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Resources back to their crypt. Then I made an executive decision that Andy and I needed to finish the night shift by performing a destructive bioassay on the contents of a bottle labelled “drain cleaner” I’d found in a drawer in my desk. After repeated oral analysis, we concluded it was mislabelled. It was a risky procedure—if the bottle hadn’t been mislabelled we could have made ourselves
very
ill indeed—but certain traditions must be upheld. In particular, a young high-flying officer should not tell a former superior that they’ve been bloody idiots without the plausible deniability lent by a sufficiency of single malt whisky. Even if it’s true.
    “So what’s
your
ten-percenter?” Andy asked after I finished explaining precisely why he needed the refresher course on health and safety procedures when conducting summonings. “Don’t tell me you’re working on an admin-side scheme?”
    “Actually, I am,” I said, hoisting a shot glass in his direction: “Prosit!”
    “Up yours.” He took a sensible sip. “No, seriously, they’ve got you on the hook, too, haven’t they? That’s why you came in to work late?”
    Actually they didn’t. The ten-percenter thing only really applied to staff with actual postgraduate degrees. I’d never finished my PhD, much less got to strut my stuff in a silly robe, but I’d jumped on the bandwagon with a carefully muted shriek of glee. I had my own entirely selfish reasons. Andy might have selected his project because he was suffering from that peculiar version of impostor syndrome to which researcher-turned-admin bodies are prone, but for my part I’d been bitten by a bug, and I needed a plausible excuse to spend 10 percent of my working hours on a scheme the suggestions box committee probably only authorized because they hadn’t understood the full implications. (
I
had. And it was fascinating. I wish I knew who’d had the idea first, so I could shake their hand . . .)
    Last year, a series of unfortunate events in Colorado Springs coincided with me being promoted onto the management fast track—and earlier this year a series of even more unfortunate events derailed me from said track, dumped me on a jet-propelled skateboard, and shoved me onto the career progression equivalent of a crazy golf course played with zombies for putting irons and live hand grenades for balls. Since then I’ve been subject to matrix management by bosses in different departments with diametrically opposed priorities who still think I work under them, while trying to establish just what is expected of me by much more senior people who think I work for
them
. It’s extremely fatiguing, not least because the furrow I’m ploughing is so lonely that nobody’s actually written a skills development manual for it: the Laundry is about procedures and teamwork and protocol, not super-spies and necromancers.
    “I’m on the hook to the extent that I want to be,” I confessed. “Lockhart insisted, actually. Told me I’d never get anywhere unless I ‘set a course and stuck to it,’ to use his words. And Angleton just laughed, then told me to fuck off and play with myself.”
    “Angleton said—” Andy’s eyebrow twitched again.
    “No, that’s me; his actual phrasing was more . . .”
Schoolmasterly
was the word I was hunting for. A long time ago, Angleton spent a decade teaching in the English public school system (the posh, private school system, that is) and it had rubbed off on him—along with the extra special version of sarcasm generations of schoolmasters have distilled for keeping on top of their fractious charges. (Even his current nom de guerre, Angleton, was chosen with irony in mind: it irritated the hell out of our American opposite numbers, because of the one-time CIA legend of the same name. Really, he ought to be code-named SMILEY or something.) “But anyway, he gave me carte blanche, and my other boss expects me to—” I waved my hands, nearly knocked over