I could easily go home without passing his door, but I don't. Now that the worst has come to pass, a gloomy curiosity has me in its grip. Why did he want me to go to Cosford? What was that guff about a white elephant? It'll bug me for the rest of the week if I don't ask the old coffin-dodger, and Iris told me to go home and relax. So I curve past the crypt on my way to the lich-gate, so to speak, and steel myself to beard the monster in his den.

(See, I'm calling him rude names. That's to prove to myself that I'm not scared of him like everybody else. See? I'm not terrified!)

The dark green metal door's shut when I come to it. But the red security light isn't on, so I knock. "Boss?" I ask softly.

I hear a muffled noise, as of something very large and massive shuffling around in a confined space. Then there's a grunt, and a heavy thud. I rest my palm lightly on the pitted brass door handle. "Boss?" I repeat.

Heavy breathing. "Enter."

I push the door open, with trepidation.

Angleton's office feels like it's the size of a self-respecting broom closet, even though it's actually quite large. All four walls are shelved floor-to-ceiling in ledgers—not books, but binders full of microfiche cards. In the middle of the room sits his legendary desk, an olive-drab monolith that looks like it came out of a Second World War aircraft carrier; a monstrous hump like a 1950s TV set sits on top of it, like a microfiche reader. Except that it isn't. Microfiche readers don't come with organ pedals and hoppers to gulp down mountains of cards. Angleton's desk is a genuine Memex, the only one I've seen outside of the National Cryptologic Museum run by the NSA in Maryland.

To those who don't need to know, Angleton is just a dry old guy who rides herd on the filing cabinets in Arcana Analysis and does stuff for the Counter-Possession Unit. His job title is Detached Special Secretary, which doesn't mean what you think it means: scuttlebutt is that it's short for Deeply Scary Sorcerer.

He's nearly bald, his chin is two sizes two small for his skull, and his domed scalp gleams like bone: with his wizened mannerisms—like a public school master from the 1930s, Mr. Chips redux—people tend to underestimate him on first acquaintance. It's a mistake they only make once. Whether or not they survive.

"Ah, Robert." He looks up from the Memex screen, his face stained pale blue by its illumination. "Please be seated."

I sit down. The chair, a relic of the cold war, squeaks angrily. "I fucked up."