The Fuller Memorandum (15 page)

“Why? To prevent me stealing it?”

“No, Mr. Dower: to prevent it from killing you.”

 

 

I’M BACK IN MY OFFICE AFTER THE BLOODY BARON MEETING.
The committee have minuted that I am to try and think myself into Angleton’s shoes (ha bloody ha); the coffee mug is cooling on the mouse mat beside my cranky old HP desktop as I sit here, head in hands, groaning silently and wishing I’d paid more attention in history classes rather than staring at the back of Zoe McCutcheon’s head and thinking about—let’s not go there. (Sixteen-year-old male: fill in the blanks.) All this Russian stuff is confusing the hell out of me—why can’t we go back to worrying about Al Qaida or pedophiles on the internet or whatever it is that intelligence services traditionally obsess about?

There’s a pile of dusty manila folders sitting on my desk. Angleton said they were interesting, right before he went missing, and if that wasn’t a deliberate clue I’ll eat my pants. He’s a slithy old tove and I wouldn’t put it past him to have meant something significant, damn him. But all I’ve got is a list of hastily scrawled file reference numbers, pointers into the shelf positions documents are stored at in the stacks—nothing as simple as filenames, of course,
that
would be giving valuable information to the enemy. How like Angleton.

I pick up the first folder and open it. It contains a creased, dog-eared, and much folded letter, handwritten on paper that’s a weird size. I peer at the faded scrawl, trying to make head or tail of it. “Jesus, boss, what the
hell
. . . ?” Luckily I have a scanner with an automatic document feeder. I carefully feed the brittle pages to the computer, one at a time, twitching the software to maximum resolution. On the first page I pick up a reasonable high-contrast scan—there’s some ghosting, what looks like pale scribble showing through, as if the author tried to scrub something out—and zoom in. I puzzle out the date, first:
October 11th, 1921
. Then I turn the handwriting recognition software loose and sit back. After a while, it’s cooked and ready to read.

THE WOMAN WHO CALLS HERSELF CASSIE MAY WAITS PATIENTLY,
sitting on a backless stool behind the antique cash register in George Dower’s shop while keeping an eye on the proprietor, who is busy in the workshop behind the bead curtain (which she has tied back, to afford her a clear view).

The back of the shop is not what she had expected. She’s been in instrument makers’ workshops before, smelled the glue and fresh-planed wood, the wax and varnish. She’s familiar with other musical specialties as well, with signal generators and plugboards, amps and filters, the hum and hot metallic smell of overdriven amplifiers. Dower’s shop is not like any of these. It has some of the characteristics of a jeweler’s workshop, or a watch repairer’s—but it is not entirely like either of those. It’s summer but the air is uncharacteristically chill, and not from air conditioning: it’s stuffy, and there’s a faint charnel-house scent, as if something has died under the floorboards.

Dower has donned a pair of white cotton conservator’s gloves and hung a dictaphone around his neck. He keeps the bone-white violin at arm’s length, as if he doesn’t want to hold it too close, muttering into his microphone: “C-rib thickness varies between 3.2 and 5.5 millimeters; as with the right lower curve, this material appears to be ductile and rigid, although examination at 6X magnification reveals the characteristic spongiform structure of endochondral ossification . . .” He swallows, as if nauseous—as well he might be. (The instrument is indeed made of bone, preserved and treated to give it a rigidity and resonance similar to mountain maple. The treatments that modify the material in this way are applied while its donor is still alive, and in excruciating pain.) Peering into a fiber-optic probe, the end of which is inserted through one of the violin’s f-holes: “The upper block appears to be carved from the body and lesser cornu of
os hyoideum
; the greater cornu is avulsed in a manner usually indicative of death by strangulation . . .”

Dower may suspect, but the woman knows, that the materials used to construct this instrument were harvested from the bodies of no less than twelve innocents, whose premature deaths were believed to be an essential part of the process. Before he became a highly specialized instrument maker, Dower trained as a surgeon. He’s a sensitive, trained to see what lies before his eyes: most people wouldn’t recognize the true horror of the instrument, seeing merely a white violin. Which is why the woman came here, after checking the files for a list of suitable examiners.

After almost three hours, Dower is flagging, but his work is nearly done. The woman is checking her watch now, with increasing concern. Eventually, finally, he replaces the bow in its recess and folds the lid of the case shut, snapping the latches closed. He steps back and fastidiously peels off his gloves, then drops them in a rubbish bin, being careful not to touch their contaminated outer surface with his bare skin. Finally he clicks off the dictaphone. “I’m done,” he says flatly.

The woman stands, smooths the wrinkles out of her skirt, and nods. “Your written report,” she says.

“I’ll write it up after I’ve had some lunch. You can collect it after four, this afternoon . . .”

She shakes her head. “I won’t be back.” Reaching into her bag she pulls out another envelope. “Print out one copy of your report—and no more—and place it in this envelope. Then seal it and post it.” There is no address on the envelope. “After you have done that, you should destroy your records. Erase your word processor files, burn the tapes, whatever it takes. You will be held responsible if your report leaks.”

“But there’s no—” He takes the envelope. “You’re sure?”

“If you post that envelope I will have the contents on my desk by morning,” she tells him, staring at him with pale green eyes as unquiet as a storm surge.

“I don’t want to see that thing ever again,” he tells her.

“You won’t.”

“But you want to know how to make
more
—”

“No.” Her face is as smooth as plaster, as if any hint of human emotion might crack the surface of her glaze: “I want to prove to my superiors that the cost is too high.”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

“Not given the magnitude of the threat we face. Desperate measures are called for; I merely believe this one to be
too
desperate. Good-bye, Mr. Dower. I trust we shall never meet again.”