"That's not what I meant." She's silent for a moment. Then: "Why did you break the rules in Santa Cruz? Not that I object, but…"
"Because"-I inspect my wineglass-"I like you. I don't think leaving people I like in the shit is a good way to behave. And, frankly, I don't have a very professional attitude to my work. Not the way the spooks think I should."
She leans forward. "Do you have a more professional attitude to your work now?"
I swallow. "No, not really."
Something-a foot-rubs up and down my ankle and I nearly jump out of my skin. "Good." She smiles in a way that turns my stomach to jelly, and the waiter arrives with a precariously balanced pile of dishes before I can say anything and risk embarrassing myself. We just stare at each other until he's gone, and she adds: "I hate it when people let their professionalism get in the way of real life."
WE EAT, AND WE TALK ABOUT PEOPLE AND things, not necessarily in complimentary terms. Mo explains what it's like to be married to a New York lawyer and I commiserate, and she asks me what it's like to live with a manic-depressive psycho bitch from hell, and evidently she's been talking to Pinky and Brains about things because I find myself describing my relationship with Mhari with sufficient detachment that it might as well be over-ancient history. And she nods and asks if running into Mhari in Accounts and Payroll isn't embarrassing and this leads to a long discourse on how working for the Laundry is about as embarrassing as things can get: from the paper clip audits to the crazy internal billing system, and about how I hoped that getting into field ops would get me out from under Bridget's thumb, but no such luck. And Mo explains about tenure track backbiting politics in small American university departments, and about why you can kiss your career goodbye if you publish too much-as well as too little-and about the different ways in which a dual-income no-kiddies couple can self-destruct so messily that I'm left thinking maybe Mhari isn't that unusual after all.
We end up walking back to the hotel arm in arm, and under a broken streetlamp she stops, wraps her arms around me, and kisses me for what feels like half an hour. Then she rests her chin on my shoulder, beside my ear. "This is so good," she whispers. "If only we weren't being followed."
I tense. "We're-"
"I don't like being watched," she says, and we let go of each other simultaneously.
"Me neither." I glance round and see a lone guy on the street behind us looking in the window of a closed shop, and all the romance flees the evening like gas from a punctured balloon. "Shit."
"Let's just… go back. Hole up and wait for morning."
"I guess."
We start moving again and she takes my hand. "Great evening out. Try it again some time?"
I smile back at her, feeling both regret and optimism. "Yeah."
"Without the audience."
We reach the hotel, share a last drink, and head for our separate rooms.
I DREAM OF WIRES. DARK LANDSCAPE, COLD MUD. Something screams in the distance; lumpy shapes strung up on barbed wire stretched before the fortress. The screams get louder and there's a rumbling and crashing and somewhere in the process I become aware that I'm not dreaming-someone is screaming, while I lie in bed halfway between sleeping and waking.
I'm on my feet almost before I realise I'm awake. I grab a T-shirt and jeans, somehow slide my feet into both legs simultaneously and I'm out the door within ten seconds. The corridor is silent and dim, the only lighting coming from the overhead emergency strips; it's narrow, too, and by night the pastel-painted walls form a claustrophobic collage of grey-on-black shadows. Silence-then another scream, muffled, coming from upstairs. It's definitely human and it doesn't sound like anything you'd expect to hear from a hotel room at night. I pause for a moment, feeling silly as I consider that particular possibility-then duck back into my room and grab the multitool and the palmtop I've left atop the dresser. Now I head for the staircase.
Another scream and I take the steps two at a time. A door opens behind me, a tousled head poking out and mumbling, "I'm trying to sleep…"
The hair on my arms stands on end. The stair rail is glowing a faint, eerie blue; sparks sting my bare feet as I climb, and the handle of the fire door at the top of the stairs gives me a nasty shock. Air sighs past me, a thin breeze blowing along the corridor where blue flickering outlines the door frames in darkness. Another scream and this time a thudding noise, then a muffled crash; I hear a door slam somewhere below me, then the shattering whine of a fire alarm going off.
Mo is in the Plato suite. That's where the screams are coming from, where the wind blows-I hit the door with my shoulder as hard as I can, and bounce.
"What is going on?"
I glance round. A middle-aged woman, thin-faced and worried. "Fire alarm!" I yell. "I heard screaming in here. Can you get help?"
She steps forward, waving a big bunch of keys: she must be the concierge. "Allow me." She turns the door handle and the key, and the door slams open inward as a gust of wind grabs us both and tries to yank us into the room. I grab her arm and brace my feet against the doorframe. Now there's a scream right in my ear, but she grabs my wrist with another hand and I wrestle her back into the corridor. A howling gale is blowing through the doorway, as if someone's punched a hole in the universe. I risk a glance round it and see-
A hotel bedroom in chaos and disarray-wardrobe tumbled on the floor, bedclothes strewn everywhere-all the hallmarks of a fight, or a burglary, or something. But where in my room there's another door and then a cramped bathroom, here there's a hole. A hole with lights on the other side of it that cast sharp shadows across the damaged furniture. Stars, harsh and bright against the darkness of a flat, alien landscape shrouded in twilight.
I pull my head back and gasp into the woman's ear: "Get everybody out of here! Tell them it's a fire! I'll get help!" She's half doubled-over from the wind but she nods and stumbles toward the staircase. I turn to follow, shocked, half-dazed. Where the hell have the watchers gone? We're supposed to be under surveillance, dammit! I look back toward the bedroom for a final glance through that opening that shouldn't be there. The wind batters at my back, a gale howling past my ears. The opening is the size of a large pair of doors, ragged bits of lath and wallpaper showing where the small gate ripped through the wall. Beyond it, rolling ground, deep cold; a valley with a still lake beneath the icy, unwinking stars that form no constellations I can recognize. Something dim frosts the sky; at first I think it's a cloud, but then I recognise the swirl-the arms of a giant spiral galaxy raised above a dim landscape not of this world.
I'm freezing, the wind is trying to rip me through the doorway and carry me into the alien landscape-and there's no sign of Mo, nor of her abductor. She's in there somewhere, that's for sure. Whoever, whatever opened it was waiting for her to go to bed when we came back to the hotel. They left fragments of their geometry inscribed in bloody runes on the walls and floor. They'll have planned this, taken her for their own purposes-
A hand grabs my arm. I jerk round: it's Alan, looking just as much like a schoolteacher as ever, wearing an expression that says the headmaster is angry. His other hand is wrapped around the grips of a very large pistol. He bends close and yells, "Let's get the fuck out of here!"
No argument. He pulls me toward the fire door and we make our way down the stairs, shocked and frostbitten. The wind quietens behind us as we rush down to the ground floor, all the way to the bar where Angleton is waiting to be briefed.