The Annihilation Score (10 page)

“It's coming.” I swallow. “With all due respect, I was called to this briefing at short notice. My department is in fact working overtime on a broad strategy for managing the superpowered. Unfortunately we currently have neither the budget nor the enabling legislative framework to implement the plan, but—”

“You'll have it on my desk by nine a.m. sharp next Monday morning.” She doesn't smile: Jessica Greene only opens wide to swallow her prey. “You will personally brief my staff later that day, subject to scheduling.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I say automatically. I don't
think
a heel-click would be appreciated, but—“Is there anything else?”

“No,” she says dismissively: “I think we've heard all we—”

The red telephone next to the Deputy PM's elbow trills for attention.

“Yah?” Deputy Prime Minister Dennis Baker—at age forty-one the head of the junior party in the coalition, and one of the most powerful politicians in the country—actually
yah
s. He does it with the indolent, satisfied smirk of the utterly entitled; then something odd happens. He stiffens, an expression of sudden urgency wiping the grin from his features. “Oh dear. How unfortun—
What?
” (Another pause, during which all of us try to pretend we're not holding our breath in hope of learning what could set Golden Boy's face in such a severe rictus of dismay.) “Oh dear, that's really rather serious, isn't
it? Yes, I can see why you felt it necessary to interrupt—yes, I'll tell them. Keep me informed of any developments. Yes. Bye.”

He puts the phone down, then leans forward and plants his hands palm-down on either side of his blotter for a moment. For a moment he struggles visibly for words.

“
Where
is Officer Friendly when you need him?” he finally bursts out. Then he takes a deep breath and uses the moment to get a grip on himself. “I apologize, ladies and gentlemen. It appears that the incident in Trafalgar Square may have been a diversion.”

“What?” (That's my contribution to the sudden uproar.)

“While Dr. O'Brien was defending our friend the Mayor from Strip Jack Spratt in front of the cameras around the Fourth Plinth, somebody broke into the Bank of England.”

*   *   *

“They broke into the Bank of England vaults,” I repeat later that evening, “crowbarred their way into one of the secure terminals, and downloaded the private keys to the currency serialization printer.”

Vikram: “Who are ‘they'?”

Emma: “What's a currency serialization printer?”

We're in a private room at the Civil Service Club, a couple of blocks away from the Cabinet Office. Our booking on the room in Admiralty House ran out, and the New Annex is still out of service, so the Senior Auditor personally signed us into the club and agreed to a subsistence claim. Which is a good thing, because I am shaky and ravenous with hunger—I haven't eaten properly since before last night's reception on the oil rig.

I push my hair back (isolated strands are making individual bids for freedom from the knot I imposed on them after I showered) and wet my lips before I reply. It's a really nice Beaujolais: the SA has good taste in wine. “Nobody knows who ‘they' are, which is in itself highly suspicious,” I explain. “The cameras saw nothing. Literally, nothing. The recording isn't blank, it just shows what you'd expect to see in a room with nobody there, until suddenly there's an
explosion and bits of computer and broken glass and ceiling tiles all over the floor.”

“Do go on.” Dr. Armstrong's spectacles twinkle: reflections from the candles in the middle of the table.

“They broke into the vault where they keep the secure computer system the bank uses to generate the numbers on banknotes. It's an anti-forgery measure: the serial numbers aren't purely sequential, and they aren't random. They're actually a sequence number and a cryptographic hash function generated by a
very
private key indeed. Banks can use a copy of the B of E's public key to verify that high-denomination notes aren't forgeries. It's a back-stop: even if an enterprising crook can get hold of a supply of the right paper and ink, beg borrow or steal a secure hologram-capable intaglio printer, and manufacture currency plates, they still have to get the number right.”

“I thought they used RFID chips these days?” says Jez Wilson. “And DNA?”

“The DNA tagging hasn't been rolled out yet; when it is, it can be sampled and amplified by PCR to authenticate the new banknotes. RFID chips—not for anything small, they're too expensive. Euro zone issuers use RFID chips in fifty-euro notes and up, but the Bank of England doesn't do that yet. The key security measure is still the cryptographic checksum in the machine-readable number.”

“So they stole what, the private key?”

“Not known.” I take another sip of wine. “What we
do
know is that they ran off a couple of tapes full of signed serialized numbers. At least, that's what the Treasury people are saying they think happened. All the room contains is a terminal and a pair of minicomputers, old enough to vote and with all but two of their i/o ports soldered shut. They generate sequences and dump them onto magnetic tape, which is then transported under guard to a secure banknote printing site, loaded onto the printing station that adds the serial numbers, and then degaussed on the spot to prevent the tape being reused.”

“How do they know the tapes were taken?”

“There's a mechanical rev counter inside the tape drive they use—not visible if you're looking at the front panel. It's all very old-school:
they open it up every week and write down the number of tapes that have been written in a ledger. Apparently someone ran off a couple of reels of twenty-pound notes. Each tape can store a million valid currency numbers, so they're good for twenty million pounds of perfect forgeries per cartridge. Then they left behind an EMP bomb—a shaped implosion charge wrapped around a small electromagnetic coil. It made a mess of the room, and more importantly fried every chip, hard drive, tape, and floppy disk within twenty meters.” That's when the security guards noticed: there was a bone-rattling thump from the basement and their mobile phones died.

“Charming,” murmurs the SA. “So they've got no idea who did it, except that the culprits knew exactly what they were doing, could bamboozle TV cameras, and got away with a couple of incredibly portable items that are worth twenty million pounds each. What makes them think it's connected with Strip Jack Spratt's song-and-dance session?”

“Well, there are two clues to work on.”
This calls for another sip of wine.
“Firstly, as near as we can tell, the break-in happened at exactly the same time that Jack started building his pornographic sculpture on the Fourth Plinth. It might be a pure coincidence, but what are the odds? And secondly”—I pause for another sip—“the thief left a calling card.”

The SA winces almost imperceptibly. “What did it say?” he asks, clearly nerving himself for bad news.

“It said, ‘The World Shall Hear From Me Again! Tremble, Fools, Before It Is Too Late!—Professor Freudstein.'

“And it was printed in Comic Sans.”

So. First we have an outbreak of superpowers . . . and now we have a
soi-disant
Mad Scientist with
really bad
typographic taste on our hands.

How could things possibly get any worse?

THE OFFICE

The next day I awaken early, with a mild hangover and a bad case of
oh dear God did I really say that to the Senior Auditor?
I roll over and reach out, meaning to ask Bob's opinion, and hit cold air on the other side of an unfamiliar hotel bed. Everything crashes down on me at once and I sit bolt upright. Then reflex takes over: I reach for my laptop.

I have email, lots of email. Temporary office space has been assigned in one of our outlying buildings just south of the river, under the shadow of the glittering green glass block-pile that is Legoland, the Secret Intelligence Service headquarters building. (That's MI6 to you.) A memo from Emma MacDougal: she's going to spend the morning trawling for available staff to assign to my department and she'll send them across as soon as possible.
Damn, I'll have to get in to the new office early to head them off at the pass.
Another email, this time from the secure Metropolitan Police intranet: Jo Sullivan wants to talk to me. Well, that's good to know, because
I
want to talk to
her
. The shortest route to an arrested villain in an interview room is through his arresting officer's boss, and Strip Jack Spratt is currently the only lead I've got on this Freudstein character.

Of course I'm not totally naive, so I google Freudstein before I even think about going downstairs and seeing if my room tariff includes breakfast. First hit: an EBM/techno band from Brighton. Second hit: the villain in an obscure Italian cult horror movie from 1981. Somehow neither of these seem like promising candidates for the sort of lunatic who'd break into the Bank of England. I rub my forehead and groan. Usually when I go to sleep, all the crises of the day look better—or at least more distant—the next morning. This is that rare and unwelcome exception: a day when I wake up to find that yesterday's bad news is still rumbling downhill, gathering momentum like a giant snowball.

Despair, dismay, disorientation, and delusion: the four horsemen of the bureaucratic apocalypse are coming my way. I want to crawl back under the covers and hide from the world, but somehow I don't think the world is going to let me escape so easily. So I roll sideways out of bed (a day older and a day creakier) and shuffle towards the compact hotel bathroom.

Someone has been kind enough to send my suitcase over. I raid it for a change of underwear, then dress in my work weeds and head downstairs. I discover that I am set up for breakfast. Unfortunately the hotel buffet is pretty much wall-to-wall fried meat and carbs. I manage to choke down a bowl of muesli and some diabolically bad coffee before giving up and retreating back to my room. A quick call to the front desk confirms that I've got the room for two more nights, thanks to the SA: bless his little cotton socks for thinking it through. (By Friday the tabloids will begin to lose interest, and by Saturday I might be able to sneak back into my own home through the kitchen window without being mugged by paparazzi.) So I collect my violin case, shoehorn my laptop into my handbag, and head for the nearest tube station. It's time to go to work.

Work turns out to be a rented office suite in a refurbished warehouse in Hoxton, an odd survivor left over from the Silicon Roundabout boom. (The local council helpfully kicked out all the startups to make room for student flats: apparently rented accommodation is better for the post-housing boom economy than creating new businesses.)
I get there a whisker before ten o'clock. There's an anonymous-looking steel door with an entryphone system and reinforced bolts; behind it there's a security desk, two unlabelled doorways with complex locks on them, and a blue-suiter who failed to hop on the G4S gravy train when it rolled past. “Dr. O'Brien,” I introduce myself, showing my warrant card. “I gather I have an office here.”

The security officer stirs himself for long enough to look at my card, then does a double take. “I'm sorry, ma'am—Director—let me sign you in.” He takes my card and scans it, then unlocks a drawer and hands the card back to me, along with a lanyard and badge. I freeze for a moment, eyeball-to-eyeball with a glassy-eyed version of me who looks as if she's just swallowed a frog. “Please come this way.”

We go through the left door (which unlocks when you hold your ID badge against the sensor and face a camera at eye level). Behind it, the guard ushers me along a narrow windowless corridor, up the elevator to the fourth floor, and out into a stairwell with a glass-fronted interior reception area beyond it. “All yours, ma'am. I'd better get back to the front desk.”

All mine?
It feels very strange. There's a bog-standard bleached-pine desk in the lobby area, but no PC or chair yet. A pile of flat-pack furniture boxes stacked up behind it appear to have been abandoned by the previous occupants. There are the usual false floor and ceiling tiles, beige carpet for the one and off-white polystyrene for the other. I use my badge to let myself into the offices beyond, noting that the door might be made of glass but it's more than two centimeters thick and the copper-and-wire-mesh gasket of a Faraday cage is visible in the door frame, a security precaution intended to block wireless emissions.

A completely empty office suite is more than a little eerie. I walk a circuit of the rectangular corridor, noting office doors, toilets, cafeteria. The cafeteria is bare, cupboard doors hanging open like hungry mouths. The only office with any distinguishing features at all is at the far corner: there's a discreet plaque on the door that says DIRECTOR.

I go in.

As Director, I apparently rate a spacious, airy corner office with
thick pile carpet and tinted windows that overlook the high street. More than that: before I get to it I have to run the gauntlet of a medium-sized outer office that is clearly intended for the director's personal assistant. My offices are bigger than the top floor of my house. Alas, the effect is slightly spoiled by the profound lack of any visible furniture. Raised floor panels show where the phones and network cables will be plumbed in: but I suppose they think I'm such an elevated personage that I can just levitate in lotus position until such time as someone delivers my desk and chair.

I pull out my phone to call Facilities back at the New Annex, but just as I'm about to dial, it vibrates to announce an incoming call. (So much for the Faraday cage.) There's a familiar face on the screen and for a heart-stabbing moment I consider not answering: but no, that's not an option.

“Bob?”

“Mo? How are you? I heard about the news—”

“Where are you? Where are you staying? I haven't been back home since yesterday lunchtime—”

Our words collide and overlap in a birefringent sheen of ripples: or perhaps that's just my eyes. I stop and listen, clinging to the phone as if it's a life-saver.

“I'm in the New Annex, Mo. It's a real mess here; the fire extinguishers were triggered, there's water damage and other stuff. Second floor's utterly inaccessible while the crime scene folks work it over. I'm crashing on my office floor: I've got a sleeping bag. They want me to disarm all the traps in Angleton's office and get into the Memex. It could take some time. How about you?”

I twirl in place, very slowly. Is he sleeping in the office to avoid me, or avoid Lecter? That's the question. “They've given me a corner office. Great view, shame about the furniture. Emma said she'd start sending people over this afternoon but unless Facilities get here first I've got nowhere to put them.” I realize dismally that we're talking about work. Retreating into the routine to avoid dealing with the uncanny rift that's opened up between us. “I need moral support. Can we meet up somewhere?”

“Yes, but you said you haven't been home—”

“Paparazzi, dear.”

“Did you feed Spooky?”

Oh snap, I
knew
I'd forgotten something. Horrid little fleabag. “Yes, but that was yesterday and you were going to clean the litter tray and I can't go home, I'm horribly busy and the journalists will doorstep me—”

“Just stop it, Mo.” He sounds weary. “I'll go round there as soon as I can get away from here, find a cattery or something. Park her in my office if not. It's not fair to leave her alone in an empty house.”

“I'll be—” I take a deep breath. “I can go home on Saturday. The SA reckons the tabloids will lose interest after seventy-two hours.” I realize how stupid this is the moment I say it: I'm going to give a bored cat the free run of the house and bedroom, and ample time to demonstrate its diabolically inventive (not to say fragrant) displeasure? I may not like cats, but that's only because I understand the way their twisty little minds work. “If you can find time to pick her up some time today, I'd be ever so.” I dangle a concession in front of him: “You can even bring her home to stay once I'm able to move back in.”

“Okay, I'll do that. We still need to talk—”

My phone vibrates again. “Uh oh, I've got an incoming. Looks like it's Emma. Can we continue this later? Great, bye—
smooches
,” I add, but he's already hung up. So by the time I utter the last word I'm speaking to Mrs. MacDougal from Human Resources. “Oops, that was meant for my husband. How are you this morning, Emma?”

“
I'm
fine.” There's a rather odd emphasis in her voice, as if to imply
but you aren't
: but maybe that's just my paranoia speaking. “I was calling to give you your initial personnel assignments; as you probably gathered, things are a little hectic today? But I've found four warm bodies for your team and we can fill in from there as the week goes on. I've got names for group tech support, two analyst/planners, and of course your deputy director—”

“That's great,” I say, and I mean it, “but where am I going to put them? There's no furniture here, Emma! Not even chairs. Has anyone told Facilities?”

“Oh hell, Moira was supposed to get onto that first thing. I told her to send six employee kits over—”

“Would they be flat packs, by any chance?” I stalk towards the lobby area.

“Yes, six desks, six chairs, six individual bookcases, and a supply cupboard—”

“Bingo.” The teetering pile of boxes stares me. “Could you maybe send someone round with a screwdriver, no, make that a full toolbox? And half a dozen six-way mains extension bars.” My notebook is weighing my handbag down. “I don't think we've got any network access here, so I'll email you a bullet list of everything else I can think of that we're going to need in the next twenty-four hours. We're going to be running on laptops and external security discipline for a while.”

“You do that,” Emma says warmly. “Anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes; just tell anyone who asks that we're not open for business today. Tomorrow is another matter.”

“Okay, bye.”

“Bye.”

I put my phone away and head back to my enormous, empty office. I park Lecter's case in the corner between the two windows, sit cross-legged in the middle of the carpet, and start typing furiously on my laptop. Because tomorrow may belong to me, but the day after tomorrow belongs to the Home Secretary: and if I'm not ready to deliver a dog-and-pony show by Monday, the presence or absence of our departmental coffee percolator will be the least of my worries.

*   *   *

The day passes in a blur. If you've ever moved house, you'll have some inkling of what it's like to bootstrap an empty office suite from scratch. I spend the first hour writing want lists for Emma to throw at her minions. Then the front door buzzer beeps for attention. It's a bloke from Facilities, with toolbox, as requested. “One employee desk and chair set needs to go in each of those offices”—I point—“starting with the Director's corner office and the
receptionist's room. Um. If there's a separate management-grade kit, give it to the Director. And the stores cupboard can go in there.” I wave vaguely at the empty windowless room next to the kitchen.

“Sure and I can be doing that.” He grins cheerily. “I'll have you somewhere to sit in a jiffy.”

“You get started.” I nod. “I'm nipping out. Back in an hour.”

It turns out that there's a Café Nero around the corner with free wifi and comfy leather sofas—they're playing tag with Starbucks for the migratory worker base—so I take self plus violin there, and plant myself behind a laptop screen and a venti mocha with a double shot and a good view of the door and windows. Then I start hammering the keys: it turns out that HR have a canned departmental starter-kit on file, and there are a
lot
of forms to fill out. (Yes, we've all had the security talk about open wireless networks. I've also had the weekly special en-clueing from my dear husband. We have a VPN, and firewalls, and you do not want to mess with them because the design spec for the Laundry's firewall software is not to keep intruders out, but to make them undergo spontaneous combustion when they get in: as Bob puts it, it's the only way to be sure.)