The Merchants’ War tmp-4

by Charles Stross

  In the front room, Huw poked at the ruggedized PDA, switching off the logging program. He plugged it into the laptop to recharge and hotsync, then sighed. The video take would be a while downloading, but the portable weather station had its own display. He unplugged it from the PDA, flicked it on, and looked at the last reading. Temperature: 16 Celsius. Pressure: 1026 millibars. Relative humidity: 65%. “What the fuck?” He muttered to himself. Sixteen Celsius—sixty Fahrenheit—in Maryland, in August? With high pressure? That was the bit that didn’t make sense. It was over ninety outside, with 1020 millibars. “It’s twenty Celsius degrees colder over there? And the trees are conifers?”

  The penny dropped. “No wonder nobody could use the Wu family knotwork up in Massachusetts—it’s probably under half a mile of ice!”

  “Hey, you talking to me?” Elena called from the kitchen.

  Huw glanced at the laptop. “Be right back, buddy,” he told it, then carefully put it down on the battered cargo case, picked up the brown paper bag with the wine, and walked back towards Elena to wait for Hulius’s return.

  It was afternoon, according to the baleful red lights on the small TV opposite Mike’s bed. He blinked at it sleepily, feeling no particular inclination to reach out for the remote control that sat on the trolley beside his bed. The curtains were drawn across what he took for a window niche, and he was alone in the small hospital room with nothing for company but the TV, the usual clutter of spotlights and strange valves and switches on the wall behind his bed, and the plastic cocoon they’d wrapped his leg in. The cocoon—it’s like something out of Alien, he thought dreamily. Drainage tubes ran from it to the side of the bed, and there was a trolley with some kind of gadget next to him, and a hose leading to his left wrist. A drip. That was it. I’m on a drip. Therefore, I must be home. I drip, therefore I am. The thought was preposterously funny in a distant, swirly kind of way. Come to think of it, all his thoughts seemed to be leaving vapor trails, bouncing off the inside of his skull in slow motion. His leg ached, distantly, but it was nothing important. I’m home. Phone home. Maybe I should phone Mom and Pop? Let them know I’m all right. No, that wouldn’t work—Mom and Pop died years ago, in the car crash with Sue. Forget it. He managed to roll his eyes towards the table the TV stood on. There was no telephone. Some hospital bedroom this is…

  He was too hot. Much too hot. He was wearing pajamas: that was it. Fumbling for the buttons with his right hand, he realized he was fatigued. It felt as if his arm was weak, a long way away. He managed to get a couple of buttons undone, just as the door opened.

  “As you can see he’s, oh my—”

  “Mike? Can he hear me?”

  “I’m too hot.” It came out funny.

  “I’m real sorry, Mr. Smith, but he’s running a fever. We’ve got him on IV penicillin for the infection, and morphine—”

  “Penicillin? Isn’t that old-fashioned; I mean, aren’t most bacteria resistant to it these days?”

  “That’s not what the path lab report says about this one, thank Jesus; you’re right, most infections are resistant, but he’s had the good fortune to pick up an old-fashioned one. So, like I was saying, he’s on morphine, his leg’s an almighty mess, and they used a whole lot of Valium on him last night so he wouldn’t pull out his tubes.”

  “Mike?”

  The voice was familiar, conjuring up images of a whirring hand exerciser, a tense expression. “Boss?”

  “Mike? Did you try to say something?”

  Lips are dry. He tried to nod.

  “Ah, h—heck. Is it the Valium? Or the morphine?”

  “He ought to be better in a couple of hours, Mr. Smith.”

  “Okay. You hang in there, Mike. I’ll be right back.”

  The door closed on discussion, and the sound of footsteps walking away. Mike closed his eyes and tried to gather his thoughts. In the hospital. Doped up. Leg hurts a little. Morphine? Colonel Smith. Got to talk to the colonel…

  An indefinite time later, Mike was awakened by the rattle of the door opening.

  “Huh—hi, boss.” The cotton wool wrapping seemed to have gone away: he was still tired and a little fuzzy, but thinking didn’t feel like wading through warm mud anymore. He struggled, trying to sit up. “Huh. Water.”

  There was a jug of water sitting on the bedside trolley, and a couple of disposable cups. Eric sat down on the side of the bed and filled a cup, then passed it to him carefully. “Can you manage that? Good.”

  “’S better.” What’s the colonel wanting? Must be really anxious for news to be here himself… He cleared his throat experimentally. “How…how long?”

  “It’s Sunday afternoon. You were dumped on our doorstep on Friday evening, two and a half days past your due date. Do you feel like talking, or do you need a bit more time?”

  “More water. I’ll talk. Is…is official debrief?”

  “Yes, Mike. Fill me in and I promise to leave you alone to recover.” Eric smiled tightly. “If you need anything, I’ll see what I can sort out. Guess you’re not going to be in the office for a while.” He passed the refilled cup over and Mike drained it, then struggled to sit up.

  “Here, let me—gotcha.” The motorized bed whined. Colonel Smith placed a small voice recorder on the bedside table, the tape spool visibly rotating inside it. “That comfortable?”

  “Y-yeah. You want to know what happened? Everything was on track until I got into the palace grounds. Then everything went to hell…”

  For the next hour Mike described the events of the past week in minute detail, racking his brains for anything remotely relevant. Eric stopped him periodically to flip tape cassettes, then began to supply questions as Mike ran down. Mike held nothing back, his own ambiguous responses to Miriam notwithstanding. Finally, Eric switched the recorder off. “Off the record. Why did you tell her we’d play hardball? Did you think we were going to burn her? How did you think it’s going to sound if we have to go to bat with an oversight committee to keep your ass out of jail?”

  Mike reached towards the water again. He swallowed, his throat sore. “You should know: if you want to run HUMINT assets, you can’t treat them like machines. They have to trust you—they absolutely have to trust you. So I gave her the unvarnished truth. If I’d spun her a line of bullshit, do you really think she’d have believed me? She knows me well enough to know when I’m lying.”

  Smith nodded. “Go on.”

  “Her situation is shitty enough that—hell, her mom said she’s on the run—she’s short on options. If I’d told her we’d welcome her with open arms she’d have smelled a rat, but this way she’s going to carry on thinking about it, and then eventually start sniffing the bait. At which point, we can afford to play her straight, and she’s starting with low expectations. Offer her a deal—she cooperates with us fully, we look after her—and you’ll get her on board willingly. You’ll also get leverage over her mother, who is still in place and in a position to tell us what the leadership is up to. But I think the most important thing is, you’ll have a willing world-walker who will do what we want, and—I figure this is important—try to be helpful. I can’t quantify that, but I figure there’s probably stuff we don’t know that a willing collaborator can call out for us, stuff a coerced subject or a non–world-walker would be useless for. If Doc James gets some crazy idea about turning her into a ghost detainee, we’re not going to be able to do that, so I figured I’d start by lowering her expectations, then raise the temperature at the next contact.”

  “Plausible.” Eric nodded again. “It’s a plausible excuse.”

  Mike put the cup down. His throat felt sore. “Is this going to go to oversight?”

  Eric was watching him guardedly. “Not unless we fuck up.”

  “Thought so.” Get your cynical head on, Mike. “How do you meant to handle her, then?”

  “We go on as planned.” Eric looked thoughtful. “For what it’s worth I agree with you. I had a run-in with James over how we deal with contacts, and w
hile he’s a whole lot more political than I thought, he’s also a realist. Beckstein isn’t a career criminal, you’re right about that side of things. Not that it’d be a problem to nail her on conspiracy charges, or even treason—the DoJ has a hard-on for anyone it can label as a terrorist, especially if they’re collaborating with enemy governments to make war on the United States—but there’s no need to bring out the big stick if we don’t need it. If you can coax her into coming in willingly, I’ll do my best to persuade James to reactivate one of the old Cold War defector programs. You can tell her that, next time you see her.”

  “Cold War defector program?”

  “How do you think we used to handle KGB agents who wanted to come over? They’d worked for an enemy power, maybe did us serious damage, but you don’t see many of them doing time in Club Fed, do you? You don’t burn willing defectors, not if you want there to be more defectors in future. There were a couple of Eisenhower-era presidential directives to handle this kind of shit, and I think they’re still in force. It’s just a matter of working on James and figuring out what the correct protocol is.”

  “Okay, I think I see what you’re getting at.” Mike eased back against the pillows. “It fits with the timetable. The only problem is, she hasn’t gotten back in touch this week, has she? Are you tapping my home telephone?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.” Eric looked irritated. “I’m not aware of any contact attempts, but I’ll make inquiries. I’d be surprised if nobody was watching your apartment—or mine, for that matter—but that’s not my call to make.”

  “Okay. Then can you tell me where I am? Or when I’m going to be let out of this place, or what the hell is happening to my leg in there?” Mike gestured loosely at the bulky plastic brace and the cocoon of dressings. “It’s kind of disturbing…”

  “Shit.” Eric glanced away. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ll ask one of the medics to tell you. They told me was your leg was broken, got chewed up pretty badly—who the hell expected them to be using mantraps in this day and age?”

  “It’s not this day and age over there,” Mike offered dryly.

  Eric laughed, a brief bark: “Okay, you got me! Listen, I figure the medics should give you the full rundown. What they told me is that you’ll be off your legs for a few weeks and you won’t be running any marathons for the rest of this year, but you should make a full recovery. They were more worried about the infection you brought home, except it responds well to penicillin, of all things. Something about there being no antibiotic resistance in the sample they cultured…anyway. You’re in a private wing of Northern Westchester. We’ve closed it off to make it look like it’s under maintenance, the folks who’re seeing you are all cleared, there are guards on the front desk, and as soon as you’re ready to move we’re going to send you home. Officially you’re on medical leave for the next month, renewed as long as the doctors think necessary. Unofficially, once I confirm this with Dr. James, you’re going to be on station waiting for Iris Beckstein to get in touch. You can call in backup if you see fit—even a full surveillance team and SWAT backup—but from what you’re telling me, she’s got tradecraft, which would make that a high-risk strategy. Think you’re up to it?”

  “I’ll have to be.” Mike reached for the water again. “What a mess.”

  “That’s what you get when you go back to running agents.” Eric stood up. “Enough of that, I’ve got to go type all this up.” He frowned. “Be seeing you…”

  Begin Transcript:

  (Coldly.) “You realize that if anyone else had done this, I’d have had them shot.”

  “Yes, dear: I was counting on it. This way, hopefully the auld bitches won’t be expecting it.”

  “Sky Father, give me patience! What did you think you were playing at? We’ve got a war on, in case you hadn’t noticed—”

  “Oh, really? And I suppose the sky is a funny non red color, too? I’m not playing, I’m deadly serious: this is more important than your little war.”

  “Damn it, woman! Can’t you leave your mother’s embroidery circle alone just this once?”

  (Exasperated sigh.) “Who exactly do you think it was that started the war, brother?”

  “What—excuse me. You can’t be serious. Do you really expect me to believe that she’s in cahoots with Egon?”

  “Absolutely not! It would be beneath her dignity to be in cahoots with anyone below the rank of the Romish Pope-Emperor. But you know, she’s always been opposed to the idea of marrying into the royal family, hasn’t she? ‘Marrying beneath our station,’ indeed. She set up this stupid business with Creon by way of Henryk, in order to provoke Egon. And really, do you believe for a moment that Egon was a real threat to us, absent her maneuvering? She set Helge up as a target while she had me under her proxy’s thumb in Niejwein. If she hadn’t overreached herself I’d still be stuck there.”

  “That’s…curiously plausible. Hmm. You said she overreached herself. Do you mean Hildegarde didn’t expect Egon to mount the putsch then and there?”

  “I doubt it.” (Pause.) “She wouldn’t have shown her precious nose at the betrothal if she thought it was going to be cut off by the hussars, would she? But her intent was there. I know her schemes, the way her mind works. I think she meant to provoke Egon into doing something stupid, like the way he poisoned his younger brother all those years ago. She doesn’t like Helge, as you might have noticed. After what she did to her sister, do you question her ruthlessness?”

  “All right.” (Pause.) “Your mother’s embroidery circle dabbles in dangerous waters, and it is a bad idea to cross them. They’ve stirred up a third of the nobility against us and Egon’s raiders are harrowing the countryside with fire and the sword—at least until we force him to group his army so that we can crush it beneath our boot-heel. As we shall, when the time comes, and make no mistake—they have carronades and musketry, but we have machine guns and radios. But, still. You have not yet explained why you did that thing. You’d best try to explain it to me, and get your story straight—the council will be a much less receptive audience, sister.”

  “Alright. You’re not going to like it, though. Between your incredibly foolish machinations and mother-dearest’s scheming, I’ve nearly lost my only child. That’s not all I’ve lost, I’ll concede, but unlike some of our relatives, I hold her dear. If I can get her back, I will move heavens and underworld to do so. That’s the first thing I’d like to remind you of. The second point is—and this had better not be advanced before the council, or we are all lost beyond redemption—your niece knows about the insurance policy, but thanks to Henryk’s stupidity and mother-dearest’s venality, she’s on the outside. If you’d told me what bait you’d used on her, I could have settled things, but oh no—”

  “Henryk’s men got to her first. He knows—knew—too, you understand that?”

  “I’ve never understood why any of the old assholes should be allowed near the breeding program—”

  “Stop and think about it. If we didn’t at least let them observe, they’d have to assume it’s a conspiracy against them. (As indeed it is, but not in such crude terms.) Henryk’s participation was vital, to prevent a new civil war.”

  “Still. It’s a delicate matter, you used it as a carrot for Helge to get her teeth into, then you complain when the other donkey in the stable bites her?”

  “Enough. We can discuss might-have-beens some other time. But what of the American spy?”

  “If you must. When I found out who he was—at first he was an ‘injured clansman,’ you should remember—my first thought was to hang him from the nearest available tree: but it turned out he’d already spoken to her. It was too late.”

  “Sky Father, you mean—”

  “He was sent here to ‘talk to Miriam.’ He didn’t know where she’d gone after the battle—my guess is, with a Wu family locket, she’s somewhere in New Britain right now—but that’s not the point. She spoke to him. Let me assure you that hanging her ex-b
oyfriend would be exactly the most effective way to make her turn traitor. She grew up in America, remember. In my opinion, the least damaging option was to spin him a line of disinformation, let his leg fester a bit, then send him back. If we’re really lucky, we’ve got ourselves a back channel all the way to the White House. And if not—well, let’s just say, whoever debriefs him is going to get a usefully skewed view of our politics.”

  (Pause.) “That will probably keep the council from demanding your head.”

  “I know.” (Pause.) “Now let me draw you a diagram. The Americans have captured world-walkers and worked out how to make them serve. That means they know what they’re dealing with. Helge—being Miriam—is on the run, she knows about the breeding program, and one of their agents has already tried to seduce her. Why haven’t you tried to kill her?”

  “She’s my niece. You are not the only one who feels some residual loyalty, Patricia.”

  “Rubbish. There’s another reason, isn’t there? Is it something she knows? No? Oh. Something she did, no—the betrothal?”

  “Henryk wanted to ensure a fruitful marriage. He was in a hurry. He sent Dr. ven Hjalmar to see to her.”

  “Tell me you didn’t…”

  “I didn’t. Henryk did. With the queen mother’s connivance, of course. That’s the point, you see. It’s going to be a world-walker.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes. It was always going to be a very short betrothal, just long enough for the pregnancy test to be confirmed. And, do you know something? Once we’ve put down the pretender, all the surviving witnesses who were present at the palace will swear that it was, in fact, a lawful marriage ceremony, not just a betrothal.”

  “Holy mother of snakes! You’re telling me that with Egon out of the picture, she’s carrying the lawful heir to the throne?”

  “Yes. You did ask why I hadn’t issued a death warrant, didn’t you?”

  (Pause.) “Angbard, I’ve really got to hand it to you: that is the most crazy, fucked-up, Machiavellian conspiracy I’ve heard of since Watergate.” (Pause.) “Does Hildegarde know?”