He's obviously seen The Godfather one time too many. I find myself waiting for a goon to step out of the shadows and stick a gun in my ear. Maybe he just doesn't like my T-shirt, a picture of a riot cop brandishing a truncheon beneath the caption "Do not question authority." I swallow, wondering what's coming up next.
Angleton sighs deeply, then stares at the dark greenish oil painting that hangs on his office wall behind the visitor's hot seat. "You can fool Andrew Newstrom but you can't fool me," he says quietly.
"You know Andy?"
"I trained him when he was your age. He has a commitment that is in short supply these days. I know just how devoted to this organisation you are. Draftees back in my day used to understand what they'd got themselves into, but you young ones…"
'Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country has ever done for you?' I raise an eyebrow at him.
He snorts. "I see you understand your deficiencies."
I shake my head. "Not me-that's not my problem. I decided I want to make a career here. I know I don't have to-I know what the Laundry's for-but if I just sat around under the cameras waiting for my pension I'd get bored."
Those eyes are back on me, trying to drill right through to the back of my head. "We know that, Howard. If you were simply serving your time you'd be back downstairs, counting hairs on a caterpillar or something until retirement. I've seen your record and I am aware that you are intelligent, ingenious, resourceful, technically adept, and no less brave than average. But that doesn't alter what I've said one bit: you are routinely, grossly insubordinate. You think you have a right to know things that people would-and do-kill for. You take shortcuts. You aren't an organisation man and you never will be. If it was up to me you'd be on the outside, and never allowed anywhere near us."
"But I'm not," I say. "Nobody even noticed me until I'd worked out the geometry curve iteration method for invoking Nyarlathotep and nearly wiped out Birmingham by accident. Then they came and offered me a post as Senior Scientific Officer and made it clear that 'no' wasn't on the list of acceptable answers. Turns out that nuking Birmingham overrides the positive vetting requirement, so they issued a reliability waiver and you're stuck with me. Shouldn't you be pleased that I've decided to make the best of things and try to be useful?"
Angleton leans forward across the polished top of his Memex desk. With a visible effort he slews the microfiche reader hood around so that I can see the screen, then taps one bony finger on a mechanical keypress. "Watch and learn."
The desk whirs and clunks; cams and gears buried deep in it shuffle hypertext links and bring up a new microfilm card. A man's face shows up on the screen. Moustache, sunglasses, cropped hair, forty-something and jowly with it. "Tariq Nassir al-Tikriti. Remember that last bit. He works for a man who grew up in his home town around the same time, who goes by the name of Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti. Mr. Nassir's job entails arranging for funds to be transferred from the Mukhabarat-Saddam's private Gestapo-to friendly parties for purposes of inconveniencing enemies of the Ba'ath party of Iraq. Friendlies such as Mohammed Kadass, who used to live in Afghanistan before he fell foul of the Taliban."
"Nice to know they're not all religious fundamentalists," I say, as the Memex flicks to a shot of a bearded guy wearing a turbanlike something on his head. (He's scowling at the camera as if he suspects it of holding Western sympathies.)
"They deported him for excessive zeal," Angelton says heavily. "Turns out he was marshalling resources for Yusuf Qaradawi's school. Do I need to draw you a diagram?"
"Guess not. What does Qaradawi teach?"
"Originally management studies and economics, but lately he's added suicide bombing, the necessity for armed struggle preceded by Da'wa and military preparation in order to repel the greater Kufr, and gauge metrics for raster-driven generative sepiroth on vector processors. Summoning the lesser shoggothim in other words."
"Nng," is all I can say to that. "What's this got to do with the price of coffee?"
Another photograph clicks up on the screen: this time a gorgeous redhead wearing an academic gown over a posh frock. It takes me a moment to recognise Mo. She looks about ten years younger, and the guy in a tux whose arm she's draped over looks-well, lawyerly seems to fit what she told me about her ex. "Dr. Dominique O'Brien. I believe you've met?"
I glance up and Angleton is staring at me.
"Do I have your complete attention now, Mr. Howard?" he rasps.
"Yeah," I concede. "Do you mean the kidnappers in Santa Cruz-"
"Shut up and listen and you may learn something." He waits for me to shut up, then continues. "I'm telling you this because you're in it already, you've met the prime candidate. Now, when you were sent over there we didn't know what you were dealing with, what Dr. O'Brien was sitting on. The Yanks did, which was why they weren't letting her go, but they seem to have changed their minds in view of the security threat. She's not a US citizen and they've got her research findings; interesting, but nothing fundamentally revolutionary. Furthermore, with enough information about her out in the public domain to attract nuisances like the Izzadin al-Qassem hangers-on who tried to snatch her in Santa Cruz, they don't much want her around anymore. Which is why she's over here, in the Laundry and under wraps. They didn't simply deport her, they asked us to take care of her."
"If it's not fundamentally revolutionary research, why are we interested in her?" I ask.
Angleton looks at me oddly. "I'll be the judge of that." It all clicks into place, suddenly. Suppose you worked out how to build a Teller-Ullam configuration fusion device-a hydrogen bomb. That wouldn't qualify as revolutionary these days, either, but that doesn't mean it's unimportant, does it? I must give some sign of understanding what Angleton's getting at because he nods to himself and continues: "The Laundry is in the nonproliferation business and Dr. O'Brien has independently rediscovered something rather more fundamental than a technique for landscaping Wolverhampton without first obtaining planning permission. In the States, the Black Chamber took an interest in her-don't ask about where they fit in the American occult intelligence complex, you really don't want to know-but verified that it wasn't anything new. We may not have a bilateral cooperation treaty with them, but once they worked out that all she'd come up with was a variation on the Logic of Thoth there was really no reason to keep her except to prevent her falling into the hands of undesirable persons like our friend Tariq Nassir. It's their damned munitions export regulations again; the contents of her head are classified up there with nerve gas and other things that go bump in the dark. Anyway, once the mess was cleared up"-he glares at me as he hisses the word mess-"they really had no reason not to let her come home. After all, we're the ones who gave them the Logic in the first place, back in the late fifties."
"Right… so that's all there is to it? I heard those guys, they were going to open a major gateway and drag her through it-"
Angleton abruptly switches off the Memex and stands up, leaning over the desk at me. "Official word is that nothing at all like that happened," he snaps. "There were no witnesses, no evidence, and nothing happened. Because if anything did happen there, that would tend to indicate that the Yanks either fucked up by releasing her, or threw us a live hand grenade, and we know they never fuck up, because our glorious prime minister has his lips firmly wrapped around the presidential cigar in the hope of a renewal of the bilateral trade agreement they're talking about in Washington next month. Do you understand me?"