(That’s the trouble with this job. Sometimes it chews you up and spits you out-literally.)
Mo came back the next weekend, too. She says she’s trying to get a week’s compassionate leave, but the fallout from Iris’s actions has been beyond earthshaking. We’ll see.
I’VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS REPORT FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS now.
This being the Village, and an internet-free zone, I’m allowed to use a computer and dictation software-although it’s had its CD drive and wifi chipset removed, the case is welded shut, and it’s padlocked to an oak desk that weighs approximately half as much again as Angleton’s Memex. It beats the manual typewriter hands down, but when I asked if I could take it home with me, the security officer barely managed to conceal his sneer.
I suppose there are some loose ends I should tie up, so here goes:
We never did find out exactly what happened to any of Panin’s men apart from Alexei, or to Panin himself: you should read my speculations with more than a pinch of salt. I can’t even be certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that Panin was behind the theft of the violin report, although theft of state secrets is the sort of thing that the Thirteenth Directorate’s parent agency traditionally excelled at. I’m assuming that the elite Spetsnaz infiltration troops assigned to an occult warfare department probably stood more of a chance of escaping alive than the cultists: but we didn’t account for all of them, either. The scene at Brookwood the next morning was indescribable. I’ve seen the pictures. It was easy enough to close down the cemetery-police roadblocks, reports about an illegal rave and graveyard vandalism, a handful of D-notices to gag the more annoying local reporters-but then they had to do something with the bodies. The feeders raised just about everything that wasn’t totally dismembered and disarticulated. In the end, they had to bring in bulldozers and dig trenches. They identified some of the cultists-but not Jonquil the Sloane Ranger, or her boyfriend Julian.
I don’t think Brookwood will reopen for a long time.
Brains has been given a good talking-to, and is being subjected to the Security Theater Special Variety Show for breaching about sixteen different regulations by installing beta software on an employee’s personal phone. Reminding Oscar-Oscar that if he hadn’t done so they’d have lost the Eater of Souls to a cultist infiltrator appears to be futile. Right now, everyone in Admin has joined in the world’s biggest arse-kicking circle dance, except possibly for Angleton, who is shielding me from the worst of it. Because they haven’t forgotten that I’ve been a naughty boy too-if it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t have needed all those bulldozers at Brook-field, would they? Although Angleton has had a measure of success in pointing out to certain overenthusiastic disciplinarians that if it wasn’t for the feeders I summoned, they’d have had the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh trying to open up a long distance call to the Sleeper in the Pyramid, paid in the coin of London ’s dead.
AS FOR THE MAN HIMSELF-CALL HIM TEAPOT, CALL HIM Angleton, call him Sir-I haven’t seen him since I woke up here, and I won’t be seeing him until the Auditors hear my final report and I go back on active duty. But I have this to say:
I used to think he scared the shit out of me, but now I know better. I know what he’s like, from the inside. The effects of Iris’s botched binding faded fast, and I probably only borrowed a tiny fraction of his power. I didn’t know how to use it properly, either. But I have been destiny-entangled before, and I know what it was like then, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Angleton was in a flatlined coma for the entire duration of my funny turn.
I also learned this much: Angleton isn’t bound to the Laundry by the ramshackle geas that Fuller and his fellow eccentric occultists threw together in the 1930s. He’s a free agent-or at least as free as any of us are, be we beasts, men, or gods. The reason he puts up with us? I don’t know. It may be long habit-he’s lived the life of an Englishman for so long now that he self-identifies as such. But I have a theory.
Angleton knows what’s coming. He knows exactly what is going to bleed through the walls of reality, when the stars burn down from the pitiless heavens and our ever-thinking numbers begin to corrode the structure of reality. And he believes we’re his best hope for his own survival.
Like I said: the only god I believe in is coming back. And when he arrives, I’ll be waiting with a shotgun.
GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS, ACRONYMS, AND ORGANIZATIONS
AIVD Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (General Intelligence and Security Service) [Netherlands]
BA British Airways [UK]
BLACK CHAMBER Cryptanalysis agency officially disbanded in 1929 (secretly retasked with occult intelligence duties) [US]
CESG Communications-Electronics Security Group (division within GCHQ) [UK]
CIA Central Intelligence Agency [US]
CMA Computer Misuse Act (law governing hacking) [UK]
COTS Cheap, Off The Shelf (computer kit; procurement term) [US/UK]
DEA Drug Enforcement Administration [US]
DERA Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (privatized as QinetiQ) [UK]
DGSE Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure [France]
DIA Defense Intelligence Agency [US]
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation [US]
FO Foreign Office [UK]
FSB Federal Security Service (formerly known as KGB) [Russia]
GCHQ Government Communications HQ (equivalent to NSA) [UK]
GCSE General Certificate of Secondary Education (high school qualification; not to be confused with GCHQ) [UK]
GRU Russian Military Intelligence [Russia]
JIC Joint Intelligence Committee [UK]
KCMG Knight-Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George (honors service overseas or in connection with foreign or Commonwealth affairs) [UK]
KGB Committee for State Security (renamed FSB in 1991) [Russia]
THE LAUNDRY Formerly SOE Q Department (spun off as a separate organization in 1945) [UK]
MI5 National Security Service (also known as DI5) [UK]
MI6 Secret Intelligence Service (also known as SIS, DI6) [UK]
NEST Nuclear Emergency Support Team [US]
NKVD Historical predecessor organization to KGB (renamed in 1947) [USSR/Russia]
NSA National Security Agency (equivalent to GCHQ) [US]
OBE Order of the British Empire (awarded mainly to civilians and service personnel for public service or other distinctions) [UK]
OCCULUS Occult Control Coordination Unit Liaison, Unconventional Situations [UK/NATO]
ONI Office of Naval Intelligence [US]
OSA Official Secrets Act (law governing official secrets) [UK]
OSS Office of Strategic Services (disbanded in 1945/remodeled as CIA) [US]
Q DIVISION Division within the Laundry associated with R &D [UK]
QINETIQ See DERA [UK]
RIPA Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (law governing communications interception) [UK]
SAS Special Air Service (British Army special forces) [UK]
SBS Special Boat Service (Royal Marines special forces) [UK]
SIS See MI6 [UK]
SOE Special Operations Executive (equivalent to OSS, officially disbanded in 1945; see also the Laundry) [UK]
TLA Three Letter Acronym [All]
Charles Stross
