"Well." Andy glances at Nick, then back at me. "You're on active service, so you need to know this stuff inside out and upside down. But you're right, the specific reason for this session is what happened the other night. I can't confirm or deny the identities of anyone else involved, though."
"Then I've got a problem," I tell him. "I don't know if I should bring it up right now, but if I sit on it and I'm wrong… well, way I see it is, Mo is the one who's under threat and in need of protection. Right? I mean, I can cope with being drooled over by things with more tentacles than brains, but it's not exactly part of her job description, is it? You're supposed to be responsible for her safety. If you've got me going over rules of engagement, and she's involved, then when the shooting starts-"
Andy is nodding. It's a bad sign when your boss starts nodding at you before you finish each sentence.
"As a matter of fact I agree with your concerns completely," he says. "And yes, I agree we've got a problem. But it's not quite what you think it is." He leans forward and makes a steeple out of his fingers, elbows together on the table. The steeple leans sideways at an architecturally unsound angle. "We can probably keep her safe indefinitely, as long as she's locked down under a protection program and resident in one of our secure accommodation units. That's not in question; if nobody can see or track her, they can't attack her-although I'm not sure about the inability to track given that they must have obtained samples in order to spring that incubus on her last month. What concerns me is that such a posture is essentially defensive. We don't know for sure just what we're defending against, Bob, and that's bad."
Andy takes a deep breath, but Nick jumps in before he can continue: "We've dealt with Iraqi spies before, boy. This doesn't smell like them."
"Uh." I pause, unsure what to say. "What do you mean?"
"He means that the Mukhabarat simply don't have the technology to summon an incubus. Nor do they generally manage incarnations that leave Precambrian slime all over the carpet; about all they're up to is interrogation and compulsion of Watchers and a little bit of judicious torture. No real control of phase-space geometry, no Enochian deep grammar parse-tree generators-at least none that we've seen the source code to. So we can't make any assumptions about the attacks on Mo. Someone tried to grab her for whatever purpose. By now, they must know we're onto them. The next logical step is for them to pull back and switch track to whatever they were working on in the first place-which is extremely dangerous for us because if they were trying to snatch her, they were probably working on weapons of mass destruction. We badly need to get them out in the open and our only bait is Professor O'Brien. But if she knows she's bait, she'll keep looking round for sharks-which will tip them off. So we're assigning you to shadow her, Bob. You keep an eye on her. We'll keep an eye on you. When they bite, we'll reel them in. You don't need to know how, or when, but you'll do well to read this manual so you know how we set up this kind of situation. Clear?"
I crane my neck round at Nick, whose expression is uncharacteristically flat: he stares right through me with eyes like gunsights. "I don't like it. I really don't like it."
"You don't have to," Andy says flatly. "We're telling you what to do. Your job is-I shouldn't be telling you this, it should be Angleton, this afternoon, but what the hell-you're going to be assigned to shadow Mo. We'll do the rest. All I want to hear from you now is that you're going to do as you're told."
I tense. "Is that an order?"
"It is now," says Nick.
WHEN I GET HOME AFTER RECEIVING MY MISSION orders and preemptive chewing-out from Angleton I find my key doesn't turn in the lock. It's dark and it's raining so I lean on the doorbell continuously until the door swings open. Pinky stands behind it, one hand on the latch. "What took you so long?" I ask him.
He steps back. "These are yours, I believe," he says, handing me a bunch of shiny new keys. He clanks as he walks; he's wearing black combat boots, matching trousers, what looks like a leather vest, and enough chains to stock a medium-sized prison. "I'm off clubbing tonight."
"Why the new keys?" I close the door and shake my hair, shrug off my coat, and try to find room to hang it in the hall.
"They changed the locks today," he says conversationally, "departmental orders, apparently." There's a new mat inside the front door, and when I look closely I see silvery lettering in a very small font stitched into its edges. "They came and swept the house for listeners and actors then renewed the wards on all the windows, the doors, the air vents-even the chimney. Any idea why?"
"Yeah," I grunt. I head for the kitchen, squeezing past someone's battered suitcases that are parked in the hall.
"We've got a new flatmate, too," he adds. "Oh, Mhari's fucked off again, but this time she says she's moving into House Orange for good."
"Ah-hum." Twist the knife in the wound, why don't you? I inspect the kettle, then poke around inside my cupboard to see if there's any food more substantial than a pot noodle.
"You'll probably like the new flatmate, though," Pinky continues. "She's helping Brains with his omelettes in the front cellar-he's using high-intensity ultrasound, this time."
I find a pot noodle and a desiccated supermarket pizza base. There's cheese and tomato paste in the fridge, and a pork sausage I can chop up to go on top of it, so I turn the grill on. "Any newspapers?" I ask.
"Newspapers? Why?"
"I have to book a flight. I'm taking a week's leave next Monday, and it's already Wednesday."
"Going anywhere interesting?"
"Amsterdam."
"Cool!" There's a pair of fur-lined handcuffs on the bread board; Pinky picks them up and eyes them critically, then starts polishing them on a square of kitchen roll. "Party on?"
"I have some research to do at the Oostindischehuis. And in the basement of the Rijksmuseum."
"Research." He rolls his eyes and tucks the handcuffs into a belt clip. "What a boring use for a holiday in Amsterdam!"
I chop bits of pork sausage up and sprinkle them over my garbage pizza, oblivious. The cellar door swings open. "Did somebody mention Amsterdam-hey, what are you doing here?"
I drop my knife. "Mo? What are you-"
"Bob? Hey, have you guys met?"
" 'Scuse me, would you mind moving? I need to get through-"
With four people in the kitchen it's distinctly cosy, not to say crowded. I move my pizza up under the grill and switch the kettle on again. "Who put you up here?" I ask Mo.
"The Plumbers-they said this was a secure apartment," she says, rubbing the side of her nose. She peers at me suspiciously. "What's going on?"
"It is a secure apartment," I say slowly. "It's on the Laundry list."
"Bob's girlfriend just moved out for the fourth time," Pinky explains helpfully. "They must have thought the spare room needed filling."
"Oh, this is too much." Mo pulls out a chair and sits down with her back against the wall, arms crossed defensively.
"Guys?" I ask. "Could you take it outside?"
"Certainly," Brains sniffs, and disappears back into the cellar.
Pinky smiles. "I knew you'd hit it off!" he says, then ducks out of the room hastily.
A minute later the front door slams. Mo fixes me with a magistrate's stare. "You live here? With those two?"
"Yeah." I inspect the grill. "They're mostly harmless, when they're not trying to take over the world each night."
"Trying to-" She stops. "That one. Uh, Pinky? He's out clubbing?"
"Yes, but he never brings any rough trade home," I explain. "He and Brains have been together for, oh, as long as I've known them."