The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2)

by Charles Stross

  ‘All right.’ She stood up. ‘Is there an electrical light in the bedroom? I need to plug my machine in to charge . . .’

  *

  The fridge was half empty, the half-and-half was half past yogurt, and Oscar clearly thought he was a burglar. That was the downside of coming home. On the upside: Mike could finally look forward to sleeping in his own bed without fear of disturbances, he had a crate of antibiotics to munch on, and Oscar hadn’t thrown up on the carpet again. Home. Funny place, where are the coworkers and security guards? Out on the street, obviously. Mike stood on the porch and watched as Herz drove off, then closed the door and went inside. The crutches got in the way, and the light bulb in the hallway had blown, but at least Oscar wasn’t trying to wrap his furry body around the fiberglass cast in a friendly feline attempt to trip up the food ape. Yet. Mike shuffled through into the living room and lowered himself into the sofa, struggled inconclusively with his shoe, and flicked on the TV. The comforting babble of CNN washed over him. I need some time out, he decided. This hospitalization shit is hard work. Spending half an hour as a couch potato was a seductive prospect: a few minutes later, his eyelids were drooping shut.

  Perhaps it was the lack of hospital-supplied Valium, but Mike – who didn’t normally remember his dreams – found himself in a memorable but chaotic confabulatory realm. One moment he was running a three-legged race through a minefield, a sense of dread choking him as Sergeant Hastert’s corpse flopped drunkenly against him, one limp arm around his shoulders; the next, he was lying on a leather bench seat, unable to move, opposite Dr. James, the spook from head office. ‘It’s important that you find the bomb,’ James was saying, but the cranky old lady on the limousine’s parcel shelf was pointing a pistol at the back of his head. ‘Matthias is a traitor; I want to know who he was working for.’

  He tried to open his mouth to warn the colonel about the madwoman with the gun, but it was Miriam crouching on the shelf now, holding a dictaphone and making notes. ‘It’s all about manipulating the interdimensional currency exchange rates,’ she explained: then she launched into an enthusiastic description of an esoteric trading scam she was investigating, one that involved taking greenbacks into a parallel universe, swapping them for pieces of eight, and melting them down into Swiss watches. Mike tried to sit up and pull Pete out of the line of fire, but someone was holding him down. Then he woke up, and Oscar, who’d been sitting on his chest, head-butted him on the underside of his chin.

  ‘Thanks, buddy.’ Oscar head-butted him again, then made a noise like a dying electric shaver. Mike figured his bowl was empty. He took stock: his head ached, he had pins and needles in one arm, the exposed toes of his left foot were cold to the point of numbness, and the daylight outside his window was in short supply. ‘Come here, you.’ He reached up to stroke the tomcat, who was clearly intent on exercising his feline right to bear a grudge against his human whenever it suited him. For a moment he felt a bleak wave of depression. The TV was still on, quietly babbling inanities from the corner of the room. How long is this going to take? Mrs. Beckstein had said it could be weeks, and with Colonel Smith tasking him with being her contact, that could leave him stuck indoors here for the duration.

  He pushed himself upright and hobbled dizzily over to the kitchen phone – the cordless handset had succumbed to a flat battery – and dialed the local pizza delivery shop from memory. Working out what the hell to do with this surfeit of time (which he couldn’t even use for a fishing trip or a visit to his cousins) could wait ’til tomorrow.

  The next morning, the long habit of keeping office hours – despite a week of disrupted sleep patterns – dragged Mike into unwilling consciousness. He took his antibiotics, then spent a fruitless half-hour trying to figure out how to shower without getting water in his cast, which made his leg itch abominably. This is hopeless, he told himself, when the effort of trying to lift an old wooden stool into the shower left him so tired he had to sit down: I really am ill. The infection – thankfully under control – had taken out of him what little energy the torn-up and broken leg had left behind. The difficulty of accomplishing even minor tasks was galling, and sitting at home on full pay, knowing that serious, diligent people like Agent Herz were out there busting their guts to get the job done made it even worse. But there was just about nothing he could do that would contribute to the mission, beyond what he was already doing: sitting at ground zero of a stakeout.

  Mike had never been a loafer, and while he was used to taking vacations, enforced home rest was an unaccustomed and unwelcome imposition. For a while he thought about going out and picking up some groceries, but the prospect of getting into the wagon and driving with his left leg embedded in a mass of blue fiberglass was just too daunting. Better wait for Helen, he decided. His regular cleaner would be in like clockwork tomorrow – he could work on a shopping list in the meantime. There’s got to be a better way. Then he shook his head. You’re sick, son. Take five.

  Just after lunchtime (a cardboard-tasting microwave lasagna that had spent too long at the bottom of the chest freezer), the front doorbell rang. Cursing, Mike stumbled into the hall, pushing off the walls in a hurry, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t get impatient and leave before he made it. He paused just inside the vestibule and checked the spy hole, then opened the door. ‘Come in!’ He tried to take a step back and ended up leaning against the wall.

  ‘No need to put on a song and dance, Mike, I know you feel like shit.’ Smith nodded stiffly. ‘Go on, take your time. I’ll shut the door. We need to talk about stuff.’ He was carrying a pair of brown paper grocery bags.

  ‘Uh, okay.’ Mike pushed himself off from the wall and half-hopped back towards the living room. The crutch would have come in handy, but he knew his way around well enough to use the furniture and door frames for support. ‘What brings you here?’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I thought I was meant to be taking it easy.’

  ‘You . . . are.’ Smith glanced around as he came into the main room. Not used to visiting employees at home, Mike realized. ‘But there’s some stuff we need to talk about.’

  I do not need this. Mike lowered himself onto the sofa. ‘You couldn’t tell me in the hospital?’ he asked.

  ‘You were still kind of crinkle-cut, son. And there were medics about.’

  ‘Gotcha.’ Mike waved at the door to the kitchen. ‘I’d offer you a coffee or something but I’m having a hard time getting about . . .’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Smith put one of the grocery bags down on the side table, then walked over to the kitchen door and put the other on the worktop inside. Then he made a circuit of the living room. He held his hands tightly behind his back, as if forcibly restraining himself from checking for dust on top of the picture rail. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘Are we being monitored?’

  Smith glanced at him. ‘I sure hope so.’ He gestured at the walls. ‘Not on audio, but there’s a real expensive infrared camera out there, and a couple of guys in a van just to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘There are?’ Mike knew better than to get angry. ‘What are they expecting to see?’

  ‘Visitors who don’t arrive through the front door.’ Smith slung one leg over the arm of the recliner and leaned on it, inspecting Mike pensively.

  ‘Oh, right.’ For a second, Mike felt the urge to kick his earlier self for passing on absolutely everything he’d learned. The impulse faded: he’d been fever-ridden, and anyway it was what he was supposed to do. But still, if he hadn’t done so, he wouldn’t be stuck out here under virtual house arrest. He might be back in hospital, with no worries about groceries. And besides, Smith had a point. ‘You might want to warn them I’m expecting a housekeeper to show tomorrow – she drops by a couple of times a week.’

  ‘I’ll tell them.’ Smith paused. ‘As it happens, I know you’re not being listened in on, unless you lift the receiver on that phone – I signed the wiretap request myself. There’s stuff we need to talk about, and this place is more pr
ivate than my office, if you follow my drift.’

  ‘I’m not being listened in on right now? Suits me.’ Mike leaned back in the sofa. ‘Talk away. Sorry if I don’t, uh, if I’m not too focused: I feel like shit.’

  ‘That’s why you’re on sick leave. You may be interested to know that your story checks out: Beckstein’s mother disappeared six months ago. Her house is still there, the bills are being paid on time, but there’s nobody home. We haven’t gotten a trace on her income stream so far; her credit cards and bank account are ordinary enough, but the deposits are coming in from an offshore bank account in Liechtenstein and that’s turning out to be hard to trace. Anyway, we confirmed that she’s one of them.’ He stood up again and paced over to the kitchen door then back, as if his legs were incapable of standing still. ‘This is a, a tactical mess. We’d hoped to get at least a few successful contacts in place before our ability to operate in fairyland was blown. What this means is that they, uh, Beckstein senior’s faction, are going to be alert for informants from now on. On the other hand, if they’re willing to talk we’ve got an – admittedly biased – HUMINT source to develop. Contacts, in other words.’

  Mike stared at him. Smith was just about sweating bullets. ‘Who do we talk to in the Middle East?’ he asked. ‘I mean, when we want to know what al-Qaeda is planning?’

  ‘That’s a lot more accessible, believe it or not. This, these guys, it’s like China in the fifties or sixties.’ Smith looked as if he was sucking on a lemon. ‘Look.’ He picked up the second grocery bag and handed it to Mike. ‘This stuff is strictly off the books because, unfortunately, we’re off the map here, right outside the reservation.’

  ‘What –’ Mike upended the bag and boxes fell out. A cell phone, ammunition, a pistol. ‘The fuck?’

  ‘Glock 18, like their own people use. The phone was bought anonymously for cash. Listen.’ Smith hunkered down in front of him, still radiating extreme discomfort. ‘The phone’s preprogrammed with Dr. James’s private number. This is running right from the top. If you have to negotiate with them, James can escalate you all the way to Mr. Cheney himself.’

  Mike was impressed, despite himself. They’re briefing the vice president? ‘What’s the gun for?’

  ‘In case the other faction come calling for you.’

  ‘Hadn’t thought of that,’ Mike admitted. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Find out if GREENSLEEVES was blowing smoke. If all he had was a couple of slugs of hot metal, that’s still bad – but right now it would be really good if we could call off the NIRT investigation. On the other hand, you might want to tell the Beckstein faction what will happen if one of our cities goes up.’

  ‘Huh. What would happen? What could we do, realistically?’

  Smith paused for a few seconds. ‘I’m just guessing here, you understand. I’m not privy to that information. But my guess is that we would be very, very angry – for all of about thirty minutes. And then we’d retaliate in kind, Mike. The SSADM backpack nukes have been out of inventory since the early seventies, and the W54 cores were retired by eighty-nine, but they don’t have to stay that way. The schematics are still on file and if I were a betting man I’d place a C-note on Pantex being able to run one up in a few weeks, if they haven’t done so already. Mr. Cheney and Dr. Wolfowitz are both gung ho about developing a new generation of nukes. It could get really ugly really fast, Mike. A smuggler’s war, tit for tat. But we’d win, because we’ve got a choke hold on the weapons supply. And if it comes to it, I don’t think we’d hold back from making it a war of extermination. It’s not hard to stick a cobalt jacket on a bomb when there’s zero risk of the fallout coming home.’

  ‘Wow, that’s ugly all right.’ 9/11 had been bad enough: the nightmare Smith was dangling before him was far worse. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yep.’ The colonel stood up. ‘From now on, until you’re through with this thing or we call it off, you’re in a box. We don’t want you in day-to-day contact with the organization. The less you know, the less you can give away.’

  ‘But I – oh. You’re thinking, if they kidnap me – ’

  ‘Yes, that’s what we’re afraid of.’

  ‘Right.’ Mike swallowed. ‘So. I’m to tell Mrs. Beckstein about Matt’s bomb threat, and we either want it handed over right now, or convincing evidence that he was bluffing. Otherwise, they’re looking at retaliation in kind. What else?’

  ‘You give her the mobile phone and tell her who it connects to. There’s a deal on the table that she might find interesting.’ Smith nodded to himself. ‘And there’s one other thing you can pass on at the same time.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tell her we’re working on the world-walking mechanism. Her window of opportunity for negotiation is open for now – but if she waits too long, it’s going to slam shut.’ He stood up. ‘Once we aren’t forced to rely on captured couriers, as soon as we can send the 82nd Airborne across, we aren’t going to need the Clan any more. And we want her to know that.’

  *

  In Otto’s opinion one armed camp was much like another: the only difference was how far the stink stretched. His majesty’s camp was better organized than most, but with three times as many men it paid to pay attention to details like the latrines. King Egon might not like the tinkers, but he was certainly willing to copy their obsession with hygiene if it kept his men from succumbing to the pestilence. And so Otto rode with his retinue, tired and dusty from the road, past surprisingly tidy rows of tents and the larger pavilions of their eorls and lords, towards the big pavilion at the heart of the camp – in order to ask the true whereabouts of his majesty.

  The big pavilion wasn’t hard to find – the royal banner flying from the tall mast anchored outside it would have been a giveaway, if nothing else – but Otto’s eyes narrowed at the size of the guard detachment waiting there. Either he mistrusts one of his own, or the bluff is doubled, he thought. Handing his horse’s reins to one of his hand-men he swung himself down from the saddle, wincing slightly as he turned towards the three guards in household surcoats approaching from the side of the pavilion. ‘Who’s in charge here?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am.’ The tallest of them tilted his helmet back.

  Otto stiffened in shock, then immediately knelt, heart in mouth with fear: ‘My liege, I did not recognize you – ’

  ‘Good: you weren’t meant to.’ Egon smiled thinly. ‘No shame attaches. Rise, Otto, and walk with me. You brought your company?’

  ‘Yes – all who are fit to ride. And your messenger, Sir Geraunt.’

  ‘Excellent.’ The king carefully shifted the strap on his exotic and lethal weapon, pointing the muzzle at the ground as he walked around the side of the tent. Otto noticed the two other household guards following, barely out of earshot. They, too, carried black, strangely proportioned witch weapons. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

  ‘Sire?’ Behind him, Heidlor was keeping his immediate bodyguard together. Good man. The king’s behavior was disturbingly unconventional –

  ‘The witches can walk through another world, the world of shadows,’ remarked Egon. ‘They can ambush you if you keep still and they know where you are. Armies are large, they attract spies. Constant movement is the best defense. That, and not making a target of one’s royal self by wearing gilded armor and sleeping in the largest tent.’

  Ah. Otto nodded. So there was a reason for all this strangeness, after all. ‘What would you have me do, sire?’

  Behind the royal pavilion there was a hummock of mounded-up earth. Someone – many someones – had labored to build it up from the ground nearby, and then cut a narrow trench into it. ‘Pay attention.’ His majesty marched along the trench, which curved as it cut into the mound. Otto followed him, curious as to what his majesty might find so interesting in a heap of soil. ‘Ah, here we are.’ The trench descended until the edges were almost out of reach above him, then came to an abrupt end in an open, circular space almost as large as the royal pavil
ion. The muddy floor was lined with rough-cut planks: four crates were spaced around the walls, as far apart as possible. The king placed a proprietorial hand on one of the crates. ‘What do you make of it?’

  Otto blanked for a moment. He’d been expecting something, but this . . . ‘Spoils?’ he asked, slowly.

  ‘Very good!’ Egon grinned boyishly. ‘Yes, I took these from the witches. Hopefully they don’t realize they’re missing. Tonight, another one should arrive.’

  ‘But they’re –’ Otto stared. ‘Treasure?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Their demon blasting powder?’

  ‘Something even better.’ A low metal box, drab green in color, lay on the planking next to the crate. Egon bent down and flicked open the latches that held the lid down. ‘Behold.’ He flipped the lid over, to reveal the contents – a gun.

  ‘One of the tinkers’,’ Otto noted, forgetting to hold his tongue. ‘An arms dump?’

  ‘Yes.’ Egon straightened up. ‘My sources told me about them, so I had my – helpers – go looking.’ He looked at Otto. ‘Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, the witch families handed their collective security to the white duke. He standardized them. Their guns, your pistol –’ he gestured at Otto’s holster – ‘when you run out of their cartridges, what will you do?’

  Otto shrugged. ‘It’s a problem, sire. We can’t make anything like these.’

  Egon nodded. ‘They have tried hard to conceal a dirty little secret: the truth is, neither can they. So they stockpile cartridges of a common size and type, purchased from the demons in the shadow world. Your pistol uses the same kind as my carbine. But they kept something better for themselves. This is a, an M60, a machine gun.’ He pronounced the unfamiliar, alien syllables carefully. ‘It fires bigger bullets, faster and farther. It outranges my six-pounder carronades, in fact. But it is useless without cartridges, big ones that come on a metal belt. And they are profligate with ammunition. So the duke stockpiled cartridges for the M60s, all over the place.’