The Concrete Jungle

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