I take a deep breath. “The di Fonsecas are persons of interest: a professor of theoretical mathematics and a former fortune teller with a reputation as a witch. He’s titled—duke of a historic statelet that hasn’t existed since the eighteenth century. There’s old money and influence there, not to mention his membership in a politically influential but very secretive masonic lodge—”
Lockhart makes a cutting gesture: “Fast-forward, if you please.”
“Okay. Our ten-year-old girl is enrolled in an expensive Liceo Scientifico where her academic performance goes from subpar in the first year to meteoritic in the second and subsequent. By fifteen she was taking her, ah, diploma di scuola superiore—ready to enter university four years early. Wednesday Addams, the Italian remix: a quiet, reserved pupil, doesn’t make many friends, spends holidays at home with her adoptive parents. Pay no attention to the word among the local lads about town that she’s a, a succubus; probably she’s just very good at creeping out teenage boys who hit on her.
“She’s staying with the di Fonsecas in their holiday villa—but not at home on the evening of July 19, 2002, when they are murdered. The murderers are gunmen reported variously to be members of the Palermo Mafia, the Brigado Rosso, or the Red Skull Cult, depending on who you ask. The girl, aged sixteen, is the sole survivor. Her claim to have been out on the town at the time is accepted by the local magistrates. She inherits roughly two million euros and the contents of the di Fonsecas’ library, changes her legal name, and moves out.”
I draw a deep breath. “Fast-forward two years—I’ll back up in a minute—and two badly decomposed bodies are dredged from a lake in Tuscany. DNA evidence places them at the scene of the massacre. The remains show signs of paranormal intervention.” That’s Laundry-speak for they were chewed on by extradimensional horrors.
“Inconclusive.” Lockhart frowns. “What next?”
How to summarize…? Oh, that’s easy. “She embarks on a five-year reign of terror. Instead of going to university, from September 2002 through to November 2007 BASHFUL INCENDIARY ran the most successful private occult intelligence service in history. The Hazard Network. An eighteen-year-old genius with a private income, the looks of a model, and a knack for identifying and hiring raw talent. She is, as it turns out, a very talented ritual practitioner”—one who risks their own cerebral cortex by working magic, raw, by force of will—“with a speciality in sex magic and, if that isn’t sickening enough, she’s a damn fine paralogician and a skilled programmer.” Ritual magic is rare enough; combining it with a talent for our kind of business is distinctly unusual.
“Let’s see: White Hat work. We know the Sultan of Brunei hired the Hazard Agency to track down a deep-cover Al-Qaida cell attempting to infiltrate the army intelligence service and the Sultan’s own personal bodyguard. A Swiss bank retained her services as a Tiger Team to test security on their new deposit facility—verdict: it needed serious improvements. That sort of thing.
“As for her Black Hat work, there’s nothing anyone can prove well enough to stand up in court—but a certain stench of brimstone attaches.” I begin checking off crimes and outrages on my fingers. “Suspected removal of occult artifacts and jewelry from sunken Roman merchant vessels in the Adriatic. Suspected involvement in smuggling of Egyptian antiquities. Suspected theft of previously stolen old masters from a rich collector’s hoard in Vienna, subsequent resale and blackmail—sexual as well as handling stolen goods—of their previous custodian. And an investment portfolio that bottomed out at 1.2 million euros in 2002 and peaked at just over one hundred million”—I do the Doctor Evil little-pinkie gesture at this point—“before the bottom fell out of the market in 2008.”
Lockhart nods. “Since that time?”
“In 2008 she retires to London. Waits six months, then dumps the thick end of twenty million pounds of her personal wealth into the property market—right after the initial crash—and another hundred thousand pounds in political donations that make her very difficult to dislodge. By this time she’s only got five or ten million left in the bank—she’s paid off her team—but she plays her hand expertly. She’s an EU citizen thanks to the di Fonsecas, a twenty-four-year-old millionairess who invites herself to the right parties and makes friends with the right Bright Young Things. Any crimes she did commit are swept under the rug, and she’s kept her nose clean for the past seven years. In fact, she’s done a terrifyingly professional job of turning herself into a pillar of the establishment. There’s absolutely nothing on her record after 2008 except for the financial and social work. To all intents and purposes it looks as if she dropped out of the whole occult world completely.”
“Yes, that’s always the way it works.” Lockhart nods.
“So why isn’t she one of us?” I ask bluntly. “She’d be a major asset…”
“You have no need to know.” The caterpillar stretches in a thin line: curls over and plays dead. “That decision was taken above your pay grade—or mine. However”—Lockhart places a hand on top of the BASHFUL INCENDIARY file—“you will doubtless have realized by now that if she was in here she would be required to work under the same constraints as you or I, which would severely reduce her value to us. And I am led to believe that, within certain parameters, her loyalty is absolute.”
I can’t help myself. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lockhart’s cheek twitches. “For one thing, it means that she really does not like the Culto del Teschio Rosso and their playmates. And for another thing, if you ask her why she moved here, she will tell you that she conducted a rigorous survey of European occult defense agencies and concluded that we have the best chance of surviving CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. In her opinion.” His tone is dry enough to curdle milk. “It would be unwise to confuse a finely tuned survival instinct with loyalty to the Crown, Mr. Howard, but it counts for something.”
“So we’re her lifeboat and you trust her to bail if you hand her a bucket?”
“Something like that. Or so I have been led to believe by Mahogany Row. And what’s good enough for them is, ipso facto, good enough for us.”
“Jesus.” I shake my head. (So this is coming down from the very top of the organization: the stratospheric, secretive executive country that mere mortal scum like me don’t get to see even from a distance unless we’re very unlucky.) “So, let me see if I’ve got this straight. Ray Schiller of the Golden Promise Ministries is doing breakfast with the PM, and you’re a little upset because he’s disturbingly convincing and gives off bad vibes. We can’t snoop on the PM ourselves, so you point this loose cannon at the pastor—” I stop. “Oh no you don’t.”