“Fifteen minutes?” Rita’s voice rose.
“Yes. It’s risky enough as it is. Ms. Douglas, Mrs. Burgeson has powerful enemies. Unilaterally opening negotiations with the US government is horribly risky: if it backfires it potentially gives them grounds to charge her with treason and espionage. You they’d see as leverage—a hostage.”
“But I don’t even know her!”
“You know that, I know that, and she knows that. The other side do not. You will have fifteen minutes—then we’ll take you back down to Irongate and send you home, along with instructions to contact us safely in future.” Above their heads, the engine note began to change. The chopper began to slow. They were flying over buildings, three- to six-story blocks. The skyline was unfamiliar to Rita: the southern end of Manhattan in this world boasted no thicket of dense-packed skyscrapers, but an array of neoclassical domes and Gothic cathedrals and something that looked for all the world like a castle.
Well, fuck, Rita thought, staring blankly out through the chopper’s bubble nose at the approaching jagged horizon of triumphal arches, palaces, and huge government buildings that eclipsed even the Capitol in D.C. with their bumptious pomposity. I blew the mission, got captured, blabbed when questioned, and now they’re just going to run me through an interview with the evil queen, pat me on the head, and send me home … She’d thought she was at rock-bottom when the Inspector was giving her the third degree, but this was positively mortifying.
The chopper slowed, circled, and began to descend toward a lawn that separated two marble-fronted wings of a giant palace. “Don’t try to world-walk from here,” Miss Thorold advised her. “This whole area is built up. You’d break your neck or get run over by a yellow cab. We’ll have you home by evening.”
Rita swallowed. “I’ll be good,” she said hoarsely, unsure whether it was a promise or a threat.
* * *
Everything now seemed to happen very fast, with the inevitability of a march to a firing squad. The blades spooled down as the chopper settled on its skids and doors opened. The snick of a handcuff around her right wrist locked her to Inspector Morgan, who seemed mildly irritated. They walked to the building, then along endless corridors and a wide marble staircase under stained-glass windows. There were flags, flags everywhere: an unfamiliar field of gold stars superimposed on a white circle on a red background. Another corridor, past windows overlooking a broad courtyard and oil paintings of men in wigs, white stockings, and polished steel cuirasses. Then a door, opening as a man’s voice said, “Come in.”
Now they were upstairs, the handcuff was unlocked: Rita found herself in an outer office, desk against one wall, inner office door ajar. “Come on,” said Miss Thorold. “George, this is Ms. Douglas. We’re expected. Please ensure we have privacy.” To Rita: “Can you push my chair for me?”
“I guess so.” Miss Thorold’s bodyguard, Jack, gave her a warning look as he surrendered his place to her.
“We’ll wait here,” said Inspector Morgan.
“Yes, you will.” Miss Thorold pointed: “Rita, that way.” Heart in her mouth, Rita pushed the chair forward into the open doorway.
“You took your time getting here,” said the middle-aged lady behind the desk as she rose to her feet. “Close the—” She stopped and stared. “Olga. Is this who I think it is?”
“Shut the door, Rita,” said Miss Thorold. “Yes, I think so. What’s your birthday, Rita?”
“May eleventh,” she said automatically, as the door latched behind her. She couldn’t look away from the evil queen. She didn’t look particularly evil. She had dark hair, and a middle-aged face that had been pretty once and was now succumbing to gravity’s pull. Her costume—no, that’s what they wore here—was odd to Rita’s eyes, something like a shalwar kameez, but tailored and draped with ruffles at collar and cuffs. “Are you my birth mother?”
“The DNA results won’t be ready for another day,” said Miss Thorold.
“I don’t need them.” The commissioner, Mrs. Burgeson, stepped out from behind her desk and slowly approached, staring at Rita. “I spent the eleventh of May 1994 in a bed in the Obstetrics Department at Mass General.” Her eyes were very dark: pupils dilated, staring at some inner vista. “And you’re a world-walker.”
Rita stepped out from behind Olga’s wheelchair. “Yeah, right,” she said, crossing her arms defensively. The evil queen looked as if she’d been punched in the gut. You’re not getting to me that easily, Rita thought silently, even though she felt shivery, gripped by a nameless emotion that she wished she could banish. “Miss Thorold here says you’ve got a message for me.”
“Yes, I do.” Mrs. Burgeson swallowed. For a few seconds she looked as if she was choking, but the moment passed. She turned and walked slowly back behind her desk, as if ten years had landed on her shoulders in an instant. “Come here and sit down. Both of you.”
Rita wheeled Olga up to the front of the desk, then perched on the edge of a spindly visitor’s chair that looked like it belonged in a museum. Mrs. Burgeson, she couldn’t help noticing, had a very modern laptop occupying pride of place on her tooled leather desktop, leaving the hulking CRT terminal and its oddly unrecognizable keyboard to sulk in a corner.
“Rita—” Mrs. Burgeson stopped, then shook her head as some internal censor brought her tongue up short. “I’m sorry, there’s so much to say and so little time. I wish we had longer—”
“Why? So you could explain why you dumped me?” Rita asked, keeping her tone light, even though her words filled her with nausea. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to talk about. I get that you didn’t want me: I’m chill; I’ve got a real family back home who love me anyway.”
Miss Thorold glared at her: if looks could kill, Rita would have been incinerated on the spot. “Why don’t we stick to business?” Olga suggested grimly.
Mrs. Burgeson, for her part, looked uncertain. She spoke, haltingly: “Listen, Rita, I know you’ve little reason to trust me, but it was more complicated than that. And I was younger than you are now. If you ever want, want to—” She stopped and dabbed ineffectually at her eyes. “I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath. “Stick to business.” Another deep breath. “I want you to take a sealed letter to your boss.” She picked up a plain white envelope, utterly prosaic, that had been sitting on top of an out-tray. She pushed it across the desk toward Rita. “Also, this.” A plastic screw-top sample tube, with a swab in it. “Please witness.”
Rita watched as the evil queen uncapped the tube, removed the swab, took the end of it into her mouth, then placed it back in the tube and sealed it. “This will serve to confirm my identity,” she said, placing it on top of the letter. She took a deep breath. “Olga, the contact protocol…?”
“I don’t have it with me. I’ll see she has it before she leaves,” said Miss Thorold. She added, for Rita’s benefit: “It’s a set of times and GPS coordinates you can use to visit this world safely. The locations will be secured at this end and I’ll be available to meet you—no risk of getting run over by streetcars, and no handcuffs.”
The evil queen leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, and for a moment Rita felt a stab of apprehension. “Last time I spoke to them, they tried to murder me,” she remarked to nobody in particular. She opened her eyes and looked at Rita, her face composed and clear of emotion. “I want you to understand this very clearly, Rita. The history of dealings between the Clan and the US government is toxic. You must be clear with your superiors: we are not the Clan. The Clan tore itself apart after the Family Trade people stuck their oar into Gruinmarkt politics by nuking the Hjalmar Palace—which they did before 7/16. I’m not going to get into tit for tat or recriminations here. What happened, happened. The world-walkers here in the Commonwealth are refugees. We earn our keep as far as the Commonwealth government is concerned, but we don’t set policy.”
Olga cleared her throat.
“We mostly don’t set policy,” Mrs. Burgeson amended. “But here’s the thing. The very f
irst time the United States made contact with another time line, it ended in a nuclear holocaust. I want you to tell your superiors that it had better not happen again. My superior—the First Man, the head of state—is of the opinion that the least bad strategy to pursue is one called Mutually Assured Destruction. It’s an old cold-war trade-off: both sides know that if they launch a preemptive attack they will destroy their enemy, but only at the cost of being destroyed themselves. The New American Commonwealth has an arsenal containing more than nine thousand hydrogen bombs, because we are locked in a cold-war standoff with the French Empire. More than a thousand of those weapons”—her voice wavered—“are targeted on US cities right now. God knows we don’t want to use them—but if we are attacked, retaliation is certain to follow.”
“You’re—” Rita boggled at her. “That’s insane!”
“Tell me about it.” Mrs. Burgeson smiled weakly. “Which is why that letter is so important. It’s an invitation to discuss the ground rules for diplomatic engagement, so we can find a way to step back from the brink. Before some idiot on either side starts World War Four by accident.”
Olga cleared her throat.
“Oh yes.” Mrs. Burgeson was weaving the shreds of her dignity into a cloak of confidence, collecting herself visibly from second to second. “Of course this has to happen at the worst possible time. Rita, the other thing your bosses need to know is that the First Man, Adam Burroughs, has terminal cancer.”
“So there’s going to be an election soon?” Rita asked. “Or does he have a vice president?”
The evil queen shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way; the Commonwealth is only seventeen years old. They had a revolution, and before that, it was an absolute monarchy—think North Korea, not Disney. The Commonwealth’s constitution is only fifteen years old and it has never been tested by a peaceful transfer of leadership. Adam has been the First Man since the very beginning. In theory, we know what’s supposed to happen and how to do it. In practice…”
“Nobody knows,” Olga said darkly. “Most likely there will be a peaceful transfer of power to the new First Man, or perhaps even a First Woman. But that’s far from certain.”
Mrs. Burgeson picked up the narrative: “The point is, we have weeks—not months—to sort out an agreement that cools everything down. If we don’t get there while the First Man is well enough to sign off on it, everything goes back to square one—only in the middle of a succession crisis. Which is really risky, because war planners love to take advantage of succession crises, never mind the fact that one possible outcome is that our own hard-liners could end up running the show.”
She met Rita’s eyes, and Rita froze. She felt as if the evil queen could see right through her: and for a sickening moment she wondered if she’d fallen into the wrong fairy tale by mistake. “But we’re out of time now—you’d better be going before the Specials arrive with an arrest warrant. If you change your mind, if you want answers—I’ll be here for you.
“Goodbye, Rita.”
PHOENIX, TIME LINE TWO, AUGUST 2020
Another morning.
Kurt Douglas yawned as he shuffled around the kitchen. His feet, back, knees, and hips ached. The kettle on the stovetop was beginning to steam as he added coffee grounds to a filter cone, measuring them carefully. Two and a half precisely heaped spoonfuls was his habit. He had a rigid idea of how best to greet a new day: he would brew his coffee, then he would retreat to the downstairs bathroom to take his morning medication, shave, and read the news on his tablet while he threw off the early morning lassitude.
He’d had a disturbed night’s sleep, as was increasingly normal for him these years. And he rattled around this huge, two-thirds-empty house like a dried pea in a toothless mouth. The sheer distance from bed to bathroom was a nuisance, forcing him to fully awaken when he had to rise in the small hours to deal with his old man’s bladder. If Greta had been around she could have helped him fill the house. But as things stood, he almost resented its size. Franz expected him to keep the place proudly, like a janitor in a palace that his grandchildren would inherit in due course.
Collecting his coffee, he retreated into the comfort of his morning routine. Everything was much the same as any other day, until he came to his e-mail. A letter from Rita! He read it with increasing engagement, looking for the little signs between the written words. So: she had run into a special friend? Or a friend, anyway? One of the girls from back when they’d lived on the East Coast. His brow wrinkled unconsciously. Interesting. Of course Rita knew better than to use e-mail for anything important … What was the girl trying to tell him—oh. Of course.
Kurt did not hurry his routine. But when, half an hour later, he dressed in sweatpants and shirt and sport sandals and walked slowly across to his son’s mailbox, he was unsurprised to find a letter within, addressed by hand to “K. Douglas,” laboriously and in unpracticed capitals. Someone unused to writing longhand; someone young. (Or at least young by Kurt’s standards.)
His pulse quickened, but he refrained from deviating from his routine in any way. He carried the post into Franz and Emily’s house, sorting the other items into two neat piles and placing them on the breakfast bar. Only after the normal delay did he go home, with the envelope concealed under his shirt.
Once inside, Kurt locked the door and shuffled upstairs to the spare bedroom he sometimes used as a study. He drew the curtains, then turned on a portable camping lantern for illumination. He placed it on the small desk beside the letter and a battered paperback and some writing materials. He pulled on a pair of disposable latex gloves, careful not to touch their exterior. Then he sat down and pulled a blanket over his head, forming a tent above desk, lamp, and letter. It was no guarantee that he was free from observation, but unless the observers in question had glued a webcam to his forehead while he slept (one small enough that he had missed it in the bathroom mirror while shaving), it was fairly certain that they had no direct knowledge of the letter’s contents. (Unless it had been opened and scanned and resealed in transit, even though it had been addressed to another—but that way lay madness.)
It was a letter, an old-fashioned handwritten missive directed to him by name. “Dear Mr. Douglas, your granddaughter Rita said I should write to you. I’ve been reading the book you gave her, and I have some questions you might help me with for my comprehension class…”
Kurt suppressed the impulse to nod approvingly. The code words were in place, falling in their assigned word order like pins between a key’s serrated teeth, ready to unlock hidden wisdom. One of the youngsters, a little cub nosing up to the pack leader for advice. He turned to his copy of the book and began to draw the grid for the one-time pad. The questions were a neat block, written painstakingly in a crabbed hand that bespoke focus and paranoia:
RITA IN DHS STOP URGENTLY NEED SUPPORT STOP CAN ORCHESTRA CONTACT BIRTH MOTHER ENDS
Kurt grunted painfully. For a moment he felt despair. He’d been afraid of this, or something like this, for many years. It was not just the very specific fear that something might reach out from the dark heart of the security state and snatch away his granddaughter (who, for all that she bore none of his genes, thought more like him than his own son). It was the broader, agoraphobic fear that the unquiet dead were stirring in their graves, a third of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was impossible to outrun memory, or to outlive one’s sins. As long as the Wolf Orchestra remained hidden, abandoned in place by the state it served when the cold war ended and the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist, the temptation to awaken the musicians was there. He could summon them to their instruments and play a last devilish ditty—tempting and taunting those who knew.
Kurt had remembered, and silently practiced the necessary rituals for all the years of their exile. For more than three decades he’d let them lie, trusting that save for the annual ritual of the greeting cards—to keep track of his players—he could allow his conductor’s baton to gather dust. But now another hand ha
d reached out: this Angie, Rita’s friend. Angie Hagen. Alex Hagen’s granddaughter, another of the third-generation children, born and raised on American soil. Children trained by their parents and grandparents to serve the fatherland, whether they knew it or not.
I could try to do this on my own, he thought dubiously. Why disturb his musicians’ beauty sleep? Many of the first generation were dead of old age. Some of them were senile, disturbing their fellow nursing home inmates with the black comedy of their memories, dismissed as demented confabulators by children and carers alike as they randomly blabbed state secrets over the dinner table. Most of the active ones today were children or grandchildren, born and educated here like the descendants of conversos, Jews living under suspicion as Catholic converts after the reconquest of Spain. They kept to the rituals of their parents out of habit, living in constant fear of the Inquisition’s knock on the door.
Few of them were truly aware of what they had once been expected to do, and fewer still were ideologically committed. The inner citadel of belief in the workers’ duty to build a paradise on Earth had been betrayed by history. They’d been misled by their own leaders and teachers, then abandoned in the dark abyss of late-stage capitalism. Nobody really believed anymore. But it was still too dangerous to contemplate reconciliation with the nation in which they were embedded like a fragment of shrapnel from an unremembered cold-war explosion.
The bastards have Rita, Kurt reminded himself. They had stolen her and they would use her until she broke, for they knew her to be of enemy breeding—even if she herself did not. His resolve hardened. I will visit this Angel, he decided. She cared enough for Rita that she’d written a coded plea to the orchestra conductor. Philadelphia? It’s been a long time. He’d visited the City of Brotherly Love once before: it would be interesting to see how it had changed. He would talk to Rita’s Angel, and then he would commence the search for Rita’s birth mother.
Empire Games Series, Book 1 Page 34