The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [155]
“Yes, it’s so neat you can draw a flow chart. But it’s nondeterministic, Bob: the Bond plot structure has a number of forks in it before it converges on the ending, with Mr. Secret Agent Man and his love interest getting it on in a lifeboat or the honeymoon suite of the QE2 or something. Including the approach to the villain. Billington didn’t look into it deeply enough; he assumed that the Hero archetype would come looking for him and fall into his clutches directly.”
“But.” I snap my fingers, trying to collect my scattered thoughts. “You. Me. He got me, but I wasn’t the real Bond-figure, right? I was a decoy.”
She nods. “It happens. If the love interest ends up on the villain’s yacht, being held prisoner, then the hero has to go after her. Or him. The real trick was the idea—I think it was Angleton’s—of using the Good Bond Girl as a decoy by dressing her up in a tux and a shoulder holster. And then to figure out how to use this to get the Black Chamber to put one over on Billington.”
“Ramona. She knew that I thought I was the agent in place, so she naturally assumed I really was the agent.”
“Right. And this also let us identify a leak in our own organization, because how else did Billington make you so rapidly? Which turns out to have been Jack. Last of the public school assholes, hung out to dry out where he couldn’t do any damage—so he develops a sideline in selling intel to what he thinks is another disgruntled outsider.”
“Urk.” I suddenly remember the electrodynamic rig Griffin had stuck in his safe house and briefly wonder just what the hell else he might have been picking up on it, sitting pretty in the middle of the Caribbean with no supervision.
Mo falls silent. I realize she’s waiting for something. My tongue’s frozen: there are questions I want to ask, but it’s a bad idea to ask something when you’re not sure you want to hear the answer. “Did you enjoy being . . . Bond?” I finally manage.
“Did I?” She raises an eyebrow. “Hell.” She frowns. “Did you?” she demands.
“But I wasn’t—”
“But you thought you were.”
“No!” The very question is freighted with significance I don’t want to explore. “I don’t do high society, I don’t smoke, I don’t like being beaten up, being taken prisoner, being tortured, or fighting people, and I’m no good at the womanizing bit.” I dry-swallow. “How about you?”
“Well,” she pauses to consider, “I’m no good at womanizing either.” Her cheek twitches. “Is that what this is about, Bob? Did you figure I was cheating on you?”
“I was—” I clear my throat “—unsure where I stood.”
“We need to talk about this. Get it out in the open sometime. Don’t we?”
I nod. It’s about all I can do.
“I didn’t jump into bed with anybody else,” she says briskly. “Does that make you feel better?”
No, it doesn’t. Now I feel like a shit for having asked in the first place. I make myself nod.
“Well, great.” She crosses her arms, then taps her fingers on her upper arm: “Where have our drinks gotten to?”
“I ordered the martinis. I guess she’s taking her time.” Quick, change the subject. I really don’t want us to fall down one of those embarrassing conversational potholes where the silence stretches out into an eloquent statement of mutual miscommunication: “So, how did you manage to disguise yourself as Eileen? You really had me convinced at first.”
“Oh, that was no big deal.” Mo looks relieved. She smiles at me and my heart beats faster. “You know Brains has a sideline in cosmetology? Says some of his best friends are drag queens. Well, we’ve got enough surveillance background on Eileen to know what she looks like, so I got Brains out to the York to provide make-up services before the assault. Stick a class two glamour on top of the basics—a wig, the right clothes, some latex paint—and her own daughter wouldn’t make her. We used Pale Grace™ for the finishing touch; it might be bugged, but we made sure I wouldn’t see anything until I was aboard the ship. So I just headed for the control room using the maps we had on file from Angleton’s—”
I raise a hand. “Hold it.”
“What?” Mo stares at me.
“Have