The Fuller Memorandum

“N

“Praise Pharaoh!” That’s someone else: a male voice, not Julian. Observe, Orient-okay, you’re tentatively designated Goatfucker #3. “What happened to his arm?”

“Midnight snack, don’t you know,” Julian replies from somewhere near my feet. “Is All-Highest in residence yet?”

“Yes,” says #3. “You are expected.”

“Ooh!” squeals Jonquil. She pokes me in the ribs, harder than necessary: “You’re going to see Mummy now! Isn’t that exciting?”

I realize that a “no” might offend, and keep my yap shut. I’m trying to string together Words of Command for making the undead repeat a behavioral loop-hey, Mummy? Visions of a can-can line of cadavers in windings bounce through my imagination. Fool, they’re going to kill you. Focus! The part of me that’s on-message and plugged-in to this very unpleasant reality game is panicking at the languid detachment that’s stealing over the rest of me. He makes a bid for my lips: “Where… are…?” I hear myself croak.

The lift grinds to a halt and I feel a cool draft as the doors open.

“Brookwood cemetery. Have you been here before? It’s really marvelous! It’s the biggest necropolis in England, it covers more than eight square kilometers and more than a quarter of a million people are buried here! This is our section-it used to belong to the Ancient and Honourable Order of Wheelwrights, back in the eighteen hundreds-”

“Quiet,” says #3. “You shouldn’t tell him this thing.”

“I don’t see why not,” Jonquil says huffily: “It’s not as if he’s going to escape, is it?”

That’s right, remind me I’m doomed, see if I care. Hey, isn’t Brookwood where the Necropolitan line used to terminate? Oh, that figures. The cultists have built their fucking headquarters right on top of the power source for that ley line they trapped me with. And, let’s face it, it’s a nice neighborhood. There isn’t much of a crime problem here, community policing keeps a low profile, it’s dead quiet-

They wheel me out into what I’m pretty sure is a sublevel. A lift, in a mausoleum? Doesn’t make sense. So this is probably a mortuary building, abandoned and re-purposed. I try to give no sign of the cold shudders that tingle up and down my spine as they roll me along a short passage, then stop.

“Greetings, Master,” says Jonquil, an apprehensive quaver in her voice for the first time: “We have brought the desired one?”

I can feel a fourth presence, chilly and abstracted. I have a curious sense that I am being inspected-

“Good. The All-Highest will see you now.” The voice is as cold as an unmarked grave.

I hear a door open, and they wheel me forward in silence. Abruptly, someone leans close to me and pulls the canvas bag up and away from my head. It’s dark down here, the deep twilight of a cellar illuminated only by LED torches, but it’s not so dark that I can’t see the All-Highest.

And that’s when I realize I’m in much worse trouble than I ever imagined.

MO LISTENS TO HER PHONE IN DISBELIEF. “THEY WHAT? ” SHE demands.

“They left the paper clip attached to a book in Putney Library,” says Angleton, with icy dignity. “A copy of Beasts, Men and Gods by Ferdinand Ossendowski.”

“Then you’ve lost him.”

“Unless you have any better ideas.”

“Let me get back to you on that.” She snaps her phone closed and glances across the table. An idea is taking hold.

“Who was that?” asks Panin. “If you do not mind…”

“It was Angleton. The memorandum is still missing. The enemy identified his tracer and neutralized it.”

“You have my sympathies.”

“Hmm. Do you have a car? Because if so, I’d appreciate a lift home. If you don’t mind.”

Ten minutes later, the black BMW with diplomatic plates is slowly winding its way between traffic-calming measures. Mo leans back, holding her violin case, and closes her eyes. It’s a big car, but it feels small, with the driver and a bodyguard up front, and Panin sitting beside her in the back.

“Do you have anything in mind?” Panin asks quietly.

“Yes.” She doesn’t open her eyes. “Angleton drew a blank, trying to trace the missing document. But that’s not the only asset the cultists have got their hands on.”

“Your husband.” Panin’s nostrils flare. “Do you have a tracer on him, by any chance?”

“No.” She doesn’t bother to explain that Laundry operatives don’t routinely carry bugs because what one party can track, others may pick up. “However, he has a mobile phone.”

“They’ll have switched it off, or discarded it.”

“The former, I hope. If so, I can trace that.” The shiny, beetle-black car double-parks outside a nondescript row of terrace houses. “Please wait. I’ll only be a minute,” she adds as she climbs out.

Ninety seconds later she’s back, her go-bag weighing slightly more heavily on her shoulder. “Laptop,” she explains.

“Your superiors let you take classified documents home?” Panin raises an eyebrow.

“No. It’s his personal one. He paired it with his phone. Which is also a personal device.” She belts herself in, then opens the laptop screen. “All right, let’s see.” She slides a thumb drive into the machine, rubs her thumb over a window in it: “Now this is a secured memory stick, loaded with execute-in-place utilities. Nothing exotic, mind you, strictly functional stuff. Ah, yes. At the end of the road, turn left…”

The driver doesn’t speak, but he has no trouble understanding her directions in English. The car heads south, slowly winding its way through the evening streets. Mo busies herself with the laptop, a route finder program, and a small charm on the end of a necklace, which she dangles above the screen: a ward, taken from around her neck. “It’s along here, somewhere,” she says as the car cruises yet another twisting residential street, where large houses are set back behind tall hedges. “Whoa, we’ve gone past it. Okay, pull in here.” She pulls out her phone and speed-dials a number.

“Yes?” Angleton is alert.

“I’m in Hazlehurst Road, near Lambeth cemetery, with Nikolai and his driver. Tracking Bob’s personal phone. How soon can you meet me here?”

“Hold on.” Pause. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Rolling now. Can you wait?”

Mo glances sidelong at Panin, who shakes his head slowly. “I don’t think so,” she says. “Nikolai has urgent business elsewhere.” She pulls the door latch, and it swings open with the sluggish momentum of concealed armor plate. She extends one foot to touch the pavement: “I’ll be discreet.”

“Good-bye, Dr. O’Brien. And good luck.”

Most of the houses on this road are detached, sitting in pricey splendor on plots of their own, a few down-market Siamese-twin semis lowering the millionaire row tone. It’s London, but upmarket enough that the houses have private drives and garages. Mo walks slowly back along the pavement until she comes level with the hedge outside a semi with a built-in garage, probably dating to the mid-1930s. The ward throbs in her hand as she reluctantly fastens the fine silver chain around her neck and tucks it in. This is the place. She’s sure of it.

She pulls out her phone, dials again, says, “Number thirty-four,” then puts it away. Then she opens her go-bag and pulls out a pair of goggles. She pulls them on and flicks a switch. Then she stalks around the side of the house.

There is a bad smell from the drains out back, and the lawn is un-mown. The hedge has not been trimmed: it looms over the over-long grass like the dark and wild beard of the god of neglect. The windows of the house are dark, and not merely because no lights shine within. It’s strangely difficult to see anything inside. Mo stares at the flagstoned patio beneath the French doors through her goggles. They are goggles of good and evil, part of the regular working equipment of the combat epistemologist, and their merciless contrast reveals the stains of an uneasy conscience mixed with the cement that binds the stones: it’s an upmarket Cromwell Street scene, she realizes, her stomach churning. The police forensic teams will be busy here later in the week, as the tabloid reporters buzz round their heads like bluebottles attracted to the rotting cadavers beneath their feet.