The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (11 page)

Twelve weeks ago (continued):

Mike Fleming leaned back in his chair and tried desperately to stifle a yawn.
This is crazy
, he told himself.
How can you be tired at a time like
this?

The air conditioner in the conference room wheezed, losing the battle to keep the heat of the summer evening at bay. He desperately needed another coffee. Despite the couple of hours’ nap
he’d caught back home before the spooks from NSA sucked him in, his eyes kept half-closing, threatening him with a sleep-deprivation shutdown.

‘Agent Fleming?’

‘Oh. Yeah? Sorry, what was the question?’

‘How long have you been awake?’ It was Smith, his expression unreadable.

Mike shook himself. ‘About fifty hours. Got about an hour’s sleep before your guys picked me up.’

‘Ah – right.’ Out of the corner of one eye Mike barely registered Herz from the FBI office looking sympathetic. ‘Okay, I’ll try not to keep you,’ said Smith.
‘We need you awake and alert for tomorrow. Meanwhile, can you give us a brief run-through on the background to Greensleeves? I’ve read Tony’s write-up of your report, but everyone
else here needs to be put in the frame, and it’s probably better if they get it from the horse’s mouth first before they get the folder. How do you take your coffee?’

Mike yawned. ‘Milk, no sugar.’ He stood up. ‘Shall I?’

‘Be my guest.’ Smith waved him toward the podium.

‘Okay.’ Mike forced himself to breathe deeply, suppressing another yawn, as Colonel Smith quietly picked up a white phone and ordered a round of coffees for the meeting.
‘Sorry, folks, but it’s been a long couple of days.’ Appreciative muttering. ‘Source Greensleeves. Don’t ask me who dreams up these stupid names. A couple of weeks ago
Greensleeves, whoever he was, casually dropped the hammer on a ring operating out of Cambridge. At this time it was purely a standard narcotics investigation. A low-level wholesaler, name of Ivan
Pavlovsk, was handling the supply line for a neighborhood street gang who were shifting maybe a kilo of heroin every month. Greensleeves left a code word and said he’d be back in touch later.
I thought at first it was the usual caped-crusader bullshit but it turned out to be solid and the DA up there is nailing down a plea bargain that should put our Ukrainian friend behind bars for the
next couple of decades.’ He leaned against the podium and glanced at Smith. ‘Are you sure you want the whole list?’

‘Give us the highlights.’ Smith’s brow wrinkled. ‘Up until yesterday. What you told Tony Vecchio.’ Tony was Mike and Pete’s boss in the investigation
branch.

‘Okay. We had two more leads from Greensleeves, at one-week intervals. Both were for intermediate wholesale links supplying cocaine in single-digit kilogram amounts to retail operations.
There was no lead on Greensleeves himself. Each time, he used a paid-for-cash or stolen mobile phone, called from somewhere populous – a restroom in the Prudential, the concourse of the Back
Bay station – and spent between thirty seconds and three minutes fifteen seconds on the phone before ringing off. He came straight through to my desk extension and left voice mail each time
– the third time we had a tap and trace in place but couldn’t get any units there in time. He used the same password with each call, and gave no indication as to why he was trying to
shop these guys to us. Until yesterday Pete here was betting it was an internal turf war. My money was on an insider wanting to cash out and make a WPP run, but either way the guy was clearly a
professional.’ Mike paused.

‘If anyone wants a recap, we’re having copies of the case notes prepared for you,’ Smith added. ‘Can I ask you all
not
to make any written notes of this
briefing,’ he added pointedly in the direction of Frank the surveyor. ‘We’d only have to incinerate them afterward.’

Like that, is it?
Mike wondered. ‘Shall I continue?’

‘When you’re ready.’

‘Okay. We got a tip-off from Greensleeves five weeks ago, about Case Phantom’s main distribution center for Boston and Cambridge. Case Phantom is Pete’s specialty, a really
major pipeline we’ve been trying to crack for months. Greensleeves used the same code word, this time in an envelope along with a sample of merchandise and – this is significant –
a saliva sample. Greensleeves wanted to turn himself in, which struck us as noteworthy: but what set the alarm bells going was Greensleeves wanting to turn himself in and enlist in the Witness
Protection Program in return for knocking over Case Phantom. And helping us get it right, this time.’

Pete sighed noisily.

‘Yeah,’ said Mike. ‘Operation Phoenix was part of Case Phantom, too. Back before Greensleeves decided to come aboard. It was a really big bust – the wrong
kind.’

Now
he saw Agent Herz wince. They’d taken up the tip-off and gone in like gangbusters, half the special agents posted at the Boston DEA office with heavy support from the police.
But they’d hit a wall – literally. The modern-looking office building had turned out to be a fortress, doors and windows backed by steel barriers and surveillance cameras like a foreign
embassy.

Worse, the defenders hadn’t been the usual half-assed
Goodfellas
wannabes. Someone with a Russian army-surplus sniper’s rifle had taken down two of the backup SWAT team
before Lieutenant Smale had pulled them back and called up reinforcements for a siege. Then, four hours into the siege – just as they’d been getting ready to look for alternative ways
in – the building had collapsed. Someone had mined its foundations with demolition charges and brought it right down on top of the cellars, which were built like a cold war nuclear bunker.
The CSIs and civil engineers were still sieving the wreckage, but Mike didn’t expect them to find anything.

‘In retrospect, Phoenix should have been a signal that something really weird was happening,’ Mike continued. ‘It took us a long time to dig our way into the rubble and what we
found was disturbing. Bomb shelters, cold stores, closed-circuit air-conditioning . . . and fifty kilograms of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine in a vault. Plus an arsenal like a National Guard depot.
But there were no bodies . . .’ He trailed off introspectively.
Too tired for this
, he thought dizzily.

‘Okay, now fast-forward. You’ve had a series of tip-offs from source Greensleeves, leading up to Greensleeves turning himself in three days ago,’ Colonel Smith stated.
‘What about the saliva sample? It’s definitely him?’

Mike shrugged. ‘The lab says so. Matthias is definitely source Greensleeves. He got us an armored fortress in downtown Cambridge with fifty kilos of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine and a
Twilight Zone
episode to explain, plus a series of crack warehouses and meth labs up and down the coast. Biggest serial bust in maybe a decade. He’s –’ Mike shook his
head. ‘I’ve spent a couple of hours talking to him and it’s funny, he doesn’t sound crazy, and after watching that video – well. Matt – Greensleeves –
doesn’t
sound sane at first, he sounds like a nut. Except that he’s right about everything I checked. And the guy vanishing in front of the camera is just icing on the cake. He
predicted
it.’ Mike shook his head again. ‘Like I said, he sounds crazy – but I’m beginning to believe him.’

‘Right.’ Colonel Smith broke in just as a buzzer sounded, and a marine guard opened the outer door for a steward, who wheeled in a trolley laden with coffee cups and flasks.
‘We’ll pause right there for a moment,’ Smith said. ‘No shop talk until after coffee. Then you and Pete can tell us the rest.’

*

The debriefing room wasn’t a cell. It resembled nothing so much as someone’s living room, tricked out in cheap sofas, a couple of re-cliners, a coffee table, and a
sideboard stocked with soft drinks. The holding suite where they’d stashed Greensleeves for the duration didn’t look much like a jail cell, either. It had all the facilities of a rather
boring hotel room – beds, desk, compact ensuite bathroom – if the federal government had been in the business of providing motel accommodation for peripatetic bureaucrats.

But the room had two things in common with every jail cell ever built. First, the door was locked on the outside. And second, the windows didn’t open. In fact, if you looked at them for
long enough you’d realize that they weren’t really windows at all. Both the debriefing room and the holding suite were buried in a second-story basement, and to get in you’d have
to either prove your identity and sign in through two checkpoints and a pat-down search, or shoot your way past the guards.

Mike and Pete had taken the friendly approach at first, when they’d first started the full debriefing protocol. After all, he was cooperating fully and voluntarily. Why risk pissing him
off and making him clam up?

‘Okay, let’s take it from the top.’ Mike smiled experimentally at the thin, hatchet-faced guy on the sofa while Pete hunched over the desk, fiddling with the interview
recorder. Hatchet-face – Matt – nodded back, his expression serious. As well it should be, in his situation. Matt was an odd one; mid-thirties in age, with curly black hair and a face
speckled with what looked like the remnants of bad acne. He was wiry, all whipcord muscle and bone, and he wore the same leather jacket and jeans he’d had on when he walked through the DEA
office door.

‘We’re going to start the formal debriefing now you’re here. When we’ve got the basics of your testimony down on tape, we’ll escalate it to OCDTF and get them to
sign off on your WPP participation and then set up a joint liaison team with the usual – us, the FBI, possibly FinCEN, and any other organizations whose turf is directly affected by your
testimony. We can’t offer you a blanket amnesty for any crimes you’ve committed, but along the way we’ll evaluate your security requirements, and when we’ve got the
prosecutions in train we’ll be able to discuss an appropriate plea bargain for you, one that takes your time in secure accommodation here into account as time served. So you should be free to
leave with a new identity and a clean record as soon as everything’s wrapped up.’ He took a breath. ‘If there’s anything you don’t understand, say so. Okay?’

Matt just sat on the sofa, shoulders set tensely, for about thirty seconds, until Mike began to wonder if there was something wrong with him. Then: ‘You don’t understand,’ he
said, in a quiet but urgent tone. ‘If you treat this as a criminal investigation we will both die. They have agents everywhere and you have no idea what they are capable of.’ He had an
odd foreign accent, slightly German, but with markedly softened sibilants.

‘We’ve dealt with Mafia families.’ Mike smiled encouragingly.

‘They are not your Mafia.’ Matt stared intimidatingly. ‘You are at war. They are a, a shadow government. They will not respond as criminals, but as soldiers and politicians. I
am here to defect, but if you are going to insist that they are ordinary criminals, you will lose.’

‘Can you point to them on a map?’ Mike asked. The informer shook his head. He looked faintly – disappointed? Amused? Annoyed? Mike felt a stab of hot anger.
Stop playing
head games with me
, he thought,
or you’ll be sorry
.

Pete looked up. ‘Are we talking terrorists here? Like al-Qaeda?’ he asked.

‘I said they are a government. If you do not understand what that means we are both in very deep trouble.’ Matt picked up the cigarette packet on the table and unwrapped it
carefully. His fingers were long, but his nails were very short. One was cracked, Mike noticed, and his right index finger bore an odd callus: not a shooter’s finger, but something
similar.

‘There is another world,’ Matt said carefully as he opened the packet and removed a king-size. ‘This world is the world you are familiar with. The world of the United States,
and of al-Qaeda. The world of automobiles and airliners and computers and guns and antibiotics. But there is another world, and you know nothing of it.’

He paused for a moment to pick up the table lighter, then puffed once on the cigarette and laid it carefully on the ashtray.

‘The other world is superficially like this one. There is a river not far from here, for example, roughly where the Charles River flows. But there is no city. Most of Boston lies under the
open sea. Cambridge is heavily forested.

‘There are people in the other world. They do not speak your language, this English tongue. They do not worship your tree-slain god. They don’t have automobiles or airliners or
computers or guns or antibiotics. They don’t have a United States. Instead, there are countries up and down this coast, ruled by kings.’

Matt picked up the cigarette and took a deep lungful of smoke. Mike glanced over at Pete to make sure he was recording, and caught a raised eyebrow. When he looked back at Matt, careful to keep
his expression blank, he realized that the informant’s hands were shaking slightly.

‘It’s a nice story. But what does it have to do with the price of cocaine?’

‘Everything!’ Matthias snapped.

Taken aback, Mike jolted upright. Matt stared at him: he stared right back. ‘What do you mean?’ He demanded.

After several seconds, Matthias’s tension unwound. ‘I’m sorry. I will get to the point,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of Gruinmarkt is dominated by a consortium of six
noble houses. Their names are – no, later. The point is, some members of the noble bloodline can walk between the worlds. They can cross over to this world, and cross back again, carrying . .
. goods.’

He paused, expectantly.

‘Well?’ Mike prodded, his heart sinking.
Jesus, just what I need. The hottest lead this year turns out to be a card-carrying tinfoil hat job
.

Matthias sighed. ‘Kings and nobles.’ He took another drag at his cigarette, and Mike forced himself to stifle a cough. ‘Noble houses rise and fall on the basis of their wealth.
These six, they are not old. They date their fortunes to the reign of – no, to the, ah, eighteen-fifties. Before then, they were unremarkable merchants – tinkers, really.
Traders
. Today they are the high merchant families, rich beyond comprehension, a law unto themselves. Because they
trade
. They come to this world bearing dispatches and gems and
valuables, and ensure that they arrive back in the empire of the Outer Kingdom – in what you would call California, Mexico, and Oregon – the next day. Without risk of disaster, without
delay, without theft by the bands of savages who populate the wilderness. And the trade runs on the other side, too.’