Mhari may have a history of periodically going off the deep end and throwing boots at my head, but she was never an idiot. She worked for the Laundry full-time on the admin side for two or three years before her sideways shift into investment banking. She knows exactly how the Laundry goes about dealing with outbreaks. And she knows that our three priorities are the three Cs: Containment, Confidentiality, and Capabilities. We contain outbreaks, maintain confidentiality, and enhance our capabilities. The Scrum’s new and fascinating breakthrough is certainly an enhanced capability so she knew that as long as she could maintain confidentiality and do something to contain it, she could wrap it all up in a bow (with the right forms, filled out in triplicate and signed in blood) and hand them over to HR. And as soon as she realized she could talk about us to Oscar—the confidentiality geas apparently doesn’t work too well on people who’ve contracted her unfortunate condition—she briefed him, called up her contacts in HR, and set all the wheels in motion to position her team on the inside of the tent pissing out, rather than vice versa. At which point the outbreak of K syndrome that sucked me into searching out the Scrum stopped being an external threat to be addressed and turned into a fucking inside job. Which neatly explains why my warrant card didn’t work on Alex: as a barely-across-the-threshold new employee he was nevertheless permitted to see it for what it was: the geas on our ID cards doesn’t affect our own people.

And yes, in case you were wondering, this is my angry-and-disgusted face with egg dripping down it . . .

9.

COMMITTEE PROCESSES

THERE ARE CLUBS, AND THEN THERE ARE CLUBS.

Back in the eighteenth century (and even earlier) London didn’t have cafés, restaurants, or hotels, as such: it had coffee shops, and drinking dens, and a plethora of coaching houses and inns—but these were not places where gentlemen of quality might dine together in polite company, or drink, or sleep. To address the needs of the nobs (principally: somewhere to socialize, eat, drink, and sleep without being bothered by the raucous lower orders), some of their lordships established discreet clubs. They purchased buildings, hired staff, and acquired the habit of using them as a home from home in the big city.

Today, the gentleman’s club is undergoing something of a revival. Over the years many of its functions were usurped by hotels and restaurants—and unlike a particularly exclusive club, you can find chain hotels and restaurants in every large city. But the club is by no means extinct, and London still harbors dozens of them, at least one of which has been in existence since the late seventeenth century.