Charles Stross: The Atrocity Archives

"Bingo." It is CAT-5, and there's an even more interesting cable running off to one side that looks like a DS-3. I whip out my multitool and begin working on the junction box. The scrabbling's become insistent by the time I've uncovered the wires, but what the fuck. Who was it who said, When they think you're technical is the time to go crude? I grab a handful of network cables and yank, hard. Then I grab another handful. Then, having disconnected the main trunk line- mission accomplished -I take another moment to think.

"Bob, have you got a plan?"

"I'm thinking."

"Then think faster, they're about to come through the door-"

Which is when I remember my mobile phone and decide to make a last-ditch attempt. I speed-dial Bridget's office extension-and Angleton picks up after two rings. Bastard.

"Ah, Bob!" He sounds positively avuncular. "Where are you? Did you manage to shut down the Internet?"

I don't have time to correct him. Besides, Josephine is reloading her cannon and I think she's going to try a really horrible pun if I don't produce a solution PDQ. "Boss, run McLuhan's SCORPION STARE tool and upload the firmware to all the motion-tracking cameras on the ground floor east wing loop right now. "

"What? I'm not sure I heard you correctly."

I take a deep breath. "She's subverted the night watchmen. Everybody else is out of the building. Do it now or I'm switching to a diet of fresh brains."

"If you say so," he agrees, with the manner of an indulgent uncle talking to a tearaway schoolboy, then hangs up.

There's a splintering crash and a hand rams through the door right between us and embeds itself in the wall opposite. "Oh shit," I have time to say as the hand withdraws. Then a bolt of lightning goes off about two feet outside the door, roughly simultaneous with a sizzling crash and a wave of heat. We cower in the back of the cupboard, terrified of fire until after what seems like an eternity the sprinklers come on.

"Is it safe yet?" she asks-at least I think that's what she says, my ears are still ringing.

"One way to find out." I take the broken casing from the network junction box and chuck it through the hole in the door. When it doesn't explode I gingerly push the door open. The ringing is louder; it's my phone. I pull it wearily out of my pocket and hunch over it to keep it dry, leaning against the wall of the corridor to stay as far away from the blackened zombie corpses as I can. "Who's there?"

"Your manager." He sounds merely amused this time. "What a sorry shower you are! Come on up to Mahogany Row and dry off, both of you-the director has a personal bathroom, I think you've earned it."

"Uh. Harriet? Bridget? McLuhan?"

"Taken care of," he says complacently, and I shiver convulsively as the water reaches gelid tentacles down my spine and tickles my balls like a drowned lover.

"Okay. We'll be right up." I glance back at the smashed-in utility cupboard and Josephine smiles at me like a frightened feral rat, all sharp teeth and savagery and shining.38 automatic. "We're safe now," I say, as reassuringly as possible. "I think we won…"

THE JOURNEY TO ANGLETON'S LAIR IS BOTH UP AND along-he normally works out of a gloomy basement on the other side of the hollowed-out block of prime London real estate that is occupied by the Laundry, but this time he's ensconced in the director's suite on the abandoned top floor of the north wing.

The north wing is still dry. Over there, people are still at work, oblivious to the charred zombies lying on the scorched, soaked, thaumaturgically saturated wing next door. We catch a few odd stares-myself, soaked and battered in my outdoors gear, DI Sullivan in the wreckage of an expensive grey suit, oversized handgun clenched in a death grip at her side-but wisely or otherwise, nobody asks me to fix the Internet or demands to know why we're tracking muddy water through Human Resources.

By the time we reach the thick green carpet and dusty quietude of the director's suite Josephine's eyes are wide but she's stopped shaking. "You've got lots of questions," I manage to say. "Try to save them for later. I'll tell you everything I know and you're cleared for, once I've had time to phone my fiancée."

"I've got a husband and a nine-year-old son, did you think of that before you dragged me into this insane nightmare? Sorry. I know you didn't mean to. It's just that shooting up zombies and being zapped by basilisks makes me a little upset. Nerves."

"I know. Just try not to wave them in front of Angleton, okay?"

"Who is Angleton, anyway? Who does he think he is?"

I pause before the office door. "If I knew that, I'm not sure I'd be allowed to tell you." I knock three times.

"Enter." Andy opens the door for us. Angleton is sitting in the director's chair, playing with something in the middle of the huge expanse of oak desk that looks as if it dates to the 1930s. (There's a map on the wall behind him, and a quarter of it is pink.) "Ah, Mr. Howard, Detective Inspector. So good of you to come."

I peer closer. Clack. Clack. Clack. "A Newton's cradle; how 1970s."

"You could say that." He smiles thinly. The balls bouncing back and forth between the arms of the executive desktop aren't chromed, rather they appear to be textured: pale brown on one side, dark or blonde and furry on the other. And bumpy, disturbingly bumpy…

I take a deep breath. "Harriet was waiting for us. Said we were too late and the Counter-Possession Unit was being disbanded."

Clack. Clack.

"Yes, she would say that, wouldn't she."

Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Finally I can't stand it anymore. "Well?" I demand.

"A fellow I used to know, his name was Ulyanov, once said something rather profound, do you know." Angleton looks like the cat that's swallowed the canary-and the feet are sticking out of the side of his mouth; he wants me to know this, whatever it is. "Let your enemies sell you enough rope to hang them with."

"Uh, wasn't that Lenin?" I ask.

A flicker of mild irritation crosses his face. "This was before then," he says quietly. Clack. Clack. Clack. He flicks the balls to set them banging again and I suddenly realise what they are and feel quite sick. No indeed, Bridget and Harriet-and Bridget's predecessor, and the mysterious Mr. McLuhan-won't be troubling me again. (Except in my nightmares about this office, visions of my own shrunken head winding up in one of the director's executive toys, skull clattering away eternally in a scream that nobody can hear anymore…) "Bridget's been plotting a boardroom coup for a long time, Robert. Probably since before you joined the Laundry-or were conscripted." He spares Josephine a long, appraising look. "She suborned Harriet, bribed McLuhan, installed her own corrupt geas on Voss. Partners in crime, intending to expose me as an incompetent and a possible security leak before the Board of Auditors, I suppose-that's usually how they plan it. I guessed this was going on, but I needed firm evidence. You supplied it. Unfortunately, Bridget was never too stable; when she realised that I knew, she ordered Voss to remove the witnesses then summoned McLuhan and proceeded with her palace coup d'état. Equally unfortunately for her, she failed to correctly establish who my line manager was before she attempted to go over my head to have me removed." He taps the sign on the front of the desk: PRIVATE SECRETARY. Keeper of the secrets. Whose secrets?

"Matrix management," I finally say, the lightbulb coming on above my head at last. "The Laundry runs on matrix management. She saw you on the org chart as head of the Counter-Possession Unit, not as private secretary to…" So that's how come he's got the free run of the director's office!