The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [35]
I shake my head, but it won’t stop spinning. “Zombie smoke in the lighter socket, Dee-Hamilton circuit in the body shell, and the car comes when I summon it. Okay. Hey, what’s—”
He slaps my hand as I reach for the boxy lump fastened to the gearshift with duct tape. “Don’t touch that button, Bob!”
“Why? What happens if I touch that button, Pinky?”
“The car ejects!”
“Don’t you mean, the passenger seat ejects?” I ask sarcastically. I’ve had just about enough of this nonsense.
“No, Bob, you’ve been watching too many movies. The car ejects.” He reaches across the back of my seat and pats the fat pipe occupying the center of the luggage area.
I swallow. “Isn’t that a little . . . dangerous?”
“Where you’re going you’ll need all the help you can get.” He frowns at me. “The tube contains a rocket motor and a cable spool bolted to the chassis. The airbags in the wheel hubs blow when the accelerometer figures you’ve hit apogee, if you haven’t already used them in amphibious pursuit mode. Whatever you do don’t push that button while you’re in a tunnel or under cover.” I glance up at the concrete roof of the car park and shudder. “The airbags are securely fastened, if you land on water you can just drive away.” He notices my fixed, skeptical stare and pats the rocket tube. “It’s perfectly safe—they’ve been using these on helicopter gunships for nearly five years!”
“Jesus.” I close my eyes and lean back. “It’s still a fucking Smart car. Range Rovers carry them as lifeboats. Couldn’t you get me an Aston Martin or something?”
“What makes you think we’d give you an Aston Martin, even if we could afford one? Anyway, Angleton says to remind you that it’s on lease from one of our private sector partners. Don’t bend it, or you’ll answer to the Chrysler Corporation. You’ve already exceeded our consumables budget, totaling that Compaq in the meeting—there’s a new one waiting for you in the case in the boot, by the way. This is serious business: you’re representing the Laundry in front of the Black Chamber and some very big defense contractors, old school tie and all that.”
“I went to North Harrow Comprehensive,” I say wearily, “they didn’t trust us with neckties, not after the upper fifth tried to lynch Brian the Spod.”
“Oh. Well.” Pinky pulls out a thick envelope. “Your itinerary, once you arrive at Juliana Airport. There’s a decent tailor in the Marina shopping center and we’ve faxed your measurements through. Um. Do you dress to the left, or . . . ?”
I open my eyes and stare at him until he wilts. “Eight dead.” I hold up the requisite number of fingers. “In twenty-four hours. And I have to drive up the fucking autobahn in this pile of shit—”
“No, you don’t,” says Brains, finally straightening up and wiping his hands on a rag. “We’ve got to crate up the Smart if we’re going to freight it to Maho Beach tomorrow—you’re riding with us.” He gestures at a shiny black Mercedes van parked opposite. “Feel better?”
Wow—I’m not going to be strafed with BMWs again. Miracles do sometimes happen, even in Laundry service. I nod. “Let’s get going.”
I SLEEP MOST OF THE WAY TO FRANKFURT. WE’RE late getting to the airport—no surprise in light of preceding events—but Pinky and Brains prestidigitate some sort of official ID out of their warrant cards and drive us through two chain-link barriers and past a police checkpoint and onto the apron, hand me a briefcase, then drop me at the foot of the steps of an air bridge. It’s latched onto a Lufthansa airbus bound for Paris’s Charles de Gaulle and a quick transfer. “Schnell!” urges a harried-looking flight attendant. “You are the last. Come this way.”
One and a half hours and a VIP transfer later, I’m in business class aboard an Air