The Revolution Business: Book Five of the Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

  "Nobody has—" Miriam blinked. "You're kidding. You're Clan Security. You're telling me you've lost track of the official the Council put in charge of half a dozen atom bombs?"

  "Milady—" It was Brill.

  "What is it?"

  "He can't—" Her eyes were pleading.

  "Nobody can keep track of every member of the inner families," rumbled Alasdair. "We don't have the manpower." Miriam looked round, to see him watching Riordan. "Nevertheless . . . something happened, did it not?"

  "I was awaiting a report," Riordan said reluctantly, "before calling a meeting of the Committee of Regents. And the full Council, if necessary. It is not just his lordship who is proving hard to contact."

  "Who's missing?"

  "Oliver, Earl Hjorth. Baron Schwartzwasser. His lordship of Gruen, Baron yen Hjalmar. About half a dozen past and present soldiers of this very office who are absent without leave, two-thirds of the Postal Committee, various others—don't look so shocked; it's a goodly cross section of the conservative faction, but not all of them. I happen to know that Baron Julius is sitting on the bench in the royal assizes today, and when I raised the matter he professed ignorance convincingly. My lady, they might be attending a private party, for all I know. Their political views are not a sufficient reason to condemn them, in the absence of any other evidence."

  "But you don't know where the bombs are." Riordan looked pained. Miriam leaned towards him. "And there are rumors," she hissed. "A lot of whispering about revenge and honor. I'm not deaf, I've got ears to hear this stuff with. What do you think is going on?"

  Riordan tensed, and she thought for a moment that he was about to reply, but at that moment the door opened. "I said we weren't to be—oh. My lady." He rose to his feet as Miriam turned.

  "Helge? What are you doing here?" Olga glanced round angrily as she closed the door. "I see." She focused on the office's owner. "My lord, we need to talk about Plan Blue, right now. Helge, I beg of you, please excuse us—"

  "It's too late for that." Riordan frowned. "Helge was just asking me about—about Plan Blue."

  "Plan Blue?" Miriam echoed.

  Alasdair cleared his throat. "Is that the contingency plan for—" He cleared his throat again, and raised an eyebrow.

  "Oh scheisse," said Brill, despair in her voice.

  "The bastards have activated it," said Olga, her voice tightly controlled. "And I do not recall being invited to a plenary session to approve such action. Do you? It's unforgivable!"

  "Plan Blue?" Miriam repeated.

  "Excuse me." Riordan nodded at her. "My apologies, my lady, but I must make a call." He lifted the telephone handset and began to dial, then paused. "That's funny. There's no tone."

  "Give that to me." Miriam reached for it. The handset was dead, mocking her. "Urn, you've got a dead line. Could you have been cut off by accident, or is that too improbable?"

  "Enemy action," said Sir Alasdair. "My lady, over here." He moved swiftly, gesturing Miriam away from the window and moving to stand where she'd been a moment before.

  "Otto Schenck admitted it to, to one of my sources," Olga added as Riordan poked at his desktop computer, a frown spreading on his face. "Boasted, belike, he said they're going to send the enemy their king's head on a plate—"

  "It's not going to work," Brill whispered.

  "What's not going to work?" Miriam rounded on her tensely. "What are you talking about?"

  "Why now?" Brill frowned. "Why are they doing this now?" She looked at Miriam. "It's something to do with your grandmother, my lady. Her visit the other day. That was no coincidence!"

  "What do you—"

  "We need to get out of here!" Brill raised her voice, piercing and urgent. "Listen, everybody! This is a setup! We need to leave the building right now!"

  "Why—" Riordan was standing up.

  "She's right, go, now!" Olga grabbed his arm.

  "My lady. This way." Alasdair yanked the door open and pulled Miriam along behind him.

  "But where are we—" Miriam stopped arguing and concentrated on not stumbling as he powered along the corridor to-wards a fire door. "Alasdair! No!" Visions of claymore mines flashed through her mind as he stopped dead.

  "Oh, I don't think so," he assured her with a sharkish grin. "I checked this one before you arrived. Besides, I don't think they want to kill us. Immobilize us and send us a message, perhaps, but they're not going to risk killing the heir." He shoved down on the emergency bar and pushed the door open. In the distance behind them, a tinny siren began to wail. "After me, if you please."

  Sir Alasdair ducked round the door, then pronounced the area clear. They piled down the fire escape to the car park at the back of the small office building, Brill and Olga trailing behind. "What exactly is Plan Blue?" Miriam demanded breathlessly. "Where's Riordan?"

  "He's got other things to do," said Olga. "My lady Brilliana, please take your mistress somewhere safe."

  "Where—"

  "—Plan Blue?"

  "Plan Blue is the usage case for the Clan deterrent," Brill explained as they climbed into Sir Alasdair's Explorer. "A decapitation strike at the enemy."

  "Oh Jesus. Tell me that doesn't mean what I think it means."

  "I fear I cannot."

  "Olga, what is Riordan doing?"

  "He's going to find a phone." She grinned, humorlessly. "Oh, there he is now. . . ."

  Miriam turned her head to see Riordan round the side of the building, holding a briefcase. He was walking towards them. Olga popped the door.

  "Drive," he said, climbing in. "I've got to make a call. Once it connects, they'll be trying to trace us, so on my word pull into a car park so I can ditch this thing."

  Brill stared at the case as if it contained a poisonous reptile. "Is this safe?" she asked.

  "No." Riordan didn't smile. "You were right about it, Olga."

  The truck was already moving as Riordan opened the briefcase. "What's that?" asked Miriam.

  "A special phone." Brill pulled a face. "Not safe."

  "Indeed." There was a tray in the case, with a cell phone—in several pieces—nested in separate pockets. One of them contained a small, crude-looking circuit board with a diode soldered to it; another contained a compact handset.

  "Why did we leave the office?" asked Miriam.

  "Can't use this phone while stationary," Riordan grunted. "And the opposition cut our lines. A nuisance measure, I think, but the timing is worrying; I think they were watching you to see if you would take their bait. And you did."

  "Bait?" She shook her head, bewildered.

  "You came to see me, about Plan Blue. I do not believe that is an accident."

  "Bastards," she mumbled under her breath. Louder: "It was your man Carl."

  "Thank you," Riordan said gravely. "Alright, I am going to talk to the enemy now." He picked up the handset, flicked a switch on the small circuit board, and poked at the exposed keypad of the vivisected phone. "Dialing . . ." The sound of a ringing phone filled the truck's cab, coming from a speaker in the briefcase.

  "Hello?" The voice answering the phone was cold.

  "I was told that you can send a message to the White House," said Riordan. "Is that correct?"

  Miriam's skin crawled as she waited for the reply.

  "Correct," the voice said drily. "To whom am I speaking?"

  "You can call me the Chief of Security."

  "And you may call me Dr. James. Are you calling to surrender?"

  "No, I'm calling to warn you that your meddling has produced an overreaction from our conservative faction. They've activated a plan which—fuck."

  The line had gone dead; simultaneously, the LED on the circuit board had lit up, burning red.

  "They did it," Brill said, fascinated. "The bastards." Her actual word, in hochsprache, was considerably stronger.

  "Next drive-through, please," Riordan called to Sir Alasdair. "I am afraid you are right, milady."

  "What was that?" Miriam asked, staring at the LED
. "Something one of our artificers put in to replace the ten grams of C4 wired across the earpiece," said Olga. "Is it not an ingenious little assassination weapon?"

  "But we"—Miriam stared in horror—"we were going to warn them!"

  "Maybe they don't want warning?" Sir Alasdair commented.

  "But we—" Miriam stopped. "We've got to do something! Do you know where the bombs are?"

  "No," said Olga.

  "That's the whole point of Plan Blue," Riordan added. "It's a procedure for deployment. Nobody knows everything about it; for example, I don't know the precise target locations. It was designed so that it can't be disrupted if the commanders are captured, or if one of the bomb emplacement teams is captured."

  "But that's insane! Isn't there any way of stopping it?"

  "Normally, yes, if the chain of command was operating. But someone appears to have decided to cut us out of the loop. I fear we are facing a coup assisted by people inside Security, my lady. I have some calls to make. . . ."

  "We can warn them," said Olga, causing at least three people to ask, "how?" simultaneously.

  "Your friend, Mr. Fleming," she added, glancing sidelong at Miriam. "He is inside their security apparat."

  "So was that, that man. On the phone." Miriam stared at Riordan, who was busily unplugging components in the briefcase and fiddling with something that looked alarmingly like a pyrotechnic flare.

  "Yes, but Fleming will know how to bypass him," Brill said thoughtfully. "He will know how to escalate a bomb threat and sound a general alert. His superior may be playing insane games, but I believe he is still trustworthy."

  The Explorer turned a corner. "Stopping in a minute," called Sir Alasdair. "Are you ready?"

  "Yes," said Riordan, depressing a button on the flare and closing the briefcase. He latched it shut, then spun the combination wheels. "We have two minutes until we require a fire extinguisher."

  "You won't need them." Alasdair was already slowing, his turn signal flashing. "Okay, go." The car park outside a 7-Eleven was deserted.

  Riordan popped the door, lowered the briefcase, and then kicked it away from the truck. "Go yourself," he said. He was already opening another mobile phone, this one reassuringly unmodified. "Duty chief? This is the major. I have some orders for you. The day codes are—"

  Miriam rubbed her temples. "Anyone got a cell phone?" she asked.

  "I have," said Olga. "Why?"

  "Unless you can't live without it, I want to call Mike."

  "But we can—"

  "I said I want to call Mike!" Miriam snarled. "When I've spoken to him you can put me back in my padded box to gestate while you get down to finding those fucking bombs and arresting or shooting whoever stole them, but I should be the one who talks to Mike."

  "Why—“

  "Because I'm the only one of us he's got any reason to trust," she said bleakly, "and I'm afraid I'm going to burn him."

  The clinic room could have been a bedroom in a chain hotel, if not for the row of sockets on the wall behind the bed—piping in oxygen, vacuum, and other, less common utilities—and for the cardiac monitor on a stand beside it, spreading leads like creepers to each of the occupant's withered branchlike limbs. Outside the sealed window unit, the late afternoon sunshine parched the manicured strip of grass that bordered this side of the clinic; beyond it, a thin rind of trees dappled the discreet brick wall with green shadows.

  The man in the bed dozed lightly. He'd been awake earlier in the day, shaking in frustration as the speech therapist tried to coax words out of his larynx, and the effort—followed by an hour with the physiotherapist, working on the muscles in his damaged left arm, and then a light lunch served by a care assistant who carefully spooned each mouthful into his mouth—had tired him out. He'd been in his late sixties even before the stroke, his stamina reduced and his aches more noticeable with every morning. Since the stroke, things had only gotten worse. Afternoon naps, which he'd once disdained as suitable only for kindergartners, had become a regular daily fixture for him.

  Something—a small movement, or an out-of-place noise—brought him to consciousness, though he could not say why. Perhaps the shadow of a bird fluttering before the window glass disturbed him, or footsteps in the corridor outside: In any case, his eyelids flickered open, staring at the ceiling overhead. "Urrr." He closed his mouth, which had fallen open as he slept, and reached for the bed's motor controller with his left hand. His eyes twitched from side to side, scanning the angles and planes of the space surrounding him, looking for intrusions. His thumb twitched, pushing the headboard motor control, and the bed began to whine, raising him towards a sitting position.

  "Good afternoon, old man." The visitor closed the clinic room door carefully, then approached the bed, standing where its occupant could see him.

  "Urr . . . doc." Surprise and doubt sparked in the old man's eyes. "Doc-tor!"

  "I wanted to take a last look at you. You know, before the end."

  "You. End?" The visitor had to lean close to make out the words, for Angbard's speech was garbled, the muscles of his lips and tongue cut loose by the death of nerves in his brain. "Wher' guards?"

  "They were called away." The visitor seemed amused. "Something to do with an emergency, I gather. Do you remember Plan Blue?"

  "Wha—"

  The visitor watched as Angbard fumbled with the bed's controller. "No, I don't think so," he said, after a moment. Reaching out, he pulled the handset away from the duke's weakened fingers. "Your aunt sends her regards, and to tell you that our long-standing arrangement is canceled," he said, and stood up. "That may be sufficient for her, but some of us have been waiting in line, and now it's my turn."

  "Scheisse!"

  The duke made a grab for the emergency cord, but it was futile; he was still deathly weak and uncontrolled on his left side, and his right hand clawed inches short of the pull. Then the visitor grabbed the pillow from behind his head and rammed it down onto his face. It was a very uneven struggle, but even so the old man didn't go easily. "Fucking lie down and die," snarled the visitor, leaning on him as he tried to grab the duke's flailing left hand. "Why can't you do something right for once in your life?"

  He was answered by a buzzer sounding from the heart monitor.

  Breathing heavily he levered himself off the bed; then, lifting the pillow, he shoved it under the duke's lolling head before turning to stare at the monitor. "Hmm, you do appear to have lost your sinus rhythm altogether! Time to leave, I think." He stared at the corpse in distaste. "That's a better end than you deserved, old man. Better by far, compared to the normal punishment for betrayal. . ."

  He breathed deeply a few times, watching the buzzing heart monitor. Then Dr. ven Hjalmar opened the door, took a deep breath to fill his lungs, and shouted, "Crash cart, stat! Patient in cardiac arrest!" before turning hack to the bed to commence the motions of resuscitation.

  Mike had been accumulating leave for too long; taking some of it now wouldn't strike anyone in human resources as strange, although it was a fair bet that someone higher up the tree would start asking questions if he didn't show up for work within a week.

  In the meantime he went home, still numb with shock from the disclosures buried on the cassette tapes. It was, he thought, time to make some hard choices: Collusion between officials and the bad guys was nothing particularly new, but for it to go so high up the ladder was unprecedented. And it would be extraordinarily dangerous for someone at his level to do anything about it. Or not—and that was even worse. Dr. James is in WARBUCKS's pocket, Mike reminded himself. And he gave me those tapes, not some other, more qualified analyst. If I'm lucky he did it because he considers me trustworthy. More likely . . . A vision kept flickering in his mind's eye, of Colonel Smith, in all candor, telling Dr. James, "Mike's a bit squirrelly about you. Nothing to worry about, but you should keep an eye on him." And Dr. James, with that chilly reserved look in his eye, nodding and making a note by his name on the org chart: disposable resource.
>
  Mike was under no illusions about the taskmaster Dr. James worked for: a determined, driven, man—ruthless would not be an exaggeration. He had a fire in his belly and a desire to bend history to his will. With his doctrine of a unitary executive and his gradual arrogation of extraordinary powers granted by a weak presidency, he'd turned the office of vice president into the most powerful post in the government. And he had good reason to silence anyone who knew of his covert connection to the Clan: good reason, even, to silence the Clan themselves for good. He's an oilman, and he knows they're sitting on all the oil that was ever under Texas, untapped, Mike realized. And now he's got a machine for getting there. It's crude today, but who knows what it'll he like tomorrow? He's got to be thinking, who needs Iraq, anyway? Or Saudi Arabia?

  Mike wasn't naive: He knew that the most addictive drug, the deadliest one, the one that fucked people up beyond redemption every time, was money. And I'm between an addict and the most powerful fix in history. . . .

  That afternoon and evening, he meticulously searched his apartment, starting by unplugging all the electrical appliances and checking sockets and power supplies for signs of tampering. Then he began to search the walls and floors, inch by inch, looking for bugs. And while he searched, he thought.

  The picture looked grimmer the longer he looked at it. Thinking back, there'd been the horror-flick prop they'd found in a lockup in Cambridge, thick layers of dust covering the Strangelovian intrusion of a 1950s-era hydrogen bomb, propped up on two-by-fours and bricks with a broken timer plugged into its tail. Nobody ever said what it had been about, but the NIRT inspectors had tagged its date: early 1970s, Nixon administration. What kind of false-flag operation involves nuking one of your own cities? How about one designed to psyche your country up for a nuclear war with China? Except it hadn't happened. But the Clan have a track record of stealing nukes from our inventory. Mike shuddered. And WARBUCKS had backed BOY WONDER's plan to invade Iraq, even after Chemical Ali had offed his cousin Saddam and sued for peace on any terms. And according to some folks who Mike wasn't yet prepared to write off as swivel-eyed loons, the oil had something to do with it.