The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) (65 page)

In the basement of the Ministry of Propaganda were numerous broadcasting rooms; and no fewer than six of these were given over to the letter talkers, who endlessly recited strings of words
sapped of all meaning, words chosen for their clarity over the airwaves. So barely two hours after Huw and Yul had shown the cadre in Springfield two clean pairs of heels, a letter talker keyed his
microphone and began to intone: ‘Libra, Opal, Furlong, Opal, Whisky, Trident’ – over the air on a shortwave frequency given over to the encrypted electrospeak broadcasts of the
party’s network, a frequency that would be echoed by transmitters all over both Western continents, flooding the airwaves until Burgeson’s radio operator could not help but hear it.

Which event happened in the operator’s room on board an armored war train fifty miles west of St. Anne, which stood not far from the site of Cincinatti in Miriam’s world. The
operator, his ears encased in bulky headphones, handed the coded message with his header to the encryption sergeant, who typed it into his clacking, buzzing machine, and then folded the tape and
handed it off to a messenger boy, who dashed from the compartment into the train’s main corridor and then along a treacherous, swaying armored tunnel to the command carriage where the
commissioner of state propaganda sat slumped over a pile of newspapers, reading the day’s dispatches as he planned the next step in his media blitz.

‘What is it now?’ Erasmus asked, glancing up.

The messenger boy straightened. ‘Sor, a cript for thee?’ He presented the roll of tape with both hands. ‘Came in over the airwaves, like.’

‘I see.’ The train clanked across a badly maintained crossing, swaying from side to side. Erasmus, unrolling the tape, drew the electric lamp down from overhead to illuminate the
mechanical scratchings as he tried to focus on it. It had been under at least three pairs of eyeballs since arriving here; over the electrograph, that meant . . . He blinked.
Miriam?
She’s
here
? And she wants to talk?
He wound back to the header at the start of the message that identified the sending station.
Springfield.
Burgeson chuckled humorlessly
for a moment. HAVE INTERESTING PROPOSAL FOR YOU RE TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND FAMILY BUSINESS. To put that much in an uncoded message was a giveaway: It reeked of near-panic. She’d said
something about her relatives being caught up in a civil war, hadn’t she?
Interesting.

Burgeson reached out with his left hand and yanked the bell rope, without taking his eyes off the message tape. A few seconds later Citizen Supervisor Philips stuck his head round the partition.
‘You called, citizen?’

‘Yes.’ Burgeson shoved the newspaper stack to one side, so that they overflowed the desk and drifted down across the empty rifle rack beside it. ‘Something urgent has come up
back East. I need to be in Boston as soon as possible.’

‘Boston? What about the campaign, citizen?’

‘The campaign can continue without me for a couple of days.’ Burgeson stared at Philips. Dried-out and etiolated, the officer resembled a praying mantis in a black uniform: but he
was an efficient organizer, indeed had pulled together the staff and crew for this campaign train at short notice. ‘We’ve hit New Brentford and Jensenville in the past two days,
you’ve seen how I want things done: Occupy the local paper’s offices, vet the correspondents, deal with any who are unreliable and promote our cadres in their place. Continue to monitor
as you move on.’ The two-thousand-ton armored war train, bristling with machine guns and black-clad Freedom Riders, was probably unique in history in having its own offset press and
typesetting carriage; but as Erasmus had argued the point with Sir Adam, this was a war of public perception – and despite the technowizardry of the videography engineers, public perceptions
were still shaped by hot metal type. ‘Keep moving, look for royal blue newspapers and ensure that you leave only red freedom-lovers in your wake.’

‘I think I can do that, sir.’ Philips nodded. ‘Difficult cases . . . ?’

‘Use your discretion.’
Here, have some rope; try not to hang yourself with it.
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. Meanwhile, when’s the next supply run back to
Lynchburg departing?’

‘If it’s Boston you want, there’s an aerodrome near Raleigh that’s loyal,’ Philips offered. ‘I’ll wire them to put a scout at your disposal?’

‘Do that.’ Burgeson suppressed a shudder. Flying tended to make him airsick, even in the modern fully-enclosed mail planes. ‘I need to be there as soon as possible.’

‘Absolutely, citizen. I’ll put the wheels in motion at once.’ And, true to his word, almost as soon as Philips disappeared there came an almighty squeal of brakes from beneath
the train.

*

The past week had been one long nightmare for Paulette Milan.

She’d been a fascinated observer of Miriam’s adventures, in the wake of the horrible morning a year ago when they’d both lost their jobs; and later, when Miriam had sucked her
into running an office for her – funneling resources to an extradimensional business startup – she’d been able to square it with her conscience because she agreed with
Miriam’s goals. If the Clan, Miriam’s criminal extended family, could be diverted into some other line of business, that was cool. And if some of their money stuck to Paulie’s
fingertips in the form of wages, well, as long as the wages weren’t coming in for anything illegal on her part, that was fine, too.

But things hadn’t worked out. First Miriam had vanished for nearly six months – a virtual prisoner, held under house arrest for much of that time. The money pipeline had slammed
shut, leaving Paulie looking for a job in the middle of a recession. Then things got worse. About six weeks ago Miriam’s friends – or co-conspirators, or cousins, or whatever –
Olga and Brill had turned up on her doorstep and made her the kind of offer you weren’t allowed to refuse if you knew what was good for you. There was a fat line of credit to sweeten the
pill, but it left Paulie looking over her shoulder nervously. You didn’t hand out that kind of money just to open an office, in her experience. And there had been dark hints about internal
politics within the Clan, a civil war, and the feds nosing around.

All of this was
bad
. Capital-B bad. Paulie had grown up in a neighborhood where the hard men flashed too much cash around, sometimes checked into club fed for a few years at a time, and
snitches tended to have accidents . . . She’d thought she had a good idea what was coming until she’d turned on the TV a few days ago and seen the rising mushroom clouds. Heard the new
president’s broadcast, glacial blue eyes twinkling as he came out with words that were still reverberating through the talk shows and news columns (‘PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: PRESIDENT
“NOT INSANE”,’ as the
Globe
had put it).

It made her sick to her stomach. She’d spent the first two days in bed, crying and throwing up on trips to the bathroom, certain that the FBI were going to break down her door at any
moment. The stakes she’d signed up for were far higher than she’d ever imagined, and she found she hated herself for it: hated her earlier moment of pecuniary weakness, her passive
compliance in following Miriam down her path of good intentions, her willingness to make friends and let people influence her. She’d caught herself looking in the bathroom cabinet at one
point, and hastily shut it: The temptation to take a sleeping pill, or two, or enough to shut it out forever, was a whispering demon on her shoulder for a few hours. ‘What the fuck can I
do
?’ she’d asked the bourbon bottle on the kitchen table. ‘What the
fuck
can I do?’

Today . . . hadn’t been better, exactly; but she’d awakened in a mildly depressive haze, rather than a blind panic, knowing that she had two options. She could go to the feds, spill
her guts, and hope a jail cell for the rest of her life was better than whatever the Clan did to their snitches. Or she could keep calm and carry on doing what Miriam had asked of her: sit in an
office, buy books and put them in boxes, buy
stuff
(surveying tools, precision atomic clocks, laboratory balances: What did she know?) and stash it in a self-storage locker ready for a
courier collection that might never arrive.

Get up. Drink a mug of coffee, no food. Go to the office. Order supplies. Repackage them with an inventory sheet, to meet the following size and weight requirements. Drive them to the lockup.
Consider eating lunch and feel revulsion at the idea so do some more work, then go home. Keep calm and carry on (it beats going to Gitmo). Try not to think . . .

Paulette drove home from the rented office suite in a haze of distraction, inattentive and absentminded. The level of boxes in the lockup had begun to go down again, she’d noticed: For the
first time in a week there’d been a new manila envelope with a handwritten shopping list inside. (She’d stuffed it in her handbag, purposely not reading it.) So someone was collecting
the consignments. Her fingers were white on the steering wheel as she pulled up in the nearest parking space, half a block from her front door. She was running short on supplies, but the idea of
going grocery shopping made her feel sick: Anything out of the routine scared her right now.

She unlocked the front door and went inside, switched the front hall light on, and dumped her handbag beside the answering machine. It was a warm enough summer’s day that she hadn’t
bothered with a jacket. She walked through into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, purposely not thinking about how she was going to fill the evening – a phone call to Mother, perhaps, and
a movie on DVD – and that was when the strange man stepped out behind her and held up a badge.

‘Paulette Milan, I’m from the DEA and I’d – ’

She was lying down, and dizzy. He was staring at her. Everything was gray. His mouth was moving, and so was the world. It was confusing for a moment, but then her head began to clear:
I
fainted?
She was looking up at the living room ceiling, she realized. There was something soft under the back of her head.

‘Can you hear me?’ He looked concerned.

‘I’m – ’ She took a couple of breaths. ‘I’m – Oh God.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you like that – are you all right? Listen, do you have a heart condition – ’
No. No.
She must have shaken her head.
‘Do you know Miriam Beckstein?’

Paulie swallowed. ‘Shit.’

Everything, for an instant, was crystal clear.
I’m from the DEA. Do you know Miriam Beckstein?
The next logical words had to be,
You’re under arrest.

‘I need to talk to her; her life’s in danger.’

Paulie blinked.
Does not compute.
‘You’re from the DEA,’ she said hesitantly. Pushed against the carpet. ‘I fainted?’

‘Uh, yes, in the kitchen. I never – I carried you in here. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I wanted to talk, but I was afraid they might be watching.’

Watching?
‘Who?’ she asked.

‘The FTO,’ he said.
Who?
she wondered. ‘Or the Clan.’

The brittle crystal shell around her world shattered. ‘Oh, them,’ she said carelessly, her tongue loosened by shock. ‘No, they ring the front doorbell. Like everyone
else.’ Bit by bit, awareness was starting to return. Chagrin –
I can’t believe I fainted
– was followed by anxiety –
Who
is
this guy? How do I know
he’s DEA? Is he a burglar?
– and then fear:
Alone with a strange man.

The strange man seemed to be going out of his way to be non-threatening, though. ‘Do you want a hand up?’ he asked. ‘Figure you might be more comfortable on the sofa –
’ She waved him away, then pushed herself upright, then nodded. Things went gray again for a moment. ‘Listen, I’m not, uh, here on official business, exactly. But I need to talk
to Miriam – ’ She rose, took two steps backwards, and collapsed onto the sofa. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘No,’ she heard herself say, very distinctly. ‘I’m
not
okay. Who are you, mister, and what are you doing in my house?’

He hunkered down on the balls of his feet so that he was at eye level to her. ‘Name’s Fleming, Mike Fleming. I used to know Miriam. She’s in a whole bunch of trouble; if you
know what she’s been doing this past year, you’d know that – if you know about the Clan, you’re in trouble, too. That goes for me, also.’ He paused. ‘Want me to
go on?’

‘You’re.’ She stopped. ‘Why did you tell me you’re DEA?’

‘I was, originally – I still carry a badge they issued. I’d prefer you not to phone them just yet to verify that. See, I’m willing to put my neck on the line. But I want
to get to the truth. You know about the Clan?’

Paulie shook her head. ‘If I say anything, you know what those people will do?’ She was saying too much, she vaguely recognized, but something about this setup smelled wrong.

‘Which people? The Clan, or the Family Trade Organization?’ Fleming paused. ‘I’m not in a position to arrest you for anything – I’m not here on official
business. I need to talk to Miriam – ’

‘Wait.’ Paulette tried to pull herself together. ‘The
what
organization? You want to talk to her? About what?’

Fleming looked at her quizzically. ‘The FTO is a cross-agency operation to shut down the Clan. I was part of it until, uh, about a week ago. It was an attempt to get all the agencies whose
lines the Clan crossed to sing from the same hymn book. I came in from the DEA side when source GREEN – a Clan defector called Matthias – walked in the door. I’ve seen Miriam,
about three months ago, in a palace in a place called Niejwein – want me to go on?’

Oh Jesus, save me – he’s the real thing.
She shook her head numbly. ‘What do you want?’

‘Like I said, I need to talk to Miriam. She’s in terrible danger – FTO has been penetrated. The president used to work with the Clan, back in the eighties and early nineties.
He’s the one behind this mess, he goaded them into using those nukes, and there’s worse to come. He’s running FTO. All the oil in Texas –
every
version of Texas
– that’s what he’s after, that and a state of emergency at home to give him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he likes. I’ve tried to put out a warning via the press,
but my contact didn’t believe me until the attacks, and now – ’