"I don't think I'd fit. Not 'til I get this thing off my leg." Mike leaned across the back of the copilots' seat, staring at the controls. "Last time I saw this many screens was when I had to arrest a share trader—it's like a flying dealer desk!"
"Yeah, that's about right. Of course, if any of it goes wrong it adds a whole new meaning to the phrase, 'my computer crashed." MacDonald grinned. "Look, out there. And down. Get a feel for the visibility. What do you think our main problem is going to be?"
"What do I—oh." Mike frowned. "Okay, there's no GPS where we're going. The Clan don't have heavy weapons, at least nothing heavier than machine guns—as far as we know. Unless they've somehow bought some missiles, and they're pretty much limited to whatever they can carry by hand from one side to the other. So—" He glanced up at the rotor blade arching overhead and followed it out into the middle distance. "Hmm. Where we're going there are a lot of trees. And the places we want to get inside of are walled. Is that going to be a problem?"
"You ever seen Black Hawk Down?" It was a rhetorical question. "We've got ways of dealing with trees. What we really don't like—our second worst nightmare—is buildings with armed hostiles overlooking the LZ. In general, just don't go there. The ground pounders can secure the target then we can land and pick them up. The alternative is to risk us taking one on the rotor head, in which case we all get to walk home."
"What's your worst nightmare?"
"MANPADs," He said bluntly. "Man-portable air defense missiles, that is. Not your basic SAM-7, which is fundamentally obsolete, but late-model Stingers or an SA-16 Igla—that's Russian-made and as deadly as a Stinger—can really ruin your day. From what I've been reading, your bad guys could carry them across, they only weigh about twenty kilos. We've got countermeasures and flare dispensers, of course, but if they've bothered to get hold of a bunch of MANPADs and learn how to use them properly we could be in a world of hurt."
Mike nodded. "That wouldn't be good."
"Well." MacDonald slapped the top of the instrument console affectionately. "It's not as bad as it sounds. Because they won't be expecting anyone to come calling by chopper. It's never happened to them before, right? So they've got no reason to expect it now. Plus, we have God and firepower on our side. As long as the ARMBAND supply holds up we can ship over specops teams and their logistics until the cows come home. You do not want to get between a Delta Forces specialist and his ticket home, if you follow my drift, it doesn't give you a good life expectancy. So it's all down to the guys with the black boxes."
"I don't know anything about that side of things." Mike shrugged. "For that, you need to talk to the colonel. But I would guess that we've got a bunch of GPS coordinates you can feed into your magic steering box of tricks; sites the Clan used as safe houses in this world, so they're almost certainly collocated with their installations in the other place. We don't know what they look like over there, but that's beside the point if we know where to find them."
"Well, it also helps to know what we're meant to do when we get there." MacDonald grinned briefly. "Although that oughta be obvious—otherwise they'd have sent someone else. So what do you know that you can tell me?"
"I don't. Know, that is. What you're cleared for, for example." Mike paused. "I'm just the monkey—Colonel Smith, he's the organ-grinder. You've been over to the other world, you've got the basics, right? But this is new to me. Until this morning, I hadn't had more than a hint that you guys even existed."
"There are too many Chinese walls in this business. Not our fault."
"Yeah, well, you know this didn't come out of nowhere, did it?" Mike decided to take a calculated risk. "The folks who live over there found us first. And they're not friendly."
"No shit? I'd never have guessed."
"Well, that's the punch line. Because the target where they live—it's another version of North America, only wild and not particularly civilized. I've been over there on foot and, hell, we're not getting very far if we get stuck down there. So I would guess that's where you guys come in. But I don't know for sure because nobody's told me"—He shrugged—"but I think we're about to find out. Maybe we should go find that office now. Find out what the official line is."
11
party to conspiracy
Throwing a party and inviting all your friends and family was not, Miriam reminded herself ruefully, a skill that she'd made much use of over the past few years—especially on the scale that was called for now.
For one thing, she had status; as a member of the council of regents that had assembled itself from the wreckage of the Clan Council's progressive faction, and as a countess in her own right, she wasn't allowed to do things by half. A low-key get-together in the living room with finger food and quiet music and a bring-your-own-bottle policy was right out, apparently. If a countess—much less a queen-widow—threw a party, arrangements must be made for feeding and irrigating not only the guests, but: their coachmen, arms-men, and servants; their horses; their hangers-on, courtiers, cousins, and children in the process of being introduced to polite society; her own arms-men and servants; and the additional kitchen and carrying staff who it would be necessary to beg, borrow, or kidnap in order to feed all of the above. Just the quantity of wine that must be brought in beggared the imagination.
"Old King Harald, he had a reputation for bankrupting any lord who made trouble for him. He used to invite himself and his court to stay for a couple of weeks, paying a house call—with six hundred mouths to feed." Brill grinned at Miriam over the clipboard she was going through. "Two thousand three hundred bottles of spiced wine and eighty casks of small beer is nothing for a weekend retreat, my lady."
"Oh god. Am I going to bankrupt myself if I make a habit of this?"
"Potentially, yes." Brill lowered her clipboard. "You must know, a third of the royal budget was spent on food and drink for the court. I know this sounds insane to you, but this is the reality of our economy—peasants produce little surplus, knowing that it can be taken from them in taxes. However." She made a note on her checklist: "Four oxen, two hundred turkey-fowl, twelve pigs, a quarter-ton of fresh-caught cod, six barrels of salted butter, two tons of wheat . . . yes, you can afford this from your household funds. Monthly, even. It increases your outgoings tenfold, but only for three days. And once you have demonstrated your hospitality, there is no reason to hold such entertainments merely for your courtiers: Say the word and those you wish to see will visit to pay their respects. Next week's festivity demonstrates your wealth and power and establishes you on the social circuit."
"You make that sound as if it's something I'm going to have to repeat."
"My lady." Brilliana's tone was patient rather than patronizing: "Nothing you do now can divert you from your destiny to become a shining star in the social firmament—well, nothing short of raving at the moon—but how seriously the other stars of the stratum take you depends on how you comport yourself in this affair. Many of your peers are shallow, vapid, prone to superficial gossip, and extremely malicious. Yet you—or I—cannot live without their sanction. Your status as queen-widow depends on their consent and their consent is contingent on you being the queen-widow they expect—in public."
"Huh. By throwing a huge party I give them lots of stuff to gossip about, though." Miriam frowned. "But if I don't throw a huge party they'll gossip anyway, with even less substance and possibly more malice because I haven't stuffed their stomachs with good food. I can't win, can I?"
Brill nodded. "My humble advice is to treat it as a matter of gravest business, and to attend to every plaint and whine that your supplicants—and you will have many—bring to your attention. Then ignore them, as is your wish, but at least let them talk at you."
"I'm not going to ignore them." Miriam picked moodily at a loose thread on the left sleeve of her day-dress. "Damn it. You remember my Dictaphone? I need it, or one like it. Make it one that runs on microcassettes, and make sure there's a spare set of batteries and spare tapes for, oh, let's
go mad and say twenty-four hours. Add a pair of desktop recorders with on/off pedals to the shopping list, and another laptop, and some kind of printer. We've got the generator, right? Let's use it. Can you find me a couple of people who know how to use a keyboard and speak both English and hochsprache who we can trust? I need an office staff for this job. . . ."
Brill closed her mouth with a snap. "Uh. An office?"
"Yeah." Miriam's smile flickered on for a moment. "You've framed it for me: This is a political do, isn't it? And I'm a politician. So I'm going to listen to everybody, and because I can't take it all in, I'm going to record what they say and respond later, off-line. But somebody's got to type up all those petitions and turn them into stuff I can deal with."
"You need secretaries." Brill picked up her clipboard, flipped over a page, and began making notes. "Trustworthy—I know. Second sons or daughters of allies? To assist the queen-widow's household? I believe . . . yes, I can do that. Anything else?"
"Yes. I want a photographer."
"A photographer." Brill frowned. "That is very unusual? . . ."
"Yes, well. If anyone makes trouble, tell the truth: I need to learn to recognize people, and because I'm new around here and don't want to give offense by not recognizing people the second time I see them, I want photographs with names attached. But otherwise—hmm. It's a party. People are on display, right? So have a photo printer to hand, and offer to take portraits. Do you think that would work?"
"We don't have a photo printer. . . ." Brill trailed off. She blinked, surprised. "You offer portraits, while you compile mug shots? . . ."
"Old political campaign trick, kid, Mom told me about it. She did some campaigning back in the eighties when she was married to—" Miriam stopped, her throat closing involuntarily. Dad, she thought, a black sense of despair suffocating her for a moment. "Shit."
Brill stared at her. "Helge?"
Miriam shook her head.
"Nara!" Brill snapped her fingers. "A cup of the slack for my lady, at once." The maidservant, who had been hiding in some dark recess, darted away with a duck of her head that might have been a bow. "Helge?" Brill repeated gently.
"A memory." Miriam stared at the backs of her hands. Smooth skin, unpainted nails—nail paint was an alien innovation here—and she remembered holding her father's hands, years ago; it seemed like an eternity ago. A happier, more innocent lifetime that belonged to someone else. "You know how it is. You're thinking about something completely different and then—bang."
"Your father." Brill cleared her throat. "You do not speak of Lord Alfredo, do you."
Miriam sighed. "The man is dead, and besides, it was in another country a long time ago." She glanced at Brill. "He died nearly ten years ago. He was a good man." She tried to swallow. "It seems so long ago. I'm being silly! . . ."
"No you're not." Brill laid her clipboard down as the door opened. It was the maid, bearing a tray with a bottle and two cups on it. "You've been driving yourself hard today, my lady; a cup and a pause to refresh your nerves will not delay you any more than overtiring yourself would do."
"A cup." Miriam focused on the tray as Hara placed it on the table and retreated, bowing. Over the weeks she'd been working on her ability to ignore the omnipresent servants; or rather, to avoid embarrassing anyone—herself or them—by recognizing them as social individuals. Long habit of politeness vied with newly learned behavior as she held herself back from thanking the woman (which would only commence both of them on a possibly disastrous social minuet of interaction that might result in the maid losing her job or being flogged for insolence if she misspoke). "Pour one for yourself, Brill. I'm—you're right. Anyway, what am I meant to be doing next?"
Brilliana produced a pocketwatch from her sleeve. "Hmm. You were due for a fitting half an hour ago, but that doesn't matter. The seamstresses already have all the toiles they need, they can embroider while they wait. Hmm again. There is the menu to consider, and your household's clothing, and the fireworks, and small gifts and largesse, but"—her gaze flickered to Miriam's face—"we can do that tomorrow. Milady? Right now, you're going to take a break. Please?"
Ding-dong.
The doorbell chime died away. The short dark-haired woman swore quietly and put down the vegetable knife she'd been using on a handful of onions. "What now?" she asked herself rhetorically, wiping her hands on a towel as she walked towards the front door. Last week it had been the Jehovah's Witnesses, the week before . . . well, at least it won't be them. They never ring. They just appeared in her living room, disturbingly self-possessed and always armed.
"Yes?" she said, opening the door.
"Hi, Paulie," said Brilliana, smiling hesitantly.
Paulette gaped for a moment. "You'd better come in." She took in Brill's companion: "You, too?"
"Thank you," said Olga, as they retreated into the front hall. She closed the door carefully. "Miriam sent us."
"Looks nice," Brill added offhand as she looked around. "That wallpaper, is it new?"
"I put it up six months ago!" Paulette stared at her in exasperation and muted fear. At her last visit, Brill had hinted darkly about the extremes the Clan would go to in order to preserve their secrecy. "How is she? Did you find her?"
"Yes." Brilliana grimaced. "Luckily I found her before things went too badly awry. And there is gold at the end of this tunnel."
"Politics! Who needs it?" Olga chirped brightly, momentarily slipping into her well-practiced airhead role. "One needs must be patient while these things work themselves out. But in any case, we thought we ought to visit. It's well past time we had a talk."
"Urn." Paulette backed towards the kitchen. "Sure. How would you like to do it over an iced tea?"
"I'd like that just fine."
Ten minutes later, with mugs in hand, they were seated around the coffee table in the lounge. "Have you had any official visits?" asked Brill. "Men in black, that sort of thing?" She said it lightly, as if half-joking, but Paulette knew how serious it was.
"No, nothing I've noticed. No visits, no strange minivans, none of that sort of thing."
"Fine." Brill sounded reassured. Olga, however, looked thoughtful.
"Don't you want to check the phone lines?" she asked, unable to help herself.
"Already done." Brill's smile was unsettling. "I left a device behind on my last visit. It would have told me if there was any sign of tampering."
"We hope," Olga added, with a disturbing smile.
"Oh." Paulette took a mouthful of her drink to stop herself saying anything she might regret later. "Well that's alright then." Brill showed no sign of noticing any irony. "So you came to have a little chat. After nearly six months of nothing at all." She squinted at Brill. "And you brought Olga. How nice." Sarcasm was risky, but Paulette was a realist: If the news was really bad, these two wouldn't have invited themselves in for a social. There had to be a value proposition in play here, an offer too good to refuse. But at least they were here to make an offer, not to simply shoot her out of hand. The Clan were comparatively civilized, for a bunch of barely postmedieval gangsters.
"She sent us," said Olga. "She told us to tell you, you were right. But that is not why we are here. It appears the US government has noticed us."
"Oh." Paulette put her glass down. "Shit."
There was a moment's heartfelt silence.
"Just how much have the feds noticed you guys?" Paulette asked carefully, meaning: Am I likely to get any of that attention?
"Thoroughly." Olga looked tired for a moment. "Brill?"
"There's an entire new federal agency devoted to us." Brill took a mouthful of tea, frowned. "Super-black, off the books, siphoning money off the war appropriations and the NSA and the CIA, as far as we can tell. They've captured couriers and used them as mules to get into our world. Most recently they"—she swallowed—"used a backpack nuke to send us a message."
"Oh Jesus." There didn't seem to be anything else to say to that. "That's not policing, that's war."<
br />
"Exactly," Brilliana said heavily.
"Which leaves us with problems." Olga picked up the thread. "We can no longer do business over here as usual"—business being the somewhat less legal side of the import-export trade—"and furthermore, this mess coincided with a political upset back home. Everything's up in the air."
"And you're off the reservation," Paulette said drily.
"Yes, there is that." Olga glanced sidelong at Brill. "There's no telling how long it'll last." Brill shook her head slightly. "But anyway . . . we came to apologize for dragging you into this mess."
"Isn't it a bit late for that?"
"Not necessarily. We can cut you loose. You were never directly involved in our principal business operations. There's no record of you outside of a few handwritten ledgers in Niejwein, and the office Hel- Miriam bought, and there's no sign that the feds are aware of what she was up to on her own behalf. I think if we cover your tracks we can be confident that they won't stumble across you." She halted awkwardly for a moment. "The flip side is, if they identify you as a person of interest, we won't be able to do anything to protect you. We won't even know."
"Ah." Paulette contemplated screaming, but it didn't seem like it would do any good. "What could you do to help?"
"Well, that depends." Olga put her hands between her knees, clearly uneasy. "Whatever happens next, the Clan will no longer be acting as, as an extradimensional drugs cartel anymore. The feds consider us to be a hostile government: Should we not act upon our status? Furthermore, the changes among the all-highest mean that they are not entirely wrong. Anyway, I didn't come here merely to say we are cutting you loose."
The Revolution Business: Book Five of the Merchant Princes Page 27
