The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (26 page)

The brasserie was crowded but not totally logjammed yet, and Paulette managed to get them a table near the back. ‘I need breakfast,’ Miriam said. ‘What’s good?’

‘The bruschetta’s passable, and I was going to go for the spaghetti alle polpette. To drink, the usual hangover juice, right?’

‘Yeah, a double OJ it is.’ At which point the waitress caught up with them and Miriam held back until Paulette had ordered. ‘Now, did you get me the stuff I asked
for?’

‘Sure.’ Miriam felt something against her leg – the plastic shopping bag Paulie had been carrying. It was surprisingly heavy – lots of paper, a box file perhaps.
‘It’s in there.’

‘Okay.
All
of that is for me?’

Paulette grinned. ‘Give me credit.’

‘Yeah, I know you’re good – but
that
much?’

‘I have my ways,’ Paulie said. Quieter: ‘Don’t worry, I kept it low-key. First up are the public filings, SEC stuff, all hard copy. The downloads I did in an internet
cafe, using an anonymous Hotmail account I never access from home. To pay for the searches, I got an account with a special online bank: they issue one-time credit card numbers you can use to pay
for something over the Net. The idea is, you use the number once, the transaction is charged to your account at the bank, then the number goes away. Anyone wants to trace me, they’re going to
have to break the bank’s security first, okay?’

‘You’ve been getting very good at the anonymous stuff.’

‘Knowing whose toes you might be treading on kind of incentivized me! I’m not planning on taking any risks. Look, at first sight it all looks kosher – I mean, the clinic is
just a straightforward reproductive medicine outfit, specializing in fertility problems, and the company you fingered, Applied Genomics, is a respectable pharmaceutical outfit. They manufacture
diagnostic instruments, specializing in lab tests for inborn errors of metabolism: simple test-tube stuff that’s easy to use in the field. They’ve got a neat line in HIV testing kits
for the developing world, that kind of thing. You were right about a connection, though. Next in the stack after the filings, well, I found this S.503(c) charity called the Humana Reproductive
Assistance Foundation. Applied Genomics pays a big chunk of money to HRAF every year and none of the shareholders have ever queried it, even though it’s in six or sometimes seven figures.
HRAF in turn looks pretty kosher, but what I was able to tell is that for the past twenty years they’ve been feeding money to a whole bundle of fertility clinics. The money is earmarked for
programs to help infertile couples have children – what
is
this, Miriam? If it’s another of your money-laundering leads, it looks like a dead end.’

‘It’s not a money-laundering lead. I think it really
is
a fertility clinic.’ The drinks arrived and Miriam paused to take a tablet and wash it down with freshly
squeezed orange juice. ‘It’s something else I ran across, okay?’

Paulette glanced away.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. Been having a shitty time lately.’

‘You have?’ Paulette shook her head, then looked back at Miriam. ‘Things haven’t been so rosy here, either.’

‘Oh no. You go first, okay?’

‘Nah, it’s nothing. Man trouble, no real direction. You’ve heard it all before.’ Paulie backed off and Miriam eyed her suspiciously.

‘You’re tap-dancing around on account of Roland, aren’t you? Well, there’s no need to do that. I’ve – I’ve gotten used to it.’ Miriam glanced down
as the waitress slid a platter of bruschetta onto the table in front of her. ‘It doesn’t get any better, but it gets easier to deal with the, with the . . .’ She gave up and
picked up a piece of the bread, nibbling on it to conceal her sudden spasm of depression.

‘So call me an insensitive cow, but what else is eating you?’ Paulette asked.

‘It’s’ – Miriam waved a hand, her mouth full – ‘reproductive politics. You’d think they’d figure I’m too old for it but no, you’re
never
too old for the Clan to start looking for something to do with your ovaries. Fallout from the civil war they had a few decades ago: they don’t have enough world-walkers, so the
pressure is on those they
do
have to breed like a bunny. But I didn’t have the story completely straight before. You know all the stuff about arranged marriages I told you? I should
have asked who did the arranging. It turns out to be the old ladies, everyone’s grandmother. There’s a lot of status tied up in it, and it seems I got a whole bunch of great-aunts
ticked off at me just because I exist. To make matters worse, Ma’s turned strange on me – she’s gone native, even seems to be playing along with the whole business. I think
she’s being blackmailed, crudely, over her medication. The king,
his
mother’s part of the Clan, he’s trying to set up the younger son, who is a basket case into the
bargain – brain damage at an early age – and he’s got me in his sights. And the elder son seems to have decided to hate me for some reason. Don’t know if it’s
connected, but there’s more.’ Miriam took another mouthful of orange juice before she could continue.

‘I ran across this secret memo, from the director of the Gerstein Center to Angbard, of all people, talking about the results of some project that Applied Genomics is funding. And I smell
a rat. A great, big, dead-and-decomposing-under-the-front-stoop, reproductive politics rodent. Angbard is paying for in-vitro fertilization treatments. Meanwhile everybody keeps yammering about how
few world-walkers there are and how it’s every woman’s duty to spawn like a rabbit, and then there’s this stuff about looking for W-star heterozygotes. Carriers for some kind of
gene-linked trait, in other words. And I just learned of a genetic test that’s become available in the past year, god knows from where, that can tell if someone’s a carrier or an active
world-walker. You fill in the dotted lines, Paulie – you tell me I’m not imagining things, okay?’ Miriam realized her voice had risen, and she looked around hastily, but the
restaurant was busy and the background racket was loud enough to cover her.

Paulette stared at her, clutching her bread knife in one fist as if it were the emergency inflation toggle on a life jacket. ‘I’ve never heard such a . . . !’ She put the knife
down, very carefully. ‘You’re serious.’

‘Oh yes.’ Miriam took another bite of bruschetta. It tasted of cardboard, despite the olive oil and chopped tomato. ‘What would be the point of being flippant?’

Paulette picked up her bruschetta and nibbled at it. ‘That is so monumentally paranoid that I don’t know where to begin. You think Angbard is paying for IVF for these families and
using donors from the Clan.’ She thought for a minute. ‘It wouldn’t work, would it? They wouldn’t be world-walkers?’

‘Not as I understand it, no.’ Miriam finished her starter. The din and clatter of the restaurant was making her headache worse. ‘But they’d have a huge pool of, in
effect, outer family members. Half of them female. Thousands, adding many hundreds more every year. Suppose – how long has this been going on for? How long has HRAF been going?’

‘I don’t know.’ Paulette looked uncomfortable. ‘Sixteen years?’

‘Okay. Suppose. Imagine HRAF is about creating a pool of outer family people living in the United States who don’t know what they are. In, say, another five years they start hitting
age twenty-one. Six hundred . . . call it three hundred women a year. HRAF have their details. They send them all letters asking if they’re willing to accept money to be surrogate mothers.
What does a surrogate cost – ten, twenty thousand bucks? Maybe nine out of ten will say no, but that leaves thirty women, each of whom can provide a new world-walker every year – or
walkers, you’re not going to tell me that the Gerstein Center isn’t going to dose them to try for twins or triplets. Call it fifty new world-walkers per year. Say half of the surrogate
mothers agree to continue for four years, and you’ve got, let’s see, a hundred and twenty-five new world-walkers per annual cohort from Angbard’s breeding program. Paulie, there
are only about a thousand world-walkers in the Clan! In just eight years, half the world-walkers will come from this scheme – in twenty years, they’ll outnumber the Clan’s
native-born world-walkers, even if the average Clan female produces four world-walking children.’ She drank the rest of her orange juice.

‘It’s like that movie,
The Boys from Brazil
,’ Paulie said. ‘Cloning up an army of bad guys and making sure they’re raised loyal to the cause.’ She
looked uncomfortable. ‘Miriam, I met Angbard. He isn’t the type to do that.’

‘Um. No.’ Miriam stared at her plate. All of a sudden she didn’t feel hungry. ‘Charming, ruthless, and manipulative, I’ll grant you. Liable to back a conspiracy to
create a test-tube master race? I’m – I’m not seeing it either. Except, I
saw
that memo! With my own eyes! If it’s real, it looks like there’s something
really smelly going on at that clinic. And I need to get a handle on it.’

‘Why?’ Paulette stabbed at her bruschetta with a knife. ‘What
is
getting into you, Miriam? What have they got on you?’

‘They –’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Blackmail is business as usual. I figure I need to get an edge of my own, before they marry me off to the Idiot Prince. Simple as
that.’

‘Huh.’ Paulette put her knife down with exaggerated care. ‘Miriam. I told you about what things were like when I was growing up.’

‘Yes.’ Miriam nodded. ‘Wiseguys. Well, I was born into the mob, I guess, so using their own tactics – blackmail seems to be the family sport – ’

‘Miriam!’ Paulette reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Listen. As your agent, and as your legal adviser, I would really be a lot happier if you would drop this.
You’re right, the clinic shit sounds dirty. But if your uncle is involved, it means there’s money involved too, or security. The tough guys, they used to cut their wives and children a
lot of slack – as long as they didn’t try to nose in on the business. You see what I’m saying? This is family business and they’re going to take it a whole lot differently
if you go digging – ’

‘Nuh-uh, no way.’ Miriam shook her head vehemently. ‘I know them, Paulie. They’re more medieval than that. Everything is on the outside, you know? Their politics is
entirely personal. So’s their business. If I get the goods on this scheme, then I’ve got a handle on whoever’s running it –’ Miriam stopped dead as the waitress
sashayed in and scooped up her plate with a smile.

‘I still don’t like it. I
mean
that. I think you’re misreading them. Just because you’re little miss heiress, it doesn’t make you invulnerable.
They’ve got their code: item number two on it, after “Don’t talk to the cops”, is “Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong”. And this sounds
like exactly the sort of business people wake up dead for sticking their nose in.’

Miriam shrugged. ‘Paulie, I’ve got status among them. I couldn’t just vanish. Too many people would ask questions.’

‘Like they did when you appeared out of nowhere? Miriam. Seriously, one last time, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
Please
, just for me, will you drop it?’

Miriam crossed her arms, irritated. ‘Who’s paying your wages?’

The main course appeared, savory meatballs in a hot, sweet tomato sauce. Paulie ignored it, her face frozen. ‘Okay, if that’s how you want to do it,’ she said quietly.
‘You’re the boss, you know best. Okay?’

‘Oh . . . okay.’
I went too far
, Miriam realized.
Shit. How do I apologize for
that? She glanced down at her plate. ‘Yeah, that’s how I want to play
it,’ she said.
Play it all the way
, then
apologize
. Paulie was a mensch, she’d come round.

‘First I have to figure out if it really
is
what it seems to be. Although given that stuff about W-star heterozygotes, I can’t see what else it might be. Then if I’m
right, I have to figure out how to use it. At best’ – she bit into a meatball – ‘it could give me all the leverage I need. They couldn’t touch me, not even my psycho
grandmother could. Hmm, great meatballs. So yeah, I think I need to go pay the clinic an anonymous visit.’ She flashed Paulette a fragile smile. ‘Do you know where I can buy a
stethoscope around here?’

The auditor smiled as she walked in the door. ‘I’ve come to see Dr. Darling,’ she announced, parking her briefcase beside the desk. Her expression was
disturbingly cheery as she raised an ID card: ‘FDA, clinical audit division. I don’t have an appointment.’

The receptionist visibly teetered on the edge of a panic attack for a few seconds. ‘I’m afraid Dr. Darling isn’t –’ She lost her thread. The auditor didn’t
look particularly threatening: just another office worker in a conservative suit, shoulder-length black hair, severe spectacles. But she was from the FDA. And
unannounced
!
‘I’ll just see if I can get him? Wait right here . . .’

The auditor tapped her toe a trifle impatiently as the receptionist fielded two incoming calls and paged Dr. Darling. Glancing round, the auditor took in the waiting area, from the bleached pine
curves of the desk to the powder-blue modular sofa for visitors to sit on. The walls were hung with anodyne still-life paintings of fruit baskets, alternating with certificates testifying that this
HMO or that insurance company had voted the clinic an award for excellence in some obscure field. It was all very professional, nothing that could possibly offend anyone. A classic medical industry
head office, all promises and no downside. Not a hint that it might be dabbling in eugenics. ‘Excuse me?’ She looked up. ‘Dr. Darling will be right with you.’

The door opened. Dr. Andrew Darling was forty-something, excessively coiffed and sporting a ten-thousand-dollar smile. ‘Good morning! You must be from the FDA, Dr., ah . . . ?’

‘Anderson,’ said Miriam, holding up the ID card and mentally crossing her fingers.
Get me a fake ID
, she’d told Brill.
Not police or DEA or anything like that, but
I want to be able to walk into any restaurant or drugstore and scare the living daylights out of the manager
. And Brill had just narrowed her eyes and looked at Miriam thoughtfully and nodded,
and all of a sudden Miriam was an FDA standards compliance officer called Julie Anderson.