rec room or wherever the hell it is they'd put me in to sleep things off. I open the door and indeed find a washroom of sorts, barely bigger than an airliner's toilet but beautifully finished. I take a leak, gulp down half a pint or so of water using the plastic cup so helpfully provided, then spend about a minute sitting down and trying not to throw up. **Ramona, are you there?** If she is, I can't hear her. I take stock: my phone's missing, as is my neck-chain ward, my wristwatch, and my shoulder holster. The bow tie is dangling from my collar, but they weren't considerate enough to remove my uncomfortable toe-pinching shoes. I raise an eyebrow at the guy in the mirror and he pulls a mournful face and shrugs: no help there. So I wash my face, try to comb my hair with my fingertips, and go back outside to face the music.
The gorilla is waiting for me outside. McMurray stands in front of the closed door to the rec room. The gorilla beckons to me then turns and marches down the corridor, so I play nice and tag along, with McMurray taking up the rear. The corridor is punctuated by frequent watertight bulkheads with annoying lintels to step over, and there's a shortage of portholes to show where we are: someone's obviously done a first-rate coach-building job, but this ship wasn't built as a yacht and its new owner clearly places damage control ahead of aesthetics. We pass some doors, ascend a very steep staircase, and then I figure we're into Owner Territory because the metal decking gives way to teak parquet and hand-woven carpets, and up here they have widened the corridors to accommodate the fat-cats: or maybe it's just that they built the owner's quarters where they used to stash the Klub-N cruise missiles and the magazine for the forward 100mm gun turret.
Klub-N vertical launch cells are not small, and the owner's lounge is about three meters longer than my entire house. It appears to be wallpapered in cloth-of-gold, which for the most part is mercifully concealed behind ninetycentimeter Sony displays wearing priceless antique picture frames. Right now they're all switched off, or displaying a rolling Screensaver depicting the TLA Corporation logo. The furniture's equally lacking in the taste department. There's a sofa that probably escaped from Versailles one jump ahead of the revolutionary fashion police, a bookcase full of selfhelp business titles (A Defendant's Guide to the International Criminal Court, The Twelve-Step Sociopath, Globalization for Asset-Strippers), and an antique sideboard that abjectly fails to put the rock into baroque. I find myself looking for a furtive cheap print of dogs playing poker or a sad-eyed clown — anything to break the monotony of the collision between bad taste and serious money.
Then I notice the Desk.
Desks are to executives what souped-up Mitsubishi Colts with low-profile alloys, metal-flake paint jobs, and extraloud, chrome-plated exhaust pipes are to chavs; they're a big swinging dick, the proxy they use to proclaim their sense of self-importance. If you want to understand an executive, you study his desk. Billington's Desk demands a capital letter.
Like a medieval monarch's throne, it is designed to proclaim to the poor souls who are called before it: the owner of this piece of furniture is above you. Someday I'll write a text book about personality profiling through possessions; but for now let's Just say this example is screaming 'megalomaniac!' at me. Billington may have an ego the size of an aircraft carrier but he's not so vain as to leave his desk empty (that would mean he was pretending to lead a life of leisure) or to cover it with meaningless gewgaws (indicative of clownish triviality).
This is the desk of a serious executive. There's a functionallooking (watch me work!') PC to one side, and a phone and a halogen desk light at the other. One of the other items dotting it gives me a nasty shock when I recognize the design inscribed on it: millions wouldn't, but the owner of this hunk of furniture is using a Belphegor- Mandelbrot Type Two containment matrix as a mouse mat, which makes him either a highly skilled adept or a suicidal maniac. Yup, that pretty much confirms the diagnosis. This is the desk of a diseased mind, hugely ambitious prone to taking insanely dangerous risks. He's not ashamed of boasting about it — he clearly believes in better alpha-primate dominance displays through carpentry.
McMurray gestures me to halt on the carpet in front of the Desk. 'Wait here, the boss will be along in a minute.' He gestures at a skeletal contraption of chromed steel and thin, black leather that only Le Corbusier could have mistaken for a chair: 'Have a seat.'
I sit down gingerly, half-expecting steel restraints to flash out from concealed compartments and lock around my wrists. My head aches and I feel hot and shivery. I glance at McMurray, trying for casual rather than anxious. The Laundry field operations manual is notably short on advice for how to comport one's self when being held prisoner aboard a mad billionaire necromancer's yacht, other than the usual stern admonition to keep receipts for all expenses incurred in the line of duty. 'Where's Ramona?' I ask.
'I don't remember saying you were free to ask questions.'
He stares at me from behind his steel-rimmed spectacles until icicles form on the back of my neck. 'Ellis has a specific requirement for an individual of her ... type. I'm a specialist in managing such entities.' A pause. 'While you remain entangled, she will be manageable. And as long as she remains manageable, there will be no need to dispose of her.'
I swallow. My tongue is dry and I can hear my pulse in my ears. This wasn't supposed to happen; she was supposed to be back in the safe house, acting as a relay! McMurray nods at me knowingly. 'Don't underestimate your own usefulness to us, Mr. Howard,' he says. 'You're not just a useful lever.'
There's a discreet buzz from his belt pager: 'Mr. Billington is on his way now.'
The door behind the Desk opens.
'Ah, Mr. B — Howard.' Billington walks in and plants himself firmly down on the black carbon-fiber Aeron chair behind the Desk. From the set of his shoulders and the tiny smile playing around his lips he's in an expansive mood. 'I'm so pleased you could be here this evening. I gather my wife's party wasn't entirely to your taste'
I stare at him. He's an affable, self-satisfied bastard in a dinner jacket and for a moment I feel a nearly uncontrollable urge to punch him in the face. I manage to hold it in check: the gorilla behind me will ensure I'd only get one chance, and the consequences would hurt Ramona as much as they'd hurt me. Still, it's a tempting thought. 'I have a bid for your auction,' I say, very carefully keeping my face straight. 'This abduction was unnecessary, and may cause my employers to reconsider their very generous offer.'
Billington laughs. Actually, it's more of a titter, high-pitched and unnerving. 'Come now, Mr. Howard! Do you really think I don't already know about your boss's paltry little two-billion-pound bait-worm? Please! I'm not stupid.
I know all about you and your colleague Ms. Random, and the surveillance team in the safe house run by Jack Griffin.
I even remember your boss, James, from back before he became quite so spectral and elevated. I know much more than you give me credit for.' He pauses. 'In fact, I know everything.'
Whoops. If he's telling the truth, that would put a very bad complexion on things. 'Then what am I doing here?' I ask, hoping like hell that he's bluffing. 'I mean, if you're omnipotent and omniscient then just what is the point of abducting me — not to mention Ramona — and dragging us aboard your yacht?' (That's a guess about Ramona, but I don't see where else he might be keeping her.) 'Don't tell me you haven't got better things to do with your time than gloat; you're trying to close a multi-billion-dollar auction, aren't you?' He just looks at me with those peculiar, slotted lizard-eyes and I have a sudden cold conviction that maybe making money is the last thing on his mind right now. 'You're here for several reasons,' he says, quite agreeably.
'Hair of the dog?' He raises an eyebrow, and the gorilla hurries over to the sideboard.
'I wouldn't mind a glass of water,' I confess 'Hah.' He nods to himself. 'The archetype hasn't taken full effect yet, I see.'
'Which archetype'
McMurray clears his throat. 'Boss, do I need to know this'
Billington casts him a fish-eyed stare: 'No, I don't think you do. Quick thinking.'
'I'll just go and check in on Ramona then, shall I? Then I'll go polish the binnacle and check for frigging in the rigging or something.' McMurray slithers out through the door at high speed Billington nods thoughtfully.
'He's a smart subordinate.' He raises an eyebrow at me.
'That's half the problem, you know.'
'Half what problem?'
'The problem of running a tight ship.' The gorilla hands Billington a glass of whisky, then plants a glass full of mineral water in front of me before returning to his position by the door. 'If they're smart enough to be useful they get ideas about making themselves indispensable — ideas about getting above their station, as you Brits would put it.
If they're too dumb to be useful they're a drain on your management time. All corporations are an economy
