The Apocalypse Codex

3. BIG TENT

A BLOCK OF SIX GEORGIAN TOWN HOUSES CLUSTER DISCREETLY together on one of the leafy avenues behind Sloane Square in London, south of Victoria and west of Westminster.

In the house at the west end of the row there lives a witch.

A man stands waiting on her doorstep. He wears a pin-striped suit of conservative cut and his hair is graying in late middle age; he might be a senior partner in a law firm, or an accountant paying a house call to a rich, elderly client to discuss their affairs. But appearances are deceptive. He is in fact SSO8(L) Gerald Lockhart, and he is visiting on business.

There are many types of self-identified witches. The common or garden variety is generally harmless—women of a certain age who wear purple disgracefully, have two or more cats, run a new age shop, recycle fanatically, and sometimes believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

The witch who lives in this particular house doesn’t wear purple, can’t be bothered with pets, prefers wholesale to retail (but quit both trades some years ago), pays a cleaning firm to take care of the recycling, knows several demons personally, and is not even remotely harmless.

Gerald Lockhart puts his finger on the doorbell and, with an expression of grim determination not obviously warranted by such a trivial action, pushes it.

Somewhere behind the glossy black door, a bell jangles. Lockhart relaxes his finger on the button after a second, then glances up at the discreet black golf ball of the camera above the door. A few seconds later he hears footsteps approaching. Then the door opens.

“Good afternoon.” The man who opens the door is in his late twenties, with shaven head and a slacker goatee; however, he wears a suit so funereal in cut that he could be taken for an undertaker, if undertakers wore black open-necked shirts with their weeds. “Ah, Mr. Lockhart? I believe Ms. Hazard is expecting you. If you’d care to follow me, sir? I’m sure she’ll only be a minute.”

Lockhart follows the butler across a tiled hallway and through a side door that leads into a parlor at the front of the house. There are side tables, armchairs, and a sofa, the latter items recently re-upholstered but clearly dating to an earlier century. The butler leaves him; as he turns to go, Gerald notes with interest the earring, the tattoos on the back of his neck, and the cut of his jacket, tailored to draw attention away from his broad, heavily muscled shoulders. Ms. Hazard does not employ household staff solely as an affectation of personal wealth. Lockhart makes a mental note to have the fellow’s background checked. It’s always useful to have a little extra leverage.

Somewhat closer to three minutes later, the parlor door opens. “Good afternoon,” Lockhart says, rising reflexively. “And thank you for making time to see me at such short notice.”

“It is a pleasure, as always.” Persephone beams as she steps closer. Her diction is very slightly stilted, with the echo of an Italian accent lending it a musical trill: her elocution tutor is clearly first-rate. “How are you, Gerald? And how are the children?”

The witch wears an understated gray wool dress with black tights and kitten heels; with her hair pulled tightly back and minimal makeup, she exudes a gamine charm. She moves fluidly, as if only loosely bound by gravity. Lockhart thinks she carries herself like a dancer; but he notices the hardened skin on the backs of her hands—deftly obscured by a smudge of concealer across her knuckles—and the loose sleeves that conceal her shoulders and upper arms. The Nutcracker ballet, for Karate and Krav Maga, perhaps.

“Polly is fine,” Lockhart says gravely. “Darren is recovering from a bug he brought back from play group, and we’re watching in case Nicky comes down with it too—”

They make small talk for a few minutes as Persephone listens, nodding. To an ill-informed observer she could be a thirty-year-old ballet dancer who has married a man with serious money, a man of the very highest rank—seats in the country and the House of Lords, on a first-name basis with minor royalty, reserved place at Eton for the firstborn male issue, that sort of thing. And Lockhart might simply be a family friend, a senior civil servant of the old school, filling her in on the gossip.

Of course, appearances are deceptive: their official relationship is that of a controller and the intelligence officer they direct. But they keep up appearances in semi-private, to ingrain the habit, lest their paths should meet in public.

After a while, Lockhart runs out of pleasantries to spin around his family life. “But enough of that,” he signals. “I’m wasting your time.”

“Oh, hardly.” She half-smiles, then reaches for a device resembling a TV remote control. “All right, we can talk now. Within the usual limits.” A thin mosquito-whine from the windows behind her hints at the presence of transducers in the frames, designed to defeat laser mikes or other snooping devices.

“Good.” Lockhart pulls a notepad and pen from his jacket pocket. “Did you have anything to add to the agenda…?”

“Not at this time.” She pauses. “Okay. The LUDWIG NIGHT outcome—that’s positive, as per my report, although it was closer than I’m happy about. I take it the asset has been returned to inventory?”

“Yes.” Lockhart nods. “The valuation committee have been asked to report on it but I don’t think there’s going to be any problem authorizing full payment of all your expenses. A job well done, after all.”

“Good.” She watches while Lockhart flips the page.

“Next item. There’s a candidate from within the organization—”

“Within the organization?” She leans forward, suddenly attentive.

“Yes,” says Lockhart. “He’s been tapped for advancement on the basis of his track record in general operations, but he really needs a spin around the block and an evaluation by…well, someone like yourself. I gather Mahogany Row want to know if he’s got the right stuff. So he’s been assigned to me, and I was thinking, if you don’t object, of assigning him to you as liaison on the next suitable excursion?”

“You want me to test-drive your new assistant?”

“Yes, more or less. I don’t think you’ll find him a spare wheel, I hasten to add, although first appearances can be deceptive: he’s a poor fit within the regular civil service framework, too prone to picking his own targets and going after them unilaterally—but he gets results. So the promotion board thought it might be worth trying him out on a more, ah, independent command, as it were.”

“Really? Well, hmm. If you could send me his HR file, that would help me make my mind up. But we can always use a bit of free-thinking in this line of work. If you want to saddle me with a field liaison officer, it’d be best if you pick one who doesn’t expect me to file reports every sixty minutes.”

“Noted.” Lockhart pauses to jot down her request. “I’ll have it seen to later today.” He folds his notepad and slides it away.

“Are we done, then?” she asks.

“Mostly. There’s another job I’d like to talk to you about, but not here. It’s urgent, I’m afraid.”

“Really?” She looks at him sharply. “Do you have a tight schedule?”

“Yes; it’s a rush job and we need to get the ball rolling by close of business today. Most hush-hush.”

“I see. Well, depending on how long it takes…I’ve been summoned for jury service next month, did I say? Terrible nuisance. Perhaps we should continue in the studio?”

“Of course.” Lockhart follows her out into the hall. “And I shouldn’t worry about the jury duty; these things have a habit of falling through cracks. Unlike other types of public service I could mention.”

Persephone walks back into the house, past the broad staircase and the dining room and kitchen, into a narrower, stone-flagged passage obviously designed for servants’ use. She opens a narrow wooden door: there is a spiral staircase, ascending into brightness.

At ground level the house appears to be the residence of a society lady: afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason’s, dinner parties for Ruperts and Jocastas, season tickets to Glyndebourne. But as he climbs the staircase the illusion falls away. And as ever, Lockhart can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s entering the wicked witch’s tower.

They ascend a long way—almost fifty steps, clearly passing through the first and second floors of the house. There are no exits below the top, but daylight bulbs behind tall frosted glass panes like arrow-slit windows provide illumination.

Lockhart has seen external photographs of the house, and the floor plans on file with the council planning department, and he knows there’s no spiral staircase from the former pantry to the attic according to the official deeds. Nor would a casual intruder even be able to see the entrance to the stairwell. Persephone Hazard is not the kind to skimp on security.

The staircase ends at another door. Persephone waits for him at the top, looking as cool and collected as ever; Lockhart is breathing more heavily than he likes to admit. “Come on in,” she says, and turns the handle. “You haven’t been up here recently, have you? I’ve made some changes.”

The space on the top floor is open plan, and huge. It appears that the attic spaces of the entire row of town houses have been combined into one enormous room, rafters boarded over with a sprung floor, roof beams replaced in situ with steel girders to provide an unobstructed space fifty meters long and ten meters deep. There’s a clear space at one end big enough for a dance floor or a dojo; the rest is broken up by movable partitions. “Welcome to my workshop. It’s why I finished buying up the entire row of houses—just so I could build this,” Persephone explains, a note of quiet pride in her voice. “I rent out the other units, so I can vet my neighbors for security.”

Lockhart swallows. “Very impressive,” he says. Previously he’s only seen the interior of the town house she lives in. She doesn’t invite social callers up here, as a rule, and he can see why.

There is a metal ring in the middle of the eight meter by eight meter square of open flooring at the far end of the room. Cables connect it to a pair of nineteen-inch racks that would not be out of place in a server room. Tool cabinets and other equipment, including a pair of backup generators, are positioned around it.

She walks towards him until they are standing nose to nose. “So, Gerry. What really brought you here today?”

“I like to get out of the office from time to time.” He nods at the huge summoning grid at the far side of the room. “Is that in proper working order? The new job really does require containment rather than just a sweep for bugs.”

Persephone stares at him for a moment, then turns and walks towards the grid. Lockhart hurries to catch up with her—she’s a tall woman, and she moves fast. “This is a class six grid,” she explains over her shoulder. “Kimpel-Ziff deflectors and four different safety interlocks. The control module”—she points at the first equipment rack, which is full of shiny server blades—“is three-way redundant and has two separate power supplies, two UPSs, and two different generators. Just in case. It also has a secondary containment grid around the outside, just in case. Which is to say that it is as secure as anything your organization could provide. So the answer to your question is yes, it’s in proper working order.” She stares at Lockhart, nostrils flaring. “Will that do?”

“Yes.” He nods. “If you don’t mind firing it up? This briefing will take some time.”

SUMMONING GRIDS—PENTACLES WITH ATTITUDE—HAVE A number of uses. Unsurprisingly, summoning spirits from the vasty deeps of Hilbert space is one of them. They can also be used, by the foolhardy or terminally reckless, to open gateways to other spaces (most of which are utterly inhospitable to humanlike life). Finally, they can be used to create a firewall, like a science fictional force-field only buggier and prone to hacking attacks by extra-dimensional script kiddies with pseudopods. Which is why nobody with any sense uses them casually.

The ward that Persephone programs into the management console of her grid isn’t aimed at summoning squamous horrors or opening a doorway to hell: it’s just there to provide thirty minutes of uninterrupted high-quality privacy, protected utterly from bugs, listeners, and remote viewing exploits. It takes her a minute to set the script up and hit return on the keyboard; then she steps into the middle of the grid and beckons Lockhart forward.

They stand in silence at the center of the silver schematic diagram, ignoring each other, watching opposite ends of the room. Then, suddenly, the room isn’t there anymore. Neither is the ceiling. The only light is the LED lantern that Persephone places carefully on the floor at the center of the disk they are standing on, an eight-meter circle of reality in the middle of a universe of absolute night.

“We can talk now,” she says tonelessly. “Twenty-nine minutes until the field decays. Sorry about the lack of soft furnishings.”

“That’s all right.” Lockhart’s shoulders slump. “I’d like to apologize for springing this on you. I had no choice.”

“Not clever. You could have blown everything, turning up on my doorstep like that! I’m being watched; they’ll be watching you too now, you know.”

“Yes. I know.”

She stares at him. By lantern-light the bags under his eyes are dark, his cheeks gaunt. “You’d better explain.”

“A situation has come up. You’re the best asset match for it, precisely because of the arm’s length arrangement. Dealing with this situation is probably more important than preserving your cover—”

“Really? There are at least two foreign intelligence services and three crime syndicates looking for me under a variety of former identities. You’re not at risk of being shot by the Oaxaca Cartel if—”

“Nevertheless.”

“This had better be good.”

“It’s a unique situation. We believe a situation has arisen that the organization itself, as a branch of the civil service, is incapable of dealing with at an institutional level: our hands are tied. Your Mr. McTavish may have some insights to contribute.”

“Now wait a minute!” Persephone struggles visibly for self-control. “Are you accusing Johnny of malfeasance, or—”

“No, absolutely not. But you are familiar with his upbringing, yes?”

“What, his father’s church?”

“Yes, that.”

“You’re kidding. Tell me you’re kidding?”

“No.” Lockhart takes a deep breath. “They’re out there, Ms. Hazard. As you well know. And unfortunately something has come up that—well, I suspect he may have some valuable insights to contribute. However, we, as an organization, aren’t allowed to investigate.”

“That’s idiotic!”

“Is it? It’s in the very nature of this particular threat. Eldritch horrors from beyond spacetime? Not a problem, that’s our job. Al-Qaida terrorists trying to blow up the London Eye? Again, not a problem: that’s the Met’s Counter-Terrorism Branch and/or the Security Service. Foreign intelligence services playing footsie? Again, that’s SIS or us, depending. But these are all external threats.”

“So it’s an internal threat?”

“I sincerely hope not.” Lockhart shakes his head. “But there’s a line all of the security services are required not to cross: the cabinet, the actual executive arm of government, is off-limits to us. That rule is there for a very good reason…but enough of that. Tell me.” Lockhart leans close: “When was the last time you went to church?”

JOHNNY MCTAVISH IS IN BED WHEN HIS PHONE RINGS. UNCHARACTERISTICALLY, he is asleep, but one eye opens immediately. It’s Persephone’s ringtone, which means business. Johnny blinks, trying to orient himself. The bed in question is half-familiar, the furniture around it less so. Then the phone trills again. His view is obstructed by a shapely back, spray of honey-blonde hair across the pillow, curve of buttocks resting against his upper thighs—oh, it’s Amanda—she mumbles something sleepily and thrusts her buttocks against him as he elbows his torso upright and reaches past her to the bedside unit.

“’Lo,” he says to the phone.

“Afternoon, Johnny.” The Duchess sounds amused. “Got company?”

She knows he has a special ringtone for her; the laconic greeting gave him away. “Of course.” Amanda is still half-asleep. Hardly surprising—they didn’t get to bed until 6 a.m. The poor thing must be worn-out. He feels himself begin to stiffen against her ass-crack.

“Do you have any plans for this evening?” asks Persephone.

Johnny yawns deliberately to force carbon dioxide out of his blood-stream, levering himself to a higher state of awareness. “Nothing definite,” he says. “Got something in mind?” His three days and nights with Amanda are drawing to an end: in another few hours her banker hubby will be back home from the Arabian Gulf, and it’ll be time for Johnny to disappear.

“Yes, there’s a little evening event I want to attend, and I think you should come along. How about Zero and I swing round to pick you up from home at seven? Smart casual will do.”

“All right.” He swallows her name; Amanda is showing enough signs of awareness that tact is the better part of valor. “Seven sharp. Bye.” He puts the phone down.

“Who was that?” Amanda murmurs, catching his arm as it crosses her chest.

“Work,” he says.

“Work.” She sounds doubtful, but guides his hand down until his fingers lightly stroke one of her nipples. “Your boss expects you to work evenings?”

“Oh yes.” He feels her aureoles pucker beneath his fingertips. She sighs and leans against him. First-class booty, the best that oil money can buy. He strokes her flank regretfully, already half-certain that this will be the last time. “My boss is evil,” he whispers in her ear. “And I’m going to have to go to work soon.”

“But not just yet.” She tenses as his hand slides between her legs. “Please?”

“Not just yet,” he agrees.

THERE IS A GARAGE ATTACHED TO PERSEPHONE’S HOUSE, OCCUPYING most of what was once a garden. It’s a very large garage, by Central London standards. Right now it’s semi-occupied by two vehicles—a diesel Land Rover and a squat, brutally powerful Bentley coupe. The third resident, a Rolls-Royce Phantom, is cautiously nosing its way out into the street. The chauffeur and occasional butler, Oakley shades and hipster goatee packaged in a black suit, is clearly trying too hard to look like a gangster in a Tarantino movie.

In the back, Persephone has the windows dimmed to near-opacity as she skim-reads reports on her smartphone. Head down, intent and focussed, she pays no obvious attention to the sway and surge of the car, but grips the device tightly in one gloved hand, zipping through a series of pages pre-digested and highlighted for her convenience by a very private research bureau. It’s not that Persephone can’t use a web browser herself; but some of the material in this briefing would be hard to come by without a lot of tedious legwork and access to some expensive databases, and time is the one thing money can’t buy.

It’s a February evening in London: cold but not yet chilly, dank and dark beneath clouds that promise rain but never quite deliver. The chauffeur drives smoothly, but behind the gold-tinted reflective surfaces of his shades his eyes are constantly flickering, evaluating threats, looking for trouble. A few months ago, a banker had his Aston-Martin hijacked at knife point while waiting for traffic lights not far from here. It would be most unfortunate if thieves were to target this particular vehicle: explaining their injuries to the police might delay Ms. Hazard.

“Zero.”

He glances in the mirror at her voice. “Yes, boss?”

“Tune to Premier Gospel, please.”

Zero blinks slowly, then switches on the sound system and brings up the radio control panel. “What do you want that rubbish for?”

“I couldn’t possibly say.” She sounds coolly amused. “Mood music, maybe.”

Zero’s knuckles tighten on the steering wheel for a moment, then he goes back to scanning for hijackers, tails, suicidal cyclists, and other threats.

It takes them half an hour to drive out to the North Circular, then a further twenty minute detour into the wilds of London suburbia—estates of 1930s semis with privet hedges and fences out front. Finally they come to a pub with a mock-Tudor half timbered frontage and a sign declaring it to be The Legionnaire’s Rest. Zero pulls into the abbreviated car park and stops. Behind him, Persephone is finishing a phone call. Moments later the back door opens and a man climbs in.

“I thought you said smart casual, Duchess,” complains Johnny. His accent switches seamlessly to cod-cockney: “Wotcher, Zero old cock.”

“Same to you, motherfucker,” the chauffeur says cheerfully. “Strap in so I can go.”

“Smart casual for you,” says Persephone. She’s wearing a Chanel suit and a hat. Gucci handbag, designer heels. “You’re going in the main audience. I’ve got a VIP backstage pass. Going to see the Man.”

“What’s the gig?”

“Revival meeting. Have you found Jesus yet?”

“Isn’t he down the back of the sofa?” Johnny stares at her for a moment, his face set in a grimace of distaste. “Revival meeting. Have you gone freaking insane?” He looks at the back of Zero’s head, then asks plaintively: “Is it something in the water?”

“Button it up, we’re on a job.”

“Oh.” He shakes his head. “You had me for a moment there. What kind of job?” He notices the music, barely audible over the road noise. “Is the Church of England hiring us to take out the Pope? Or are the Scientologists—”

“Neither.” She passes him the phone. “Start reading.”

Johnny takes the phone and begins to skim. Then he stops abruptly and stares out the window, his expression haunted. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

Persephone is silent for a few seconds. Then: “Gerry Lockhart thought you might have some special insights.”

Johnny pauses, doing a slow double take. “Gerry wants my insight? Since when?”

“Since you grew up in a very wee highland kirk that practices the baptism of the sea and other, odder traditions.” She looks at him. “He figures you’re quite the expert on what’s going on here.”

“Does he now,” Johnny breathes.

Persephone nods. “We’re to sit at the back—or at the front, in my case—and sing along with the music. And we need to make notes. Your job is to apply your highly experienced eyeball to their particular brand of religion. What are we looking at, what do they believe, what species of animal are we dealing with? I’m going to be in the front row.” She unfastens the top button of her blouse, raises a button-sized leather bag on a fine silver chain from around her neck. “I’m warded.” She lets it drop between her breasts, refastens the button, then rummages in her bag and pulls out a small cross and pins it to her lapel. She passes another cross lapel pin to Johnny. “Here, use this. Camouflage.”

Johnny is wearing chinos, a polo shirt, and a fleece. After some fumbling, he pins the alien symbol to the fleece. “I’m allergic to churches,” he says glumly. “As you should well know.”

“Yes. But are you warded?” Persephone persists.

Johnny sighs. “Does the Pope shit in the woods?” He doesn’t bother to show her the wrist band.

“Good.”

“You think we’re going to run into trouble?”

“Not on this occasion.”

“Are you sure?” He pushes. “Really sure?”

Persephone sighs. “Johnny.”

“Duchess.”

“We are going to a church service. Evangelical big tent outreach, singing and clapping, that kind of thing. No more and no less. Doubtless your dear departed dad would disapprove, but ours is not to question why, etcetera. Take notes, do not draw attention to yourself, we can discuss the where and the why of it afterwards.” She pauses. “We’ve got a lunch date with Gerry and a junior co-worker tomorrow. That’s when you get to hear what the caper’s all about, capisce? For now, just finish reading that report and take notes.”

Johnny glances back at the phone. “There’s nothing here that a hundred other churches aren’t doing. They’re millenarian dispensationalist Pentecostalists and they’re trying to spread the happy-clappy around. Film at eleven.” He sounds as if he’s trying to reassure himself, and failing.

“Let’s hope that’s all it is.” She takes a deep breath. “Either way, we’re here to find out.”

THE GOLDEN PROMISE MINISTRIES ARE NOT UNAMBITIOUS: they’ve booked the O2 Arena for a week now, and another week in a month’s time.

It takes Zero the best part of an hour to drive into Greenwich. He drops Johnny just around the corner from the O2 complex, then drives on to find a spot in the VIP car park. Traffic is heavy—the arena is able to hold more than 20,000 spectators, and a lot of them are coming by car for this one. It’s not just a church service—it’s an evening out for all the family, with a gospel choir, a band, and a star-studded cast led by Pastor Raymond Schiller of the Golden Promise Ministries.

The arena itself is huge—a domed performance space the size of a medium-scale sports stadium. Tiered blocks of seats tower above the central stage, lit by distant spotlights far overhead; the atmosphere among the audience is as deafeningly expectant as at any rock concert or football match. Johnny, who walks in among the regular punters, finds himself a roost halfway up one of the rear stands, with a bottle of Pepsi and a cheeseburger. He settles back in his seat and scans the crowd below him. Somewhere near the front of the stage there’s a roped-off VIP area, accessed via a red-carpeted subway. The Duchess is down there now, chatting and laughing with the others on the restricted guest list: company directors with sick wives and children, wealthy widows, the children of the idle rich come in search of some additional meaning for their lives. Potential deep-pocket donors for Christ.

Back here in the bleachers it’s another matter. It’s an everyman (and everywoman) cross-section of London, emphasis on the cross. Family groups with children, some couples without, fewer men and women on their own, and larger groups—church trips, youth groups, some that Johnny can’t identify or can’t credit. (A hen night? he jots discreetly in his notepad.) There are a lot of non-white faces: religion is a minority pursuit in England these days. They come from all walks of life: builder, trader, website-maker. They’re here for the music, the pizzazz, the excitement, the joy, and the sense of common purpose. It’s like a reflection of his misplaced childhood, cut off behind the broken mirror of his adult cynicism.

Johnny watches with studied detachment as the show begins. People are still arriving, filtering in in knots and clumps and talking in quiet, excited tones as the warm-up man starts on stage, a younger preacher from Golden Promise Ministries’ Mission to Miami: “Welcome, Welcome! Open your hearts to the golden promise of a love that will make everything right—”

He’s an inspiring speaker, and he promises joy on a plate, heaven on a stick. There is a prayer. Everybody joins in. There is a chant. It’s impossible not to stand and clap in time with twenty thousand other sweaty, excited pairs of hands, as Johnny rediscovers: they’ve got the script letter-perfect. Then the warm-up man segues into an introduction for the first act, a squeaky-clean rock band who are impossibly young and skinny behind the electric guitars they grip as tightly as their faith. There follows half an hour of power ballads where the punch line is Jesus.

Johnny gives up on the notepad, and settles down to wait. An old professional, he gives no outward sign of his irritation. Three more hours of this shit, he thinks disgustedly. Amanda’s banker was stuck overnight in Zurich; he won’t be home for hours yet. What price an immortal soul, when booty beckons? He makes a private guess with himself, and wins a fiver when the band give way to Warm-Up Man in his shiny electric-blue suit, who invites the audience to pray with him and starts the workup towards the main act. Johnny’s boredom is just beginning to strengthen towards anomie when Raymond Schiller strides on stage, arms spread in benediction, a larger-than-life figure.

Johnny forgets everything else and focuses on the stage with the total nerveless calm of a sniper.

The Duchess was absolutely right to bring him here. He realizes, to his dismay, that Lockhart was also right to finger him for this caper: you can take the boy out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the boy. And like the devil (in whom Johnny does not believe), the boy will know his own.