Charles Stross - MP 6 -The Trade of Queens

Something must be done, this is something, ergo this must be done.

Mike drove slowly, listening to the radio. There were police checkpoints on roads in and out of D.C.; the tattered remnants of Congress and Supreme Court were gathering at an Undisclosed Location to mourn their dead and witness the somber inauguration of the new president, a sixty-something former business tycoon from Wyoming. A presidential address to the nation scheduled for the evening: unreassuring negatives leaking from the Pentagon,

This isn't al-Qaeda, this isn't the Iranians, this is something new.

The pro-forma groundswell rumble of rage and fury at yet another unheralded and unannounced cowardly attack on the sleeping giant. The nation was on the edge of its nerves, terrified and angry. Muslim-Americans: scared. Continuity of Government legislation was being overhauled, FEMA managers stumbling bleary-eyed to the realization that the job they'd been hired for was now necessary—

At a pay phone in the back of a 7-Eleven, Mike pulled out a calling card and began to dial, keeping a nervous eye on his wristwatch. He listened briefly, then dialed a PIN.

"Hello. You have no new messages."

He hung up. "Shit," he muttered, trudging back towards the front of the shop, trying hard not to think of the implications, not hurrying, not dawdling, but conserving the energy he'd need to carry him through the next day. He was already two miles away as the first police cruiser pulled up outside with its lights flashing, ten minutes too late: driving slowly, mind spinning as he tried to come up with a fallback plan that didn't end with his death.

If only Miriam's mother had left a message, or Olga the ice princess, he'd have more options open—but they hadn't, and without a contact number he was out in the cold. The only lines he could follow led back into an organization answering to a new president who had been in cahoots with the Clan's worst elements and wanted the evidence buried, or to a news editor who hadn't believed him the first time round—and who knew what Steve would think, now that the White House was a smoking ruin?

I blew it,

he thought bleakly.

Dr. James has likely declared me a rogue asset already.

Which was technically correct—as long as one was unaware that James himself was in it up to his eyes. The temptation to simply drive away, to take his papers and find a new life in a small town and forget he'd ever been Mike Fleming, was intense.

But it wouldn't work in the long term,

he realized. The emergency administration would bring in the kind of internal 1D checks that people used to point to when they wanted to denounce the Soviets. They'd have to: It wasn't as if they could keep world-walkers out by ramping up the immigration service.

What can I do?

His options seemed to be narrowing down.

Work within the organization

had gone out the window with that car bomb: The organization wanted him gone.

Talk to Iris Beckstein—about

what?

Talk to the press—no,

that had seemed like a good idea yesterday: funny how rapidly things changed. He could guess what would happen if he fixed up another meeting with Steve Schroeder any time soon. Steve would try to verify his source, be coopted, spun some line about Mike being a conspirator, and reel him in willingly; and Mike had no tangible evidence to back up his claims.

Try to turn a coworker—look

how well that had worked for Pete Garfinkle. Pete had confessed misgivings to Mike; shortly thereafter he'd been put in a situation that killed him. Mike had confessed misgivings to Colonel Smith; shortly thereafter—join

up the dots.

The whole organization was corrupt, from the top down. For all he knew, the bombs—his knuckles whitened upon the steering wheel—did WARBUCKS have big enough balls to deliberately maneuver the Clan into giving him everything he wanted, on a plate? To have helped them get their hands on the bombs, and then to have provoked them into attacking the United States? Not a crippling attack, but a beheading one, laying the groundwork for a coup d'etat?

The scale of his paranoia was giving Mike a very strange sensation, the cold detachment of a head trip into a darkened wilderness of mirrors: the occupational disease of spies.

If you can't trust your friends, the only people left to trust are your enemies,

he reminded himself. Miriam had tried to warn him; that suggested, at a minimum, something to hope for.

But FTO'll be watching her house. And her mother's. In case anyone shows.

He forced himself to relax his grip on the wheel and pay attention to his surroundings as a pickup weaved past him, horn blaring.

How

many

watchers?

Maintaining full surveillance on a building was extremely expensive—especially if nobody had bothered to look in on it for months.

An ephemeral flash of hope lit up the world around him. If FTO had been watching Miriam's house before, they might well have pulled out already—and yesterday's events would have shaken things up even more.

But what if they're wrong?

He remembered Matthias's advice, from months ago:

They think like a government. And Miriam's

important

to them. She's an insider—otherwise she wouldn't have been able to warn me. Would we put a watch on a cabinet official's house if we knew enemies had it under surveillance? Even if we were under attack?

Trying to work through that line of thought threatened to give him a headache, but it seemed to be worth checking out. Best case, there'd be a Clan security post discreetly watching her place, and nobody else. Worst case, an FTO surveillance team—but knowing how FTO worked in the field, he'd have a good chance of spotting them.

Find Miriam. Try to cut a deal: Warn her faction about the spy, about WARB UCKS's plans—in return, try to get them to hand over the murderers. Maybe find some way to cut a deal.

I just hope I'm not too late.

Leaking everywhere

In a stately house four miles outside Niejwein, two noble ladies sat beside an unlit hearth, awkwardly eyeing each other. Between their angled chairs an occasional table stood like a frontier fence, surmounted by the border tower of a fortified wine decanter. The afternoon sun slanting through the lattice window stained the wood-paneled walls with a deep golden warmth; a pair of fat flies buzzed in erratic circles below the ceiling, swooping and tracing out the lines of their confinement.

"Have you been keeping well?" asked the older of the pair, her age-spotted eyelids drooping as she watched her sixty-two-year-old visitor. "Do you have any complaints?" She spoke abruptly, her tone brusque.

The younger one snorted. "Only the obvious, Mother." The last word came out with an odd emphasis, falling just short of making an insult of it. "Your hospitality is impeccable but, I hope you'll excuse me for putting it so crudely, oppressive. I would ask, though, is my maid Mhara unharmed?"

The dowager frowned, her crow's-feet wrinkles deepening. "I do not know." She extended a shaky hand and tugged on a braided bell cord. A discreet servants' door opened behind her. "My daughter inquires of her maid."

"Yes, my lady." The attendant bowed his head.

"Was she taken? If so, is she well?"

"She, ah, escaped, my lady. After she shot one of the dragoons in the, ah, thigh."

"Well then." The dowager gave her daughter a wintry smile. "Satisfied?"

Her daughter stared back at her for a long moment, then nodded fractionally. "Satisfied."

"Go away," the dowager announced to the air. The servants' door opened and closed again, restoring the illusion of privacy. "Such a show of compassion," she added, her tone of voice dripping with irony.