Empire Games Series, Book 1

by Charles Stross

  Back to John Frederick: “There have been more unwelcome developments, and I think some in particular that you need to see with your own two eyes.” Behind them, a quartet of liveried servants pushed and heaved a television set into the room—a hulking piece of cabinetry fronted by a circular green glass disk—and positioned it at an angle convenient for the princes. “We are used to reigning as of right, cousin. But things are spinning out of control: the revolutionaries are ingenious, and I very much fear that unless we hang together and put an end to this nonsense as fast as possible, then dedicate our lives and those of our heirs to suppressing it, we will hang separately…”

  PART TWO

  FAST TRACK

  Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.

  —Leon Trotsky

  Training Mission

  NEAR BOSTON, TIME LINE FOUR, MAY 2020

  Two months after her abortive kidnapping, Rita was allowed a weekend trip home to visit her family. In fact, she was urged to do so. “E-mail and Facebook aren’t enough,” explained her supervisor, an affable African American named Patrick O’Neill who’d worked surveillance operations when he was in the FBI. “If you vanish off the face of the earth for weeks, then send them vaguely reassuring messages, your parents will worry that you’ve been abducted; it’s entirely natural. But you’ve been through basic orientation and briefing now, and it’ll make life a lot easier for us—and for them—if you go home and explain what’s happened.”

  “Easier for you?” Rita asked dubiously.

  Patrick shrugged. “Your grandpa’s been rattling the bars. Your father’s even talking about hiring a private eye, just to shut him up. It’s not going to help anybody if they waste money on a wild-goose chase, and we figure they’ll calm right down if they get a chance to see you in person. Regularly, even. So we’ve got a cover package for you that should hold up for a weekend, and we can work it into your training schedule. Think of it as a field exercise. We’ll recycle the same cover when you go to Quantico for the National Academy course, so it’ll help you bed in.”

  “Okay!” Rita resisted the urge to jump up and down. Eight weeks of grueling exercise and six-hour classroom days at the TSA’s off-world Camp Graceland training center had begun to blur into a hellish cross between the Girl Scouts, college, and a prison.

  Camp Graceland was a boot camp for spies. The teacher/student ratio was nearly 1:1, and except for her direct supervisor, Patrick, everybody knew her by a false name. They had started with medical tests (drug tests, epigenetic methylation scans: the usual), then rushed her through a bunch of interviews and security checks—some while being monitored by a polygraph, others with her head stuck in an fMRI scanner. She still remembered the Very Serious security officer’s expression as he’d asked if she was now, or ever had been, a Communist: he’d been a sight. (The question was clearly the legacy of some paranoid congressional imposition on the national security apparat. “No, but my grandpa Kurt used to be one, and I send him photographs of government buildings via dead letter drop” clearly wasn’t on the list of acceptable answers.) It had led to her explaining her geocaching hobby to him—and the idea that there was an entire subculture of folks who went on furtive Internet-mediated treasure hunts for buried objects using GPS and old-school spy tradecraft seemed to have caused him deep personal distress. Luckily for her, eccentricity was not yet illegal. So she eventually passed the checks.

  The interviews and a swearing-in were followed by a weeklong basic organizational orientation course, then a stripped-down version of the training that National Clandestine Service people got. The upcoming course at Quantico was more conventional—it was the law enforcement leadership course the FBI ran for other organizations. Clearly someone upstairs thought it might help if she knew how to think like a senior cop … or a senior counterespionage officer. “When do I go?”

  “You’ve got two more weeks on this segment,” said Patrick. “We’ll use the final week to work up your cover and establish operating procedures. Then you get to go on leave on Friday, using your cover while traveling. You don’t need to use the cover while you’re with your folks, but resume on Monday when you travel to Quantico.”

  “Huh.” She paused. “How much can I tell them? How much do you want me to hold back?”

  Patrick checked a file on his tablet. “You can tell them you landed a job with DHS; that’s not a problem. If they know anything about your, uh, birth parents, you can hint that it’s connected. But they don’t need to know about Graceland, about anything that’s happening here, or anything you’ve been told is classified or that you suspect is classified and somebody screwed up and forgot to tell you about. And if they don’t already know about your birth mother’s capability, they don’t need to learn about it now. There’s a cover story for them—a boring office job and some stuff you periodically get asked about. If they conclude that we’ve roped you in so we can keep an eye on you, that’s perfect, because it’s partly true.”

  “Right.” Rita paused. “I don’t like lying to my parents,” she admitted. It went against every instinct of her upbringing: but then, so did opening up and telling Patrick what she was thinking. It had taken weeks of work on both their parts to get to the point where it was possible. Rita was independent-minded, suspicious, and somewhat antiauthoritarian. She’d have been a complete washout for a regular DHS job: but a human intelligence agent—or HUMINT asset, as the organization referred to them—required an entirely different profile. “It goes against the grain.”

  “We don’t want you to lie to them. People are mostly very bad at lying, and good at telling when folks they know are lying to them. What we want is for you to tell them the truth—but only the safe bits. This way, you can calm them down and reassure them not to worry about you, and then you can stop worrying about them—which you have been doing, to the point where if you keep doing it it’ll impair your ability to do your job.” He raised an eyebrow. “Did you think we hadn’t noticed?”

  “No.” Rita flushed.

  “Kid, you’re wound up tighter than a drum. We’re training you for one of the most specialized and stressful missions; you’ll do your job better if you’re not looking over your shoulder the whole time worrying about your family. Anyway, we’ll start on your cover briefing tomorrow. Right now you’re due to start the Intro to Crypto workshop with Melissa from No Such Agency in about ten minutes: I’d get moving if I were you.”

  NEAR PHOENIX, TIME LINE TWO, MAY 2020

  “Mom?”

  “Rita! Where have you been?”

  “Long story, Mom. Listen, is Dad around? Grandpa? What about River, is he okay—”

  “Yes, yes, everyone’s all right! Are you—”

  “I’m about thirty miles up the road, Mom, driving a rental. I can be with you in an hour?”

  “Oh my, oh my, yes. Come right over. Listen, are you in trouble?”

  “Not exactly, but I’ve got a new job and things are complicated. Can it wait so I can tell everyone over dinner?”

  “Oh! Yes, yes, you’re right. Come right on over.”

  “Love you, Mom. Bye.”

  “Love you too.”

  Click.

  Rita hunched over the steering wheel of the rental, breathing deeply for a minute, then slid her split-personality phone away. It didn’t seem real, exactly: there was a sheet of invisible glass between her and the world now, unreflecting, intangible, but a barrier nonetheless. And I’m not Rita. I’m Anna, until I get home. “Anna Mittal,” read the name on her Arizona driver’s license. With an address in Phoenix, age twenty-four, a physiotherapist. Not: Rita Douglas, age twenty-five, Boston resident and driver’s license, former nonunion actor turned DHS probationary employee with payroll records pointing to a back-office job vetting frequent fliers for the streamlined secure boarding program.

  “It’s a game,” Patrick had explained during one of the briefing sessions. (Training doctrine called f
or the gamification of everything short of “wet ops”—assassination. Games were, after all, formalized play, and play was how young mammals acquired and then performed essential life skills.) “Your objective is to minimize your threat surface when exposed to a hostile environment; in this case, all you need to do to flip between Rita and Anna. There’ll be a different protocol if we ever send you overseas, but these are the basics, and practicing on your family is a great way to upskill yourself. Just remember not to show Anna’s ID card or SIM personality to your folks, or Rita’s to any Hostiles, and you’ll do fine.”

  The car did most of the driving for thirty miles, finally beeping for human supervision when it reached the main street leading to the subdivision her family lived in. The suburbs were undergoing a mild renaissance, recovering from the gas price–induced real-estate wilt of the noughties. Franz had followed a job out here, Emily joining him along with her brother, River, another adoptee. They’d snapped up a McMansion in a not-too-decrepit area for cash and extended themselves on credit to adapt an adjacent house for Grandpa Kurt, on the not-unreasonable theory that when Grandpa didn’t need it anymore they’d be able to turn a profit on it for the kids. Back when gas had been four bucks a gallon, commuting from here would have been a real strain, but with gas at eighty cents, thanks to imports from other time lines, it was a different story. The neighborhood was rising: only the unnatural green of the Astroturfed front yards hinted at the real cost of living large.

  Rita didn’t like Arizona. It was currently run by a Dominionist governor who rallied his followers with a dog whistle, with a creepy Save the Babies/Defense of Marriage proposition on the ballot to amend the state constitution at the next election. But it was where her family had moved: if she wanted to see them, she could either visit Jesusland or use her phone camera.

  Rita pulled in behind a familiar SUV and parked. She swapped her ID cards again, reset her phone, and hauled out her carry-on. She walked up to the front door, smiling and waving at the camera: “Hi, Mom! It’s me!”

  The door clicked open. “Rita!” Emily hugged her. “We’ve been so worried! Where have you been? Come in, let’s shut the door.” It was almost a hundred Fahrenheit outside, seventy-five indoors.

  “Long story.” Rita dropped her bag in the hallway. “Ancient history came looking for me, but I’m okay.”

  “Coffee first. Your room’s waiting for you: I left the bedding off to air, but it’s same as always. River’s in class but he’ll probably be home by six—”

  “Gramps?”

  “He’s out, as usual at this time of day. He volunteers at a Goodwill shop. Not Goodwill, a different charity, but you know what I mean.” Emily retreated toward the kitchen; Rita followed. She hadn’t seen her mom in three months. There was more gray in her hair, and her cheeks seemed to sag more than ninety days could account for. “Don’t worry, by the way, I’ve finished all my work today. I was thinking about cooking up a feast for tonight, seeing we’re a full family.” She smiled. “Want to help me shop for food?”

  “Oh, Mom. Yes, but you don’t have to—”

  “The hell I don’t! First you’re off to Seattle on that hand-to-mouth thing, then you disappear for a couple of days, and the next I hear is some horrible news—an attempted abduction? And we’re visited by a couple of men in black who tell us everything is going to be fine, then you barely write, much less call, for weeks and weeks—”

  Her mother’s shoulders were shaking. Rita stared for a moment, then closed the gap and hugged her. “Listen, it’s going to be all right. But—” She hesitated. “I’m going to have to ask you about my, uh, birth mother: everything you know about the … before you adopted me—”

  “Oh, hon.” Emily sniffed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that. Or it could wait for another few years. Until everything was a bit … calmer.”

  “Calm.” Only her mother would use that word to talk about the biggest national trauma of the century. “Mom. Listen, it’s okay. They, uh, gave me a job. I think so they can keep an eye on me. The DHS, I mean. It’s just that I need to know everything you know. For my own safety?” She heard a whine threatening to climb into her voice, made herself stop talking.

  “I get that. Thing is, hon, we didn’t know anything. No, that’s not quite right. I mean, yes, Kurt suspected something. A bit. But we didn’t put two and two together until after 7/16. We thought it was just the usual sort of problem, that your birth mother had just been unlucky and you could live a normal life. It wasn’t until after 7/16, and the visit from the FBI, that we realized who she must have been.” Rita let go and took a step back. “Well, I mean I, I never met her! It mostly went through the lawyers. But her mother—your grandmother, I guess—Kurt knew her, and he introduced us this one time and she seemed perfectly nice.”

  “Wait.” Rita shook her head. It was too much to assimilate quickly. “A grandmother? You mean, I’ve got a grandmother?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Her mom shrugged uncomfortably. “She was on crutches, Rita. She had MS. A few years later Kurt said he’d seen her and she was in a wheelchair. Then she disappeared. This would have been, oh, late 2002 or early 2003. A while before 7/16. Months, maybe a year.”

  “She disappeared? How come?”

  “I don’t know. Ask your grandfather; he might know some more. But Rita, you’ve got to understand—we didn’t know. Nobody knew about the world-walker thing. Or the bombs. That all happened years later, and we only figured it out when the FBI came and interviewed us after 7/16. All we knew was that this nice lady, a friend of Kurt’s, whose daughter had got in trouble at college, and was looking for adopters. And Franz and I were never going to have babies ourselves.”

  “Oh, Mom.” The coffeemaker began to hiss, then clicked loudly. Rita moved instinctively toward the cupboard with the mugs. It was something to occupy her hands with while her brain tried to catch up.

  “I hope you don’t think I blame you for any of it.”

  “No, Mom. I don’t. Fat-free or half-and-half?”

  “I’m on fat-free again. I’m sorry. I thought you were better off out of it, not knowing. It wasn’t your fault. I can’t believe your birth mother had anything to do with it—or her mother, for that matter. I honestly thought it was all in the past and there was nothing to worry about anymore … until they came and started asking us questions about you a couple of months ago.”

  “Mom? Here’s your coffee.” Rita tried to conceal her disquiet: of course they’d have visited Emily and Franz as part of her background check. Why wouldn’t they?

  “Thank you, dear.” With a visible shudder, Emily pulled herself together. “Then I need to go shopping. Come with me and you can catch up on all the gossip.”

  * * *

  That evening, after an exhausting family dinner—almost a mini-Thanksgiving, with a distinct subtext of gratitude for Rita’s delivery from whatever durance vile she had been consigned to by the DHS—Rita walked home with her grandfather Kurt. It wasn’t much of a walk, but it put some distance between Rita and Emily’s hand wringing, Franz’s quiet concern, and River’s brattish teenage-brother act. “Come in, come in,” Kurt mumbled as he held the front door open for her. “Out of the heat.”

  It was hot in Kurt’s abode too: he kept the upper floor closed off, sleeping in the downstairs den next to the living room and venturing up top only to shower. But it was cooler than the desert evening outside, and it was quiet, with only her usually taciturn grandfather for company.

  “You must tell me the truth,” Kurt said, “Over a beer.” It came out like an order, a throwback to his youth.

  “I’d rather not.”

  Kurt snorted, then pulled out his phone. He placed it inside a fleecy bedroom slipper on the boot rack by the front door, raised an eyebrow, and offered the other slipper to Rita. After a moment’s hesitation, she copied him.

  Kurt led her through the front hall to the kitchen and closed the connecting door. The refrigerator was well-stocked with imports
that reminded Kurt of home—Schöfferhofer, Weihenstephaner, Maisel’s Weisse—and a six-pack of Miller Ice for visitors. He ate most evenings with Franz and Emily; after Greta had died, he’d retreated into quiet introspection, his son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren the focus of his remaining social life. Rita had been worried by his withdrawal, but the news that he’d taken a volunteer job sounded hopeful.

  Kurt pulled two bottles from the fridge, popped their caps, and carefully poured them into a pair of ceramic steins. “Drink,” he told her. “I know you didn’t tell your parents everything. Nobody ever does. Come into the living room and unwind. I’ll tell you a story.”

  “What do you mean?” Rita followed Kurt into the living room. It was furnished mostly in shades of brown and orange leavened by outbreaks of ancient black leather, like a washed-up seventies bachelor pad, and it smelt faintly of stale cigarettes. Kurt had been giving up tobacco for as long as she could remember. He walked stiffly, wincing slightly: his hips were hurting again.

  “When I was a young man, fresh out of the Volksarmee, let me tell you, it was a different world. There were seventeen million of us in East Germany, and over a hundred thousand secret police in the Stasi. Think of it—two and a half times as many secret police per person as there are ordinary cops in America! And ordinary VoPo—Volkspolizei—on top! But that’s not all. The Stasi used informers, half a million of them. Maybe two million irregular informers. One in eight people were snitches. You couldn’t drink at a bar without drinking with a snitch. So we drank at home. Prost.”