The Merchants’ War tmp-4

by Charles Stross

  “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 remarked loudly.

  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 doppelgangered, 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 size 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 carefully banked: 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 for a moment. “Good enough,” he rasped, then glanced sideways at his neighbor, whom Helmut recognized—with a surprised double-take—as Earl Oliver Hjorth, an unregenerate supporter of the backwoods conservative cabal and the last man he’d have expected to see in the duke’s confidences. “I told you so.”

  The earl nodded, looking thoughtful.

  “Is there any word from Earl 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 idle 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 icy 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 doppelganger 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 thunderous. “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 here.

  “He’s a theoretician, isn’t he?” she asked Erasmus, as their carriage slid through the wooded hills. “What’s Lady Bishop’s interest?”

  He stared out of the window silently, until she thought he wasn’t going to reply. Then he cleared his throat. “Sir Adam has credibility. Old King George sought his counsel. Before Black Monday, he was a Member of Parliament, the first elected representative to openly declare for the radicals. And to be fair, the book—it’s his diagnosis of the ailment afflicting the body politic, not his prescription. He’s the chair of the central committee, Miriam. We need him in the capital—”

  There was a sudden jerk, and Miriam was pushed forward in her seat. The train began to slow. “What’s going on?”

  “Odd.” He frowned. “We’re still in open country.” The train continued to slow, brakes squealing below them. The window put the lie to Erasmus’s comment almost immediately, as a low row of wooden shacks slid past. Brakes still squealing, the long train drifted to a halt. Erasmus glanced at her, worried. “This can’t be good.”

  “Maybe it’s just engine trouble? Or the track ahead?” That’s right, clutch at straws, she told herself. Her hand went to her throat, where she had taken to wearing James Lee’s locket on a ribbon: at a pinch she could lift Erasmus and land them both in the same world as the Gruinmarkt, but…“I can get us out of here, but I know nothing about where we’d end up.”

  “We’ve got papers.” Now he sounded as if he was grasping at straws, and knew it.

  “Don’t anticipate trouble.” She swallowed.

  “Get your bag. If they want a bribe—”

  “Who?”

  “How should I know?” He pointed at the window: “Whoever’s stopped the train.”

  The door at the end of the compartment opened abruptly, and a steward stepped inside. He puffed out his brass-buttoned chest like a randy pigeon: “Sorry to announce, but there’s been a delay. We should be moving soon, but—” A bell sounded, ringing like a telephone outside the compartment. “’Scuse me.” He ducked back out.

  “What kind of delay?” Miriam asked.

  “I don’t know.” Erasmus stood up. “Got everything in your bag?” He raised an eyebrow.

  Miriam, thinking of the small pistol, swallowed, then nodded. “Yeah.” It was stuffy in the un–air-conditioned carriage, but she stood up and headed over to the coat rail by the door, to pick up her jacket and the bulging handbag she’d transferred the notebook computer into. “Thinking of getting off early?”

  “If we have to.” He frowned. “If this is—”

  Footsteps. Miriam paused, her coat over her left arm. “Yes?” she asked coolly as the door opened.

  It was a middle-aged man, wearing the uniform of a railroad ticket inspector. He looked upset. “Sir? Ma’am? I’m sorry to disturb you, but would you mind stepping this way? I’m sure we can sort this out and be on our way soon.”

  Erasmus glanced sideways at her. Miriam dry-swallowed, wishing her throat wasn’t dry. Bluff it out, or…? “Certainly,” he said smoothly: “Perhaps you can tell us what it’s about?”

  “In the station, sir,” said the inspector, opening the door of the carriage. The steps were already lowered, meeting the packed earth of a rural platform with a weathered clapboard hut—more like a signal box than a station house—hunched beside it. Only the orange groves to either side suggested a reason for there to be a station here. The inspector hurried anxiously over towards the building, not looking back until he neared the door. Miriam caught Burgeson’s eye: he nodded, slowly. The Polis would just have come aboard and arrested us, wouldn’t they? she told herself. Probably…

  As her companion approached the door, Miriam curled her fingers around the butt of her pistol. The inspector held the door open for them, his expression anxious. “The electrograph from your cousin requested a private meeting,” he said apologetically. “This was the best I could arrange—”

  “My cousin?” Miriam asked, her voice rising as the door opened: “I don’t have a cousin—”

  A whoosh of escaping steam dragged her attention up the line. Slowly and majestically, the huge locomotive was straining into motion, the train of passenger cars squealing and bumping behind it. Miriam spun round, far too late to make a run back for it. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath. A steam car was bumping along the rutted track that passed for a service road to the station. “Double shit.” Erasmus was frozen in the doorway, one hand seeming to rest lightly on the inspector’s shoulder. Another car came into view along the road, trailing the first one’s rooster-tail of dust.

  “Please don’t!” The inspector was nearly hysterical.

  “Who set this up?” Erasmus asked, his tone deceptively calm.

  “I don’t know! I was only following orders!” Miriam ducked round the side of the station house again, glancing in through the windows. She saw an empty waiting room furnished only with a counter, beyond the transom of which was an evidently empty ticket office. It’s not the station, she realized, near-hysteria bubbling under.

  “Into the waiting room,” she snapped, bringing the revolver out of her pocket. “Move!”

  The inspector stared at her dumbly, as if she’d grown a second head, but Erasmus nodded: “Do as she says,” he told the man. The inspector shuffled into the waiting room. Erasmus followed, his movements almost bored, but his right hand never left the man’s shoulder.

  “How long ’til they get here?” Miriam demanded.

  “I don’t know!” He was nearly in tears. “They just said to make you wait!”

  “They,” said Erasmus. “Who would they be?”

  “Please don’t kill me!”

  The door to the ticket office was ajar. Miriam kicked it open and went through it with her pistol out in front. The office was indeed empty. On the ticket clerk’s desk a message flimsy was waiting. Miriam peered at it in the gloom. DEAR CUZ S
IT TIGHT STOP UNCLE A SENDS REGARDS STOP WILL MEET YOU SOONEST SIGNED BRILL.

  Well, that settles it. Miriam lowered her gun to point at the floor and headed back to the waiting room.

  “—The Polis!” moaned the inspector. “I’ve got three wee ones to feed! Please don’t—”

  Shit, meet fan. Even so, it struck her as too big a coincidence to swallow. Maybe the Polis are tapping the wires? That would do it. Brilliana had figured out where she was, which train she was on, and signaled her to wait, not realizing someone else might rise to the bait.

  Burgeson’s expression was grim. “Miriam, the door, please.”

  “Let’s not do anything too hasty,” she said. “There’s an easy way out of this.”

  “Oh please—”

  “Shut up, you. What do you have in mind?”

  Miriam waved at the ticket office. “He’s not lying about my cousin: she’s on her way. Trouble is, if we bug out before she gets here she’s going to walk into them. So I think we ought to sit tight.” She closed the door anyway, and glanced round, looking for something to bar it with. “I can get us both out of here in an emergency,” she said, a moment of doubt cutting in when she recalled the extreme nausea of her most recent attempts to world-walk.

  The first car—more like a steam-powered minivan, Miriam noted—rounded the back of the station and disappeared from sight. Almost two minutes had passed since they reached the station. Miriam slid aside from the windows, while Burgeson did likewise. Boots thudded on the ground outside: the only sounds within the building were the pounding of blood in her ears and the quiet sobbing of the ticket inspector.

  “Mr. Burgeson!” The voice behind the bullhorn sounded almost jovial: “And the mysterious Mrs. Fletcher! Or should I say, Beckstein?” He made it sound like an accusation. “Welcome to California! My colleague Inspector Smith has told me all about you both and I thought, why, we really ought to have a little chat. And I thought, why not have it somewhere quiet-like, and intimate, instead of in town where there are lots of flapping ears to take note of what we say?”