The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [38]
Angleton nods minutely. “I should remind you that Billington is extraordinarily rich and has fingers in a surprising number of pies. For example, by way of his current wife—his third—he owns a cosmetics and haute couture empire; in addition to IT corporations he owns shipping, aviation, and banking interests. Your assignment—and Ramona’s—is to get close to Billington. Ideally you should contrive to get yourself invited aboard his yacht, the Mabuse, while Ramona remains in touch with your backup team and the local head of station. Your technical backups are Pinky and Brains, your muscle backup is Boris, and you’re to liaise with our Caribbean station chief, Jack Griffin. Officially, he’s your superior officer and you’ll be under his orders when it comes to nonoperational matters, but you’re to report directly to me, not to him. Unofficially, Griffin is out to pasture—take anything he says with a pinch of salt. Your job is to get close to Billington, remain in touch with us, and be ready to act if and when we decide to take him down.”
I manage not to groan. “Why does it have to be me aboard the yacht—why not Ramona? I think she’d be a whole lot better at the field ops thing. Or the station chief guy? Come to think of it, why aren’t the AIVD doing this? It’s their territory—”
“They invited us in; all I can say for now is, we have specialist expertise in this area that they lack. And it has to be you, not Ramona. Firstly, you’re an autonome, a native of this continuum: they can’t trap you in a Dho-Nha curve or bind you to a summoning grid. And secondly, it’s got to be you because those are the rules of Billington’s game.” Angleton’s expression is frightening. “He’s a player, Bob. He knows exactly what he’s doing and how to work around our strengths. He stays away from continental landmasses, uses games of chance to determine his actions, sleeps inside a Faraday cage aboard a ship with a silver-plated keel. He’s playing us to a script. I’m not at liberty to tell you what it is, but it has to be you, not Ramona, not anyone else.”
“Do we have any idea what he’s planning? You said something about weapons—”
Angleton fixes me with a steely gaze. “Pay attention, Bob. The presentation is about to commence.” And this time I can’t stifle the groan, because it’s another of his bloody slideshows, and if you thought PowerPoint was pants, you haven’t suffered through an hour of Angleton monologuing over a hot slide projector.
SLIDE 1: PHOTOGRAPH OF THREE MEN WEARING suits with the exaggerated lapels and wide ties of the mid- 1970s. They’re standing in front of some sort of indistinct building-like structure, possibly prefabricated. All three wear badges clipped to their breast pockets.
“The one on the left is me: you don’t need to know who the other two are. This photograph was taken in 1974 while I was assigned to Operation AZORIAN as our liaison—officially from MI6 as an observer, but you know the drill. The building I’m standing in front of is . . .”
SLIDE 2: A photograph taken looking aft along the deck of a huge seagoing vessel. To the left, there’s a gigantic structure like an oil drilling rig, with racks of pipes stacked in front of it. Directly ahead, at the stern, is the structure glimpsed in the previous slide—a mobile office, jacked up off the deck, its roofline bristling with antennae. Behind it, a satellite dish looms before the superstructure of the ship.
“We’re aboard the Hughes Glomar Explorer on its unsuccessful voyage to raise the sunken Soviet Golf-II-class ballistic missile submarine K-129. Announced as Operation JENNIFER, this was leaked to the press by someone acting on unofficial orders from the director of ONI—the usual goddamn turf war—and Watergated to hell by mid-1975.