The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [73]
Mo frowns. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to fly out with Alan and his soldiers? I mean, if you’re borrowing a warship, why are you bothering with the undercover stuff? What exactly do you expect me to do?”
Barnes snorts and raises an eyebrow at Angleton: “Are you going to tell her, or am I?”
“I’ll do it.” Angleton picks up the control to the slide projector. “Would you mind switching off the lights?”
“Why the dog and pony show?” O’Brien demands, her voice rising.
“Because you need to understand the trick we’re trying to play on the opposition before you can deal the cards. And it’s best if I illustrate . . .”
EVENTS HAVE ECHOES, AND ALMOST EXACTLY TWO weeks earlier, a similar meeting took place on another land-mass.
While Bob continues to panic over his impending death by drowning, spare a thought for Ramona. It’s not her fault that she’s in the fish tank with Bob; quite the opposite. Given even the faintest shred of an excuse, she’d have managed to avoid this briefing in Texas. Unfortunately her controllers are not interested in excuses. They want results. And that’s why we join her in the front seat of a Taurus, driving up a dusty unsurfaced lane towards a sun-blasted ranch house in the middle of nowhere.
This is so not Ramona’s scene. She’s too smart to be a Valley Girl, but she grew up in that part of the world. She’s happiest when the bright sunlight is moderated by an onshore breeze and the distant roar of the surf is just crowding the edge of the white noise in her ears: ah, the smell of sage-brush. This part of west Texas, between Sonora and San Angelo, is just way too far inland for Ramona’s taste. It’s also too . . . Texan. Ramona doesn’t care for good ol’ boys. She doesn’t much like arid, dusty landscapes with no water. And she especially doesn’t like the Ranch, but that’s not a matter of prejudice so much as common sense.
The Ranch scares her more every time she visits it.
There’s a parking lot up front: little more than a patch of packed earth. She pulls up between two unfeasibly large pickups. One of them actually has a cow’s skull lashed to the front bumper and a rifle rack in the back. She gets out of the Taurus, collects her shoulder bag and her water bottle—she never comes here without a half-gallon can, minimum—and cringes slightly as the arid heat tries to suck her dry. Walking around the parked vehicles, she doesn’t bother to check the cow’s skull for the faint matching intaglio of a pentacle: she knows what she’ll find. Instead she heads for the porch, and the closed screen door, with a wizened figure rocking in a chair beside it.
“You’re five minutes and twenty-nine seconds late,” the figure recites laconically as she climbs the front step.
“So bite me,” Ramona snaps. She hikes her bag up her shoulder and shivers despite the heat. The guardian watches her with dry amusement. Dry. There is no water here, certainly not enough to hydrate the bony nightmare in bib overalls that hangs out next to the door, endlessly rocking its chair.
“You’re expected,” it rasps. “Go right in.”
It makes no move towards her, but the skin on the back of her neck prickles. She takes two steps forward and twists the doorknob. At this point, an unexpected visitor can reasonably be expected to die. At this point, expected visitors also die—if Internal Affairs has issued a termination order. Ramona does not die, this time. The door latch clicks open and she steps inside the cool air-conditioned vestibule, trying to suppress a shuddery breath as she leaves the watcher on the threshold behind.
The vestibule is furnished in cheap G-plan kit, with a sofa and chairs, and a desk with a human receptionist sitting behind it who looks up at Ramona and blinks sheep eyes at her. “Ms. Random, if you’d care to take the second door on the left, go straight ahead, then take the first right at the end of the corridor. Agent McMurray is expecting you.”
Ramona smiles tightly. “Sure thing. Can I use the ladies’ room on the way?”
The receptionist makes a show of checking her desk planner. “I can confirm that you are authorized