“Wotcher, Bob.” I nearly jump out of my skin; for someone who’s most of two meters tall and built like a brick shithouse Johnny is surprisingly hard to notice.
“Yo,” I manage, glancing round quickly. I see no sign of anyone tailing us, and relax slightly. “There’s something I need to fill you in on. Got ten minutes for a coffee?”
“This way,” he says, and disappears into the murk between street lights. I do my best to follow him.
He leads me to a small indie coffee shop that, for a miracle, is both open and hasn’t turned itself into a restaurant in time for dinner. We find a booth with padded vinyl seats and a good view of the doorway and slide in. I unzip my coat and rub my hands together. I’m cold; I didn’t realize it until we got indoors. A waitress ambles over while I’m still shivering. “What’ll it be?”
“Mug of Joe,” grunts Johnny.
“Mocha venti with an extra shot for me, no cream,” I add.
“Anything else?”
I shake my head and she wanders off. Johnny looks suspicious. “Since when do you speak Starbucks?”
I shrug. “It’s not as if I can help it; they’ve got our office surrounded, and they don’t like it if you try to order in English.”
We wait in silence until our coffees arrive and the waitress departs again. Then Johnny asks, “What’s the problem?”
“A little something for the weekend.” I pull out the tat book. “You guys left before I could hand these over.” I slide it towards him.
“Not our fault, the travel agent was most insistent…” Johnny opens the book. “Hmm.” He squints at the contents. “That’s neat. Are these what I think they are?”
I sip my coffee. “I don’t know. What do you think they are?”
Johnny slides one of a pair of matching stabbed love-hearts out of its transparent sleeve. “Sympathy and contagion. If I wear one of these and you wear the other, we get a private walkie-talkie channel, right?” His gaze flickers back to me. “Whose bright idea was it?”
I shrug. “Don’t ask me, Lockhart just thought they might come in useful. Dead-letter drops are so twentieth century, don’t you think?”
“Huh.” Johnny is looking thoughtful. “Yes, I should think the Duchess will be most interested in these. Thank you kindly.” He raises his mug and takes what is clearly a throat-burning swig of coffee. “Well, I’d better be going.”
“Wait!” I stop. “Firstly,” I take the book and leaf through it, removing the control tattoos, “I need to keep these. Secondly—what are you guys planning?”
“We’re going to get Mr. Lockhart exactly what he wants,” Johnny says blandly. “Tomorrow, the Duchess is driving down to the Ministries’ compound to start the Omega Course. It runs three days, Friday through Sunday, and she’ll be there the whole while. Don’t expect to hear from us—I’m moving on as well. I’ll get in touch afterwards. In emergency”—he flips to a control tat—“I’ll page you. Okay?”
Great. So just when Lockhart expects me to report back, all I can say is, They’ve dropped off the map. “And if I need to get in touch with you?”
He taps the book with a thick, stubby finger: “Use the force.” Then he finishes off his coffee and vanishes, leaving me to pick up the bill.
YR. HMBL. CRSPNDNT. DOES NOT HAVE EYES IN THE BACK OF his head. Also, he’s pretty shit at the whole spy tradecraft shtick.
Which is why what I’m about to relate came to me at third hand, some time after the event.
PERSEPHONE WATCHED THE DOORWAY OF THE COFFEE HOUSE from the far side of the road until she was sure the Laundry bureaucrat wasn’t following Johnny. Then she slid the Flex into gear and circled the block slowly, keeping a weather eye open for any sign of company. Half a block past the coffee house she pulled over and popped the passenger door. Johnny clambered aboard, a stray snowflake preceding him. “Drive.”
Persephone headed south, sticking to the speed limit. Traffic was light; she hung a left, then a right, checking her mirrors each time. “We’re clear.”
“Good.” Johnny slumped slightly in his seat. “Save us from innocents, Duchess, they’ve stuck us with a bloody amateur.”
“You think?” Persephone’s lips peeled back from her teeth in a humorless grin.
“Bubblegum sympathy tats and a trench coat. What is the world coming to?”
“Never attribute to incompetence that which can be adequately explained by jet lag, my dear. So, these tats. What do you think?”
“I think you’d be mad to wear one,” said Johnny. “They’re too big, and these fundie nutjobs got some whacky ideas about real tattoos—mark of Cain, stuff in Leviticus, that kind of thing—and if they strip-search you—”
“They won’t.”
“Or if they lift Mr. Chinless-Wonder and find his tat—”
“They won’t.” Persephone spoke with complete assurance. “You underestimate Mr. Howard, his rap sheet’s nearly as questionable as yours. People underestimate him: that’s his game. Probably why it’s taken Mahogany Row so long to notice him, at a guess. If we’d met him, back in our Network days…Well. I’m going to, let’s see, burn myself on a steam iron? Blistered heel from running? Yes, that should explain the gel plaster. I’ll keep the tattoo covered. You don’t need to be so twitchy.”
“But—”
Persephone turned to stare at him. “We are trying to get word out to Lockhart, aren’t we? It’s their preferred channel—and it’s a lot harder to eavesdrop on than a phone call or a dead drop.”
He looked away first, helpless before her confidence. “I got a bad feeling about this whole deal, Duchess. Very bad.”
Coming up on the intersection with North Speer that would carry them out to the interstate, Persephone floored the accelerator. Gas gurgled into the huge V8 as the big mom-wagon accelerated. “Your opinion is noted. So doesn’t reducing our risk of exposure help?”
Johnny shivered, a surprisingly delicate gesture for one so outwardly stolid. “Yeah, but I’ve still got a feeling there is something wrong with the picture. We’re missing a piece. Something enormous.”
“Very likely.” Her fingers whitened on the steering wheel. “But it’s our job to find out, isn’t it? That’s what we do.”
MEANWHILE, SIXTY KILOMETERS AWAY…
Off US85, about seven kilometers north of the Air Force Academy in the vicinity of Palmer Lake, there’s a road leading due west into Pike National Forest. It looks like a dirt track, winding around the wooded hillsides, but once it’s out of sight of the township there’s a fence, and a gate bearing the sign of the cross, and then single-track blacktop hugging the hillside above the Lower Reservoir until it reaches another discreet fence, and turns into a proper road, with driveways leading off either side to landscaped car parks and low buildings. One building is surmounted by a trio of large satellite dishes; another cluster is backed by a complex of specialized gas supplies and air conditioning units that would do justice to a small hospital. There’s a mansion, a motel, a 7-Eleven, and a surprisingly small church.
Welcome to the Golden Promise Ministries compound.
Whenever the gates down near Palmer Lake open to admit a vehicle, eyes up in the security center track them on closed-circuit TV screens, check their registration plates online on license databases. Golden Promise Ministries has its own fire service, ambulance, and police force. Golden Promise Ministries has its own kindergartens and schools. It’s the hub of an entire town, in miniature: a gated community with its own rules and regulations.