The Merchants' War: Book Four of the Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

  “Oh.” She stared at the real title page, her brow furrowed: The Ethical Foundations of Equality, by Sir Adam Burroughs. “It’s a philosophy textbook?”

  “A bit more than that.” Burgeson’s cheek twitched. “More like four to ten years’ hard labor for possession.”

  “Really…” She licked her lips. It was a hot day, the track was uneven, and between her clammy skin and her delicate stomach she was feeling mildly ill. “Can you give me a synopsis?”

  “No.” He grinned at her. “But I should like it very much if you would give me one.”

  “Whoa.” She felt her ears flush. “And I thought you were being a perfect gentleman!”

  He looked at her anxiously. “Did I say something offensive?”

  “No,” she said, as her guts twisted, “I’m just in a funny mood.” Her hand went to her mouth. “And if you’ll excuse me now, I’m feeling sick—”

  Days turned into hours, and the minor nuisances of keeping a round-the-clock watch on a suburban house sank into the background. So when the call she’d been half-dreading finally came through, Judith Herz was sitting in the back of her team’s control van, catching up on her nonclassified e-mail on a company-issue BlackBerry and trying not to think about lunch.

  “Ma’am?” Agent Metcalf leaned over the back of the seat in front, offering her a handset tethered to the van’s secure voice terminal: “It’s for you.”

  She managed to muster a smile as she put down the BlackBerry and accepted the other phone: “Who is it?”

  Metcalf didn’t say anything, but his expression told her what she needed to know. “Okay. Give me some privacy.” Metcalf ducked back into the front. A moment later, the door opened and he climbed out. She waited for it to close before she answered. “Herz here.”

  “Smith speaking. Authenticate.” They exchanged passwords, then: “I’ve got an errand for you, Judith. Can you leave the watch team with Sam and Ian for a couple of hours?”

  “A couple of—” She bit back her first response. “This had better be worth it, Eric. You’re aware my watch team’s shorthanded right now?”

  “I think it’s worth it,” he said, and although the fuzz the secure channel imposed on the already-poor phone line made it hard to be sure, she got the impression that he meant it. “How far from the nearest MBTA station are you?”

  Herz blinked, surprised. “About a twenty-minute walk, I figure,” she said. “I could get one of the guys to drop me off, if you’re willing to cut the front cover team to one man for a few minutes. Why, what’s come up?”

  “We’ve got a lead on your last job, and I thought you’d want to be in on the close-out. I’m out of town right now and I need a pair of eyes and ears I can trust on the ground. What do you say?”

  “The last—” That was the search for the elusive nuke source GREENSLEEVES had claimed he’d planted. She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “You found it?”

  “It’s not definite yet but it looks like it’s at least a level two.” They’d defined a ladder of threat levels at the beginning of the search, putting them into a proper framework suitable for reporting on performance indicators and success metrics. A level five was a rogue smoke detector or some other radiation source that tripped the NIRT crews’ detectors—all the way up to a level one, a terrorist nuke in situ. The nightmare in the lockup in Cambridge was still unclassified—Judith had pegged it for a level one, and still didn’t quite believe in it—but a level two was serious; gamma radiation at the right wavelength to suggest weapons-grade material, location confirmed.

  “Okay. Where do you want me to go?”

  “Blue Line, Government Center. It’s the station itself. Go there and head for the Scollay Square exit. Rich will meet you there. He and Rand are organizing the site search. The cover story we’re going with is that it’s an exercise, training our guys for how to deal with a terrorist dirty bomb—so you can anticipate some press presence. You’ll be wearing your old organization hat and you can tell them the truth, you’re an agent liaising with the anti-terror guys.”

  Herz felt like wincing. Wheels within wheels—how better to disguise a bunch of guys in orange isolation suits trampling around a metro station in search of a terrorist nuke than by announcing to the public that a bunch of guys in isolation suits would be tramping around the station in search of a pretend-nuke? “What if they don’t find Matt’s gadget?” She asked.

  “That’s okay, they’ve got a mock-up in the van. You’ll just have to run in with it and tell any reporters who get in your way that we forgot to install it earlier.”

  A dummy nuke, in case we don’t find a real one? Herz shook her head. “When does it kick off?”

  “Rich is shooting for fourteen hundred hours.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way.” She hung up the phone and cracked the window. Metcalf was smoking a cigarette. “Hey, Ian.”

  He turned, looking surprised. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “We’ve got a call. Time to roll.”

  Metcalf carefully stubbed the cigarette out on the underside of his shoe then climbed back into the driver’s seat. “What’s come up?”

  “I need a lift to Alewife. Got a T to catch.”

  He shook his head. “You’re being pulled off the site?”

  “It’s urgent.” She put an edge in her voice.

  “I’m on it.” He slid the van into gear and pulled away. “How long are you going to be?”

  “A couple of hours.” She picked up her briefcase and zipped it shut to stop her hands trembling with nervous anticipation. “I’ll make my own way back.”

  The train ride to Downtown Crossing went fast, as did her connection to Government Center. Early afternoon meant that there was plenty of space in the subway trains, but the offices in the center of town would be packed. Herz tried not to think about it. She’d had months to come to terms with the idea that there might be a ticking bomb in the heart of her city—or not, that it might simply be a vicious hoax perpetrated by a desperate criminal—and now was not the time to have second thoughts about it. Still. “Our man has a thing about trip wires and claymore mines,” Mike Fleming had told her. Right. Booby traps. She resolved to keep it in mind. Not that it wasn’t in the orchestral score everyone was fiddling along to, but if it slipped some other player’s mind at the wrong moment…

  On her way out of the station Herz had time to reflect on the location. The JFK Federal Building loomed on one side, a hulking great lump of concrete: around the corner in the opposite direction was the tourist district, Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market and a bunch of other attractions. The whole area was densely populated—not quite as bad as downtown Manhattan, but getting there. A small backpack nuke would cause far more devastation and more loss of life than a ten-megaton H-bomb out in the suburbs. But the search teams had already combed this district—it was one of the first places they’d looked. So what’s come up now?

  Rich was waiting just inside the station exit, tapping his toes impatiently. “Glad you could make it,” he said, leading her out onto the plaza. “We’re ready to go.”

  Judith froze for a moment. There was an entire flying circus drawn up on the concrete: police cars with lights flashing, two huge trucks with an inflatable tent between them, Lucius Rand and his team wandering around in bright orange suits, hoods thrown back, chatting to each other, the police. There was even a mobile burger van—someone’s idea of lunch, it seemed. “What’s this?” She asked quietly.

  “This is Operation Defend Our Rails,” Rich announced portentiously. “In which we simulate a terrorist attack on a T station with weapons of mass destruction, and how we’d respond to it. Except,” his voice dropped a dozen decibels, “it’s not a simulation. But don’t tell them.” He nodded in the direction of a couple of bored-looking reporters with a TV camera who were filming the orange-suited team.

  “What do the cops know?”

  “They know nothing.” Rich suddenly looked serious.

  “Okay.” Judith stee
red him towards what looked to be the control vehicle. “Tell me why we’re here, then.”

  “Team Green rescanned the area with the new gamma spectroscope they just got hold of from Lockheed. The idea was to calibrate it against our old readings, but what they found—they thought it was an instrument error at first. Turns out that MBTA’s civil engineers recently removed the false walls at the ends of the Blue Line platforms so they could run longer trains. That’s when we began getting the emission spectra. More sensitive detectors, less concrete and junk in the way—that’s how it works. There’s an older platform behind the false walls, and it looks like there’s something down there.”

  Down? “How far down?” she asked.

  “Below the surface? Not far. This lot is all built up on reclaimed land—if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  She nodded. “Suppose it’s not deep at all, in fairyland. Suppose it’s on the surface. They could just waltz in and plant a bomb. Nobody would notice?”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Dr. Rand, taking her by surprise. “Let’s get you a hard hat and jacket and head down to the site.”

  “You’ve already opened it up?” she demanded.

  “Not yet, we were waiting for you.” He grinned unnervingly. “Step this way.”

  All railway stations—like all public buildings—have two faces. One face, the one Herz was familiar with, was the one that welcomed commuters every day: down the stairs into the MBTA station, through the ticket hall and the steps or ramps down to the platforms where the Blue Line trains and Green Line streetcars thundered and squealed. The other face was the one familiar to the MBTA workers who kept the system running. Narrow corridors and cramped offices up top, anonymous doors leading into dusty, ill-lit engineering spaces down below, and then the trackside access, past warning signs and notices informing the public that they endangered both their lives and their wallets if they ventured past them. “Follow me, sir, ma’am,” said the MBTA transit cop Rand was using as an escort. “It’s this way.”

  From one end of a deserted Blue Line platform—its entrance sealed off by police tape, the passengers diverted to a different part of the station—he led them down a short ramp onto the trackside. Herz glanced up. The roof of the tunnel was concrete, but it was also flat, a giveaway sign of cut and cover construction: there couldn’t be much soil up there. Then she focused on following the officer as he led them alongside the tracks and then through an archway to the side.

  “Wow.” Judith glanced around in the gloom. “This is it?” Someone had strung a bunch of outdoor inspection lamps along the sixty-foot stretch of platform that started at shoulder height beside her. It was almost ankle-deep in dirt, the walls filthy.

  “No, it’s down here,” said Lucius, pointing.

  She followed his finger down, and realized with a start that the platform wasn’t solid—it was built up on piles. The darkness below seemed almost palpable. She bent down, pulling her own flashlight out. “Where am I supposed to be looking?” she asked. “And has anyone been under here yet?”

  “One moment,” said Rand. “Officer, would you mind going back up for the rest of my team? Tell Mary Wang that I want her to bring the spectroscope with her.”

  Herz half-expected the cop to object to leaving two civilians down here on their own, but evidently someone had got to him: he mumbled an acknowledgment and set off immediately, leaving them alone.

  “No, nobody’s been under there yet,” said Rand. “That’s why you’re here. You mentioned that the person behind this incident had some disturbing habits involving trip wires, didn’t you? We’re going to take this very slowly.”

  “Good,” said Herz, suppressing an involuntary shudder.

  The next half hour passed slowly, as half a dozen members of Rand’s team made their way down to the platform with boxes of equipment in hand. Wang arrived first, wheeling a metal flight case trailing a length of electrical cable behind. She was petite, so short that the case nearly reached her shoulders. “Let’s see where it is,” she said encouragingly, then proceeded to shepherd the case along the platform at a snail’s pace, pausing every meter or so to take readings, which she marked on the platform using a spray can.

  “Where do you make it?” Rand asked her.

  “I think it’s under there.” She pointed to a spot about two thirds of the way down the platform, near the rear wall. “I just want to double-check the emission strength and recalibrate against the reference sample.”

  Rand glanced at Herz and pulled a face. “Granite,” he said. “Plays hell with our instruments because it’s naturally radioactive.”

  “But Boston isn’t built on—”

  “No, but where did the gravel in the aggregate under the platform come from? Or the dye on those tiles?” His gesture took in the soot-smudged rear wall. “Or the stones in the track ballast?”

  “But granite—”

  “It’s not the only problem we’ve got,” Rand continued, in tones of relish that suggested he was missing the classroom: “Would you believe, bananas? Lots of potassium in bananas. You put a bunch of bananas next to a gamma source and a scattering spectrometer on the other side and they can fool you into thinking you’re staring at a shipping container full of yellowcake. So we’ve got to go carefully.” Wang and a couple of assistants were hauling her balky boxful of sensors over the platform again, peering at the instrument panel on top with the aid of a head-mounted flashlight.

  “It’s here!” she called, pointing straight down. “Whatever it is,” she added conversationally, “but it sure looks like a pit to me. Lots of HEU in there. Could have come right out of one of our own storage facilities, it’s so sharp.”

  “Nice work.” Rand eased himself down at the side of the platform and lowered himself to the track bed. He looked up at Herz. “Want to come and see for yourself? Hey, Jack, get yourself over here!”

  Judith jumped down to the track bed beside him. Her hands felt clammy. Is this it? she asked herself. The sense of momentous events, of living through history, ran damp fingertips up and down her spine. “Watch out,” she warned.

  “No problem, ma’am.” Rand’s associate, Jack, had an indefinite air about him that made her think, Marine Corps: but not the dumb stereotype kind. “Let’s start by looking for lights.”

  Another half hour crept by as Jack—and another three specialists, experts in bomb disposal and booby traps—checked from a distance to ensure there were no surprises. “There are no wires, sir,” Jack finally reported to Dr. Rand. “No IR beams either, far as I can tell. Just a large trunk over against the wall, right where Mary said.”

  The hair on Judith’s neck rose. It’s real, she admitted to herself. “Okay, let’s take a closer look,” said Rand. And without further ado, he dropped down onto hands and knees and shuffled under the platform. Herz blinked for a moment, then followed his example. At least I won’t have to worry about the dry-cleaning bill if Jack’s wrong, part of her mind whispered.

  Jack had set up a couple of lanterns around the trunk. Close up, down between the pillars supporting the platform, it didn’t look like much. But Rand seemed entranced. “That’s our puppy all right!” He sounded as enthusiastic as a plane spotter who’d managed to photograph the latest black silhouette out at Groom Lake.

  “What exactly is it?” Herz asked warily.

  “Looks like an FADM to me. An enhanced storage version of the old SSADM, based on the W54 pit. Don’t know what it’s doing here, but someone is going to catch it in the neck over this. See that combination lock there?” He pointed. “It’s closed. And, wait…” He fell silent for a few seconds. “Got it. Did you see that red flash? That’s the arming indicator. It blinks once a minute while the device is live. This one’s live. There’s a trembler mechanism and a tamper alarm inside the casing. Try to move it or crack it open and the detonation master controller will dump the core safety ballast and go to detonate immediately.” He fell silent again.

  “Does ‘detonate imme
diately’ mean what I think it means?” asked Herz. It’s been here for months, it’s not going to go off right away, she told herself, trying to keep a lid on her fear.

  “Yes, it probably does.” Dr. Rand sounded distracted. “Hmm, this is an interesting one. I need to think about it for a while.”

  You need to—Herz wrenched herself back on track. “What happens now?” she asked.

  “Let’s go up top,” suggested Rand.

  “Okay.” They scrambled backwards until they reached the track bed, and could stand up. “Well?” she asked.

  “I got its serial number,” Rand said happily. “Now we can cross-check against the inventory and see where it came from. If it’s on the books, and if we can trust the books, then we can just requisition the PAL combination and open it up, at which point there’s a big red OFF switch, sort of.” A shadow crossed his face: “Of course, if it’s a ghost device, like the big lump of instant sunshine you stumbled across in Cambridge, we might be in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble? Tell me everything. I’ve got to tell the colonel.”

  “Well…” Rand glanced from side to side, ensuring nobody else was within earshot. “If it’s just a pony nuke that’s been stolen from our own inventory, then we can switch it off, no problem. Then we get medieval on whoever let it go walkabout. But you remember the big one? That wasn’t in our inventory, although it came off the same production line. If this is the same, well, I hope it isn’t, because that would mean hostiles have penetrated our current warhead production line, and that’s not supposed to be possible. And we won’t have the permissive action lock keys to deactivate it. So the best we can hope for is a controlled explosion.”

  “A controlled—” Herz couldn’t help herself: her voice rose to an outraged squeal—“explosion?”

  “Please, calm down! It’s not as bad as it sounds. We know the geometry of the device, where the components sit in the casing. These small nukes are actually very delicate—if the explosive lens array around the pit goes off even a microsecond or two out of sequence, it won’t implode properly. No implosion, no nuclear reaction. So what happens is, we position an array of high-speed shaped charges around it and blow holes in the implosion assembly. Worst case, we get a fizzle—it squirts out white-hot molten uranium shrapnel from each end, and a burst of neutrons. But no supercriticality, no mushroom cloud in downtown Boston. We’ve got time to plan how to deal with it, so before we do that we pour about a hundred tons of barium-enriched concrete around it and hollow out a blast pit under the gadget to contain the fragments.” He grinned. “But these gadgets don’t grow on trees. I’m betting that your mysterious extradimensional freaks stole it from our inventory. In which case, all I need to do is make a phone call to the right people, and they give me a number, and—” he snapped his fingers “—it’s a wrap.”