The tall, sandy-haired soldier nodded. ‘I dismount. We have sixty seconds to clear down any witnesses. Then we wheel the barrow to the stairwell. By T minus six the payload is to be emplaced in the place of the red fire extinguisher, which we will place in the barrow. We are then to proceed back to our arrival point, whereupon Jurgen will take his place in the barrow and I will bring us home no later than T minus five.’
‘What provisions for failure have you made?’ asked the fellow with the small-sword.
‘Not much,’ the Ferret admitted. ‘Jurgen?’
Jurgen shrugged. ‘We shoot any witnesses, of course.’ He tapped one trouser pocket, which was cut away to reveal the butt of a silenced pistol peeping out of a leg holster. The uniforms weren’t very authentic – but then, they only had to mislead witnesses for a few seconds. ‘If we can’t cross back because of a surveyor’s error, we turn the barrow upside down and Kurt stands on it. I ride him. Yes?’
The Ferret nodded to his companion. ‘My lord earl, there we are. Simple, sweet, with minimal room for things to go wrong.’
The earl nodded thoughtfully. His eyes flickered between the two soldiers. Did they suspect that the thumbwheel on the payload’s timer-controller had been modified to detonate six minutes earlier than the indicated time? Probably not, else they wouldn’t be standing here. ‘If we’d been able to survey inside this, this five-sided structure . . .’
‘Indeed. Unfortunately, my lord Hjorth, it is the most important administrative headquarters of their military, and it was attacked by their enemies only two years ago. The visitors’ car park is as close as we could get. The payload’ – the Ferret patted the stubby metal cylinder – ‘is sufficient to the job.’
‘Well, then.’ Baron Oliver Hjorth managed a strained smile. ‘I salute your bravery. Good men!’
Jurgen nodded. ‘I’m certain that there will be no trouble, my lord.’
‘Everyone in the witch-kingdom expects to see fire extinguishers in stairwells,’ added the Ferret, not bothering to explain that the keg-sized payload looked utterly unlike a fire extinguisher. ‘And it won’t be there long enough for anyone to tamper with it.’ Strapped to the detonation controller, it weighed nearly ninety kilos; there was a reason for the carefully surveyed crossing point, the wheelbarrow, and the two strong-backed and incurious couriers.
‘Good,’ the earl said briskly. He pulled out a pocket watch and inspected the dial. ‘Fifty-six minutes, I see. Is that the time? Well, I must be going now.’ He nodded at the Ferret. ‘I expect to see you in Dankfurt by evening.’
‘And the men, sir,’ prompted the Ferret.
‘Oh yes. And you.’ Hjorth glanced at the uniformed couriers. ‘Yes, we shall find a suitable reward for you. I must be going.’
With that, he turned and clambered down the ladder, followed by his bodyguard. Together, they squelched towards the rowboat that waited at the water’s edge. It would carry them to the other side, and thence to the carriage waiting to race him away down the post road, so that he would be a couple of leagues distant before the clocks counted down to zero.
Just in case something went wrong at the last moment. You could never be too sure, with these devices.
*
The Explorer rumbled slowly down a narrow road near Andover, thick old-growth trees blocking the view to either side. Harold Parker State Forest wasn’t exactly the back end of nowhere, but with thousands of acres of hardwood and pine forest, campground and logging roads, and day trippers moving in and out all summer, it was a good place to disappear. Miriam sat back with her eyes closed, trying to fend off the sickening sense of impending dread. It was happening again: the sense of her life careering out of control, in the hands of – Stop that, she told herself. Half the occupants of the big SUV were sworn to her, bound by oaths of fealty; the rest were – If I can’t trust them, I can’t trust anybody. So here they were, bumping along a logging road towards a secret, undisclosed location where Clan Security maintained a cache of equipment and a doppelgängered transfer house –
The SUV was slowing. Miriam opened her eyes. ‘Nearly there,’ Sir Alasdair grunted.
Riordan was still glued to his cell phone, nodding occasionally between bursts of clipped Hochsprache. Miriam tapped him on the shoulder. He held up a hand. ‘Be right back,’ he told his absent conversationalist. ‘What is it?’
‘If there’s a mole inside ClanSec, how do you know your Plan Black site hasn’t been rigged?’ she asked. ‘If I was trying to mouse-trap you, I can’t think of a better way to do it than scaring you into running for a compromised rendezvous.’
Riordan looked thoughtful. Miriam noticed Sir Alasdair’s shoulders tense. Brilliana chirped up from the back row of seats: ‘She’s right, you know.’
‘Yes,’ Riordan said grudgingly. ‘But we need to evacuate – ’
‘It can be booby-trapped here, or in the Gruinmarkt,’ Olga pointed out. ‘If here, we can deal with it. Over there – we shall just have to reconnoiter, no?’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Sir Alasdair. ‘Who are we expecting here, my lord?’
‘This site is meant to be held by Sir Helmut’s second lance,’ Riordan said as he stared at the screen of the tablet PC in his lap. ‘Two over here, six over there with two active and four in recovery or ready for transfer. The site on the other side is a farmhouse: burned out during the campaign, I’m afraid, but defensible.’
‘Can you identify them?’ asked Brilliana.
‘By sight, yes, most probably. Outer-family aspirants, a couple of young bloods – I can show you their personnel files, with photographs. Why?’
‘Because if I see the wrong faces on duty I want to be sure before I shoot them.’
The Explorer was slowing. Now Sir Alasdair took a sharp left onto a dirt trail barely any wider than the SUV. ‘We’re about two hundred yards out,’ he warned. ‘Where do you want me to stop?’
‘Right here.’ Riordan glanced at Brilliana. ‘Are you ready, my lady?’
Brill nodded, reaching into her shoulder bag to pull out a black, stubby gun with a melted-looking grip just below the muzzle and a box magazine stretching along the upper surface of the barrel. ‘Sir Alasdair – ’
‘I’m coming too,’ rumbled Miriam’s bodyguard. He pulled the parking brake. ‘My lord, would you care to take the wheel? If a quick withdrawal is required – ’
‘I can drive,’ Miriam heard herself saying. ‘You don’t need me for anything else, and I’m sure you need your hands?’
Riordan glanced at her, worried, then nodded. ‘Here’s the contact sheet.’ He passed the tablet PC back to Brill, who peered at it for a few seconds.
‘Okay, I am ready,’ she announced, and opened her door.
For Miriam, the next few minutes passed nightmarishly slowly. As Alasdair and Brill disappeared up the track and into the trees alongside it, she took Sir Alasdair’s place behind the wheel, adjusting the seat and lap belt to fit. She kept the engine running at a low idle, although what she’d do if it turned out to be an ambush wasn’t obvious – backing up down a dirt trail while under fire from hostiles didn’t seem likely to have a happy outcome. She sighed, keeping her eyes on the road ahead, waiting.
‘They know what they’re doing,’ Olga said, unexpectedly.
‘Huh?’ Miriam swallowed.
‘She’s right,’ added Riordan. ‘I would not have let them go if I thought them likely to walk into an ambush.’
‘But if they – ’
Someone was jogging down the track, waving. Miriam focused, swallowing bile. It was Brill. She didn’t look happy.
‘Wait here.’ Olga’s door opened; before Miriam could say anything, she was heading towards Brill. After a brief exchange, Brill turned and headed back up the path. Olga returned to the Explorer. ‘She says it’s safe to proceed to the shack, but there’s a problem.’ Her lips were drawn tight with worry.
‘You’d better go,’ Riordan added. ‘We’re on a timetable here.’
&
nbsp; ‘We’re – ’ Oh. Miriam put the SUV in gear and began to crawl forward. It’s an evacuation plan; they’ve got to figure on hostiles blowing it sooner or later, so . . . She’d seen enough of the Clan’s security machinations in action to guess how it went. Wherever they were evacuating through, the safe house – shack? – would be anything but safe to someone arriving after the cutoff time.
The track curved around a stand of trees, then down an embankment and around another clump to terminate in a clearing. At one side of the clearing stood a windowless shack, its wooden slats bleached silvery gray by the weather. Brilliana stood in front of the padlocked door, white-faced, her P90 at the ready in clenched hands. ‘Park here,’ said Olga, opening her door again.
Miriam parked, then climbed down from the cab. ‘Where’s Alasdair?’ she asked, approaching Brill.
Brill shook slightly. ‘Milady, he’s gone across already. Please don’t go there – ’ But Miriam had already seen what was round the side of the shack.
‘What happened?’ she demanded. ‘Who are they?’ Riordan had also seen; he knelt by the nearer of the two bodies, examining it. Lying facedown, dressed in hunting camouflage jacket and trousers, they might have been asleep. Miriam stared at Riordan, then back at Brill. ‘What happened?’ she repeated.
‘They were waiting for us.’ Brill’s voice was robotic, unnaturally controlled. ‘They were not the guards we expected to see. That one’ – Riordan was straightening up – ‘I recognized him. He worked for Henryk.’
Riordan was holding something at arm’s length. As he came closer, Miriam recognized it. ‘Silenced,’ Riordan told her, his voice over-controlled as he ejected the magazine and worked the slide to remove the chambered round. ‘An assassin’s weapon.’
Brill nodded, her face frozen; but something in the set of her shoulders unwound, slumping infinitesimally.
‘Oh my god.’ Miriam felt her knees going weak. ‘What’s Sir Alasdair walking into?’
‘I don’t know.’ Brill took a deep breath. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes. Don’t worry, my lady, he’ll try to save one of them for questioning.’
Miriam shivered. Her sense of dread intensified: not for herself, but for Alasdair. The man-mountain had already saved her life at least once; deceptively big and slow, he could move like an avalanche when needs must. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘If I had to guess, I’d say the conservatives think they’re inside our OODA loop.’ Olga looked extremely unhappy. ‘This has to have been planned well in advance. My lady, I beg your indulgence, but would you mind waiting in the truck? It has been modified – there is some lightweight armor – it would set my mind at ease.’
‘Really?’ Miriam fought back the urge to scream with frustration.
‘Lady Olga, allow me.’ Brill touched Miriam’s arm. ‘Walk with me.’
Brill led Miriam back up the track, just beyond the bend.
‘What’s going to – ’
Brill cut across her. ‘Listen, my lady. In a couple of minutes, two of us – I would guess the earl and myself – will have to cross over, piggy-back. If the map is truthful, if Sir Alasdair has been successful at his task, I will return. Then Lady Olga will have to carry you across, while the returnee recovers their wits. If I don’t come back, you should assume that we are both dead and that before we died we betrayed your presence here to your enemies. In which case you and Lady Olga must drive like hell then go to ground and lose yourselves as thoroughly as you can imagine. Because if Earl-Major Riordan is dead or captured, our enemies will have accomplished their end, and all they need you for is to bring the heir to term and then . . . they won’t need you anymore. Do you understand? Do you understand?’
Brill’s grip on her wrist was painful. Miriam nodded, jerkily. ‘How long?’ she managed.
‘About . . . hmm. No more than five minutes.’ Brilliana pursed her lips. ‘If Sir Alasdair ran into trouble and we can’t fix it, we’ll come back. No false heroics. So you see? If I don’t come back soon, it’s because I can’t.’
‘You could be walking into an ambush.’
‘We could but we won’t.’ Brill nodded her head at the uphill slope. ‘What do you think that is?’
‘That’s a – ’ Miriam stopped. ‘Oh. Clever.’
‘Yes.’ The ground level in the Gruinmarkt didn’t always match the level in this world. World-walking tended not to go too well if the world-walker arrived several meters above ground level; and it didn’t work at all if they tried to cross over inside a solid object. ‘The shack is the primary location, but there’s a secret secondary. At the crest of the ramp, step off the track to the left, about six feet, then cross over. There’s an outhouse, and you come out at roof level with a clear field of fire.’ Brill hefted her gun. ‘Listen, go back to the truck and wait with Lady Olga.’ She smiled diffidently: ‘It will work out, you see.’
*
Near a small town in Pennsylvania, six miles north of Camp David, Highway 16 runs through rolling hills and open woodland, past the foot of a low mountain called Raven Rock.
A casual visitor turning off the highway onto Harbaugh Valley Road wouldn’t see much: a chain-link fence and a narrow track off to one side, and a sign warning of a restricted area. But if they drove up the road a couple of miles it would be another story – assuming the armed guards didn’t stop them first. Tucked away behind the trees on top of the mountain there was a huge array of satellite dishes and radio masts. And beneath the ground, buried under many meters of bedrock, lay the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, home of the Alternative National Military Command Center, the 114th Signal Battalion, and the emergency operations centers for the army, navy, air force, joint staff, and secretary of defense.
Of course, a casual visitor wouldn’t have seen the visitors arriving in the back of unmarked black Lincoln Town Cars with smoked windows that sat oddly low on their suspension. They wouldn’t have seen the thick steel doors that opened inside the low, windowless buildings, or the downward-sloping tunnel that cut into the ground, or the elevators and cranes and the blast doors set into the side of the tunnel. Indeed, there was no such thing as a casual visitor at the concrete-and-steel-lined installation embedded in the ground beneath the motel and golf club buildings.
Welcome to the Undisclosed Location.
In a compact, brightly lit conference room ninety feet below the ground, the vice president sat with his advisors, watching television. They had a lot of television to watch; a rack of six sets covered half a wall, flicking through channels on a twenty-second cycle. Bloomberg, CNN, Fox News, and C-SPAN played tag with the Cartoon Network and Discovery Channel on four monitors; two others were permanently tuned to NBC and the view from a traffic camera over-looking a street intersection in Dupont Circle.
The vice president leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms, and glanced at the skinny Yalie with his lapel-pin crucifix and rimless spectacles. ‘This is the boring part,’ he confided. ‘We used to come down here and game these scenarios every month or so during the nineties, you know. All weekend long. Used to be the Russkies on the other side, or the Iranians. They’d set up their opening move, we’d set up our response, and then we’d see how it all played out, whether or not we locate and kill the threat before it activates, which branch of the crisis algorithm we go down. The trouser legs of terror.’ He chuckled, a throaty laugh that terminated in a bubbling cough. ‘So. Do you think they’re bluffing?’
Dr. Andrew James glanced past his boss, at the empty chair where State’s assistant secretary ought to be sitting if this session wasn’t classified FAMILY TRADE ONLY. ‘I couldn’t say for sure, sir, but that phone call sounded promising.’ He gestured at the desk telephone in front of him, beige and stuffed with buttons with obscure labels that only made sense to the NSA eggheads who designed these gadgets. ‘The call terminated promptly.’
‘Good,’ the VP said vehemently. ‘Gutless bastards.’
‘We don’t know for sure that it terminate
d as intended, sir,’ James warned. ‘The adversary’s INFOSEC is pretty good for an amateur operation, and the bugging transcript from contact FLEMING indicates at least one of them was concerned about the bait phone.’
‘They got the message, either way. Bart, is there any noise on the Continuity side?’
‘Nothing new, sir.’ Bart, a graying DISA apparatchik, was hunched over a laptop with a trailing cable patched into a wall jack – a SIPRNet connection. ‘They’re all just standing by. SECDEF is aboard KNEECAP on the ramp at Andrews AFB, standing by for JEEP with short-notice takeoff clearance. The president is in the EOB as usual. Uh, message from SECDEF. He wants to know if you’ve got an update.’
‘Tell him no’ – the vice-president stared at the wall of televisions, then reached behind his left ear to adjust the multichannel earpiece – ‘but if they don’t send us a message within the next twenty-four hours I think they’re probably going to fold. I just want him where – want backup. This could go wrong.’
Dr. James’s BlackBerry buzzed for attention. Glancing down at its screen, he froze. ‘Sir.’
‘Speak.’
‘SIGTRADE just issued a RED FLASH – some kind of coded signal. It’s running through their network – ’ The machine buzzed again. ‘Uh, right. Something is going on. Post six reports surveillance subjects all just freaked. They’re moving, and it’s sudden.’
The vice-president closed his eyes. ‘Round ’em up, then. That’s plan – which plan – ’
Another aide riffled hastily through a ring binder. ‘Would that be HEAD CRASH, sir? Track and disable immediate, then hood and ship?’
‘That’s the one.’ He nodded. ‘Send it,’ he told Bart. ‘And tell them I want hourly head counts and updates on everything – misses as well as arrests.’
*
In private, behind locked doors, the discussion took a different shape.
‘Sit down, Jim. Have a whisky?’
‘Yes, please.’ James Lee settled into the overstuffed armchair and waited while his father – Elder Huan’s nephew Shen – filled two crystal tumblers from a hip flask and ensconced himself in the room’s other armchair. His den was furnished in conventional Western style, free of exotic affectations or imported reminders of the Middle Empire here; just two overstuffed armchairs, a battered mahogany bureau from the inventory of a retired ship’s captain, and a wall of pigeonholes and index files. The Lee family’s decidedly schizophrenic relationship with New Britain was tilted to the Occident here; but then, Dad had always been an Anglophile. ‘How’s Mother keeping? And Angelina? I haven’t seen them lately – ’
The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) Page 37