The Merchants' War (7 page)

Back in the kitchen, he spooned rough sugar into the mug. The samovar was still hissing like a bad-natured old cat, so he slit open the electrograph's seal while he was waiting for it to finish brewing. The letter within had been cast off a Post Office embosser, but the words had been composed elsewhere. YOUR SISTER IN GOOD HANDS DURING CONFINEMENT STOP MIDWIFE OPTIMISTIC STOP WHY NOT VISIT STOP BISHOP ENDS.

His eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the slip of paper, his morning tea quite forgotten. Nobody in the movement would entrust overtly coded messages to the government's postal service; the trick was to use electrographs for signaling and the movement's own machinery for substantive communications. But this wasn't a prearranged signal, which made it odd. He'd had a sister once, but she'd died when he was six years old: what this was telling him was that Lady Bishop wanted him to visit her in New London. He stared at it some more. It didn't contain her double cross marker-if she'd signed her first name to a signal it would mean
I've been captured-
and it did contain her negative marker-if a message contained an odd number of words that meant I
am at liberty.
But it wasn't a scheduled meeting: however he racked his brains he couldn't think of anything that might warrant such an urgent summons, or the disruption to his other duties.

Does this mean we have a breach?
He put the treacherous message down on the kitchen table and turned off the gas, then poured boiling hot tea into his mug.
If Margaret's been taken, it's a catastrophe. And if she hasn't
-gears spun inside his mind, grinding through the long list of possibilities. Whatever the message meant, he needed to be on a train to the capital as soon as possible.

An hour later, Erasmus was dressed and ready to travel, disguised as himself (electrograph in wallet, along with ID papers). He carefully shut off the gas supply and, going downstairs, hung up the CLOSED DUE TO ILLNESS sign in the shop window. It needed no explanation to such folk as knew him, and in any case the Polis had been giving him a wide berth of late, ever since his relapse in their cells.
They probably think I'm out of the struggle for good,
he told himself, offering it as a faint prayer. If he could ever shed the attention he'd attracted, what use he could make of anonymity with his age and guile!

It took him some time to get to the new station besides the Charles River, but once there he discovered that the mid-morning express had not yet departed, and seats in second class were still available. And that wasn't his only good fortune. As he walked along the pier past the streamlined engine he noticed that it had none of the normal driving wheels and pistons, but multiple millipedelike undercarriages and a royal coat of arms. Then he spotted the string of outrageously streamlined carriages strung out along the track behind it, and the way the gleaming tractor emitted a constant gassy whistling sound, like a promise from the far future. It was one of the new turbine-powered trains that had been all the talk of the traveling classes this summer. Erasmus shook his head. This was unexpected: he'd hoped to reach New London for dinner, but if what he'd heard about these machines were true he might arrive in time for late lunch.

His prognostications were correct. The train began to move as he settled down behind a newspaper, accelerating more like an electric streetcar than any locomotive he'd been on, and minutes later it was racing through the Massachusetts countryside as fast as an air packet.

Burgeson found the news depressing but compelling.
Continental Assembly Dismissed!
screamed the front page headline.
Budget Deadlock Unresolved
. The king had, it seemed, taken a right royal dislike to his Conservative enemies in the house, and their dastardly attempts to save their scrawny necks by raising tariffs to pay for the Poor Law rations at the expense of the Navy. Meanwhile, the rocketing price of Persian crude had triggered a run on oil futures and threatened to deepen the impending liquidity crisis further. Given a choice between a rock and a hard place-between the need to mobilize the cumbersome and expensive apparatus of continental defense in the face of French aggression, and the demands of an exhausted Treasury and the worries of bondholders-the king had gone for neither, but had instead dismissed the quarrelsome political mosquitoes who kept insisting that he make a choice between guns and butter. It would have struck Erasmus as funny if he wasn't fully aware that it meant thousands were going to starve to death in the streets come winter, in Boston alone-and that was ignoring the thousands who would die at sea and on foreign soil, because of the thrice-damned stupid assassination of the young prince.

There were some benefits to rule by royal edict, Erasmus decided. The movement was lying low, and the number of skulls being crushed by truncheons was consequently small right now, but with the dismissal of the congress, everyone now knew exactly who to blame whenever anything bad happened. There was no more room for false optimism, no more room for wishful thinking that the Crown might take the side of the people against his servants. The movement's cautious testing of the waters of public opinion (cautious because you never knew which affable drinking companion might be an agent provocateur sent to consign you to the timber camps, and in this time of gathering wartime hysteria any number of ordinarily reasonable folks had been caught up in the most bizarre excesses of anti-French and anti-Turkish hysteria) suggested that, while the king's popularity rose whenever he took decisive action, he could easily hemorrhage support by taking responsibility for the actions usually carried out by the home secretary in his name. No more lying democracy: no more hope that if you could just raise your thousand-pound landholder's bond you could take your place on the electoral register, merging your voice with the elite.

The journey went fast, and he'd only just started reading the small-print section near the back (proceedings of divorce and blasphemy trials; obituaries of public officials and nobility; church appointments; stock prices) when the train began to slow for the final haul into Queen Josephina Station. Erasmus shook his head, relieved that he hadn't finished the paper, and disembarked impatiently. He pushed through the turbulent bazaar of the station concourse as fast as he could, hailed a cab, and directed it straight to a perfectly decent hotel just around the corner from Hogarth Villas.

Half an hour later, after a tense walk-past to check for signs that all was in order, he was relaxing in a parlor at the back of the licensed brothel with a cup of tea and a plate of deep-fried whitebait, and reflecting that whatever else could be said about Lady Bishop's establishment, the kitchen was up to scratch. As he put the teacup down, the side door opened. He rose: "Margaret?"

"Sit down." There were bags under her eyes and her back was stooped, as if from too many hours spent cramped over a writing desk. She lowered herself into an overpadded armchair gratefully and pulled a wry smile from some hidden reservoir of affect: "How was your journey?"

"Mixed. I made good time." His eyes traveled around the pelmet rail taking in the decorative knick-knacks: cheap framed prints of music hall divas and dolly-mops, bone china pipe-stands, a pair of antique pistols. "The news is-well, you'd know better than I." He turned his head to look at her. "Is it urgent?"

"I don't know." Lady Bishop frowned. There was a discreet knock at the door, and a break in the conversation while one of the girls came in with a tea tray for her. When she left, Lady Bishop resumed: "You know Adam is coming back?"

Erasmus jolted upright. "He's
what?
That's stupid! If they catch him-" That didn't bear thinking about.
He's coming back?
The very idea of it filled his mind with the distant roar of remembered crowds.
Inconceivable-

"He seems to think the risk is worth running, given the nature of the current crisis, and you know what he's like. He said he doesn't want to be away from the capital when the engine of history puts on steam. He's landing late next week, on a freighter from New Shetland that's putting into Fort Petrograd, and I want you to meet him and make sure he has a safe journey back here. Willie's putting together the paperwork, but I want someone who he knows to meet him, and you're the only one I could think of who isn't holding a ring or breaking rocks."

He nodded, thoughtfully. "I can see that. It's been a long time," he said, with a vertiginous sense of lost time.
It must be close on twenty years since I last heard him speak.
For a disturbing moment he felt the years fall away. "He really thinks it's time?" He asked, still not sure that it could be real.

"I'm not sure I agree with him... but, yes. Will you do it?"

"Try and stop me!" He meant it, he realized. Years in the camps, and everything that had gone with that... and he still meant it.
Adam's coming back, at last.
And the nations of men would tremble.

"We're setting up a safe house for him. And a meeting of the Central Executive Committee, a month from now. There will be presses to turn," she said warningly. "He'll need a staff. Are you going to be fit for it?"

"My health-it's miraculous. I can't say as how I'll ever have the energy of a sixteen-year-old again, but I'm not an invalid anymore, Margaret." He thumped his chest lightly. "And I've got lost time to make up for."

Lady Bishop nodded, then took a sip of her tea.

"There's another matter, I needed to speak with you about," She said. "It's about your friend Miss Beckstein."

"Yes?" Erasmus leaned forward. "I haven't heard anything from her for nearly two months-"

"A woman claiming to be her turned up on my doorstep three nights ago: we've spent the time since then questioning her. I have no way of identifying her positively, and if her story is correct she's in serious trouble."

"I can tell you-" Erasmus paused. "What kind of trouble?"

Margaret's frown deepened. "First, I want you to look at this portrait." She pulled a small photograph from the pocket of her shalwar suit. "Is this her?"

Erasmus stared at it for a moment. "Yes." It was slightly blurred but even though she was looking away from the camera, as if captured through the eye of a spy hole, he recognized her as Miriam. He looked more closely. Her costume was even more outlandish than when she'd first shown up on his doorstep, and either the lighting was poor or there was a bruise below one eye, but it was definitely her. "That's her, all right." "Good."

He glanced up sharply. "You were expecting a Polis agent?"

"No." She reached for the picture and he let her take it. "I was expecting a Clan agent."

"A- " Erasmus slopped. He picked up his teacup again to disguise his nervousness. "Please explain," he said carefully. "Whatever I am permitted to know."

"Don't worry, you're not under restriction." Lady Bishop's frown momentarily quirked into a smile. "Unfortunately, if Miss Beckstein is telling the truth, it's very bad news indeed. It appears she fell into disfavor with her family of the first estate-to the point where they imprisoned her, and then attempted to marry her off. But the arranged marriage provoked a violent backlash from the swain's elder brother, and it seems she is now destitute and in search of a safe harbor. Her family doesn't even know if she's still alive, and she believes many of them are dead. Which leaves me with a very pressing dilemma, Erasmus. If this was subterfuge or skulduggery, some kind of plot to pressure us by her relatives, it would be easy enough to address. But under the circumstances, what should I do with her?"

Burgeson opened his mouth to speak, then froze.
Think very carefully, because your next words might condemn her.
"I, ah, that is to say-" He paused, feeling the chilly lingers of mortal responsibility grasp the scruff of his neck like a hangman's noose. "You invited me here to be her advocate," he accused.

Lady Bishop nodded. "Somebody has to do it."

The situation was clear enough. The movement existed from day to day in mortal peril, and had no room for deadweight. Prisons were a luxury that only governments could afford.
At least she invited me here to speak,
he realized. It was a generous gesture, taken at no small risk given the exigencies of communication discipline and the omnipresent threat of the royal security Polis. Despite the organization's long-standing policies, Lady Bishop was evidently looking for an excuse
not
to have Miriam liquidated. Heartened by this realization, Erasmus relaxed a little. "You said she turned up on your doorstep. Did she come here voluntarily?"

"Yes." Lady Bishop nodded again.

"Ah. Then that would imply that she views us as allies, or at least as possible saviors. Assuming she isn't working for the Polis and this isn't an ambush-but after three days I think that unlikely, don't you? If she is then, well, the ball is up for us both. But she's got a story and she's been sticking to it for three days...? Under extraordinary pressure?"

"No pressure. At least, nothing but her own isolation."

Erasmus came to a decision. "She's been a major asset in the past, and I am sure that she isn't a government sympathizer. If we take her in, I'm certain we can make use of her special talents." He put his teacup down. "Killing her would be a-"
tragic
"-waste."

Lady Bishop stared at him for a few seconds, her expression still. Then she nodded yet again, thoughtfully. "I concur," she said briskly.

"Well, I confess I am relieved." He scratched his head, staring at the picture she still held.

"I value your opinions, Erasmus, you must know that. I needed a second on this matter; my first leaning was to find a use for her, but you know her best and if you had turned your thumb down-" she paused. "Is there a personal interest I should know about?"

He looked up. "Not really. I consider her a friend, and I find her company refreshing, but there's nothing more."
Nothing more,
he echoed ironically in the safety of his own head. "I incline towards leniency for all those who are not agents of the state-I think it unchristian and indecent to mete out such punishment as I have been on the receiving end of-but if I thought for an instant that she was a threat to the movement I'd do the deed myself." And that was the bald unvarnished truth-a successful spy would condemn dozens, even hundreds, to the gallows and labor camps. But it was not the entire truth, for it would be a harsh act to live with afterwards: conceivably an impossible one.