“You’re telling me that the Scrum are probably pawns in a game of vamp versus vamp?”

“No, Bob, you deduced that for yourself. You may or may not be correct. I do not know. However, I would strongly advise you to investigate further.”

“So, er . . . who is he?”

Angleton crosses his arms. He looks annoyed. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” I stare at him in disbelief.

“I am not omnipotent, boy. Or omniscient. We are discussing the possible existence of a very powerful sorcerer, immune from K syndrome and probably more than a century old, who has encrusted our organizational premises with an obfuscatory geas going back decades. They predate my arrival and probably know enough about me to stay out of my way.” His expression of irritation deepens.

“Okay, so let’s say there is a long-term PHANG in the Laundry, and you don’t know who he is—surely at least you have a suspect in mind?” (Yes, he. If we’re talking about someone older than Angleton, we’re talking about a prewar sorcerer. Pre–First World War.)

Angleton shakes his head. “I have suspicions. But I don’t want to share them with you; they might lead you down a blind alley.”

“If you insist.” I pause. “So we have this invisible blood-sucking mole within the organization. But there’s also another long-term PHANG outside the big tent, and he’s lately set up the Scrum to, to start a fight with our PHANG?” Angleton nods. “But they must have been doing this on and off for decades!”

“Correct, Bob. We are discussing some of the world’s deadliest magician-assassins; if you meet our in-house monster you should be at pains not to underestimate him, however meek and mild he might seem. They play their vicious games using a range of proxies. The Scrum are proxies. You or I might be proxies, without ever knowing it. You might consider investigating where the suggestion to look for K syndrome clusters using the NHS data warehouse originated—but I expect he’s covered his traces well.

“The key facts are that he works with what he knows, and because he is embedded in the Laundry, what he knows is us. So: let us suppose that our in-house monster became aware that his long-term adversary was beginning a series of experiments intended to eventually give him an army of tractable vampire minions. (My understanding is that such attempts have hitherto always failed, because viable vampires are anything but tractable.) In response, our man inserted Ms. Murphy into the adversary’s experiment, and arranged for you to find her: a stroke of pure genius. One might even speculate that he planned it as a move to steal his rival’s toy-box, the baby PHANGs. But now the adversary can’t help but realize he’s being played—and sooner or later he’ll retaliate. Either by throwing his toys on the floor, or by upsetting the game board.”

“Wait, what—” My head’s spinning.