Charles Stross - The Hidden Family

Now he resorted to his hammer again, in earnest—but to no avail. After five minutes, when things began to quieten down, Angbard signaled for the sergeant at arms to bring order to the hall. “Order!” he shouted. “We will recess for one hour, to take refreshments. Then the meeting will resume.” He rose, scowling ominously at the assembled Clan shareholders. “What you’ve heard so far is the background. There is more to come.”

Morning on the day shift in Boston. The office phones were already ringing as Mike Fleming swiped his badge and walked in past security.

“Hi, Mike!” Pete Garfinkle, his officemate, waved on his way back from the coffee machine.

“’Lo.” Mike was never at his best, early in the morning. Winter blues, one of his ex-girlfriends had called it in a forgiving moment. (Blues so deep they were ultraviolet, the same girlfriend had said as she was moving out—blues so deep she’d gotten radiation burns.) “Anything in?”

“What? On the—” Pete waved a finger.

“Office. Okay, give me five minutes.”

Mike wandered along to the vending machine, passing a couple of suits from the public liaison office, and collected a mug of coffee. Traffic was bad this morning, really bad. And he hadn’t shaved properly either. It was only nine but he already had a five o’clock shadow, adding to his bearish appearance. Don’t mess with me.

Pete was already nose-deep in paperwork that had come in the morning mail when Mike finally made it to his desk. Pete was a morning guy, always frazzled by six o’clock—when Mike was just hitting his stride. “Tell me the news,” Mike grunted. “Anything happening?”

“On the Hernandez case? Judge Judy has it on her docket.” Pete grinned humorlessly.

“Judge Judy couldn’t find his ass with a submarine’s periscope and a map.” Mike pulled a face, put his mug of coffee down, and rubbed his eyes. The urge to yawn was nearly irresistible. “Judge Judy is about the least likely to sign a no-knock—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know all about your pissing match with hizonner Stephen Jude. Can it, Mike, he works for Justice, it’s his job to gum up the works. No point taking it personal.”

“Huh. That fucker Julio needs to go down, though. I mean, the goddamn Pope knows what he’s at! What the hell else do we need to convince the DA he’s got a case?”

“Fifty keys of crack and a blow job from the voters.” Pete leaned his chair perilously far back—the office was so cramped that a sideswipe would risk demolishing piles of banker’s boxes—and snorted. “Relax, dude. We’ll get him.”

“Huh. Give me that.” Mike held out a huge hand and Pete dumped a pile of mail into it. “Ack.” Mike carefully put it down on his desk, then picked up his coffee and took a sip. “Bilge water.”

“One of these days you’d better try and kick the habit,” Pete said mildly. “It can’t be doing your kidneys any good.”

“Listen, I run on coffee,” Mike insisted. “Lessee—”

He thumbed rapidly through the internal mail, sorting administrative memos from formal letters—some branches still ran on paper, their intranets unconnected to the outside world—and a couple of real, honest, postal envelopes. He stacked them in three neat piles and switched on his PC. While he waited for it to boot he opened the two letters from outside. One of them was junk, random spam sent to him by name and offering cheap loans. The other—

“Holy shit !”

Pete started, nearly going over backwards in his chair. “Hey! You want to keep a lid—”

“ Holy shit!”

Pete turned around. Mike was on his feet, a letter clutched in both hands and an expression of awe on his face. “What?” Pete asked mildly.

“Got to get this to forensics,” Mike muttered, carefully putting the letter down on his desk, then carefully peering inside the envelope. A little plastic baggie with something brown in it—

“Evidence?” asked Pete, interestedly: “Hey, I thought that was external?”

“You’re not kidding!” Mike put it down as delicately as if it was made of fine glass. “Anonymous tip-offs ‘R’ us!”

“Explain.”

“This letter.” Mike pointed. “It’s fingering the Phantom.”

“You’re sure about that?” Pete looked disbelieving. Mike nodded. “Jesus, Mike, you need to learn some new swear words, holy shit doesn’t cut it! Show me that thing—”

“Whoa!” Mike carefully lifted the envelope. “Witness. You and me, we’re going down to the lab to see what’s in this baggie. If it’s what the letter says, and it checks out, it’s a sample from that batch of H that hit New York four months ago. You know? The really big one that coincided with that OD spike, pushed the price down so low they were buying it by the ounce? From the Phantom network?”

“So?” Pete looked interested. “Somebody held onto a sample.”

“ Somebody just sent us a fucking tip-off that there’s an address in Belmont that’s the local end of the distribution chain. Wholesale, Pete. Name, rank, and serial number. Dates—we need to check the goddamn dates. Pete, this is an inside job. Someone on the inside of the Phantom wants to come in from the cold and they’re establishing their bona fides.”

“We’ve had falsies before. Anonymous bastards.”

“Yeah, but this one’s got a sample, and a bunch of supplementaries. From memory, I think it checks out—at least, there’s not anything obviously wrong with it at first glance. I want it dusted for fingerprints and DNA samples before we go any further. What do you think?”

Pete whistled. “If it checks out, and the dates match, I figure we can get the boss to come along with us and go lean on Judge Judy. A break on the Phantom would be just too cool.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Mike grinned ferociously. “How well do you think we can resource this one?”

“If it’s the Phantom? Blank check time. Jesus, Mike, if this is the Phantom, I think we’ve just had the biggest break in this office in about the last twenty years. It’s going to be all over Time Magazine if this goes down!”

In the hallway outside the boardroom, the palace staff had busied themselves setting up a huge buffet. Cold cuts from a dozen game animals formed intricate sculptures of meat depicting their animate origins. Jellied larks vied with sugar-pickled fruit from the far reaches of the West Coast, and exotic delicacies imported at vast expense formed pyramids atop a row of silver platters the size of small dining tables. Hand-made Belgian truffles competed for the attention of the aristocracy with caviar-topped crackers and brightly colored packets of M&Ms.

Despite the huge expanse of food, most of the Clan shareholders had other things in mind. Though waiters with trays laden with wine glasses circulated freely—and with jugs of imported coffee and tea—the main appetite they exhibited seemed to be for speech. And speech with one or two people in particular.

“Just keep them away from me, please,” Miriam said plaintively, leaning close to Olga. “They’ll be all over me.”

“You can’t avoid them!” Olga insisted, taking her arm and steering her toward the open doors onto the reception area. “Do you want them to think you’re afraid?” she hissed in Miriam’s ear. “They’re like rats that eat their own young if they smell weakness in the litter.”

“It’s not that—I’ve got to go.” Miriam pulled back and steered Olga in turn, toward the door at the back of the boardroom where she’d seen Angbard pushing her mother’s wheelchair, ahead of the crush. Kara, her eyes wide, stuck close behind Miriam.