“Yes? Yes?” he demands busily.
“Connecting you now, sir…” More static. The handset doesn’t lead to a phone, mobile or otherwise, but to a TETRA terminal dedicated to OCCULUS’s use: an early nineties digital radio technology, horribly obsolete, but one that the government has been locked into by a thirty-year contract. “Dr. Angleton is on the line.”
“Ah, James! Are you there?”
“Major Barnes?”
“Yes, it’s me! Any word on our boy?”
“We can find him.” Angleton’s voice is clear. Barnes sits up unconsciously expectant.
Farther back in the OCCULUS truck, a man wearing a bright yellow HAZMAT suit glances up from the H &K MP5 he’s checking for the third time. Another HAZMAT-suited soldier, shorter and stockier, knuckles him in the back. “Hey, Scary, nobody ever tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?”
“Sorry, sir.”
Major Barnes ignores them: Angleton is talking. “I have a preliminary fix and I’m on my way over right now. I should be with you in about five minutes. Once I’m on location I can guide you to the target in person.”
“Are you sure that’s advisable?”
“No, but I’ll leave tactical command up to you; the problem is, I don’t have an exact fix to within less than a hundred meters. I need to be on the spot.”
Major Barnes swears silently. “All right, we’ll have to work with that. What exactly do you think we’re facing?”
“No idea,” Angleton says cheerfully, “but whatever we’re looking at, it’s been set up by a cell of the Black Brethren. If we’re lucky it’ll prove to be a safe house with just a couple of residents. If not… remember the Scouts’ motto?”
“Be prepared,” Barnes echoes, wearing an expression of pained martyrdom. “Dib dib dib and all that. I hope this isn’t going to go pear-shaped…”
“The good news is, I’ve raised a SCORPION STARE control order. So once we know what we’re looking at, you should have no trouble containing the outbreak.”
“How wonderful,” Barnes says sourly. “Are you anticipating mass civilian casualties?”
“Hopefully not.” Angleton pauses. “What I’m hoping for is low-hanging fruit. Ah, with you in a moment-”
Another police car pulls up, lights flickering; as Major Barnes glances out of the truck’s side window, he sees the rear door open and Angleton unfolding himself. He looks back at the HAZMAT-wearers behind him. “Showtime coming up. Sitrep, Jim?”
Warrant Officer Howe puts his carbine down and glances back at the seven other members of his half-size troop: “We’re ready, sir.” His unspoken question-ready for what?-hangs in the air, but he’s been working with Barnes for long enough that he doesn’t need to say it aloud.
“Angleton’s coming up,” says the major. “So look sharp.”
The door opens and Angleton steps inside the truck. He smiles, cadaverous. “Ah, gentlemen. I wish I could say it was good to see you again; we really need to stop meeting like this.” That gets a chuckle from Sergeant Spice. Angleton walks forward towards Major Barnes’s area, his head bowed to avoid the overhead equipment racks. “We’re very close,” he says quietly. “I can smell it.”
Barnes knows better than to roll his eyes. Dealing with the spooks often involves playing nursemaid-to a particularly paranoid witchfindergeneral, in this case. “If you could just tell the driver where to go, sir?”
“Certainly.” Angleton squeezes past the back of Barnes’s chair, and slides into the front passenger seat.
The driver glances at him sidelong. “Sir?”
“Kill the blues, then pull out. I want you to drive up the high street slowly. I’ll tell you when to pull over.”
The truck lurches heavily off the curb, bouncing on its suspension as the driver pulls it through a U-turn-just missing being T-boned by an oblivious minivan driver, her mobile glued to her ear. It rumbles back towards the Richmond Road intersection.
Angleton’s nostrils flare. “Keep going.” He peers through the windscreen, searching. The driver tries to ignore his hands-he’s fiddling with something small that seems to bend the light around it. “Slow down, it’s just ahead. On our right. There-no, keep going. That was it. That building… it’s in the library.” He swears under his breath, words of painful power that make the driver wince.
“You want us to raid a public library?” Major Barnes is incredulous. “What are we looking for, an overdue book?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Angleton sounds weary. “Gentlemen, I believe we may have been led on a wild-goose chase. I am tracking a missing classified document. I was expecting it to lead us to a nest of cultists, but it seems they’ve learned how to use a photocopier and this”-his over-the-shoulder wave conveys world-weary regret-“is their idea of a joke. Unfortunately the document in question is classified, and we can’t ignore it. We can’t ignore the possibility of an ambush, either, but at least it ought to be easy enough to evacuate. Alan, would you mind contacting the local fire control? I think a snap inspection of the library sprinkler system ought to get our feet under the table.”
Barnes nods, wordlessly, and starts to call the fire-control room on one of the other handsets. In the back, Warrant Officer Howe nods at his men: “Strip.” The HAZMAT suits come off, to reveal regular Fire Brigade overalls underneath. “Okay, as soon as we get the go-ahead…”
Angleton waits tensely in the front passenger seat, fidgeting with something small and dark. Nobody is watching him. But an observer might think, from his behavior, that he’s worried they’re too late.
WHILE ANGLETON AND THE OCCULUS TEAM ARE GETTING READY to raid a public library in search of a missing document, Mo is midway through her second glass of lemonade in a wine bar with the man who would be Panin, and I am phasing in and out of consciousness, in airless darkness and pain, in the boot of a speeding car.
Regrets: I have them.
For instance, I never wrote to my MP to express my displeasure at the widespread deployment of sleeping policemen around the capital. It never occurred to me to do so: Mo and I don’t own a car, and speed bumps are a rarely sighted problem in our world. But right now I am learning to hate the things with a livid passion usually reserved for broken software installers and lying politicians. My abductors appear to be incapable of slowing for obstructions, and every time we bounce over a speed cushion or crunch down off a raised speed table or swerve through a chicane I take the full force of it on my right arm. That goatfucking cannibal cultist arsehole Julian packed me in the boot damaged side down; I don’t have the strength, the room, or the leverage to turn myself over. I swear, when I get out of this thing I’m going to run for mayor, and the first item on my manifesto will be to order the transport planners to scrape the fucking things off every road in London with their tongues. Second item on the agenda: making it legal to shoot any cultists seen in the city after sundown with a bow and arrow. Sort of like that bylaw York has, the one about Welshmen. Or was it Scotsmen? Where was I-
Oh. I blacked out again. This is bad. My wrist feels damp… think I’m bleeding again.
They got my phone. I don’t have a ward. If I’m lucky Mo or Angleton got my messages and they know I’m in trouble. (If Angleton finds my phone I’ll be in trouble. How much trouble? How much do you think-running classified software on an unauthorized system?) How long will it take them to figure out I’m missing? What time is it, anyway? How long have the Goatfuckers had me? Hey, why am I scrunching up-
Fuck. I hate roundabouts.
When I’m mayor of London I’m going to require all cars to have transparent boot lids, on pain of-on pain of pain. So what if you can’t leave your shopping in the car while it’s parked? Fuck ’em, why won’t they think of the kidnap victims? Oof. That was a bad one.