The Atrocity Archives (37 page)

"Very approximately, yes," said Andy.

"Okay. To deal with the perceived alien
mind-sucker threat, some nameless genius has worked out that the CCTV
cameras dotting our green and pleasant land can be networked together,
their inputs fed into a software emulation of a basilisk's brain, and
turned into some kind of omnipresent look-to-kill death net. Even
though we don't really know how the medusa effect works, other than
that it relies on some kind of weird observationally mediated
quantum-tunneling effect, collapse of the wave function, yadda yadda,
that makes about 1 percent of the carbon nuclei in the target body
automagically turn into silicon with no apparent net energy input. That
right?"

"Have a cigar, Sherlock."

"Sorry, I only smoke when you plug me into the
national grid. Shit. Okay, so it hasn't occurred to anyone that the
mass-energy of those silicon nuclei has to come
from
somewhere,
somewhere else, somewhere in the Dungeon
Dimensions … damn. But that's not the point, is it?"

"Indeed not. When are you going to get to it?"

"As soon as my hands stop shaking. Let's see.
Rather than do this openly and risk frightening the sheeple by
stationing a death ray on every street corner, our lords and masters
decided they'd do it bottom-up, by legislating that all public cameras
be networked, and having back doors
installed in them to allow the hunter-killer basilisk brain emulators
to be uploaded when the time comes. Which, let's face it, makes
excellent fiscal strength in this age of outsourcing, public-private
partnerships, service charters, and the like. I mean, you can't get
business insurance if you don't install antitheft cameras, someone's
got to watch them so you might as well outsource the service to a
security company with a network operations centre, and the brain-dead
music industry copyright nazis are campaigning for a law to make it
mandatory to install secret government spookware in every Walkman—or
camera—to prevent home taping from killing Michael Jackson. Absolutely
brilliant."

"It is elegant, isn't it? Much more subtle than
honking great ballistic missile submarines. We've come a long way since
the Cold War."

"Yeah. Except you're
also
telling me
that some script kiddie has rooted you and dialed in a strike on Milton
Keynes. Probably in the mistaken belief that they think they're playing
MISSILE COMMAND."

"No comment."

"Jesus Fucking Christ riding into town on top of
a pickup truck full of DLT backup tapes—what kind of idiot do you take
me for? Listen, the ball has gone
up.
Someone uploaded the
SCORPION STARE code to a bunch of traffic cams off Monk's Road
roundabout and turned Daisy into six hundred pounds of boiled beef on
the bone
à la
basilisk, and all you can say is
no
comment
?"

"Listen, Bob, I think you're taking this all too
personally. I can't comment on the Monk's Road incident because you're
officially the tag-team investigative lead and I'm here to provide
backup and support, not to second-guess you. I'm trying to be helpful,
okay?"

"Sorry, sorry. I'm just a bit upset."

"Yes, well, if it's any consolation that goes
for me, too, and for Angleton believe it or not, but 'upset' and fifty
pence will buy you a cup of coffee and what we really need is to finger
the means, motive, and murderer of Daisy
the Cow in time to close the stable door. Oh, and we can rule out
external penetration—the network loop to Monk's Road is on a private
backbone intranet that's fire-walled up to the eyeballs. Does that make
it easier for you?"

"No shit! Listen, I happen to agree with you in
principle, but I am
still
upset, Andy, and I want to tell
you—no shit. Look, this is so not-sensible that I know I'm way the
hell
too late but I think the whole MAGINOT BLUE STARS idea is fucking
insane, I mean, like, bull-goose, barking-at-the-moon,
hairs-on-the-palm-of-your-hands crazy. Like atomic landmines buried
under every street corner! Didn't they know that the only unhackable
computer is one that's running a secure operating system, welded inside
a steel safe, buried under a ton of concrete at the bottom of a coal
mine guarded by the SAS and a couple of armoured divisions, and
switched
off
? What did they think they were
doing
?"

"Defending us against CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, Bob.
Which I'll have you know is why the Russians are so dead keen to get
Energiya flying again so they can launch their Polyus orbital battle
stations, and why the Americans are getting so upset about the Rune of
Al-Sabbah that they're trying to build censorware into every
analogue-to-digital converter on the planet."

"Do I have CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN clearance? Or do
I just have to take it on trust?"

"Take it on trust for now, I'll try and get you
cleared later in the week. Sorry about that, but this
truly … look, in this instance the ends justify the
means. Take it from me. Okay?"

"Shit. I need another—no, I've already had too
much coffee. So, what am I supposed to do?"

"Well, the good news is we've narrowed it down a
bit. You will be pleased to know that we just ordered the West
Yorkshire Met's computer crime squad to go in with hobnailed boots and
take down the entire MK traffic camera network and opcentre. Official
reason is a suspicion of time bombs installed by
a disgruntled former employee—who is innocent, incidentally—but it
lets
us turn it into a Computer Misuse case and send in a reasonably clueful
team. They're about to officially call for backup from CESG, who are
going to second them a purported spook from GCHQ, and that spook is
going to be you. I want you to crawl all over that camera network and
figure out how SCORPION STARE might have got onto it. Which is going to
be easier than you think because SCORPION STARE isn't exactly open
source and there are only two authorised development teams working on
it on the planet that we know of, or at least in this country. One of
them is—surprise—based in Milton Keynes, and as of right this minute
you have clearance to stamp all over their turf and play the Gestapo
officer with our top boffin labs. Which is a power I trust you will not
abuse without good reason."

"Oh great, I always fancied myself in a long,
black leather trench coat. What will Mo think?"

"She'll think you look the part when you're
angry. Are you up for it?"

"How the fuck could I say no, when you put it
that way?"

"I'm glad you understand. Now, have you got any
other questions for me before we wrap this up and send the tape to the
auditors?"

"Uh, yeah. One question. Why me?"

"Why—well! Hmm. I suppose because you're already
on the inside, Bob. And you've got a pretty unique skill mix. Something
you overlook is that we don't have many field qualified agents, and
most of those we have are old school two-fisted
shoot-from-the-hip-with-a-rune-of-destruction field necromancers; they
don't understand these modern Babbage engine Internet contraptions like
you do. And you've already got experience with basilisk weapons, or did
you think we issued those things like toothpaste tubes? So rather than
find someone who doesn't know as much, you just happened to be the man
on the spot who knew enough and was thought … 
appropriate."

"Gee, thanks. I'll sleep a lot better tonight
knowing that you couldn't find anyone better suited to the job. Really
scraping the barrel, aren't we?"

"If only you knew … if only
you knew."

The next morning they put me
on the train to Cheltenham—second class of course—to visit a
large office site, which appears as a blank spot on all maps of the
area, just in case the Russians haven't noticed the farm growing
satellite dishes out back. I spend a very uncomfortable half hour being
checked through security by a couple of Rottweilers in blue suits who
work on the assumption that anyone who is not known to be a Communist
infiltrator from North Korea is a dangerously unclassified security
risk. They search me and make me pee in a cup and leave my palmtop at
the site security office, but for some reason they don't ask me to
surrender the small leather bag containing a mummified pigeon's foot
that I wear on a silver chain round my neck when I explain that it's on
account of my religion. The idiots.

It is windy and rainy outside so I have no
objection to being ushered into an air-conditioned meeting room on the
third floor of an outlying wing, being offered institutional beige
coffee the same colour as the office carpet, and spending the next four
hours in a meeting with Kevin, Robin, Jane, and Phil, who explain to me
in turn what a senior operations officer from GCHQ detached for field
duty is expected to do in the way of maintaining security, calling on
backup, reporting problems, and filling out the two hundred and
seventeen different forms that senior operations officers are
apparently employed to spend their time filling out. The Laundry may
have a bureaucracy surfeit and a craze for ISO-9000 certification, but
GCHQ is even worse, with some bizarre spatchcock version of BS5720
quality assurance applied to all their procedures in an attempt to
ensure that the Home Office minister can account for all available
paper clips in near real-time if
challenged in the House by Her Majesty's loyal opposition. On the other
hand, they've got a bigger budget than us and all they have to worry
about is having to read other people's email, instead of having their
souls sucked out by tentacular horrors from beyond the universe.

"Oh, and you really ought to wear a tie when
you're representing us in public," Phil says apologetically at the end
of his spiel.

"And get a haircut," Jane adds with a smile.

Bastards.

The Human Resources imps billet me in a bed and
breakfast run by a genteel pair of elderly High Tory sociopaths, a Mr.
and Mrs. MacBride. He's bald, loafs around in slippers, and reads the
Telegraph
while muttering darkly about the need for capital punishment as a
solution to the problem of bogus asylum seekers; she wears heavy
horn-rimmed glasses and the hairdo that time forgot. The corridors are
wallpapered with an exquisitely disgusting floral print and the whole
place smells of mothballs, the only symptom of the twenty-first century
being a cheap and nasty webcam on the hall staircase. I try not to
shudder as I slouch upstairs to my room and barricade the door before
settling down for the evening phone call to Mo and a game of Civ on my
palmtop (which I rescued from Security on my way out). "It could be
worse," Mo consoles me, "at least
your
landlord doesn't have
gill slits and greenish skin."

The next morning I elbow my way onto an early
train to London, struggle through the rush hour crush, and somehow
manage to weasel my way into a seat on a train to Milton Keynes; it's
full of brightly clad German backpackers and irritated businessmen on
their way to Luton airport, but I get off before there and catch a taxi
to the cop shop. "There is nothing better in life than drawing on the
sole of your slipper with a biro instead of going to the pub on a
Saturday night," the lead singer of Half Man Half Biscuit sings
mournfully on my iPod, and I am inclined to agree, subject
to the caveat that Saturday nights at the pub are functionally
equivalent to damp Thursday mornings at the police station. "Is
Inspector Sullivan available?" I ask at the front desk.

"Just a moment." The moustachioed constable
examines my warrant card closely, gives me a beady-eyed stare as if he
expects me to break down and confess instantly to a string of unsolved
burglaries, then turns and ambles into the noisy back office round the
corner. I have just enough time to read the more surreal crime
prevention posters for the second time ("Are your neighbours
foxhunting
reptiles from the planet of the green wellies? Denounce them here, free
of charge!") when the door bangs open and a determined-looking woman
in
a grey suit barges in. She looks how Annie Lennox would look if she'd
joined the constabulary, been glassed once or twice, and had a really
dodgy curry the night before.

"Okay, who's the joker?" she demands. "You." A
bony finger points at me. "You're from—" she sees the warrant card
"—oh
shit." Over her shoulder: "Jeffries,
Jeffries
, you rat
bastard,
you set me up! Oh, why do I bother." Back in my direction: "You're
the
spook who got me out of bed the day before yesterday after a graveyard
shift. Is this
your
mess?"

I take a deep breath. "Mine and yours both. I'm
just back down from"—I clear my throat—"and I've got orders to find
an
Inspector J. Sullivan and drag him into an interview room." Mentally
crossing my fingers: "What's the J stand for?"

"Josephine. And it's
Detective
Inspector, while you're about it." She lifts the barrier. "You'd
better
come in then." Josephine looks tired and annoyed. "Where's your other
card?"

"My other—oh." I shrug. "We don't flash them
around; might be a bit of a disaster if one went missing." Anyone who
picked it up would be in breach of Section Three, at the very least.
Not to mention in peril of their immortal soul.

"It's okay, I've signed the Section, in blood."
She raises an eyebrow at me.

"Paragraph two?" I ask, just to be sure she's
not bluffing.

She shakes her head. "No, paragraph three."

"Pass, friend." And then I let her see the
warrant card as it really is, the way it reaches into your head and
twists things around so you want to throw up at the mere thought of
questioning its validity. "Satisfied?"

She just nods: a cool customer for sure. The
trouble with Section Three of the Official Secrets Act is that it's an
offense to know it exists without having signed it—in blood. So us
signatories who are in theory cleared to talk about such supersecret
national security issues as the Laundry's tea trolley rota are in
practice unable to broach the topic directly. We're supposed to rely on
introductions, but that breaks down rapidly in the field. It's a bit
like lesbian sheep; as ewes display their sexual arousal by standing
around waiting to be mounted, it's hard to know if somebody else is,
well, you know.
Cleared.
"Come on," she adds, in a marginally
less hostile tone, "we can pick up a cup of coffee on the way."