The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3)

by Charles Stross

  The short fireplug in the double-breasted suit leaned towards him: ‘You don’t get to ask questions,’ he started, but the thin man raised a hand.

  ‘Not yet. Mr. Schroeder, we’re from the FBI. Agent Judt.’ He held an ID badge where Steve couldn’t help seeing it. ‘This is my colleague, Agent Fowler. It would make things much easier if we could keep this cordial, and we understand your first instinct is to treat this as a news investigation, but right now we’re looking at an unprecedented crime and you’re the first lead we’ve found. If you know anything, anything at all, then I’d be very grateful if you’d share it with us.’

  ‘If there’s another bomb out there and you don’t help us, you could be charged with conspiracy,’ Agent Fowler added in a low warning rumble. Then he shut up.

  Steve took a deep breath. The explosions kept replaying behind his eyelids in slow motion. He breathed out slowly. ‘I’m a bit . . . freaked,’ he admitted. ‘This morning I had a visit from a man who identified himself as a DEA agent, name of Fleming. He spun me a crazy yarn and I figured he was basically your usual run-of-the-mill paranoid schizophrenic. I didn’t check his ID at the time – tell the truth, I wanted him out of here. He said there’d be nukes, and he’d call back later. I’ve got a recording’ – he gestured to his dictaphone – ‘but that’s about it. All I can tell you is what he told me. And hope to hell he gets back in touch.’

  Agent Fowler stared at him with an expression like a mastiff contemplating a marrowbone. ‘You sent him away.’

  Fear and anger began to mix in the back of Steve’s mind. ‘No, what I sent away was a fruitcake,’ he insisted. ‘I write the information technology section. Put yourself in my shoes – some guy you don’t know comes to visit and explains how a secret government agency to deal with time travelers from another universe has lost a bunch of atom bombs accidentally-on-purpose because they want the time travelers to plant them in our cities – what would you do? Ask him when he last took his prescription? Show him the door, by any chance?’

  Fowler still stared at him, but after a second Agent Judt nodded. ‘Your point is taken,’ he said. ‘Nevertheless . . .’

  ‘You want to wait until he makes contact again, be my guest.’ Steve shivered. ‘He might be a fruitcake, or he might be the real thing; that’s not my call. I assume you guys can tell the difference?’

  ‘We get fruitcakes too,’ Judt assured him. Riccardo was being no help: He just stood there in front of the beige partition, eyes vacant, nodding along like a pod person. ‘But we don’t usually get them so close to an actual, uh, incident.’

  ‘Act of war,’ Fowler snarled quietly. ‘Or treason.’

  Fleming didn’t ask for anonymity, Steve reminded himself. Which left: handing a journalistic source over to the FBI. Normally that would be a huge no-no, utterly immoral and unjustifiable, except . . . this wasn’t business as usual, was it? ‘I’ll help you,’ Steve said quietly. ‘I want to see you catch whoever did it. But I don’t think it’s Fleming you want. He said he was trying to get the word out. If he planted the bombs, why spin that cock-and-bull story in the first place? And if he didn’t plant them, but he knew where the bombs were, why wouldn’t he tell me?’

  ‘Leave the analysis to us,’ suggested Agent Judt. ‘It’s our specialty.’ He pointed at the dictaphone. ‘I need to take that, I’m afraid. Jack, if you’d like to stay with Mr. Schroeder just in case the phone rings? I’m going to bring headquarters up to speed, get some backup in.’ He looked pointedly at Riccardo. ‘You didn’t hear any of this, Mr. Pirello, but it would be very helpful to me if you could have someone in your building security department provide Agent Fowler and me with visitor badges, and warn the front desk we’re expecting colleagues.’

  Riccardo scuttled away as soon as Judt broke eye contact. Then he turned back to Steve. ‘Just wait here with Jack,’ he said reassuringly.

  ‘What if Fleming phones? What do I do?’ Steve demanded.

  ‘Answer it,’ said Fowler, in a much more human tone of voice. ‘Record it, and let me listen in. And if he wants to set up a meeting – go for it.’

  *

  In a cheap motel room on the outskirts of Providence, Mike Fleming sat on the edge of an overstuffed mattress and poured a stiff shot of bourbon into the glass from the bathroom. His go bag sat on the luggage rack, leaking the dregs of his runaway life: a change of underwear, a set of false ID documents, the paperwork for the rental car in the parking lot – hired under a false name, paid for with a credit card under that name. The TV on the chest of drawers blatted on in hypermanic shock, showing endless rolling reruns of a flash reflecting off the Potomac, the collapsing monument – for some reason, the White House seemed to be taboo, too raw a nerve to touch in the bleeding subconscious of a national trauma. He needed the bourbon, as a personal anesthetic: It was appallingly bad tradecraft, he knew, but right now he didn’t feel able to face reality without a haze of alcohol.

  Mike wasn’t an amateur. He’d always known – always – that a job could blow up in his face. You didn’t expect that to happen, in the DEA, but you were an idiot if you didn’t take precautions and make arrangements to look after your own skin. It was surprisingly easy to build up a false identity, and after one particular assignment in Central America had gone bad on him with extreme prejudice (a local chief of police had turned out to be the brother-in-law of the local heroin wholesaler), he’d carefully considered his options. When Pete Garfinkle had died, he’d activated them. It made as much sense as keeping his gun clean and loaded – especially after Dr. James had earmarked him for a one-way ticket into fairyland. They weren’t forgeries, they were genuine, legal ID: He didn’t use the license to get off speeding tickets, and he paid the credit card bill in full every time he used it. They were simply an insurance policy for dangerous times, and ever since he’d gotten back home after the disastrous expedition into Niejwein a couple of months ago, he’d been glad of the driving license and credit card taped inside a video cassette’s sleeve in the living room.

  From Steve Schroeder’s office he’d taken the elevator down to street level, caught a bus, switched to the Green Line, changed train and commuter line three times in thirty minutes, then hopped a Chinatown bus to New York, exiting early and ultimately ending up in a motel in Providence with a new rental car and a deep sense of foreboding. Then, walking into the motel front desk, he’d seen the endless looping scenes of disaster on CNN. It had taken three times as long as usual to check in. One of the two clerks on duty was weeping, her shoulders shaking; the other was less demonstrative, but not one hundred percent functional. ‘Why do they hate us?’ the weeping one moaned during a break in her crying jag. ‘Why won’t they leave us alone?’

  ‘Think Chemical Ali did it?’ Three months ago it would have been Saddam, before his cousin’s palace coup on the eve of the invasion.

  ‘Who cares?’

  Mike had disentangled himself, carefully trying not to think too hard about the scenes on the TV. But once he got to his room, it hit him.

  I tried to prevent it. But I failed.

  A vast, seething sense of numbness threatened to swallow him. This can’t be happening, there must be some way out of here, some way to get to where this didn’t happen. But it had happened; for better or worse – almost certainly for worse – Miriam’s enemies had lashed out at the Family Trade Organization in the most brutal way imaginable. Not one, but two bombs had gone off in D.C.: Atomic bombs, the all-time nightmare the DHS had been warning about, the things Mike had been having nightmares about for the year since Matthias walked into a DEA office in downtown Boston with a stolen ingot of plutonium in his pocket.

  No way of knowing if Schroeder had taken him seriously. He’d felt the argument slipping away, Schroeder’s impatience visibly growing as he tried to explain about the Clan, and about the FTO project to wrap them up and then to infiltrate and attack their home bases. He hadn’t even gotten as far as his contact with Miriam’s mother, Olga the ice prince
ss, the business about negotiation. He could see Schroeder’s attention drifting. And if he couldn’t convince one man who’d known Miriam and wondered where she’d gotten to, what hope was there?

  Maybe if I hadn’t asked the colonel, weeks ago, he speculated. Colonel Smith was Air Force, on secondment to FTO by way of a posting with the NSA. He understood chains of command and accountability and what to do about illegal orders. Not like that shadowy spook-fucker, Dr. James. But they blew up my car. They’d expected him to run somewhere. Smith might already be dead. If I’d smuggled some of the tapes out – tapes of conversations in Hochsprache, recorded by someone with access to the Clan’s innermost counsels – but that was nuts, too. The whole setup in that office was designed to prevent classified materials from going AWOL.

  Where do I go, now?

  Tired and sweaty and stressed and just a little bit numb from the bourbon, Mike sank back against the headboard and stared at the TV screen. Two diagonal columns of smoke, one of them almost forming the classic mushroom, the other bent and twisted out of recognizable shape. Again and again, the Washington Monument’s base blasted sideways out from under it, the peak falling. Helicopter footage of the rubble, now, eight- and nine-story office blocks stomped flat as if by a giant’s foot. Preliminary estimates of the death toll already saying it was worse than 9/11, much worse. Anchormen and women looking shocked and almost human under their makeup, idiotically repeating questions and answers, hunting for meaning in the meaningless. Interviews with a survivor on a gurney, bandaged around one side of their head, medevac’d to a hospital in Baltimore.

  What’s left that I can do?

  The vice president, somber in a black suit – someone had found a mourning armband for him somewhere – mounting a stage and standing behind a lectern. Balding, jowly, face like thunder as he answered questions in a near-constant waterfall of flashbulb flickering. Promising to find the culprits and punish them. Make them pay. This man whom the Clan’s consigliere had named as their West Coast connection. A whey-faced Justice Scalia stepping forward to administer the oath of office. President Cheney. Dire warnings about the Middle East. Appeals for national unity in the face of this terrorist threat. Promises of further legislation to secure the border. State of emergency. State of complicity.

  Where can I run?

  Mike lifted his glass and took another mouthful. Knowing too much about the Family Trade Organization was bad enough; knowing too much about the new president’s darker secrets was a one-way ticket to an unmarked roadside grave, for sure. And the hell of it was, there was probably no price he could pay that would buy his way back in, even if he wanted in on what looked like the most monstrously cynical false-flag job since Hitler faked a Polish army attack on his own troops in order to justify the kickoff for the Second World War. I need to be out of this game, he realized blearily. Preferably in some way that would defuse the whole thing, reduce the risk of escalation. Stop them killing each other, somehow. It seemed absurdly, impossibly utopian, as far beyond his grasp as a mission to Mars. So he took another sip of bourbon. He had a lot of driving to do tomorrow, and he needed a good night’s sleep beforehand, and after what he’d seen today . . . it was almost enough to make him wish he smoked marijuana.

  *

  Even revolutions need administration: And so the cabinet meeting rooms in the Brunswick Palace in New London played host to a very different committee from the nest of landowning aristocrats and deadwood who’d cluttered John Frederick’s court just three months earlier. They’d replaced the long, polished mahogany table in the Green Receiving Room with a circular one, the better to disguise any irregularities of status, and they’d done away with the ornate seat with the royal coat of arms; but it was still a committee, and Sir Adam Burroughs presided in his role as First Citizen and Pastor of the Revolution.

  Erasmus arrived late, nearly stepping on the heels of Jean-Paul Dax, the maritime and fisheries commissioner. ‘My apologies,’ he wheezed. ‘Is there a holdup?’

  ‘Not really.’ Dax stepped aside, giving him a sharp glance. ‘I see your place has moved.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Burgeson had headed towards his place at the right of Sir Adam’s hand, but now that he noticed, the engraved nameplates on the table had been shuffled, moving him three seats farther to the right. ‘A mere protocol lapse, nothing important.’ He shook his head, stepping over towards his new neighbors: Maurits Blanc, commissioner of forestry, and David McLellan, first industrial whip. ‘Hello, David, and good day to you.’

  ‘Not such a good day . . .’ McLellan seemed slightly subdued as Erasmus sat down. He directed his gaze at the opposite side of the round table, and Erasmus followed: Not much chivalry on display there, he noticed. A tight clump of uniforms sat to the left of Sir Adam: Reynolds, along with Jennings from the Justice Directorate, Fowler from Prisons and Reeducation, and a thin-faced fellow he didn’t recognize – who, from his attitude, looked to be a crony of Reynolds. A murder of crows, seated shoulder-to-shoulder: What kind of message was that?

  ‘Is Stephen feeling his oats?’ Erasmus murmured, for McLellan’s ears only.

  ‘I have no idea.’ Burgeson glanced at him sharply: McLellan’s expression was fixed, almost ghostly. Erasmus would have said more, but at that precise moment Sir Adam cleared his throat.

  ‘Good morning, and welcome. I declare this session open. I would like to note apologies for absence from the following commissioners: John Wilson, Electricity, Daniel Graves, Munitions – ’ The list went on. Erasmus glanced around the table. There were, indeed, fewer seats than usual – a surprise, but not necessarily an unwelcome one: the cumbersome size of the revolutionary cabinet had sometimes driven him to despair.

  ‘Now, to the agenda. First, a report on the rationing program. Citizen Brooks – ’

  Erasmus was barely listening – making notes, verging on doodles, on his pad – as the discussion wandered, seemingly at random, from department to department. He knew it was intentional, that Sir Adam’s goal was to ensure that everyone had some degree of insight into everyone else’s business – transparency, he called it – but sometimes the minutiae of government were deathly boring; he had newspapers and widecasters to run, a nagging itch to get out in front and cultivate his own garden. Nevertheless he sat at ease, cultivating stillness, and trying to keep at least the bare minimum of attention on the reports. Tone was as important as content, he felt: You could often tell fairly rapidly if someone was trying to pull the wool over your eyes simply by the way they spun out their words.

  It was halfway through Fowler’s report that Erasmus began to feel the first stirrings of disquiet. ‘Construction of new reeducation centers is proceeding apace’ – Fowler droned portentously, like a well-fed vicar delivering a slow afternoon sermon – ‘on course to meet the goal of one center per township with a population in excess of ten thousand. And I confidently expect my department to be able to meet our labor obligation to the Forestry Commission and the Departments of Mines and Transport – ’

  Did I just hear that? Burgeson blinked, staring at Fowler and his neighbors. Did I just hear the minister for prisons boast that he was supplying labor quotas to mines and road-building units? The skin on the back of his neck crawled. Yes, there were a lot of soldiers in the royalist camp, and many prisoners of war – and yes, there was a depression-spawned crime wave – but handing a profit motive to the screws stuck in his throat. He glanced around the table. At least a third of the commissioners he recognized had done hard time in the royal labor camps. Yet they just sat there while Fowler regurgitated his self-congratulatory litany of manacles refastened and windows barred. That can’t be what’s going on, he decided. I must have misheard.

  Next on the agenda was Citizen Commissioner Reynolds’s report – and for this, Erasmus regained his focus and listened attentively. Reynolds wasn’t exactly a rabble-rousing firebrand, but unlike Fowler he had some idea about pacing and delivery and the need to keep his audience’s attention. ‘Thank you, citizens. Th
e struggle for hearts and minds continues’ – he nodded at Erasmus, guilelessly collegiate – ‘and I would like to congratulate our colleagues in propaganda and education for their sterling work in bringing enlightenment to the public. However, there remains a hard core of wreckers and traitors – I’d place it at between two and eight percent – who cleave to the discredited doctrine of the divine right of kingship, and who work tirelessly and in secret to undermine our good works. The vast majority of these enemies work outside our ranks, in open opposition – but as the party has grown a hundredfold in the past three months, inevitably some of them have slipped in among us, stealthy maggots crawling within to undermine and discredit us.

  ‘A week ago, Citizens Fowler, Petersen, and I convened an extraordinary meeting of the Peace and Justice Subcommittee. We agreed that it was essential to identify the disloyal minority and restrain them before they do any more damage. To that end, we have begun a veterinarian process within our own departments. Security is particularly vulnerable to infiltration by saboteurs and former revenants of the Crown Polis, as you know, and I am pleased to say that we have identified and arrested no fewer than one hundred and fifty-six royalist traitors in the past three days. These individuals are now being processed by tribunals of people’s legates appointed by the Department of Law. I hope to report at the next cabinet meeting that the trials have been concluded and my department purged of traitors; when I can make such an announcement, it will be time to start looking for opportunities to carry the fight to the enemy in other departments.’ Reynolds smiled warmly, nodding and making eye contact around the table; there was a brief rumble of agreement from all sides.

  Erasmus bobbed his head: but unlike his neighbors, he was aghast. Among the books Miriam Beckstein had lent him the year before, he had been quite taken aback by one in particular: a history of revolution in the East, not in the French Empire-in-being in the Russias, but in a strange, rustic nation ruled by descendants of Peter the Great. The picture it painted, of purges and show trials followed by a lowering veil of terror, was one of utmost horror; he’d taken some comfort from the realization that it couldn’t happen here, that the bizarre ideology of the Leninists was nothing like the egalitarian and democratic creed of the Levelers. Was I wrong? he wondered, watching Citizen Commissioner Reynolds smiling and acknowledging the congratulations of his fellow commissioners with a sense of sickness growing in his belly: Is corruption and purgation a natural product of revolutions? Or is there something else going on here?