The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [151]
But then the Second World War intervened. And someone remembered the peculiar paper the village doctor had tried to publish in the Lancet, back in the ’20s, and someone else noticed its proximity to several interesting underwater obstructions, and, with the stroke of a pen, the War Ministry relocated everyone who lived next to the waterline. And the men from MI6 Department 66 came and installed electricity and telephones and concrete coastal defense bunkers, and they rerouted the road so that it doubled back on itself and missed the village completely before merging with the road to the next hamlet up the coast. And they systematically erased the Village from the Ordinance Survey’s public maps, and from the post office, and from the discourse of national life. In a very real sense, the Village is as far away from England as Saint Martin, or the Moon. But in another sense, it’s still too close for comfort.
Today, the Village has the patina of neglect common to building developments that subsist on the largess of government agencies, and rely for their maintenance on duct tape and the extensive use of the power of Crown Immunity to avoid planning requirements. It’s not a white-painted picturesque Italianate paradise like Portmeirion, and we inmates aren’t issued numbers instead of names. But there’s a certain resemblance to that other Village—and there is, overlooking the harbor mole, a row of buildings that includes an old-fashioned pub with paint peeling from the wooden decking outside, worn linoleum floors, and hand-pumps that dispense a passable if somewhat briny brew.
I came up from London yesterday, after the board of enquiry met to hear the report on the outcome of the JENNIFER MORGUE business. It’s over now, buried deep in the secret files in the Laundry stacks below Mornington Crescent tube station. If you’ve got a high enough clearance you can get to read them—just go ask the librarians for CASE BROCCOLI GOLDENEYE. (Who says the classification office doesn’t have a sick sense of humor?)
I’m still feeling burned by the whole affair. Bruised and used about sums it up; and I’m not ready to face Mo yet, so I had to find somewhere to hole up and lick my wounds. The Village isn’t a resort, but there’s a three-story modern building called the Monkfish Motel that’s not entirely unlike a bad ’60s Moat House—I think it was originally built as MOD married quarters—and there’s the Dog and Whistle to drink in, and if I get drunk and start babbling about beautiful man-eating mermaids and sunken undersea horrors, nobody’s going to bat an eyelid.
It’s late afternoon and I’m on my second pint, slumped in the grasp of the sofa in the east corner of the lounge bar. I’m the only customer at this time of day—most everyone else is off attending training courses or working—but the bar stays open all the same.
The door opens. I’m busy failing to reread a dog-eared paperback biography, my mind skittering off the words as if they’re polished ice cubes that melt and slide away whenever I warm them with my glance. Right now it’s gathering moss on the coffee table in front of me as I idly flip the antique Zippo lighter that’s the one part of my disguise kit I ended up bringing home. Footsteps slowly approach, clattering on the bare floor. I sit there in the corner, and I wonder tiredly if I ought to run away. And then it’s too late.
“He told me I’d find you here,” she says.
“Really?” I put the Zippo down and look up at her.
THE PRELUDE TO THIS LITTLE DRAMA TOOK PLACE the day before yesterday in Angleton’s office. I was sitting in the cheap plastic visitor’s seat he keeps on the other side of his desk, my line of sight partially blocked by the bulky green-enameled flank of his Memex, trying to hold my shit together. Up until this point I’d been doing a reasonable job,