Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"How, if you’ve never been here before?"

"Oh, I’ve been in his lair lots of times, just not in the flesh. I’ve dreamwalked here a dozen times, astral travelling. That’s how I knew the way. And we talk on the phone a lot. He can be very chatty, as long as you keep your distance. I really was pretty sure he’d let us in."

"Because he likes you."

"Yes. I do him favours…"

"I’m almost afraid to ask. What kind of favours?"

"I find him these dodgy porn sites on the Net…"

"I was right. I didn’t want to know."

The tunnel opened up abruptly into a huge cavern carved out of the bedrock deep under London. It was vast, almost overpowering in its scale, but the Mole had clearly had a lot of time to make himself comfortable. The great open floor space was packed with every modern appliance, every conceivable luxury and convenience. Along with mountains of piled-up computer equipment. Huge flat plasma screens covered the walls, showing fifty different views at once, with the sound turned off. And in every gap and space there were computer monitors showing dozens of different sites all at once. Molly led me through the maze of equipment and into the centre of the Mole’s lair, and there in the very heart of the labyrinth sat the Mole himself in a great bright red leather swivel chair. He kept his back to us until the very last moment, and then he reluctantly swung the chair around to glare at us. He put up a hand to stop us coming any closer, and we stopped a good dozen feet away. He looked us over, making no move to rise from his chair to greet us.

I’d expected the Mole to be a dumpy little guy with squinty eyes behind huge spectacles, and that was exactly what he was. He was very pale, with long flyaway hair around a podgy face, and he blinked and twitched quite a bit. He wore Bermuda shorts, grubby trainers, and a T-shirt bearing the legend Tarzan, Lord of the Geeks. He also wore a Buddhist charm on a chain around his neck: the All-Seeing Eye. And above that, the golden collar of the Droods. One plump hand rose to touch it as he looked at me and the torc around my throat, and finally he relaxed a little. He smiled briefly at me and nodded to Molly.

"Hello, my dear. So good to see you again. And in person, at last. Yes. But please, both of you, don’t come any closer. I’m not used to company anymore. No. No. Hello, Edwin. Fellow Drood, fellow rogue. Yes. I don’t normally allow visitors. They’re too hard on my nerves. But if I can’t trust a fellow rogue…So, welcome to my lair. Edwin, Molly. Yes."

"Nice chair," I said for want of anything else polite and nonthreatening to say.

"It is, isn’t it?" said the Mole, brightening a little. "I ordered it specially. Through a whole series of cutouts. I have to be very careful. The armrests hold coolers for soft drinks. Would you care for one?"

"Not just now," I said.

"Good, because I’m running a bit short just at the moment. I must put a new order in. Yes. I have very good people who smuggle all sorts of things down here to me, for a consideration, but of course it’s not easy, getting things delivered. No. No. I have to be…circumspect. About everything. I’m safe here, protected, and I intend to stay safe. Cut off from the world. It isn’t just the family who want me dead, after all. Oh, no."

"Really?" I said. "Who else is after you?"

"Pretty much everybody," the Mole said sadly. "I know so many secrets, you see. So many things that some people don’t want other people to know. Oh, the things I know! You’d be amazed! Really. Yes."

"How do you power all this equipment?" I asked, genuinely curious.

The Mole shrugged. "I tap all the energy I need from the Underground. And the city. They don’t notice. I have all the utilities down here, and I’ve never paid a bill. Though I could, if I chose. I’m really quite remarkably wealthy. Oh, yes. So, Edwin; you’re the new rogue. Let me look at you…I know you by reputation, of course. The only field agent to keep the family at arm’s length for almost ten years. Unprecedented! Always knew it couldn’t last…The family doesn’t trust anyone or anything it can’t control. I used to be Malcolm Drood, you know."

He said the name as though he expected me to recognise it, but I didn’t. We’re a big family. He studied my face intently, and then frowned and pouted as he realised the name meant nothing to me.

"So, I’ve been erased from the official family history. Scrubbed out. I suspected as much. Yes. You will have been wiped out too by now, Edwin. As far as the next few generations of the family are concerned, you will never have existed. All your history gone, oh, yes. Everything you ever did for the family, all your battles and successes and achievements, will be parcelled out and attributed to others. To agents who still toe the family line and bow down to family authority. Matthew will probably get most of it. He always was hard-core family, the humourless little prick. He’ll always be a good little soldier…Not like us, eh, Edwin? We have minds of our own. Souls of our own. Yes. Yes!"

"Can they really do that?" Molly said to me. "Just write you out of history, as though you never even existed?"

"Of course!" said the Mole. "It’s always been that way. As decided by the higher echelons of the family. Of which I was once a valued member."

"What is it you do down here, exactly?" I said bluntly. "And what, if anything, can you do to help me?"

He blinked and twitched at me for a while, not used to being so openly challenged in his own private kingdom. One hand reached for remote controls set into his armrest, and then he pulled the hand away again. He smiled nervously at me, and then at Molly. She gave him her best cheerful, reassuring smile, and he calmed down a little.

"I watch the world," said the Mole just a little smugly. He turned back and forth in his chair, indicating the many screens with one plump hand. "Down here I can see everything that goes on, or at least everything that matters. I have hidden cameras in places you wouldn’t believe. I spy, I eavesdrop, and I make notes. If you knew what Bill Gates was planning to do next, you’d shit yourselves. Yes. Yes…I live on the Net, you know. Studying conspiracy theories, searching for evidence of our family at work, and then passing the information on to whomever I think will make best use of it. Wherever it will do the most good, or the most harm to the family." He looked at me very solemnly. "Our family has to be stopped, Edwin. Broken, humbled, brought down. For everything that’s been done to you and me and all the others just like us. And I belong to a hundred different subversive organisations, under a hundred different identities. Oh, yes! Nothing happens, nothing is planned that I don’t get to know about in advance. I need to know everything, to make sense of what’s happening in the world. Yes…A difficult job. An endless job…But someone’s got to do it."

"Do you by any chance belong to a group called Manifest Destiny?" said Molly.

"Of course. Paranoid, xenophobic, and definitely in thrall to the cult of the personality, and downright sloppy when it comes to operations in the field…But I had great hopes of them originally. I mean, yes, they were and are complete and utter bastards in many ways, but at least they have an organisation that seems capable of taking on the Droods. I support them, from a distance, trying to encourage them into more practical pursuits on the grounds that anyone who opposes the family deserves supporting. Yes. Would you like to see the battle that’s going on between their people and the three Drood field agents in the streets above us?"

"That’s still happening?" said Molly.

"Oh, yes. Manifest Destiny are throwing everything they’ve got against the field agents. The poor fools. You’ll never bring down the family through direct conflict. No. No…"