“Ow.” Alex’s eyes are closed but I can feel his mind sharpening, like a bundle of razor wire emerging from the fogbank on the sofa opposite me next to the miniature lightning cloud that is Cassie. (There is no way in hell that anyone would try to bind Cassie with an oath of office. It’s bad enough getting traction on a PHANG’s soul-bleedingly sharp surfaces; if you tried to net the alf?r All-Highest in a geas you’d set fire to your head—and that of everyone else in the same web of thaumaturgically enforced trust.) “What did you just do?”
“Trust but verify, Doctor. Continuity Ops is a rump and everyone is overstretched—even the Auditors—so he delegated the dirty work to me.” Cassie gloms onto him for reassurance and glares at me on his behalf; they’re still at the stage in the relationship where it takes a crowbar to prise them apart, and it makes me feel like a heel. “Cassie isn’t bound by our oath, obviously, but we have protocols for working with External Assets and”—at this point I’m pitching to her as much as to him—“I assume you have each other’s best interests at heart?”
They nod simultaneously.
“Good.” I drop the smile and crack my knuckles. “I assume neither of you want to go back to the camp, and I expect you’re not terribly keen on hosting one of those parasitic worms, which is what’s in store for you if Schiller gets his hands on you. And unlike Schiller, we take care of our own. So. Are you willing to join us and help fix whatever has broken our government? Because if so, we have an assignment waiting for you.”
SIX
PARTY PLANNERS
Meanwhile, Continuity Operations are busy. It’s not just me, or the SA and Mo and the other Auditors; this little circus has drafted in all sorts of key players, from the regulars of Mahogany Row to various External Assets. And so it is that the very same day that Johnny and I are breaking out of a prison on Dartmoor, Persephone Hazard makes a call on a very unusual holiday camp in the Lake District, several hundred kilometers to the north.
Camp Sunshine started out as a disastrous experiment in the late 1940s. One of the big seaside resort operators—Pontins or Butlin’s perhaps—branched out and tried to establish a holiday camp in the beautiful wilderness of the Cumbrian Mountains, just outside the national park. I’m not sure quite why anybody thought this was a viable business plan, but it turns out that the sort of clientele who want to spend their annual works vacation on a week of sea, sun, and organized partying are going to be less than enthusiastic about a trek into the wilderness. Especially when said trek terminates in a dismal camp of prefab huts halfway up a mountainside where it rains sideways six days in every five, and the nearest nightlife is downtown Penrith on a Saturday evening, twelve miles down a dirt track. Heaven for hill-walkers it may be, but a seaside resort it ain’t.
Which is why the Laundry acquired it in part-settlement of a corporation tax bill in the early 1950s, strung a wire fence and some really powerful containment grids around it, and put it to other uses.
Merely visiting Camp Sunshine is problematic; starting out from London, it’s faster and easier to get to Moscow. Previously a visitor from Head Office might fly to Manchester Airport, hire a car, and drive the last eighty-odd miles. But thanks to the total shutdown of air travel two and a bit weeks ago, and the knock-on disruption that followed, that isn’t an option. So although she set off shortly after dawn, it’s late afternoon by the time Persephone leaves the A6, turns onto a B road, and cautiously points her Range Rover up a series of hairpin bends lined with drunkenly leaning reflective poles and signs warning of road closure in event of snow.
Beyond the top of the pass, there is a gate in a drystone wall that runs alongside the road as it crosses a strip of moorland. Persephone pulls over, climbs down from the driver’s seat, pauses just long enough to stretch her back—she’s been driving for more than two hours—then opens the gate. As she does so she feels a warning vibration in the ward she wears under her jumper. It’s confirmation that her satnav was telling the truth; she hasn’t been here before, and Camp Sunshine doesn’t exactly advertise its presence these days. She slowly drives across the cattle grid, then closes the gate behind her. There’s very little traffic on the road behind her, and there are no witnesses to see when vehicle and driver fade from view as the gate latches shut.
Back in the Range Rover, Persephone peers at the map display, then inches forward in low gear. Wheels spin momentarily on the moist pasture, but then a deep-rutted track appears in the grass. A crudely hand-painted wooden sign beside the path reads TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. Her gaze flickers to the rearview mirror as she brakes to a stop. “Merde,” she mutters—a bad habit, talking aloud to herself, but there are no witnesses—and she digs around in the passenger seat legwell for her handbag, then rummages in it for a small leather pouch, which she hastily attaches to the backside of the mirror, so that it is visible through the windscreen. Only when she has confirmed to her own satisfaction that the sigil inside it is active does she release the hand brake and drive on again.
(Containment grids and razor wire fences are passive defenses, whereas the prisoners who live in Camp Sunshine warrant more active containment measures, and being shot by mistake is the least of ’Seph’s worries.)
Driving across the field, she comes to another gate in a wall of loose-piled stones. This time she pulls up short but stays in the Range Rover and taps out a quick riff on the horn—shave and a haircut—then waits. A few seconds pass before a red light flashes between the stones, and the gate slowly swings open. She glances round warily, checks that all the windows are sealed and the central locking is engaged, then creeps forward. As she passes the threshold of the next field the quality of the daylight coming in through the windscreen changes subtly, as if she has driven into the penumbra of a storm cloud. Her ward stings, briefly, and there is a brief bluish flicker around the brightwork on the outside of the car, as of Saint Elmo’s fire. Disturbing shadows flicker at the edge of her vision as she drives across the field, and even though she knows full well what they are and that she is permitted to be here, her fingers whiten where she grips the steering wheel rim.
(This is the main defensive zone around Camp Sunshine. Instructions for what to do, in the unlikely event of a breakdown: remain in the vehicle, do not open any door or window under any circumstances—even if it is on fire—and await the arrival of Camp Security. Being trapped in a burning vehicle would be bad, but leaving the vehicle would be far more dangerous.)