The Trade of Queens (6 page)

“Good,” the earl said briskly. He pulled out a pocket watch and inspected the dial. “Fifty-six minutes, I see. Is that the time? Well, I must be going now.” He nodded at the Ferret. “I expect to see you in Dankfurt by evening.”

“And the men, sir,” prompted the Ferret.

“Oh yes. And you.” Hjorth glanced at the uniformed couriers. “Yes, we shall find a suitable reward for you. I must be going.”

With that, he turned and clambered down the ladder, followed by his bodyguard. Together, they squelched towards the rowboat that waited at the water's edge. It would carry them to the other side, and thence to the carriage waiting to race him away down the post road, so that he would be a couple of leagues distant before the clocks counted down to zero.

Just in case something went wrong at the last moment. You could never be too sure, with these devices.

*   *   *

The Explorer rumbled slowly down a narrow road near Andover, thick old-growth trees blocking the view to either side. Harold Parker State Forest wasn't exactly the back end of nowhere, but with thousands of acres of hardwood and pine forest, campground and logging roads, and day trippers moving in and out all summer, it was a good place to disappear. Miriam sat back with her eyes closed, trying to fend off the sickening sense of impending dread. It was happening again: the sense of her life careering out of control, in the hands of—
Stop that
, she told herself. Half the occupants of the big SUV were sworn to her, bound by oaths of fealty; the rest were—
If I can't trust them, I can't trust
anybody.

It was turning into a recurring motif. Just as she tried to get a handle on her life and steer a course for herself, someone would try to
look after
her, usually with disastrous consequences. Betrayal, destabilization, chaos, and—as often as not—deaths. She'd thrown a party two days ago, inviting friends and possible allies to sound them out about a new venture—a whole new political program, in fact, not simply a business idea—only to receive heavy-handed hints about matters more properly handled by Clan Security. And today she'd come to talk to Earl-Major Riordan about them, only to learn that her worst suspicions were if anything an understatement of the problem: that the stick-in-the-mud faction, fearful of change, were on the edge of all-out revolt—

—had in fact revolted, that event possibly triggered by the very fact of her absence from the royal court; and other matters out of nightmare were in train, the Clan's stolen atomic weapons lost and possibly deployed. So here they were, bumping along a logging road towards a secret, undisclosed location where Clan Security maintained a cache of equipment and a doppelgangered transfer house—

The SUV was slowing. Miriam opened her eyes. “Nearly there,” Sir Alasdair grunted.

Riordan was still glued to his cell phone, nodding occasionally between bursts of clipped hochsprache. Miriam tapped him on the shoulder. He held up a hand. “Be right back,” he told his absent conversationalist. “What is it?”

“If there's a mole inside ClanSec, how do you know your Plan Black site hasn't been rigged?” she asked. “If I was trying to mousetrap you, I can't think of a better way to do it than scaring you into running for a compromised rendezvous.”

Riordan looked thoughtful. Miriam noticed Sir Alasdair's shoulders tense. Brilliana chirped up from the back row of seats: “She's right, you know.”

“Yes,” Riordan said grudgingly. “But we need to evacuate—”

“It can be booby-trapped here, or in the Gruinmarkt,” Olga pointed out, her voice icy cold. “If here, we can deal with it. Over there—we shall just have to reconnoiter, no?”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Sir Alasdair. “Who are we expecting here, my lord?”

“This site is meant to be held by Sir Helmut's second lance.” Riordan sounded thoughtful as he stared at the screen of the tablet PC in his lap. “Two over here, six over there with two active and four in recovery or ready for transfer. The site on the other side is a farmhouse, burned out during the campaign, I'm afraid, but defensible.”

“Can you identify them?” asked Brilliana.

“By sight, yes, most probably. Outer-family aspirants, a couple of young bloods—I can show you their personnel files, with photographs. Why?”

“Because if I see the wrong faces on duty I want to be sure before I shoot them.”

The Explorer was slowing. Now Sir Alasdair took a sharp left onto a dirt trail barely any wider than the SUV. “We're about two hundred yards out,” he warned. “Where do you want me to stop?”

“Right here.” Riordan glanced at Brilliana. “Are you ready, my lady?”

Brill nodded, reaching into her shoulder bag to pull out a black, stubby gun with a melted-looking grip just below the muzzle and a box magazine stretching along the upper surface of the barrel. “Sir Alasdair—”

“I'm coming too,” rumbled Miriam's head bodyguard. He pulled the parking brake. “My lord, would you care to take the wheel? If a quick withdrawal is required—”

“I can drive,” Miriam heard herself saying. “You don't need me for anything else, and I'm sure you need your hands?”

Riordan glanced at her, worried, then nodded. “Here's the contact sheet.” He passed the tablet PC back to Brill, who peered at it for a few seconds.

“Okay, I am ready,” she announced, and opened her door.

For Miriam, the next few minutes passed nightmarishly slowly. As Alasdair and Brill disappeared up the track and into the trees alongside it, she took Sir Alasdair's place behind the wheel, adjusting the seat and lap belt to fit. She kept the engine running at a low idle, although what she'd do if it turned out to be an ambush wasn't obvious—backing up down a dirt trail while under fire from hostiles didn't seem likely to have a happy outcome. She sighed, keeping her eyes on the road ahead, waiting.

“They know what they're doing,” Olga said, unexpectedly.

“Huh?” Miriam swallowed an unhappy chuckle.

“She's right,” added Riordan. “I would not have let them go if I thought them likely to walk into an ambush.”

“But if they—”

Someone was jogging down the track, waving. Miriam focused, swallowing bile. It was Brill. She didn't look happy.

“Wait here.” Olga's door opened; before Miriam could say anything, she was heading towards Brill. After a brief exchange, Brill turned and headed back up the path. Olga returned to the Explorer. “She says it's safe to proceed to the shack, but there's a problem.” Her lips were drawn tight with worry.

“You'd better go,” Riordan added. “We're on a timetable here.”

“We're—”
Oh.
Miriam put the SUV in gear and began to crawl forward.
It's an evacuation plan; they've got to figure on hostiles blowing it sooner or later, so
 … She'd seen enough of the Clan's security machinations in action to guess how it went. Wherever they were evacuating through, the safe house—shack?—would be anything but safe to someone arriving after the cutoff time.

The track curved around a stand of trees, then down an embankment and around another clump to terminate in a clearing. At one side of the clearing stood a windowless shack, its wooden slats bleached silvery gray by the weather. Brilliana stood in front of the padlocked door, white-faced, her P90 at the ready in clenched hands. “Park here,” said Olga, opening her door again.

Miriam parked, then climbed down from the cab. “Where's Alasdair?” she asked, approaching Brill.

Brill shook slightly. “Milady, he's gone across already. Please
don't go there
—” But Miriam had already seen what was round the side of the shack.

“What happened?” she demanded. “Who are they?” Riordan had also seen; he knelt by the nearer of the two bodies, examining it. Lying facedown, dressed in hunting camouflage jacket and trousers, they might have been asleep. Miriam stared at Riordan, then back at Brill. “What happened?” she repeated.

“They were waiting for us.” Brill's voice was robotic, unnaturally controlled. “They were not the guards we expected to see. That one”—Riordan was straightening up—“I recognized him. He worked for Henryk.”

Riordan was holding something at arm's length. As he came closer, Miriam recognized it. “Silenced,” Riordan told her, his voice overcontrolled as he ejected the magazine and worked the slide to remove the chambered round. “An assassin's weapon.”

Brill nodded, her face frozen; but something in the set of her shoulders unwound, slumping infinitesimally.

“Oh my god.” Miriam felt her knees going weak. “What's Sir Alasdair walking into?”

“I don't know.” Brill took a deep breath. “I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. Don't worry, my lady, he'll try to save one of them for questioning.”

Miriam shivered. Her sense of dread intensified: not for herself, but for Alasdair. The man-mountain had already saved her life at least once; deceptively big and slow, he could move like an avalanche when needs must. “What are they doing here?”

“If I had to guess, I'd say the conservatives think they're inside our OODA loop.” Olga looked extremely unhappy. “This has to have been planned well in advance. My lady, I beg your indulgence, but would you mind waiting in the truck? It has been modified—there is some lightweight armor—it would set my mind at ease.”

“Really?” Miriam fought back the urge to scream with frustration.

“Lady Olga, allow me.” Brill touched Miriam's arm. “Walk with me.”

Brill led Miriam back up the track, just beyond the bend.

“What's going to—”

Brill cut across her, her voice thick with tension. “Listen, my lady. In a couple of minutes, two of us—I would guess the earl and myself—will have to cross over, piggyback.
If
the map is truthful,
if
Sir Alasdair has been successful at his task, I will return. Then Lady Olga will have to carry you across, while the returnee recovers their wits. If I don't come back you should assume that we are both dead and that before we died we betrayed your presence here to your enemies. In which case you and Lady Olga must
drive like hell
then go to ground and lose yourselves as thoroughly as you can imagine. Because if Earl-Major Riordan is dead or captured, our enemies will have accomplished their end, and all they need you for is to bring the heir to term and then … they won't need you anymore. Do you understand? Do you
understand
?”

Brill's grip on her wrist was painful. Miriam nodded, jerkily. “How long?” she managed.

“About … hmm. No more than five minutes.” Brilliana's lips quirked. “If Sir Alasdair ran into trouble and we can't fix it, we'll come back. No false heroics. So you see? If I don't come back soon, it's because I can't.”

“You could be walking into an ambush.” Her heart was going too fast, Miriam realized distantly.

“We could but we won't.” Brill nodded her head at the uphill slope. “What do you think that is?”

“That's a—” Miriam stopped. “Oh.
Clever.
”

“Yes.” The ground level in the Gruinmarkt didn't always match the level in this world. World-walking tended not to go too well if the world-walker arrived several meters above ground level; and it didn't work at all if they tried to cross over inside a solid object. “The shack is the primary location, but there's a secret secondary. At the crest of the ramp, step off the track to the left, about six feet, then cross over. There's an outhouse, and you come out at roof level with a clear field of fire.” Brill hefted her gun. “Listen, go back to the truck and wait with Lady Olga.” She smiled diffidently: “It will work out, you see.”

*   *   *

Near a small town in Pennsylvania, six miles north of Camp David, Highway 16 runs through rolling hills and open woodland, past the foot of a low mountain called Raven Rock.

A casual visitor turning off the highway onto Harbaugh Valley Road wouldn't see much: a wire mesh fence and a narrow track off to one side, and a sign warning of a restricted area. But if they drove up the road a couple of miles it would be another story—assuming the armed guards didn't stop them first. Tucked away behind the trees on top of the mountain there was a huge array of satellite dishes and radio masts. And beneath the ground, buried under many meters of bedrock, lay the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, home of the Alternative National Military Command Center, the 114th Signal Battalion, and the emergency operations centers for the army, navy, air force, joint staff, and secretary of defense.

Of course, a casual visitor wouldn't have seen the visitors arriving in the back of unmarked black Lincoln Town Cars with smoked windows, that sat oddly low on their suspension. They wouldn't have seen the thick steel doors that opened inside the low, windowless buildings, or the downward-sloping tunnel that cut into the ground, or the elevators and cranes and the blast doors set into the side of the tunnel. Indeed, there was no such thing as a casual visitor at the concrete-and-steel-lined installation embedded in the ground beneath the motel and golf club buildings.

Welcome to the Undisclosed Location.

In a compact, brightly lit conference room ninety feet below the ground, the vice president sat with his advisors, watching television. They had a lot of television to watch; a rack of six sets covered half a wall, flicking through channels on a twenty-second cycle. Bloomberg, CNN, Fox News, and C-SPAN played tag with the Cartoon Network and Discovery Channel on four monitors; two others were permanently tuned to NBC and the view from a traffic camera overlooking a street intersection in Dupont Circle.

The vice president leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms, and glanced at the skinny Yalie with his lapel-pin crucifix and rimless spectacles. “This is the boring part,” he confided. “We used to come down here and game these scenarios every month or so during the nineties, you know. All weekend long. Used to be the Russkies on the other side, or the Iranians. They'd set up their opening move, we'd set up our response, and then we'd see how it all played out, whether or not we locate and kill the threat before it activates, which branch of the crisis algorithm we go down. The trouser legs of terror.” He chuckled, a throaty laugh that terminated in a bubbling cough. “So. Do you think they're bluffing?”