Cover

Bob Howard is taking a much needed break from the field to catch up on his filing in The Laundry's archives when a top secret dossier known as The Fuller Memorandum vanishes — along with his boss, who the agency's executives believe stole the file.

Determined to discover exactly what the memorandum contained, Bob runs afoul of Russian agents, ancient demons, and the apostles of a hideous faith, who have plans to raise a very unpleasant undead entity known as the Eater of Souls.

Charles Stross

The Fuller Memorandum

The Laundry Files - 3

ePub r1.1

Titivillus 11.12.2018

Título original: The Fuller Memorandum

Charles Stross, 2010

Editor digital: Titivillus

Primer editor: capitancebolleta (r1.0)

ePub base r2.0

Inner Cover

In memory of

Charles N. Brown and John M. Ford.

We miss you both.

Acknowledgments

Writers build on the shoulders of others. In particular, I'd like to single out three other writers, without whose work this book would not be as it is: Ferdinand Ossendowski, for his memoirs of events during the Russian civil war; James Palmer, for his portrait of the Bloody White Baron; and Anthony Price, who gave this book a skeleton.

Prologue
LOSING MY RELIGION

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE TRUE RELIGION. ARE YOU FEELING lucky, believer?

Like the majority of ordinary British citizens, I used to be a good old-fashioned atheist, secure in my conviction that folks who believed—in angels and demons, supernatural manifestations and demiurges, snake-fondling and babbling in tongues and the world being only a few thousand years old—were all superstitious idiots. It was a conviction encouraged by every crazy news item from the Middle East, every ludicrous White House prayer breakfast on the TV. But then I was recruited by the Laundry, and learned better.

I wish I could go back to the comforting certainties of atheism; it's so much less unpleasant than the One True Religion.

The truth won't make your Baby Jesus cry because, sad to say, there ain't no such Son of God. Moses may have taken two tablets before breakfast, but there was nobody home to listen to the prayers of the victims of the Shoah. The guardians of the Kaaba have got the world's best tourism racket running, the Dalai Lama isn't anybody's reincarnation, Zeus is out to lunch, and you really don't want me to start on the neo-pagans.

However, there is a God out there—vast and ancient and infinitely powerful—and I know the name of this God. I know the path you have to walk down to be one with this God. I know his secret rituals and the correct form of prayer and his portents and signs. I have studied the ancient writings of his prophets and followers in person, not simply relying on the classified digests in the CODICIL BLACK SKULL files and the background briefings for CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN.