recovered security footage
time code: 11.26 07 02 20xx
subject: Peta Lois Quinn, [designated 'fiver' for this recording];
location: Tilbury container port, Port of London
Routine call to Service. "Fiver" seen attempting to enter the port inconspicuously by the St Andrews Road entrance with shipping agency staff and other dock workers. Tracked using CCTV cameras past storage of bulk grain imports to riverside container farm and loading to wharfside mooring of MV Lady Pike [reg. Cape Town S.A.]. Seen boarding. Informed no need further monitoring…
Georgia "Georgie" Wade watched Peta Quinn with eyes that were bloodshot and heavy.
For the better part of two decades, Lidrian's Barge was the notorious gathering place for the community of rogues, pirates and undesirables, the "foreign powers" and the watchmen who watch them: the American "Agency", the French "Academy", the Russian's "Committee" and of course the British "Service".
Like all the best pirate retreats, Lidrian's was a moveable feast: sometimes an actual barge, sometimes a caravan train in the desert, sometimes a convoy of trucks pitched up at a forgotten diner on the Interstate. Once it was an airship, but that didn't work out. For a while it was an abandoned nuclear bunker and everyone got sick building syndrome; for a couple of months it was a Scottish Castle, until the owner unexpectedly returned from the Caribbean; and for a brief outrageous period in 2009 it occupied the New York headquarters of a bankrupt bank. Rumour and gossip suggested Lidrian was currently moored in London only because she was toying with a move to the Olympic Village after the 2012 Games.
Peta Quinn was not intimate with rumour or gossip.
As a privileged, middle-class post-graduate student of mathematics and computing at what she considered the better of the two British Universities, the list of things with which she was intimately familiar was depressingly short: her thesis on the programming of viruses in quantum computing; the office politics of a renowned but chronically underfunded maths department; a dog called Ruffles currently living with her parents; occasionally a young man called Peter, although a relationship built on a coincidence of names and apparently mutually satisfactory sex did not seem well-starred for success. And an unlicensed ten-year-old Glock 17C semi-automatic pistol, with which she practiced almost every day. She called the pistol Mr Bang Bang.
It was, of course, the Glock that had drawn the attention of the Service – or, more precisely, a very tiny scintilla of attention from the very minor and unimportant secretariat within the Service whose duty was to notice that sort of thing – and was why Ms Quinn was under surveillance in the first place.
The Service were interested, in as much as they were interested at all, to know where she had obtained the firearm. Their suspicions ran, unimaginatively enough, to her tutor, Professor Grace Whitsun. Peta had met Grace Whitsun on the anti-war protest march when she, Peta, was still an undergraduate. Whitsun had arranged Peta's postgraduate studies and had hand-picked her as one of five students to whom she gave individual attention. Whitsun was who she was here to meet.
Peta thought Grace was a remarkable woman. The Service thought she was a boring conspiracy nut, the kind who posted "I know something you don't know" type comments on message boards and filled lonely girls' heads with "truths" about the Cold War, the "war on terror" and the "secret war" they were all supposed to be covering up. Unfortunately, if she was also the sort of nut who handed out guns along with her mixed-up "truths", they were probably going to have to do something about her.
So, resentfully, Georgie Wade watched Peta Quinn. She blinked her heavy eyes and winced. Exhaustion kept dragging her down towards sleep. It would do no good. Her sleep was shattered by nightmares that would thrust her back into wakefulness.
Georgie had never wanted this job. "This job" being her job in the Service, never mind the job of following some waif of a girl into Lidrian's den.
She was resentful of her paymasters in the Service. This was not exactly something new – Georgie had spent fifteen years nurturing an entirely unreasonable sense of grievance over an inheritance that had left her so well off that she should never have had to seek paid work in her life but, in her view, not nearly as obscenely wealthy as she deserved. She'd been so sure that she was daddy's favourite. That male privilege might take priority over her winning charm when it came to disposing of the family fortune had simply never entered her head, an immature attitude she'd never been given any reason to grow out of. She'd blamed her more lucky sibling. She still did, in spite of, well… She'd largely taken the Service job in an attempt to spite the brother who barely acknowledged her existence let alone knew that he was so deeply despised.
Georgie blinked and winced. She swallowed and winced again.
She winced every time she blinked. She winced every time she swallowed.
Every time she blinked, she could see her brother Paul's exploded remains as she had found them in the boardroom among the scorching and the chains. Every time she swallowed she could taste the rubber and sulphur and, worst of all, bacon taste of the air that cloyed that grotesque tableau. The Honourable Paul Wade was extremely dead, but still giving Georgia reasons to resent him.
Add jealousy to resentment, she thought, ratcheting up the sliver of her despite currently directed towards the unaware Peta, jealousy of her simple, innocent culture shock.
Peta had had no real way to prepare for Lidrian's. If she'd thought about it, which she hadn't, she would probably have expected it to be something like Rick's Café from "Casablanca". Or possibly the Cantina scene from "Star Wars". Which in a way, it was. Aboard the MV Lady Pike, a hatch opened onto a dimly lit cavern of recessed booths masked by silk drapes with the vague suggestion of the Middle East and a miasma made of the meeting of smokes from assorted narcotics and the oily aromas that emerged from what might have been a kitchen somewhere.
The dress code was biased strongly to the Western business suit, many of them a little too bulky under one arm where a holster was what can hardly be described as concealed, but there was a strong showing for the traditional Arab garb, keffiyeh for the men and hijab for the women, with a minority opting for combat fatigues, or at least a fashionable flak jacket over shirt and trousers. A group of Goths occupied one table well away from the door. At the bar, a shabby little man with slicked-back hair and huge half-lidded eyes gulped water from a pint glass. Next to him was a man completely nude, chatting apparently unselfconsciously. Peta quickly looked away. Her eye fell on a huge man dressed in a dirty linen suit sitting alone. He was eating a dish of rice and sultanas and, on the platter in front of him, what looked like a whole lamb's head.
Heavy-browed and darkly terracotta of skin, a group of Argai were quarrelling in one of the alcoves. Not that Peta would have had any idea that they were Argai, nor even what it meant to be Argai. But they tugged at the corner of her eye as in some way intrinsically wrong. If someone had explained that, no matter how immaculate their Saville Row suits, their particular combination of features just didn't quite fit any stereotype with which she was familiar she would have seen it at once, but as it was her mind just screamed out a wrongness that she was unable to place.
Anticipation was inadequate in the face of the visceral sensation of alienation that that place induced. The sounds, the smells, the very touch of the oily smoky air like an unwanted caress, bypassed any visual interpretation sending signals to play directly on the amygdales. The fear and implicit humiliation of entering a new place, alone and uncertain – exposed! – was raised to a pitch that actually seemed to scrape her skin. This was another world…
Georgie wondered whether she should eat something.
She should eat something for the cover. She was never hungry anymore. Her stomach rebelled at the thought, and she took another big swig of her gin.
She'd managed to get served at the front bar, stayed clear of the naked man, and wandered deeper into the barge, ignoring Peta while never straying too far from her.
It was all in the training. Ignore the target; let your subconscious mind follow her; the juju men back at the Service would sort it all out in debriefing. She'd done it before, astonished at all the detail of her brother's business she'd recalled under hypnosis when she'd been quite sure she'd not been paying the least bit of attention.
That brought another twist of the resentment and guilt. The Service hadn't really been interested in her at all – only in her bloody lucky bloody brother. Her bloody dead, bloody lucky bloody brother.
Beyond the front bar, Lidrian's offered entertainments to all tastes. Smoking lounges, for the high of your choice, of course, and a no-limits casino, or the private card tables. Then there were the fight clubs organised in the lower levels of the barge. And there were the bordello rooms, where the most salacious rumours promised exotic "foreign" hostesses, maybe even one of the near legendary Elgab. Georgie was not above a little titillation, and listened to the gossip when she could. But she was cynical and not in the mood. Probably just some over-made-up East European girls, anyway.
Peta, she suddenly realised, was being introduced to some people.
Following her without following her, she'd been led by the girl past the more vulgar pleasures of the pirate barge through to a dining room. Or maybe even a ballroom. It was like something from a Twenties speakeasy, with people sat about large round tables eating, or just taking drinks. There was live music from a jazz trio accompanied by a theremin of all things. It very quickly started to give Georgie a headache, which she assumed, nastily, was probably the point.
Grace Whitsun had emerged blinking from one of many side doors to the private rooms. For a moment, she looked like some tweed-coated Victorian explorer emerging from the Mummy's Tomb, only to transform instantly from dotty professor to gym mistress: hands on hips, she surveyed the room, sighted Peta, and then set off towards her at a yomp.
"Quinn! There's my girl. Outstanding!" Grace seized the younger woman in a bear hug, giving her neither air nor time with which to reply. "Made it. Well done! Come. People to meet!"
Georgie expected the professor to lead Peta back to the room from which she'd emerged. That wasn't a problem. At Lidrian's, all of the "private" rooms were made to be spied on, whether it was by hidden camera or infrared eye or an old-fashioned spyhole in the wall or ceiling. All you had to do was pay for the privilege. She was already half-planning which of the staff to approach with a bribe, when she saw that the two women were instead heading over to a table on the edge of the cabaret stage. Damn. Smarter than they looked then.
Of course, it was the exact opposite of her training and instructions, but Georgie did like to pick up the secrets for herself. It made her feel like a real spy, a proper Jane Bond, not just a convenience for the Service. But short of jumping up on stage – she briefly saw herself snatching a bowler hat and doing a second-rate knock-off of Liza Minnelli; it wasn't like she could whip out a sax and turn the group on stage into a quintet – she wasn't going to get close enough to overhear them directly. She'd have to rely on the Service doing its "magic", and she didn't like that. She wanted to feel important, not a tool for the sexist pigs.
Impotently, she picked another table and scowled at a menu card.
The table to which Grace led Peta was almost empty. Another woman was sat there: small, dark, but quietly intense. A beaded skullcap covered her hair and a matching pearl choker was about her long neck. Otherwise, she wore a plain white business suit. Her elbows rested on the table, and her hands, unjewelled, moved constantly in fluid expansive gestures.
A young man hovered at her shoulder, attentive but nervous, pale where she was dark, with short black hair in an untidy cut hanging in a fringe that almost but not quite hid his eyes which, like hers, were startlingly green. He wore grey in a shade that you barely noticed him and would quickly forget he was there, although his matched thumb-rings were eye-catching: black and white yin and yang symbols.
Also at the table, leaving a gap between them of a couple of chairs, sat a man. He wore a blazer and made it look like the only thing less appropriate would have been a cocktail dress. Hair cropped, nose broken, a tiny bird tattoo next to his eye – if he'd heard the phrase "hard-faced" and gone out into the world set on acquiring one, this is how he would have ended up looking.
Grace seized an empty chair facing the two of them, pulled it out and dropped into it, crashing her arms down on the table.
"Grace Whitsun," she announced, "from the university. You know that. This is Quinn. She's doing the thing." Grace noticed that Peta, like the young man, was hovering. "Sit, sit!" she urged, and Peta delicately perched on the chair beside her.
Georgia, of course, heard none of this.
"Introductions: Peta, this is Mr Darke, Emmanuel Darke, he's security. That's a euphemism – he hurts people."
The man, Darke, grunted what might have been a laugh. "I'd rather say I stop other people from hurting you, prof. It's a nasty world. We can't all have… Liberal principles."
"Well, that's a point of view we could debate."
"Perhaps another time," interjected the woman with one of her characteristic gestures. "I am Mrs Winter." She indicated the young man, "my secretary, Harker. Harker Minion Rector." The boy nodded a greeting. "I understand you're the people who've been looking for me. You have a proposal and I have information. Shall we do business?"
"That, I would so very much like to say, would be splendid, don't you think," interrupted a new voice.
A vastly fat man, a shabby linen suit straining around his girth, had somehow appeared from nowhere and was settling himself into a chair between Peta and Darke. He paused with his backside not quite settled, affecting the look of a naughty schoolboy as he glanced from one face to another. "Oh, I ever so very much beg your pardons. Have I intruded on a private party? Is my foot ever so put in it?"
"The man eating the lamb's head," said Peta, even as Grace was saying "Who the hell is this?" and Darke was quietly saying "Friend, you may want to find another table, like right now."
The man finished settling himself into the chair and turned to beam at them all before addressing the table: "I am, indeed, the man who was eating the lamb's head. So gratifying to be noticed is it not."
"Notice this," said Darke, a large handgun appearing in his fist, pointing at the intruder's ample stomach.
"No." Mrs Winter's voice was deep for a woman, purposeful. But also playful. Some might say sensuous. A woman of many assets, but her voice was clearly one. "No," she said, "this one has been…"
"Touched?" suggested the man. "Marked, perhaps. Cursed, even?"
Mrs Winter smiled at him. "Say instead: 'gifted'," she replied.
"Whatever," snarled Darke. "Can I get rid of him, please, Winter?"
The man raised his hands to affect a pose of shock: "Mrs Winter, gracious lady, I appeal to you; you at least surely know me."
"Of course I do," she said. "Only, forgive me, what are you calling yourself today?"
"Touché, madam, touché. Ladies, gentleman, as the minstrel put it: please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste, no? No? Well, Monkfish will do, for now. Augustus Julius Monkfish Esquire, at your service. Oh, and Captain Darke, the gentleman with the glass of water and the large knife at your throat is an associate of mine, Mr Lorimar Sole. Be so good as to put down your prodigious armament, would you, sir. Guns do so make him nervous and I'd hate for his hand to tremble, so close to your jugular."
Georgie found she wasn't breathing. Darke did not flinch. Nor move his gun. The man calling himself Monkfish theatrically sighed, rolled his eyes, and gazed at Mrs Winter, his head slightly cocked to one side.
"Oh do put the weapon away, Mr Darke," she said, "and Mr… Monkfish… won't you please explain yourself?"
Darke's scowl knotted even further, but he acquiesced and lowered the gun. Monkfish made a pantomime of drawing out a handkerchief and mopping his brow and lips.
"Permit me," said Mr Monkfish, "to tempt you with an indiscretion."
"An indiscretion?" Mrs Winter elegantly arched an eyebrow.
"Though it goes against the very essence of my nature," he assured them expansively, "Lord knows, I am a man who knows how to keep a secret. Am I not, Mr Sole?"
"Oh yes, Messer Monkfish, uh-huh uh-huh, you are the very soul of discretion."
"And you, Mr Sole, are a very Trappist.
"Oh thank you, Messer Monkfish."
"If I may…" said Mr Monkfish. "I know why you're here."
"Oh you do?" said Mrs Winter.
"Oh yes," said Monkfish. "No need to doubt. I will explain all. These people," he waved at Grace and Peta, "have a plan. They know, because their university has been working on it, that a certain Ministry of the British Government are building a, what shall I call it, a machine, a device, an 'engine', yes, an 'engine' the purpose of which is to allow them to approach those whom the Service designate the 'foreign powers' on what they think will be a more even footing, namely: to open a D-Gate, a doorway to other Worlds."
Darke scoffed. "Other Worlds, yeah, right."
"Dear doubting Mr Darke, the Ministry believes… or I might say, more to the point, your university friends believe that the Ministry believes that they possess a device through which they can access… would you be so crushingly boorish as to say 'higher dimensions'? Do you not just hate it when people who should know better talk of 'parallel dimensions' when they mean 'parallel continua'? Call me pedantic, I know you will, but I do so mind: how can dimensions be parallel when they are by definition perpendicular? I should rather we say: 'further circles of the world'."
"That," said Darke, "is just ridiculous."
Monkfish gave him a withering look. "Yes, isn't it. Of course it is. Mrs Winter, do I need to continue? We're sitting here in Lidrian's Barge with, oh, I count at least fifteen 'foreign' agents within range of a well-thrown baguette. Are we really all going to play 'let's pretend that it's all made up'?"
"Suppose," she replied carefully, "that we were to accept the premise that the Ministry may have… a device. Of some sort. For whatever purpose. What of it?"
"Why, was Monkfish not plain? These university fellows intend to steal it."
There was a distinct beat of silence around the table, as loud as a confirmation. Then Mrs Winter smiled, a full, seductive, killer's smile, a smile that never reached her green eyes. She continued:
"That sounds like a very dangerous proposition, Mr Monkfish. Whyever would we discuss something like that? Especially with someone we…" she let her gesturing hands flower expansively, "…barely know?"
"My ever so dear Mrs Winter, may I call you that? These ladies have a plan; Mr Darke is able to provide what I believe is called in the trade 'the muscle'…"
"I have a few guys on payroll," Darke shrugged. "So what?"
"… and you, Mrs Winter, I suspect that you are hoping to buy the device from them when they are done."
"You paint a pretty picture, Mr Monkfish. But I'd still like to see the part where you fit in."
"Oh, your humble servant, madam. To you, Monkfish can be of only the most trivial use, but in so many ways."
"Name five," Darke snarled.
Monkfish regarded the mercenary with, what, pity? Disdain?
"One: Logistics; two: reconnaissance; three: espionage; four: an expert technical knowledge of ancient and 'foreign' artefacts; and five," he pretended to consider, "assassination. I am also a tender and generous lover and make an immaculate Spanish Omelette. Isn't that so, Mr Sole?"
"Oh yes, oh yes. Messer Monkfish is an, uh-huh uh-huh, excellent chef."
"Will that do?"
Mrs Winter waved a hand at Darke to silence him before he could reply.
"And supposing we were to accept any of your… fantastical tale. What would you be expecting to get in return?"
"Ah yes, the very quid for the ever so pro quo. Well, we will come to that. For now, let us just say that there is an item that I very dearly desire to possess and that I believe you to be able to deliver this item to me and therefore I should be very much obliged if you would deliver this item to me. Such is the price of Monkfish. Do we have an agreement?"
"I can't say that I like your terms."
"I did not expect you to. Do we have, as I say, an agreement?"
"Let us say we have… an understanding."
"Touché, madam, encore touché. An understanding. Yes, an understanding. I should think that that will serve. Very good, very well, very wise. In that case, we have an accord. I am your man. And these…
Mr Monkfish reached into a pocket of his linen jacket, pausing only to roll his eyes as Darke's gun hand twitched on the table, and drew out seven tall, slim playing cards.
"… are the people we will need."