Huw sat in front of a laptop in the day room at the back of the house, staring at the Mathematica workbook running in a window as it stepped through variations on a set. Wearing goggles and an oxygen mask, with a blood pressure cuff on his upper arm and a Glock on his belt, he squinted intently as the program flashed up a series of topological deformations of a familiar knot.
On his left wrist, he wore an electronic engineer’s grounding strap, which he had attached to a grounding spike in the backyard by a length of wire – and tested carefully. Two camcorders on tripods monitored his expression and the screen of the laptop. The medical telemetry gear was on order, but hadn’t arrived yet; it would have to wait for the next run. There were other watchers, too, equipped as best as he’d been able to manage in the time available.
‘Ouch.’ Huw tapped the space bar on the keyboard, pausing the run. ‘Sequence number 144. I definitely felt something there.’ He glanced round. ‘Elena? You awake back there?’
‘This thing stinks.’ Her voice buzzed slightly. ‘And I give you seven more minutes until changeover time, my lord. Would you mind hurrying up and getting it over with?’
Huw stretched, rotating his shoulder blades. ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘Resuming with sequence number 145 in three, two, one’ – he tapped the space bar again – ‘ouch! Ow, shit!’ – and again. Then he reached down and hit the start button on the blood pressure monitor. ‘That was a definite . . . something. Ow, my head.’
The machine buzzed as the cuff inflated. Thirty seconds passed, then it began to tick and hiss, venting compressed air. Finally it deflated with a sigh. ‘Shit. One fifty-two over ninety-five. Right, that’s it for this run. I got a definite contact.’
Huw closed the workbook, then removed his goggles and unclipped the oxygen mask. ‘Ow.’ He rubbed at his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, where the rubber had chafed. ‘How are you coping?’
‘Help me out of this thing?’ Elena asked plaintively.
Huw stood up, detached the grounding strap, and stretched again. ‘Okay, let’s see . . .’ Elena was fumbling with the gas regulator under her visor. ‘No, let me sort that out.’ A moment later he had the visor unclipped and her helmet swinging open.
‘That’s better!’ She took a deep breath and began to unfasten her gloves as he attacked the straps holding her backpack in place. ‘Are you sure the real thing will be lighter?’
‘No,’ Huw admitted. ‘And that’s if we can get our hands on one in the first place. I think we’re going to end up having one custom made.’ Pressurized suits with self-contained air circulation weren’t exactly an off-the-shelf item, and some of the suppliers he’d approached had responded with alarming questions; the line between certain civilian and military uses was rather thin, it seemed. ‘Here, you should be able to get your helmet off now.’
‘Oh, that’s nice.’ Elena began to work at the high-altitude suit’s catches. It had been a random find in a somewhat peculiar store, and had taken almost a week to restore to working order; so far it was the only one they had, which had put a serious cramp on experimentation until Huw had bitten the bullet and decided to work with an oxygen bottle and goggles as minimal safety precautions. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Head’s splitting,’ Huw admitted. ‘Hmm. Let me just check again.’ He ran the blood pressure monitor again. It was roughly the same – alarmingly high for a fit twenty-something – but he was standing up and moving, rather than slouched over a computer: Good. ‘I think I’m coming down.’
‘It was definitely a tingle? Stronger than the last?’
‘I think,’ Huw paused for thought, ‘I’m going to skip forward a couple of notches, see how far this sequence runs. I got two weak ones, then this’ – he winced – ‘like tuning in an old radio.’
‘A radio? A radio tuned to new worlds?’
‘Maybe.’ He detached the blood pressure cuff and walked over to the archway leading to the kitchen. ‘I’m more interested in knowing what class of knot we’re dealing with.’
‘What kind of . . . ? But it’s a knot! How many kinds are there?’
‘I don’t know.’ Huw glanced at the coffee machine, then the wine bottle sitting next to it. ‘Huh. Where’s – ’ The door chime pinged for attention.
‘I’ll get it.’ Elena was out of the boots and gloves; she’d managed to unzip the pressure suit as far as the crotch, revealing the rumpled tee shirt and jeans she was wearing inside it. Huw shook his head. ‘That’d better not be the Jehovah’s Witnesses; they’re going to think we’ve got a really weird family life.’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing – oh hello there!’ Her voice rose to a happy chirp as Huw looked round. ‘Come in, be you welcome! He’s in the kitchen, over there, Huw – ’
Making a snap decision, Huw palmed the corkscrew and picked up the bottle. Turning, he paused in the doorway. ‘Sigfrid? What are you doing here?’
Sigfrid – lanky, tall, with a mustache that resembled a corpulent caterpillar asleep on his upper lip – unslung his shoulder bag and grinned. ‘Eh, his lordship the major sent me. Said you needed spare hands for some kind of project?’
‘Well.’ Huw raised the bottle. ‘It’s about time. Do you know if he was sending anyone else?’
‘No.’ Sigfrid looked uncertain. ‘At least, he didn’t tell me.’
‘Right.’ He turned to Elena: ‘Can you phone Yul? Tell him to pick up food for four this time.’ Back to Sigfrid. ‘So what have you been doing in the meantime?’
‘Oh, you know.’ Sigfrid shrugged his jacket back from his shoulders and let it slide to the floor. ‘I was with his lordship of Markford’s household when the pretender went on his rampage? So I had a busy couple of weeks. First a siege, then an evacuation through the backwoods, then lots of running around, hurry up and wait, until they stuck me in Castle Hjorth with the guards detachment.’
‘But you’re here now.’ Huw nodded to himself. ‘Want to fetch some glasses?’ Elena was on her mobile phone. ‘Top cupboard, to the left of the kitchen sink.’ Sig was never the scholarly sort, but he was bright enough to learn. ‘Let me fill you in on what we’re trying to achieve here.’
‘Surely. The major said something about trying to find other worlds. Does that mean . . . ?’
Huw nodded. ‘Yes. And tomorrow we’re going to try to open up another one.’ He pulled the cork free with a pop. ‘We live in interesting times!’
*
On their first day in the enemy capital, the reconnaissance team checked into their hotel and commenced operations. Disguised as a family of Dutch tourists, Sir Gunnar ven Hjorth-Hjalmar, accompanied by his married younger cousin Beatrice and her infant son (the elder was back at the family estate, in the care of his nurse), purchased day passes on the double-decker tourist busses that rumbled incessantly through the boulevards and avenues of the city. Sitting on the top deck with a camcorder glued to his right eye, his ‘wife’ gaping in bucolic awe at the colonnaded classical buildings and low office blocks to either side, Gunnar found it amusing to contemplate the police and security checkpoints that swarmed defensively around the federal buildings. They call this security? he asked himself ironically. Hmm. Target-rich environment, maybe.
‘What’s that?’ asked Beatrice, pointing at the Washington Monument. She spoke Hochsprache, the better to aid the disguise; a strawberry blonde with a two-year-old on her hip wasn’t anybody’s idea of an Al-Qaeda terrorist. She hadn’t spent much time over in the Anglischprache world, beyond the minimum required for the corvée, and her emulation of an awestruck tourist was entirely genuine – because Niejwein, the largest city with which she was familiar, was less than a tenth the size of downtown Washington, D.C.
‘It is a memorial to their founding king-emperor, the duke who led their armies during their rebellion against the king across the water.’ Gunnar sniffed. ‘He refused to take the throne, but their aristocrats honor him to this day.’
‘How very stupid of him,’ Beatrice agreed. ‘Was he mad
?’
‘I don’t know.’ Gunnar zoomed in on the monument, then panned slowly sideways to take in the neoclassical palaces of bureaucracy to either side of the wide plaza and the shallow pool. Eight and nine stories high, none of them exceeded the height of the spire. Interesting, he noted. ‘Mark a waypoint, please.’
Beatrice fumbled obediently in her handbag, then produced a tissue and wiped little Anders’s nose. Anders bubbled sleepily as his mother wadded up the tissue with mild distaste and stuffed it back in her bag, along with the GPS machine. ‘He will need cleaning soon,’ she told Gunnar.
‘It cannot be helped. A single man, making notes and filming, would attract attention.’
‘Of course, cousin. But we will need to stop the carriage to do so.’
Gunnar panned back across the Mall, slowly scanning a frontage of museum buildings. ‘There are public toilets in all the museums and public buildings here, well-kept and as luxurious as any palace back home.’
‘Good.’ She glanced behind her. ‘These buildings. The people own them?’
‘Only indirectly. Just as they rebelled against their king and replaced him with none, so they tried to abolish their aristocracy. It grew back, of course, but not in the same image – there is a ruling class here, but its members are not named count this or lord that.’
‘How very confusing! How is one to recognize a superior . . . ?’
‘You don’t.’ Gunnar ignored her evident discomfort. ‘It’s very confusing at first. But eventually you learn to spot the signs. Their wealth, for one thing. And the way the laws that leash the ordinary people slip past them. They don’t carry arms; other people carry arms for them, it’s a sign of how rich and powerful this empire has become.’ Too many words, he thought. The words wouldn’t stop coming; relief at being here, at not worrying about being murdered by the bitch-queen back home, had loosened his tongue.
Beatrice shifted Anders across her lap. ‘It’s huge,’ she said, her voice wavering slightly.
‘Of course. This city, Washington, D.C., has nearly two-thirds the population of the entire Gruinmarkt. And it rules over everything from the outer kingdom in our west through the badlands and the mountains to the Sudtmarkt and the Nordmarkt – well, part of the Nordtmarkt belongs to these Americans’ northern neighbor, but that kingdom is also vast, by our lights. But it is still a kingdom and it is still run by a king-emperor of sorts, albeit one of their elite who is formally proclaimed by his peers to rule for four or eight years. And we know how to talk to power.’
‘Huh. My tutor told me their king-emperor is elected, that the people choose him. Is this not so?’
‘It looks like that, yes, but it’s not so simple. The little people are presented with two contenders, but the ruling elite would never tolerate the candidacy of an outsider. Sometimes a contender tries to look like an outsider, but it’s purely a rabble-rousing pretense. This current king-emperor doesn’t even go that far; his father was king-emperor before last.’
‘Huh. Again, how stupid! Sir Gunnar, I think we should move now, before Anders disgraces himself. If it pleases you?’
Gunnar lowered the camcorder and switched it to standby. The tour guide was still droning on in a nasal voice, mangled by the loud-speakers behind the windshield at the front of the open upper deck of the bus. ‘Yes, let us do so.’ The bus swayed as it moved forward then turned in towards the curb. ‘Follow me.’
The sky was clear and blue, the sun beating down on the sidewalk as Beatrice stepped off the bus with Anders, waiting while Gunnar – determinedly staying in character – collected the pushchair. As he unfolded it, Anders sent up a sleepy moan: Beatrice bounced him, shushing. ‘Please let us get him indoors.’
‘In a moment.’ Gunnar glanced round. The bus had stopped close by a huge concrete and stone facade – back home, it would have been the stronghold of a noble family, but here it was most likely a museum of some sort. ‘Ah yes. We’ll try there.’ Holocaust Memorial Museum? Gunnar had a vague recollection that it might be connected with some historic massacre in these Anglischprache folks’ history, but that didn’t matter to him; it was a museum, so obviously it would have toilets and baby-changing facilities. ‘Record a waypoint. And another one in the baby-changing room, if the machine functions adequately indoors.’
The museum had security guards and one of those annoying contraptions that let them peer into visitors’ possessions next to a metal detecting arch. Gunnar was sufficiently familiar with such precautions to have left his weapons back at the hotel, but they still irritated him, reminding him that he was not free to comport himself as a gentleman in this place. If the business of governance was to maintain a monopoly on lethal force, as his baron had once asserted, then the Anglischprache clearly understood this message. Still, discreet signs pointed to the toilets beyond the obstruction, and the little one’s needs must be attended to.
Gunnar cooled his heels in the atrium for a few minutes while his sister-in-law dealt with the child. It was a peculiar museum, he decided, very strange – more like a mausoleum. This holocaust was clearly a most unsavory affair, but why dwell on it? It was confusing: It didn’t even seem to have happened to the Anglischprache themselves, but to some other people. So why bother commemorating it with a museum? But it’s in the right place, he reminded himself. And it’ll be easier to get onto the roof than any of the government offices. If it’s high enough . . .
Beatrice finally emerged from the rest room, carrying a quieter Anders. Gunnar smiled, trying to look relieved. ‘I think I would like to go upstairs here,’ he told her quietly. ‘Let’s go find the elevator and ride it to the top. Did you get a waypoint?’
‘I’m sorry, cousin; the machine balked. I think the walls are too thick.’
‘Then you will try again on the highest floor. And I shall look for access doors to the roof. If there’s a window, I will film landmarks through it, to estimate the elevation.’
‘You have plans for this place?’
‘Oh yes, indeed.’ Gunnar nodded. ‘We’re well into Sudtmarkt territory here, but for what I think we shall be doing, that should be no obstacle.’
‘You want to doppelgänger a museum?’
‘It’s a possibility – I want to look at some shops, too. As long as the land is accessible, it will fit my needs. And I don’t recall any cities in the middle of swamps down there. The Sudtmarkt can be bullied, bought, or bribed, and along with elevation that’s all that matters.’
*
A month had passed since the disastrous mission into Niejwein; Mike had been back in the office for two weeks, alternating between interdepartmental meetings and frustrating sessions in room 4117 when he got an e-mail from the colonel: ‘Tomorrow we’re taking a day trip to the Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod. I’ve got a meeting there, and there are some folks I want to introduce you to.’
The aircraft hangar was dim and cavernous after the bright daylight outside. Mike blinked, slightly dazzled, at the thing squatting on the stained concrete in front of him. It seemed misshapen and malformed, like a fairy-tale dragon sleeping in its cave. Sure enough it was green and scaly and spiky – a huge refueling probe jutting lance-like from the chin beneath its cockpit windows, and infrared sensors bulging like enormous warts from the deformed forehead beneath the hunched shoulders of its engine cowls.
Dragons, however, did not traditionally have high-visibility warning tags dangling from their rotor blade tips, or an array of maintenance trolleys and tractors parked around them. And dragons most especially didn’t have a bunch of Air Force officers chattering next to the huge external fuel tank slung from their port winglet.
Mike had hobbled halfway to the chopper before anyone noticed him. An arm waved: ‘Mike. Over here, I want you to meet these folks.’ He picked up his pace as much as he dared. ‘Gentlemen, this is Mike Fleming. Mike is a special agent on assignment to our organization from DEA. His specialty is getting under enemy skin. He’s our HUMINT guy, in other words, and he pi
cked up that broken leg in the same line of work as you guys – only on foot. Mike, this is Lieutenant John Goddard, and Captain Simon MacDonald. They’re in charge of flight operations for this little test project – staff and execution both, they sit up front in the cockpit.’ More faces and more introductions followed, warrant officer this and tech specialist that, the guys in charge of making the big helicopter work. Mike tried to commit them all to memory, then gave up. The half dozen guys and one or two women in fatigues standing around here were the crew chiefs and flight crew – it took a lot of people to keep a Pave Low helicopter flying.
‘Pleased to meet you.’ Mike shook hands all round. He caught Eric’s eye. ‘I’m impressed.’ Which statement, when fully unpacked, meant How the hell have you been keeping this under wraps? The implications weren’t exactly subtle: So this is Dr. James’s breakthrough. What happens next?
‘Good,’ said Smith, nodding. Quietly: ‘I told them you’re not up to serious exertion, they’ll make allowances. Just try to take it all in.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Simon, why don’t you give Mike here the dog and pony show. I’ll go over the load-out requirements with John and Susan in the meantime. When Mike’s up to speed, we can meet up in the office, uh, that’s room R-127, and share notes.’
‘Yes, I’ll do that, sir.’ MacDonald turned to Mike and waved a hand at a door some way back along the flank of the green monster. ‘Ever seen one of these before?’ he asked breezily.
‘Don’t think so. On the news, maybe?’ Mike followed the captain across the stained concrete floor towards the door, going as fast as he could with his cast. The chopper was the size of a small airliner. Blades big enough to bridge a freeway curved overhead in the dimness. The fuel tanks under the stubby wings proved, on closer acquaintance, to be nearly as tall as he was, and as long as a pickup truck. ‘I don’t know much about helicopters,’ he admitted.
The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) Page 27