets Act (1916) is our principle weapon in the endless war against security leaks. It was passed during a wartime spy scare-a time of deep and extreme paranoia-and it's even more bizarre than most people think. As far as the public knows, the Official Secrets Act only has two sections; that's because Section Three is itself classified Secret under the terms of the preceding sections, and merely knowing about Section Three's existence-without having formally signed it-is a criminal offence. Section Three has all kinds of juicy hidden provisions to make life easy for spooks like us; it's a bureaucratic cloaking field. Anything at all can go on behind the shroud of Section Three as if it simply hasn't happened. In American terms, it's a black operation.

"If you section him we have to come up with a job and a budget," Harriet accuses.

"Yes, but I'm sure he'll be useful." Andy waves languidly. "Boris, would you mind asking around your section, see if anyone needs a mathematician or cryptographer or something? I'll write this up and point it at the Board. Harriet, if you can add it to the minutes. Bob, I'd like a word with you after the meeting, about timekeeping."

Oh shit, I think.

"Anything else? No? Meeting over, folks."

Once we're alone in the conference room Andy shakes his head. "That wasn't very clever, Bob, winding Harriet up like that."

"I know." I shrug. "It's just that every time I see her I get this urge to drop salt on her back."

"Yes, but she's technically your line manager. And I'm not. Which means you are supposed to phone in if you're going to be late on a day when you've got a kickoff meeting, or else she will raise seven shades of low-key shit. And as she will be in the right , appeals to matrix management and conflict resolution won't save you. She'll make your annual performance appraisal look like it's the Cultural Revolution and you just declared yourself the reincarnation of Heinrich Himmler. Am I making myself clear?"

I sit down again. "Yes, four very bureaucratic values of clear."

He nods. "I sympathise, Bob, I really do. But Harriet's under a lot of pressure; she's got a lot of projects on her plate and the last thing she needs is to be kept waiting two hours because you couldn't be bothered to leave a message on her voice mail last night."

Putting it that way, I begin to feel like a shit-even though I can see how I'm being manipulated. "Okay, I'll try harder in future."