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.What a way to start a day: Griffin’s found something to go nonlinear over.I shake my head in disgust.As if I haven’t got enough problems already.I’m just about up and running on local time.Even so, it takes me a while to figure out my way to the address Griffin gave me.It turns out to be a holiday villa, white clapboard walls and wooden shutters overlooking the road behind the beachfront.The temperature’s already up to the mid-twenties and rising as I trudge towards the front door.I’m about to knock when it opens and I find myself eyeball to hairy eyeball with Griffin.“Get in here!” he half-snarls, grabbing me by my jacket.“Quick!”I take in his red-rimmed eyes, stubbly chin, and general agitation.“Something bad happen?”“You could say that.” I follow him into the back room.The windows are shuttered, several large nylon hold-alls are lined up against one wall, and there’s a mass of electronics spread across the dining table.After a couple of seconds I figure out that I’m looking at a clunky electrodynamic rig and a Vulpis-Tesla mainframe: it looks like it was invented by a mad pervert who was into torturing chickens, but it’s really just a tool for summoning minor abominations.By the look on his face Griffin’s been bolting it together and hitting the bottle for the past twelve hours or so—not a combination I’m sanguine about.“I got a dispatch from head office.The oppo’s acting up—they’ve sent us one of their fast bowlers!”“What’s cricket got to do with us?” I ask, confused.It’s too early in the morning for this.“Who said anything about cricket?” Griffin hurries across the room and starts rearranging the Bakelite plug-board that configures the chicken-torturer.“I said they’d sent a fast bowler, not a fucking cricketer.”“Slow up.” I rub my eyes.“How long have you been out here?”He rounds on me.“Nineteen years, if it means anything to you, whippersnapper!” he snorts.“Kids these days.”I shrug.“Slang changes, is what I’m saying.”“Bah.” He straightens up and sighs.“I got a flash code from the Weather Service this morning: Charlie Victor is in town.He’s one of their top assassins, works for Unit Echo—that’s our designation for it, not theirs, nobody’s got a fucking clue what the Black Chamber internal org chart looks like—and generally we don’t get advance warning because the first warning anyone gets about Charlie Victor is when they wake up dead.”“Whoa.” I grab a chair and sit down hard.“When did he arrive?”“Yesterday, while you were snoozing.” Griffin stares at me.“Well?”“Do we know who his target is?”“Weather Service says it’s something to do with your mission, this billionaire.”“Weather Service—” I pause.How to phrase my opinion of the Predictive Branch tactfully? Just in case Griffin’s got a gypsy cousin who’s into fluffy chakra crystal ball-fu and works for Precognitive Ops.“Weather Service has a certain reputation.” A reputation for being disastrously wrong about 30 percent of the time—as you’d expect of a bunch of webcams hooked up to crystal balls scrying random number generators—and for being less than half right about 50 percent of the time, which is even worse than the real Meteorological Office.The only reason we don’t ignore them completely is that about one time in five they hit the jackpot—and then people live or die by their projections.But that 30 percent gave us the amazing invisible Iraqi WMDs, the Falklands War (“nothing can possibly go wrong”), and going back a bit further, the British Lunar Expedition of 1964.7, 8“Weather Service is taking traffic flow at source from GCHQ and cross-correlating it with validated HUMINT sources,” Griffin rumbles ominously.“This is about as hard as it gets.What are the implications for your mission?”“I need to talk to Angleton—I thought we had an accommodation on this one, but if what you’re saying’s right, all bets are off.” I glance at the VT frame.“What’s the chicken plucker for?”“A necessary precaution.” Griffin stares at me speculatively.“In case Charlie Victor tries to pay a visit.And to keep a lock on your special kit.” He nods at the cases in the corner.“Uh-huh.Any sign of my backup team?”“I called them for a meeting half an hour ago.They should be arriving any time—”Right on cue, there’s a knock at the door.I head over to open the door but Griffin beats me to it, shoving me out of the way and raising a finger to silence me
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