“Good guess.” She bends over the case. “Any idea how long you’ll be gone for? Or where?”
“You missed an ‘if’ out of those questions.” I shrug. “I may not be going anywhere at all. Or I may be going several places, in a hurry.”
“Oh, one of those jobs.” She frowns. “Okay, you pack for five days and work the hotel room service on expenses for priority cleaning if you overrun. Underwear, shirts, huh…is this your only tie?”
“Apart from the bow that goes with the dinner jacket, yes.” It’s a black silk tie with Wile E. Coyote’s head embroidered on it in raised relief, black-on-black. I’ve had it for two years; I was forced to buy it for my uncle’s funeral after the last neck-strangulator was disemboweled by the washing machine. (How was I to know they’re dry clean only?) I was wondering how long it would take her to notice.
“Jesus, Bob.” She shakes her head. “Okay, I’m taking you to work tomorrow. By tube, via the shops in Liverpool Street station. And I’m buying.”
“Why?” I will confess to sounding a tad querulous at this point.
“So you don’t end up with a diplomatic mug shot that makes you look like a hung-over hipster, that’s why.” She glares at me. “It’s work.”
I deflate. “No, it’s management bullshit,” I say weakly.
“Tell me about it.” For a moment her expression is bleak beyond anything her years entitle her to. And she’s five years older than me.
I take a chance. “There’s a department called—”
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and a taste of acrid brimstone fills my nostrils. So, being me, I try again.
“I’m working for—” There’s an immediate electric prickling in my eyes and a crawling on my scalp. Nope, oath of office ain’t having it.
“Looks like our usual waiver doesn’t apply to this job.” The ward of office agrees and refrains from frying my ass for explaining this to her.
Her eyes narrow thoughtfully. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, but that’s some serious shit you’re in.” I nod enthusiastically, which seems to be allowed. “Coming right on top of that course on, what was it, leadership skills…” She walks around the bed and prods disconsolately at the graveyard of trainers. “You’ll be needing a good pair of running shoes, then. And something that doesn’t call you out as anything other than your normal boring embassy desk pilot. Assuming you’re doing what I think you’re doing.” She pauses. “Have you been to see Harry yet?”
“That was on my to-do list for tomorrow,” I admit. Harry is our armorer. “But if I have to tool up, everything will already have gone to shit.”
“In which case you will need to be carrying, in order to evacuate and report.” She pauses. “Scratch Harry; if you’re going overseas, guns are a liability. I think you want to have a word with Pinky tomorrow. He’s been working with a new application of SCORPION STARE, and you might be an ideal candidate for beta tester.”
I KNOCK ON LOCKHART’S OFFICE DOOR AT NINE THIRTY SHARP the next morning, wearing a sober suit and a new tie—one of three that Mo insisted on buying for me in Noose Hutch International on the way to work (which meant she got to vet them for cartoon wildlife first). It’s uncomfortable but I’m not panicking yet—I’ve got a compact Leatherman tool in my pocket, which means I can always stab it to death if it wakes up and tries to throttle me.
“Ah, Mr. Howard.” Lockhart’s stare is judgmental. “Come on, we’re running late.” He sweeps out of the office and I tag along in his wake.
Normally, when I apply for a passport I get some pictures taken in a photo booth, fill out a form, then go round to a post office and pay them to check the paperwork and send it off to the Identity and Passport Service. A couple weeks later a fat envelope flops through the letterbox. This is a bit different, and involves visiting an office about which we shall say as little as possible, because the Dustbin are not our friends (except when they’re arranging official cover documentation for our people, including shiny new passports with genuine diplomatic visas accredited by the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square without the need for an actual visit and interview).
After the photo-and-fingerprints session at Spook Central, Lockhart leads me outside the MI5 headquarters building and hails a taxi. Twenty traumatic minutes later we arrive at the sucking vortex of existential despair and chaos that is Euston, whereupon Lockhart hands me a rail ticket and leads me through the barriers. “Where are we going?” I ask. He ignores me, but pauses to buy a copy of the Daily Telegraph. The ticket, I note, is first class—something I thought was a strict no-no under our current hair-shirt expenditure controls.
Half an hour later, he folds his newspaper, stands up, and leads me off the train onto a platform in Milton Keynes Central. I shiver and look around, counting cameras. “Where are we going?” I ask again.
“To an obscure industrial park on the outskirts of town,” he replies as he strides out of the front of the station, head swiveling in search of taxis like a vigilant blackbird after a juicy earthworm. We pause beside a row of pantone-colored concrete seagulls. “A place called Hanslope Park. Home to an organization called HMGCC.”
“Her Majesty’s GNU C Compiler?” I blink stupidly at the daylight.
“No, Her Majesty’s Government Communications Centre. Very much not open source, Mr. Howard.”
“Oh.” Something about the address rings a bell from years ago, but I’m not certain yet. I stare at the seagulls. My skin crawls; I have bad memories of Milton Keynes, but they mostly center on the concrete cows and a compromised research station that may or may not have been located close to Hanslope Park. A sign beside the station entrance tells me that the local schools are having a seagull parade, with a charity draw and a prize for the best avian paint job. “So we’re making the rounds?”
“It generally attracts less attention than an external request.” A taxi pulls up between a puce seabird with bright red eyes and a startled expression and another gull wearing authentic 1940s Luftwaffe insignia. We climb in.
HMGCC is one of those boringly standardized cookie-cutter government installations that look like a blighted industrial estate: crappy seventies brutalist office architecture and prefabricated concrete warehouses with an open car park behind razor-wire-topped fences and signs saying BEWARE OF THE DOG. For all I know it could be right next door to the unit where I had my happy-fun encounter with Mark McLuhan; these places are so anonymous they could be anything. A bonded whisky warehouse, a bank cash center, or a factory where they build nuclear warheads. Further back, behind the buildings and out of sight of the road, there will be satellite dishes and exposed runs of cabling and pipes between buildings, and stuff of interest to spies and trainspotters—but first you have to get inside.
Lockhart stops our taxi driver at the front gate, pays, and we walk up to an impressive set of wire gates that are overlooked from three directions by white masts bending under the weight of CCTV cameras and antennae. My skin is just about ready to crawl off my neck and sprint screaming up the street—I know what those cameras are for!—but Lockhart pulls out his warrant card and advances on the gate guard. “Gerald Lockhart and Robert Howard to see Dr. Traviss. We’re expected.”
Half an hour and the electronic equivalent of a body cavity search later—I swear they’re using me as a guinea pig for the scanners for next decade’s airport security theater—we arrive in a small, dingy office with high, frosted-glass windows and too much furniture. It’s clearly one of the graveyards where the MOD filing cabinets go to die. There’s a too-small meeting table, and three occupied seats. The occupants stand as Lockhart shakes hands. “Bob, this is Dr. Traviss.” A tall, gloomy-looking fellow in a suit and horn-rimmed glasses, Traviss seems only marginally aware of his surroundings. “This is Alan Fraser”—a government-issue scientific officer, subtype: short, hairy, and explosive, probably screeches all over the home counties on a monstrously overpowered motorbike every weekend to reassure himself that he still has a life—“and this is Warrant Officer O’Hara”—a blue-suiter, middle-aged, clearly along for the ride with orders to shoot the boffins if they try to think too hard. “Dr. Traviss, Bob is the individual you were briefed on yesterday.” Oh, really? I think. “He’s going overseas. Bob, these fellows are going to equip you for inventory tracking.”