“Ruby. Seminole. Kriegspiel. Hatchet.” The nonsense words ricochet from side to side of my skull like bullets; my tongue feels like leather and I can’t look away. “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Howard, so I’ll make it quick. Execute Sitrep One.”
From a very great distance I hear my own voice, in a cadence not my own, say, “Subjective integrity is maintained. Subjective continuity of experience is maintained. Subject observes no tampering.”
“Exit supervision,” says the Senior Auditor, and I flap my jaws soundlessly for a few seconds, taking deep breaths. He breaks eye contact. “I’m sorry to have to subject you to that, Mr. Howard, but I’m afraid it’s the lesser evil—the alternative would be a month or two under observation in Camp Sunshine, and we need you operational too badly to spare you for that long.”
“What”—I swallow—“kind of tripwire was that?”
“You’ve seen The Manchurian Candidate.” The Senior Auditor raises an eyebrow. I nod: I’m bluffing, but I can look it up on Wikipedia later. “The Black Chamber have been known to forcibly install back doors in the minds of foreign operatives who fall into their hands, turning them into sleeper agents. After your experience in Santa Cruz eleven years ago…we felt it best to take precautions. It’s a standard precaution for all field agents who are tagged for fast-track development.”
“And I’m not—” I pause. “No, if I was, you wouldn’t tell me. You’d use me as a conduit?” I’m grasping for straws.
He shakes his head, somewhat sadly: “No, Mr. Howard, I’m afraid we’d have to decommission you. If we couldn’t excise the damaged tissue, that is, but that kind of neurosurgery has a poor prognosis.”
I am taking deep whooping breaths. “Aaagh—”
“I’m very happy to say that you’re fine,” he adds hastily. “Would you like a minute to—”
I wave wordlessly.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he adds awkwardly. (I manage a nod.) “I am here to clear up some loose ends from GOD GAME RAINBOW. First, before we continue—I’m required to ask you this: Is there anything you would like to disclose to me in confidence?”
“Uh. Um…such as…” I manage to ask, but it feels like my brain’s still freezing from whatever he just did, combined with the realization that if my traitorous nervous system had given a different answer I could be dead.
“Oh, anything you’d like to confess.” He emits a self-deprecating chuckle. “Excessive expense claims, bribes, embezzlement, you’re working for the KGB as a double agent, that sort of thing. In confidence, with no disciplinary outcome indicated if you make a clean breast of it to the Audit Commission at this point.” He looks at me hopefully, like a kindly uncle expecting me to confess the origin of the scratches on the door of his new Jaguar.
“Um, er”—stop that—“well, Gerald Lockhart gave me a rather exotic credit card and instructions to use it in a manner that’s not consistent with our usual expenses policy. Does that count?”
“Perhaps. What did you use it for that might be inappropriate?”
“Well.” I rack my brain. “He told me to fly business class and stay in a higher class of hotel than I’d have used on a regular travel account. When given the scram instruction I rented the first car I could get, for a week, unlimited mileage in case the airport wasn’t available. Oh, and I ordered out for some items when in the hotel—including a pizza.” He frowns minutely. “But I needed the pizza box to make a field-expedient containment grid for one of Schiller’s hosts, which I used to locate the breeding pool.” His frown clears. “I tried to keep receipts, but the Black Chamber confiscated them.” Along with the contents of my wallet, my passport, the pizza box, my IronKey, and everything else I was carrying.
“Well, I think we can find a way to retroactively approve the pizza and the car hire,” the Senior Auditor says gravely. “And I shouldn’t expect the hotel and air fares will be a problem if you were ordered to use them. Is there anything else?”
Anything—why is he asking—realization blinks on like a five-hundred-watt light bulb. “Oh, yes, yes there is.” I explain about Pete and the apocrypha and my misgivings about the whole business, and he nods every thirty seconds throughout the whole sorry story. Finally I wind down. “That’s what you were after, right?”
He’s silent for a few seconds, then finally nods again. “Yes, Mr. Howard, it was. Thank you for telling me. I’ll take the matter under advisement. We may have to call you in for a formal debriefing, but in view of the circumstances I don’t think you have much to worry about.” He stops. “You have reason to believe otherwise?”
I nod, glumly. “My wife will be furious when she finds out.”
“Hmm.” He cocks his head to one side, watching me. “Don’t you suppose she would be even more upset if you got yourself killed and failed to stop Schiller waking the Sleeper?”
“Uh—maybe.” There are some domestic disagreements you can’t win: it’s in the rules, or something. “If I was allowed to talk to her about it—Lockhart overrode our usual waiver.”
“Well, if you have any trouble, talk to me and I’ll see if it’s possible to override that. Meanwhile, CANDID will come round eventually,” says the Senior Auditor. “She has a level head on her shoulders.” He clears his throat. I barely have time to flinch, just as my younger self did whenever he heard the dental drill spinning up; he’s a deft touch, is our Senior Auditor. “Now, as to why I’m really here, I’d like you to accompany me upstairs to a personnel hearing in one of the executive offices.”
TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS EARLIER:
“Hurts like a motherfucker, Duchess,” Johnny opines, touching the dressing taped around his throat. He wears an open-necked dress shirt, the better to conceal its alarming proportions from casual witnesses.
“I’m not surprised.” Persephone doesn’t move her head or shift her hands from the steering wheel, but he can see her gray eyes flicker to examine him in the rearview mirror. “Try not to do that, Johnny. It takes longer to heal if you stress it.”
“I thought I was dead for keeps this time.” He shudders. “And Schiller was going to resurrect me.” He leans back in the leather-and-walnut embrace of Schiller’s Lincoln limousine and focusses on the back of her head. Her hair is tied in a chignon beneath a chauffeur’s cap that matches her black suit as she drives steadily towards the rising sun. There are more strands of gray in it than there were just a week ago. Nevertheless, she drives like a machine: over the night just past they’ve covered nearly seven hundred miles.
“Sorting you out when you get yourself killed is my job,” she says, exposing a flash of jealousy. “You didn’t think I’d leave you to him, did you?”
Johnny shrugs, then winces in pain. “Looked a bit hairy for a few minutes there, Duchess. This retirement caper isn’t as peaceful as I expected.” She doesn’t reply. Miles pass, then he tries again: “Seems to me if it wasn’t for Howard we’d both be in the shitter. It’s a total clusterfuck.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Lockey and his backers suckered us. They suckered everyone too damn well. Assuming the fish ain’t rotting from the head down, he locked the Black Chamber out before they even realized they had an incursion. If he hadn’t tried to overreach hisself by fishing in our backyard…” Johnny’s thousand-yard stare is focussed far beyond the vanishing point of the highway ahead. “An’ then the old poacher-gamekeeper match-up turned sour on us.”
“You’re assuming he didn’t do that deliberately. Play us for idiots right down the line.” Persephone is silent for almost five minutes. Her expression is distant. “He got Mahogany Row’s attention, and they sent us. Do you suppose it was deliberate? That he’d worked out that we’d have the right kind of asset and trailed himself through London just to ensure that someone like you would show up on his doorstep?”