The Rhesus Chart (39 page)

Even if our adversary is an insider and takes the bait, I give it only about a 25 percent probability of working. And once it fails, we’re going to be in a world of hurt—at that point, we run out of options other than a plonkingly obvious inquisition and witch hunt. Witch hunts are a reliable way of devastating organization morale, squandering human capital, and uncovering lots of trivial stuff that we didn’t want to have to officially pay attention to. They generate a boom in business for circular firing squads, but don’t achieve anything useful—and will ensure we render ourselves operationally incompetent for the next six months. We can’t afford to lose six months. Time is money that comes out of one particular purse we can’t afford to spend, even if we succeed in winkling out the PHANG-killer in the shadows. We are in CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN days, and the next threat we have to deal with might be one of the existential anthropic kind, which is to say, the variety where you have to get it right the first time because there is no second chance.

Which is why the Senior Auditor, bless his heartless, twinkly eyed smile, chose the Pete’n’Alex Show as the main draw for our vampire hunter carnival.

As he points out with inexorable logic: “Mr. Menendez is unavailable. Ms. Murphy may be presumed to be a hard target, due to her prior experience within the organization and, ah, incompatibility with the
modus operandi
that was used on Evan. This goes for Janice Hill, too.” Mhari suppresses a snigger. “So our candidates are Dick, John, and Alex. Alex is fully briefed and seconded to this working group because he was available; the principle of minimizing operational exposure suggests we should use him.” The SA smiles brightly at Alex, who cringes beneath his gaze. “Don’t worry. Your utility to us as bait will be severely impaired if we allow any harm to befall you! So that’s not going to be allowed to happen.”

“Hang on a moment,” I interrupt. “Isn’t this several notches above Alex’s competence? He hasn’t even been assessed for active operational service. And Reverend Wilson”—it feels really odd to be using Pete’s official day job title—“is almost certainly not equipped to deal with . . .”

I trail off. The Senior Auditor is
looking
at me. It feels a bit like being an amoeba on a microscope slide, pinpointed by million-watt searchlights and observed by a vast, unsympathetic, alien intellect.

“The adversary will make no attempt to take the bait on organization premises,” the SA points out with complete self-assurance. “He will wait until his prey is off-site. I believe”—the SA glances sidelong at Pete, and I take a shuddering breath of relief—“you have a work assignment that takes you to the KGB.2.YA archive in Watford on a regular basis. And that Dr. Schwartz is assisting you. Is that correct?”

“What, you mean the MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY stuff?” Pete looks momentarily confused. “Yes, that’s right. Why?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, after dark, you will take Dr. Schwartz for a ride out to the warehouse,” the Senior Auditor tells us. “Mr. Angleton will take control of the security cordon around the New Annex prior to your departure. You will be provided with a covert escort, under Mr. Howard’s control, and the target area will be adequately prepared for our ambush team to move into position upon your arrival.” He smiles reassuringly. “We will ensure that your movements are well-trailed, but no more than three hours in advance. If the bait is
not
taken, you will simply retrieve the items Reverend Wilson needs to continue his project, then return to the New Annex. And if the bait
is
taken, we’ll be waiting.”

He looks straight at me. “The rest is up to you, Mr. Howard.”

 • • • 

A PHONE RINGS, AND A VOICE ANSWERS: “HELLO?”

“George, it’s me.”

“What is the—” (A pause.) “Yes?”

“The wheels have come off, I’m afraid.”

“The—tell me. Speak. Now. I command you.”

“Marianne has dispatched two of the new brood, and she and I are going to take care of two of the others in the next day. However, a problem has arisen. The Laundry are now officially aware that someone or something is stalking their new intake. And when I say the Laundry, I mean the Invisible College—word has travelled all the way up the ladder.”

(Another pause.) “Well,
that
tears it.”

“There’s still time to cauterize the canker before it putrefies, George. But I can’t do this on my own. You’ll have to move, and move fast. Marianne and I are luring our next targets away from the security cordon, and we have dragged a lot of their guards along for the ride—it’s an ambush, in case it isn’t obvious. But we can only keep them away from the New Annex for about two hours. Then the entire house of cards will collapse.”

“Bastard! You planned this! You set me up!”

“Not well enough, I’m afraid. The best laid plans of mice and men, etcetera. It’s all very unfortunate. Someone needs to go into the New Annex office building and liquidate the control team that the Laundry has established to stalk us. For obvious reasons, it cannot be me.”

(Tightly.) “What can I expect to find?”

“Two Auditors. One DSS who I know nothing about—he’s not in the declassified archives. A bunch of chair-warmers. And the site security I outlined in the briefing document.”

“You’ll owe me for this.”

“Yes-yes, of course. But can you do it? Or have the decades of sitting on your arse in your nice warm club rotted the sinews, old chap?”

“You’ll owe me blood.”

Click.

 • • • 

AT PRECISELY HALF PAST FIVE THE NEXT AFTERNOON, TWO
helmeted figures slip out of the side entrance of the New Annex, slink down an alleyway, then unchain and climb aboard a tricked-out Vespa. The rider—Pete—seems no more or less suspicious than is to be expected, but the passenger—Alex—is clearly as twitchy as a TWOCer who suspects a police stakeout. It’s not surprising (Pete, after all, isn’t the tethered goat in this scenario, he’s just the driver) but it’s worrying.

I watch them via a battery-powered wireless webcam glued to the shutters on the betting shop opposite the alley entrance. I’m sitting in front of a laptop in the cramped back of a bright crimson box on wheels that proclaims itself to be a City of London Fire Brigade Major Incident Command Vehicle. It’s not; it’s an OCCULUS truck. Fire Incident Command Vehicles don’t carry wiry-looking taciturn guys in black webbing and urban/nighttime camo uniforms, or an unfeasibly large number of guns. “Decoy is moving,” I announce. I’m wearing a headset and mike and a webbing/camo outfit of my own, albeit lighter on the guns and heavier on the occult accessories. “Turning left left left into the high street—”

“On it. Moving out.” The narrator is “Scary” Spice, who I’ve worked with on other occasions, and who currently doesn’t have any army rank I understand—he’s some sort of “civilian contractor,” having graduated from being a sergeant in the territorial SAS a couple of years ago. “Eyes up, guys.”

There’s a loud rumbling noise from somewhere in front as our driver guns the engine, then a distant wail of air horns as he switches on the blues and twos.

(I had to warn Pete: “Do not be tempted to shoot amber lights or exceed the speed limit. Remember you’re leading a twelve-ton truck full of men with guns who will be very annoyed if they lose track of you. But not as annoyed as Alex will be if they lose track of
him
, and our adversary doesn’t.”

(“Spoilsport.” The vicar snorted. “As if I’d do that . . .”)

We drive for about fifty minutes, heading north and then east until we hit the North Circular at rush hour. The North Circular moves for no man, even if he’s got flashing blue lights and enough firepower to start World War Z. Inevitably we lose Pete and Alex for a while. But then I get a call from the traffic ops control room for North London, where our friends in blue are keeping a special eye open for a vicar and a vampire on a Vespa. (They’re also keeping an eye on the warehouse via CCTV, but we don’t want any obvious watchers on-site before we arrive, lest they spook the target.) The North Circular is okay for this sort of long-distance tail—it has more traffic cameras than Spooky the cat had fleas. I relay to the cab: “He’s about a kilometer ahead of us, still on the A406 westbound. Due to turn right onto Neasden Lane North . . .”

My phone rings. It’s Pete; he’s got a hands-free helmet. “Hi, Bob—I seem to have lost you. Where are you? I’m going to pull over—”

“No, don’t do that. We’ve got you on camera; you’re about a kilometer ahead of us. We’re stuck in that tailback on the North Circular you passed a couple of minutes ago. You should on no account stop moving. If necessary, if we haven’t gotten free of this, you should ride on past the Watford turnoff, join the M25 anti-clockwise at junction 21A, then leave it again at 1A and take Western Avenue back in until you hit the North Circular again. But
don’t stop moving
. If you stop you become a target. Do you copy?”

“Don’t stop, loop around the M25 and North Circular if you can’t shake the traffic.” I feel a sudden lurch as the big truck begins to move again. “Got it.”

He disconnects. I don’t cross my fingers or clutch my nonexistent rabbit’s foot, but I check my ward (a heavy-duty item I checked out this morning), pat the belt holster with my G17, and take a deep breath. Mo will kill me if I let anything happen to Pete. (Hell, she nearly killed me already, just for asking him to read a dubious Bible translation.)

Someone nudges my shoulder. “You okay, Bob?” asks my neighbor. It’s Warrant Officer Howe, and if he’s sounding concerned rather than ripping my lungs out through my left ear I must be a pretty picture. (Either that or he’s afraid I’ll go nonlinear, like the way things turned out that time at Brookwood.) I dredge up a reassuring smile from somewhere. “Pre-op nerves,” I say. “I’ll be okay once it shakes down.”

More juddering and acceleration and braking as we roll along, doing the lights and siren thing. My phone rings again. “Bob?” It’s Pete. “I have you in my rearview mirror so I’m proceeding to the warehouse. Bye.”

“Decoy has us in sight and is proceeding to target location,” I announce over the intercom.

“Wait one,” says Scary. “Please repeat.”

“Decoy confirmed he has us in rearview mirror and is accordingly proceeding to target location,” I repeat.

“Negative, Howard, decoy is out of sight.”

“What!” I stop. Obviously there’s more than one fire engine out and about tonight. “I’ll check with traffic control.” I start poking at the airwave radio, trying to remember my cop-speak. Why didn’t we slap a GPS transponder on the bike?
Don’t be silly, Bob, it takes time to requisition those things and if everyone does their job properly it won’t be necessary . . .

“Scooter registration LB59KPT is on the A411 London Road, northbound towards Watford,” the dispatcher tells me.

Well
shit
. That puts Pete well ahead of us. He’ll be there almost five minutes before we catch up. “Is there any way to make this thing go faster?” I ask Scary. Meanwhile I speed dial Pete on my phone. And that’s where Murphy’s Law takes over, because he picks up the phone, and the call drops immediately. I dial again. And again. The third time it goes straight through to voice mail. “Hello, you have reached the voice mail of the Reverend Peter Wilson. I’m sorry I’m not able to speak right now; if you leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, you may find these parish numbers helpful . . .”

“Decoy’s phone not responding,” I tell everyone. “We’ve lost contact.”

“Okay, hang on to your ’nads,” says Scary. “Hit it,” he adds, possibly forgetting that he has a hot mike. The driver floors the accelerator and tries to bounce my brain out of my skull. I just hope we haven’t left it too late.

 • • • 

PETE PULLS INTO THE SMALL CAR PARK BEHIND THE KGB.2.YA
warehouse and switches off the ignition. He looks around. It’s dark and the industrial estate is nearly deserted, dimly lit by sodium lights that cast long shadows across the concrete and tarmac. The metal-clad buildings hunch like the shells of long-dead giant tortoises. There’s a single cheap hatchback car parked out in front, and a cheerful light glows from the office window beside the front door. Pete climbs off the scooter, then holds the handlebars while Alex disentangles himself and fumbles with his helmet strap. “Is this it?” he asks anxiously. “Where
is
everyone?”

“It’s always like this, apparently,” Pete replies, looking round. “And don’t worry about the others. Bob’d let us know if they were delayed again.”

“Well, I don’t like it.” Alex shivers. He’s been doing a lot of that lately, and not because he’s cold—as a regular cyclist, even in winter, he’s used to it: his hoodie and trousers are up to the job of keeping him warm on the back of a bike. But he’s still suffering from the culture shock of having migrated from academia into the pressure-cooker intensity of the Scrum, and the Laundry is even worse in some ways, combining the dingy institutional conservativism of a particularly stuffy Oxbridge college with the stuff of nightmares. It seems to be staffed by a curious mixture of battle-axe civil servants, slightly demented CS/math geeks like Howard, and scary old men who
smile
at you in a way that is simultaneously friendly and horrifying, like a hangman sizing you up for a noose. And then they explain that some lunatic is trying to
kill
you, has in fact already murdered Evan quite horribly, and that they expect you to quietly walk in front of a bus to see if the driver hits the brakes in time—

—And you can’t seem to think of a reason to say “fuck! no!” before your hands are fumbling with a motorcycle helmet and you’re sitting on a scooter behind a vicar, and then facing a locked door on an industrial estate with who-knows-what beyond it—

—Alex makes a complex gesture with the fingers of his left hand, in the privacy of his jacket pocket. Then he pulls out his hulking great tablet of a phone and discreetly fires up an app he flung together in a frenzy of focussed hacking overnight. And which he hasn’t told anybody about. Because, well, if they won’t take him into their confidence, why should he take them into his?