Charles Stross - The Clan Corporate

"Hey, are you telling me…"

"Yes. You're going to crash a royal garden party and make her an offer she can't refuse."

A week of twelve-hour days in a training camp on the edge of a sprawling army base couldn't prepare Mike Fleming for the experience of his first world-walk. On the contrary: he'd been led to expect a glossy high-tech send-off, and instead what he was getting looked very much like a ringside seat at an execution.

It was nearly noon. His personal trainer, who he knew only as John, had woken him at six o'clock and rushed him through breakfast. John had a halting grasp of hochsprache, but insisted Mike speak nothing else to him, playing dumb whenever Mike lapsed into English out of frustration or in search of some unmapped concept. Then he'd been taken on a tour of Facilities. A quiet woman who looked like she worked weekends in Macy's kitted him out in what they figured would pass for local costume-no cod-medieval "men in tights" nonsense, but rough woolen fabric, leggings, and an overtunic and leather boots.

Next on his itinerary was the armory. A hatchet-faced warrant officer checked him out and told him what was what in English. "This is your sword. Nearest we've got to it is a cutlass, note the curve in the blade-forget point work. If you ever did any fencing at school, forget that too. This is strictly for edge work, German-style. Oh, and if you have to use it you're probably dead. We don't have a couple of months to work you up to competent. Luckily for you, you're also allowed one of these." He held up a nylon holster, already laden with a black automatic pistol. "Glock 20C, fifteen-round magazine, ten mill." Just like the handguns "James Morgan" had been buying and, presumptively, a standard Clan issue. "You have two spare magazines. I take it you've checked out on one." In answer to Mike's mute head shake, he swore and glared at John: "What is it with you folks? Are you trying to get him killed?"

Half an hour on the range upstairs from the armory reassured Mike marginally and seemed to mollify the armorer. He could hit things with it, strip it down, and could reload and clean it. "Next trip," said John. "We have a, a thing that flies-"

Thing that flies turned out to be John's best attempt at saying helicopter in hochsprache. It gave Mike a splitting headache as it thudded along in the direction of Long Island. When it landed at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, John handed him a trenchcoat and a broad-brimmed hat. "Very funny," he snarled, still half-deafened by the rotor noise.

"Wear it." A minivan with blacked-out windows was waiting the parking lot: funnily enough, there were no other cars present.

"Huh." Mike clambered down from the chopper and trudged across the barge to the minivan. The side door opened. Inside it, Colonel Smith was waiting for him.

"Sorry 'bout the cloak-and-dagger nonsense," Smith said unapologetically as their driver pulled out into the approach road behind another minivan. Mike glanced over his shoulder as a third van discreetly joined the convoy. "Can't take any chances."

"What? Where are we going?"

"Nearest geographical cognate we could figure." Smith pulled back his sleeve. He was wearing something that looked like a digital watch that had swallowed a mobile phone-after a moment Mike recognized it as a GPS receiver. Smith frowned. "Doesn't work too well-too many skyscrapers."

The minivan slid through the New York traffic in fits and starts, bumper to bumper with a yellow cab that had somehow intercalated itself in the convoy. Mike lost track of where they were going after a couple of minutes and a baroque detour around some roadwork. "What's the setup?"

Smith opened a folder with red and yellow stripes along its cover. "Pay attention, you don't get to take this with you. A courier is ready to take you across to Zone Blue. You go over piggyback. In Zone Blue, we currently have a forward support team of three-Sergeant Hastert, PFC O'Neil, and PFC Icke. They'll look after you, also give the courier a bunch of crap to bring back over to us. You do exactly what the sergeant tells you. After you leave Zone Blue, they'll exfiltrate. Let me emphasize, there won't be anybody there. What there will be is a buried radio transmitter, like this." Smith pulled an egg-shaped device with a stubby aerial out of his pocket. "You dig it up, push the button, and the backup team will be alerted to come check you out for shadows. If you've got unwelcome company, they will kill it or take it prisoner-at their discretion-or leave you the fuck alone. They will not be more than an hour away from you at any time, so if they don't show up within an hour, someone's in trouble. Procedure is to revisit the zone at daily intervals for one week, then back off to once a week for a month. You also need to memorize this. Directions to Zone Green, which is your fallback site. There's no equipment or personnel there, so if you're captured and tortured you can't give anyone away, but if you go there you'll be observed and contacted."

Mike studied the sheet of typed directions, feeling a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead. It's real, he realized. It's not some kind of elaborate joke. It's really going to happen. Nervous dread made a hollow nest in his stomach. "The palace-" He'd seen maps of that already, a big stone pile near a small town, at one end of a road lined with slightly smaller stone piles.

"Over the page." A basic sketch map showed Zone Blue in relation to the palace. "There are complications to do with the transport protocol for this run."

"What do you mean?" Mike looked up.

"It's in the center of town. The courier may try to escape." Smith stared at him. "You're going piggyback. Hold out your hand."

"What-"

Smith snapped a bracelet shut around Mike's wrist. "Transmitter. Very short range. Here's the key." He handed Mike a key. "Turn clockwise to release the transmitter. Two twists anticlockwise and it will send the detonate command. If Three tries to attack you-"

"Okay." Mike stared at the thing, repelled and fascinated. "What do I do with it?"

Smith shrugged. "If it goes according to plan and Team X-ray meets you in, they hold Courier Three while you take the bracelet off and hand it to him. Then you send him back over to us and we take the necklace off and put him back in his box. If he tries to run, or attacks you, kill him." He stared at Mike. "I'm serious. If he does either of those things, he'll try to kill you. Wouldn't you, in his situation?"

In his situation-Mike tried to get a handle on it, but his mind kept slipping up unwelcome channels, looking into irrelevances. "Courier Three-I thought you only had two?"

"Need to know." Smith shook his head. "Look, we're there."

Manhattan wasn't just skyscrapers; old brownstones still thrived in the shadow of the tall towers. Smith waited for the other minivans to draw up, then opened the door and led Mike up the front steps of an ordinary-looking house while half a dozen men and a couple of women in the sort of business attire that yelled "cop" stood discreet guard.

The house looked ordinary enough from inside-but Smith headed straight for an unobtrusive door and into what had probably been a living room before someone ripped out the furniture, boarded up the windows, installed antiblast paneling and floodlights, and spray-painted a big X in the middle of the floor. Now there was something sinister about it, a cramped, dark terminus that needed only a trapdoor and a dangling rope to turn it into a place of execution. "Wait here."

Mike waited while Smith and two of his underlings bustled back out again. A minute later they returned, half-supporting and half-dragging a third man between them. He was unshaven and looked tired, bent forward with his hands cuffed tightly behind his back: his scalp had been shaved and there was a big dressing taped to one temple. As he looked around and saw Mike his eyes widened with fear. Then another of the anonymous guards stepped forward and swiftly clamped a metal collar around his throat.