Free The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross

Czech intelligence. Then they branched out into the broader media. They bugged the FBI team who were bugging The Beatles. Some say that Mary Whitehouse got her start as one of their junior inquisitors. By 1968 they’d commissioned a study on installing a pyre in the former Star Chamber in Whitehall so they could burn witches—using North Sea gas, of course. It was a terribly British witch hunt. Their paranoia knew no bounds—they wrangled the BBC into canceling the fifth series of Monty Python because they thought the canned laugh tracks might contain coded messages to KGB sleeper agents.
    “Finally, they began to investigate the prime minister, Harold Wilson. Wilson, Wright was convinced, was a KGB agent.” I’m nodding along like a metronome at this point. “There was a group, a cabal if you like, of MI5 officers. About thirty of them. They actually planned a coup d’état in 1972. They were going to stick Lord Louis Mountbatten in charge of a provisional military government, herd all the suspected spies into Wembley Stadium, and shoot them. They were even going to replace the House of Commons with Daleks.”
    I roll my eyes. I can tell when Angleton is yanking my chain: “Even the tea lady?”
    “Yes, Bob. Even the tea lady.” Angleton looks at me gravely. “ When will you learn to read your briefing documents?”
    “When they don’t land on my head disguised as a pulp bestseller when I’m in the middle of an intensive training course.” I sit up. “So, the 1960s and early 1970s: deeply paranoid, or merely full of obsessive-compulsive witch hunters? How does this affect us now ?”
    Angleton leans across his desk and makes a steeple of his fingers: “The point, boy, is that ever since that time of unbound paranoia the one unbreakable law of the British secret services has been: Thou shalt not snoop on Number Ten . Because we are not in the business of generating policy—it’s not a task for which agencies like ours are suited, and in those countries where spooks set policy, it always ends in tears. We vet politicians on the way up—that’s an entirely different matter—but by the time they’re moving into Number Ten they should already be above suspicion; if they aren’t, we haven’t been doing our job properly. And that’s very important because we are ultimately answerable to them . Our loyalty is to the Crown; the Prime Minister, as leader of the government, is the person in whose office that authority is vested. He or she issues our marching orders. So we obey Rule One at all times. Are you with me so far?”
    “Um. I guess so. All very sensible, I suppose. Except…” I frown. “What has this got to do with me?”
    “Well, boy…” Angleton fixes me with a bright, elfin smile—and I am abruptly terrified . “What do you think happens when an investigation in progress runs into the Prime Ministerial exclusion zone?”
    TWO HOURS LATER AND TWO FLOORS UP IN ANOTHER WING OF the New Annex I knock on another door. It’s a wider and much more imposing door, with a brass nameplate screwed firmly to the wood: LOCKHART, G. And there’s a red security lamp and a speaker beside it.
    The speaker buzzes. “Enter.” It’s like a visit to the dentist. I go inside, unsure of the ailment I’m here to have diagnosed—just gripped by an unpleasant certainty that it’s going to hurt.
    Gerry Lockhart rates a big corner office with a window, decent carpet, and oil paintings . I have no bloody idea where those come from—presumably Facilities have a sharing arrangement with the Government Art Collection—but it’s a new one on me; aside from the always-empty offices on Mahogany Row, nobody in this organization rates any kind of eyeball candy unless it’s a Health and Safety or Security poster. When the door opens he’s sitting, poring over some papers on his desk; he hastily flips a black velvet cloth over the documents, slips off his half-moon reading glasses, then stands and extends a