Here it comes. "What have you got in mind?" Paulette asked wearily. "And is it going to just evaporate under me again, three months down the line? . . ."
"That wasn't Miriam's doing." Olga grimaced. "You should not underestimate the power of the enemies she made. She spent months under house arrest. Later, you can ask her yourself if you are so inclined. But this is different."
"In what way is it different?" Why am I doing this? Paulette asked herself. Am I trying to get myself sucked in again? It was true, the money had been good—and Miriam was a friend, and it beat the ordinary daily grind she'd had before, and the tedious ad-min job she'd had to take up since; but the downside, attracting the attention of the government, and not in a good way, was almost enough to make her short-circuit the process and say "no" immediately. Only residual curiosity was keeping her going.
"Miriam has both a secure position and a plan," said Olga. "She is in a position where, if she plays her hand correctly, she can set policy for the whole Clan. I am not entirely clear on her design, but she said I should tell you that unlike the old trade, this one is both legal and ethically sound. She said it would also need a lot of organizing at this end, materials and books and journals and specialist expertise to buy in . . . and to be fire-walled completely from the Clan's historic operations. Is that of interest to you?"
Paulette nodded. She'd visited New Britain once at Miriam's behest, found it a strange and disorienting experience, like a trip to another century. "Well, it's a plan. But what makes this time different?"
Olga glanced at Brill, as if for support. "She's the queen," she said.
Paulette blinked. "Queen," she repeated. It was the last thing she'd have expected to hear.
"Yes. You know, woman who sits on a throne? Sometimes wears a crown?"
"Eh." Paulette blinked again, then looked at Brilliana. Who was watching her, a flicker of tightly controlled amusement twitching her lips. "She's not joking, is she?"
"Power is no joking matter." The younger woman's eyes were cold. "We've just fought a civil war over it. And now Helge is carrying the heir to the throne—long story, you do not need to look shocked—we would be fools not to seize the moment. And we need a new world to exploit, now that this one has shown itself hostile. That much has now become glaringly clear even to the most reactionary of the conservative wing."
"Okay." Paulette licked suddenly dry lips. She could feel her heartbeat. "So what's in it for me?" If you say old time's sake I may just punch you . . . this was the proverbial offer too good to refuse. No way will they just let me go now.
"A tenth of a point of gross," said Olga. "But you don't have to say yes now. Miriam is holding a meeting in a few days of her accomplices and confidantes. If you are interested, you may attend." She slid a business card across the table. "Phone this number no later than four o'clock tomorrow afternoon and say yes or no, then follow the post officer's instructions; they will see you across. The nature of the business, and your role in it, is such that if you choose to decline the offer, you have nothing to fear—you could spill everything you know, and the US government would learn nothing of use. Oh, and she sends you this. You can treat it as a nonreturnable advance against wages." She slid a checkbook across the table to rest atop the card. "Half a million bucks in the account, Paulie. Try not to spend it all at once."
It was just another summer party, held on the afternoon of a muggy, humid summer day twelve miles outside of Niejwein, in the grounds of a fortified mansion out near what would—in another world—be Lincoln, Massachusetts. Summer parties were a seasonal fixture among the aristocracy of Niejwein, required to live in proximity to their ruler and lacking in any kind of civil society that might host more public entertainments; but this was also the first Miriam had ever held. Just a summer party, Miriam reminded herself, glassy-eyed, as yet more carriages and their obligatory escorts of footmen and mounted guards drew up, disgorging men and women in the peacock finery of the nobility: It was more like the Academy Awards, minus the onlookers and the network television presence, but with added cockfighting behind the woodshed.
Sir Alasdair had a third of his men dispersed around the perimeter of her commandeered residence, another third staking out the doppelganger house in Lincoln, and the remaining cadre of guards on alert downstairs. Brilliana had the receiving line under control, looking for all the world like the lady of the house herself—and leaving Miriam (again wearing the persona of Helge, Prince Creon's putative widow) free to focus on those she wished to talk to. Two teenage scions of the inner family lines, Barbara and Magraet, had been induced into the household for transcription and translation and ensconced in a back room with a bottle of wine and a supply of spare batteries and Dictaphone tapes. And Earl Riordan—no, Baron Riordan, a reward by order in council for his support, paid out of the estates of several drastically pruned noble family trees—had sent her a dozen hard-eyed Security agents in the livery of waiters and other domestics. There'd be no trouble here, clearly. "It's all under control," Brill had assured her that morning. "Just relax and enjoy the affair."
"Relax? In the middle of this?" Miriam had taken in the organized chaos.
"Yes, Helge, it's your job to be serene. Leave the panicking to me." And Brill had left her to the mercy of her wardrobe staff, who had spent weeks preparing their idea of a party dress for her, and who had never heard of the word excess.
Which left her standing still in an attempt not to perspire in the stuffy warmth of the blue receiving room, trying to smile and make small talk and juggle a glass of wine and a peacock-feather fan that barely stirred the air in front of her. She was surrounded: With Sir Alasdair standing discreetly to one side, and a permanent floating mob of relatives and hangers-on trying to approach her from the front, she was unable to move, reliant on the two ladies-in-waiting hovering nearby.
"—The effect on the harvest will, unfortunately, be bad, your highness, with so many destitute; the pretender's army ate what they could and burned the rest, and banditry and famine follow such as night follows day."
Miriam—no, Helge—smiled politely as Lord Ragnr and Styl droned on, talking at her rather than to her, but most accurately delivering his report to the small condenser mic hidden in her corsage. "And how much has been lost, exactly?" she nudged, shaking her head minutely as Sir Alasdair raised an eyebrow and mimed a shoving motion.
"Oh, lots! I myself counted—" That was Lord Ragnr and Styl's vice, Miriam remembered. In another world he'd have been an adornment to a major accountancy firm's boardroom. In this one, he was a liability to his profession (lord oath-sworn to Duke Lofstrom and ruler of some boring fishing villages, a small chunk of forest, and a bunch of peasant hamlets; performance appraisal based on ability to hunt, drink, and kill the duke's enemies). But she'd listened to him before, and he seemed to think this gave him license to bend her ear in future, and what he had to say was deeply tedious but clearly a matter of profound importance for the business of future good governance. And so, she stood and smiled, and listened to the man.
"—By your leave, my lord?" Miriam blinked back to the present as Sir Alasdair gently interrupted. "My liege, your grandam is about to be announced."
"She is?" Miriam felt the color draining from her cheeks. Well shit! "You're certain about that?" I thought she was dead!
"Absolutely." Sir Alasdair's expression was imperturbable: She noted the colorless wire coiling from his left ear to the collar of his tunic.
"Oh. Well." She took a breath of musty, overheated air. "My lord, you must, please, forgive me? But I have not seen my grandmother since before the insurrection, and"—if I clap eyes on her before I die of old age it's too soon—"I really must pay my respects." I'd rather piss on her grave, but I suppose I'd better find out why she's here.
Ragnr and Styl seemed disappointed, for some reason, but took it in good spirit, and after much backing and flowery commiseration she was free. More backing and sidling and some whispered instructions and her ladies-in-waiting f
ormed a flying wedge, or at any rate a creeping one. As they moved towards the door with Miriam in their wake she recognized a gaggle of familiar faces. "Sir Huw?" she called.
"Milady!"
She smiled, unforced: "Did you bring your results?"
Huw nodded. "I'm ready to speak. Whenever you want me to."
"Good. Upstairs, half an hour?"
Huw ducked his head and vanished into a knot of younger Clan members. Miriam blinked as she noticed Elena, almost unrecognizable in a red gown with a long train. Are they an item? Miriam wondered, before dismissing the question. Where's Mom? I need her advice before I confront Hildegarde.
"Milady?" It was Gerta, pressed into service as an attendant. "If it please you . . ."
"I need to circulate," she mouthed over her shoulder. "Sir Alasdair? . . ."
The press around her began to give way as she made progress towards the main hall. Despite the open doors and windows the air was no less close, thanks to the milling clusters of visitors and their attendants, and the copious quantities of rose water and other perfumes with which they attended to their toilet. Out here in the countryside, the humidity and stink of summer was a mere echo of conditions in the capital; though the gods had little to say against bathing (unlike the early Christians), the smell of old sweat and unwashed clothing was unpleasantly noticeable.
"Make way for her grace!" called one of her servants. "Make—"
"So the rumors were accurate. You did survive."
Miriam turned to face the speaker. "I could say the same of you. Grandmother."
The grand dowager Duchess Hildegarde was in her eighties, one of those octogenarians who seemed to persist through a process of mummification. She stared at Miriam, her eyelids drooping as if in disinterest. "I find that interesting," she said flatly. "The odds were not in your favor."
For a moment Miriam flickered back to that bewildering and fearful night, remembering James Lee's evident flattery—and offer of a locket bearing the Lee clan's deviant knotwork: In retrospect an incitement to defect. She managed a polite smile. "I try to make a habit of beating bad odds."
"Hah. You'll continue to face them, girl, as long as you keep playing your fancy games. You ignore the old ways at your peril; others cleave to them, and your fingers can be burned just as easily by the fire you didn't light. Although you do seem to have a fine talent for getting others to rescue you from situations of your own devising. But on another matter, have you seen your dam? I must have words with her. We need to clear the air."
Her grandmother's offhanded condescension didn't surprise Miriam; but the suggestion that the air needed clearing was something else. "What's there to talk about? I thought you'd disowned her!"
"Well." Hildegarde's cheek twitched into something that might have been a grimace. "That was then; this is politics, after all."
"On the contrary, this is my party, and I'm shocked, absolutely shocked, that anybody might want to discuss matters of politics here." Miriam glared at her grandmother. "Or haven't you worked it out yet?"
Hildegarde looked her up and down. "Oh, Patricia raised you well," she breathed. "And I could ask exactly the same of you, but you wouldn't listen. Best save my breath. You'll understand eventually." Then, before Miriam could think of a suitable response, she turned and shuffled aside.
"What was that about?" asked Brill, materializing at her elbow: "I could have sworn—"
"I wish I knew." Miriam stared after the dowager, perturbed. "I have the strangest feeling that she was trying to send me some sort of message I'm meant to understand. Only somebody forgot to tell me how to mind read."
"She is"—Brill stared at the broad shoulders of the dowager's arms-men—"a most powerful and dangerous lady."
"And what makes it worse is the fact that she thinks I ought to be on her side." Miriam curled her lower lip.
"Really?" Brill glanced sidelong at her. "I was going to say, I believe she thinks she is looking out for your best interests. Being your grandam, after all."
Miriam shrugged uncomfortably. "Save me from people acting in my best interests. Without asking first," she added.
"I wouldn't—" Brill paused and cupped a hand to her left ear. Like Sir Alasdair, she was wearing a wire. "Ah, Baron Isserlis is soon to arrive, my lady. I must leave you for a while. Where should I tell him you want to meet, again?"
"With the others: in the red room, upstairs, at six o'clock. That's where I told Laurens to put the projection screen and laptop, anyway."
"If that goes for all of them? . . ."
"It does. Except for the obvious exceptions."
"The B-list."
"Wine 'em, dine 'em, and keep 'em out of my hair while I'm making the pitch." Miriam fanned herself. "Can you do that?"
Brill smiled. "Watch me," she said. "It's your job to relax and enjoy yourself. Then give a good presentation!"
In a mosquito-infested marsh on the banks of a sluggish river, a draft of peasants from the estates of the Earl of Dankfurt had assembled a scaffold. The scaffold, of stout timber with a surface of planking, bore a winch and some additional contrivances, and despite its crude appearance it had been positioned very carefully indeed. Blood and sweat had gone into its location, and the use of imported surveying tools to measure very precisely indeed its distance and altitude relative to the four reference points where Clan couriers had established accurate GPS locations before crossing over from Washington D.C.
(Accurately locating anything in the Sudtmarkt was problematic, but where there was a need—and urgency—there was a way: and with four reference points, theodolites, and standardized lengths of chain, positioning to within a couple of inches at a distance of up to a mile was perfectly achievable. Besides, Gunnar had insisted on three-inch accuracy with the icy certainty of punishment from above to back him up. And so it was done.)
"This is the entry point?" asked the visitor.
"Yes, my lord." Gunnar turned and gestured towards a nearby copse of trees, climbing the gentle slope. "And right over—there, past the tree line—you should just be able to see the tower for the department store on Pennsylvania Avenue. Site three is, I'm afraid, not visible from here, being on the other side of the river, but construction is complete. We carried out our intrusion tests yesterday shortly after closing time and everything worked perfectly."
"Intrusion tests?"
"A courier, outfitted with cover as a tourist, to make sure our proposed sites were workable. They crossed over ten minutes after the museum closed, to ensure there were no human witnesses, then made their way out when the alarm system went off. Their story was that they'd been in the rest room and hadn't noticed the time. Along the way, they check for motion detectors in the rest rooms, that sort of thing, to ensure a witness-free transit point."
"Excellent. And the others?"
"Shops are a little bit harder to probe, so I checked the store in reverse, myself—I crossed over from the other side. Found we were three inches too low on this side, so I raised the platform accordingly. We will have to risk their store security noticing that they lost a shopper, but they are most likely to assume that I was simply an artful thief."
One of the visiting lord's companions was making notes in a planner; another of them held a large parasol above his lordship's head. His lordship looked thoughtful for a few seconds. "And how do you probe the third site?"
"Ah, well." Gunnar froze for a few seconds. "That one we can't send a world-walker into. We can fool store security guards who are looking for shoplifters, but soldiers with machine guns are another matter. We will just have to do it blind and get it right first time. On the other hand, I managed to get a verified GPS reading and a distance estimate to the facade from the car park by pretending to be lost tourists, and the outer dimensions of the building itself are well-known. I am certain—I place my honor on it—that site three is within four or five feet of the geometric center of the complex, at ground level."
"What about the subway station?"
"It's been closed since 9/11, unfortunately, otherwise that would be ideal. Damned amateurs with their box-cutters . . ."
"Leave me. Not you, Gunnar."
Gunnar stared at his visitor. "My lord?"
The parasol- and planner-bearers and the bodyguards were also staring at his lordship. "All of you, go and wait with the carriage a while. I must talk with Sir Gunnar in confidence."
Heads ducked; without further ado, the servants and guards backed away then turned and filed towards the edge of the clearing. His lordship watched with ill-concealed impatience until the last of them was out of easy earshot, before turning to Gunnar.
"You must tell me the truth, sir. I'm informed that our superiors have a definite goal in mind, for which they require certain assurances. Both our necks—and those of others—are at risk should this scheme fail. If, in your estimate, it is doomed, please say so now. There will be censure, certainly, but it will be nothing compared to the punishment that will fall on both of us should we make the attempt and fail."
Gunnar nodded thoughtfully. "Your staff, how many of them? . . ."
"At least two spies, for opposing factions."
"Ah, well that makes it clear, then." Gunnar took a deep breath. "This is a huge risk we're taking. And you just revealed your internal security coverage. You know that, don't you?"
"The spies in question will have a boating accident involving alligators around sunset this evening." His lordship smiled humorlessly. "We—my superiors—have chewed the plan to pieces. Our other choices are no better. The pretender saw to that with his betrothal-day massacre and the radicals have been happy to complete his work. But. My question. Can you make it work?"
"Well." Gunnar raised his hat to run fingers through his hair. "I believe so, given the men and the machines. Sites one and two are not professionally secured. The Anglischprache, they rely too much on machines to do the work of men. I will need a team of four world-walkers for each of those two sites, including two Security men who can kill without hesitation if necessary. And the, ah, janitor's carts we discussed. They will need to synchronize their time in advance, and if anyone is out of position it will fail. And you will need to supply the devices and they must work, and at least one man on each team must be trained in setting their timers. But I am, um . I believe we have a one in fifty chance of failure for sites one and two. It's a solid plan."
The Revolution Business: Book Five of the Merchant Princes Page 28
