Charles Stross - The Family Trade

“What about Roland?”

“Oh, yes. I told Roland. And he could have told-” for a moment Miriam looked wistful. “Damn, this means I can’t trust anyone who works for Angbard, can I?” She glanced obliquely at Brill.

“I don’t work for Angbard,” Brill said slowly. “I work for you.”

“Well, that’s nice to know.” Miriam gave her a lopsided grin. “I hope it doesn’t get you into trouble. Worse trouble,” she corrected.

“What are we going to do?” asked Brill, frowning as only a twenty-something confronted by fate can frown.

“Hmm. Well, I’m going to open this door.” Miriam gestured. “Somehow or other. Then… there’s a lot you don’t know, isn’t there? The door opens on an alley in a place called New York. It’s a big city and it’s after dark. I’m going to call a car service, and you’re going to do what I do-get in after me, ride with me to where we’re going, wait while I pay the driver, and go inside. I’ll do all the talking. You should concentrate on taking in whatever you can without looking like a yokel. Once we’re in private, you can talk all you want. All right? Think you can do that?”

Brill nodded seriously. “It’ll be for me like when you first arrived? On the other side?” she asked.

“Good analogy.” Miriam nodded. “No, it’ll be worse, much worse.” She grinned again. “I had an introduction; the whole world didn’t all get thrown at me all at once. Just try not to get yourself killed crossing the road, okay?” Then she glanced around. “Look, over there below the mezzanine, see those crates? I want you to go and sit down on the other side of them. Shield your head with your arms, yes, like they’re about to fall on you. And keep your mouth open. I’m going to try and get this door open without blowing us to pieces. I figure it should be possible because they were expecting people to come in from outside, not to materialize right inside the warehouse.”

“We’re already supposed to be dead, aren’t we?”

Miriam nodded. “Go,” she said.

Brill headed off toward the stack of tea chests. Miriam bent down and followed the near-invisible wire off to one side. I really don’t like the look of this, she thought, her heart hammering at her ribs. She glanced up at the green casing, ominous as a hornet’s nest suspended overhead. “Let’s see,” she mumbled. “The door opens inward, pulls on the wire… or the warehouse door opens inward, also pulls on the wire. But if it’s spring-loaded, releasing it could also set the fucking thing off. Hmm.”

She examined the wire as it ran around a rusting nail pounded into the wall beside the door. “Right.” She stood up and walked back across to the trailer with its own booby trap and its cargo of death. Climbing the steps, she paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and stepped over the wire.

Nothing happened. I’m still here, she told herself. She took another deep breath, this time to avoid having to breathe in too close to the thing sprawled across the fallen office chair at the far side of the office. She’d called Roland, told him to send cleaners-instead, these booby traps had materialized. When the Clan wants you dead, you die, she realized bleakly. If indeed it is the Clan…

There, on a rusting tool chest propped against the other wall, was exactly what she was looking for. She picked up the heavy-duty staple gun and checked that it was loaded. “Yup.” She hefted it one-handed, then mustered up a smile and picked up a pair of rusty pliers and stepped back out of the trailer.

Two minutes later, she had the door open. The wire, firmly stapled to the door frame, was severed: The mine was still armed, but the trigger wire led nowhere. “Come on,” she called to Brilliana. “It’s safe now! We can leave!” Brill hurried over. As she did so, Miriam glanced up and shuddered once more. What if they’d heard of infrared motion detectors? Well, that was the Clan all over.

It was snowing lightly, and Miriam phoned for a taxi when they reached the main road. Brill kept quiet, but her eyes grew wide when she saw Miriam talking into a small gray box-and wider still as she took in the cars that rumbled past in the gloom. She glanced from side to side like a caged cat in a strange, threatening environment. “I didn’t know it would be like this!” she whispered to Miriam. Then she shivered. “It’s really cold.”

“It’s winter, kid. Get used to it.” Miriam grinned, slightly manic from her success with the bomb.

“It’s colder on the other side, isn’t it?”

A cab pulled alongside, its light turned off. Miriam walked over. “Cab for Beckstein?” she asked. The driver nodded. She held open the rear door. “Get in and slide across,” she told Brill. Then she gave directions and got inside, shutting the door.

The cab moved off. Brill looked around in fascination, then reached down toward her ankles. “It’s heated” she said quietly.

“Of course it’s heated,” said the driver in a Pakistani accent. “You think I let my passengers freeze to death before they pay me?”

“Excuse my friend,” Miriam told him, casting a warning glance at Brill. “She’s from Russia. Just arrived.”

“Oh,” said the driver, as if that explained everything. “Yes, very good, that.”

Brill kept her eyes wide but her mouth closed the rest of the way to the Marriott Marquis, but watched carefully as Miriam paid off the cabbie using pieces of green paper she pulled from a billfold. “Come on, follow me,” said Miriam.

Miriam felt Brill tense as the glass doors opened automatically ahead of them, but she kept up with her as she headed for the express elevator. “One moment,” Miriam muttered to her, pushing the button. “This is an elevator. It’s a room, suspended on wires, in a vertical shaft. We use it instead of the stairs.”

“Why?” Brill looked puzzled.

“Have you ever tried to climb forty flights of stairs?” Miriam shut up as another elevator arrived, disgorging a couple of septuagenarians. Then the express doors opened, and she waved Brill inside. “This is easier,” she said, hitting the second from top button. The younger woman lurched against the wall as the elevator began to rise. “We’ll be there in no time.”

The glass-walled elevator car began to track up the outer wall of the tower. “That’s-oh my!” Brill leaned back against the far wall from the window. “I’d rather walk, I think,” she said shakily.

A thought struck Miriam at the top. “We’d better be careful going in,” she commented before the doors opened. “I want you to wait behind me.”

“Why?” Brill followed her out of the lift into an empty landing. She looked slightly green, and Miriam realized she hadn’t said anything on the way up.

“Because,” Miriam frowned, “we’re safe from the other side, here. But Roland knows which room I’m using.” He won’t have told anybody, she reasoned. Even if he has, they can’t have booby-trapped it from the inside, like the warehouse. Not on the twenty-second floor. I hope.

“All right.” Brill swallowed. “Which way?” she asked, looking bewildered.

“Follow me.” Miriam pushed through the fire doors, strolled along a hotel corridor, trying to imagine what it might look like to someone who’d never seen a hotel-or an elevator-before. “Wait here.”

She swiped her card-key through the lock, then stood aside, right hand thrust in her jacket pocket as she pushed the door open to reveal an empty suite, freshly prepared beds, an open bathroom door. “Quick.” She waved Brill inside then followed her, shut and locked the door, and sagged against it in relief.

“Oh shit, oh shit…” Her hands felt cold and shook until she clasped them together. Delayed shock, the analytical observer in her brain commented. Tonight you killed an assassin in self-defence, defused a bomb, discovered a murder and a conspiracy, and rescued Brill and Olga. Isn’t it about time you collapsed in a gibbering heap?