WRITE: DOCUMENT TO RETRIEVE:
I find the shift pedal, kick the Memex into numerical entry mode, and type:
FETCH 10.0.792.560
NOT FOUND.
WRITE: DOCUMENT TO RETRIEVE:
Shit. I try again.
FETCH INDEX.
There is a whirring and a chunking sound from within the desk. Aha! After several sluggish seconds a new menu appears.
WRITE: ENTER DOCUMENT CODE NUMBER:
FETCH 10.0.792.560
More whirring and a brief pause. Then the screen clears, to display everything the Memex knows about the missing file:
DOCUMENT INDEX ENTRY:
NUMBER: 10.0.792.560
TITLE: THE FULLER MEMORANDUM
DEPOSIT DATE: 6-DECEMBER-1941
STORAGE LOCATION: STACK VAULT 10.0.792.560
COPY STATUS: FORBIDDEN
CLASSIFICATION: BEYOND TOP SECRET, Z-CLEARANCE
EXPIRATION: DOES NOT EXPIRE
CODEWORDS: TEAPOT, WHITE BARON, CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN
SEE ALSO: Z-ANGLETON, Z-EXECUTION PROTOCOLS, Z-FINAL EXIT
END OF INDEX ENTRY
CLASSIFIED: S76/47 Dear John, Once again, greetings from Reval. I hope you can forgive my lack of enthusiasm; it’s godforsaken cold here in January. I thought I knew what winter was (Moscow in winter is enough to teach anyone a grudging respect for Jack Frost) but this is absolutely unspeakable. There are few railways in Estonia, and those which remain after the armistice are under military control, to deter any passing fancy that might occur to Comrade Trotsky in his spare time. (I am sure we shall not be invaded again, at least before he has finished pacifying Siberia, but one can hardly blame Mr. Piip for his caution.) I have a most unexpected cause to write to you-a gift horse just presented its head at my transom window! Such a gift horse was this that it would be insane not to look it in the mouth, but I have inspected its back teeth and I assure you that the mare is, although middle-aged, by no means anything other than that which it appears to be: namely, the bereaved mother of the Prodigal we were discussing in our earlier correspondence. It seems that my sympathetic questioning made more of an impression on Madame Hoyningen-Huene than I imagined. There was a brief thaw in the bitter cold we have lately been experiencing, and being of a mind to visit the capital for a few weeks she took advantage of it. She is even now ensconced in our parlor, where Evgenia is entertaining her. And the Prodigal son’s fossil collection? “Take them!” she cried. “Oskar told me how they caught your fancy; perhaps you know of a curator in London who will put them to some better use? Vile things, I don’t want to remember my son by them!” Her man, who was burdened with the heavy box all the way from Rapla to Reval, can only have wholeheartedly agreed. And so they are even now in a shipping trunk, awaiting more clement weather before I dispatch them to you by sea. Madame Hoyningen-Huene is a sensitive soul, and her life has been blighted by domestic tragedy, from her first husband’s breakdown and incarceration to the deaths of two baby daughters, and now to the fate that has overtaken her son (however much he might have deserved it). She takes little interest in politics, and is transparently what she is: the daughter of Baron Von Wimpffen of Hesse, wife of Baron Oskar Von Hoyningen-Huene, a devoted family lady. Quite why her life has circled this vortex of unspeakable tragedy eludes her entirely, as does the nature of her privileged upbringing and the precarious status of the Prussian aristocracy in the Baltic states-but she is near to sixty, a child of the previous century, and simply unable to adapt to the chill winds of change sweeping the globe. “He wrote to me often of his fears and uncertainties,” she said, showing me a sheaf of letters. I think she needed to share her pain, that of a mother for her son, the last love and succor of any man, however much of a brute he may be. “You see, he was by inclination deeply religious, but unfortunately it brought him much pain. I hold the shamanic eastern mystics responsible-vile orientals! And the Jews.” Her aristocratic nostrils flared. “If they hadn’t fomented this disgraceful revolution he would not have thought to rise up against the government.” (Such sentiments are common among the aristocracy here; they have an unhealthy identification with the late Tsar.) “What did he believe?” I asked. “As a matter of curiosity…” “Ohh-he took it into his head to convert to a vile farrago of oriental superstitions! Nothing as honest and Aryan as Theosophy. He picked these filthy beliefs up in Mongolia, nearly ten years ago, when visiting. He met a witch doctor by all accounts, a man called the Bogd Khan-” She rattled on at some length about this. “Would you mind if I read his letters on religion?” I asked her, and to cut a long story short, she acceded. I now have not only Ungern Sternberg’s fossil collection, inherited from his father, but his surviving letters-those he sent to his mother. And they are very interesting indeed. I attach my (admittedly imperfect) translation of selected extracts of his letters from 1920; I will forward the originals by separate cover from the fossils. Meanwhile, I strongly recommend that you should motivate your fellows in the Order to start searching for the missing Teapot. Your obedient friend, Arthur Ransome
THERE COMES A TIME IN EVERY COUNTERESPIONAGE INVESTIgation when you have to grit your teeth, admit that you’re at your wits’ end, admit defeat, and bugger off home for a Chinese takeaway and a night in front of the telly. Then you get a good night’s sleep (except for the nocturnal eructations induced by too much black bean sauce) and awaken, refreshed and revived and in a mood to do battle once more with-
Bollocks.
I have gotten somewhere: I now know that the missing file is called the Fuller Memorandum (which by a huge leap of inductive logic-I hope I’m not getting ahead of myself here-I deduce is a memorandum, by or about F). It was filed in 1941, was absolutely mega-top-secret burn-before-reading stuff sixty-five years ago, and has some bearing on CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. It’s also missing. Those last three facts would be enough to give me industrial-grade stomach ulcers if it was my fault. Luckily, it’s not my fault. All I have to do is find Angleton and I’m sure he can explain it all, and also explain what the flaming fuck it has got to do with BLOODY BARON.
This much is not time-critical. Getting that Chinese takeaway, with or without black bean sauce, is time-critical, lest I starve to death on the case. Going home and doing sweet, sappy, quality time things with Mo is time-critical too, lest she files for divorce on grounds of neglect. And so is not having a nervous breakdown while waiting for the board of enquiry findings, lest I find myself without a career, in which case they’ll put me in charge of pushing that handcart full of dusty files around the department. So I stand up, stretch, push the off button on the Memex, and leave Angleton’s lair.
I pause briefly in my own rabbit hutch of an office, scan my email, respond to a couple of trivial pestiferations (no, I am no longer in charge of the structured cabling specifications for D Block; yes, I am still attached to the international common insourcing and acquisition standards committee, for my sins in a previous life; no, I do not have a desktop license for Microsoft Office, because my desktop PC is a Microsoft-free zone for security reasons-and would you like fries with that?). The scanner has finished digesting all those dusty letters from Arthur to John; I squirt the PDFs across to the NecronomiPod and then I grab my backpack and umbrella and head for home. Iris isn’t in her office as I pass the window, and Rita on the front desk has pissed off early-then I check my watch and do a double take. It’s six forty. Shit. Mo will kill me, I think as I head down the main staircase at a fast clip and barrel through the staff exit.
This is London. South Bank, south of the center, north of Tooting, and west of Wandsworth (come on, you can alliterate too)-suburban high street UK. It is early evening and the streets are still crowded, but most of the shops are closed. Meanwhile, the pubs are half-full with the sort of hardcore post-work crowd that go drinking on a Monday evening. I turn left, walking towards the nearest tube station: it’s fifteen minutes away but once it gets this late there’s no point waiting for a bus.