The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2)

by Charles Stross

  ‘If anyone wants a recap, we’re having copies of the case notes prepared for you,’ Smith added. ‘Can I ask you all not to make any written notes of this briefing,’ he added pointedly in the direction of Frank the surveyor. ‘We’d only have to incinerate them afterward.’

  Like that, is it? Mike wondered. ‘Shall I continue?’

  ‘When you’re ready.’

  ‘Okay. We got a tip-off from Greensleeves five weeks ago, about Case Phantom’s main distribution center for Boston and Cambridge. Case Phantom is Pete’s specialty, a really major pipeline we’ve been trying to crack for months. Greensleeves used the same code word, this time in an envelope along with a sample of merchandise and – this is significant – a saliva sample. Greensleeves wanted to turn himself in, which struck us as noteworthy: but what set the alarm bells going was Greensleeves wanting to turn himself in and enlist in the Witness Protection Program in return for knocking over Case Phantom. And helping us get it right, this time.’

  Pete sighed noisily.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mike. ‘Operation Phoenix was part of Case Phantom, too. Back before Greensleeves decided to come aboard. It was a really big bust – the wrong kind.’

  Now he saw Agent Herz wince. They’d taken up the tip-off and gone in like gangbusters, half the special agents posted at the Boston DEA office with heavy support from the police. But they’d hit a wall – literally. The modern-looking office building had turned out to be a fortress, doors and windows backed by steel barriers and surveillance cameras like a foreign embassy.

  Worse, the defenders hadn’t been the usual half-assed Goodfellas wannabes. Someone with a Russian army-surplus sniper’s rifle had taken down two of the backup SWAT team before Lieutenant Smale had pulled them back and called up reinforcements for a siege. Then, four hours into the siege – just as they’d been getting ready to look for alternative ways in – the building had collapsed. Someone had mined its foundations with demolition charges and brought it right down on top of the cellars, which were built like a cold war nuclear bunker. The CSIs and civil engineers were still sieving the wreckage, but Mike didn’t expect them to find anything.

  ‘In retrospect, Phoenix should have been a signal that something really weird was happening,’ Mike continued. ‘It took us a long time to dig our way into the rubble and what we found was disturbing. Bomb shelters, cold stores, closed-circuit air-conditioning . . . and fifty kilograms of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine in a vault. Plus an arsenal like a National Guard depot. But there were no bodies . . .’ He trailed off introspectively. Too tired for this, he thought dizzily.

  ‘Okay, now fast-forward. You’ve had a series of tip-offs from source Greensleeves, leading up to Greensleeves turning himself in three days ago,’ Colonel Smith stated. ‘What about the saliva sample? It’s definitely him?’

  Mike shrugged. ‘The lab says so. Matthias is definitely source Greensleeves. He got us an armored fortress in downtown Cambridge with fifty kilos of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine and a Twilight Zone episode to explain, plus a series of crack warehouses and meth labs up and down the coast. Biggest serial bust in maybe a decade. He’s –’ Mike shook his head. ‘I’ve spent a couple of hours talking to him and it’s funny, he doesn’t sound crazy, and after watching that video – well. Matt – Greensleeves – doesn’t sound sane at first, he sounds like a nut. Except that he’s right about everything I checked. And the guy vanishing in front of the camera is just icing on the cake. He predicted it.’ Mike shook his head again. ‘Like I said, he sounds crazy – but I’m beginning to believe him.’

  ‘Right.’ Colonel Smith broke in just as a buzzer sounded, and a marine guard opened the outer door for a steward, who wheeled in a trolley laden with coffee cups and flasks. ‘We’ll pause right there for a moment,’ Smith said. ‘No shop talk until after coffee. Then you and Pete can tell us the rest.’

  *

  The debriefing room wasn’t a cell. It resembled nothing so much as someone’s living room, tricked out in cheap sofas, a couple of re-cliners, a coffee table, and a sideboard stocked with soft drinks. The holding suite where they’d stashed Greensleeves for the duration didn’t look much like a jail cell, either. It had all the facilities of a rather boring hotel room – beds, desk, compact ensuite bathroom – if the federal government had been in the business of providing motel accommodation for peripatetic bureaucrats.

  But the room had two things in common with every jail cell ever built. First, the door was locked on the outside. And second, the windows didn’t open. In fact, if you looked at them for long enough you’d realize that they weren’t really windows at all. Both the debriefing room and the holding suite were buried in a second-story basement, and to get in you’d have to either prove your identity and sign in through two checkpoints and a pat-down search, or shoot your way past the guards.

  Mike and Pete had taken the friendly approach at first, when they’d first started the full debriefing protocol. After all, he was cooperating fully and voluntarily. Why risk pissing him off and making him clam up?

  ‘Okay, let’s take it from the top.’ Mike smiled experimentally at the thin, hatchet-faced guy on the sofa while Pete hunched over the desk, fiddling with the interview recorder. Hatchet-face – Matt – nodded back, his expression serious. As well it should be, in his situation. Matt was an odd one; mid-thirties in age, with curly black hair and a face speckled with what looked like the remnants of bad acne. He was wiry, all whipcord muscle and bone, and he wore the same leather jacket and jeans he’d had on when he walked through the DEA office door.

  ‘We’re going to start the formal debriefing now you’re here. When we’ve got the basics of your testimony down on tape, we’ll escalate it to OCDTF and get them to sign off on your WPP participation and then set up a joint liaison team with the usual – us, the FBI, possibly FinCEN, and any other organizations whose turf is directly affected by your testimony. We can’t offer you a blanket amnesty for any crimes you’ve committed, but along the way we’ll evaluate your security requirements, and when we’ve got the prosecutions in train we’ll be able to discuss an appropriate plea bargain for you, one that takes your time in secure accommodation here into account as time served. So you should be free to leave with a new identity and a clean record as soon as everything’s wrapped up.’ He took a breath. ‘If there’s anything you don’t understand, say so. Okay?’

  Matt just sat on the sofa, shoulders set tensely, for about thirty seconds, until Mike began to wonder if there was something wrong with him. Then: ‘You don’t understand,’ he said, in a quiet but urgent tone. ‘If you treat this as a criminal investigation we will both die. They have agents everywhere and you have no idea what they are capable of.’ He had an odd foreign accent, slightly German, but with markedly softened sibilants.

  ‘We’ve dealt with Mafia families.’ Mike smiled encouragingly.

  ‘They are not your Mafia.’ Matt stared intimidatingly. ‘You are at war. They are a, a shadow government. They will not respond as criminals, but as soldiers and politicians. I am here to defect, but if you are going to insist that they are ordinary criminals, you will lose.’

  ‘Can you point to them on a map?’ Mike asked. The informer shook his head. He looked faintly – disappointed? Amused? Annoyed? Mike felt a stab of hot anger. Stop playing head games with me, he thought, or you’ll be sorry.

  Pete looked up. ‘Are we talking terrorists here? Like al-Qaeda?’ he asked.

  ‘I said they are a government. If you do not understand what that means we are both in very deep trouble.’ Matt picked up the cigarette packet on the table and unwrapped it carefully. His fingers were long, but his nails were very short. One was cracked, Mike noticed, and his right index finger bore an odd callus: not a shooter’s finger, but something similar.

  ‘There is another world,’ Matt said carefully as he opened the packet and removed a king-size. ‘This world is the world you are familiar with. The world of the United States, and of al-Qaeda. The world of
automobiles and airliners and computers and guns and antibiotics. But there is another world, and you know nothing of it.’

  He paused for a moment to pick up the table lighter, then puffed once on the cigarette and laid it carefully on the ashtray.

  ‘The other world is superficially like this one. There is a river not far from here, for example, roughly where the Charles River flows. But there is no city. Most of Boston lies under the open sea. Cambridge is heavily forested.

  ‘There are people in the other world. They do not speak your language, this English tongue. They do not worship your tree-slain god. They don’t have automobiles or airliners or computers or guns or antibiotics. They don’t have a United States. Instead, there are countries up and down this coast, ruled by kings.’

  Matt picked up the cigarette and took a deep lungful of smoke. Mike glanced over at Pete to make sure he was recording, and caught a raised eyebrow. When he looked back at Matt, careful to keep his expression blank, he realized that the informant’s hands were shaking slightly.

  ‘It’s a nice story. But what does it have to do with the price of cocaine?’

  ‘Everything!’ Matthias snapped.

  Taken aback, Mike jolted upright. Matt stared at him: he stared right back. ‘What do you mean?’ He demanded.

  After several seconds, Matthias’s tension unwound. ‘I’m sorry. I will get to the point,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of Gruinmarkt is dominated by a consortium of six noble houses. Their names are – no, later. The point is, some members of the noble bloodline can walk between the worlds. They can cross over to this world, and cross back again, carrying . . . goods.’

  He paused, expectantly.

  ‘Well?’ Mike prodded, his heart sinking. Jesus, just what I need. The hottest lead this year turns out to be a card-carrying tinfoil hat job.

  Matthias sighed. ‘Kings and nobles.’ He took another drag at his cigarette, and Mike forced himself to stifle a cough. ‘Noble houses rise and fall on the basis of their wealth. These six, they are not old. They date their fortunes to the reign of – no, to the, ah, eighteen-fifties. Before then, they were unremarkable merchants – tinkers, really. Traders. Today they are the high merchant families, rich beyond comprehension, a law unto themselves. Because they trade. They come to this world bearing dispatches and gems and valuables, and ensure that they arrive back in the empire of the Outer Kingdom – in what you would call California, Mexico, and Oregon – the next day. Without risk of disaster, without delay, without theft by the bands of savages who populate the wilderness. And the trade runs on the other side, too.’

  ‘How do they do it?’ Mike asked. Humor him, he may have something useful, after all. Mentally, he was already working out which forms to submit to request the psychiatric assessment.

  ‘Suppose a broker in Columbia wants half a ton of heroin to arrive in upstate New York.’ Matthias ground his cigarette out in the ashtray, even though it was only half-finished. ‘He has a choice of distribution channels. He can arrange for an intermediary to buy a fast speedboat, or a light plane, and run the Coast Guard gauntlet in the Caribbean. He can try a false compartment in a truck. Once in the United States, the cargo can be split into shipments and dispatched via other channels – expendable couriers, usually. There is an approximate risk of twenty-five percent associated with this technique. That is, the goods will probably reach the wholesaler – but one time in four, they will not.’ His face flickered in a fleeting grin. ‘Alternatively, they can contact the Clan. Who will take a commission of ten percent and guarantee delivery – or return the cost in full.’

  Huh? Mike sat up slightly. Matthias’s habit of breaking off and looking at him expectantly was grating, but he couldn’t help responding. Even if this sounded like pure baloney, there was something compelling about the way Matt clearly believed his story.

  ‘The Clan is a trading consortium operated by the noble houses,’ Matt explained. ‘Couriers cross over into this world and collect the cargo, in whatever quantity they can lift – they can only carry whatever they can hold across the gulf between worlds. In the other world, the Clan is invincible. Cargos of heroin or cocaine travel up the coast in wagon trains guarded by the Clan’s troops. Local rulers are bribed with penicillin and aluminum tableware and spices for the table. Bandits with crossbows and swords are no match for soldiers with night-vision goggles and automatic weapons. It takes weeks or months, but it’s secure – and sooner or later the cargo arrives in a heavily guarded depot in Boston or New York without you ever knowing it’s in transit or being able to track it.’

  There was a click from across the room. Mike looked round. ‘This is bullshit,’ complained Pete, stripping off his headphones. He glared at Matt in disgust. ‘You’re wasting our time, do you realize that?’ To Mike, ‘Let’s just charge him with trafficking on the basis of what we’ve already got, then commit him for psych – ’

  ‘I don’t think so –’ Mike began, just as Matthias said something guttural in a foreign language the DEA agent couldn’t recognize. ‘I’m sorry?’ he asked.

  ‘I gave you samples,’ Matt complained. ‘Why not analyze them?’

  ‘What for?’ Mike’s eyes narrowed. Something about Matthias worried him, and he didn’t like that one little bit. Matt wasn’t your usual garden-variety dealer’s agent or hit man. There was something else about him, some kind of innate sense of his own superiority, which grated. And that weird accent. As if – ‘What should we look for?’

  ‘The sample I gave you is of heroin, diacetylmorphine, from poppies grown on an experimental farm established by order of the High Duke Angbard Lofstrom, in the estates of King Henryk of Auswjein, which would be in North Virginia of your United States. There has never been an atomic explosion in the other world. I am informed that a device called a mass spectroscope will be able to confirm to you that the sample is depleted of an iso-, um, isotope of carbon that is created by atomic explosions. This is proof that the sample originated in another world, or was prepared at enormous expense to give such an impression, for the mixture of carbon isotopes in this world is different.’

  ‘Uh.’ Pete looked as taken aback as Mike felt. ‘What? Why haven’t you been selling your own here, if you can grow it in this other world?’

  ‘Because it would be obvious where it came from,’ Matt explained with exaggerated patience. ‘The entire policy of the Clan for the past hundred and seventy years has been to maintain a shroud of secrecy around itself. Its participation in the drug courier business dates back over fifty years. Selling drugs that were clearly harvested on another world would not, ah, contribute to this policy.’

  Mike nodded at Pete. ‘Switch the goddamn recorder on again.’ He turned back to Matthias. ‘Summary. There exists a, a parallel world to our own. This world is not industrialized? No. There is a bunch of merchant princes, a clan, who can travel between there and here. These guys make their money by acting as couriers for high-value assets which can be transported through the other world without risk of interception because they are not recognized as valuable there. Drugs, in short. Matthias has kindly explained that his last heroin sample contains a, um, carbon isotope balance that will demonstrate it must have been grown on another planet. Either that, or somebody is playing implausibly expensive pranks. Memo: get a mass spectroscopy report on the referenced sample. Okay, so that brings me to the next question.’ He leaned toward Matthias. ‘Who are you, and how come you know all this?’

  Matt extracted another cigarette from the packet and lit it. ‘I am of the outer families – I cannot world-walk, but must be carried wheresoever I should go. I am – was – private secretary to the head of the Clan’s security, Duke Lofstrom. I am here because’ – he paused for a deep drag on the cigarette – ‘if I was not here they would execute me. For treason. Is that clear enough?’

  ‘I, uh, think so.’ Pete had walked round behind Matt and was frantically gesturing at Mike, but Mike ignored him. ‘Do you have anything else to add?’

 
; ‘Yes, two things. Firstly, you will find a regular Clan courier on the 14:30 Acela service from Boston to New York. I don’t know who they are, so I can’t give you a personal description, but standard procedure is that the designated courier arrives at the station no more than five minutes prior to departure. He sits in a reserved seat in carriage B, and he travels with an aluminum Zero Halliburton roll-on case, model ZR-31. He will be conservatively dressed – the idea is to be mistaken for a lawyer or stockbroker, not a gangster – and will be armed with a Glock 20 pistol. You will know you have arrested a courier if he vanishes when confined in a maximum security cell.’ He barked a humorless laugh. ‘Make sure to videotape it.’

  ‘You said two things?’

  ‘Yes. Here is the second.’ Matt reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, silvery metallic cylinder. Mike blinked: on first sight he almost mistook it for a pistol cartridge, but it was solid, with no sign of a percussion cap. And from the way Matt dropped it on the table-top it looked dense.

  ‘May I?’ Mike asked.

  Matt waved at it. ‘Of course.’

  Mike tried to pick it up – and almost dropped it. The slug was heavy. It felt slightly oily and was pleasantly warm to the touch. ‘Jesus! What is it?’

  ‘Plutonium. From the Duke’s private stockpile.’ Matt’s expression was unreadable as Mike flinched away from the ingot. ‘Do not take my word for it; analyze it, then come back here to talk to me.’ He crossed his arms. ‘I said they were a government. And they have a nuclear weapons program . . .’

  *

  A lightning discharge always seeks the shortest path to ground. Two days after she discovered Duke Angbard’s location to be so secret that nobody would even tell her how to send him a letter, Miriam’s wrath ran to ground through the person of Baron Henryk, her mother’s favorite uncle and the nearest body to Angbard in age, position, and temperament that she could find.