“Yes.”
“And what do you usually bring in for lunch?” Louisa said.
“I usually buy it.”
“Yeah, okay, and you buy . . . ?”
“A salad.”
“So you usually eat a shop-bought salad until one day you make yourself a curry instead.”
“Well, that’s what he’d expect, isn’t it? The fat bigot.”
Lech and Louisa exchanged a look.
“I mean, obviously I make my own curry.”
They exchanged it back again.
“What?”
“Lamb’s fat,” said Louisa. “And bigotry is his preferred mode of communication, yes. But he’s not stupid. You might as well have labelled your lunchbox ‘Bait.’”
“But he took it!”
“When a rat takes your poison, that’s job done,” said Lech. “When Lamb does, that’s research.”
“I was you,” said Louisa, “I wouldn’t go biting into anything you didn’t prepare yourself.”
And even then, not if you’ve turned your back on it for ten seconds, she mentally added.
“Where is he, anyway?” Lech asked, but no one knew.
They were in the kitchen, because it was that time: Louisa’s need for coffee, always imminent, was at its peak early afternoon, and Lech’s desire to be nowhere near his desk was at its peak most of the time. As for Ashley, neither had gauged her daily requirements yet, because this seemed an unnecessary effort until her ongoing presence had been established. Investing in a fellow slow horse was far from automatic.
Current assessment, though: attempting to kill Jackson Lamb with a turbo-charged curry showed initiative and imagination, indicating that Ashley Khan might be worth getting to know. It was just a pity the same resourceful outlook rendered her long-term prospects negligible.
Roddy Ho entered, opened the fridge, and removed a plastic bottle of radioactive-coloured drink. When he closed the door it slowly swung open again, but he didn’t notice. Instead he leaned against the only length of kitchen counter not already occupied and applied himself to the task of removing the plastic screw-cap with his teeth. This took him, by Louisa’s fascinated count, twenty-two seconds. Then he tilted the bottle back, took a large gulp and shook his head, as if he’d just performed some feat of athleticism out of the reach of lesser divinities. Only then did he address the other three. “’Sup?” he asked.
“You forgot to say ‘dude,’” Lech pointed out.
“Yeah, well, you forgot to say . . .”
They waited.
“。 . . Fuck off.”
“Sorry,” said Lech. “Fuck off.”
Louisa kicked the fridge door shut.
“He might just think I like really hot curry,” Ashley said.
“Or you could rely on his famously forgiving nature,” said Lech. “That might work.”
Roddy said to Louisa, “That du—that guy, the one at the embassy? Who wouldn’t look at the cameras?”
“What about him?”
“He left. First thing this morning.”
“。 . . And did you catch his face this time?”
“Yeah.” Roddy slurped another mouthful of bright green energy. “He sort of waved, in fact. Weird.”
“So did you run him through the program?”
“Nah. Sent you the clip, though.”
“You’re an absolute star.”
Roddy shrugged. “You can owe me one.”
Ashley, who’d filled the space when she wasn’t talking by looking at her phone instead, raised her head suddenly. “Oh. My. God!”
“What?”
“Red Queen.”
All three stared. “What?”
“Red Queen!” She gestured with her phone. “It’s all over the network. Like, ‘This is not a drill.’”
“So it’s really happening?” said Lech.
“Yes.”
“Not a practice run?” said Louisa.
“No.”
“Actual Red Queen. Actually happening.”
“Yes! How many times?”
Lech said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s Red Queen?”
“Duh,” said Roddy.
Catherine appeared in the doorway, with a suddenness which might have been alarming if it weren’t a firmly established trope. “What’s going on?”
“Red Queen,” Roddy said importantly.
She looked at each in turn. As always, her over-neat appearance, the long-sleeved, mid-calf dress, the lace collar and cuffs, the buckled shoes, lent her the appearance of, not necessarily a governess, but of an illustration of a governess in an out-of-print children’s book. Of the four looking back at her, two underestimated her for that very reason. “Red Queen,” she repeated, instinctively reproducing the capitals. “I don’t know what that means.”