The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (85 page)

‘Don’t do that,’ Eric interrupted again. He glanced around frantically, looking for a pen and a Post-it: he hadn’t expected this much information, so soon. ‘We have
other resources to call on who are better at dealing with this angle.’ To be precise, Bob and Alice at No Such Agency, who – given a cell phone’s identifying fingerprints –
could tell you
everything
about them. This was the trouble with ex-FBI staff: they did great investigative work, but they didn’t know what external strings they could pull with
Defense. ‘E-mail me the list immediately,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll take it from there.’

‘Certainly, I’ll send them right after – ’

‘No, I meant
now
.’ The gyroball, unnoticed, wound down. ‘If any of those phones are switched on, we can get more than a trace.’ He took a deep breath.
‘I’m going offline now, waiting on that e-mail, Mandy.’ He hit the hangup button and shook his head, then speed-dialed a different number.

The phone picked up immediately. ‘James here.’

‘It’s me. I assume you’re in the loop over Lucius’s little project? Well, Stony Brook has just hit the mother lode, too. Cells, numbers. I’m forwarding everything
to EARDROP. If any of them turn out to be live I intend to put some assets on the ground and tag them – then it’s time to turn up the heat. If Herz confirms that the gadget under
Government Center was planted by GREENSLEEVES, and Dr. Rand’s friends confirm that no other weapons of the same class are missing, I propose to activate COLDPLAY.’

‘Excellent,’ said James. ‘Get started, then get back to me. It’s time to hurt those bastards.’

*

Three coaches full of medieval weekend warriors drove in convoy through the Massachusetts countryside, heading towards Concord.

The coaches were on lease from a small private hire firm, and someone had inexpertly covered their sides with decals reading HISTORY FAIRE TOURING COMPANY. The passengers, mostly male but with
some women among them, wore surcoats over chain mail, and the luggage racks overhead were all but rattling with swords and scabbards: the air conditioners wheezed as they fought a losing battle
with the summer heat. They looked like nothing so much as the away team for the Knights of the Round Table, on their way to a joust.

The atmosphere in the coach was tense, and some of the passengers were dealing with it by focusing on irrelevancies. ‘Why do we have to wear all this crap?’ complained Martyn,
running his thumb round the neckline of his surcoat. ‘It’s about as authentic as a jet fighter at the battle of Gettysburg.’

‘You’ll grin and bear it,’ said Helmut. ‘It’s cover, is what it is. You can swap it for camo when we link up with the wardrobe department. And it’ll do in a
hurry, if it comes to it . . .’

‘Consider yourself lucky,’ Irma muttered darkly. ‘Ever tried to fight in a bodice?’

Martyn blew a raspberry. ‘Are we there yet?’

Helmut checked the display on his GPS unit. ‘Fifteen miles. Hurry up and wait.’ Someone down the aisle groaned theatrically. Helmut turned, his expression savage: ‘Shut the
fuck up, Sven! When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it.’

The medieval knight at the wheel drove on, his shoulders slightly hunched, his face red and sweating. The lance members wore full plate over their machine-woven chain vests and Camelbak
hydration systems – it was much lighter than it looked, but it was hellishly hot in the sunlight streaming through the coach windows. Heat prostration, Helmut reminded himself, was the reason
heavy armor had gone out of fashion in this world – that, and its declining utility against massed gunfire. ‘Hydration time, guys, everyone check your buddies. Top off now. Victor, make
with the water cart.’

A police cruiser pulled out to overtake the coach and Helmut tensed, in spite of himself. Thirty assorted knights and maids on their way to a joust and a medieval faire shouldn’t set the
traffic cop’s alarm bells ringing the way that thirty soldiers in American-style body armor would, but there was a limit to how much inspection their cover could handle. If the police officer
pulled them over to search the baggage compartment he’d be signing his own death warrant: Helmut and his platoon of Clan Security soldiers were sitting on top of enough firepower to reenact
the Vietnam war.

‘Keep going.’ The police car swept past and Helmut sent Martyn a fishy stare. ‘Mine’s a Diet Pepsi,’ Martyn said, oblivious. Helmut shook his head and settled back
to wait.

Some time later, the driver braked and swung the coach into a wide turn. ‘Coming up on the destination,’ he called.

Helmut sat up and leaned forward. ‘The others?’

‘Braun is right behind me. Can’t see Stefan but I’d be surprised if – ’

Helmut’s phone rang. Gritting his teeth, Helmut answered it. ‘Yes?’

‘We see you. Just to say, the park’s clear and we’re keeping the bystanders out of things.’

‘Bystanders?’

The voice at the other end of the connection was laconic: ‘You throw a Renaissance Faire, you get spectators. Ysolde’s telling them it’s a closed rehearsal and they should come
back tomorrow.’

Helmut buried his fingertips in his beard and scratched his chin. ‘Good call. What about the –’ he checked his little black book ‘– ticket seats?’

‘They’re going up. A couple of problems with the GPS but we should be ready for the curtain-raiser in about an hour.’

Helmut glanced at his book again to confirm that
curtain-raiser
was today’s code word for
assault team insertion
. One of the constraints they’d been working under
ever since the big DEA bust six months ago was the assumption that at any time their cellular phones (carefully sanitized, stolen, or anonymously purchased for cash) might be monitored or tracked
by hostile agencies. Clan Security – in addition to fighting a civil war in the Gruinmarkt – had been forced to rediscover a whole bunch of 1940s-era communication security
procedures.

‘Call me if there’s a change in status before we arrive,’ Helmut ordered, then ended the call. ‘Showtime,’ he added, for the benefit of the audience seated behind
him.

‘It’s not over until the fat lady sings,’ Martyn snarked in Irma’s direction: she glared at him, then drew her dagger and began to ostentatiously clean her
already-spotless nails.

The coach turned through a wide gateway flanked by signs advertising the faire, bumped across loose gravel and ruts in the ground, then came to a halt in a packed-earth car park at one end of a
small open field. A couple of big top circus tents dominated it, and a group of men with a truck and a stack of scaffolding were busy erecting a raised seating area. To an untrained eye it might
easily be mistaken for a public open-air event, close by Concord: that was the whole idea. Real SCA members or habitual RenFaire goers weren’t that common, and those that might notice this
event would probably write it off as some kind of commercial rip-off, aimed at the paying public. Meanwhile, the general reaction of that public to a bunch of people in inaccurate historical
costume was more likely to be one of amusement than fear. Which was exactly what Riordan had proposed and Angbard had accepted.

In fact, the strip mall on the far side of the open space was owned by a shell company that answered to a Clan council director – because it was doppelgängered, located on the
identical spot occupied by a Clan property in the other world. And the supposed historical faire was one of several ClanSec contingency plans designed to cover the rapid deployment of military
units up to battalion strength into the Gruinmarkt.

‘Let’s move those kit bags out,’ Helmut barked over his shoulder as the driver scrambled to open the baggage doors on the side of the coach. ‘I’ll have the guts of
any man who opens his kit before he gets it inside the assembly tent.’ His troopers scrambled to drag their heavy sports bags towards the nearer big top: he’d checked that they’d
been properly packed, and while any hypothetical witnesses would see plenty of swords and ‘historical shit’ as Erik called it, they wouldn’t get even a hint of the SAWs and M16s
that were the real point of this masquerade – much less the M47 Dragon that Stefan’s fire support platoon were bringing to the party.

The setup in the tent would have surprised anyone expecting a show. Half a dozen men and women – officers in Clan security, comptrollers of the postal service, and a willowy blonde in a
business suit who Helmut was certain was one of the duke’s harem of assassin-princesses – were gathered around a table covered with detailed floor plans: three more, armed with
theodolites, laser range finders, and an elaborate GPS unit were carefully planting markers around the bare earth floor. At the far side, a work crew was unloading aluminum scaffolding and planks
from the back of a truck, while another gang was frantically bolting them together at locations indicated by the survey team. Helmut left his soldiers scrambling to pull camouflage surcoats and
helmets on over their armor, and headed straight for the group at the table, halting two meters short of it.

The duke glanced up from the map. As usual, he was impeccably tailored, dressed for the boardroom: a sixty-something executive, perhaps, or a mid-level politician. But there was a feral anger
burning in his eyes that was normally kept well hidden: Helmut suppressed a shudder. ‘Third platoon is dismounting and will be ready to go in the next ten minutes,’ he said as calmly as
he could.

The duke stared at him. ‘Good enough,’ he rasped, then glanced sideways at his neighbor, whom Helmut recognized – with a surprised double-take – as Baron Oliver Hjorth,
an unregenerate supporter of the backwoods conservative cabal and the last man he’d have expected to see in the duke’s confidence. ‘I told you so.’

The baron nodded, looking thoughtful.

‘Is there any word from Riordan?’ The duke turned his attention towards a plump fellow at the far side of the table.

‘Last contact was fifty-two minutes ago, sir,’ he said, without even bothering to check the laptop in front of him. ‘Coming up in eight. I can expedite that if you want . .
.’

‘Not necessary.’ The duke shook his head, then looked back at Helmut. ‘Tell me what you know.’

Helmut shrugged. Despite the full suit of armor, the gesture was virtually silent – there was neoprene in all the right places, another of the little improvements ClanSec had made to their
equipment over the years. World-walkers were valuable enough to be worth the cost of custom-fitted armor, and they hadn’t been slow in applying new ideas and materials to the classic
patterns. ‘Stands to reason he’s hit the Hjalmar Palace, or you wouldn’t have called us out. Is there any word from Wergatsfurt or Ostgat?’

The duke inclined his head. ‘Wergatsfurt is taken. Ostgat hasn’t heard a whisper, as of –’ He snapped his fingers.

‘Thirty-seven minutes ago,’ said the ice blonde. She sounded almost bored.

‘So we were strung out with a feint at Castle Hjorth and the Rurval estates, but instead he’s concentrated eighty miles away and hit the Hjalmar Palace,’ summarized Helmut. He
glanced around at the scaffolding that was going up. ‘It’s fallen?’

‘Within minutes,’ Angbard confirmed. He was visibly fuming, but keeping a tight rein on his anger.

‘Treachery?’

‘That’s my concern,’ said the duke, with such restraint that Helmut backed off immediately. The blonde, however, showed no sign of surprise: she studied Helmut with such bland
disinterest that he had to suppress a shudder.

So we’ve got a leak,
he realized with a sinking feeling.
It didn’t stop with Matthias, did it?
‘Should I assume that the intruders know about
doppelgänger defenses?’ He glanced round. ‘Should I assume they have world-walkers of their own?’

‘Not the latter, Gray Witch be thanked.’ Angbard hesitated. ‘But it would be unwise to assume that they don’t know how to defend against us, so every minute delayed
increases the hazard.’ He reached a decision. ‘We can’t afford to leave it in their hands, any more than we can afford to demolish it completely. Our options are therefore to go
in immediately with everything we’ve got to hand, or to wait until we have more forces available and the enemy has had more time to prepare for us. My inclination is towards the immediate
attack, but as you will be leading it, I will heed your advice.’

Helmut grimaced. ‘Give me enough rope, eh? As it happens, I agree with you. Especially if they have an informant, we need to get in there as fast as possible. Do we know if they are aware
of the treason room?’

‘No, we don’t.’ Angbard’s expression was stony. ‘If you wish to use it, you will have to scout it out.’

‘Aye, well, there are worse prospects.’ Helmut turned on his heel and raised his voice. ‘Martyn! Ryk! To me. I’ve got a job for you!’ Turning back to the duke, he
added: ‘If the treason room is clear, we’ll go in that way, with diversions in the north guard room and the grand hall. Otherwise, my thinking is to assault directly through the grand
hall, in force. The higher we go in –’ he glanced up at the scaffolding, then over to the hydraulic lift that two guards were bringing in through the front of the tent ‘–
the better I’ll like it.’

*

Motion sickness was a new and unpleasant experience to Miriam, but she figured it was a side effect of spending days on end aboard a swaying express train. Certainly it was the
most plausible explanation for her delicate stomach. She couldn’t wait to get solid ground under her feet again. She’d plowed through about half the book by Burroughs, but it was heavy
going; where some of the other Leveler tracts she’d read had been emotionally driven punch-in-the-gut diatribes against the hereditary dictators, Burroughs took a far drier, theoretical
approach. He’d taken up an ideological stance with roots Miriam half-recognized – full of respectful references to Voltaire, for example, and an early post-settlement legislator called
Franklin, who had turned to the vexatious question of the rights of man in his later years – and had teased out a consistent strand of political thought that held the dictatorship of the
hereditary aristocracy to be the true enemy of the people. Certainly she could see why Burroughs might have been exiled, and his books banned, by the Hanoverian government. But the idea that he
might be relevant to the underground still struck her as peculiar.
Do I really want to get involved in this?
she asked herself. It was all very well tagging along with Erasmus until she
could get her hands on her laptop again and zip back to the United States, but the idea of getting involved in
politics
made her itch. Especially the kind of politics they had over
here.