The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (27 page)

It was, she reflected, a bit like magic. The Clan could – of necessity – do things with false ID that beggared the imagination, far better than anything she’d had to work with
on undercover investigations for
The Industry Weatherman
. It was funny what a few million dollars a year in the right pockets could buy you. As long as you had the chutzpah – the
sense of personal invulnerability – to make effective use of it. Miriam’s wrist itched under the temporary tattoo.
Yes
, she thought.

‘Ah, Dr. Anderson.’ Darling barely examined her card. ‘If you’d care to follow me?’

Darling turned and led her through a maze of cubicles and corridors lined with the usual water coolers, photocopiers, and wilting rubber plants, to an office that seemed too cluttered and
compact to be that of an executive. There were files of hardcopy case notes on his desk and a subsiding heap of medical journals behind the glass front of a very used-looking bookcase. ‘I
wasn’t expecting a compliance audit this month,’ he said.

‘I know. You should have received a preliminary e-mail by now, though. This isn’t the start of a full investigation, I hope; more of a precautionary check, I didn’t bring a
full team with me. To be frank, I’m hoping you can just clarify a few points for me and we can leave it at that?’

‘That’s very irregular.’ Darling looked slightly puzzled.

Another false note and he’ll see through me
, Miriam realized nervously. But it was too late for second thoughts now. She stared at him through the lenses of her false spectacles
and concentrated on playing her role to perfection. ‘We’ve been asked to investigate quietly. By another government agency.’ She tapped her briefcase. ‘You’ve been
dealing with Applied Genomics via a cutout trust. All perfectly above-board. Don’t tell me this is the first time anyone’s asked you about it?’

She’d struck pay dirt: Darling’s face turned gray. ‘Who sent you here?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that.’ Miriam did her best to look irritated but patient. ‘It’s the Reproductive Assistance Foundation children, the W-star
heterozygotes. I’ve been asked some inconvenient questions by our sister agency. What are your postnatal follow-up protocols? What process did you subject your study guidelines to for ethical
clearance, and what facilities do you have in place to recall patients in the event that it turns out that there are complications – if, just for the sake of argument, the W-star trait is
associated with inborn errors of metabolism such as a hyperlipidemia or phenylketonuria? I am – surprised – Dr. Darling, to put it mildly, that there doesn’t seem to be any
mention of screening for this trait in the approvals filing for your clinic. And I was hoping you could offer me an explanation that doesn’t necessitate further investigation.’

Darling blinked rapidly. ‘I – the W-star trait, where did you
hear
about that? Nobody’s supposed to –’ He stood up hastily and walked over to the office
door, pushed it shut.

‘I can’t disclose my sources.’ Miriam stared at him coolly.

‘Was it Homeland Security?’

‘I can neither confirm nor deny that.’

‘Why are you here on your own?’ There was a nasty edge to his voice.

Here comes the hard sell
. ‘Because this is best dealt with quietly.’ She concentrated on thinking herself into the skin of the person who was using Julie Anderson,
compliance inspector, FDA, as a convenient cover identity. ‘I repeat, I can’t tell you who I am. I wasn’t here, I don’t exist. We know about your relationship with Applied
Genomics. Mr. Angbard is the subject of an ongoing federal investigation. I’m here to follow up a loose end and make sure nothing unravels when I pull on it, if you follow me. This is all
going to be swept under the rug so tightly that it didn’t happen, it never existed, nobody’s going to admit anything, and there won’t be any prosecutions – at least not in
public. Are you with me so far? We do not want any scandals. But we need to know several things. We need to know
how many
, and
when they were born
, and
where they live
and
who they are
. And then we’re going to make sure that when Mr. Angbard and his interesting supply of money vanishes quietly – no, don’t ask – your problem goes
away too. Did you ever see the Indiana Jones movies, Dr. Darling? If you like, I’m from the Federal Warehouse. I’m one of the curators. And I want your address list, in hard copy,
before I walk out of this building. Do you understand me?’

Darling swallowed. ‘What you’re asking for is unethical as hell, not to mention illegal,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t medical confidentiality mean anything to you
people?’

Miriam smiled humorlessly. She was really getting into this, she decided: being a spook was
fun
. ‘I’m sure using substituted semen for in-vitro fertilization is also
unethical and illegal. Now are we going to do this quietly, or am I going to have to go away and come back with a FEMA emergency court order and an arrest warrant?’

‘Shit.’ It was the sweet sound of surrender. ‘Are you going to indemnify me? Or entertain a plea bargain? If you get this stuff, I want immunity from prosecution arising from
it.’

‘You are not the target of this investigation,’ Miriam stonewalled.
If he expects paperwork
. . . ‘And this isn’t prosecution territory in any event, as I
believe I already said. I was never here, you didn’t give me any files, there’s not going to be any fallout or any collateral damage. We don’t want a paper trail. Do you
follow?’

‘I – oh hell.’ Darling shuffled. ‘Okay, I’ll get you the files.’ He glanced at the door. ‘Will hard copy do? We don’t keep this stuff on a
networked server.’

‘Paper will be fine. In the first instance, we’re just after a contact sheet for the W-star subjects. I can come back for their full medical records later.’
Not that
I’m going to, because they won’t be worth a three-dollar bill
.

‘Okay. Wait here.’ Darling stood up and left the office, closing the door quietly.

Miriam shut her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.
Okay, he’s doing it
, she decided.
He’s bought the story. Right?
This was always the hardest part of an
investigation, getting the target’s trust. But after about thirty seconds she opened her eyes again.
Am I missing something?
She rubbed her palms on her knees: they were damp. She
hadn’t been on this end of an investigation for more than a year, and it made her as nervous as a cat passing the back fence of a boarding kennel. She thought she’d laid the groundwork
adequately, but . . .
Darling’s been falsifying IVF donor records for Angbard by way of this nonprofit trust. I’ve just dropped the hammer on him. What could go wrong at this
stage?

Well, in the worst case scenario Darling could just pick up the phone and
call
Angbard, tell him someone from the FDA was sniffing around the operation. But that wasn’t very
likely, and in any case it would take time for Angbard to send Clan security round to deal with her, time in which she could simply vanish from the scene. (She resisted the urge to push back her
left sleeve and glance at the temporary tattoo: if she bugged out now she’d probably end up somewhere in the wild woods, over on the other side, with a splitting headache.) Next worst
scenario: Darling was going to phone the FDA, and would discover pretty quickly that there was no field inspector called Anderson. At which point she could either run away or pull the full
black-helicopters tinfoil-hat spook thing. This being a deeply paranoid decade, the odds were that he’d believe her – and if not, she could still bug out. But the third worst case
–

Miriam stood up as the door opened. It was Darling, and there was a security guard with him. ‘That’s her,’ he said. The guard took a step forward and Miriam flicked her sleeve
back to stare at the knot-work design in brown henna that writhed on the back of her wrist like a snake endlessly swallowing its own tail, inducing feelings of nausea. ‘Arrest her.’

The guard reached out to grab Miriam as she brought the knot into focus, putting her mind into the state in which she could world-walk with the ease of long practice. Hands closed around her
right arm as lightning stabbed at the base of her skull. ‘Ow!’ She winced, vision flickering, and tried again.
Nothing
. Her stomach twisted and she began to double over, head a
throbbing wall of pain.
What the hell –

‘On the ground!’ said the guard. ‘Lie down!’ Something hard shoved into the base of her skull. ‘Okay, I don’t think she’s armed, sir. If you can help me
with these – ’

Handcuffs. Miriam tried to move her wrists but they didn’t want to respond, flopping around behind her as the guard pinioned them.
The building must be doppelgängered
, she
realized through the crippling headache.
Which means
the whole clinic
is a Clan front – that’s impossible!

Her stomach flip-flopped. Hands were lifting her: something sharp pressed against the side of her neck. ‘Okay, that’s ten mills of valium. Wait two minutes, then get the cuffs off
her and take her down to recovery ward B, there’s a spare room off the main bay. I’ll meet you down there.’

‘Going . . . be sick . . .’ She’d spoken aloud, she thought. But there was a great empty hollow space inside her, and everything felt warm and wet, as if she were dissolving in
a vast salty ocean of comfort and sleep.
Valium?
she thought.
What went wrong?
It was the last thing she thought for a long time.

*

It was dark, and her head hurt. Miriam tried to stretch and found she couldn’t move.
That’s odd
, she thought fuzzily,
I don’t remember going to
bed
. She tried to stretch again, but her head was spinning and her knees ached and she felt a sudden urge to urinate. She was lying on her back.
Why am I on my back?
The urge was
irresistible and for some reason she couldn’t fight it. But that was okay. If it wasn’t for the headache and the knee thing she could fall asleep again; she felt warm and comfortable,
as if a hot pillow was pressing down on her.
Drugs
, she thought vaguely,
I’m sedated
. It was so funny she felt like giggling, but laughter was too much like hard work.

‘ – sample bottle please, and get her a new catheter bag –’ The words made no sense.

Miriam tried to ask, ‘What’s going on?’ but nothing came out. There was an unpleasant pressure between her legs and a sensation of cold, uncomfortable and intimate.
Not due
for a smear test
, she thought irrelevantly, and managed to make an indignant grunt.

‘She’s too light, give me another five mikes,’ said the same voice. Then there was a prickling at her wrist and the world went away for a while.

The next time she woke up was both better and worse. She had a pounding headache and her mouth felt as if a family of small rodents had camped out on her tongue – but she was in a bed, and
fully conscious, the soft valium blanket no longer pressing down on her. Instead, she was alert – and acutely conscious of just how stunningly stupid she’d been.

In her careful list of what might have gone wrong, she’d overlooked option three: the entire clinic was a front for Angbard’s organization, in which case it was no surprise at all
that it was doppelgängered. And Darling had known she was a hoaxer as soon as she opened her mouth, because none of the IVF scheme details had been registered with the relevant FDA supervisory
committees. Nobody outside the Clan had ever
heard
of W* heterozygotes. So . . .

She groaned and tried to roll over, away from the too-bright sunlight that was hurting her eyelids, only to be brought up short by a metal bracelet locked around her left wrist. She opened her
eyes to see a whitewashed concrete wall inches away from her nose.
I’m a prisoner
.

The realization was crushing, and with it came a sense of total despair at her own stupidity.
I told Paulie to take care and not go barging in, why couldn’t I listen to my own
advice?
She pushed herself upright and looked around, taking stock of her situation.

She was lying on a narrow cot in a room about five feet wide and maybe eight feet long. Next to the end of the bed, a stainless-steel sink was bolted to the wall. At the foot of the bed she
could see a similarly grim-looking commode next to the door. The bed had a foam pillow and a sheet, and that was it. They’d dressed her in a hospital gown, taken her clothes, and handcuffed
her to a ring in the wall by a length of chain. There was a window set high up in another wall, through which the morning – or afternoon – sunlight slid, and a naked bulb recessed in
the ceiling, but she couldn’t see a light switch. There was no mirror over the washbasin, no handle on the inside of the door, and absolutely no sign to betray where she was. But she already
knew what this place had to be, and where. It was a doppelgänger cell in one of the Clan’s surviving safe houses. An oubliette. People could vanish in here, never be seen again. For all
she knew, maybe that was the idea – there’d be a sealed room on the other side, air full of carbon monoxide or some other silent killer so that if she somehow unchained herself and
tried to world-walk . . .

Miriam shook her head, desperately trying to dispel the bubbling panic.
I do not need this now
, she told herself faintly.
I mustn’t go to pieces
. But telling herself
didn’t help much. In fact, it seemed to make things worse. She’d stuck her nose into Angbard’s business, and she’d have to be a blind fool to imagine that Angbard would just
slap her lightly across the wrist and say ‘Don’t do it again’ at this point. Angbard’s authority was based on the simple, drastic fact that everybody knew that you
didn’t cross the duke. Roland had been terrified of him, Baron Oliver and her grandmother the dowager had given Angbard a wide berth, focusing instead on weaklings among his associates
– the only person she’d known to openly cross Angbard was Matthias, and he’d just
vanished
. Quite possibly she was going to find out where he’d gone. If not –
she cringed. It wasn’t as if she could try to bluff that it was just a stupid, sophomoric prank, an attempt to get his attention. Angbard wasn’t an idiot, and more important, he
didn’t think
she
was. Which meant that he was bound to take her seriously. And the last thing she wanted was for Angbard to get it into his head that she was looking for – not
to use any euphemisms – blackmail material. She glanced at her wrist, halfway desperate enough to try and world-walk anyway, risking the doppelgänger room. Then she gave an involuntary
moan of despair. Her temporary tattoo was gone.