The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2)

by Charles Stross

  ‘It’s – harrumph! A postal problem we have, indeed,’ Lord Brunvig had said, clearing his throat, a trifle embarrassed. ‘Every route is in chaos and every identity must be vetted. We have lost couriers,’ the old buffer had said, in tones of horror. (As well he might, for if a Clan courier went missing in Massachusetts he or she should very well be able to make their own way home eventually unless the worst had happened.) ‘So. We need a fallback,’ he had added. ‘Would you mind awfully . . . ?’

  The Clan had plenty of quiet, disciplined men (and some women) who knew the Amtrak timetable inside out and had clean driving licenses, but precious few who had spent time in New Britain – and they weren’t about to trust the hidden family with the crown jewels of their shipping service. It took time to acculturate new couriers to the point where they could be turned loose in a strange country with a high-value cargo and expected to reliably deliver it to a destination that might change from day to day, reflecting the realities of where it was safe to make a delivery on the other side of the wall of worlds. Which was why Miriam – a high lady of the Clan, a duchess’s eldest child – found herself standing on a suburban railway platform on the outskirts of New London in a gray shalwar suit and shoulder cape, her broad-brimmed hat clasped to her head, tapping her heels as the small shunting engine huffed and panted, shoving a string of three carriages up to the platform. And all because I already knew how to read a gazetteer, she thought whimsically.

  Not that there was much to be whimsical about, she reflected as she waited for the first-class carriage to screech to a halt in front of her. New Britain was in the grip of a spy fever as intense as the paranoia about terrorism currently gripping the United States, aggravated by the existence of genuine sub rosa revolutionary organizations, some of whom would deal with the devil himself if it would advance their agenda. Things were, in some ways, much simpler here. The machinery of government was autocratic, and the world was polarized between two great superpowers much as it had been during the Cold War. But political simplicity and the absence of sophisticated surveillance technology didn’t mean Miriam was safe. What the Constabulary (the special security police, not the common or garden-variety thief-takers) lacked in bugging devices they more than made up for in informers and spies. Her papers were as good as the Clan’s fish-eyed forgers could make them, and she was confident she knew her way. But if a nosy thief-taker or weasel-eyed constable decided to finger her, they’d be straight through her bag, and while she wasn’t sure what it contained she was certain that it would prove incriminating. If that happened she’d have to world-walk at the drop of a hat – and hope she could make her own way home from wherever she came out. The quid pro quo was itself trivial: a chance to spend some time in New Britain, a chance to replace the paranoia of court life in Niejwein with a different source of stress.

  The shunting engine wheezed and clanked, backing off from the carriages. Somewhere down the platform a conductor blew his whistle and waved a green flag, signaling that the train was ready for boarding. Miriam stepped forward, grabbed a door handle, and pulled herself into one of the small, smoke-smelling sleeper compartments in the ladies’ first-class carriage. Alone, I hope, she told herself. Let me be alone . . . ? She pulled the door shut behind her and, grunting quietly, heaved the heavy bag onto the overhead luggage net. With any luck it would stay there undisturbed until Dunedin – near to Joliet, in the United States, there being no such city as Chicago in this timeline. All she had to do was ferry it to a certain suburban address and exchange it for an identical bag, then return to New London. But Dunedin was over a thousand miles from New London. One good thing you could say about the New British railways was that the overnight express service rattled along at seventy miles an hour. But if the train was full she might end up with company, and being kept awake by genteel snoring was not Miriam’s idea of fun.

  Clank. The carriage bounced, almost throwing her out of her seat. A shrill whistle from the platform, and a distant asthmatic chuffing, followed by a jerk as the newly coupled locomotive began to pull. Miriam relaxed enough to unbutton her cape. It’s going to be all right, she decided. No snoring!

  The corridor door opened: ‘Carnets, please, ma’am.’ The inspector tugged his hat as he scratched her name off on a chalkboard. ‘Ah, very good. Bed make-up will be at eight bells, ma’am, and the dining car opens from seven. If you have any requests for breakfast, the cook will be glad to accommodate you.’ Miriam smiled as he backed out through the door. First class definitely had some advantages.

  Once he’d gone she pulled the slatted wooden shutters across the corridor window, and shot the bolt on the door. Alone! It was positively liberating, after weeks spent in the hothouse atmosphere of the Niejwein aristocracy. Her cape went up on the overhead rack first, then she bent down to unbutton her ankle boots. First-class sleeper compartments had carpet and kerosene heaters, not that she’d be needing the latter on this hot, dusty journey. Once the rows of gray, hunchbacked workers’ apartments petered out into open countryside, she pulled her Palm Pilot out of her belt-purse. With four hours to go until dinner – and fifteen or sixteen until the train pulled into Dunedin station – she’d have plenty of time for note-taking and reading.

  Precisely half an hour later, the machine emitted a strangled squawking noise and switched itself off.

  ‘Bother.’ Miriam squeezed the power button without success, then stuck the stylus in the reset hole. Beep. The machine switched on again. Miriam breathed a sigh of relief, then tried to open the file she’d been working on. It wasn’t there. A couple of minutes of feverish poking proved that the machine had reset itself to factory condition, erasing not only the work she’d already done but all the other files she’d been meaning to read and edit. Miriam stared at it in dismay. ‘Fifteen hours?’ she complained to the empty seat opposite: she hadn’t even brought a newspaper. For a moment she was so angry she actually considered throwing the machine out the window. ‘Fucking computers.’ She glanced over her shoulder guiltily, but she was alone. Alone with nothing but the parched New Britain countryside rolling past, a faint smoke trail off to one side hinting at the arid wind that seemed to be plaguing the seaboard this summer.

  If Miriam had one overwhelming personality flaw it was that she couldn’t abide inactivity. After ten minutes of tapping her right toe on the floor she found herself nodding along, trying to make up a syncopated backbeat that followed the rhythm of the wheels as they clattered over the track joints. Not even a book, she thought. For a while she thought about leaving her compartment in search of the conductor, but it would look odd, wouldn’t it? Single woman traveling alone, no reading matter: that was the sort of funny-peculiar thing that the Homeland Security Directorate might be interested in. The idea of writing on her PDA had lost all its residual charm, in the absence of any guarantee that the faulty device wouldn’t consign long hours of work to an electronic limbo. But not doing anything went right against the grain. Worse, it was an invitation to daydream. And when she caught herself daydreaming these days, it tended to be about people she knew. Roland loomed heartbreakingly large in her thoughts. I’ll go out of my mind if I don’t do something, she realized. And almost without her willing it, her eyes turned upward to gaze at the carpetbag. It can’t do any harm to look, canit?

  COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL

  FROM: Director’s Office, Gerstein Center for Reproductive Medicine, Stony Brook

  TO: Angbard Lofstrom, Director, Applied Genomics Corporation

  Here’s a summary of the figures for this FY. A detailed breakdown follows this synopsis; I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

  Operations continued as scheduled this quarter. I can report that our projected figures are on course to make the Q2 targets in all areas. Demand for ART procedures including IVF, IUI, ICSI, and tubal reversal is up 2% over the same quarter last year, with an aggregate total of 672 clients treated in the Q1 period. Last year’s Q2 figures indicate a viable outcome in 598 cases with a total of
661 neonates being delivered.

  With reference to AGC subsidized operations, a total of 131 patients were admitted to the program during Q1. A preliminary estimate is that the total cost of subsidized treatment for these individuals during this quarter will incur operation expenses of approximately $397K (detailed breakdown to follow with general quarterly accounts). Confidence-based extrapolation from last year’s Q2 crop is that this will result in roughly 125 +/–17 neonates coming to term in next year’s Q1 period. Of last year’s Q2 crop, PGD and chorionic villus sampling leads me to expect an 87% yield of viable W* heterozygotes.

  We were extremely startled when routine screening revealed that one of our patients was a W* heterozygous carrier. As this patient was not an applicant for the AGC program, no follow-on issues arise in this case, although I have taken the liberty of redacting their contact details from all patient-monitoring systems accessible to FDA supervision – copy available on your request. However, I must urgently request policy guidance in dealing with future W*hz clients not referred to the program through your office.

  Other than that, it’s all business as usual at GCRM! Hope you’re having a profitable and successful quarter, and feel free to contact me if you require further supplementary information or a face-to-face inspection of our facility.

  Yours sincerely,

  DR. ANDREW DARLING, D. O.

  Director of Obstetrics

  COPS

  A lot had happened in twelve weeks. The assorted federal agents who had been sucked into the retreat in Maryland had acquired a name, a chain of command, a mission statement, and a split personality. In fact it was, thought Mike, a classic example of interdepartmental politics gone wrong, or of the blind men and the elephant, or something. Everyone had an idea about how they ought to work on this situation, and most of the ideas were incompatible.

  ‘It’s not just Smith,’ Pete complained from the other side of his uncluttered desk. ‘I am getting the runaround from everyone. Judith says she’s not allowed to use agency resources to cross-fund my research request without a directive from the Department of Justice – she’s ass-covering – Frank says the County Surveyor’s Office isn’t allowed to release the information without a FOIA, and Smith says he wants to help but he’s not allowed to because the regs say that data flows into the NSA, never out.’

  Days of running around offices trying to get a consensus together were clearly taking their toll on Pete Garfinkle. Mike nodded wearily. ‘Have you tried public sources?’

  ‘What? Architecture websites? Property developers’ annual reports, that kind of thing? I could do that, but it’d take me weeks, and there’s no guarantee I’d spot everything.’ Pete’s shoulders were set, tense with frustration. ‘We’re cops, not intelligence analysts, Mike, isn’t that right? I mean, except for you, babysitting source Green-sleeves. So we sit here with our thumbs up our asses while the big bad spooks run around pulling their national security cards on everybody. I can’t even requisition a goddamned report on underground parking garages in New Jersey that’ve been fitted with new security doors in the past six months! And this is supposed to be a goddamned joint intelligence task force?’

  ‘Chill out.’ It came out more sharply than Mike had intended. ‘You’ve got me doing it too, now. Listen, let’s go find a Starbucks and unwind, okay?’

  ‘But that means –’ Pete rolled his eyes.

  ‘Yeah, I know, it means checking out of the motel. So what? It’s nearly lunchtime. We’ve almost certainly got time to sign out before we have to sign back in again. Come on.’

  Mike and Pete cleared their cramped two-man office. It wasn’t a simple process: nothing was simple, once you got the FBI and the NSA and the CIA and the DEA all trying to come up with common security standards. First, everything they were reading went into locked desk drawers. Then all the stationery supplies went into another lockable drawer. Then Mike and Pete had to cross-check each other’s locked drawers before they could step outside into the corridor, lock the office door, and head for the security station by the elevator bank. FTO – the Family Trade Organization – was big on compartmentalization, big on locks, big on security – big on just about everything except internal cooperation. And big on the upper floors of skyscrapers, where prices were depressed by the post-9/11 hangover and world-walker assassins were considered a greater threat than hijacked jets.

  The corridor outside was a blank stretch punctuated by locked doors, some with red lights glowing above them, the walls bare except for security-awareness posters from some weird NSA loose-lips-sink-ships propaganda committee. Mike made sure to lock his door (blue key) and spun the combination dial before he headed toward the elevator bank. The last door on the corridor was ajar. ‘Bill?’ asked Pete.

  ‘Pete. And Mike.’ Bill Swann nodded. ‘Got something for me?’

  ‘Sure.’ Mike held out his keys, waited for Bill to take them – and Pete’s – and make them disappear. ‘Going for lunch, probably back in an hour or so,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, sign here.’ Swann wasn’t in uniform – nobody at FTO was, because FTO didn’t exist and blue or green suits on the premises might tip some civilian off – but somehow Mike didn’t have any trouble seeing him as a marine sergeant. Mike examined the proffered clipboard carefully, then signed to say he’d handed in the keys to his office at 12:27 and witnessed Bill returning them to the automatic key access machine – another NSA-surplus security toy. ‘See you later, sirs.’

  ‘Sure thing, I hope.’ Pete whistled tunelessly as he scribbled his chop on the clipboard.

  ‘Dangerous places, those Starbucks.’

  ‘You gotta watch those double-chocolate whipped cream lattes,’ Pete agreed as they waited at the elevator door. ‘They leap out at you and attack you. One mouthful and they’ll be rolling you into pre-op for triple bypass surgery. Crack your rib cage just like the alien in, uh, Alien.’

  ‘Mine’s a turkey club,’ said Mike, ‘and a long stand. Somewhere where . . .’ The elevator arrived as he shrugged. They stood in silence on the way down. The elevator car had seen better days, its plastic trim yellowing and the carpet threadbare in patches: the poster on the back wall was yet another surplus to some super-black NSA security-awareness campaign. We’re at war and the enemy is everywhere.

  ‘Do you ever get a feeling you’ve woken up in the wrong company?’ he asked Pete as they crossed the lobby.

  ‘Frequently. Usually happens just before her husband gets home.’

  ‘Gross Moral Turpitude ’R’ Us, huh? Does Nikki know?’

  ‘Just kidding.’

  Pete’s marriage was solid enough that he could afford to crack jokes. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘I know, I know . . .’ Pete paused while they waited at the crosswalk outside. It was a hot day, and Mike wished he’d left his suit coat behind. ‘Let’s go. Listen, it’s the attitude thing that’s getting to me. The whole outlook.’

  ‘Cops are from Saturn, spooks are from Uranus?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Pete’s eyebrows narrowed to a solid black bar when he was angry or tense. ‘Over there.’ He gestured down a side street lined with shops, in the general direction of Harvard Square. ‘It’s a cultural thing.’

  ‘You’re telling me. Different standards of evidence, different standards on sharing information, different attitudes.’

  ‘I thought it was our job to roll up this supernatural crime syndicate,’ Pete complained. ‘Collect evidence, build cases, arrange plea bargains and witness support where necessary, observe and induce cooperation, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Right.’ Mike nodded. A familiar Starbucks sign; there was no queue round the block, they’d made their break just in time to beat the rush. ‘And the management have got other ideas. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘We’re cops. We think of legal solutions to criminal problems. Smith and the entire chain of command above us are national security. They’re soldiers and intelligence agents. They work outsi
de the law – I mean, they’re governed by international law, the Geneva conventions and so on, but they work outside our domestic framework.’ He broke off. ‘I’ll have a ham-and-cheese sub, large regular coffee no cream, and a danish.’ He glanced at Mike. ‘I’m buying this time.’

  ‘Okay.’ Mike ordered; they waited until a tray materialized, then they grabbed a pair of chairs and a table in the far corner of the shop, backs to the wall and with a good view of the other customers. ‘And you figure they’re making it difficult because they’re not geared up to share national security information with domestic police agencies, at least not without going through Homeland Security.’

  ‘Home of melted stovepipes.’ Pete regarded his coffee morosely. ‘It’s frustrating, sure, but what really worries me is the policy angle. I’m not sure we’re getting enough input into this. NSC grabbed the ball and the AG is too busy looking for pornographers under the bed and jailing bong dealers to have time for the turf war. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve classified it so he doesn’t even know we exist, or thinks we’re just another drug ring roundup embedded in some sort of counter-terrorist operation Wolf Boy and Daddy Warbucks are running.’

  Mike blew on his coffee cautiously, then took a sip. ‘I’m not sure they’re wrong,’ he admitted.

  ‘Not sure – hmm?’

  ‘Not sure they’re right, either.’ Mike shrugged. ‘I just know we’re not tackling this effectively. It’s the old story: if the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Matt’s former associates are a problem, okay? Only we can’t get at them, can we? Which leaves policing techniques to get them the hell out of our home turf. So why the emphasis on the military stuff? I half suspect some guys who know a lot more than us figure that this is a situation which merits military force. It sure doesn’t look like something we can do more than a holding action against from here, at any rate.’