He was looking old and tired, so I decided to cheer him up with my company. He took one look at me advancing on him and tried to run. But I’d already sent Molly ahead of me to block his way. He looked back and forth, and his shoulders slumped. I smiled at him, and he grunted back. Anyone would have thought he wasn’t pleased to see me.
“Not pleased to see me, Philip?” I said brightly.
“I used to have a career!” he snapped. “I used to have prospects, and an office with a window! And then you happened to me.”
“Shouldn’t have tried to kill me then,” I said reasonably.
“I shouldn’t have failed,” said MacAlpine, pouting. “I told them there was no point in trying to go head-to-head with a Drood field agent, but no; no one ever listens to me. Even though I’ve got more field experience than half my superiors put together, these days. The departments aren’t what they were. I used to swan around Eastern Europe in a cool car, with all the latest weaponry, making trouble in all the right places . . . and now I have to fill in forms in triplicate just to go to the toilet. I blame the end of the Cold War. They knew how to play the game. . . . Now it’s all fanatics and religious head cases with no sense of humour, who wouldn’t understand the rules of the game if you tattooed them on their foreheads.”
“I heard you’d found a new niche for yourself at MI-13,” said Molly. “Cracking down on unregistered aliens from other dimensions . . .”
“MI-13 is still a force to be reckoned with,” MacAlpine said quickly. “Droods don’t have all the answers. There’s still plenty for us to do.”
I nodded, only half listening to what he was saying. A strange sense of déjà vu was raising all the hairs on the back of my neck. The last time I’d talked with Philip MacAlpine, it had been at the Winter Hall, in Limbo. I still remembered that conversation, but he didn’t, because he wasn’t really there. Or was he? It was hard to be sure about anything that had happened in that strange other place. I wondered, if I were to remind him of what he said there, would he remember? I decided it was better not to ask. I cut into his ramblings about how his life hadn’t worked out the way it should have, and fixed him with a hard stare.
“You owe me, MacAlpine. You, MI-13 and this whole country. I saved the crown jewels from being stolen.”
MacAlpine sniffed moistly. “All right. Say you did. Even though officially that never happened, and don’t you forget it. What do you want, a medal? I could probably get you a nice illuminated scroll, signed by Her Majesty.”
“You owe me,” I said, and something in my voice made him look away for a moment. “You owe me, and I want a favour. Right now, with a ribbon on it. Nothing too difficult. I need to get into Under Parliament, and for that I need access to the outer lobby of the House of Commons. Now, I could force my way in, but that would make more trouble than it was worth, for both of us. So I want you to supply Molly and me with two MI-13 security passes. One day only, of course. Do it now, Philip. Or watch me turn seriously crotchety.”
He growled and muttered for a while, but his heart wasn’t in it. He took out his mobile phone and moved away so he could talk in private. Though he needn’t have bothered; over the blasting music and the sheer bedlam of raised voices, we’d had to shout at each other to be heard anyway. Molly glared after him.
“Never trusted him. Shifty little scrote. You really think he’s going to help us? He hates your guts!”
“Possibly,” I said calmly. “But he’s far too much the professional to let that get in the way of doing business. He may not want to help me now, but his superiors will. They owe the Droods, and they know it, and they’ll be glad to get off this easily. What are a couple of passes to them? They hand the things out like party favours these days.”
MacAlpine put his phone away and came back to join us, looking even more sour than before, if that was possible. “All right, it’s arranged. Two security passes will be waiting for you at the entrance to the House of Commons: a full pass for Shaman Bond, and a backup pass for one other.”
“One other?” Molly said ominously. “The powerful and legendary wild witch of the woods is one other?”
“If I put your real name on the pass, they’d never let you in,” said MacAlpine. “Your reputation precedes you.”
“Yes,” said Molly, not displeased. “It does tend to.”
MacAlpine made a point of turning his full attention to me. “The passes will get you into the outer lobby, but no farther. Don’t push your luck. And getting into Under Parliament is strictly your business.”
“No problem,” I said cheerfully.
“I really didn’t like the way you said that,” MacAlpine said sadly.
“Good,” I said.
“It’s not supposed to be easy to get into Under Parliament!” snapped MacAlpine. “Or London Undertowen! Because that’s where you’re really going, isn’t it?”
I considered him thoughtfully. There had been something in his voice. . . . “What have you heard, Philip?”
He smiled at me for the first time. “That maybe . . . there’s something worse than Droods in the world now.”
Molly and I left the Wulfshead Club by the back door, and emerged into a shabby side street in Westminster. The streetlights were sharp and bright, there was hardly anyone about, and only the very best kinds of cars rolled smoothly past. Molly and I strolled along arm in arm, allowing our hearing to recover from the deafening noise of the club. It wasn’t a long walk to the House of Commons. I didn’t even bother trying the Merlin Glass; both Houses of Parliament are all but buried under overlapping layers of defences and protections, laid down over the centuries. The establishment has always looked after itself, first and foremost. Bring an object of power like the Merlin Glass anywhere near Parliament, and every SAS combat sorcerer in the army would teleport in, loaded for bear and ready to commit extreme violence against anything that moved. So Molly and I strolled along, taking the pretty route, killing time till one a.m.
We stopped off along the way at a pub called the Floating Voter. The pub sign showed the actual voter, floating facedown in the Thames. They’re not exactly subtle around Westminster. It was definitely down-market, as pubs went, and this one went pretty far, but it had the benefit of being the local watering hole for all the political hacks, all the reporters and researchers and hangers-on that accumulate around Parliament like flies round a dead dog. Print reporters, of course; the television people were a more refined breed, with their own upmarket dives to hang around in. And the researchers here were really only glorified runners, making sure their respective MPs had all the information they needed, so they wouldn’t disgrace themselves every time they opened their mouths. Heaven forfend that they might have an opinion of their own, not thoroughly tested in advance by market research. It was a hard, thankless and never-ending job, but it was often the only way into the game for people who didn’t have the right family or party connections. And there’s never been any shortage of people who want to get close to power without the trial of actually getting elected. The Floating Voter was where all these people came to vent their anger as they wet their whistles, and let off steam about what idiots their masters were, and all the other people who were holding them back.
Molly knew a whole bunch of these people from her time in Manifest Destiny, back when that organisation was still pretending to be a part of the political process. We strolled casually into the main bar, and a number of heads came up to smile and nod in our direction. Molly isn’t someone you easily forget, and as always, people expected Shaman Bond to turn up anywhere. A bunch of tabloid hacks waved us over to join them at the bar.
“Welcome back to the din of iniquity, Molly dearest!” said an overstuffed gentleman in a long, grubby coat. “Still plotting character assassinations and general insurrection?”