"So do we have a general agreement?" Iris asked. "An ad hoc policy committee to sit for six months until relieved by a full council session, ruling in the name of Helge's unborn child, with Helge co-opted as a member of the committee and responsibility for Clan security resting with the major?"

Riordan glanced at the agenda in front of him. "There's a lot more to it than that," he pointed out.

"Yes. But the rest is small print-these are the big issues. I call for an informal show of hands: Is a solution along the lines I just outlined acceptable in principle to you all?"

She glanced around the table. Riordan nodded. "Votes, please. Non-binding, subject to further negotiation on the details," he added, heavily. "So we know whether it is worth our while to continue with this meeting."

Hands began to go up. Iris raised hers; a moment later, Oliver Hjorth grimaced and raised his.

"I see nobody objects." Riordan nodded. "In that case, let us start on the, ah, small print. I believe you submitted a draft list of actions, my lord Julius?…"

9

coronation

It had been a busy three weeks for Mike Fleming. An enforced week of idleness at home-idleness that was curiously unrestful, punctuated by cold-sweat fear-awakenings at dead of night when something creaked or rattled in the elderly apartment-was followed by a week of presenteeism in the office, hobbling around with a lightweight cast on his foot and a walking stick in his hand, doing make-work to ease him back into the establishment. Then one morning they'd come for him: two unsmiling internal affairs officers with handcuff eyes, who told him that his security clearance was being revalidated and escorted him to an interview suite on the thirteenth floor of an FTO-rented office building.

The polygraph test itself was almost anticlimactic. It wasn't the first time that Mike had been through one; and I've done nothing to be ashamed of, he reminded himself as they hooked him up. He focused on the self-righteous truth: Unless the system was so corrupted that sharing honest concerns with his superior officer was now an offense, he was in the clear.

So the questions about his alcohol consumption, political leanings, and TV viewing habits came as something of an anticlimax.

They sent him home afterwards, but early the next day a courier dropped by with a priority letter and a new identity badge, clearing him to return to duty. So Mike hobbled out to his car again and drove to work, arriving late, to find he'd missed a scheduled meeting with Dr. James and that there was a secret memo-one he wouldn't have been allowed to set eyes on two days earlier-waiting for him to arrive at his desk.

"I'm supposed to give you access to the GREEN SKY files," Marilyn Shipman said, her lips pursed in prim disapproval. Mike couldn't tell whether it was him she disapproved of, or merely the general idea of giving someone, anyone, access to the files. "For transcription purposes only. Room 4117 is set up with a stand-alone PC for you to use, and I can bring the files to you there one at a time."

"Ah, right." Mike gestured at his desk. "I've got a lexicon and some other research materials. Can I bring them along?"

"Only if you don't mind leaving them there." Shipman paused. "Paper goes into the room but nothing comes out until it's been approved by the classification committee. Depending on their classification, I could make an authorized copy and have it added to the room's permanent inventory. But if they're another codeword project…"

"I don't think so, but I'll have to check." Mike suppressed a momentary smile at her expression of shock. Some of the spooks who'd ended up in FTO were halfway human, but others seemed to take the form of their procedures more seriously than the actual substance. Like Ms. Shipman, who-he had a mental bet going with his evil twin self-would probably be less offended if he exposed himself to her than by his momentary forgetfulness about the classification level of his own notebook.

An entire working day (and three meetings) later, Mike finally got the keys to Room 4117 and its contents, including his carefully photocopied lexicon and handwritten notes on hochsprache. There was other material, too: an intimidating row of nonclassified but obscure works on proto-Germanic and Norse linguistics. The room itself was sparsely furnished and windowless, half filled by the single desk. The PC, and an audio-typist's tape deck, were fastened to it by steel cables, and as if to drive home the point, a framed print on the wall behind the PC reproached him: SECURITY, IT'S MORE THAN YOUR JOB THAT'S AT STAKE.

Then Marilyn brought him the box of material he was supposed to be working with.

"You're kidding me. I've got to sign for a bunch of cassette tapes?"

"You got it. Here and here." She pointed to the relevant lines on the form.

"Some of these look like they've been chewed by a dog."

"You're working with primary source material now. You'd be amazed at some of the stuff we get coming in from Pakistan and the Middle East." She paused while he signed the clipboard. "These are originals, Mr. Fleming. They've been backed up-they're in the library if anything goes wrong-but most of our analysts work with primary recordings wherever possible. Just in case anything's missing from the backup copy. There shouldn't be any problems of that kind, but you can never be quite sure. As to why it's on cassette tape, I couldn't possibly say. Perhaps that's all the field officer had to hand. They're still common in some parts of the world." She smiled tightly and tapped the yellowing plastic lid on the secretarial recorder with a fingertip. "Do you remember how to use one of these?"

"I think I can cope." Mike looked at the headset doubtfully. "What's that?" He pointed at a hole that had been drilled through a red button on the machine's control panel.

"That was the record button. They disconnect the erase head, too, just in case; this one's strictly playback only."

"What, in case I slip and accidentally delete something?"

"No, it's in case you try to record a message for the accomplice you've got working down in library services to smuggle out of the establishment, Mr. Fleming. That should have been in your security briefing materials. We are very methodical here."

"I can see that." Mike picked up the first of the cassettes; a thin patina of dust grayed the hand-scribbled label. "Has this been in your archives for long?"

"I don't know and I couldn't say."

After Marilyn left, Mike sorted through the box. There were ten cassettes in all, and some of them were clearly years old. Most were identified only by a serial number scribbled on one side; a couple of them showed signs of the tape having been crumpled, as if they had unspooled and been painstakingly reassembled from a tangle of twisted Mylar. It had been years since Mike had last bothered with a cassette tape in everyday life; his last two automobiles had come with CD players. They were an obsolete technology, analog recordings on thin ribbons of Mylar tape. It seemed very strange to be working with them again, inside a windowless cell in a huge concrete office block in Maryland. But then again, a little voice reminded him: They're robust. The equipment's cheap, and doesn't have to look like a spy tool. And you can replace them easily. Why fix something if it isn't broken?

And so he slotted the first tape into the player, donned the headset, and pressed the PLAY button.

And it made very little sense whatsoever, even on the third replay.

By the third day, Mike had just about worked out what his problem was. It wasn't just his grasp of the language, poor as it was. It wasn't the clarity of the recordings, either-the microphone had been reasonably well placed, and it was of adequate sensitivity. The men (and occasional women) he heard discussing things in what sounded like an office suite-these were regular business meetings, as far as he could tell-were audible enough, and he could make out most of their words with a little effort. Many of their terms were unfamiliar, but as if to balance things out, the speakers used familiar English words quite often, albeit with an accent that gave Mike some trouble at first.


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