Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

Just another day at the office, folks, nothing to see here, walk on by.

Well, maybe not. Here comes a honking great helicopter-the Twin Squirrel from the Met's ASU that I was in the other night, only it looks a lot bigger and scarier when seen from a couple hundred feet in full daylight as it settles in on the car park, leaves and debris blowing out from under the thundering rotors.

The chopper is still rocking on its skids when one of the back doors opens and Angleton jumps down, stumbling slightly-he's no spring chicken-then collects himself and strides toward us, clutching a briefcase. "Speak," he tells me, voice barely raised to cover the rush of slowing rotors.

"Problem, boss." I point to the building: "Andy's still inside confirming the worst but it looks like it started as a fucking stupid interdepartmental prank; it went bad, and now one of the perps has wigged out and gone postal."

"A prank." He turns those icy blue peepers on me and just for a fraction of a second I'm not being stared at by a sixty-something skinny bald guy in a badly fitting suit but by a walking skeleton with the radioactive fires of hell burning balefully in its eye sockets. "You'd better take me to see Andrew. Fill me in on the way."

I'm stumbling over my tongue and hurrying to keep up with Angleton when we make it to the front desk, where Andy's busy giving the OCCULUS folks cleanup directions and tips for what to do with the broken lamia and the summoning altars in the basement. "Who's-oh, it's you. About time." He grins. "Who's holding the fort?"

"I left Boris in charge," Angleton says mildly, not taking exception at Andy's brusque manner. "How bad is it?"

"Bad." Andy's cheek twitches, which is a bad sign: all his confidence seems to have fled now that Angleton's arrived. "We need to-damn."

"Take your time," Angleton soothes him. "I'm not going to eat you." Which is when I realise just how scared I am, and if I'm half out of my tree what does that say about Andy? I'll give Angleton this much, he knows when not to push his subordinates too hard. Andy takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, then tries again.

"We've got two loose ends: Mark McLuhan, and a John Doe. McLuhan worked here as senior occult officer, basically an oversight role. He also did a bunch of other stuff for Q Division that took him down to Dansey House in a liaison capacity. I can't believe how badly we've slipped up on our vetting process-"

"Take your time," Angleton interrupts, this time with a slight edge to his voice.

"Sorry, sorry. Bob's been putting it together." A nod in my direction. "McLuhan is working with a John Doe inside the Laundry to make us look bad via a selective disclosure leak-basically one that was intended to be written off as bad-ass forteana, nothing for anyone but the black helicopter crowd to pay any attention to, except that it would set you up to look bad. I've found some not very good email from Bridget inviting McLuhan down to headquarters, some pretext to do with a software audit. Really fucking stupid stuff that Bob can do the legwork on later. But what I really think is happening is, Bridget arranged this to make you look bad in support of a power play in front of the director's office."

Angleton turns to me: "Phone head office. Ask for Boris. Tell him to arrest McLuhan. Tell him, SHRINKWRAP. And, MARMOSET." I raise an eyebrow. "Now, lad!"

Ah, the warm fuzzies of decisive action. I head for the lamia's desk and pick up the phone and dial 666; behind me Andy is telling Angleton something in a low voice.

"Switchboard?" I ask the sheet of white noise. "I want Boris. Now. " The Enochian metagrammar parsers do their thing and the damned souls or enchained demons or whatever on switchboard hiss louder then connect the circuit. I hear another ring tone. Then a familiar voice.

"Hello, Capital Laundry Services, system support department. Who are you wanting to talk to?"

Oh shit. "Hello, Harriet," I say, struggling to sound calm and collected. Getting Bridget's imp at this juncture is not a good sign, especially when she and Boris are renowned for their mutual loathing. "This is a red phone call. Is Boris about?"

"Oh-ho, Robert! I was wondering where you were. Are you trying to pull a sickie again?"

"No, I'm not," I say, taking a deep breath. "I need to talk to Boris urgently, Harriet, is he around?"

"Oh, I couldn't possibly say. That would be disclosing information prejudicial to the good running of the department over a public network connection, and I couldn't possibly encourage you to do that when you can bloody well show your face in the office for the meeting we scheduled the day before yesterday, remember that?"

I feel as if my guts have turned to ice. "Which meeting?" I ask.

"The software audit, remember? You never read the agenda for meetings. If you did, you might have taken an interest in the any other business … Where are you calling from, Bob? Anyone would think you didn't work here…"

"I want to talk to Boris. Right now." The graunching noise in the background is my jaw clenching. "It's urgent, Harriet. To do with the code blue the other day. Now you can get him right now or you can regret it later, which is your choice?"

"Oh, I don't think that'll be necessary," she says in what I can only describe as a gloating tone of voice. "After missing the meeting, you and your precious Counter-Possession Unit will be divisional history, and you'll have only yourselves to blame! Goodbye." And the bitch hangs up on me.

I look round and see both Andy and Angleton staring at me. "She hung up," I say stupidly. "Fucking Harriet has a diversion on Boris's line. It's a setup. Something about making an end run around the CPU."

"Then we shall have to attend this meeting in person," Angleton says, briskly marching toward the front doors, which bend aside to get out of his way. "Follow me!"

We proceed directly to the helicopter, which has kept its engines idling while we've been inside. It's only taken, what? Three or four minutes since Angleton arrived? I see another figure heading toward us across the car park-a figure in a grey trouser suit, slightly stained, a wild look in her eyes. "Hey, you!" she shouts. "I want some answers!"

Angleton turns to me. "Yours?" I nod. He beckons to her imperiously. "Come with us," he calls, raising his voice over the whine of gathering turbines. Past her shoulder I see one of the fake firemen lowering a kit-bag that had been, purely coincidentally, pointed at DI Sullivan's back. "This bit I always dislike," he adds in a low monotone, his face set in a grim expression of disapproval. "The fewer lives we warp, the better."

I half-consider asking him to explain what he means, but he's already climbing into the rear compartment of the chopper and Andy is following him. I give Josephine a hand up as the blades overhead begin to turn and the engines rise in a full-throated bellowing duet. I get my headset on in time to hear Angleton's orders: "Back to London, and don't spare the horses."

The Laundry is infamous for its grotesque excesses in the name of accounting; budgetary infractions are punished like war crimes, and mere paper clips can bring down the wrath of dead alien gods on your head. But when Angleton says don't spare the horses he sends us screaming across the countryside at a hundred and forty miles per hour, burning aviation fuel by the ton and getting ATC to clear lower priority traffic out of our way-and all because he doesn't want to be late for a meeting. There's a police car waiting for us at the pad, and we cut through the chaotic London traffic incredibly fast, almost making it into third gear at times.

"McLuhan's got SCORPION STARE," I tell Angleton round the curve of Andy's shoulder. "And headquarters's security cams are all wired. If he primes them before we get back there, we could find a lockout-or worse. It all depends on what Harriet and her boss have been planning."