‘Give me that coffee.’
‘When you called about the body in the warehouse, I told Matthias because he’s in charge of internal security,’ Roland explained as he poured a mug from the filter machine. ‘Then when you told me there was a bomb, I couldn’t figure it out. Because if he wants to blackmail me he needs you to be alive, don’t you see? So I can’t see why he’d plant it, but at the same time – ’
‘Roland.’
‘Yes?’
‘Shut up. I’m trying to think.’
Matthias. Cameras everywhere. She remembered the servant’s staircase. Roland’s bedroom. So Matthias wants us out of the way? It was tempting. ‘Two million dollars.’
‘Huh?’
‘We could go a long way on two million bucks,’ she heard herself say. ‘But not far enough to outrun the Clan.’
‘You want to – ’
‘Shut up.’ Roland had been holding out on her. For what sounded like good reasons, she admitted – but the thought made her blood run cold. Roland was no knight in shining armor. The Clan had broken him. Now all it took was Matthias pushing his buttons to make him do whatever they wanted. She wanted to hate him for it, but found that she couldn’t. The idea of going up against an organization with billions of dollars and hundreds of pairs of hands was daunting. Roland had done it once already, and paid the price. Okay, so he’s not brave, she thought. Where does that leave me? Am I brave, or crazy? ‘Are you holding out anything else on me?’ she asked.
Roland took a deep breath. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Honest. The only person who’s got anything on me is Matthias.’ He chuckled bitterly. ‘Nobody else. No other girlfriends. No boyfriends, either. Just you.’
‘If Matthias has primed you for blackmail, he must want something you can do for him,’ she pointed out. ‘He knows he could get rid of both of us by just giving us a shitload of money and covering our trail. And if he was behind these attempts to kill me, I’d be dead, wouldn’t I? So what does he want to do that involves me and needs you – and that he figures he needs a blackmail lever for?’
‘I – I don’t know.’ Roland pulled himself together, visibly struggling to focus on the problem. ‘I feel so stupid. I haven’t been thinking rationally about this.’
‘You’d better start, then.’ Miriam took a mouthful of coffee and looked at him. ‘What does Matthias want?’
‘Advancement. Recognition. Power.’ Roland answered immediately.
‘Which he can’t get, because . . . ?’
‘He’s outer family.’
‘Right. Do you see a pattern here?’ she asked.
‘He can’t get it, from the Clan. Not as long as it’s run the way it is right now.’
‘So.’ Miriam stood up. ‘We’ve been stupid, Roland. Shortsighted.’
‘Huh?’ He looked at her uncomprehendingly, lost in his private self-hatred.
‘I’m not the target. You’re not the target. Angbard is the target.’
He straightened up. ‘You think Matthias wants to take over the whole Clan security service?’
‘With whoever his mystery accomplices are. The faction who murdered my mother and kept the family feuds going with judicious assassinations over a thirty-year period. The faction from world three. Leave aside Oliver and that poisonous dowager granny and the others who’d like me dead, Matthias is in league with those assassins. And before he makes his move – ’
‘He’ll tell Angbard about us, whatever we do. To get us out of the frame before he rolls the duke up. But we can’t go to Angbard with it – we’d be openly admitting past disloyalty, hiding things from him. What are we going to do?’
PART NINE
STAKEOUT
TIP-OFF
It was a Friday morning late in January. The briefing room in the police fortress was already full as the inspector entered, and there was a rattle of chairs as a dozen constables came to their feet. Smith paused for a moment, savoring their attentive expressions. ‘At ease, men,’ he said, and continued to the front of the room. ‘I see you’re all bright and eager this morning. Sit down and rest your feet for a while. We’ve got a long day ahead, and I don’t want you whining about blisters until every last one of our pigeons is in the pokey.’
A wave of approving nods and one or two coughs swept the room. Sergeant Stone stayed on his feet, off to one side, watching his men.
‘You’ll all be wondering what this is all about, then,’ began Smith. ‘Some of you’ll ’ave heard rumors.’ He glanced around the room, trying to see if anyone looked surprised. Rumors were a constable’s stock in trade, after all. ‘If any of ’em turns out to be true, I want to know about it, because if you’ve heard any rumors about what I’m telling you now, odds are the pigeons’ve heard it too. An’ today we’re going to smash a nest of rotten eggs.’
He scanned his audience for signs of unease: Here and there a head nodded soberly, but nobody was jumping up and down. ‘The name of the game is smuggling,’ he said. ‘In case you was wondering why it’s our game, and not the Excise’s, it turns out that these smugglers have a second name, too: Godwinite scum. The illegal press we cracked last week was bankrolled from here, in my manor, by a Leveler quartermaster. We ain’t sure where the gold’s coming from, but my money is on a woman who’s lately moved into town and who smells like a Frog agent to me. At least, if she ain’t French she’s got some serious explaining to do.’
Smith clapped his hands together briskly to warm them up.
‘You men, your job is to help me give our little lady an incentive to sing like a bird. We are going to run this by shifts and you are going to stick to her like glue. Two tailing if she goes out, two on the manor, four hours on, four off, but the off team ready to go in if I says so. We are going to keep this up until she makes contact with a known seditionist or otherwise slips up, or until we get word that more gold is coming. Then we’re going to get our hands on her and find out who her accomplices are. When that happens we are going to get them back here, make them talk, and cut out the disease that has infected Boston for the past few years. A lot of traitors to the Crown are going to go for a long walk to Hudson Bay, a bunch more are going to climb the nevergreen tree, and you are going to be the toast of the town. Now, Sergeant. If you’d like to run through the work details, we can get started . . .’
*
A few hours later, a woman stepped out from behind a hedge, kicked the snow from her boots, and glanced around a dilapidated kitchen garden.
‘Hmm.’ She looked at the slowly collapsing greenhouse, where holes in the white curtain revealed the glass panes that had fallen in. Then she saw the house, most of its windows dark and gloomy. ‘Hah!’
She strode up the garden path boldly, a huge pack on her shoulders: When she came to the side door she banged on it with a confident fist. ‘Anyone at home?’ she called out.
‘Just a minute there!’ The door scraped ajar. ‘Who be you, and what d’you want, barging into our garden – ’
‘That’s enough, Jane, she’s expected.’ The door opened wide. ‘Olga, come in!’
The maid retreated, looking suspiciously at the new arrival as she stepped inside and shut the door. Miriam called: ‘Wait!’
‘Yes’m?’
‘Jane, this is Olga, my young cousin. She’ll be staying here from time to time and you’re to treat her as a guest. Even if she has an, uh, unusual way of announcing her arrival. Is that understood?’
‘Yes’m.’ The kitchen maid bobbed and cast a sullen glance at Olga.
‘Come on in and get out of the cold,’ Miriam told her, retreating through the scullery and kitchen into a short corridor that led to the huge wooden entrance hall. ‘Did you have a good trip? Let’s get that pack stowed away. Come on, I’ll show you upstairs.’ There was only one staircase in this house, with a huge window in front of it giving a panoramic view of the short drive and the front garden. Miriam climbed it confidently and gestured Olga toward a door beside the top step. ‘Take the main guest bedroo
m. Sorry if it looks a bit under-furnished right now – I’m still getting myself moved in.’
The bedroom was huge, uncarpeted, and occupied by a single wardrobe and a high-canopied bed. It could have come straight out of House Hjorth, except for the gurgling brass radiators under the large-paned windows, and the dim electric candles glowing overhead. ‘This is wonderful,’ Olga said with feeling. She smiled at Miriam. ‘You’re looking good.’
‘Huh. I’m taking a day out from the office, slobbing around here to catch up on the patent paperwork.’ She was in trousers and a baggy sweater. ‘I’m afraid I scandalized Jane the first time. Had to tell her I was into dress reform.’
‘Well, what does the help’s opinion matter? I say you look fine.’ Olga slid out from under her pack and began to unbutton her overcoat. ‘Do you have anything I can take for a headache?’
‘Sure, in the bathroom. I’ll show you. How would you like a guided tour of the town later?’ she asked.
‘I’d love it, when the headache is sorted.’ Olga rubbed her forehead. ‘This cargo had better be worth it,’ she said as Miriam knelt and began to work on the pack. ‘I feel like a pack mule.’
‘It’s worth it, believe me.’ Miriam worked the big, flattish box loose from the top of Olga’s pack. ‘A decent flat-panel monitor will make all the difference to running AutoCAD, believe me. And the medicine and clothes and, uh, other stuff.’ Other stuff came in a velvet bag and was denser than lead, almost ten kilograms of gold in a block the size of a pint of milk. ‘Once I’ve stored this safely and changed, we can go out. We’ll need to buy you another set of clothes while you’re over here.’
‘It can wait.’ Olga reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a pistol, offering it to Miriam. ‘I brought this along, by the way. Lady Brilliana is waiting on the other side.’
‘She is, is she? Good. Did she bring that cannon of hers?’
‘Yes.’ Olga nodded.
‘You’d better put that away. People don’t go armed here, except the police. You don’t want to attract attention.’
‘Yes. I noticed that in your world, as well.’ Olga found an inner pocket in her coat and slid the gun into it carefully. ‘Who’s to defend you?’
‘The thief-takers and constables, in theory. Ordinary thief-takers are mostly safe, but the police constabulary are somewhat different here – their official job is to defend the state against its own subjects. Unofficially some would say it’s the same back home, but those people have never seen a real police state.’ Miriam picked up the dense velvet bag with both hands and carried it to the doorway, glanced either way, then ducked through into the next room.
‘This is your bedroom?’ asked Olga.
‘Yes. Here, help me move the bed.’ There was a loose panel in the skirting board behind the bed. Miriam worried it free, to reveal a small safe which she unlocked. The bag of bullion was a tight fit because the safe was already nearly full, but she worked it closed eventually and put the wooden slat back before shoving the bed up against it. ‘That’s about ten thousand pounds,’ Miriam commented – ‘enough to buy this house nine times over.’
Olga whistled appreciatively. ‘You’re doing it in style.’
‘Yeah, well, as soon as I can liquidate it, I’m going to invest it.’ Miriam dusted herself down. ‘You’re sure Brill is all right?’ she asked.
‘Brilliana is fine. I don’t believe you have anything to worry about on her part.’
‘I don’t believe she’s a threat. A snoop planted by Angbard is another matter.’
Olga looked skeptical. ‘I see.’
‘Give me ten minutes? I need to get decent.’
‘Certainly.’ Olga retreated to the bathroom – opposite the guestroom – to play with the exotic fixtures. They weren’t as efficient as those in Miriam’s office or Fort Lofstrom, but they’d do.
Miriam met her on the landing, dressed for a walk in public, complete with a preposterous bonnet. ‘Let’s head to the tram stop,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll take you by the office and introduce you to people. Then there’s a friend I want you to meet.’
Miriam couldn’t help but notice the way Olga kept turning her head like a yokel out in the big city for the first time. ‘Not like Boston, is it?’ she said, as the tram whined around the corner of Broad Street and narrowly avoided a costermonger’s cart with a screech of brakes and an exchange of curses.
‘It’s – ’ Olga took a deep breath: ‘smellier,’ she declared. She glanced around. ‘Smaller. More people out and about. Colder. Everyone wears heavier clothing, like home, but well cut, tailored. Dark fabrics.’
‘Yes,’ Miriam agreed. ‘Clothing here costs much more than in world two because the whole industrial mass production thing hasn’t taken off. People wear hand-me-downs, insist on thicker, darker fabrics that wear harder, and fashion changes much more slowly. It used to be like that back home; in 1900 a pair of trousers would have cost me about four hundred bucks in 2000 money, but clothing factories were already changing that. One of the things on my to-do list is introducing new types of cloth-handling machines and new kinds of fabric. Once I’ve got a toehold chiseled out. But don’t assume this place is wholly primitive – it isn’t. I got some nasty surprises when I arrived.’
Something caught her eye. ‘Look.’ She pointed up into the air, where a distant lozenge shape bearing post from exotic Europe was maneuvering toward an airfield on the far side of town.
‘Wow. That must be huge! Why don’t your people have such things?’
‘We tried them, long ago. They’re slow and they don’t carry much, but what really killed them was politics. Over here they’ve developed them properly – if you want to compare airships here with airships back home, they’ve got the U.S. beat hands-down. They sure look impressive, don’t they?’
‘Yes.’
Miriam stood up and pulled on the bell cord, and the tram slid to a halt. ‘Come on,’ she urged. They stepped off the platform into shallow slush outside a street of warehouses with a few people bustling back and forth. ‘This way.’
Olga followed Miriam – who waited for her to catch up – toward an open doorway. Miriam entered, and promptly turned right into a second doorway. ‘Behold, the office,’ Miriam said. ‘Declan? This is Miss Hjorth. Olga, meet Declan McHugh.’
‘Pleased to meet you, ma’am.’ Declan was a pale-faced draftsman somewhere in his late twenties, his face spotted badly by acne. He regarded Olga gravely from beside his board: Olga smiled prettily and batted her eyelashes, hamming it up. Behind Declan two other youths kept focused on their blueprints. ‘Will you be in later, ma’am?’ he asked Miriam. ‘Had a call from O’Reilly’s works regarding the wood cement.’
‘I’ll be in tomorrow. I’m showing Olga around today because she will be in and out over the next few months. She’s carrying documents for me and talking to people I need to see on my behalf. Is that clear?’
‘Er, yes.’ Declan bobbed his head. ‘You’ll be wanting the shoe-grip blueprints tomorrow?’
‘Yes. If you could run off two copies and see that one gets to Mr. Soames, that would be good. We’ll need the first castings by Friday.’
‘I will do that.’ He turned back to his drawing board and Miriam withdrew.
‘That,’ she explained quietly, ‘is the office. There is the lab, where Roger and Martin work: They’re the chemistry team. Around that corner is going to be the metal shop. Soames and Oswald are putting it together right now, and the carpenter’s busy on the kitchen. But it’ll be a while before everything is in shape. The floor above us is still half derelict, and I’m going to convert a couple of rooms into paper storage and more drafting offices before we move the office work to new premises. Currently I’ve got eight men working here full-time. We’d better introduce you to all of them.’
She guided Olga into a variety of rooms, rooms full of furnaces, rows of glass jars, a lathe and drill press, gas burners. Men in suits, men in shirts and vests, red-faced or pale, whiskered
or clean-shaven: men who stood when she entered, men who deferred to Miriam as if she was royalty or management or something of both.
Olga shook her head as they came out of the building. ‘I wouldn’t have believed it. You’ve done it. All of them, followers, all doing your bidding respectfully. How did you manage it?’
Miriam’s cheek twitched. ‘Money. And being right, but mostly it was the money. As long as I can keep the money coming and seem to know what I’m talking about, they’re mine. I say, cab! Cab!’ She waved an arm up and down and a cabbie reined his nag in and pulled over.
‘Greek Street, if you please,’ Miriam said, settling into the cab beside Olga.
Olga glanced at her, amused. ‘I remember the first time you met a carriage,’ she said.
‘So do I. These have a better suspension. And there are trains for long journeys, and steam cars if you can afford the expense and put up with the unreliability and noise.’
The cab dropped them off at Greek Street, busy with shoppers at this time of day. Miriam pulled her bonnet down on her head, hiding her hair. ‘Come on, my dear,’ she said, in a higher voice than normal, tucking Olga’s hand under her arm. ‘Oh, cab! Cab, I say!’ A second cab swooped in and picked them up. ‘To Holmes Alley, if you please.’
Miriam checked over her shoulder along the way. ‘No sign of a tail,’ she murmured as the cab pulled up. ‘Let’s go.’ They were in the door of the pawn shop before Olga could blink, and Miriam whipped the bonnet off and shook her hair out. ‘Erasmus?’
‘Coming, coming – ’ A burst of loud wet coughing punctuated his complaint. ‘Excuse me, please. Ah, Miriam, my friend. How nice of you to visit. And who is this?’
‘Olga, meet Erasmus Burgeson.’ Miriam indicated the back curtain, which billowed slightly as Erasmus tried to stifle his coughing before entering. ‘Erasmus, meet my friend Olga.’
The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1) Page 49