The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (57 page)
Read The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) Online
Authors: Charles Stross
‘What’s happened?’ Brill, who had been leaning over a clipboard crossing off the names of couriers who had made too many crossings for the day, looked up at the tone in
Miriam’s voice.
‘The duke,’ said Sir Alasdair. He cleared his throat. ‘I am very sorry, my lady. Your uncle. The latest report from the clinic says. Um. He went into cardiac arrest this
morning.’
‘This
morning
?’ Miriam caught Brilliana staring at her. She clutched the arm of her folding director’s chair. ‘Can’t be. Can’t possibly be. Are they
sure
?’ She swallowed. Angbard, the thin white duke: For over thirty years he’d been the guiding will behind the Clan Security operation, the hand that held the reins binding the
disparate squabbling families together. Since his stroke two months ago his duties had been carved up and assigned to Olga and Riordan, but not without question or challenge: The Clan Council was
not eager to see any individual ever again wield that much power. ‘He’s dead?’ She heard her voice rising and raised a hand to cover her mouth.
‘If it’s a coincidence I’ll eat this table. I’m sorry, my lady,’ Sir Alasdair added, ‘but it can’t possibly be an accident. Not with a revolt in
progress and, and the other news. From the Americans.’
‘Brill, I’m sorry – ’ Miriam’s voice broke. Angbard hadn’t
felt
like an uncle to her – more like a scary Mafia godfather who, for no obvious
reason, had taken a liking to her – but he’d been a huge influence on Brilliana.
And Olga,
Miriam reminded herself. ‘Is there any word on who killed him? Because when we
find them – ’
‘It wasn’t a killing, according to the clinic,’ Sir Alasdair said. ‘Although it beggars belief to suppose it a coincidence, for now it must needs be but one more insult
to avenge at our convenience. One of our doctors was in attendance, Dr. ven Hjalmar – ’
‘Shit.
Shit!
’ Miriam clenched her fist. Brill was watching her, a dangerous light in her eyes.
Sir Alasdair paused. ‘Is there a problem?’ he asked.
‘Dr. ven Hjalmar is a wanted man,’ Brilliana said, her tone colorless.
‘Very,’ Miriam added, her voice cracking. ‘Sir Alasdair. Should you or your men find Dr. ven Hjalmar . . . I will sleep better for knowing that he’s dead.’
Sir Alasdair nodded. ‘I’m sure that can be arranged.’ He paused. ‘Is there a reason?’
Brilliana cleared her throat. ‘A necessary and sufficient one that need not concern you further. Oh, and his murder of Duke Angbard should be sufficient, should it not?’
‘Ah – really?’ Sir Alasdair’s eyebrow rose. ‘Well, if you say so – ’ He noticed Miriam’s expression. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Very sure,’ she said flatly.
‘In that case, I’ll put the order out. By your leave.’ Sir Alasdair beat a hasty retreat.
Miriam glanced at Brill, trying to gather her wits. ‘Come on, I want to find out what’s happening.’
The card indexes, divided by faction members and known status, were growing in size and complexity – and a third list had joined the first two: known fatalities. Earl Riordan was deep in
conversation with one of his lieutenants as Miriam approached him – ‘Then tomorrow morning, we shall relocate to Koudrivier House. Assign two lances to establish a security cordon and a
third for courier and doppelgänger duties. The rest of your men I want – my lady?’ He straightened up. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘My uncle is dead,’ Miriam managed, the words feeling strange in her mouth.
The uncle I never had time to get to know has been murdered
. . . ‘Is my mother accounted
for? Or my grandmother?’
Earl Riordan looked irritated for a moment, then thoughtful. ‘Your grandam is unaccounted for. Along with several of her friends, who appear to be involved in the insurrection.’ He
turned to one of the clerks and asked a question in rapid Hochsprache. ‘We shall find out about her grace your mother shortly, I trust. Is there anything else?’
‘Yes.’ Miriam gripped her hands tightly behind her back. ‘The duke is dead. How fast can we get a quorum of the Clan Council together? Just enough to confirm’ – she
caught Olga’s head turning towards her, the warning look too late – ‘you as official head of Clan Security,’ she continued. ‘And an extraordinary meeting to discuss
policy.’
‘We’ll do that as soon as – ’ Riordan glanced at the map table across the aisle from his clerks. ‘We have a cabal of insurrectionists to arrest first –
’
‘No.’ The firmness in her voice surprised Miriam. Even though her guts were burning, acid bile and churning stress in her belly:
Can’t stop now.
‘I don’t
think you grasp how far this has gone. Dick Cheney has just been sworn in as president. You know he worked for the duke: This is a comprehensive clusterfuck. This president will need to destroy us,
destroy the evidence, and the fuckwit faction have just handed him the perfect excuse. The American military are going to find a way to come over here and they will kill
everybody
.
You’re thinking months or weeks. We probably don’t have that long.’ Miriam stared at Riordan. He was not entirely an enigma, but she couldn’t say that she knew him well;
another of the younger generation, like Roland, educated to college level or higher in the United States, but bound to serve in the traditional family trade. ‘We just nuked the White
House,’ she reminded him. ‘What would
you
do in their shoes?’
‘I’d – ’ His expression would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so serious. ‘Oh.
Scheisse
.’ A momentary expression of despair
flickered across his face. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘We need to establish safe locations in New Britain right now, today. Get our people across there, start setting up an evacuation pipeline. You’re right about suppressing the, the
rebels – but we’re not going back to business as usual over here. Never again. They won’t give us time; if we want to survive we need to evacuate. There are folk I know who might
be able to help us, if we can – ’
Riordan raised a hand. ‘There will be no cutting and running,’ he said firmly. ‘Your point is well taken, but if we “cut and run” while the houses are divided, our
organization will . . . it won’t remain viable. The rebels will harry us and our less loyal relatives will desert us, until there’s nothing left. The Clan stands or dies as a group.
But.’ He looked at Brilliana. ‘My lady, this world is not safe for her royal highness, not now, and probably not for some time. And she is quite right about the need for us to prepare
an evacuation pipeline, against the hazard she so vividly identifies. Can you take her to New Britain and see to her safety?’
‘Now wait a – ’ Miriam began, but Brill cut in before she could get going.
‘Yes, I can do that. I’ll need muscle. Sir Alasdair, her royal highness’s household, a number of other people. And we’ll need money. Lots of it, if we’re setting up
an evacuation pipeline.’
‘You’ve got it.’ Riordan took a deep breath. ‘My lady?’ He looked back at Miriam. ‘The rebels want you under their thumb. If they have you, they hold the
monarchy here, and they truly don’t realize what they’ve unleashed in America. Your goal of preparing a, a fallback for us, in New Britain, is a worthy one, and my second-highest
priority after rounding up the traitors. I see no reason for it not to be
your
highest priority. If nothing else, it puts you beyond the insurrectionists’ easy reach – and the
Americans’, if your fears come to pass.’ He glanced at Brilliana. ‘Look after her and see that her orders in this enterprise are carried out. Make sure to keep me informed of your
location:We may need to move the Continuity Council there as well, or at least hold audiences. If anyone obstructs you, you have my authority on this matter, on the orders of the Clan Security
executive.’ To Miriam: ‘Is that what you desire, my lady?’
Miriam nodded, swallowed. The nausea was quite severe; she shoved it out of her mind. ‘I’ve got some plans already nailed down,’ she said. ‘Come on, Brill. Let’s
find somewhere to work. There’s a list of people and things we need.’ She swallowed again, feeling a cramp in her belly. ‘Oh. Oh shit. I don’t feel good . . .’
BEGIN RECORDING
‘Shalom, Mordechai.’
‘And you, my friend. This must be a fraught time for you; I can’t say how much these outrages pain me, I can barely imagine how much worse it must be for
you.’ (
Pause
.) ‘I assume this is not a casual visit?’
‘No, I – I’ve been very busy, as you can imagine. I’ve got about an hour out of the office, though, and I think you need to know. First, tell
me – the attacks. Who do you think carried them out?’
(
Pause
.) ‘If I tell you who I think did it, you’ll assume it’s inside information. And I can’t give you inside information even if I
have it to give, my friend. But I don’t think it was the usual clowns, if that’s what you’re fishing for? Because they’re simply incapable of pulling something
like this off. Let me tell you, everyone in the Institute is doing their nut right now – ’
‘Oh
hell
. They haven’t officially told your people, then? Who did it?’
‘You
know
who did it? Who?’
(
Slowly
.) ‘You’re going to think I’m crazy if you don’t get this through official channels, I swear – they briefed everybody
yesterday and this morning, half of us thought they were mad but they have evidence, Mordechai, hard evidence. It’s a new threat, completely unlike anything we
imagined.’
‘Really? My money was on a false-flag operation by the Office of Special Programs.’
‘No, no, it wasn’t us: we’re not criminals! Well, the bombs were ours. But they were stolen from the inactive inventory.’
‘
Stolen?
Tell me it’s not true, Jack! Nobody “just steals” special weapons like they’re shoplifting a candy store –
’
‘Take a deep breath, man. There are other universes, parallel worlds, like ours but where things happened differently. Different people, different history.
There’s a secret project under Livermore building machines for transiting between parallel worlds: They’ve got the photographs to prove it. The way they briefed us –
a bunch of, of drug lords from another dimension, can you believe it? Illegal aliens, emphasis on the alien, whatever. They stole half a dozen backpack nukes, they just
appeared
inside
the secure storage cells and walked off with them! The White House has been studying the situation for a year now. Negotiations broke down, and this was their idea of a
Dear John.’
‘Oy. From anyone else I would not believe it, Jack, but from you, I take it as gospel. Tell me, have you been working too hard lately?’
‘Fuck off, I’m not jerking your chain. Listen, I expect you’ll hear about it officially through diplomatic channels within a day or two. It’s
a huge mess – a whole fucking sewage farm has hit the windmill. D.C. was blowback, just like al-Qaeda, let’s not kid ourselves – and the president means to put an
end to it, and do it hard and fast.’
‘What do you mean by hard and fast, in this context?’
‘They’ve indented for a hundred and sixty B83s from Pantex, with an option on another two hundred in two weeks, that’s what I mean. And the Fifth
Bomb Wing have gone onto lockdown. I mean, everyone’s on alert everywhere, but the Fifth have canceled all leave and there’s a complete communications blackout. Half of
them moved to Fairford in England for Iraq, and the grapevine says the rest are staging out there with B83s aboard, just to keep them out of enemy hands. I just saw orders
reactivating the Seventy-second Bomb Squadron and pulling in ground staff.’
‘Out of
enemy
– what the fuck is going on?’
‘Like I said, it’s a whole new ballgame. These fuckers can just appear out of thin air, anywhere! Inside your security perimeter! My guess is that the
Fifth Bomb Wing is being readied for a counterstrike mission into a, a parallel universe, just as soon as they can load up with B83s, fit the transit machines, and as soon as the U2s
deliver accurate target maps. Keeping them overseas in England is a security measure: They can move sideways between worlds, show up inside the perimeter of our bases – but if
the bombers aren’t home they can’t touch them. Watch for the KC-10s moving too. I tell you, they’re getting ready for an attack on North America – just not
our
North America.’
‘Okay, Jack, I’ve got to hand it to you. You are either taking far more LSD than is good for you, or you have completely spoiled my afternoon, because you
just aren’t imaginative enough to make up a story like that without chemical assistance. I say that as a compliment, by the way – an excessively active imagination is a
liability in our line of work. I’m going to have to escalate this, and that’s going to make my head hurt because, my boss, it’s going to make
his
head hurt.
So I hope you won’t take this the wrong way when I ask, what have you got for me? What concrete evidence have you got to back these claims up?’
(
Rustling
.) ‘It’s classified, but not top-secret. I mean, this stuff is general dissemination for about a hundred thousand soldiers, as of this
morning – it
was
top-secret, but they’re realists, there’s no way to keep a lid on something like this indefinitely. So I, uh, there’s a classified
briefing pack that I need to lock back in my office drawer tonight. I assume you’ve got a camera or something?’
‘Of course. Jack, you’re a mensch. Listen, I am just about to go to the toilet, I’ll be back in a few minutes and your briefing pack can go right
back to the office after lunch while I go find some headache pills before I call Tel Aviv. Are you sure this isn’t just a prank to make Benny Netanyahu shit himself . . . ? No?
Too bad. Because I’d love to be there to see his face when this lands on his desk.’
END RECORDING
Oliver, Baron Hjorth had spent a sleepless night in a co-opted tax farmer’s mansion in a country estate, near the site of Baltimore in the United States. The rooms two
stories up, under the eaves, were uncomfortably hot in the summer miasma; but they lent a good view of the approaches to the house, and more importantly, good radio reception for a location so far
south of the Gruinmarkt.
