The Family Trade (8 page)

“That’s—I’m really sorry. I had no idea.”

“Don’t blame yourself.” Paulette managed an ironic smile. “I, uh, took a liberty with the files before I printed them.” She reached inside her handbag and flipped a CD-ROM at Miriam.

“Hey, what’s this?” Miriam peered at the greenish silver surface.

“It’s the investigation.” Paulie grinned at her. “I got
everything
before you decided to jump Sandy’s desk and get Joe to take an unhealthy interest in us.”

“But that’s stealing!” Miriam ended on a squeak.

“And what do you call what they did to your job?” Paulette asked dryly. “I call this insurance.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,
oh.
I don’t think they know about it—otherwise we’d be in way deeper shit already. Still, you should find somewhere to hide it until we need it.”

Miriam looked at the disk as if it had turned into a snake. “Yeah, I can do that.” She drained her glass, then picked up the disk and carried it over to the stereo. “Gotcha.” She pulled a multidisk CD case from the shelf, opened it, and slid the extra disk inside. “
The Beggar’s Opera.
Think you can remember that?”

“Oh! Why didn’t I think of doing that?”

“Because.” Miriam grinned at her. “Why didn’t I think of burning that disk in the first place?”

“We each need a spare brain.” Paulette stared at her. “Listen, that’s problem number one. What about problem number two? This crazy shit from another world. What were you messing around with it for?”

Miriam shrugged. “I had some idea that I could hide from the money laundry over there,” she said slowly. “Also, to tell the truth, I wanted someone else to tell me I wasn’t going crazy. But going totally medieval isn’t going to answer my problem, is it?”

“I wouldn’t say so.” Paulette put her glass down, half-empty. “Where were we? Oh yeah. You cross over to the other side, wherever that is, and you wander over to where your bank’s basement is, then you cross back again. What do you
think
happens?”

“I come out in a bank vault.” Miriam pondered. “They’re wired inside, aren’t they? After my first trip I was a total casualty, babe. I mean, projectile vomiting—” she paused, embarrassed. “A fine bank robber I’d make!”

“There is that,” said Paulette. “But you’re not thinking it through. What happens when the alarm goes off?”

“Well. Either I go back out again too fast and risk an aneurism or …” Miriam trailed off. “The cops show and arrest me.”

“And what happens after they arrest you?”

“Well, assuming they don’t shoot first and ask questions later, they cuff me, read me my rights, and haul me off to the station. Then book me in and stick me in a cell.”

“And
then?
” Paulette rolled her eyes at Miriam’s slow uptake.

“Why, I call my lawyer—” Miriam stopped, eyes unfocused. “No, they’d take my locket,” she said slowly.

“Sure. Now, tell me. Is it your locket or is it the pattern in your locket? Have you tested it? If it’s the design, what if you’ve had it tattooed on the back of your arm in the meantime?” Paulette asked.

“That’s—” Miriam shook her head. “Tell me there’s a flaw in the logic.”

“I’m not going to do that.” Paulette picked up the bottle and waved it over Miriam’s glass in alcoholic benediction. “I think you’re going to have to test it tomorrow to find out. And
I’m
going to have to test it, to see if it works for me—if that’s okay by you,” she added hastily. “If it’s the design, you just got your very own ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. Doesn’t matter if you can’t use it to rob bank vaults, there’s any number of other scams you can run if you can get out of the fix instantaneously. Say, uh, you walk into a bank and pull a holdup. No need for a gun, just pass over a note saying you’ve got a bomb and they should give you all the money. Then, instead of running away, you head for the staff rest room and just
vanish
into thin air.”

“You have got a larcenous mind, Paulie.” Miriam shook her head in awe. “You’re wasted in publishing.”

“No, I’m not.” Paulette frowned seriously. “Y’see, you haven’t thought this through. S’pose you’ve got this super power. Suppose nobody else can use it—we can try me out tomorrow, huh? Do the experiment with the photocopy of the locket on you, then try me. See if I can do it. I figure it’s going to be you, and not me, because if just anybody could do it it would be common knowledge, huh? Or your mother would have done it. For some reason somebody stabbed your mother and she
didn’t
do it. So these must be some kind of gotcha. But anyway. What do you think the cops would make of it if instead of robbing banks or photographing peasant villagers you, uh, donated your powers to the forces of law and order?”

“Law and order consists of bureaucracies,” Miriam said with a brisk shake of her head. “You’ve seen all those tedious FBI press conferences I sat in on when they were lobbying for carnivore and crypto export controls, huh?” A vision unfolded behind her eyes, the poisonous fire blossom of an airliner striking an undefended skyscraper. “Jesus, Paulie, imagine if Al Qaida could do this!”

“They don’t need it: They’ve got suicide volunteers. But yeah, there are other bad guys who … if you can see it, so can the feds. Remember that feature about nuclear terrorism that Zeb ran last year? How the NIRT units and FEMA were able to track bombs as they come in across the frontier if there’s an alert on?”

“I don’t want to go there.” The thought made Miriam feel physically ill. “There is
no way in hell
I’d smuggle a nuclear weapon across a frontier.”

“No.” Paulette leaned forward, her eyes serious: “But if you have this ability, who else might have it? And what could they do with it? There are some very scary, dangerous national security implications here, and if you go public the feds will bury you so deep—”

“I said I
don’t
want to go there,” Miriam repeated. “Listen, this is getting deeply unfunny. You’re frightening me, Paulie, more than those assholes with their phone calls and their handle on the pharmaceutical industry. I’m wondering if maybe I should sleep with a gun under my pillow.”

“Get frightened fast, babe; it’s your ass we’re talking about. I’ve had two days to think about your vanishing trick and our goodfella problem, and I tell you, you’re still thinking like an honest journalist, not a paranoid. Listen, if you want to clean up, how about the crack trade? Or heroin? Go down to Florida, get the right connections, you could bring a small dinghy over and stash it on the other side, no problems—it’d just take you a while, a few trips maybe. Then you could carry fifty, a hundred kilos of coke. Sail it up the coast, then up the Charles. Bring it back over right in the middle of Cambridge, out of fucking nowhere without the DEA or the cops noticing. They say one in four big shipments gets intercepted—that’s bullshit—but maybe one in five, one in eight… you could smuggle the stuff right under their noses in the middle of a terrorist scare. And I don’t know whether you’d do that or not—my guess is not, you’ve got capital-P principles—but that is the
first
thing the cops will think of.”

“Hell.” Miriam stared into the bottom of her glass, privately aghast. “What do you suggest?”

Paulette put her own glass down. “Speaking as your legal adviser, I advise you to buy guns and move fast. Mail the disk to another newspaper and the local FBI office, then go on a long cruise while the storm breaks. That—and take a hammer to the locket and smash it up past recognition.”

Miriam shook her head, then winced. “Oh, my aching head. I demand a second opinion. Where is my recount, dammit?”

“Well.” Paulette paused. “You’ve made a good start on the documentation. We can see if it’s just you, run the experiments, right? I figure the clincher is if you can carry a second person through. If you can do
that,
then not only do you have documents, you’ve got witnesses. If you go public, you want to do so with a splash—so widespread that they can’t put the arm on you. They’ve got secret courts and tame judges to try national security cases, but if the evidence is out in the open they can’t shut you up, especially if it’s international. I’d say Canada would be best.” She paused again, a bleak look in her eye. “Yeah, that might work.”

“You missed something.” Miriam stabbed a finger in Paulette’s direction. “You. What do you get?”

“Me?” Paulette covered her heart with one hand, pulled a disbelieving face. “Since when did I get a vote?”

“Since, hell, since I got you into this mess. I figure I owe you. Noblesse oblige. You’re a friend, and I don’t drop friends in it, even by omission.”

“Friendship and fifty cents will buy you a coffee.” Paulie paused for a moment, then grinned. “But I’m glad, all the same.” Her smile faded. “I didn’t get the law job.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Will you stop
doing
that? Every chance you get to beat yourself up for getting me fired, you’re down on your knees asking for forgiveness!”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize it was getting on your nerves,” Miriam said contritely.

“Fuck off!” Paulette giggled. “Pardon my French. Anyway. Think about what I said. Tomorrow you can mail that disk to the FBI if you want, then go on a long vacation. Or stick around and we’ll work on writing a story that’ll get you the Pulitzer. You can catch all the bullets from the goodfella hit men while I’ll be your loyal little gofer, get myself a star-spangled reference and a few points of the gross. Like, fifty percent. Deal?”

“Deal. I think my head hurts.” Miriam shuffled around and stood up. She felt a little shaky: Maybe it was the alcohol hitting her head on an empty stomach. “Where’s that takeout?”

Paulette looked blank. “You ordered it?”

“No.” Miriam snapped her fingers in frustration. “I’ll go do that right now. I think we have some forward planning to do.” She paused unevenly in the doorway, looking at Paulette.

“What?”

“Are you in?” she asked.

“Am I in? Are you nuts? I wouldn’t miss this for anything!”

Part 2

Meet The Family

Hotel Mafiosi

They came for her in the early hours, long after Paulette had called a taxi and Miriam had slunk into bed with a stomach full of lemon chicken and a head full of schemes. They came with stealth, black vans, and Mac-10s: They didn’t know or care about her plans. They were soldiers. They had their orders; this was the house the damp brown chair was collocated with, and so this was the target. That was all they needed.

Miriam slept through the breaking of the french window in her den because the two men on entry detail crowbarred the screens open, then rolled transparent sticky polyurethane film across the glass before they struck it with rubber mallets, then peeled the starred sheets right out of the frame. The phone line had been cut minutes before; there was a cell-phone jammer in the back garden.

The two break-and-enter men took point, rolling into the den and taking up positions at either side of the room. The light shed by the LEDs on her stereo and computer glinted dimly off their night-vision goggles and the optics of their guns as they waited tensely, listening for any sign of activity.

Hand signals relayed the news from outside, that Control hadn’t seen any signs of motion through the bedroom curtains. His short-wavelength radar imager let him see what the snatch crew’s night-vision gear missed: It could pinpoint the telltale pulse of warm blood right through a dry wall siding. Two more soldiers in goggles, helmets, and flak jackets darted through the opening and into the hall, cautiously extending small mirrors on telescoping arms past open doorways to see if anyone was inside. Within thirty seconds they had the entire ground floor swept clean. Now they moved the thermal imager inside: Control swept each ceiling carefully before pausing in the living room and circling his index finger under the light fitting for the others to see.
One body, sleeping, right overhead.

Four figures in black body armour ghosted up the staircase, two with guns, and two behind them with specialist equipment. The master bedroom opened off the small landing at the top of the stairs—the plan was to charge straight through and neutralize the occupant directly.

However, they hadn’t counted on Miriam’s domestic untidiness. Living alone and working a sixty-hour week, she had precious little time for homemaking: All her neat-freakery got left behind at work each evening. The landing was crowded, an overflowing basket of dirty clothing waiting for a trip down to the basement beside a couple of bookcases that narrowed the upstairs hall so that they had to go in single-file. But there were worse obstacles to come. Miriam’s house was full of books. Right now, a dog-eared copy of
The Cluetrain Manifesto
lay facedown at one side of the step immediately below the landing. It was precisely as cold as the carpet it lay on, so to the night-vision goggles it was almost invisible. The first three intruders stepped over it without noticing, but the fourth placed his right boot on it, and the effect was as dramatic as if it had been a banana skin.

Miriam jolted awake in terror, hearing a horrible clattering noise on the landing. Her mind was a blank, the word
intruder
running through it in neon letters the size of headlines—she sat bolt upright and fumbled on the dressing table for the pistol, which she’d placed there when she found she could feel it through the pillow. The noise of the bedroom door shoving open was infinitely frightening and as she brought the gun around, trying to get it untangled from the pillowcase—Brilliant light lanced through her eyelids, a flashlight:
“Drop it, lady!”

Miriam fumbled her finger into the trigger guard—

“Drop it!”
The light came closer, right in her face. “Now!”

Something like a freight locomotive came out of the darkness and slammed into the side of her right arm.

Someone said, “Shee-it” with heartfelt feeling, and a huge weight landed on her belly. Miriam gathered breath to scream, but she couldn’t feel her right arm and something was pressing on her face. She was choking: The air was acrid and sweet-smelling and thick, a cloying flowery laboratory stink. She kicked out hard, legs tangled in the comforter, gasping and screaming deep in her throat, but they were muffling her with the stench and everything was fuzzy at the edges.

She couldn’t move. “Not funny,” someone a long way away at the end of a black tunnel tried to say. The lights were on now, but everything was dark. Figures moved around her and her arm hurt—distantly. She couldn’t move. Tired. There was something in her mouth.
Is this an ambulance?
she wondered. Lights out.

The dogpile on the bed slowly shifted, standing up. Specialist A worked on the subject with tongue depressor and tubes, readying her for assisted ventilation. The chloroform pad sitting on the pillow was an acrid nuisance: For the journey ahead, something safer and more reliable was necessary. Specialist B worked on her at the same time, sliding the collapsible gurney under her and strapping her to it at legs, hips, wrists, and shoulders.

“That was a
fucking
mess,” snarled Control, picking up the little snub-nosed revolver in one black-gloved hand. “Safety catch was on, luckily. Who screwed up on the landing?”

“Sir.” It was Point B. “There was a book. On the stairs.”

“Bitchin’. Okay, get little Miss Lethal here loaded and ready to move. Bravo, start the cleanup. I want her personal files, wherever she keeps them.
And
her computer, and all the disks. Whoever the hell was with her this evening, I want to know who they are too. And everything else. Charlie, pack her bags like she’s going on vacation—a long vacation. Clothing, bathroom stuff. Don’t make a mess of it. I want to be ready to evacuate in twenty minutes.”

“Sir. Yes, sir.” Control nodded. Point B was going to pull a shitwork detail when they got home, but you didn’t discipline people in the field unless they’d fucked up bad enough to pull a nine-millimetre discharge. And Point B hadn’t. A month cleaning the latrines would give him time to think on how close he’d come to getting plugged by a sleepy woman with a thirty-eight revolver.

Spec A was nearly done; he and Spec B grunted as they lifted the coffin-shaped framework off the bed. Miriam was unconscious and trussed like a turkey inside it. “Is she going to be okay?” Control asked idly.

“I think so,” said Spec A. “Bad bruising on her right arm, and probably concussed, but I don’t expect anything major. Worst risk is she pukes in her sleep and chokes on her own vomit, and we can deal with that.” He spoke confidently. He’d done paramedic training and Van Two was equipped like an ambulance.

“Then take her away. We’ll be along in half an hour when we’re through sanitizing.”

“Yeah, boss. We’ll get her home.”

Control looked at the dressing table, strewn with underwear, month-old magazines, and half-used toiletries. His expression turned to disgust at the thought of searching through piles of dirty clothing. “Sky father, what a mess.”

* * *

There was an office not far from Miriam’s cell. The office was quiet, and its dark oak panelling and rich Persian carpets gave it something of the ambiance of a very exclusive Victorian gentleman’s club. A wide walnut desk occupied the floor next to the window bay. The top of the desk was inlaid with a Moroccan leather blotter, upon which lay a banker’s box full of papers and other evidence.

The occupant of the office sat at the desk, reading the mess of photocopies and memos from the file box. He was in his early fifties, thickset with the stomach of middle age, but tall enough to carry it well. His suit was conservative: He might have been a retired general or a corporate chairman. Neither guess would be wrong, but neither would be the full truth, either. Right now he looked as if he had a headache; his expression was sour as he read a yellowing newspaper clipping. “What a mess,” he murmured. “What a blessed mess…”

A buzzer sounded above the left-hand door.

The officeholder glanced at the door with wintry gray eyes. “Enter,” he called sharply. Then he looked back at the papers.

Footsteps, the sound of male dress shoes—leather-soled—on parquet, were abruptly silenced as the visitor reached the carpeted inner sanctum.

“You summoned me, uncle? Is there any movement on my proposal? If anyone wants me to—”

Angbard Lofstrom looked up again and fixed his nephew with a long icy stare. His nephew shuffled, discomfited: a tall, blond fellow whose suit would not have been out of place in an advertising agency’s offices. “Patience,” he said in English.

“But I—”

“I said
patience
.” Angbard laid the newspaper clipping flat on his blotter and stared at his nephew. “This is not the time to discuss your proposal. About which there is no news, by the way. Don’t expect anything to happen soon; you need to learn timing if you want to make progress, and the changes you are suggesting we make are politically difficult.”

“How much longer?” The young man sounded tense.

“As long as I deem necessary.” Angbard’s stare hardened. “Remember why you are here.”

“I—yes, my lord. If it pleases you to accept my apologies …”

“How is the prisoner?” Angbard asked abruptly.

“Oh. Last time I checked—fifteen minutes ago—she was unconscious but sleeping normally. She is in one of the doppelgänger cells. I removed the mnemonic she was wearing on her person and had one of the maids search her for tattoos. Her cell has no mirror, no shaving apparatus. I left instructions that I am to be called when she awakens.”

“Hmm.” Angbard chewed on his upper lip with an expression of deep disapproval. “What does the doctor say?”

“The doctor says that he might have to splint her arm, later—there is bruising—but she sustained no serious harm in the course of the pickup.”

“Well.” Angbard waved one hand in the direction of the chairs positioned before his desk. “Sit down.” His nephew sat with alacrity, his back stiff. “Do we have any known loose ends, Earl Roland?”

“Yes, sir, but nothing critical. We have retrieved the documents, camera, recorder, personal computer, and all the other effects that we could find. Her house was untidy, but we are fairly sure we were able to locate everything—her office was well-organized. The windows have been repaired, and the neighbours informed indirectly that she is on assignment away from home. She is unmarried and has few attachments.” Roland looked faintly disapproving. “There is reference to an elderly mother who lives alone. The only possible problem is referred to in the contractor’s report. Evidently on her last excursion a woman, identity unknown, arrived, collected her car, then her person, and drove her home. Presumably a friend. The problem is that she left the stakeout by taxi without any notice—I assume she summoned it by means of a mobile telephone—and our contractor team was too short-staffed to dispatch a tail. I have therefore instructed them to continue surveillance and reinstate the line tap, in the hope that the friend reappears. Once she does so—”

Roland shrugged.

“See that you do—I want them in custody as soon as possible.” Angbard harrumphed. “As to the prisoner’s disposition …” He paused, head cocked slightly to one side.

“Sir?” Roland was a picture of polite attentiveness.

“The prisoner is to be treated with all the courtesy due to one of your own station, indeed, as a senior Clan member, I say. As a respected guest, detained for her own protection.”

“Sir!” Roland couldn’t contain his shock.

Angbard stared at him. “You have something to say, my earl?” he asked coldly.

Roland swallowed. “I hear and… and will of course obey,” he said. “Just, please permit me to say, this is a surprise—”

“Your surprise is
noted,
” Angbard stated coldly. “Nevertheless, I will keep my reasons to myself for the time being. All you need to know at present is that the prisoner must be treated with, as they say, kidskin gloves.” He stared at the young officer intently, but he showed no sign of defiance: and after a moment Angbard relented slightly. “This—” he gestured at the box before him—“raises some most disturbing possibilities.” He tapped one finger on the topmost sheet. “Or had you noticed any strangers out with the Clan who are gifted with the family talent?”

“Mm, no, sir, I had not.” Roland looked suddenly thoughtful. “What are you thinking?”

“Later,” Angbard said tersely. “Just see she’s transferred to a comfortable—but securely doppelgängered—suite. Be polite and hospitable, win her trust, and treat her person with the utmost respect. And notify me when she is ready to answer my questions.”

“I hear and obey,” Roland acknowledged, less puzzled, but clearly thoughtful.

“See that you do,” Angbard rumbled. “You are dismissed.”

His nephew rose, straightened his suit jacket, and strode toward the door, a rapier banging at his side. Angbard stared at the door in silence for a minute after he had gone, then turned his eye back to the items in the file box. Which included a locket that he had seen before—almost a third of a century ago.

“Patricia,” he whispered under his breath, “what has become of you?”

* * *

Daylight. That was the first thing that Miriam noticed. That—and she had the mother of all hangovers. Her head felt as if it was wrapped in cotton wool, her right arm hurt like hell, and everything around her was somehow wrong. She blinked experimentally. Her head was wrapped in cotton wool—or bandages. And she was wearing something unfamiliar. She’d gone to bed in her usual T-shirt, but now she was wearing a nightgown—but she didn’t own one!
What’s going on?

Daylight. She felt muzzy and stupid and her head was pounding. She was thirsty, too. She rolled over and blinked at where the nightstand should have been. There was a whitewashed wall six inches from her nose. The bed she was lying in was jammed up against a rough cinder-block wall that had been painted white. It was as weird as that confused nightmare about the light and the chemical stink—

Nightmare?

She rolled the other way, her legs tangling up in the nightgown. She nearly fell out of the bed, which was far too narrow. It wasn’t her own bed, and for a moment of panic she wondered what could possibly have happened. Then it all clicked into place. “Gangsters or feds? Must be the feds,” she mumbled to herself.
They must have followed me. Or Paulie. Or something.