The Nightmare Stacks Read online

  “Wotcher, cock! Ow’s yer whippet?”

  Alex directs a withering glare over his shoulder. “Je ne comprends pas. Parlez-vous Yorkshire?”

  “Sorry, I thought that was how they spoke up here?” Pete grins, an expression that takes a decade off his face. Wearing jeans and a biker’s jacket with hands thrust deep in his pockets, he’s not exactly anyone’s picture of a spook—or a Man of the Cloth for that matter.

  “We’re not scousers. Listen, you’re late. We could get a bus but it’s tipping down and the nearest stop is a ten-minute walk away and anyway it isn’t dark yet. Can you sign for a taxi?”

  “Um.” Pete thinks about it. “There are two of us, so yes, as long as they give receipts and you countersign the claim.”

  The taxi rank is outside the front of the station, snaking around a weird circular sixties concrete building with a broad awning. (Originally the Transport Police offices, today it’s a bicycle shop.) Alex scuttles for cover from the elements, Pete following close behind with his wheelie bag. They join the queue, and a couple of minutes later they’re in the back of a Toyota creeping around the traffic-choked Inner Loop towards the bottom of Woodhouse Lane. Destination: Lawnswood Cemetery, out in the blasted wilderness beyond the northern arc of the Leeds ring road.

  “Have you visited the local office yet?” Pete asks.

  “Not yet.” Alex shrugs. “I’ve been holed up in my hotel room today, to be honest. Night shift suits me best for now.”

  “Awkward.” Pete leans against the other side of the taxi’s back seat. “Are you okay here? I mean, living out of a suitcase—”

  Alex cuts him off: “I’m fine. The sooner we look the site over and report back the sooner we can kill this stupid idea and go back to London.”

  “Kill—” Pete raises an eyebrow. “You mean you don’t want to move to Leeds?” Alex can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic. “Bright lights, big city, affordable housing?”

  “Listen.” Alex tries not to spit: “I grew up in Leeds. I spent eighteen years here before I escaped. Trust me, it’s a stupid idea.”

  “But it’s going to—” Pete glances at the front seat, realizes that they’re in the presence of ears that do not possess a security clearance, and changes the subject. “Is the weather always like this?”

  “It could be worse. They could be looking at relocating to Manchester, where the locals are evolving webbed fingers and gill slits. But if you’re used to the southeast, everything hereabouts looks kind of gray and squishy.”

  “Leaky roofs. Hmm . . .”

  * * *

  DEAR DIARY:

  I’ve been part of the Laundry for nearly six months now, and I still don’t have a clue what I’m meant to be doing, but I’m told this is entirely normal and I’ll figure it out sooner or later if I live long enough.

  (I can’t make my mind up whether that last qualifier is entirely serious.)

  I spent the first week with no clear idea that the Laundry even existed, mind you. It was all Mhari’s idea. She used to be in Human Resources and she basically conscripted us under irregular circumstances which were later shoveled under the rug. (Probably because if they hadn’t been, some very embarrassing questions would have been asked.) It was for the best, I suppose, but it meant that from the very first month I was dumped in at the deep end with no idea what was going on, except for an endless string of interviews in dingy government offices, forms to fill in (don’t get me started on the Official Secrets Act, As Amended), and interminable committee meetings. It was like all the worst aspects of being back in university crossed with The Office by way of Nathan Barley.

  Then I nearly died.

  Lots of other people did die, so I suppose I got off lightly. But it’s a hell of a reality check when you spend just three days in hospital recovering from third-degree burns to your face and hands, the bone-deep kind that should leave you scarred for life. Fortunately for me, as long as my condition is well-managed, I heal like a Hollywood movie hero. Unfortunately for me, my ability to heal like that makes me useful for an organization that needs . . . well.

  To make matters worse, at about the same time all this was happening they sprang a mentor on me.

  My mentor is the Reverend Peter Russell, MA, D. Theol. He’s fifteen years older than I am and he’s a vicar, although he rides a motorbike and has long hair and a beard and does aikido. Pete’s primary qualification for mentoring me is that he’s been in the organization fully three months longer than I have, and has lots of experience in helping disturbed young men come to terms with the vagaries of life. He’s the modern, intelligent, progressive, the-Bible-is-just-a-metaphor type of clergyman, and he’s a nice guy, even though he grumbles about having to neglect his pastoral duties in the name of national security. He seems to spend most of his office time reading sermons, checking some really strange Bible concordances, and frowning furiously. (NB: I don’t know many vicars, so for all I know they’re all like this, but I’m just saying: he’s not what I expected.)

  I asked what he’s doing here. It turns out he got sucked into the Laundry last year because Mr. Howard knew him socially and needed an expert on Biblical apocalypses in a screaming hurry, in order to stop said apocalypses from coming true. I’d feel sorry for him, but even knowing about the tentacle monsters from beyond spacetime hasn’t shaken his faith or made him bitter or anything. Never mind Gödel’s theorem or Kolmogorov–Chaitin complexity, let alone the Turing Principles on which the whole field of computational magic is based.

  For the past six months we—me and the other PHANGs—have been fumbling our way through a series of one-week intensive orientation courses and stacks of briefing papers, making it up as we go along, with the occasional nudge in the right direction from our managers. There is a screaming rush on pretty much all the time because the Laundry is taking on new staff, gearing up for something unpleasantly big, and we’re a little bit short on managers and experienced senior people because a number of them ended up being taken away in body bags after a couple of asshole elder vampires used me and the Scrum as pawns in a lethal chess game.* Mr. Howard once told me he was here for two whole years before anyone even sent him for training in out-of-office operations. Pete and I don’t have the luxury of that much time.

  Anyway, this week they’ve sent us both up to Leeds as part of the task force preparing the way to move our main emergency command center out of London.

  Apparently the Laundry used to occupy a ramshackle government building in Westminster.* That building, Dansey House, was closed for complete renovation under a public-private partnership about six years ago, while everyone moved to a variety of temporary (and not very secure) satellite offices. It was due to reopen three years ago but there were, apparently, “problems” relating to thaumaturgic contamination of the ground it was built on—problems too big for remediation. It turned out to be the necromantic equivalent of a toxic waste site—and that was before we discovered the hard way that an elder vampire had single-handedly infiltrated the department. He’d spent literally decades installing a geas—a procedure or spell that induces a compulsive cognitive bias in whoever it is applied to—on Dansey House, with the effect that people who work there don’t believe in vampires, even if their office-mate sleeps in a coffin under the desk and leaves bloodstained cups in the break room sink.

  In the absence of evidence that this was the only compulsion woven into the brickwork of Dansey House, Mahogany Row came to the decision to sell the site for redevelopment and move elsewhere. Which then left them with a big headache: where to relocate to. The New Annex, where I was initially assigned, was ruled out. It turns out that the New Annex isn’t proof against pissed-off vampire elders. Also, it’s too small. Apparently we’re facing some sort of nightmarish conjunction—due to a combination of circumstances we’re in a period when computational magic gets easier to do, and the effects are amplified—so the organization needs
room to grow. And, London property prices being what they are, a decision was made to move most of us out of the big smoke.

  Leeds is a big metropolitan zone in the geographical middle of England, sitting at the intersection of a bunch of major transport routes. I suppose it was inevitable that it’d be one of the top options, along with Manchester, Newcastle, or possibly Cheltenham (because of the strong GCHQ presence). I come from Leeds. Which is why, even though I’m a wet-behind-the-ears probationer who’s up to his ears with training courses, they saw fit to shove me on the train up here with Pete to look around various outlying facilities before we get the grand tour of the proposed new headquarters building in the city center, Quarry House, and go to town on its perimeter wards.

  Please God, why couldn’t it be Manchester instead?

  * * *

  The taxi takes almost a quarter of an hour to slither out of the city center and onto the Otley Road. But they get there in the end, and while Pete adds the receipt to his battered paper organizer Alex climbs out and looks around. The car has parked beside a rather forbidding hedge, on the other side of a dual carriageway from a row of poplars. Beyond the trees he can just make out the lights of the police station. There are few houses hereabouts, but a driveway leads out of sight beyond the hedge. And it is, predictably, raining even harder.

  “We’re not going to have much luck getting a taxi home from here, are we?” Pete says as the cab pulls away.

  “Nope. There are buses, but they’ll only be running every twenty minutes at this time of evening.” Alex doesn’t explain that he has this part of the Leeds bus timetable memorized cold. He turns and heads up the gravel drive, avoiding the worst of the pothole puddles. They come to a chain-link gate and an unfriendly sign: DEPARTMENT OF WORK AND PENSIONS—THIS PROPERTY IS MAINTAINED BY TELEREAL TRINIUM—KEEP OUT—G4S SECURITY. The padlock that holds the gate shut is grimy with rust stains, but a prickling in Alex’s fingers tells him that the site is heavily warded. Only authorized visitors will be able to get in. “Did you bring the key?”

  “Sure.” Pete fiddles with the padlock, and they step through the gate. The drive dog-legs behind another hedge before it passes out of view of the road. Black poles surmounted by the hooded eyes of CCTV cameras stare at them, and Alex suppresses a shudder of dread. Beyond the second hedgerow they come to a low building with narrow frosted-glass windows set high under its eaves, like a public toilet or a cricket pavilion. There are more signs: KEEP OUT, ENTRY FORBIDDEN, THIS SITE IS ALARMED. “Do you ever get the feeling that we’re not welcome?” Pete asks.

  “Hello, ma’am, we’re from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, do you have a few minutes to talk about our Lord and Savior?”

  Pete winces as he produces a key and tries it in the door lock. It doesn’t fit. He fumbles with the keyring in the chilly rain, trying various others until he finally gets a result. The door creaks open to reveal a bare concrete-floored lobby surrounding a circular stairwell, descending into darkness. “Get the lights, will you? I know you can see in this but I can’t—”

  Alex flicks the switch and a bare bulb flickers on above them, illuminating the staircase down to the tunnel that leads to the entrance of the former Leeds War Room Region 2 bunker.

  Peeling paint, the smells of stagnant water, wet concrete and mold, cobwebs: these are Alex’s first impressions of the 1950s cold war installation. It skulks on the edge of the city, bookended by a police station and one of the city’s larger crematoria, as if to underline the brooding horror of its purpose. Perhaps the rising damp and other signs of neglect are a good thing. Better by far if it could be left to decay on the scrapheap of history. But the Laundry has plans for it.

  Pete parks his suitcase at the top, then starts down the staircase, boots clattering on the treads. The skeleton of a motorized winch squats rusting on a rail that spans the top of the stairwell, unused since the last time anyone needed to move furniture in and out of this horribly expensive hole in the ground. “Remind me again who thought this was a good idea?”

  “Don’t be silly, Alex, it’s perfectly safe: it’s maintained by our cuddly friends Mr. Telereal and Mrs. Trinium, it says so right on the rusting sign by the front door. If we slip and break our necks or get ourselves electrocuted in the waterlogged subbasement, squatters are sure to find our bodies within a few months—aha!” At the bottom of the stairwell they find another lobby. An arch-roofed corridor, ceiling festooned with ominously fat cables, slopes down into the ground. The fluorescent tubes flicker, their ballast circuits dying, but about a third of them are still working and it’s enough to see that, although the paint is peeling and the tunnel smells musty, the floor is clear. “The way in is down here, according to the map.” Pete refers to a thick sheaf of photocopies that he clutches in one hand. “There’s supposed to be a caretaker in residence, but I don’t see any sign of—”

  Alex’s nostrils flare. “We have company.”

  “Jolly good: you go first.” Pete nudges him forward.

  “Bastard,” Alex says without any real rancor; “I want danger money.”

  “If the caretaker shoots you I’ll sign off on your hazard pay.”

  The corridor curves as it descends. Just as the entrance stairwell disappears from view behind them, they come to a wide vestibule. A huge steel blast door, painted so many times that it appears to have developed map contours, is very pointedly wedged open with a pry bar jammed under its lower lip and wooden chocks rammed into its hinged edge. Beyond the door a different corridor veers off at right angles, its walls painted institutional cream. They’ve clearly been renewed not less than a decade ago. (The tunnel beyond the blast door comes to a dead end punctuated by heavy steel grilles into which a steady breeze blows, evidence of well-maintained air conditioning fans.)

  “Oi! Who are you—”

  Alex was aware of the caretaker’s presence almost from the bottom of the stairwell. His stertorous breathing is almost as loud as the distant traffic noise. But he waits until the man shuffles into view before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his warrant card. “Ministry of Defense, Alex Schwartz and Peter Russell. We’re on your approved visitors list for this week.”

  The caretaker is about sixty, the heavy burden of his years slowly crumpling him into an envelope of wheezing lassitude wrapped around a bloated core of abdominal discomfort. He wears a security guard’s uniform, but Alex can’t help noticing that he’s tucked his feet into a pair of rubber waders with a fake wool lining. His breath smells . . . bad: or maybe it’s not his breath. His exhalations merely smell of cheap stale cigarettes. But something else, some miasma he carries with him like a shroud, makes the things in the back of Alex’s head stir and chitter in the darkness. Alex clamps down, but Pete is oblivious as the caretaker makes a show of examining the warrant card. “We’re here to conduct a site visit and check the works list.” Pete brandishes his stash of photocopies, which Alex now sees includes blueprints and floorplans for the ancient radar control bunker turned regional emergency center, along with what is probably a surveyor’s report listing what will need to be done in order to restore it to operational capability—if not for a nuclear war, then for another equally grim purpose. “If it’s in order, I’ll be back tomorrow with another inspection team. You’re living in the Regional Commissioner’s rooms, aren’t you? Can you give us the tour of the accessible areas? We’d particularly like to see the broadcast suite, the telephone switchroom, the generator and supply rooms, and the air conditioning units.”

  “Aye, I can do that, but I was ’aving me tea? Can tha be waiting five minutes?”

  “Did someone say tea?” Pete brightens. Alex doesn’t have the heart to translate the word into London-speak: tea means supper up here.

  “Nay, but I can be making tha’a cuppa. Come along now.” The caretaker turns and shuffles wearily back into the depths of the secret nuclear bunker, a hermit retreating into his cave. Pete glances at Alex,
who shrugs before turning to follow their host. It’s not as if he’s got anything better to do this evening . . .

  2.

  INTERLUDE: ADVERSARY

  DEAR DIARY:

  A lot of stuff has happened in the month since I wrote about visiting Leeds, and I’m not sure I understand it all.

  (Of course, that probably puts me ahead of the game: it turns out that most people understand nothing.)

  The short version: my working life stopped being boring almost immediately after the visit to the bunker. In fact, everything got unpleasantly exciting! Although not all at once, of course. You know the urban legend about how if you put a frog in a saucepan of cold water and bring it slowly to a boil, the frog won’t notice the heat until it dies? I was that frog. Mind you, at first I thought it was my personal life that was getting exciting, and pleasantly so at that. I had no idea about the huge events taking place in the background and what they would mean for me. Or for us.