Charles Stross - The Family Trade

“What is this place? Who are you people?” Finally Roland frowned at her. “You can stop pretending you don’t know,” he said. “You aren’t going to convince anyone.” Pausing in the doorway, he added, “The war’s over, you know. We won twenty years ago.” The door closed behind him with a solid-sounding click, and Miriam was unsurprised to discover that the door handle flopped limply in her hand when she tried it. She was locked in.

Miriam shuffled into the white-tiled bathroom, blinked in the lights, then sat down heavily on the toilet. “Holy shit,” she mumbled in disbelief. It was like an expensive hotel-a fiendishly expensive one, aimed at sheikhs and diplomats and billionaires. The floor was smooth, a very high grade of Italian marble if she was any judge of stonework. The sink was a moulded slab of thick green glass and the taps glowed with a deep lustre that went deeper than mere gilding could reach. The bath was a huge scalloped shell sunk into the floor, white and polished, with blue and green lights set into it amid the chromed water jets. An acre of fluffy white towels and a matching bathrobe awaited her, hanging above a basket of toiletries. She knew some of those brand names; she’d even tried their samplers when she was feeling extravagant. The shampoo alone was a hundred dollars a bottle.

This definitely isn’t anything to do with the government, she realized. I know people who’d pay good money to be locked up in here!

She sat down on the edge of the bathtub, slid into one of the seats around its rim, and spent a couple of minutes puzzling out the control panel. Eventually she managed to coax half a dozen jets of aerated water into life. This is a prison, she kept reminding herself. Roland’s words haunted her: ‘Different jurisdiction, you know.’ Where was she? They’d taken the locket. That implied that they knew about it-and about her. But there was absolutely no way to square this experience with what she’d seen in the forest: the pristine wilderness, the peasant village.

The bedroom was as utterly over the top as the bathroom, dominated by a huge oak sleigh-bed in a traditional Scandinavian style, with masses of down comforters and pillows. Rather than fitted furniture there were a pair of huge oak wardrobes and a chest of drawers and other, smaller, furniture-a dressing table with mirror, an armchair, something that looked like an old linen press. Every piece of furniture in the bedroom looked to be an antique. The combined effect was overwhelming, like being expected to sleep in an auction house’s display room.

“Oh wow.” She looked around and spotted the windows, then walked over to them. A balcony outside blocked the view of whatever was immediately below. Beyond it she had a breathtaking view of a sweep of forested land dropping away toward a shallow valley with a rocky crag, standing proud and bald on the other side. It was as untainted by civilization as the site of her camping expedition. She turned away, disquieted. Something about this whole picture screamed: Wrong! at her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

The chest of drawers held an unpleasant surprise. She pulled the top drawer open, half-expecting it to be empty. Instead, it contained underwear. Her underwear. She recognized the holes in one or two socks that she hadn’t gotten around to throwing away.

“Bastards.” She focused on the clothing, mind spinning furiously. They’re thorough, whoever they are. She looked closer at the furniture. The writing desk appeared to be an original Georgian piece, or even older, a monstrously valuable antique. And the chairs, Queen Anne or a good replica-disturbingly expensive. A hotel would be content with reproductions, she reasoned. The emphasis would be on utility and comfort, not authenticity. If there were originals anywhere, they’d be on display in the foyer. It reminded her of something that she’d seen somewhere, something that nagged at the back of her mind but stubbornly refused to come to the foreground.

She stood up and confirmed her suspicion that the wardrobes held her entire range of clothing. More words came back to haunt her: ‘There will be an interview in due course.’ “I’m not in a cell,” she told herself, “but I could be. They showed me that much. So they’re playing head games. They want to play the stick-and-carrot game. That means I’ve got some kind of leverage. Doesn’t it?” Find out what they want, then get out of here fast, she decided.

Half an hour later she was ready. She’d chosen a blouse the colour of fresh blood, her black interview suit, lip gloss to match, and heels. Miriam didn’t normally hold with makeup, but this time she went the whole hog. She didn’t normally hold with power dressing either, but something about Roland and this setup suggested that his people were much more obsessed with appearances than the dot-com entrepreneurs and Masspike corridor startup monkeys she usually dealt with. Any edge she could get…

A bell chimed discreetly. She straightened up and turned to look at the door as it opened. Here it comes, she thought nervously.

It was Roland, who’d brought her up here from the cell. Now that she saw him in the daylight from the windows with a clear head, her confusion deepened. He looks like a secret service agent, she thought. Something about that indefinably military posture and the short hair suggested he’d been ordered into that suit in place of combat fatigues.

“Ah. You’ve found the facilities.” He nodded. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she said. “I see you ransacked my house.”

“You will find that everything has been accounted for,” he said, slightly defensively. “Would you rather we’d given you a prison uniform? No?” He sized her up with a glance. “Well, there’s someone I have to take you to see now.”

“Oh, goody It slipped out before she could clamp down on the sarcasm. “The chief of secret police, I assume?”

His eyes widened slightly. “Don’t joke about it,” he muttered.

“Oh.” Miriam dry-swallowed. “Right, well, we wouldn’t want to keep him waiting, would we?”

“Absolutely not,” Roland said seriously. He held the door open, then paused for a moment. “By the way, I really wouldn’t want you to embarrass yourself trying to escape. This is a secure facility.”

“I see,” said Miriam, who didn’t-but had made her mind up already that it would be a mistake to simply cut and run. These people had snatched her from her own bed. That suggested a frightening level of-competence.

She approached the door warily, keeping as far away from Roland as she could. “Which way?”

“Along the passage.”

He headed off at a brisk march and she followed him, heels sinking into the sound-deadening carpet. She had to hurry to keep up. When I get out of this mess, I’m buying a new interview outfit-one I can run in, she promised herself.

“Wait one moment, please.”

She found herself fetched up behind Roland’s broad back, before a pair of double doors that were exquisitely panelled and polished. Odd, she wondered. Where is everybody? She glanced over her shoulder, and spotted a discreet video camera watching her back. They’d come around two corners, as if the corridor followed a rectangle: They’d passed a broad staircase leading down, and the elevator-there ought to be more people about, surely?

“Who am I-”

Roland turned around. “Look, just wait,” he said. “Security calls.” She noticed for the first time that he had the inside of his wrist pressed against an unobtrusive box in the wall.

“Security?”

“Biometrics, I think it’s called,” he said. There was a click from the door and he opened it slowly. “Matthias? Ish hafe gefauft des’usher des Angbard.”