The Fuller Memorandum

THE SECOND DOOR ON THE LEFT OPENS ONTO A SMOOTH-FLOORED tunnel lined in white glazed tiles and illuminated by overhead fluorescent tubes of a kind that are sufficiently familiar that, when I reach the end of the tunnel and step through the gray metal door (which locks behind me with a muffled click) I am unsurprised to find myself in a passage between two tube platforms.

Half an hour and a change of line later, I swipe my Oyster card and surface, blinking at the afternoon sun. I pat the inside pocket where I secreted the sheaf of papers that Angleton gave me. And then I head back to my office in the New Annexe, where I very pointedly dial open my secure document safe and install those papers, then lock it and go home, secure in the knowledge of the first half of a job well done.

(Like I said: fatal accidents never happen because of just one mistake.)

11. CRIME SCENES

I DON’T FUNCTION WELL IN THE SMALL HOURS OF THE MORNING. I sleep like a log, and I have difficulty pulling my wits about me if something wakes me in the pre-dawn dark.

So it takes me a few seconds to sit up and grab the bedside phone when it begins to snarl for attention. I fumble the handset close to my face: “Whuuu—” I manage to drone, thinking, If this is a telesales call, I’ll plead justifiable homicide, as Mo spasms violently in a twist of the duvet and rolls over, pulling the bedding off me.

“Bob.” I know that voice. It’s—“Jo here. Code Blue. How soon can you be ready for a pickup?”

I am abruptly awake in an icy-cold drench of sweat. “Five minutes,” I croak. “What’s up?”

“I want you in here stat, and I’m sending a car. Be ready in five minutes.” She sounds uncertain . . . afraid? “This line isn’t secure, so save your questions.”

“Okay.” The phrase this had better be good doesn’t even reach my larynx: declaring Code Blue is the sort of thing that attracts the Auditors’ attention. “Bye.” I put the phone down.

“What was that?” says Mo.

“That was a Code Blue.” I swing my feet over the edge of the bed and fish for yesterday’s discarded socks. “There’s a car calling for me in five minutes.”

“Shit . . .” Mo rolls over the other way and buries her face in a pillow. “Am I wanted?” Her voice, muffled, trails away.

“Just me.” I paw through an open drawer for pants. “It’s Jo Sullivan. At four in the morning.”

“She’s with Oscar-Oscar, isn’t she?”

“Yup.” Pants: on. Tee shirt: on. Trousers: next in queue.

“You’d better go.” She sounds serious. “Phone me the instant you hear something.”

I glance at the alarm. “It’s twenty to five.”

“I don’t mind.” She pulls the bedding into shape. “Take care.”

“And you,” I say, as I head downstairs, carrying my holstered pistol.

I’m standing in the front hall when blue and red strobes light up the window glass above the door. I open it in the face of a cop. “Mr. Howard?” she asks.

“That’s me.” I hold up my warrant card and her eyes age a little.

“Come with me, please,” she says, and opens the rear door for me. I strap myself in and we’re off for another strobe-lit taxi ride through the wilds of South London, speeding alarmingly down narrow shuttered streets and careening around roundabouts in the gray pre-dawn light until, after a surprisingly short time, we pull up outside the staff entrance to a certain store.

The door is open. Jo is waiting for me. One look at her face tells me it’s bad. Angleton warned me: This is where it starts. I tense. “What’s happened?” I ask.

“Come this way.” Jo leads me up the stairwell. The lights are on, which is abnormal, and I hear footsteps— not the steady shuffle of the night staff, but boots and raised voices. Something in the air makes me think of a kicked anthill.

We head past reception where a couple of blue-suited security men are standing guard over a stapler and six paper clips, then back along the corridor past Iris’s corner office, then round the bend to—

“Fuck,” I say, unable to contain myself. My office door is closed. But I can see the interior, because there’s a gigantic hole in the door, as if someone hit it with a wrecking ball. (Except a wrecking ball would leave rough jagged edges of splintered wood, while the rim of this particular hole looks oddly melted.) The interior isn’t much better; an avalanche of paper and scraps of broken metal are strewn across half an overturned desk. A thin blue glow clings patchily to some of the wreckage, fading slowly even as I watch. “What happened?”

“Am hoping you tell us.” It’s Boris, bags under his eyes and an expression as dark as midnight on the winter solstice. When did he get back? Wasn’t he doing something overseas connected with BLOODY BARON . . . ?

“What have you done, Bob?” Jo grabs my left elbow. “First a civilian FATACC, now this. What are you into?”

I blink stupidly at the destruction. “My secure document safe, is it . . . ?”

She shakes her head. “We won’t know until we go inside. It’s still active.” I feel a thin prickling on the back of my neck. Demonic intruders have been at work, summoned to retrieve something. Angleton was right, I realize.

“What did you have in your safe?”

“I’m not sure you’re cleared—”

Boris clears his throat. “Is cleared, Bob. I will clear her. What was in safe? What attracted attention of burglars in night?”

I squint through the hole in the door. “I had documents relating to several codeword projects in there,” I say. “The stacks can probably reconstruct my withdrawal record, and once it’s safe to go in there we can work out what is missing.”

“Bob, you went to the archives in person yesterday.” Jo tightens her grip on my elbow, painfully tight. “What did you withdraw most recently? Tell us!”

Truth and consequences time. “I asked for a copy of the Fuller Memorandum,” I tell her, which is entirely true and correct: “I was following up something Angleton told me to do a while ago.” Which is also entirely correct, and the most misleading thing I’ve said in front of witnesses all year.

“Fuller Memo—” I see a flicker of recognition on Boris’s face. “Tell me, when you go home last night, is Fuller Memorandum in safe?”

I nod. I don’t trust my tongue at this point because, as the man who used to be president said, it all depends on what you mean by the word “is.”

Jo stares at Boris. “What classification level are we talking about?” she asks.

Boris doesn’t answer at once. He’s staring at me, and if looks could kill, I’d be a tiny pile of ash right now. “Does Angleton say you are to the memorandum read?” he asks.

“Yup. Took me a while to track it down,” I extemporize. “So I left it in the safe overnight; I was going to look at it today.” All of which is truthful enough that I will happily repeat it in front of an Audit Panel, knowing that if I tell a lie in front of them the blood will boil in my veins and I won’t die—

Boris looks at Jo and nods, minutely. “Am thanking you for calling me. This is mess.”

“What was in the memo that’s so red-hot?” I ask, pushing my luck, because somewhere in all the fuss of expediting Angleton’s little scheme—taking the forgery he’d prepared and inserting it into the archives, then withdrawing it and planting the bait in my office safe—I hadn’t gotten round to asking him just what the original was about.

“Memorandum is control binding scripture for asset called Eater of Souls,” Boris says, and strangely he refuses to meet my eyes. “Codeword is TEAPOT. Consequences of loss—unspeakable.”