The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (34 page)

‘You’d better tell me what happened.’

‘I went to see Dr. Darling.’ Olga shivered for a moment, then walked across the room and sat down in the solitary armchair. ‘He’s dead. It was a professional hit, almost
a month ago. And his office was cleaned out, Helge. The records are missing.’

‘But he – ’ Miriam stared. ‘Where does Mom come into this?’

‘I had orders to get those records to
you
.’ Olga looked unhappy. ‘And your mother took them.’

‘She was in the same town at the same time, right?’

‘Yes.’ The set of Olga’s shoulders relaxed. ‘On its own that would not be conclusive, but – ’

‘You’re telling me my mother, who spends half her time in a wheelchair these days, assassinated a doctor, stole several thousand sets of medical records, and made a clean getaway?
And why? To stop me from getting my hands on the
breeding program’s records
?
’
Her emphasis on the last three words made Olga wince.

‘I am uncertain as to her motive. But – your mother knew of the program, no? And you must needs be aware of her views on the balance of powers within our circle of families,
yes?’

Miriam sighed. ‘
Of course
I know what she thinks of – of all that stuff. But that breeding program was just plain odious. I know why they did it, I mean – we’re
dangerously short on world-walkers, and if we can use a fertility clinic as a cover to spread the recessive trait around, then pay some of the first-generation women to act as donors – but I
tend to agree with Mom that it’s destabilizing as hell. And ethically more than questionable, too. But why would she destroy the records or kill Darling? Was there something else we
don’t know about?’

‘I don’t know.’ Olga looked troubled.

‘Then why don’t you ask her?’ Miriam crossed her arms.

‘Because.’ Olga bit her lip. ‘She killed Dr. Darling,’ she said, conversationally. ‘She had her woman Mhara do it, in direct contravention of Security protocols.
The other thing, Helge, that you did not let me get to, is that there was another witness present.’

‘Really?’ Miriam’s shoulders tensed.

‘Dr. ven Hjalmar,’ said Olga.

‘I want him dead.’ Miriam’s voice was flat.

‘We need to find out why she killed Dr. Darling first, don’t we?’

‘But – ’ Miriam changed tack. ‘Brill thought ven Hjalmar was dead,’ she said. ‘In fact, she told me so.’

‘Hmm. There was some confusion after the palace – perhaps she was not in the loop?’ Olga leaned back and met Miriam’s eyes. ‘I am telling you this because
Mhara’s first loyalty is to Security; she was most upset when she learned her actions were unauthorized. What is your mother doing, Helge? How many games is she playing?’

‘I . . . don’t . . .’ Miriam fell silent. ‘Dr. ven Hjalmar,’ she said faintly. ‘Is she cooperating with him?’

Olga stared at her for a long time.

*

Summer in the suburbs. The smell of honeysuckle and the creaking of cicadas hung heavy in the backyard of the small house on a residential street in Ann Arbor; there was little
traffic outside, the neighbors either already in bed or away from their homes, dining out or working late. But inside the house, behind lowered blinds, the lights were on and the occupants were
working. Not that a casual interloper would have recognized their activities as such.

Huw sat in front of a laptop in the day room at the back of the house, staring at the Mathematica workbook running in a window as it stepped through variations on a set. Wearing goggles and an
oxygen mask, with a blood pressure cuff on his upper arm and a Glock on his belt, he squinted intently as the program flashed up a series of topological deformations of a familiar knot.

On his left wrist, he wore an electronic engineer’s grounding strap, which he had attached to a grounding spike in the backyard by a length of wire – and tested carefully. Two
camcorders on tripods monitored his expression and the screen of the laptop. The medical telemetry gear was on order, but hadn’t arrived yet; it would have to wait for the next run. There
were other watchers, too, equipped as best as he’d been able to manage in the time available.

‘Ouch.’ Huw tapped the space bar on the keyboard, pausing the run. ‘Sequence number 144. I definitely felt something there.’ He glanced round. ‘Elena? You awake
back there?’

‘This thing stinks.’ Her voice buzzed slightly. ‘And I give you seven more minutes until changeover time, my lord. Would you mind hurrying up and getting it over
with?’

Huw stretched, rotating his shoulder blades. ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘Resuming with sequence number 145 in three, two, one’ – he tapped the space bar again –
‘ouch! Ow, shit!’ – and again. Then he reached down and hit the start button on the blood pressure monitor. ‘That was a definite . . . something. Ow, my head.’

The machine buzzed as the cuff inflated. Thirty seconds passed, then it began to tick and hiss, venting compressed air. Finally it deflated with a sigh. ‘Shit. One fifty-two over
ninety-five. Right, that’s it for this run. I got a
definite
contact.’

Huw closed the workbook, then removed his goggles and unclipped the oxygen mask. ‘Ow.’ He rubbed at his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, where the rubber had chafed. ‘How are
you coping?’

‘Help me out of this thing?’ Elena asked plaintively.

Huw stood up, detached the grounding strap, and stretched again. ‘Okay, let’s see . . .’ Elena was fumbling with the gas regulator under her visor. ‘No, let me sort that
out.’ A moment later he had the visor unclipped and her helmet swinging open.

‘That’s better!’ She took a deep breath and began to unfasten her gloves as he attacked the straps holding her backpack in place. ‘Are you sure the real thing will be
lighter?’

‘No,’ Huw admitted. ‘And that’s if we can get our hands on one in the first place. I think we’re going to end up having one custom made.’ Pressurized suits
with self-contained air circulation weren’t exactly an off-the-shelf item, and some of the suppliers he’d approached had responded with alarming questions; the line between certain
civilian and military uses was rather thin, it seemed. ‘Here, you should be able to get your helmet off now.’

‘Oh, that’s nice.’ Elena began to work at the high-altitude suit’s catches. It had been a random find in a somewhat peculiar store, and had taken almost a week to restore
to working order; so far it was the only one they had, which had put a serious cramp on experimentation until Huw had bitten the bullet and decided to work with an oxygen bottle and goggles as
minimal safety precautions. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Head’s splitting,’ Huw admitted. ‘Hmm. Let me just check again.’ He ran the blood pressure monitor again. It was roughly the same – alarmingly high for a fit
twenty-something – but he was standing up and moving, rather than slouched over a computer:
Good
. ‘I think I’m coming down.’

‘It was definitely a tingle? Stronger than the last?’

‘I think,’ Huw paused for thought, ‘I’m going to skip forward a couple of notches, see how far this sequence runs. I got two weak ones, then this’ – he winced
– ‘like tuning in an old radio.’

‘A radio? A radio tuned to new worlds?’

‘Maybe.’ He detached the blood pressure cuff and walked over to the archway leading to the kitchen. ‘I’m more interested in knowing what class of knot we’re dealing
with.’

‘What kind of . . . ? But it’s a knot! How many kinds
are
there?’

‘I don’t know.’ Huw glanced at the coffee machine, then the wine bottle sitting next to it. ‘Huh. Where’s – ’ The door chime pinged for attention.

‘I’ll get it.’ Elena was out of the boots and gloves; she’d managed to unzip the pressure suit as far as the crotch, revealing the rumpled tee shirt and jeans she was
wearing inside it. Huw shook his head. ‘That’d better not be the Jehovah’s Witnesses; they’re going to think we’ve got a
really
weird family life.’

‘You say that like it’s a
bad
thing – oh hello there!’ Her voice rose to a happy chirp as Huw looked round. ‘Come in, be you welcome! He’s in the
kitchen, over there,
Huw
– ’

Making a snap decision, Huw palmed the corkscrew and picked up the bottle. Turning, he paused in the doorway. ‘Sigfrid? What are
you
doing here?’

Sigfrid – lanky, tall, with a mustache that resembled a corpulent caterpillar asleep on his upper lip – unslung his shoulder bag and grinned. ‘Eh, his lordship the major sent
me. Said you needed spare hands for some kind of project?’

‘Well.’ Huw raised the bottle. ‘It’s about time. Do you know if he was sending anyone else?’

‘No.’ Sigfrid looked uncertain. ‘At least, he didn’t tell
me
.’

‘Right.’ He turned to Elena: ‘Can you phone Yul? Tell him to pick up food for four this time.’ Back to Sigfrid. ‘So what have you been doing in the
meantime?’

‘Oh, you know.’ Sigfrid shrugged his jacket back from his shoulders and let it slide to the floor. ‘I was with his lordship of Markford’s household when the pretender
went on his rampage? So I had a busy couple of weeks. First a siege, then an evacuation through the backwoods, then lots of running around, hurry up and wait, until they stuck me in Castle Hjorth
with the guards detachment.’

‘But you’re here now.’ Huw nodded to himself. ‘Want to fetch some glasses?’ Elena was on her mobile phone. ‘Top cupboard, to the left of the kitchen
sink.’ Sig was never the scholarly sort, but he was bright enough to learn. ‘Let me fill you in on what we’re trying to achieve here.’

‘Surely. The major said something about trying to
find other worlds
. Does that mean . . . ?’

Huw nodded. ‘Yes. And tomorrow we’re going to try to open up another one.’ He pulled the cork free with a pop. ‘We live in interesting times!’

*

On their first day in the enemy capital, the reconnaissance team checked into their hotel and commenced operations. Disguised as a family of Dutch tourists, Sir Gunnar ven
Hjorth-Hjalmar, accompanied by his married younger cousin Beatrice and her infant son (the elder was back at the family estate, in the care of his nurse), purchased day passes on the double-decker
tourist busses that rumbled incessantly through the boulevards and avenues of the city. Sitting on the top deck with a camcorder glued to his right eye, his ‘wife’ gaping in bucolic awe
at the colonnaded classical buildings and low office blocks to either side, Gunnar found it amusing to contemplate the police and security checkpoints that swarmed defensively around the federal
buildings.
They call
this
security?
he asked himself ironically.
Hmm. Target-rich environment, maybe
.

‘What’s
that
?’ asked Beatrice, pointing at the Washington Monument. She spoke Hochsprache, the better to aid the disguise; a strawberry blonde with a two-year-old on her
hip wasn’t anybody’s idea of an Al-Qaeda terrorist. She hadn’t spent much time over in the Anglischprache world, beyond the minimum required for the corvée, and her
emulation of an awestruck tourist was entirely genuine – because Niejwein, the largest city with which she was familiar, was less than a tenth the size of downtown Washington, D.C.

‘It is a memorial to their founding king-emperor, the duke who led their armies during their rebellion against the king across the water.’ Gunnar sniffed. ‘He refused to take
the throne, but their aristocrats honor him to this day.’

‘How very stupid of him,’ Beatrice agreed. ‘Was he mad?’

‘I don’t know.’ Gunnar zoomed in on the monument, then panned slowly sideways to take in the neoclassical palaces of bureaucracy to either side of the wide plaza and the
shallow pool. Eight and nine stories high, none of them exceeded the height of the spire.
Interesting
, he noted. ‘Mark a waypoint, please.’

Beatrice fumbled obediently in her handbag, then produced a tissue and wiped little Anders’s nose. Anders bubbled sleepily as his mother wadded up the tissue with mild distaste and stuffed
it back in her bag, along with the GPS machine. ‘He will need cleaning soon,’ she told Gunnar.

‘It cannot be helped. A single man, making notes and filming, would attract attention.’

‘Of course, cousin. But we will need to stop the carriage to do so.’

Gunnar panned back across the Mall, slowly scanning a frontage of museum buildings. ‘There are public toilets in all the museums and public buildings here, well-kept and as luxurious as
any palace back home.’

‘Good.’ She glanced behind her. ‘These buildings. The
people
own them?’

‘Only indirectly. Just as they rebelled against their king and replaced him with none, so they tried to abolish their aristocracy. It grew back, of course, but not in the same image
– there is a ruling class here, but its members are not named count this or lord that.’

‘How very confusing! How is one to recognize a superior . . . ?’

‘You don’t.’ Gunnar ignored her evident discomfort. ‘It’s
very
confusing at first. But eventually you learn to spot the signs. Their wealth, for one thing.
And the way the laws that leash the ordinary people slip past them. They don’t carry arms; other people carry arms for them, it’s a sign of how rich and powerful this empire has
become.’
Too many words
, he thought. The words wouldn’t stop coming; relief at being here, at not worrying about being murdered by the bitch-queen back home, had loosened his
tongue.

Beatrice shifted Anders across her lap. ‘It’s huge,’ she said, her voice wavering slightly.

‘Of course. This city, Washington, D.C., has nearly two-thirds the population of the entire Gruinmarkt. And it rules over everything from the outer kingdom in our west through the badlands
and the mountains to the Sudtmarkt and the Nordmarkt – well, part of the Nordtmarkt belongs to these Americans’ northern neighbor, but that kingdom is also vast, by our lights. But it
is still a kingdom and it is still run by a king-emperor of sorts, albeit one of their elite who is formally proclaimed by his peers to rule for four or eight years. And we know how to talk to
power.’