The Trade of Queens tmp-6

by Charles Stross

  Mike almost asked which faction her father had belonged to; a vestigial sense of shame stilled his tongue for a few seconds. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said eventually.

  “But impaling—” Paulette stopped.

  “It was no better than they deserved. The traditional punishment for such high treason is to spread the wings of the blood-eagle, then quarter the parts,” Olga added. “But that hasn’t been practiced since my grandfather’s time.”

  Mike stared at his mug of coffee, and dry-swallowed. This wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. “You failed to stop them,” he accused, knowing it signified nothing.

  “You failed too. So we’re even. Failures all round.” The silence stretched on for half a minute. Finally Olga broke it. “Why did you call for help?”

  Mike shuffled on his stool uncomfortably. “Did you find your mole?”

  “We have more urgent problems right now.” It was an evasion. Olga looked at Paulette. “Thank you for continuing to source provisions for us; it has been more useful than you can know, but there are some new arrangements I need to discuss with you. Things are going to be busy for a while. Mr. Fleming, there have been reports of contrails over the Gruinmarkt. We don’t have much time for idle chatter. Do you know anything about them?”

  “They’ve been planning some kind of incursion for at least six months,” Mike told her. The secret, divulged, left him feeling naked. “I saw a spec-ops helicopter. This was planned before the bombs went off. They know where all the oil is, and you’re a threat to national security. But since the bombs—now—I don’t think they’ll be satisfied with their original plans.”

  “Do you believe they’ll use nuclear weapons?”

  “Will they?” It was Mike’s turn to frown. “They already did: that castle up near Concord. The question isn’t whether, the question is when and how many.” Stripped of the bloody shirt of eighteen thousand dead, these events acquired a logic of their own. “They’ll kill a lot of people who have nothing to do with your extended family.”

  “Yes.” Olga emptied her coffee mug. “And so, we are taking steps to leave, to put ourselves forever beyond contact with the US government. Those of us with any sense, that is. Some refuse to see the writing on the wall, as you would say. The Clan is breaking up, you know; a generation ago the mere suggestion of an open split would have been seen as treason.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Paulette.

  “You’ve been there, I seem to recall. On a visit.” Olga raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me for not describing it in front of Mr. Fleming. When we go—I am allowed to offer you a payoff in money, or asylum if you are afraid of the authorities here: We look after our friends. But it’ll be a one-way trip.”

  “They’ll come after you. They’ll hunt you down wherever you run to,” Mike predicted.

  “Let them try.” Olga shrugged. “Mr. Fleming, I didn’t choose to fight the US government; I’m not Osama bin Laden. Your former vice president, he—well. We have a rule. When we do business with outsiders, we have a rule: no politicians. WARBUCKS quit politics, in the late eighties: That’s when our West Coast subsidiary approached him—well. Water under the bridge. It was a serious oversight, but one we are in the process of rectifying. My question to you is, what are you going to do now? Paulette tells me your agency has tried to kill you. What do you want? I can give you money—we’ve got more than we know what to do with, we can’t take it where we’re going—or I can offer you asylum—”

  “I want the files,” said Mike.

  “The. What?”

  “Your files on WARBUCKS.”

  “Huh?” Paulette looked confusedly between them.

  “WARBUCKS started this. I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t know a deliberate provocation when I saw one. This is all happening because he wants to cover up his past complicity with the Clan, and because the existence of the Clan is now a matter of public record. An awful lot of people are going to die to cover up his secret.” Mike’s frustration sought a way out. “People who have nothing to do with your nasty little family trade, or with me, or with WARBUCKS. Listen, I don’t much care for you. If it was business as usual I’d arrest you right now and put you away on racketeering, money laundering, and drugs charges. Oh, and the illegal firearm.” He gestured at Olga’s bag and she twitched a hand towards it; he shrugged. “But it’s not business as usual—probably never will be, ever again. The man who you guys have fallen out with is running my country. He’s corrupted my government, built a secret unaccountable agency with the capability to bypass the national nuclear command authority, disappeared people into underground prisons; you name it, he’s done it. He’s wiped his ass on the Constitution and it’s all thanks to dirty drugs money: not directly, oh no, but you’re complicit. I don’t care what happens to you people—but I swore an oath to protect the constitution of the United States, and it looks like for the past year I’ve been working for an organization designed from the get-go to undermine it. So I want your files on WARBUCKS, now they’re no use to you any more if you’re serious about pulling out. I want the dirt. And if you won’t give it to me, you’re worse than I think you are—and my opinion of you is pretty low right now.”

  “What are you going to do with the files if we give them to you?” Olga asked slowly.

  “Well, that depends.” He glanced at Paulette. “I take it your work here is mostly done, or you wouldn’t have told me even that much?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “I need someone who knows how the press works. And I need ammunition. Someone’s got to blow the lid on WARBUCKS before he eats the US government from inside—and I don’t see anyone else volunteering.”

  “But—” Paulette stopped and looked bleakly at Olga.

  “What?” Mike glanced between them.

  “Do you want to tell him?” asked Olga.

  Paulette shook her head wordlessly and reached across to flick on the radio.

  “—Cardiac arrest on the way to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Doctors worked for three hours to try to resuscitate the president but he was declared dead at five-fourteen this morning. The vice president is meeting with advisors but is expected to appear at a press conference to make a statement imminently; we understand that Supreme Court Chief Justice Scalia is on his way to the vice president’s location to administer the oath—”

  “Fuck.” Mike stared at the radio. All his carefully considered plans crumbled. “Fuck.”

  “That’s two presidents in a month,” said Olga. “I understand it’s a stressful job.”

  “Jesus fuck.” Paulette looked at Mike reproachfully. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Olga was imperturbable: “Do you think your people will care about the misdeeds of KINGPIN’s predecessor?”

  Mike shook his head. “Fuck. Sorry.” He stared at the radio. The presenter was babbling on about previous presidential emergency successions. “He’s dead. Why did the bastard have to die now?”

  “What will this new President do?” Olga leaned toward him.

  “KINGPIN? He’ll—” Mike chuckled weakly. “Oh dear god.”

  “WARBUCKS was KINGPIN’s assistant, wasn’t he?” Paulette blinked, her eyes watery. “Back in the Ford era, or something. They’re more like partners, were more like partners, the past couple of years. Partners in crime—politics, not the Clan. KINGPIN is going to be just like WARBUCKS, only without the personal history.”

  Mike nodded. “You had a handle on WARBUCKS. KINGPIN is the same—only you’ve lost your handle.”

  “Oh.” Olga sat motionless for a few seconds. “This fact needs to be reported.”

  “What are you going to do?” Mike asked.

  “I’m going to tell certain people.” Olga flashed him a bright, brittle smile. “I’m going to see if I can get you those papers—if you still want them. Then those of us with even half an ounce of self-preservation are going to run away very fast.…”

  Never Coming Back

  The row of big town houses, set back behind h
igh walls or hedges, had seen better days. Every other building showed boarded-up windows to the street, the blank-eyed, gape-doored stare of ruination and downfall. Some of them—some very few—had been squatted, but for the most part the Freedom Riders had kept the dusty workless poor out of the houses of the bourgeoisie, for this was not solely a revolution of the working class.

  The big steamer huffed and bumped across last winter’s potholes, then slowed as Yul wrestled with the wooden steering wheel, swearing at it as he worked the brake handle and tried to lever the beast between stone gateposts. Miriam sat up in the back, trying to see over his shoulders for a first glimpse of the house she’d bought in this city using smuggled Clan bullion, a little over a year ago. “Is it—” She swallowed her words as the front of the building came into view.

  “It seems intact.” Brilliana, next to her, nodded. “Let us examine it, my lady.”

  The boarded-up windows were still sealed, the front door barred and padlocked as one of her armsmen held the car’s door open for Miriam. “By your leave, my lady?” Alasdair slid round in his jump seat. “I should go first.”

  Miriam bit back an irritated response. “Yes,” she agreed. “Thank you.” Sir Alasdair unfolded his legs and stood, interposing his not-inconsiderable frame between Miriam and the facade of the building.

  “Wait,” Alasdair rumbled without looking round as he moved forward. “Schraeder, left and rear. Yul, you stay with the car. Brunner, with me.…” They spread out around the house purposefully, their long coats still closed despite the summer humidity. It looked empty, but appearances could be deceptive and Sir Alasdair was not inclined to take risks with Helge’s life, figurehead though her queen-widowship might be: He’d sworn an oath to protect her, and his people took such things seriously.

  Miriam stared at the front door as Alasdair approached it, slowing on the steps, then bending close to peer at the door handle. Beside her, Brill shifted on the bench seat, one hand going to the earpiece tucked discreetly under her hat. “Clear behind,” she said suddenly. “Schraeder’s in.”

  I bought that house, Miriam told herself. Right now it looked as unfamiliar as her father—her adoptive father—had looked in the funeral parlor. Houses took as much of their character from the people who filled them as racks of meat on bone took from their animating personality. It had once been her home; but for the miscarriage she might now be looking to raise a child in it. But for now it was just a big neglected building, a cumbersomely inanimate corpse—

  Alasdair interrupted her morbid stream of consciousness by straightening up. He unlocked the door, opened it slowly, and stepped inside.

  “All clear,” said Brill, tapping Miriam on the shoulder. “Let’s go inside.”

  The house was much as Miriam had last seen it, only dusty and boarded-up, the furniture looming beneath dust sheets. “Who organized this?” she asked, pausing at the foot of the stairs.

  “I did,” said Brill. “When Baron Henryk assigned the business operation to Morgan I assumed they’d want you back sooner or later. Morgan didn’t like it here, he preferred to spend as much time at home as he could.”

  “Right. This way.” Miriam headed upstairs in the dark, a flashlight guiding her feet. Opposite the top of the stairs was the door to the main bedroom. She pushed it open, saw daylight: The upper windows at least were not boarded up. “I need a hand with this.”

  “With what—”

  Miriam was already kneeling near the skirting board beside the bed. Stale dust and a faint smell of mouse piss wrinkled her nose. “In here. Here, hold this.” She passed Brill the loose piece of woodwork. Behind it, the brickwork was visible. “Pass me your knife.…” It took a little work, but between them they levered the two half-bricks out of their niche. Then Miriam reached inside and grabbed. “Got it.”

  The black cloth bag was about the size of a boot, but much heavier. Miriam grunted and lifted it onto the bed.

  “How much is it?” asked Brilliana.

  “I’m surprised it’s still here.” Miriam untied the knotted drawstring then thrust her hand inside. “Yep, it’s the real thing.” The gold brick glinted in the afternoon light; she returned it to the bag hastily. “About six kilos of twenty-three-carat. It was worth a hell of a lot a year ago—God only knows what it’s worth right now.” Stuck in a deflationary cycle and a liquidity crash with a revolution on top, gold—with or without seigniorage—was enormously more valuable than it had been when it was merely what the coin of the realm was made of. The national treasury had been stripped bare to pay for the war: That was what had started the crisis.

  She straighted up and dusted herself down. “Job number one for Alasdair is to get someone who knows what they’re doing to hide this properly. We lucked out once, but sooner or later one of Erasmus’s rival ministries will probably try and shake us down to see where the leverage is coming from. They won’t believe the truth, and if they find this here we’ll be for the chop. Revolutionary governments hate hoarders; it’s a law of nature.”

  “I’ll see to it, my lady—”

  “That’s another thing.” Miriam glanced at the windows. “It’s not ‘my lady’ anymore—I mean it. Drop the honorific, and tell everyone else: It’s Miriam, or ma’am, but not ‘my lady.’”

  Brill’s dismay was palpable. “But you are my lady! You are my liege, and I owe you an acknowledgment of that fact! This isn’t the United States, this is—”

  “This is a continent in the grip of revolution.” Miriam walked towards the wardrobe and lifted one corner of its dusty shroud. “What do you know about revolutionary governments?”

  “Not much; we hang rebels, my lady.” Brill lifted back the top of the dust sheet from the bed, wrinkling her nose.

  “Well, I’ve been doing some reading this week. Remember the books?” Miriam had given Brill a list of titles to order from Amazon. “There’s a general pattern. First there’s a crisis—usually fiscal, often military. The old government is discredited and a coalition of interests move in and toss the bums out. Then they start trying to govern as a coalition, and it goes to hell quickly because just changing the government doesn’t solve the underlying crisis unless it was a crisis of legitimacy.” Brill looked perturbed, as Miriam continued: “This means that the new government gets to try and fix the crisis at its weakest, and in conditions where it’s very easy to replace them. Most postrevolutionary regimes are overthrown by their own hard-line radicals, the ones with the most blinkered ideological outlook—precisely because they’re also the ones most willing to murder anyone who stands between them and a solution to the crisis.”

  She tugged the dust sheet down from the wardrobe and stepped aside.

  “The revolution here was against the autocratic monarchy, but there’s also a fiscal crisis and a war. They hit the trifecta—crisis of currency, conflict, and legitimacy in one go. The aristocracy, such as it is, gets its own legitimacy from the Crown—for centuries, John Frederick and his family have sold titles as a way of raising revenue—so anyone with a noble title is going to be automatically suspect to the hard-liners in the new government. And unless Sir Adam can end the war with France and fix the economy in, oh, about six months, the hard-liners are going to get restive.” She turned worried eyes on Brilliana. “That’s why I want everyone to stop using titles immediately. If I’m wrong, they’ll get over it. But if I’m right…”

  “I understand,” Brill said tiredly. “There’s no need to repeat yourself. Miriam. Ma’am.” She peeled back the blankets and sheets that had stayed on the bed, exposing them to air for the first time in months. “What else is going to happen here?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on whether they tackle the economy, the war, or the constitutional problems—any or all of them.” She opened the wardrobe, sniffed. “I think something died in here. Where’s the flashlight?”

  “Here.” Brill waited while Miriam shoved aside the dresses on the rail and shone the beam around the interior of the wardrobe. “What d
o you think?”

  “I think they’ll have to execute the king, and a lot of his supporters, or the French would use him as an excuse to make mischief. And they won’t rest with a revolutionary superpower on the other side of the world—Sir Adam Burroughs’s Leveler ideology is an existential threat to any absolute monarchy, much like the Soviet Union was to the United States’ capitalist system. Which leaves the economy.” Miriam straightened up. “Lots of radical ministries jockeying for preeminence, a permanent emergency in foreign affairs, a big war effort. Central planning, maybe, lots of nationalization. They’re going to have to industrialize properly if they’re going to dig their way out of this mess. War spending is always a good way to boost an economy. And land reform, let’s not forget the land reform—they’ll probably expropriate the big slave plantations in South America, the duchies of the Midwest.”

  “My—Miriam, you can’t sleep here: The bedding’s mildewed.”

  “Wha—oh? Shit. There should be spare sheets in the laundry—” Miriam wound down. “Oh. No servants.”

  “I could hire bodies easily enough, if you think it necessary?”

  “No.” Miriam frowned. “Flashing around cash would be really dangerous right now. Huh. Need to know if the electricity’s working … listen, let’s go see if the office is intact and the power still works. If so, we ought to go look at the factory. Then I can electrograph Erasmus and tell him we’re ready to start work whenever he comes up with those passes he was talking about.”

  * * *

  In an office near the northern end of Manhattan, with a window overlooking the royal navy dockyard, Stephen Reynolds set aside the stack of death warrants at his left hand and stood, smiling warmly, as commissioners Jennings and Fowler walked in.

  “Good morning, citizens.” He gestured at the seats beside his desk as he walked around it, placing himself on the same side of the table as his visitors: “Nice to see you. Are you both well? Edward, is your wife—”

  “She’s fine,” Jennings said, a trifle brusquely, then cleared his throat. “Nothing to worry about, and the would-be assassin is already in custody.” As the citizen inquisitor supervising the Justice Directorate, Jennings (not to mention his family) had become accustomed to being the principal target of the regime’s enemies (not to mention their surviving relatives). “I gather your people have identified his conspirators already.”