The Concrete Jungle

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The Concrete Jungle
by Charles Stross
Copyright ? 2004 by Charles Stross.
Reprinted with permission from The Atrocity Archives
Golden Gryphon Press, 2004, ISBN 1-930846-25-8
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
The Concrete Jungle by Charles Stross http://www.antipope.org/charlie/

The death rattle of a mortally wounded telephone is a horrible thing to hear at four o'clock on a Tuesday morning. It's even worse when you're sleeping the sleep that follows a pitcher of iced margueritas in the basement of the Dog's Bollocks, with a chaser of nachos and a tequila slammer or three for dessert. I come to, sitting upright, bare-ass naked in the middle of the wooden floor, clutching the receiver with one hand and my head with the other -- purely to prevent it from exploding, you understand -- and moaning quietly. "Who is it?" I croak into the microphone.
"Bob, get your ass down to the office right away. This line isn't secure." I recognize that voice: I have nightmares about it. That's because I work for its owner.
"Whoa, I was asleep, boss. Can't it -- " I gulp and look at the alarm clock " -- wait until morning?"
"No. I'm calling a code blue."
"Jesus." The band of demons stomping around my skull strike up an encore with drums. "Okay, boss. Ready to leave in ten minutes. Can I bill a taxi fare?"
"No, it can't wait. I'll have a car pick you up." He cuts the call, and that is when I start to get frightened because even Angleton, who occupies a lair deep in the bowels of the Laundry's Arcana Analysis Section -- but does something far scarier than that anodyne title might suggest -- is liable to think twice before authorising a car to pull in an employee at zero-dark o'clock.
I manage to pull on a sweater and jeans, tie my shoelaces, and get my ass downstairs just before the blue and red strobes light up the window above the front door. On the way out I grab my emergency bag -- an overnighter full of stuff that Andy suggested I should keep ready, "just in case" -- and slam and lock the door and turn around in time to find the cop waiting for me. "Are you Bob Howard?"
"Yeah, that's me." I show him my card.
"If you'll come with me, sir."
Lucky me: I get to wake up on my way in to work four hours early, in the front passenger seat of a police car with strobes flashing and the driver doing his best to scare me into catatonia. Lucky London: the streets are nearly empty at this time of night, so we zip around the feral taxis and somnolent cleaning trucks without pause. A journey that would normally take an hour and a half takes fifteen minutes. (Of course, it comes at a price: Accounting exists in a state of perpetual warfare with the rest of the civil service over internal billing, and the Metropolitan Police charge for their services as a taxi firm at a level that would make you think they provided limousines with wet bars. But Angleton has declared a code blue, so . . .)
The dingy-looking warehouse in a side street, adjoining a closed former primary school, doesn't look too promising -- but the door opens before I can raise a hand to knock on it. The grinning sallow face of Fred from Accounting looms out of the darkness in front of me and I recoil before I realise that it's all right -- Fred's been dead for more than a year, which is why he's on the night shift. This isn't going to degenerate into plaintive requests for me to fix his spreadsheet. "Fred, I'm here to see Angleton," I say very clearly, then I whisper a special password to stop him from eating me. Fred retreats back to his security cubbyhole or coffin or whatever it is you call it, and I cross the threshold of the Laundry. It's dark -- to save light bulbs, and damn the health and safety regs -- but some kind soul has left a mouldering cardboard box of hand torches on the front desk. I pull the door shut behind me, pick up a torch, and head for Angleton's office.
As I get to the top of the stairs I see that the lights are on in the corridor we call Mahogany Row. If the boss is running a crisis team then that's where I'll find him. So I divert into executive territory until I see a door with a red light glowing above it. There's a note taped to the door handle: BOB HOWARD ACCESS PERMITTED. So I "access permitted" and walk right in.
As soon as the door opens Angleton looks up from the map spread across the boardroom table. The room smells of stale coffee,