The Fuller Memorandum

but also to ask what the hell is going on? And this business about Angleton—”

“You saw him the day before yesterday.”

“Yes.” I pause. “He’s still missing. Right?”

She nods.

“Do you want me to look round his office? In case he left anything?” Iris sniffs. “No.” I think she’s a poor liar. “But if you know anything . . . ?”

“I don’t like being kept in the dark.” Coming over all snippy on the person who is my nominal manager isn’t clever, I know, but at this point I’m running low on self-restraint. “It seems to me that a whole bunch of rather bad things are happening right now, and that smells to me like enemy action.” I’m echoing Andy. “Whoever the enemy is, in this context. Right, fine, you keep on playing games, that’s all right by me—except that it isn’t, really, because one of the games in question just followed my wife home and tried to kill her. Us.” I point to the row of butterfly sutures on my forehead, and to her credit, she winces. “Remember, it costs.”

“You’ve made your point,” she says quietly, sitting down behind her desk. “Bob, if it was just up to me, I’d tell you—but it isn’t. There’s a committee meeting tomorrow, though, and I’ll raise your concerns. Ask me again on Monday and I should be able to pull you in on the BLOODY BARON committee, and at least add you to the briefing list for CLUB ZERO. In the meantime, if you don’t mind me asking—what items did Harry sign out to you?”

“He’s processing them now.” I enumerate. “We’ve also had our household security upgraded, in case there’s a repeat visit, although I think that’s unlikely. We’re alerted now, so I’d expect any follow-ups to happen out in public: it’s riskier for them than it was, but right now the house is a kill zone so if they want Mo badly enough they’ll have to do it in the street.”

“Ouch.” She leans back in her chair and rests one hand on her computer keyboard. “Listen. If you’re really sure you want an alarm, I’ll sign for one. But . . . what Harry said? Listen to him. It’s not necessarily what you need. The gun—well, you’re certified. Certificated.” She gives a moue of annoyance at the mangled language we have to use: “Whatever. Just keep it out of sight of the public and don’t lose track of it. As for the rest—”

She exhales: “There has been an uptick in meetings in public places conducted by three junior attaches at the Russian embassy who our esteemed colleagues in the Dustbin”—she means the Security Service, popularly but incorrectly known as MI5—“have been keeping track of for some time. It’s hard to be sure just which organization any given diplomat with covert connections is working for, but they initially thought these guys were FSB controllers. However, we’ve had recent indications that they’re actually working for someone else—the Thirteenth Directorate, probably. We don’t know exactly what’s going on, but they seem to be looking for something, or someone.”

“And then there was the Amsterdam business,” I prod.

Another sharp look: “You weren’t cleared for that.”

“Andy procured a Letter of Release for Mo.” I stare right back at her, bluffing. The I’ll tell you my secrets if you tell me yours tap dance is a tedious occupational hazard in this line of work.

“Well, yes, then.” The bluff works—that, and her ward told her I’m telling the truth about the Letter of Release. “Amsterdam, CLUB ZERO, was indirectly connected.”

“So we’ve got an upswing of activity in the Netherlands and the UK—elsewhere in Europe, too?” I speculate: “Remember I’ve sat in on my share of joint liaison meetings?”

“I can’t comment further until after the steering group meeting tomorrow.” And my bluff falls apart: “I’ve told you everything I can tell you without official sanction, Bob. Get your kit sorted out, clear down your chores, and go home for the weekend. That’s an order! I’ll talk to you on Monday. Hopefully the news will be better by then . . .”

5. LOST IN COMMITTEE

I GO BACK TO HARRY’S PLACE AND COLLECT MY KIT, THEN I catch the bus home, shoulders itching every time it passes a police car. Yes, I’m legally allowed to carry the Glock and its accessories, which are sleeping in my day sac in a combination-locked case. The gun and its charmed holster are supposed to be invisible to anyone who doesn’t carry a Laundry warrant card; but I’ll believe it when I see it. Luckily the bus is not stormed by an armed SO19 unit performing a random check for implausible weapons. I arrive home uneventfully, unpack the gun and place it on the bedroom mantelpiece (which is just to the left of my side of the bed), and go downstairs to sort out supper with Mo.

Friday happens, and then the weekend. I register the JesusPhone: it wants a name, and Mo suggests christening it (if that’s the right word) the NecronomiPod. Her attitude has turned to one of proprietorial interest, if not outright lust: damn it, I am going to have to buy her one.

We do not discuss work at all. We are not doorstepped by zombies, shot at, blown up, or otherwise disturbed, although our next-door neighbor’s teenage son spends a goodly chunk of Saturday evening playing “I Kissed a Girl” so loudly that Mo and I nearly come to blows over the pressing question of how best to respond. I’m arguing for Einsturzende Neubauten delivered over the Speakers of Doom; she’s a proponent of Schoenberg delivered via the Violin that Kills Monsters. In the end we agree on the polite voice of reason delivered via the ears of his parents. I guess we must be growing old.

On Saturday morning, it turns out that we are running low on groceries. “Why not go online and book a delivery from Tesco?” asks Mo. I spend a futile hour struggling with their web server before admitting to myself that my abstruse combination of Firefox plug-ins, security filters, and firewalls (not to mention running on an operating system that the big box retailer’s programmers wouldn’t recognize if it stuck a fork in them) makes this somewhat impractical—by which time we’ve missed the last delivery, so it looks as if we’re going to have to go forth and brave the world on foot. So I cautiously hook the invisi-Glock to my belt for the first time, pull my baggiest jacket down to cover it, and Mo and I hit the road.

Anticlimax. As we trudge home from the supermarket, laden down with carrier bags, I begin to relax slightly: even when my jacket got caught up on the front of a suicide grannie’s shopping trolley, nobody noticed the hardware and started screaming. (This is twenty-first-century England, home of handgun hysteria: they’re not being polite.) “By the way,” Mo comments edgily as we wait to cross a main road, “don’t you think you should be keeping your right hand free?”

I scan the surroundings for feral supernatural wildlife: “If I need my hand the shopping can take its chances.”

“Then don’t you think it’d be better to be carrying the bag with the bread and cheese in that hand, rather than the milk and the jar of pickled cucumbers?”

I swear quietly, try to switch hands, and get the bags inextricably entangled, just as the green man illuminates. We are a cover-free couple for the entire duration of our panicky scurry across the street crossing: “I should have held out for an attack alarm,” I grumble.

“We’ll sort one out on Monday,” Mo says absentmindedly. “Watch the vegetables, dear.”

On Sunday, we’re due to have lunch with my parents, which means catching the tube halfway across London and then rattling way the hell out into suburbia on a commuter line run by a bus company distinguished for their hatred and contempt for rail travelers. I wear the holster, this time keeping my right hand free, and Mo carts her violin case along. Our trains are not ambushed by dragons, suicide bombers, or chthonian tentacle monsters. Frankly, given the quality of the postprandial conversation, this is not a net positive. Mo’s face acquires much the same impassive expressiveness as an irritated Komodo dragon when Mum makes the usual fatuous (and thoughtless) comment about wishing for the patter of tiny feet. We are not, perforce, allowed to discuss our work in the presence of civilians, so we are short of conversational munitions with which to retaliate—they still think I work in computer support, and Mo’s some sort of statistician. By the time we make our excuses and leave I’m thinking that maybe I’d better leave the gun behind on future parental visits.

“Did you enjoy the vegetables?” I ask the steaming vortex of silence beside me as we walk back up the street towards the railway station.

“I thought you were going to roast them at one point.”

“Sorry, I’m chicken.”