They sat around a round table, in a room which served as a break area. A fridge and a kettle and several jars sat on a counter in one corner, and thick curtains were drawn across the windows. Rain still pattered without.
Coraline and Maria watched while Wybie examined the little device on the table. He held a magnifying glass in one hand, through which he peered closely at the metal spider, his mouth pursed with concentration. In his other hand, he held a wooden spoon.
Finally he sat up, placing down the magnifying glass, and suddenly rapped the wooden spoon sharply on the table. Coraline and Maria saw the spider lurch to its limbs and scuttle drunkenly in the direction of the spoon.
"Huh," said Wybie, impressed. "I've never seen anything like this before. Audio-seeking, recording, mobility, and unobtrusiveness in one package. I mean, I know things like this exist, but I just haven't seen one. God, I'd give anything to open it up, but it might have been fitted with anti-sabotage capacities. But if I could get past those..."
"Wybie?" said Coraline, waving a hand to get his attention. "Pretend I'm a big, dumb trouble-shooter who doesn't know what that is. What is it?"
"This? It's a spy," said Wybie. He rapped the wooden spoon on the table again, and the device lurched once again in its direction.
"See? It's made to record sound, so whenever it detects a noise, it moves towards it, so it can get a better recording position. Hence, audio-seeking. And these little limbs -" He flipped it onto its back with the spoon with one deft move, and the device scrabbled at the air with short metal limbs. "-These give it a heck of a lot of mobility. You could put it anywhere in a building, and it could move anywhere out of the way. Walls, ceilings, whatever. Heck, I'd bet several major internal organs that this thing could be controlled remotely."
The thing twitched at Wybie every time he spoke. Coraline looked at it with no small amount of apprehension.
"And look. This thing's not much bigger than a normal spider, and it doesn't shine at all. I'd never have noticed it if I hadn't tested No. Seventeen, and triggered whatever sort of short-range pulse that was. And it's pretty sturdy. Its microprocessors must have taken a hell of a hammering, but it's still sort of functioning."
"There were other devices in the building that got a little shock from No. Seventeen," said Maria dryly. "The computer I was working at, for example."
"I said I was sorry."
"Just so long you appreciate that, if my machine hadn't automatically backed itself up, I would have been obliged to kill you horribly."
"Noted." Wybie absently rapped the spoon on the table and watched the spy wriggle. "It's advanced. Again, I know these sorts of things exist, but I also know they're not exactly the sort you get free in a cereal box. I don't actually think they're on the civilian market. Like, at all."
"Government issue?" asked Coraline, looking straight at the spy.
"I think so."
"I see," said Coraline slowly. Then, "So what the hell was one doing in your lab?"
There was a silence around the table.
"Obviously, since none of us put it there, it had to be a third party," said Maria. "That suggests someone broke in and put it there."
"All the entryways are blocked up at night," said Wybie. "And there's not really any gaps small enough for this to get in by itself."
"However it got in, someone was trying to maintain surveillance on us," said Maria patiently. "Coraline, when you're at the cabinet meeting tomorrow, drop this in the lap of the FBI director or someone. Even if it's us, they can't ignore someone stealing government tech and breaking into government offices. They'll be able to handle it."
Coraline kept her eye on the spy.
"Why us?" she said. "What have we got here?"
If you had told the Coraline of fifteen years ago that she would one day attend the meetings of the most powerful people in the country, she would have most likely replied "Yeah, right."
If you had told her the same thing today, she would have replied "Thanks for reminding me, asshole."
Her government ID card got her past security and the White House reception, out of the cold day made grey and wet by rainclouds. She stepped through lengths of carpeted corridor briskly, with the air of old, unwelcome routine.
As she entered the West Wing, she heard the sound of work all around her, the sound of hushed conversations and clacking keys from behind office doors and from the desks of countless secretaries and aides and staff members. People talked as they walked, juggling coffee and folders and phonecalls.
It buzzed. It crackled with conversation and politics, little of which interested her. The rich colours of the walls and fine furnishings no longer distracted her. Whatever novelty had existed in entering the White House on a semi-regular basis had faded fast for her.
In her bag, she had the spy. It had been thoroughly examined and thoroughly deactivated by Wybie, after it had been agreed that bringing an active recording device left by an unknown party to a cabinet meeting might not be such a hot idea. Deactivation had consisted of several short, sharp shocks against a surface, followed by a thorough blitzing with electrons, and it had seemed to work.
As she made her way to the Cabinet Room, the first person she bumped into was a stout man with dark eyes set in a deathly pallor; Lukas Montjoy, the Secretary of Space.
They exchanged nods for courtesy's sake, but no more than that before they kept on walking. Courtesy was as much as her Department could hope for.
Montjoy peeled away for a brief conversation with an incoming aide, leaving Coraline alone. She was near the Cabinet Room now, she knew; just a couple more turns in the corridor until...
"...And make sure that Silverman gets the memo and understands it. I'm not leaving that deal to chance," came an all-too familiar and acerbic tone.
Well, of course. It was an immutable law of the universe that any crap situation in which she found herself would be worsened before it got better, and here, thought Coraline, was just the man for the job.
She rounded a corner and met the chilly, steel-grey eyes of Malcolm Skirving, the Chief of Staff for the President. Skirving could, if Coraline was feeling ungenerous (and she frequently was) be compared to an wizened and anaemic vulture. He was small of frame, crowned with thin white hair, sharp-featured, and treated his friends in the same caustic manner as he treated his enemies, a state which granted him few of the former and plenty of the latter.
He glanced at Coraline, and then dropped his gaze to the report in his hand.
"Absolutely unnecessary," he said, flipping the pages, pretending to go through the report with the stern-looking aide at his side. "Unjustifiable. Ill-conceived. Simply pointless. A drain on federal funds that will return nothing, and yet somehow finds the support to persist." Then he closed the report and looked pointedly up at Coraline. "Oh. I beg your pardon, Ms Jones. I didn't see you there."
"Mr Skirving," returned Coraline, smiling a cold smile that didn't reach her eyes. "How nice to see you. I'd considered asking for the air conditioning to be turned up, but you being nearby saved me the effort."
Once upon a time, fifteen years ago, reports from the Merch Mart in Chicago had reached the ears of the then-President, who had gone over them with a fine-toothed comb, considered them carefully, and then arranged for these reports to be passed down to his successors.
Eleven years passed. Presidents came and went, the world turned, and Coraline, Wybie and Maria went through high school and then college together. And in their spare time, they learned what they could about beldams. What they could learn was piecemeal and unreliable, and what they could do was painfully limited.
But on the day that they finished college, they were contacted by then-President Durand, who had one hell of an offer for them.
Arrangements were made. Offices were allocated. Roles were assigned. And their work began as an Executive Order created the new Department of the Supernatural. Durand ended his second term laughing as the country boggled at what had to be a final act of lunacy.
Needless to say, it hadn't been plain sailing for the Department. From day one, they were furiously debated in Congress, scrutinised by conspiracy theorists, mocked by those who saw them as jokes, and attacked by those who saw them as a downright embarrassment. One of the latter was Malcom Skirving, who had built an early career on cutting government waste and diverting resources to where they were needed, and who saw the Department as an insult.
"I'm surprised you could show up," continued Skirving, his grey eyes calculating and cold. "Surely the Department of the Supernatural has no end of important duties to fill its time. Aren't there still bogeymen to be chased out of wardrobes, snipes to be hunted, affairs of that sort?"
"I'm here on duty," replied Coraline. "I was reliably informed that some ancient, vicious monster was haunting the White House, and my goodness, as if by magic-"
With enemies like Skirving, all that had so far saved the Department was reluctance on the past of President Kuciyela or Congress to be seen doing anything with it. Even that wouldn't have been enough if they hadn't found unexpected allies in other small federal departments, new and old alike. In the past, federal departments had been reduced, divided, remade or combined, but they had never been disbanded altogether. Many of them feared the precedent that disbanding a Department altogether could set, and so, bizarrely, reluctantly, they made sure the Department of the Supernatural stayed, to Skirving's aggravation.
This hadn't saved the Department saved from having its budget slashed down to bare-bones, of course. At cabinet meetings, they were ignored. Coraline's place in the order of succession was barely above the White House pastry chef. But they had endured, for what that was worth.
Skirving smiled. It was a humourless, taut expression from which a corpse would have run screaming.
"Stake it while you can," he said. "I expect your duties shan't burden you much longer."
"Oh?" They were both walking the last length of corridor to the Cabinet Room. "What makes you think that?"
"Your Department hangs by a thread," said Skirving. The look that he sent Coraline could have frozen water in a glass. "And if you'd had any respect for your nation, you would have cut it yourself long ago."
"Heard this," said Coraline, aware that it wasn't wise to antagonise him further but unable to care. "Heard this. Heard the 'duty to your country' version, 'government laughing stock', and all the speeches you've made to cameras regarding federal waste. You really need a new tune."
Skirving's response was an all-but-imperceptible curve in one eyebrow, and they entered the Cabinet Room in silence. Most of the Cabinet was there already, sat around the long table at the centre, Coraline saw. Cheung and Silverman and Fedecker, for Agriculture and State and Labor respectively. Theresa Bardeaux, the old Secretary of Justice, nodded at Coraline as she entered. Most of the others didn't acknowledge her, instead firing the odd question at Skirving. The table was thick with spread paper and cups of coffee.
She took her position at one of the table's far ends, in a chair on which was set the seal of her department. Gregor Solokov, the young Secretary of Education, glanced at her as she sat to his right, then turned back to his work.
Coraline sat back in her chair. She loathed these meetings, where her input was neither asked for nor taken, and where she was doomed to sit needlessly for long stretches of her mortality.
God's sake, she could be doing something, anything, other than wasting her time here. She was often tempted to find out what would happen if she simply failed to turn up for a meeting where she wasn't a designated survivor. But she knew that would just make needless trouble for her department, and so she did her best to endure.
"Pardon me, is this my seat?"
The voice came from her right, and she turned to see who said it.
She recognised the speaker hovering over the chair to her right; the new Secretary of Homeland Security, James Malinois. He was a well-built and strong-featured man, with dark blond hair, honey-brown eyes, and a look of mingled curiosity and confusion on his face.
"Chances are that if it's got your Department's seal on it, it's yours," she said dryly. "I assume this is your first Cabinet meeting?" She knew it would be. From what she'd read in the news, Malinois had only been invested last week, rising from the ranks of the CIA. He'd enjoyed good bipartisan support, and had passed through Congress's subcommittees with little fuss.
"A fair assumption. I haven't had time to pick up the protocol," he said apologetically, extending a hand. "I'm sorry, I don't think we've met. I'm James Malinois, the new Secretary for Homeland Security. You're the Secretary of the Supernatural, am I correct?"
"Correct." She shook the hand.
Malinois grinned. "There's quite a few stories about your..."
The door opened, and Coraline turned and saw the President flanked by the Secret Service. Everyone rose while he stood.
President Kuciyela was slender and slightly built, for the power he wielded. He had dark, ochre-brown skin, and grey-streaked dark hair kept in a careful mane. His eyes, framed behind flat-lined spectacles, were so dark they were almost black, and his high cheekbones seemed to come to cutting edges. Three years of the presidency had made his face careworn, crow's feet spreading at corners.
"Seat yourselves," he said, his voice measured and calm. Everyone did so.
"Who's our designated survivor?" asked Bardeaux, glancing around the table.
"Vice-President Holloway," said Kuciyela. "He's on a goodwill visit to Canada."
Good luck to the Canadians, thought Coraline. Holloway had acquired many names during his three years as the Vice-President, few of which were in high awe of his intellect. Some of the older Republicans in Congress had taken to calling him 'Quayle Rides Again'.
Folders unfolded, and discussions unwound, and the Cabinet started to debate as Coraline sat back in her chair.
Two hours of stupefying boredom droned past like a taster of Hell. She only caught the odd snippet of conversation; Silverman advising that aid be given to the Reunified Korean State, Skirving's warnings regarding the intractability of Congress, and Malinois's reports on new, vague threats to homeland security.
Coraline sat in silence. Broaching the topic of beldams at the Cabinet Table was the sort of mistake you learned quickly not to make.
Eventually the meeting adjourned. Malinois left first, casting a backwards glance over his head into the room as he left, followed closely by the others.
Coraline approached Kuciyela once nearly all the others had left, and only Skirivng and a few security staff remained in the room. The President looked up as she approached.
"What is it, Ms Jones?" he asked, his even expression betraying only a little weariness.
Coraline couldn't help but think of a political cartoon she had seen about a year back, that played up Kuciyela's image as constantly careworn. It showed him trudging through a field, with the apparatus of government and current issues depicted as various burdens weighed upon him. Vice-President Holloway was an anvil with an expression of genial idiocy chained to Kuciyela's right foot. Skirving was a cadaverous vulture digging its claws into his shoulder and screeching into his ear. And, amongst dozens of similar details, the Department of the Supernatural was a small child who was tugging on Kuciyela's hand while gabbling about its imaginary friend and the monsters under its bed.
"A matter's arisen in the Department of the Supernatural that I think you have to know about, Mr President," said Coraline, opening and reaching into her bag.
"Presidents typically have busy schedules, Ms Jones, I don't know if you're aware," said Skirving. "Whatever you want to say can wai..."
"Peace, Malcolm," said Kuciyela. "What do you want to show me, Ms Jones?"
Coraline drew out the spy and held it out on her palm. Kuciyela squinted at it.
"What's that in your hand?"
"It's an electronic spy," said Coraline, making Kuciyela and Skirving look sharply up. "It was discovered in a vital area of the Thaddeus complex late last night. According to someone who knows about these things, it's a government model. As you can imagine, this begs the question of what exactly it was doing there."
"Is that thing deactivated?" asked Skirving sharply.
"Thoroughly." Coraline gave the Chief of Staff a withering look. "I'm not so stupid as to bring an active spying device into cabinet meetings, whatever your opinion of me."
"Have the intelligence agencies reported any of their hardware going astray?" asked Kuciyela of Skirving.
"I don't know. I'll find out." Skirving's lips thinned as he spoke, and his eyes narrowed on the spy. "If they have, then it's possible other government offices may be compromised."
"I agree. A full search of government offices may be necessary." Kuciyela turned to Coraline. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Ms Jones. If it turns out other departments have been infiltrated as well, then rest assured, an investigation will be carried out at the very highest levels. You have my word."
Coraline heard the words, and what was written between the lines.
If it's more than one department, this represents a serious breach of federal security. If it's just your own, however, then there are more worthwhile things to get worried about.
Still, what more could she have expected?
"Thank you, Mr President," said Coraline, impatient to just leave and get back to the Department. Where she could actually do her job.
She turned on her heel and left the room, leaving the spy and the two men behind her.
She hoped to Christ that Maria had something for her to kill by the time she got back.