Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"Someone is testing us," said James after a while. "Testing their traitor’s information, seeing how far they can get before we stop them. But who? The Stalking Shrouds? The Loathly Ones? The Cold Eidolon? The Mandrake Recorporation?" He shook his head slowly. "There’s so many of them, and so few of us." And then he smiled at me, his old damn-them-all-to-hell smile, and clapped me on the shoulder again. "Let them come. Let them all come. We’re Droods, and we were born to kick supernatural arse. Right?"

"Damn right," I said.

When the Sarjeant-at-Arms finally came looking for me, Uncle James and I were standing before an old caricature by Boz of good old Jacob in his prime, sharing a conversation with Gladstone and Disraeli, outside Parliament. (One of those revered prime ministers was actually a Drood, on his mother’s side, but I can never remember which.) God alone knows what the three of them were discussing, but given the expressions on Disraeli’s and Gladstone’s faces, Jacob was almost certainly telling them one of his famously filthy jokes. Jacob could shock the knickers off a nun at forty paces. Both James and I heard the Sarjeant approaching, but we deliberately kept our attention fixed on the piece of art until the Sarjeant was obliged to announce his presence with a somewhat undignified cough. James and I turned unhurriedly and looked down our noses at him.

"Well?" James drawled in that infuriatingly snotty polite voice of his. He’d been known to start bar fights with less. He even threw in a raised eyebrow. "Do you have any information yet as to how such an appalling assault was able to get past all of our legendary security systems to attack the Heart?"

Give the man his due; the Sarjeant just stared impassively back. "An investigation into the security breach is ongoing, sir."

"That’ll be a No, then. Anything else?"

The Sarjeant-at-Arms gave James a meaningful look, and James nodded, knowing he’d pushed the situation as far as he could. He turned his back on the Sarjeant and smiled warmly at me. "It’s time I was on my way, Eddie. The ungodly await, and there shall be beatings. Another exciting adventure lies ahead in the scurrilous backstreets and bars of fabulous Shanghai."

"I could spit," I said feelingly. "I never get missions like that. I suppose it’s going to be all good booze, bad women, and lots of gratuitous violence?"

"Ah, yes," said James. "The same old, same old…"

We laughed, he crushed my hand in his, and off he went, striding grandly down the gallery in search of danger and diversion like the accomplished adventurer he was. The Gray Fox always was the best of us. The Sarjeant-at-Arms reminded me of his presence with another of his weighty coughs, and reluctantly I allowed him to lead me back through the Hall to meet with the family Matriarch.

It turned out she was down in the War Room, deciding the fate of the world again, so we had to tramp through most of the north wing to reach the heavily reinforced steel door at the back of what used to be the old ballroom. It took us three passWords, a retina scan, and a not entirely unfriendly frisking before the Sarjeant and I were even allowed to approach the door, but eventually it opened and we descended a very basic stairway cut into the stone wall itself, with no railing and a frankly intimidating open drop on the other side. The electric lighting was almost painfully bright, and extra security measures were already in place, so that glowing force fields and shimmering mystical screens opened before us as they acknowledged our torcs, and then sealed firmly behind us. The usual guard goblins were in place, sitting in their stone recesses; squat and ugly things with a face like a bulldog chewing on a wasp. They weren’t much bigger than a football, with long spindly arms and legs, but they could be quite spectacularly vicious when roused. I’d once seen a goblin run down a werewolf and eat it alive, and you don’t forget things like that in a hurry.

While waiting for a chance to express their utterly vile and nasty natures, the goblins whiled away the time by working on crossword puzzles from the Times. Goblins love word games. One of them stopped me to ask for a seventeen-letter word for bad government beginning with an m and got really quite upset when I came straight back with maladministration. The poor thing didn’t realise he was doing yesterday’s crossword.

At the bottom of the stairs, we both had to place our hands on an electronic scanner before we were allowed into the great vault that held the family War Room. The Sarjeant led me inside and then insisted I stay put by the door while he went to inform the Matriarch that I’d arrived. I folded my arms stiffly across my chest and sneered after him, but I didn’t push the point. There was a gorgon squatting next to the door, head down, wrapped in leathery wings like an enveloping cloak. She looked like she was sleeping, but I knew she wasn’t, even though several of the snakes were making a game attempt at snoring. Entering the War Room without following exact rules of procedure would lead to the gorgon opening her eyes and looking at you, and then the family would have another surprised-looking statue for the back gardens.

The War Room was a vast auditorium carved from solid stone. In here we saw everything, or at least everything that mattered. All four walls were covered with state-of-the-art display screens showing every country of the world, with little lights blinking to indicate cities and other places where members of the family were at work. Green lights for a successfully completed mission, blue for certain individuals currently on the family hit list, and the occasional purple signifying a major cock-up and its equally large cover-up operation. Potential trouble spots were marked with amber lights, current threats with red. There was a hell of a lot of amber and red showing all across the world, and a lot more red than amber, compared to ten years ago. Hell, even Lithuania had a red light.

The family sat in long rows, concentrating on their workstations despite the hustle and bustle all around them. Dozens of farcasters caressed crystal balls or peered into scrying pools, studying the world’s problems from afar, while softly murmuring their findings into hands-free headsets. Technicians worked their computers, worrying out useful data, fingers darting across keyboards with dazzling speed. Agents may operate alone in the field, but each and every one of us is backed up by a staff of hundreds. And not just in the War Room. Information retrieval experts are constantly at work in the newsroom (usually referred to by those who work their eight-hour shifts in that windowless hole as the Pit), sifting through all the world’s media and cross-referencing the official version with the mountain of information that comes in every day from our worldwide web of spies and informers. The family relies on these dedicated researchers to spot trouble forming before it gets out of hand, as well as keep track of certain individuals who like to think they can pass through the world without leaving a trace. These researchers could tell you exactly where to find a needle in a haystack, and make a pretty good guess about which way it would be pointing. They knew everything there was to know about the world, except what it was like to live in it. They were far too valuable to ever be allowed to leave the Hall.

At any given moment, hundreds of Droods are operating in hot spots all across the world. And they work alone, because agents in the field can’t be viewed from afar. Their torcs hide them from us, as well as our enemies. That’s why only the most trusted in the family are ever allowed to become field agents. And why I’m always kept on such a short leash. The War Room has to wait for field agents to report in by traditional means, often on the run, and then provide them with as much information and backup as possible. Every agent is supported by thousands of researchers, advisors, experts in the more arcane areas of science and magic, and an around-the-clock communications staff.