Back in the corridor she continues toward its end where there are three identical doors. She pauses outside the one on the right, and knocks.
"Come in," a man's gravelly voice calls through the door.
Ramona opens the door. The room beyond is spacious, floored in rough-cut timber, and walled in glass-fronted cabinets.
The door at the far end is open, a staircase leading down to what Ramona knows to be another corridor with more display rooms opening off to either side. She's already far enough inside the ranch house that by rights she should be standing with her feet firmly planted in the dirt fifty feet behind it — outside, but that's not how things work here.
Instead, her controlling agent is waiting for her, a tall, slightly pudgy fellow with wire-rimmed glasses, thinning, close-cropped hair, and a checkered shirt. He smiles, faintly indulgently. "Well, well. If it isn't agent Random." He holds out a hand: "How was your trip out"
"Dry," she says tersely, allowing her hand to be shaken.
She squints slightly, sizing McMurray up. He looks human enough, but appearances at the Ranch are always deceptive.
"I need to find a pool at some point. Apart from that — " she shrugs " — I can't complain ."
"A pool." McMurray nods thoughtfully. "I think we can arrange something for you." His voice has a faint Irish lilt to it, although Ramona is fairly sure he's as American as she is.
"It's the least we can do, seeing as how we've dragged you all the way out here. Yes indeed." He gestures at the steps leading down to the passageway. "How well did you understand your briefing"
Ramona swallows. This bit is hard. As her controlling agent McMurray has certain powers. He was the key operative who compelled her to service; as long as he lives, he, or whoever holds his tokens of power, has the power of life and death over her, the ability to bind and release her, to issue orders she cannot refuse. There's stuff she doesn't want to talk about — but if he suspects she's holding out on him it'll be a lot worse for her than confessing to everything. Best to give him something, just hope it's not enough to raise more suspicions than it allays: "Not entirely," she admits. "I don't understand why we're letting TLA's chief executive run riot in the Caribbean. I don't understand why the Brits are involved in this, or what the hell TLA think they're doing. I mean — " she pats her shoulder bag " — I read it all, but I don't understand it. Just what's supposed to be going on"
This is the point at which McMurray can — if he's suspicious — make her mouth open without her willing it, and spill her deepest secrets and most personal hopes and fears.
Just considering the possibility makes her feel small and contemptibly weak. But McMurray doesn't seem to notice her discomfort. He nods and looks thoughtful. "I'm not sure anybody knows everything," he says ruefully.
A rueful apology? From a controlling agent? Stop jerking me around, Ramona prays, a cold knot of fear congealing in her stomach. But McMurray doesn't raise his left hand in a sigil of command; nor does he pronounce any words of dread.
He just nods in false amity and gestures once again at the stairs.
"It's a mess," he explains. "Billington's a big campaign donor and word is, we're not supposed to rock the boat. Not under this administration, anyway. It would embarrass certain folks if he were exposed — at least on our soil. And just in case anyone gets any ideas about going around Control's back, he doesn't set foot on land these days. He's got the whole thing set up for remote management from extraterritorial waters. We'd have to send the Coast Guard or the Navy after him, and that would be too public."
"Too public and two bucks will get you a coffee," Ramona says acidly; then, fearful that she might have gone too far, adds: "But why did you need to bring me out here? Is it part of the briefing"
She realizes too late that this was the wrong thing to say.
McMurray fixes her with a penetrating stare. "Why else do you think you might have been ordered to the Ranch?" he asks, deceptively mildly. "Is there something I should know, agent Random"
A huge fist grips her around the ribs, squeezing gently.
"Nuh — no, sir!" she gasps, terrified.
Merely annoying McMurray can have enormous, terrible consequences for her: there's nothing subtle about the degree of control the Black Chamber exercises over its subjects, or the consequences of error. The Chamber has a secret ruling from the Supreme Court that citizenship rights only apply to human beings: Ramona's kin are barely able to pass with the aid of a glamour. For failure, the punishment can be special rendition to jurisdictions where the very concept of pain is considered a fascinating research topic by the natives. But he merely stares at her for a moment with watery blue eyes, then nods very slightly, relaxing the constraint binding. The pressure recedes like the backwash of an imagined cardiac arrest.
"Very good." McMurray turns and begins to descend the staircase at the end of the room. Ramona follows him, eager to get away from the things in the pickle jars behind the glass display panels. "I'm glad to see that you've still got a ... sense of humor, agent Random. Unfortunately this is no laughing matter." He pauses at the bottom step. "I believe you've been here before."
Ramona's hand tightens on the stair rail until her knuckles turn white. "Yes. Sir."
"Then I won't have to explain." He smiles frighteningly, then walks down the corridor toward one of the display rooms. "I brought you here to see just the one exhibit, this time."
Ramona forces herself to follow him. She feels as if she's walking through molasses, her chest tight with an almost palpable sense of dread. It's not as if anything here is aimed at me, she tries to tell herself. It's all dead, already. But that's not strictly true.
Most advanced military organizations maintain libraries of weapons, depositories like armories that store one of everything — every handgun, artillery round, mine, grenade, knife — used by any other army that they might face in battle. The exhibits are stored in full working order, with specialist armorers trained in caring for them. Associated with their staff colleges, these depots are a vital resource when training special forces, briefing officers tasked with facing a given enemy, or merely researching future requirements.
The Black Chamber is no different: like the Army repository at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, they maintain their own collection. There is a subtle difference, however.
The Black Chamber's archive of reality-warping occult countermeasures is partially alive. Here lie unquiet roadside graves dug by ghoulish reanimators. Over there is a cupboard full of mandrakes, next door to a summoning grid that's been live for thirty years, the unquiet corpse of its victim dancing an eternal jig within the green-glowing circle, on legs long since worn down to blood-encrusted ivory stumps.
You can die if you get too close to some of the exhibits in the Ranch. And then they'll add you to the collection.
McMurray knows his way through the corridors and passages of the repository. He threads his way rapidly past doorways opening onto vistas that make Ramona's hair stand on end, then through a gallery lined with glass exhibit cases, some of them covered by protective velvet cloths. Finally he comes to a small side room and stops, beckoning Ramona toward a glass-topped cabinet.
"You asked about Billington," he says, his tone thoughtful.
Yes, sir."