A Cautionary Tale

Note: this story takes place in 2002 or thereabouts, meaning that Angleton's adventure would have taken place about 1970.

It was midway through a rainy spring afternoon when Angleton finally looked up from feeding cards into the Memex and treated me to a glare close to absolute zero on the Kelvin scale. "Please stop pacing around my office, Mr. Howard. Have you nothing better to do?"

I scowled into my mug of cold coffee. "Not unless you want to send me down to the stacks on urgent business for more files. Bridget's been on my case about my timesheets and my so-called insubordinate attitude. Unless I have an errand as an excuse, she'll pull me into her office for a lecture as soon as I leave here. And then you probably won't see me for the rest of the day. You don't think I like being stuck in here, do you?"

Before the situation could escalate Andy intervened diplomatically: "He gets like this sometimes. I think he's bored."

"Then perhaps an educational session is in order," Angleton replied thoughtfully, staring at the files on his desk. "Yes, GRANITE RAVENwill do. Sit, boy; perhaps we can salvage something from this afternoon after all." Under his scrutiny I had no choice but to collapse obediently into the second-best office chair (Andy was occupying the other one).

"Attend, if you please. We have already discussed the importance of being thoroughly prepared for every assignment, no matter how simple it may look at the outset. This investigation illustrates my point." Angleton tapped his desk for emphasis and began.

"These events took place perhaps thirty years ago. I was phasing out of fieldwork at that time but still took on the occasional investigation when requested, particularly when it was one of the Auditors doing the requesting. This particular Auditor's brother-in-law, whom I will call Smith, had been making a nuisance of himself. Smith was a managing director at Britten-Norman, on the Isle of Wight. Aircraft manufacturers – you are familiar with them? Good. You may recall that the island has a reputation for being heavily haunted as well.

"This particular Auditor's cover identity was that of an employee in the Ministry of Defence. As such, Smith had complained to him about a recent series of disturbances both in the factory and his office, to the point that his staff were spreading rumors that the place was haunted. Smith himself was more concerned about possible industrial espionage and was muttering darkly about 'the Soviets.' My contact, however, had taken the complaint seriously enough to do a preliminary investigation and was concerned that the source of the problems was more likely to be paranormal in origin, though he was not certain of this. Regardless, he told his brother-in-law that he agreed with his suspicions and that he would send someone with experience in these matters to investigate. Hence my appearance on the scene.

"I should have checked the Shipping Forecast before my departure. The Laundry's budget then was no more generous than today and our travel department had booked me by coach. A storm was blowing up and the crossing from Southampton was not a pleasant one." I hastily rearranged my face into a sympathetic expression as Angleton stared at me icily.

"Were you seasick, boss?"

"No, but the weather was inclement enough that several of my fellow passengers were." I grimaced and, satisfied, he continued.

"At any rate, I arrived at Britten-Norman and found myself greeted by Smith's director of engineering, a man named Evans. He struck me as the quiet, patient type and told me he had been on staff there for fifteen years. He was a good foil for Smith, whom I met next. I had been warned that he was a fussy and somewhat paranoid type, though well respected in his field. That is exactly what he turned out to be, though fortunately he was conventional enough that my old Sherbourne tie went some way to reassure him. My cover identity, a Ministry employee working for Smith's brother-in-law, went unquestioned and we convened in Smith's office to discuss the case.

"Smith did not need much encouragement to describe his concerns. He told me at great length about various incidents in the administrative offices, including reports of movement and lights in offices at night. When the security officer investigated, he found no one in the building although he did note a strong feeling of unease as if someone were watching him. In addition, Smith and Evans both said that their confidential files had been searched.

"Smith was quite indignant about the 'violation' of his filing cabinet, as he phrased it, but it struck me that Evans, the quieter of the two, was deeply worried. As soon as I had a chance to question him alone I did so. Evans told me that he kept his confidential notes from committee meetings in a locked desk drawer in chronologic order; he had noticed recently that they had been rearranged and that on close inspection of the cabinet he had seen scratch marks, implying that someone had picked the lock.

'And what were the topics covered in your committee meetings?' I asked. Even the belief that he was speaking with the Department of Defence was not enough to reassure Evans, but with the assistance of my warrant card I finally pried it out of him. The committee in question was in charge of developing new defence technology. Recently they had discussed reviving a highly secret method of aircraft evasion developed during the war. The RAF had used it experimentally in 1944-45 against the Luftwaffe, and then for some reason unknown it had been shelved. It was referred to as Project Granite.

'How does this project work?'

'Well, it disrupts the ability of radar to locate aircraft. The position indicated on the screen will be 500 to 1000 feet off. And if you're trying to use antiaircraft weaponry, you can see that would seriously affect firing accuracy. It's odd, though.'

'Odd how, exactly?'

'It hasn't been made clear to me exactly how the radar is disrupted. I chair the meetings, but the real work is being done by a small subgroup on the committee. It's made up of three of our older engineers. Marsdon, Keeler and Pike.'

"I didn't recognize the other two names, but Marsdon rang a bell. There was a Marsdon in Q division during the war and he had been involved with air defence. I had a feeling he would be able to tell me exactly what Project Granite was.

"At my request Evans pulled the file of committee notes and began leafing through it with a frown. 'It's happened again. The paperwork isn't in correct order. What's thiiiUUGGGH – '

"I had of course gone warded and in addition I had only caught sight of the paper out of the corner of my eye. Poor Evans, unfortunately, caught the full force of the basilisk image which had been inserted into the file and hit the floor seizing. He died almost immediately. I snatched the image out of the file, folded it without looking at it and stuffed it into my pocket as two of the secretaries came running into the room.

"Britten-Norman kept a nurse onsite for work injuries. She was called to the scene, but of course nothing could be done. By this time it was late afternoon and as the coroner wheeled the body away I noticed the weather had worsened considerably. One of the staff told me that a gale was blowing up and that all transport off the island had been canceled until further notice. Not that I was planning to leave; the basilisk trap was a giveaway that the perpetrator was familiar with occult techniques.

"I asked one of the secretaries whether Marsdon was still on site. She called his office, found that he was present and at my request explained how to find him. A few minutes later I found myself sitting across the desk from a man in late middle age, but still recognizable as the Marsdon I had known during the war.

"He blinked and then stared at me. 'You haven't changed a bit.'

'It is you, then.' I pulled my warrant card but he held up a hand.

'You don't need to bring that out. What are you doing here?'

'What I usually do. Investigating. Looking into the corners where dark things dwell. Project Granite seems to have attracted them, for instance. What can you tell me about it?'

"Marsdon explained that the Granite project had been developed by the Laundry during the war, but it was shelved because of the toll it took on practitioners; scrambling the location of multiple planes required intensive use of spells and as a result there was a high rate of K syndrome associated with the project. Recently the Laundry had become interested in the possibility of adapting it to more modern techniques, using computers. They had contacted Marsdon and the other two engineers, who had also worked with the Laundry in the past, to reactivate their status.

'Who's your Laundry contact?'

"Marsdon named someone I knew slightly. 'I report to him once a week. So why exactly are you here? Is there a problem?'

'Considering that one of your committee members died this afternoon, yes, there is a problem. Someone set a trap for Evans. There was a basilisk image planted in his file of the meeting minutes.'

"Marsdon's shocked reaction was convincing enough that I was inclined to think he was not responsible. I asked how he had not heard the news of Evans' death sooner, and he replied that he had spent the late afternoon locked in his office drafting his report for the Laundry. I then asked for information about his fellow project members, Pike and Keeler.

"The gist of what he told me is that Pike and Keeler were originally recruited in 1943. Marsdon described them as reasonably skilled but not outstanding engineers. Postwar they had been allowed to leave under the usual geas and had worked in the aeronautics industry since that time. Marsdon said the three of them had worked at Britten-Norman for about sixteen years. Due to the effects of the geas they had not been able to discuss their past with the Laundry until Granite had been reactivated. Marsdon had been put in charge of all communications relating to the project.

'Has your office been searched? Evans' was, and so has the director's.'

'It's possible.' Marsdon thought for a moment. 'I did notice some items on my desk had been shifted around, but I thought that might have been the cleaning lady.'

'Is your office warded? Have you taken any precautions at all?'

"His silence was enough of an answer. We then checked the locks on his desk drawers and found similar markings to Evans' desk. 'You're working with top secret defence information, involving the occult, and you didn't bother with wards?'

"By this time Marsdon was shaking. 'You don't understand. I didn't want to be involved with the stuff the Laun dry works with. I was never much good at that anyway – I was supplying the practitioners with practical aeronautics information they needed for their spells. All I wanted after the war was to live a normal life. They put me under a geas, cut me loose and that was the end of it. After all these years, I thought I was safe… and the project is so old, I thought no one outside the Laundry would even remember it. Besides, Britten-Norman takes their own precautions against industrial espionage. They do a lot of work for the Department of Defence.'

"While Marsdon was speaking I had cautiously checked the contents of the cabinet and found no basilisk or other traps. 'You never really leave the Laundry. Didn't they warn you about that? Hold out your hand.' I pricked his finger, smeared the blood over the lock and set up a basic ward. 'That will do for now. Don't let anyone else open this desk drawer. The ward is keyed to your blood; if anyone else tries it they'll get a nasty surprise. Wear these under your shirt,' I handed him a monkey's paw and silver charm, 'and let's get going. Welcome back to the Laundry.'

"We next checked Pike's and Keeler's offices, but neither was present. Security said, however, that they had not clocked out of the building. At Marsdon's suggestion we moved to the control room where electronic equipment and radar transmitter controllers were housed; once there he gazed vaguely round for a bit.

'The cleaners must have missed that.' He pointed to a closed door with a smear of something dark underneath it. Something about it pinged my necromancer's sensibilities; I felt certain that beyond the door was something that ought not to be there. The closer I moved to the door the stronger the sensation became.

'Where does that door lead to?' I asked, and Marsdon replied that it was a storage closet. Bracing myself, I opened the door and was greeted by two bodies and a simultaneous clap of thunder. It was a moment straight out of BBC melodrama.

'You're fortunate you locked yourself in this afternoon,' I commented to Marsdon, who had nearly fainted at the sight. As you might expect he identified them as Pike and Keeler, both of whom had been stabbed.

"At this point, clearly, my tour of investigation had become something very much more serious. A brief analysis of the situation seemed indicated. Why now, I thought. Three murders within a few hours. Was it my arrival on the scene that had precipitated the killings? It seemed likely, but was it also possible that the killer was facing a deadline in his plans to steal information relating to Project Granite?

'How far have you progressed with Granite?' I asked. 'Any recent breakthroughs? Any significant presentations coming up?'

"Marsdon pulled himself together. 'I'm supposed to go up to London at the beginning of next week to present our findings. Currently the program will work on one or two aircraft at a time, but – '

"At this point we heard footsteps in the hallway. I quickly shut the closet door, ducked behind a desk and gestured to Marsdon to do the same. The footsteps crossed the room and were followed by the sound of desk drawers being pulled roughly open, one after the other.

'What information do you keep in here?' I whispered.

'The Autocode1 programming data for the computer,' Marsdon answered. 'If it's stolen, we lose all the progress we've made so far. I'll have to start over again.'

'If it's stolen we're in bigger trouble than that. We're going to confront whoever this is. On my count. Go.'

"About twenty feet away we saw the back of a man bent over a drawer. I was about to invoke a stun macro – at the time we still called them spells – when Marsdon shouted 'What do you think you're doing? Stop!' and the situation, ah, deteriorated. Our opponent spun round and ducked behind a desk. We were standing between him and the only door to the room, so his exit was blocked. 'I'll call security,' said Marsdon, who had begun to move toward the phone when the other man screamed 'Za Rodinu!'2 and began to chant rapidly in Enochian. I just had time to recognize it as a summons for demonic forces when the chanting stopped. It was followed by a loud groan and a terrible fecal odor.

'Ugh! It's freezing in here all of a sudden.' Marsdon covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief. I gestured urgently back to the desk.

'Stay down! This isn't safe.' I looked back to see a green-highlighted figure who'd fouled his trousers, holding a knife and with blood dripping from his other hand. The blood had completed the invocation and he was now surrounded by a powerful aura. His eyes were glowing green.

"So let us review the situation. I ask you to exercise your wits. You are trapped in a factory on the Isle of Wight during a storm which has cut you off from outside help. In the room with you is a spy who has not only killed repeatedly but has willingly committed the equivalent of suicide. He is now possessed by what I judged to be a level four entity. You have no modern technology to aid you and your only assistant has no necromantic skills. What would you do next?"

I considered. Andy's murmur of "That's a tough one, boss" earned him nothing but an irritated look. My first thought, "Set my hair on fire and run around screaming," was unlikely to do any better. The next phrase that popped into my head was one of Angleton's favorites – "Use what you have." A clueless engineer, that's what he has. An engineer… "Marsdon knew the building. Was there anything there that could help? Any supplies you could use?"

"Very good, Bob. When constructing a defense, that's always the first issue to consider. I forgot to mention that the cafeteria was located just down the hallway, and there were two dead bodies conveniently available. So I first summoned two feeders to act as a distraction, with the intent of sending Marsdon to find salt or anything that could be used as a weapon. Then as the feeders exited the closet, I got a glimpse of what was stored there and had another idea."

At this point I was on the edge of my seat. Angleton had me hooked – as he'd known he would, damn him. "Electrical equipment?" I speculated. "If you could sketch some wards in conductive material and then use electrical power to, I don't know, wall off the demon…"

Angleton gave a nod of approval. "We'll get to the electrical equipment in a moment. As for the conductive material, what we saw first was canisters labelled silver nitrate. Marsdon fingered his silver charm thoughtfully. 'Can you use that?' he asked."

'Will it conduct electricity?'

'Not in solid form. It has to be dissolved first.' So I sent him off to the cafeteria with instructions to bring back as much water as possible, while I ordered my feeders to attack the demon. Unfortunately there were no pigeon's foot HOGs at that time or I would have supplied him with one. However, the zombies were able to distract our opponent while I made my way to the closet and grabbed the canisters, as well as some electrical cables.

"So you could spread the solution around and electrify the restraining grid? That's great, boss." Andy's face had lit with enthusiasm.

"Correct," Angleton looked almost approving, "and I was in the process of doing exactly that when we lost power due to the storm."

I clutched my head. "Oh my God. Really?"

"Quite. At this point, the feeders had had the worst of the confrontation and were nearly useless. I began activating defence spells and shouted to Marsdon to leave the room, as the thaum count was escalating, when he snatched up a bucket of silver nitrate solution and simply flung it at the demon. I must admit, I was impressed. I should have done that in the first place. The darkness also gave Marsdon an advantage, as the demon was glowing and he was not. 'Going crude,' as you would call it, saved the day."

"So it banished the demon?"

"Crippled it. We finished it off with more silver nitrate and a spell or two for good measure. I congratulated Marsdon on his quick thinking and sent him off to the kitchen after he had stopped shaking. He returned with sandwiches, mugs of tea and a flask of whiskey he found in a co-worker's desk. Before he began making inroads on the whiskey I asked him to collect as many flashlights as possible to illuminate the area. This allowed me to do a quick decontamination of the scene, after which I called the night officer to dictate a report.

"We spent the rest of the night in the building; Marsdon was able to identify the spy as one of the janitorial staff. I later found out he had been a recent hire, and of course his background check turned out to be false. Then I warded Marsdon into his office for safety and kept watch for the rest of the night. The next day the factory was closed; the Auditor arranged for cleanup of the site and complimented his brother-in-law on his alertness. We of course explained it as a case of industrial espionage and emphasized to him the importance of silence regarding the entire episode.

"Marsdon, unfortunately, was never the same after his experience. He improved with sedatives and counseling, we renewed the geas on him and he retired from Britten-Norman shortly afterward. The last I heard, he had moved to the remote countryside and had amassed an impressive store of garlic, crucifixes and silver objects, not to mention tinned food and bottled water." Angleton shrugged. "It gave him a distraction and, I hope, calmed his fears. He passed away about fifteen years ago."

"Was Project Granite ever completed?" Andy asked.

Angleton shook his head. "Sadly, nothing came of it. Computers in the 1970s did not yet have the capacity to power the invocation for any significant length of time, even for only one or two aircraft. And by the time their memory capacity was adequate, the Cold War was over and everyone had lost interest. Any additional questions?"

"Did you ever hear anything from the Thirteenth Directorate?" I asked.

"No, nor did I expect to. Even through unofficial channels the episode was never mentioned. We overhauled Britten-Norman's security and assigned additional Laundry agents, but nothing more was ever found. Now, Bob, as you have nothing of importance on hand there are some additional files I would like you to get for me," he handed me a list, "but there's no immediate hurry. Before you go you really should complete your timesheets…"

Class dismissed.

1 Autocode was a somewhat generic name for computer programming language at that time.

2 For the Motherland!