The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (49 page)

‘Ah.’ His father relaxed, smiling at last. He raised his glass. ‘And you think that’s all?’

‘I wouldn’t swear to it, but – ’

‘It’ll do.’ Shen took a sip. ‘Thank you, son. I think I can discuss this with Eldest now.’

James’s shoulders sank. ‘You think Uncle will take Dr. ven Hjalmar on.’

‘Yes.’ Shen’s smile widened. ‘But don’t worry. He will be under control . . .’

*

The second thing to catch Miriam’s attention was the mingled smells of scorched wood and warm blood. The first was managing to control her fall; being carried piggyback
was hard enough when the steed was a strapping young soldier, never mind a physically fit but lightly built younger woman. As Miriam and Olga disentangled themselves, Miriam looked around
curiously. They’d come through in the target area once a deeply relieved Brill had confirmed that the zone was secure, and it was Miriam’s first chance to see the havoc that the
Pervert’s army had inflicted on the Clan’s outlying minor steadings.

One farmhouse looked much like another to her eye – in the Gruinmarkt they tended to be thick-walled, made from heavy logs or clay bricks depending on the locally available materials
– but this one bore clear signs of battle. The roof of one wing was scorched and blackened, and the window shutters on the central building had been wrecked. More to the point –

‘Who – ’ she began, as Olga raised a hand and waved at the armed man standing guard by the door.

‘My lady!’ He went to one knee. ‘Lord Riordan awaits you in the west wing.’

‘Rise, Thom. Where are Knuth and Thorson?’ Olga was all business, despite what had to be a splitting headache.

‘We haven’t seen ear nor tail of them since they crossed over yesterday.’ The guard’s eyes widened as he looked at Miriam: ‘Is this – ’

‘Yes, and you don’t need to make a scene over me,’ she said hastily. Turning to Olga: ‘The other two – they’re your missing guards?’

‘Let us discuss that indoors.’ Olga nodded at the farmstead’s front door, which stood ajar. Thom followed behind like an overeager dog, happy his mistress was home. ‘I
think Knuth and Thorson are probably dead,’ she said quietly. ‘The two who were waiting for us definitely weren’t them.’

Miriam nodded, jerkily. ‘So they were assassins? Just there to kill whoever turned up?’

‘Whoever turned up at the duty staff officer’s primary evacuation point, yes.’ The picture was clear enough. The evac point had been guarded by a lance of soldiers, two on the
American side and six in the Gruinmarkt. The assassins had murdered the two guards in the state park, then planned on catching Earl Riordan and his colleagues as they arrived, one by one. They
hadn’t anticipated a group who, forewarned, arrived expecting skullduggery. ‘I expect Lady d’Ost will try and find where they hid the bodies before she comes hither to report.
Come on inside, my lady.’

The farmstead was a wreck. The guards had made a gesture towards clearing up, pushing the worst of the trashed furniture and shattered kitchenware up against one wall and sweeping the floor
– the pretender’s cavalry had briefly used it as a stable – but the scorch marks of a fire that had failed to take hold still streaked the walls, and there was a persistent, faint
aroma of rotting meat. The guards had brought out camp chairs and a folding table, and Riordan had set up his headquarters there, organizing the guards to man a shortwave radio and track unfolding
events on a large map. He looked up as Miriam arrived. ‘Welcome, Your Majesty.’

‘How bad is it?’ Miriam asked.

‘We’re getting reports. The evac plan is running smoothly and I’ve ordered all stations to check out the other side for unwelcome visitors. Didn’t want to say why –
things will be chaotic enough without setting off a panic about a civil war. The trouble is, we’re fifteen miles out of Niejwein – the eye of the storm – half a day’s ride;
and I’m not happy about disclosing your location. In the worst case our enemies may have direction-finding equipment, and if they’ve got their hands on Rudy’s ultralight . . .
we’ve got to sit tight as long as possible. I’ve ordered Helmut to bring a couple of lances here as soon as he’s nailed down the Summer Palace and I’ve put orders out for
the arrest of the entire postal committee and, I regret to say, your grandmother. We can weed that garden at our leisure once we’ve got it fenced in. Unless you have any other
suggestions?’

‘Yes.’ Miriam swallowed. ‘Is there any word of my mother? Or, or Dr. Griben ven Hjalmar? I think they’re in cahoots . . .’

Riordan glanced at one of his men and barked a question in Hochsprache too fast for Miriam to follow. The reply was hesitant. ‘No reports,’ he said, turning to Miriam.
‘I’ll let you know if anything turns up. I assume you’re talking about the duke’s special, ah, medical program?’ Miriam nodded. ‘I’m on it. Now, if you
wouldn’t mind – ’ He looked pointedly at the security guard with the radio headset, who was waving urgently for attention.

‘Go to it.’ Miriam shuffled awkwardly aside, towards the doorway into the burned-out wing of the farmhouse. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked Olga.

‘We wait, my lady. And we learn. Or
you
wait, I have orders to send. Please.’ She gestured at the bedrolls on the hard-packed floor. ‘Make yourself comfortable. We may
be here some time.’

*

Twenty years ago, in the rookeries of a town called New Catford, Elder Huan had known a young and dangerous radical – a Leveler and ranter called Stephen Reynolds.

In those days, Huan had been the public face of the family’s business involvements – a discreet railroad for money and dispatches that the underground made use of from time to time.
Reynolds had been Huan Lee’s contact, and for a while things had gone swimmingly. Few organizations had as great a need for secrecy as the Leveler command, and indeed Huan had toyed with the
idea of disclosing the family’s secret to him – for the family’s singular talent and the needs of the terrorists and bomb-throwers and other idealists were perfectly aligned, and
the pogroms and lynchings of the English, tacitly encouraged by the government (who knew a good target for the mob’s ire when they saw it – and skin of the wrong color had always been
one such), did nothing to endear the authorities to him. At least the revolutionaries preached equality and fraternity, and an end to the oppression of all races.

A series of unfortunate events had closed off that avenue before Huan started down it; raids, arrests, and executions of Leveler cells clear across the country. He, himself, had been forced to
world-walk in a hurry, one jump ahead of the jackboots of the Polis troopers. And that had been the end of
that
. The first duty of the family was survival, then profit – martyrdom in
the name of revolutionary fraternity wasn’t part of the package. In the wake of the raids he’d thought Stephen Reynolds dead – until he heard the name again, in a broadcast by the
revolutionary propaganda ministry. Reynolds had survived and, it seemed, prospered in the council of the Radical Party.

This didn’t entirely surprise Elder Huan. As he had described it to his brothers, some time later, ‘The man is a rat – sharp as a wire, personally courageous, and curious. The
Polis will have a hard time taking him.’ And now the fox was in charge of a hen coop of no small size, having emerged in charge of the Annapolis Freedom Riders, then promoted to organize the
Bureau of Internal Security that the party had formed to replace the reactionary and untrustworthy Crown Polis.

Now Elder Huan – through conduits and contacts both esoteric and obscure – had arranged for a meeting with the man himself. The agenda of the meeting was to be the renewal of an old
alliance. And Elder Huan intended to make Reynolds an offer that would secure the safety of the family throughout the current crisis.

*

For his part, Reynolds – a thickset fellow with brown hair, thinning at the crown, and half-moon pince-nez that gave him an avuncular appearance even when supervising
interrogations – was looking forward to the meeting for entirely the wrong reasons.

‘I want you and two squads to be ready outside the front door. Place another squad round the back. Plain clothes, two steamers ready for backup.’ He smiled, not warmly. Brentford,
his secretary, nodded and scribbled in his notebook. ‘You should arrest everyone in the building or leaving it after my departure,
unless
I indicate otherwise by displaying a red
kerchief in my breast pocket. Special Regime Blue, with added attention. The charges will be resisting arrest, treason, membership of a proscribed organization, and anything else that occurs to
you. Have the Star Tribunal ready to sit on them and I’ll sign off on the execution warrants immediately. Do you have that?’

Brentford nodded, impassive. These were not unusual orders; Citizen Reynolds took a very robust approach to dealing with subversives. ‘The, ah, exception, sir? Do you have any other
instructions to deal with that case?’

‘No.’ Reynolds made a fist, squeezing. ‘If anything comes up I’ll handle it myself.’

‘The danger, sir – ’

‘They’re petty smugglers and racketeers, citizen. I dealt with them before, during the Long Emergency; it’s almost a certainty that they want to deal themselves a hand at the
table, in which case they’re in for a short, sharp surprise. I merely reserve the final judgment
in case
there’s something more serious at hand.’ He stood, behind his desk,
and straightened his uniform tunic, flicking invisible dust motes from one black lapel. ‘Plain clothes, I say again. I’ll see you at eight.’

Reynolds strode to the door as Brentford saluted. He didn’t look back. Brentford was a reliable party man, a typical functionary of the new organization: He’d do as he was told, and
look up to Reynolds as a bluff fellow who led from the front, as long as he occasionally indulged in eccentricities such as periodically going into the field to gather up nests of vipers and
traitors with his own hands.

Reynolds didn’t smile at the thought. There were risks attached to this behavior, and he didn’t hold with taking risks unless there was something he held to be personally important
at stake. Maintaining his carefully constructed public image was all very well, but placing himself in front of a desperate fugitive’s knife was . . . it was
undignified
. On the other
hand, sometimes it was necessary to deal with former Polis informers himself, to ensure that they courageously swallowed their suicide pills or jumped out of a high window. He considered it to be a
small mercy – far less unpleasant than what fate held in store for them in the ungentle hands of his enthusiastic staff in Interrogations and Inquiries.

Citizen-Commissioner Stephen Reynolds was more than willing to go into the field in person and meet past friends – especially if it meant that he could silence them before they could spill
their guts to the interrogators in the BIS basements.

*

The venue Elder Huan had chosen for the meeting was a tiny front-room bar in a public house in Menzies Gate, a run-down suburb on the edge of what, in another world, would be
called Brooklyn. His foot soldiers had paid the owner handsomely to take his wife and six children and two servants and move out for the night: a three-month amnesty from protection money,
and
a wallet bulging with ration coupons. ‘I want privacy,’ Huan had told One-Eye Cho, ‘and I want a safe exit. See to it.’ The pub, unbeknownst to its owner, was
collocated with a trackless forest clearing in the northern Sudtmarkt – one carved out with sweat and axe and saw by Cho’s sons. Elder had dealt with Reynolds before, and with the
Polis, and was under no illusions about the hazards of dining with devils in Secret Security Police uniforms. ‘Place two reliable bearers in the exit, and two armed guards. Find someone who
can pass as white, and put him behind the bar with a shotgun to cover my retreat. He can be the bartender. Put another in the kitchen, who can at least provide cold cuts and soup if our guest is
hungry.’

The pub was a theater: Reynolds and Huan had both prepared scripts for the other’s benefit. The only question remaining to be answered was whose review would be more favorable.

*

Eight o’clock; the sky was still bright, but the shops were mostly shuttered, the costermongers and peddlers and rag-and-bone men and beggars had mostly slunk away, and
the front windows of the pub were dark. Reynolds surveyed it professionally as he approached along the pavement. He’d swapped his uniform for a suit of clothes as ill-fitting – even
moth-nibbled – as any he had worn during the long desperate years on the run. On the far side of the road, a couple of dusty idlers clustered near a corner; he glanced away. Down the street,
a steamer sat by the curb, curtains drawn in its passenger compartment. All was as it should be. He nodded, then turned back towards the door and rapped the head of his cane on it twice.

A spy-slot slid aside. ‘We’re shut.’

‘Tell your master an old friend calls.’ Reynolds kept his voice low. ‘Remember New Catford to him.’

The spy-slot closed. A moment later, the door opened. Reynolds slid inside.

The pub was indeed short on customers, but as the barman shot the bolts and returned to his place, Reynolds was intrigued by the appearance of the couple sitting at the one sound table, each
with a glass of beer to hand. The old Chinaman he recognized, after a pause: It was indeed the gangmaster and smuggler from New Catford who had called himself Cheung. But who was the middle-aged
white man?
Questions, questions.
Reynolds smiled broadly as he approached the table and Cheung stood.

‘Ah, Citizen Reynolds!’ cried Cheung – Reynolds suppressed a wince – and the other fellow stood, somewhat slowly. ‘How wonderful to see you prospering so in these
harsh times. Please, this is my associate Dr. ven Hjalmar, a physician. Please have a seat. Beer? Spirits? Have you eaten?’

Reynolds negotiated the social minefield and sat, without glancing at the bartender – whose impassivity told him more than he needed to know about his loyalties.
Most professional,
he decided: Cheung clearly knew what he was about. Which suggested a simple wrap-up might be difficult – but then, the presence of the doctor implied that this might be rather more complex
than the usual pathetic blackmail attempt. ‘A beer would be welcome. I gather you had a business proposal you wanted to bring to my attention?’