Now the cultists around me are breathing faster, raising their voices higher, trying to drown out the phantom sighs and moans of a thousand dead and withered seducers. I try and keep to my own chant, but it’s hard to focus on suicide when all around you the ghosts of gluttony sleep so lightly.
There is a huge bed at the center of the well of mattresses: a four-poster, canopied in rich black brocade, ebony uprights supporting a drapery as ornately swagged as any Victorian hearse, with a huge chest sitting in front of its footboard. The bed alone is wide enough to accommodate half a dozen-not sleepers, I realize-although only two bodies lie there now, curled in fetal death, close to one side.
As the singers continue, two of Iris’s minions walk up to the bed. They raise the quilt piled against the footboard, covering the mummified occupants; then they take hold of cords dangling from the base of each post and attach manacles to them.
“No,” I say. “No!” Then I try to bite the hand that’s reaching in front of my mouth with a gag.
“Mummy said not to hurt you unnecessarily,” Jonquil explains. “So open wide, or-” Her other hand grabs my crotch and squeezes. I gasp in pain. Bitch. “Good boy!”
When they dump me on the counterpane a cloud of stinking dust billows out in all directions, hanging so thick in the air that I spasm and sneeze. It takes six of them to hold me down and fasten the manacles, and I nearly faint when they extend my right arm-the morphine must be wearing off. Everything blurs for a few seconds. I look up at the inside of the canopy over the bed, and it seems to me as if I’ve seen it before-seen it in my mind’s eye a minute ago, in fact.
This isn’t a bed: it’s an altar. It used to belong to a fertility cult. It’s been used for sex magic. What do I know about sex magic, and revenants, and summonings? Think!
The chorus take up positions around the bed, continuing their chant; Iris walks around it slowly, tracing a design using a small fortune in granulated silver tipped from an antique powder horn. Then she walks to the chest at the foot of the bed and waits while two more cultists produce the varied tools and ingredients for a summoning: knives, mirrors, unpleasantly molded black candles, a laptop computer, and bookshelf speakers. She is out of my sight most of the time, unless I lift my head-it’s hard-but I gradually realize something else: she’s using the chest at the foot of… the original altar, as her own summoning altar. They’ve put me on the other cult’s summoning grid.
Iris is an SSO 6(A)-middle management in the administrative branch-because she’s not actually very talented at magic. And I’m in the position of a man, sentenced to hang, whose inexperienced executioners have temporarily sat him in the electric chair while they work out how to tie a noose. Except magic doesn’t work like that. My shoulders begin to shake. I try to get a grip on myself. A few seconds pass. I open my eyes and stare at the headboard, and flex my right arm until I nearly black out. Then, when I’m awake again, I start to subvocalize again, repeating the black theorem I started outside the door to this place.
Iris begins to chant, in Aramaic I think-something containing disturbingly familiar names. I tune her out and focus on my own liquid, gurgling subvocalization.
They strapped me to the electric chair, but they didn’t notice I was wearing a suicide belt…
A BLACK BMW CRUISES DOWN A TREE – LINED COUNTRY LANE IN the late evening dusk. To one side, there’s a fence, behind which trees block out the view. To the other side, there’s a two-meter-high brick wall, the masonry old and crumbling, with trees behind it-but spaced more widely than the woods opposite. A black minivan follows the BMW saloon, which has slowed to well below the national speed limit.
“It’s around here, somewhere,” says the driver, frowning at the brightly glowing rectangle of card on his dash.
“It’s getting weaker,” says Panin. “I think”-he glances sidelong out of the window-“our man is on the other side of that wall.”
At just that moment, the wall falls away from the road, as a driveway opens out. Dmitry needs no urging to turn into it; the trailing minivan overshoots, but the road is empty, and its driver reverses back up to the drive.
There’s a gatehouse, like that of a stately home, and a black cast-iron gate topped with spikes. There are no lights in the house, and the gate is chained shut. Panin points at it. “Get that open.”
“Sir!” The front seat passenger gets out and approaches the gate. It takes him less than a minute to crack the padlock and unwrap the chain; he waves the small convoy through, then leans in the BMW’s open door as it creeps alongside. “Do you want it closing or securing, sir?”
“Both.” The guard disappears again, the car door closing as the driver slowly accelerates along what appears to be a narrow and unlit wood-land road. The driver spares him a glance in the wing mirror. He’s the lucky man: all he has to do is stand guard over a gate tonight. What could go wrong?
“Brookwood cemetery,” Panin says quietly. He uses a pen torch to read his gazetteer. “The London necropolis, built in the nineteenth century. Eight square kilometers of graves and memorial chapels. Who would have thought it?” He clicks his tongue quietly and puts the torch away.
“What do you want me to do, sir?” asks Dmitry.
“Drive. Headlights off. Follow the card until you see a chapel ahead of you, then pull over.”
Dmitry nods, and switches off the headlights. The BMW has an infrared camera, projecting an image on the windscreen: he drives slowly. Behind them, the minivan douses its lights. Its driver has no such built-in luxuries-but military night-vision goggles are an adequate substitute.
Panin pulls a walkie-talkie from the back of the seat in front of him and keys it. There’s an answering burst of static.
“Rook One to Knight One. Closing on board now. We’ll dismount before proceeding. Over.”
“Knight One, understood, over.”
The big saloon ghosts along the winding way, past tree-shadowed gravestones and monuments that loom out of the darkness and fade behind with increasing frequency. Then it slows. Dmitry has spotted a car parked ahead, nearside wheels on the grassy verge, its tires and exhaust glowing luminous by infrared: it hasn’t been there long.
“That will be the target,” says Panin.
Dmitry kills the engine, and they coast to a silent halt. Doors open. Panin walks around the BMW, to stand behind it as the minivan pulls up behind. More doors open. Men climb out of the minivan: wiry men, clad in dark fatigues and balaclava helmets, moving fast. They deploy around the vehicles, weapons ready. Panin pulls his own goggles on over his thinning hair and flicks the switch. Then he drags a tiny, grotesque matrioshka doll on a loop of hemp string from one pocket and holds it high. Seen by twilight it appears to have a beard: and the beard is rippling. “Wards, everyone,” he says softly. “This is the target. Clear it. Spare none but the English agent-and don’t spare him either, if there’s any doubt.” He slides the loop of string over his head. “Sergeant Murametz, this is your show now.”
Murametz nods, then waves his men towards the building they can dimly discern in the distance. The Spetsnaz vanish into the night and shadows, searching for guards. Dmitry turns to his boss. “Sir-what now?”
“Now-we wait.” Panin frowns and checks his watch. “I hope we got here in time,” he murmurs. “We must finish before James and his men arrive.”
ANGLETON TURNS HIS HEAD SIDEWAYS TO WATCH MO. SHE LEANS against her seat back in the control room of the OCCULUS truck, eyes closed and face drawn. She clutches the violin case with both hands, as if it’s a lifesaver; the fingers of her left hand look bruised.
“I’m not infallible,” he repeats quietly.
She doesn’t open her eyes, but she shakes her head. “I didn’t say you were.”