“I keep my email on a memory stick. There’ll be an infected message in my inbox, so when I plug it into one of their computers it’ll auto-run. If I’m caught, I’m just an ignorant, technically illiterate socialite with an infected email set-up—the security trail can lead back to a spear phishing attack on my bank account. Victim not perp, in other words.”
“That sounds very good. So…you go in, read your email, finish the course, leave, then we have a party with his email. Hmm. Exit strategies?”
“I want you to buy three cars and locate two safe houses downtown. If I need to run I’ll signal you, then drive out, swap plates and wheels, pick up new ID, and keep driving. I’ll charge up the NetJets account to cover seats on standby and we can prepare an evac plan via the nearest airports—but that’s conspicuous. Much better to just drop off the map and turn up in Utah or New Mexico twenty-four hours later. Then revert to regular ID and fly commercial.”
“Okay, three cars, two pads. One escape car, plus a remount and a decoy? We’ll be sourcing proper motors, for appearances sake?”
“Perfect: you read my mind.”
“Okay. So let’s make that a hot four-by-four with off-road capability for the escape car, then two boring mom taxis with tuned-up engines. Why not a bike?”
“Too conspicuous. Also, hard to ride one in heels and a skirt. I’m a well-dressed society matron in this scenario, don’t forget.”
“Noted. You’re going to do this unarmed?”
“Johnny—” She smiled. “I’m a foreign VIP guest; they’d smell a rat if I went with concealed carry.”
“Okay, field-expedient gear only. May I say that I don’t like this, Duchess? Whether or not you trust Gerry, you don’t know what these cults can be like—you’ve never been in one. You’re going to be totally exposed if anything goes wrong—”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong.” Her self-assurance was complete. “I’m a VIP guest on a study retreat week, not an armed intruder, and you’ll just be a lonely foreign tourist taking in some church services. The deadliest thing I’ll be carrying will be a corrupted email box on a memory stick. Unless they turn out to be a front for the Red Skull Cult or the Malaysian Presidential Guard, it should be a walk in the park.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Johnny said gloomily.
“So we’ll just have to liven things up in round two.” Persephone grinned, impishly: “Once we know for sure who we’re dealing with.”
HOTELSPACE IS A PARTICULAR SUBSPECIES OF HYPERSPACE that links the service corridors and bland, beige-carpeted halls of chain hotels. I’ve always had an uneasy feeling that if I open the wrong Staff Only door and turn a corner, I could find myself stepping out of the vending machine room on the seventh floor of a Hilton in Munich or a Sheraton in Osaka. At about 8 p.m. local time—or three in the morning back home—I find myself padding along one of the aforementioned dim, soundproofed corridors in the center of Denver, this time on the thirtieth floor, towing a suitcase behind me and clutching my room keycard in my other hand. (All arranged by the concierge service on my magic credit card, of course.)
Along the way I have a minor flash of déjà vu, echoing a check-in in Darmstadt many years ago that segued into a near-disastrous encounter in the hotel bar. My collisions with the Black Chamber over the years have not been happy; luckily the odds of me running into certain past acquaintances are low. Nevertheless, I’m as awake as I can be with my hindbrain telling my eyelids it’s half past sleepy time.
Approaching my room’s door, I haul out my phone and poke tiredly at it. OFCUT works like a charm. There’s no sign of tampering anywhere up or down the corridor, and the lock’s clean: no wards, no geases, no nasty little hidden surprises. Relieved, I stick my card in the lock, shove the door open, and tow my bag after me. Welcome to slumberland.
What can I say about the generic American hotel room? External Assets punch well above the usual Laundry expenses budget: I’ve got a decent king-sized room rather than the usual broom closet. The bed is the size of a small aircraft carrier, piled invitingly high with pillows, and pulses in my travel-stressed vision like some kind of carnivorous cotton plant. There’s a desk, a clinically tiled bathroom, a TV set, an ethernet jack—
Ethernet.
Even before the door has swung shut behind me I’m into my travel bag to haul out the small and rather naff Dell that Facilities issued me with. The contents of the hard disk are carefully designed to look as if the laptop belongs to a mid-ranking idiot with a heavy Plants v. Zombies habit, and there is nothing remotely confidential about the machine. Laptops are an inherent security risk—they’re too easy to steal—so the classified stuff all sits on a thumb drive. It has a fingerprint reader, the contents are encrypted, and if someone who isn’t me tries to use my severed thumb to log in, then may dead alien gods have mercy on their soul (because the guardians of the Laundry email system won’t).
I dash off a quick “arrived alive” message to Lockhart’s publicly visible email address, then catch myself yawning. A quick glance at the bedside alarm radio tells me it’s only half past eight. Shit. If I succumb to sleep before 10 o’clock I’ll be up with the birds, which is not exactly my kind of lark—I should really go downstairs and get some food and hang out in the bar. Except both food and alcohol, in my current condition, will make me sleepy. If I want to stay awake, I need company. It’s way too late to phone Mo, but—
Aha.
My IronKey is loaded with an address book. I send a quick email to Johnny McTavish, attaching my US phone number and hotel room: Are you on site yet? Need to meet stat. It’s the tattoos: I should have passed them over before they left—but he and BASHFUL INCENDIARY lit out for the Golden Promise Ministries’ bible study and brainwashing B&B too soon. But there’s still a chance he can get one to her before she checks in, if I get them to him immediately.
Clearly McTavish is on the ball, because I’m listening to the coffee maker gurgling and choking into a mug five minutes later when my phone rings.
“McTavish here.” He sounds alert.
“Howard.”
“I’m in Denver.”
“You are? Me, too. We need to meet up as soon as possible.”
“Huh.” A pause. “Meet me at the corner of Colfax and Fourteenth. Half an hour?”
“I’ll do my best.” Luckily I have Google Maps on the JesusPhone…
“Over and out.”
He cuts the call. I guess I’m not the only one around here who finds jet lag eats away at the social veneer.
Colfax turns out to be the main east-west drag in town—the nearest thing to a high street in central Denver, all wall-to-wall shops and daytime diners. My hotel in the central business district is only about half a kilometer away, and while the weather’s a bit chilly by my standards it’s moving out of the depths of winter—the sidewalks are scraped bare of snow, and there’s only the odd grimy mound in the gutters to remind me that I’m in the middle of a continental deep-freeze. So I pull the overcoat out of my suitcase, drag my shoes and jacket back on, stuff the book of tats and Pinky’s funky little camera in my jacket pockets, and head downstairs to pound pavement.
We’re on a plateau halfway up a mountain range, and I can feel it on my chest before I’ve gone three blocks. It’s dusk: the cloud base overhead is low, and a lazy wind cuts through the streets, working its way through my coat. I’m wishing for a hat by the time I pass Thirteenth and start looking for Johnny. There aren’t many people out, and traffic is light: either the center of Denver on a spring evening with a smell of snow in the air isn’t the best place to hang out, or I’m missing a big ball game.