The Atrocity Archives (11 page)

"I suppose we can consider this to be
substantiated, then," says the talking corpse. "Please continue where
you left off."

I sigh. "I woke up in a hospital room with a
needle in my arm and a goon from one of their TLAs baby-sitting me.
After about an hour someone who claimed to be running Plaid Shirt
turned up and started asking pointed questions. Seems they were already
running a stakeout. After the third time that I explained what happened
at the motel he agreed that I hadn't waxed their asset and demanded to
know why I'd been round at the house. I told him that Mo phoned me and
asked for help and it sounded urgent, and after I repeated myself
another couple of dozen times he left. The next morning they shipped me
to the airport and stuck me on the plane."

The battle-axe from Accounting who's sitting
next to Derek glares at me. "
Business
class," she hisses. "I
suppose that was your idea of a good ride home?"

Huh?
"That was nothing to do with me,"
I protest. "Did they bill—"

"Yes." Andy twirls his pen idly as a fly batters
itself against the energy-saving lightbulb overhead.

"Uh-oh." Unsanctioned expenditure isn't quite a
hanging offense in the Laundry, but it's definitely up there with
insubordination and mutiny. During the Thatcher years they were even
supposed to have had paper clip audits, before someone pointed out that
the consequences of poor employee morale in this organisation might be
a trifle worse than in, say, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries,
and Food. "Not guilty," I say automatically, before I can stop myself.
"I didn't ask them for that, it happened after the assignment went
pear-shaped, and I wasn't conscious at the time."

"Nobody's accused you of authorising budgetary variances beyond your
level of authorisation," Andy
says soothingly. He casts a quelling glance at Derek from Accounting,
and then asks: "What I'd like to know is why you went after her,
though. SOP was to leave the area as soon as you were blown. Why did
you stick around?"

"Uh—" My lips are dry because I've been
expecting this one. "I was going to leave. I was in the rental car and
heading for the road out of town back to the airport, just as soon as I
got out of the kill zone. I'd have done it too, except that Mo rang."

I lick my lips again. "I was sent to see if I
could facilitate an extraction. I figured that meant someone thought Mo
was worth extracting. My apologies if that isn't actually the case, but
what I heard on the phone sounded like Mo had been abducted, and in the
wake of the shooting I figured this was an even worse outcome than a
blown mission and withdrawal. So I improvised, went round to her house
and used my locator on her.

"I've been thinking about it a lot since then.
What I should have done, I mean. I could have found where she was being
held then driven back to the motel to find whoever was running that
spy. Or something. Or headed for the airport and phoned from the
departure lounge. All I can say is I was too involved. Some bastard had
just tried to kill me; I mean, ONI was bugging Mo. When I phoned, they
had put a diversion on her line, which is how come I was able to tell
them where to look. But they probably already
knew,
I mean,
when Mo called me on her pocket mobile that would have tipped them
off."

I empty the glass of water down my throat and
put it back on the table in front of me.

"Look, I figure ONI or some other TLA
outfit—say, the Black Chamber pretending to be ONI investigators—was
watching Mo and picked up on me as soon as we made contact. It was a
stitch-up. Whoever tried to shoot me and snatch her took them by
surprise. That wasn't in the script. I know I should have come home
then, but at that point I think everyone was off
balance. Who the fuck
were
those loons, anyway? A major
summoning in public—"

"You have no need to know," Derek says snippily. "Drop it!"

"Okay." I lean back in my chair, tipping it on
two legs; my head aches abominably. "I get the picture."

My third interrogator pipes up in a reedy voice: "This isn't the
whole story, is it, Robert?"

I stare at her, annoyed. "Probably not, no."

Bridget is a blonde yuppwardly-mobile executive,
her sights fixed on the dizzying heights of the cabinet office in
seeming ignorance of the bulletproof glass ceiling that hovers over all
of us who work in the Laundry. Her main job description seems to be
making life shitty for everybody farther down the ladder, principally
by way of her number one henchperson, Harriet. She holds forth,
strictly for the record: "I'm unhappy about the way this assignment was
set up. This was supposed to be a straightforward meet-and-pitch
session, barely one rung up from having our local consul pay a social
call. With all due respect, Robert is not a particularly experienced
representative and should not have been sent into such a situation
without mentoring—"

"It's friendly soil!" Andy interrupts.

"As friendly as it gets without a bilateral
arrangement, which is to say,
not
an
active
joint-intelligence-sharing, committee-sanctioned, liaison environment.
Foreigners, in other words. Robert was pushed out in the cold without
oversight or adequate support from higher management, and when things
went off the rails he quite naturally did his best, which wasn't quite
good enough." She smiles dazzlingly at Andy. "I'd like to minute that
he needs additional training before being subjected to solo exercises,
and I'd also like to say that I think we need to review the
circumstances leading up to this assignment closely in case they are
symptomatic of a weakness in our planning and accountability loop."

Oh great.
Andy looks almost as
disgusted as I feel. Bridget has just damned
us—everyone else, in fact—with faint praise. I did "as well as could
be
expected" and need extra supervision before I can be let out of the
kindergarten to go pee-pee. Derek and Andy and everyone else involved
get to have Bridget poke her long, inquisitive nose into their
procedural compliance and see if they're exercising due diligence. As
for Bridget, if she turns up anything that even whiffs of negligence
she gets to look good to the top brass by cleaning shop, and anyone who
disagrees is being "grossly unprofessional." Office politics, the
Laundry remix.

"My head aches," I mutter. "And my body is
telling me that it's two in the morning. Do you have any more
questions? If you don't mind, I'm going to go home and lie down for a
day or two."

"Take all week," Andy says dismissively. "We'll
have everything sorted out when you get back." I stand up fast; in my
current state I don't think to ask what strange and perverted
definition of "sorted" he's using.

"I'd like to see a written report of your trip,"
Bridget adds before I can close the door behind me. "Documented in
accordance with Operations Manual Four, chapter eleven, section C. No
need to hurry, but I want it on my desk by the end of next week."

Evidence, Written, Bureaucrats for the Malicious
Use of. I head for home, anticipating a long hot bath and then eighteen
hours in the sack.

Home is much as I left it
seven days ago. There's a pile of bills slowly turning brown at
the corner propping up one of the kitchen table legs. The bin is
overflowing, the kitchen sink likewise, and Pinky hasn't cleaned out
his bread-maker since the last time he used it. I look in the fridge
and find a limp tea bag and a carton of milk that's good for another
day or so before it starts demanding the vote, so I make myself a mug
of tea and sit at the kitchen table playing Tetris on my palmtop.
Coloured blocks fall like snowflakes in my mind,
and I drift for a while. But reality keeps intruding: I've got a week's
washing in my suitcase, another week of washing in my room, and while
Pinky and the Brain are at work I can get to the washer/dryer.
(Assuming nobody's left a dead hamster in it again.)

Deliberately ignoring the bills, I get up and
drag my suitcase upstairs. My room is much the way I left it, and I
suddenly realise that I hate living this way: hate the second-hand
furniture designed by aliens from Planet Landlord, hate sharing my
personal space with a couple of hyperintelligent slobs with behavioural
problems and explosive hobbies, hate feeling my future possibilities
hemmed in by my personal vow of poverty—the signature on my Laundry
warrant card. I drag the suitcase into my room through a fog of fatigue
and mild despair, then open it and begin to sort everything into piles
on the floor.

Something snuffles behind me.

I spin round so fast I nearly levitate, hand
fumbling for a mummified monkey's paw that isn't there—then
recognition
cuts in and I breathe again. "You startled me! What are you doing in
there?"

Just the top of her head is visible. She blinks
at me sleepily. "What does it look like?"

I consider my next words carefully. "Sleeping in
my bed?"

She pulls down the duvet far enough to yawn,
mouth pink and grey in the dim light that filters through the new
curtains. "Yeah. Heard you were due back today so I, mmm, pulled a
sickie. Wanted to see you."

I sit down on the side of the bed. Mhari's hair
is mousy-brown with blonde highlights she puts in it every few weeks;
it's cut in short flyaway locks that tangle around my fingers when I
run my hand over her scalp. "Really?"

"Yeah, really." A bare arm reaches out of the
bedding, wraps around my waist, and pulls me down. "Been missing you.
Come here."

I'm meaning to sort my dirty clothing into piles
for the washing machine, but instead all my clothing ends up in a heap
in the middle of the floor, and I end up in a
heap under Mhari, who is naked under the duvet and seemingly intent on
giving me a very warm welcome home, if not a rinse and tumble-dry.
"What
is
this?" I try to ask, but she grabs my head and holds
my mouth against one generously proportioned nipple. I get the message
and shut up. Mhari is in the mood, and this is about the one situation
in which our relationship functions smoothly. Besides, it's more than a
week since the last time I've seen her, and being ambushed this way is
the best thing that's happened to me in quite a while.

About an hour later, fucked-out and completely
exhausted—to say nothing of sweaty—we're lying in a tangle on the bed
(the duvet seems to have decided to join the washing pile) and she's
making buzzing noises in the back of her throat like a cat. "What
brought this on?" I ask.

"I needed you," she says, with the kind of
innocent egotism that a cat could only envy. Grabs at my back: "Mmm.
Hmm. Had a bad week."

"A bad week?" I'm practising being a good
listener; it's usually opening my mouth that gets me into trouble with
her.

"First there was a complete mess at the office:
Eric was off sick and dropped the ball on a case he was handling and I
had to pick up the pieces. Ended up working late three nights running.
Then there was a party at Judy's. Judy got me drunk, introduced me to a
friend of hers. He turned out to be a real shit, but only after—"

I roll away. "I wish you wouldn't do this," I
hear myself saying.

"Do what?" She looks at me, hurt.

I sigh. "Never mind." Never
fucking
mind, I try not to say. I suddenly feel really dirty. "I'm going to
have a shower," I say, and sit up.

"Bob!"

"Never mind." I get up, grab a dirty towel from
the pile on the floor, and head for the bathroom to wash her off me.

Mhari has a problem: her problem is me. I should
just tell her to fuck off and die, sever all
links, refuse to talk to her—but she's good company when we're on
speaking terms, she can push all my buttons correctly when we're in
bed, and she can get right under my skin and leave me feeling about
five and a half inches high. My problem is that she wants to trade me
in on New Boyfriend, model 2.0, one with a fast car and a Rolex Oyster
and prospects. (Warped senses of humour and dead-end Laundry postings
are strictly optional.) She's permanently on the rebound, either toward
me or away from me—I can't always tell which—and in between she uses
me
the way a cat uses a scratching post. Partying at Judy's place, for
example: Judy is a mindless management functionary bimbo friend of hers
who is somehow always impeccably turned out and manages to make me feel
like a dirty little schoolboy, although she's far too polite to ever
say anything. So when Mhari traps off with some double-glazing salesman
she meets via Judy and he turfs her out of his bed the next morning,
I'm supposed to be around as a friendly consolation fuck the next day.

My
problem is that she doesn't seem to
appreciate that I hate being on the receiving end of this. If I try to
make a big deal of it she'll accuse me of being jealous and I'll end up
feeling obscurely guilty. If I don't make a big deal of it she'll
continue to act like I'm some kind of doormat. And who knows? Maybe I'm
just being paranoid and she
isn't
looking around for Mr. New
Boyfriend. (Yeah, and wild boars have been spotted in the holding
pattern over Heathrow with an engine under each wing.)

I haven't had to chase any strangers out of my
bed yet, but with Mhari around I keep wondering when it'll happen. The
worst of it is, I don't want to just cut things dead; I'd rather she
stopped playing games than she stopped seeing me. Perhaps it's
self-deception, but I think we could make things work. Maybe.

I'm in the shower cubicle washing my hair when I
hear the door open. "I do not appreciate hearing about your one-night
stands," I say, eyes closed to avoid the sting of shampoo. "I don't
understand why the fuck you hang around me when you're
obviously so eager to find someone else. But will you please leave me
alone for a bit?"