The idiots in Rome, endlessly bickering over who had killed her parents, had tried her patience sorely. And the patronizing men at the Ministry with their no job for a little girl. The British organization, at least, had a more pragmatic approach—one reflecting its antique collegiate origins, all the way back to Sir Francis Walsingham and John Dee; never mind its wartime expansion into a special operations team, willing to take anyone whether or not they had been to the right school or university. Buried somewhere in the lard-belly of committee agendas and office politics is a steel spine, and the arrangement they offered her has proven to be very satisfactory.
“The Laundry is stranger and older than you probably realize,” she says quietly. “And the core, the informal group the bureaucrats call Mahogany Row, goes back even further. For hundreds of years they existed, a select band of practitioners of the dark sciences, solitary by nature, funded out of the House of Lords’ black budget.” Howard’s jaw flaps, silently; it’s always amusing to watch their reaction when they learn the truth. “Mahogany Row, the bureaucrats call it. They don’t know the half of it. The larger organization, built from the guts of SOE, was created purely to support the wizards of the invisible college; these days, the civil servants think they’re the real thing. But only because the occupants of those empty offices choose not to disabuse them of such a useful misconception.
“I believe Gerald Lockhart may have misled you about our working relationship, Mr. Howard. Perhaps he implied that Johnny and I are contractors who work for the agency. A little white lie that lends us a bit more flexibility than we’d have if we spent all our hours filling in time sheets and attending meetings. That sort of stuff is Gerald’s job—dealing with the bureaucracy so that we don’t have to. Us? We go places, break plots, and kill demons.”
She closes her eyes briefly to consult her memory map, opens them again as a stupid minivan driver blazes past, spraying turbid slush everywhere. There are more flashing lights. The big USAF base is some miles ahead, off to the right, behind a chain-link fence surrounding the area of a medium-large European state.
“Forty to fifty minutes,” she says, pressing down on the accelerator. The yellow glare of the gate lies off to one side and astern, just beyond the horizon, lighting up the starless sky of the Other Place. An echoing glare of light lies dead ahead, straight down the highway. “Then we can shut down Schiller’s revival service.”
She glances sideways to check his reaction to her words. Howard is staring intently at the pizza box on his lap instead of listening.
“What is it?” she asks.
Howard looks up. “I think they’re onto us,” he says.
MORNING AT THE NEW LIFE CHURCH.
The New Life Church isn’t just a church—it’s a campus and office complex, with multiple buildings housing the World Prayer Center and a whole slew of small group ministries focussing on specialized niches.
Its worshipers are, in Raymond Schiller’s eschatology, misguided at best and damned at worst; or they were, until he convinced the Board of Overseers to give him a fair hearing at a prayer retreat in the compound near Palmer Lake. The Board of Overseers have now been Saved, and are duly grateful. As a sign of appreciation they have agreed to make the main sanctuary available for Ray’s big tent event, in a joyous celebration of the Golden Promise Ministries’ bounteous commitment to the people of Colorado Springs. In fact, they’re pulling out all the stops to bring their flock to the true cause—they’ve rearranged the main sanctuary for a largely standing congregation and, with the Sheriff’s Department providing volunteer fire marshals and a waiver, they’ve got a roof to cover 8,000 souls. New Life only has about 9,000 regulars at present and barely a third are likely to show for a non-Sunday special organized by a different local church, but Golden Promise have been love-bombing Colorado Springs and environs with advertisements for the event for the past week; and once they’re Saved, the new converts will be most zealous in their attempts to bring friends and family along.
Kick-off is due at 2 p.m., for an event that is planned to run all afternoon. It’s a tight schedule. The Golden Promise team are supposed to complete their tear-down by 9 p.m. so that the sanctuary can be returned to order for the Sunday morning service. The reality, as Ray has explained to Pastors Dawes and Holt, is that Sunday is cancelled. Every day is Sunday in the world to come, and once the New Life Church is rededicated to a higher purpose it will process new blood around the clock.
It’s morning at the New Life, although Ray couldn’t be certain if his watch didn’t tell him so. “Who ordered this?” He frets at sister Roseanne: “Our Lord sends his storms to protect the flock of the faithful until it’s time to take what is ours of right, but if it stops them coming to Church…”
“I’m sure it will be all right, Father?” She clutches his day planner apprehensively. “The Lord will provide snowplows and road salt, I’m sure!”
Ray glances at her sharply, but there’s no sign of irony in her hopeful face. Irony is a sin, but his handmaids are faithful followers, pure and chaste even without a host to guide them. He nods slowly. “I’m certain He will.” He turns his head to his security chief. “Alex. Our expected drop-in guests. You’re ready for them?”
Alex nods. “We have security in plain clothes checking the doors, and the parking garage barrier is manned. I’ve issued mug shots and everyone’s been briefed on the troublemakers; the control room’s manned and watching for them.” He cracks his knuckles. “They won’t get past us.”
Ray closes his eyes. “They are approximately twenty miles north of here, coming south along the Ronald Reagan Expressway. Slowly, because of the weather. The Holy Spirit told me so.” He opens his eyes. “Now, what of the other task?”
“It’s being taken care of. I sent some missionaries.” Alex has a habit of becoming uncharacteristically terse when he is discussing something that he thinks Schiller is best insulated from, lest he end up on a witness stand someday.
Ray nods, thoughtfully. “I’ll be in the vestry. Bring them to me as soon as you have them, unless I’m on stage; in that case, hold them until I’m ready.” He stands and rests a hand on sister Roseanne’s shoulder for a moment—his sense of balance has been erratic this past day or so. “God be with you.”
PATRICK IS IN THE KITCHEN, BREWING UP A POT OF TEA, WHEN he realizes something is very wrong.
Moira is upstairs in the bedroom, tucked up and crashed out on a cocktail of temazepam and Imodium to keep her guts under control. The chemo this time round is visibly eroding her, like a too-fast river wearing down a sandstone bed. It cuts into her earlier with each course. She won’t be stirring much before noon, but he needs to get moving and buy food, then call the shop about her car. So he’s up and about in a pair of worn bedroom slippers and a dressing gown that’s seen better days, sluicing hot water around the teapot and getting ready to spoon loose leaf tea into it. The Irish Breakfast blend brings back memories, not all of them bad.
It’s unnaturally dark outside, and the weatherman’s got no clue about what’s happening: there’s something on the news about an extreme weather event and a blackout that’s hit the phone company—backhoe through a cable, probably, or a fire in an exchange. But Patrick pays scant attention to the radio. Something is tickling his nerves.
He can’t say precisely what it is, but his hackles rise. Then, a moment later, he feels it. It’s a tight, warm sensation at the base of his throat, in the other tattoo they applied when he signed the contract. A warning and a threat. He glances around, taking stock. The kettle is on the burner, heating up. There’s nothing visible in the backyard. Danger. He’s felt it before, this premonition of disaster. It takes him back to an evening in Belfast: taking a shortcut home from the pub via Barrack Street, just off the lower Falls, when he’d realized he was being stalked. Or another time in Marseilles, setting up a fallback route for the Duchess when the same faces kept showing up in shop window reflections behind him. The fetid breath of disaster panting after him.