“To VPOTUS’s way of thinking, these guys are as much a threat to us as Chemical Ali was—hell, even more of a threat. The closest thing to a weapon of mass destruction he had was Saddam’s head on a stick, but he had to go, visibly and publicly, and these guys have to go, too. Even when it was just one nuke, if they’d given it back to us when we asked nicely, and sued for terms . . . it was going to be difficult. Anyway, there’s no use crying over spilt milk. The five remaining bombs aren’t enough to hurt us significantly—but they’re more than enough justification for what’s coming next. There’s a lab out west that’s been making progress on a gizmo for moving stuff between, uh, parallel universes. And you know what the price of gas is. If we can make it work, it’ll be a lot easier to get at the oil under their version of Texas than to deal with the Saudis. That’ll be what WARBUCKS is thinking, and it’s going to be what he’s telling James to expedite. When Wolfowitz gets through fixing up Iraq . . . do I need to draw you a diagram?”
At war. Mike shook his head. “So you’re telling me this is just another oil war? Has anyone told Congress that they’re supposed to have authorized this?”
“You know as well as I do that that’s not how things happen in this administration. They’re looking to our national security in the broadest terms, and when they’ve got their ducks lined up in a row, well: They’ve got a majority in Congress, they’re even in the Senate, and the other side have given them the most pliable minority leader in decades. Lieberman’s terrified of not looking tough on security issues, and lets WARBUCKS play him like a piano. That’s why the president’s style of leadership works: He decides, and then WARBUCKS gives him the leverage.”
“Not, he decides whatever WARBUCKS wants him to?”
Smith gave him an old-fashioned look. “That’s not for you or me to comment on, Mister Fleming. Either way, though, the narcoterrorism angle and the stolen nukes will make great headline copy if—when—it leaks out in public. We can call them Taliban 2.0, now with nukes: It’ll play well in Peoria, and the paranoia aspect—bad guys who can click their heels and vanish into thin air—is going to keep everyone on their toes. Bottom line is, those guys picked the wrong administration to mess with.” Smith glanced sidelong at Mike. “But I’m a lot less happy about Dr. James’s habit of going outside the chain of command.”
Mike nerved himself. “Aren’t you a bit worried that the doctor may be completely misreading how these people will react? They’re not narcoterrorists and they’re not hicks, they’ve got their own way of doing things—”
“It doesn’t matter how they respond,” said the colonel. “They’re roadkill, son. A decision has been made, at the highest level. We don’t negotiate in good faith with nuclear terrorists: We lie to them and then we kill them. The oil is a side issue. If you’ve got a problem with that, tell me now; I’ll find you a desk to fly where I can keep an eye on you and you don’t have to do anything objectionable.” The final word came out with an ironic drawl and a raised eyebrow.
For a bleak, clear moment Mike could see it all bearing down on him: a continent of lies and weasel-worded justifications, lies on both sides—Olga couldn’t have been as ignorant as she’d professed, not if six of the things were missing—and onrushing bloody-handed strife. From the administration on down, policy set by the realpolitik dictates of securing the nation’s borders and energy supplies . . . up against an adversary who had stolen nuclear weapons and dealt with enemies by tit-for-tat revenge slaying.
“I’m on board,” he said, holding his misgivings close to his chest. “I just hope those missing nukes show up.”
“So do I.” The colonel grimaced. “And so do the people we’ve got looking for them.”
BEGIN RECORDING:
“My lord Gruen, his lordship Oliver, Earl Hjorth.”
(Sound of door closing.)
“Ah, Oliver.”
My lord Baron! If you would care to take a seat? . . . We are awaiting her grace, and Baron Schwartzwasser. I think then we may proceed. . . .”
(Eighteen minutes pass. More people arrive.)
“. . . Let us begin.” (Clears throat.) “I declare this session open. My lord Gruen, you requested this meeting, I believe to discuss the recent incident in the northwest?”
“Yes, yes I did! Thank you, my lord. I have reports—”
“—It’s insupportable!”
“My lady? Do you have something you feel you must contribute, or can we hear Lord Gruen’s report first?”
“It’s insupportable!” (Vile muttered imprecations.) “Ignore me. I am just an old grandmother. . . .”
“Hardly that, my lady. Lord Gruen?”
“I am inclined to agree with her grace, as it happens: Her description of it is succinct. Here are the facts of the matter. The Pervert’s army split into three columns, which dispersed and harried our estates grievously. His grace Duke Lofstrom responded by dispersing small defensive forces among the noble households, but concentrating the main body of our Security corvée in the Anglische world as a flying column. He was most insistent that at some point the Pervert would bring his arms together to invest one of our great estates, in the hope of drawing us into a battle in which, outnumbered, we would fall.
“Despite our entreaties to defend our estates adequately and wipe out the attacking columns, he deliberately starved us of troops, claiming that he must needs give the Pervert a false, weak, picture of our strength of arms, and that in any case there were insufficient soldiers to defend all our households.”
(Sound of paper shuffling.)
“Despite one’s worst fears as to his motivation, I must concede that Isjlmeer and Nordtsman received no more succor than did Giraunt Dire and Hjalmar; the duke applied his neglect evenhandedly, failing to relieve his own party inasmuch as he also neglected our own. I do not, therefore, believe that there would be support for a move to relieve him in Committee, especially in view of the accuracy of his prediction. The Pervert
did
concentrate his forces to attack the Hjalmar Palace, evidently with treachery in mind, and in doing so he placed his army within reach of the duke’s flying column. Unimpeachable sources tell me that the Pervert’s forces had stolen machine guns, but were inadequately supplied and poorly deployed to resist the attack that Earl Riordan was preparing.”
(Throat clearing.)
“Yes, my lord?”
“Are you then confirming that, that Angbard’s strategy was
sound?
”
(Pause.)
“I would prefer to say that it wasn’t obviously
un
sound, my lord. Clearly, his parsimony in the defense of our estates bled us grievously. But equally clearly, if he
had
committed troops to our defense, he would have been unable to concentrate the forces he needed for a counterattack, and he would have ceded the initiative to the Pervert. It is possible that a more aggressive strategy of engagement would have borne fruit earlier, but one cannot be certain.”
“Oh.” (Disappointed.)
“Indeed.” (Drily.) “I am much more concerned by the unexpected outcome of the events at the fork in the Wergat. There is considerable confusion—the Anglischprache attack on the duke’s forces, the duke’s ictus, the exfiltration through the
other
Anglische realm with the connivance of the traitor family—and lastly, the, the
atomic bomb
. I was hoping my lord Hjorth might shed some light on that latter.”
(Muttering.) “My lords, my lady. If I may speak?”
Her grace: “You may speak until the cows come home, and convince no one.”
“Nevertheless, if I may speak? . . .”
(Conversation dies down.)
“Thank you. Of the duke’s condition, I shall speak later: As your representative on the security committee I believe I may brief you on the subject. But to get back to the matter in hand, my sources tell me that when the traitor Mat
thias fled to the Anglischprache king-president’s party nine months ago, he clearly gave them much more than anyone anticipated. Previous fugitives have been taken for madmen and incarcerated, or we have been able to hunt them down and deal with them—but Matthias appeared to vanish from the face of the earth. We now know that he flung himself on the mercy of the
Drug Enforcement Agency
, and by their offices, on a dark and sinister conspiracy of spies.”
(Shocked muttering.)
“There is worse. As you know, with the aid of those of our younger generation who have enlisted and served in the American armies, we have gained some knowledge of, and eventually access to, their atomic bombs. The weight and complexity of these devices, and the secrecy that surrounds their activation, transport, and use, defied us for many years, but in the second year of Alexis’s reign we finally infiltrated”—(muttering)—“a master sergeant in the Marine Corps, yes—enlisted and received special training—man-portable devices, designed for smuggling, with which to sabotage the enemies of the Anglischprache empire overseas in time of war—the, ah, Soviet Union. And these devices were stored securely, they thought, but without doppelgangering, as is to be expected of the ignorant. It was a delicate but straightforward task to build a bunker from which a world-walker could enter the storage cells—the hardest part was obtaining a treaty right to the land from the Teppeheuan, and the maintenance schedule for the bombs. From then on, of the twelve weapons, we ensured that six were stored on our side at all times, and rotated back into the Pantex store when they were due to be repaired.
“Then Matthias stole one of them.”
(More shocked muttering.)
“Order! Order, I say!”
“Thank you, my lord. If I may continue?”
(Pause.)
“Matthias ven Holtzbrinck was
trusted
. Nobody suspected him! He was Duke Lofstrom’s keeper of secrets. I must confess that in all fairness
I
thought him a man of the utmost probity. Be that as it may, Matthias ordered the removal of one of the weapons, and then hid it somewhere. We don’t know where because he covered his tracks exceedingly well: Perhaps one of the dead could tell us, but . . . anyway. Need I explain what the king-president’s men thought of their ultimate witch-weapon being stolen? I think we can guess. My sources tell me that they began negotiations with the duke with a threat, and that their spies have already been apprehended in the Gruinmarkt. Don’t look so shocked. Did you think our missing soldiers had betrayed us and sought refuge? Captivity and slavery—they have ways of compelling a world-walker”—(muttering)—“We face a determined enemy, and they showed just
how
determined they were at the Hjalmar Palace.”
“Then it was an atomic bomb?”
“Yes.”
(Uproar. Three minutes . . .)
“Order! Order, I say!”
“My lady? You have the floor.”
“This is insupportable! Gentlemen, we have known for many years that one day the Anglischprache would learn of our existence. But we cannot allow them to, to think they can tamper at will in our affairs! Sending, without warning, an atomic bomb, into a castle invested only hours earlier by the pride of our army, is a base and ignoble act. It is dishonorable! To live with this threat hanging over us is intolerable, and I submit that it is unthinkable to negotiate as one ruler to another with a king-president who would deliver such a stab in the back. If negotiations were in hand then they acted with base treachery. We act, now, as the largest faction of the Clan, and as rulers of the kingdom of Gruinmarkt, though the peace is not yet settled. We must secure our kingdom from this threat; if there is one thing I have learned in more than sixty years of politics and thirty years of war, it is that you cannot sleep peacefully unless your neighbor can be relied on to obey the same law as you do. The Americans are now, like it or not, our neighbors. We must therefore compel them to obey the law of kings.”
“My lady. What are you suggesting?”
(Coldly.) “One act of treachery deserves another. Do we not have arms? Do we not have a kingdom to defend? The American king-president—or rather, the power behind his throne—has declared war upon us and through us upon our domain and all those who live in it. We must make it clear that we will not be trifled with. The time for petty affairs of finance and customs is over. We must hurt the Americans, and hurt them so badly that their next king will not meddle lightly in our affairs.
“My lords. We have, in the course of this civil war, already found it necessary to kill one self-proclaimed king: even, one who would have reigned by blessing of the Sky Father. We must not, now, balk at the death of another lord who is an even greater danger to us than the Pervert. We must settle this matter with the Americans before they think to send their atomic bombs into the heart of Niejwein, aye, and every stronghold and palace in the land. And the best way to compel their rulers to negotiate in good faith is to demonstrate our strength with utmost clarity. My lords, you must decapitate the enemy. There is no alternative. . . .”
(Uproar.)
END RECORDING
High Estate
There was a country estate, untouched by war, separated from the clinic in Springfield by about three blocks and two-and-a-half thousand years of divergent history. Brill had picked up a courier from somewhere nearby and driven Miriam round to a safe house on a quiet residential street; whereupon the courier had carried her across, back into the depths of someone else’s history.
It was, in many respects, like her time as an involuntary guest of Baron Henryk. There was no electricity in the great stone-walled house, and no central heating or water on tap, and she was surrounded by servants who spoke to her only in hochsprache. Brill had left her in the hands of the maidservants, and she’d felt an unpleasant tension as the chattering women dressed her in clothes from the landholder’s wife’s chests. Trapped again: She felt a quite unexpected sense of panicky claustrophobia rising as they fussed over her. It had been hard to stand still, giving no sign of her urge to bolt and run: She forced herself to recall Brill’s oath. She won’t leave me here, she told herself.
To distract herself she fought her unease by trying to puzzle out their story. The landholder, she eventually concluded, was away in the wars, a relative of the Clan families: He’d sent his dependents to safety for the duration, leaving the staff behind with instructions to look after whomever the council billeted on them. Which meant they were expecting to host one Lady Helge, house and braid and surname unspecified, not Miriam—a woman from another world. You let yourself get trapped again, a little corner of her worried. They laid out a trap and let you walk right into it.
But there were significant differences from Henryk’s idea of hospitality, despite the primitive amenities and unwanted expectations. Her bedroom door had a lock, but she had her own key. The afternoon after her arrival, trying to dispel the anxiety and claustrophobia of being Helge again, she’d ventured from her room to look around the grand hall and the main rooms of the estate. When she’d returned she found the battered suitcase she’d borrowed from Erasmus sitting beside the canopy bed. A quick inspection with shaking hands revealed her laptop and the revolver Burgeson had given her. And not only had they let her keep the locket James Lee had given her—Brill had winked, and given her a second, smaller locket on a gold bracelet. None of these things were of any immediate use, but collectively they conveyed a powerful message: The trap has a key, and you are not a prisoner.
She’d sat on the bed, holding the laptop and shaking, carefully stifling her sobs of relief lest the servants waiting outside take fright. When she’d calmed down sufficiently to function again, she checked over the small pistol, reloading it with ammunition from its case. She let the hammer down on an empty cylinder, and slid it into a pouch she’d found cunningly stitched inside the cuff of her left sleeve; I can make this work, she told herself. I’ve got to make this work. The one common drawback
of both her own plan, and her mother’s, was that they depended on her living as the Countess Helge voh Thorold d’Hjorth. Not playacting in fancy dress, but actually being a lady of the Gruinmarkt—at least unless and until Iris’s hastily improvised junta secured its grip on power, or the US military figured out a way to claw a hole in the wall between the worlds. Which could happen tomorrow—or in ten years’ time.
The alternatives were all worse: a gamble on the questionable mercies of the DEA’s witness protection scheme, an even riskier gamble on Erasmus and his ruthless political allies. Between her mother’s Machiavellian proposal and the naïve optimism of the young progressive faction, there was at least some room for her to get a grip on events. “As long as Henryk doesn’t rise from the dead I’ll be alright,” she muttered under her breath. (Keep telling yourself that, mocked her inner skeptic. They’ll find some other way to screw you. . . .)
If Roland were still alive, and had actually been the knight in shining armor he’d looked like at first, she wouldn’t have to sort everything out for herself. But first he’d disappointed her, then he’d died trying to live up to her expectations, and now there was nothing to do but press on regardless. No more heroes, she resolved. I’m going to have to do this all on my own again, damn it. Which, semirandomly, reminded her of the old song. “What do I have to do to get a CD player in here?” she asked herself, and managed a croak of laughter.
A tentative voice piped up somewhere behind her, near the door: “Milady, are you alright?”
Miriam—Helge—turned her head. “I am—well,” she managed in her halting hochsprache. “What is it?”
The servant, a maid of the bedchamber—evidently of a higher status than a common or garden serving woman—studiously ignored her reddened eyes. “Milady? I beg you to receive a visitor downstairs?” The maid continued for another sentence, but Helge’s hochsprache was too patchy to catch more than a feminine prefix and an implication of status.
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