Charles Stross - MP 6 -The Trade of Queens

"We have a visitor. There's coffee in the kitchen. Do you want me to pour you one?"

Coffee plus visitor equals

—

"Yes."

He glanced across the room to the bedside table where he'd left his holster. Coming down from the jittery adrenaline spike, he added, "I'll be down in a couple of minutes. Need to freshen up first."

"Okay." Paulie's footsteps receded down the stairs.

Mike let out a breath, quietly shuddering, still winding down. The radio, the sudden silence, whatever had triggered his ambush reflex—it was all right. Moving carefully, he placed the pistol beside the holster, then picked up his pants from where he'd hung them over the back of a chair.

A visitor

almost certainly meant one of Miriam's relatives. Paulette had admitted knowing a few of them: the ice princess, another woman called Brill. He dressed hurriedly, then slid the pistol in its holster into his trouser pocket, just in case. Not that he didn't trust Paulette—he trusted her enough to sleep under her roof—but experience had taught him not to make assumptions when dealing with the Clan.

He descended the stairs, carefully keeping his left hand on the rail, and glanced sideways through the kitchen doorway. The ice princess, Olga, was sitting at the breakfast bar drinking coffee. She nodded at him coolly. "Mr. Fleming."

The kitchen radio was babbling headline chatter about someone in hospital. His jaw tensed as he stepped inside the room. "Good morning." He noticed Paulette leaning against the kitchen worktop, her eyes worried. "Someone mentioned coffee." Paulette reached out and flicked off the radio as he glanced from side to side. A big leather shoulder bag gaping open on the table, something dark and angular inside it—she wouldn't come here unarmed—slatted blinds drawn down across the window onto the backyard—

"It's right here." Paulette gestured at a mug on the breakfast bar. Mike walked over and pulled a stool out, then sat down awkwardly opposite the ice princess.

"How does it feel to be one of the most wanted people in the world?" he remarked.

"Why ask me? Surely you already know." She kept a straight face, but the chill in her voice made his pulse speed.

"I didn't murder eighteen thousand people."

"Neither did I," said Olga. She took a mouthful of coffee, then put her mug down. "The people who did that are dead, Mr. Fleming. My people took them down. Do you have a

problem

with that?"

Mike opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"They didn't stop at detonating bombs in your capital city," Olga added. "They tried to murder everyone who stood in their way. A coup attempt." Her minute nod made his stomach shrink. "They tried to kill me, and Miriam, and everyone aligned with us. Luckily we had a tip-off. They failed; the last of the plotters was impaled yesterday morning."

"Impaled?"

Paulette's expression was rigid.

"Oh yes. After the executioners blinded and castrated them," Olga added, and bowed her head. "My father was killed in the struggle, Mr. Fleming. I'd thank you not to place your

eighteen thousand dead

on my shoulders."

Mike almost asked which faction her father had belonged to; a vestigial sense of shame stilled his tongue for a few seconds. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said eventually.

"But impaling—" Paulette stopped.

"It was no better than they deserved. The traditional punishment for such high treason is to spread the wings of the blood-eagle, then quarter the parts," Olga added. "But that hasn't been practiced since my grandfather's time."

Mike stared at his mug of coffee, and dry-swallowed. This wasn't what he'd expected to hear. "You failed to stop them," he accused, knowing it signified nothing.

"You failed too. So we're even. Failures all round." The silence stretched on for half a minute. Finally Olga broke it. "Why did you call for help?

Mike shuffled on his stool uncomfortably. "Did you find your mole?"

"We have more urgent problems right now." It was an evasion. Olga looked at Paulette. "Thank you for continuing to source provisions for us; it has been more useful than you can know, but there are some new arrangements I need to discuss with you. Things are going to be busy for a while. Mr. Fleming, there have been reports of contrails over the Gruinmarkt. We don't have much time for idle chatter. Do you know anything about them?"

"They've been planning some kind of incursion for at least six months," Mike told her. The secret, divulged, left him feeling naked. "I saw a spec-ops helicopter. This was planned before the bombs went off. They know where all the oil is, and you're a threat to national security. But since the bombs—now—I don't think they'll be satisfied with their original plans."

"Do you believe they'll use nuclear weapons?"

"Will they?" It was Mike's turn to frown. "They already did: that castle up near Concord. The question isn't whether, the question is when and how many." Stripped of the bloody shirt of

eighteen thousand dead,

these events acquired a logic of their own. "They'll kill a lot of people who have nothing to do with your extended family."

"Yes." Olga emptied her coffee mug. "And so, we are taking steps to leave, to put ourselves forever beyond contact with the US government. Those of us with any sense, that is. Some refuse to see the writing on the wall, as you would say. The Clan is breaking up, you know; a generation ago the mere suggestion of an open split would have been seen as treason."

"Where are you going?" asked Paulette.

"You've been there, I seem to recall. On a visit." Olga raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me for not describing it in front of Mr. Fleming. When we go—I am allowed to offer you a payoff in money, or asylum if you are afraid of the authorities here: We look after our friends. But it'll be a one-way trip."

"They'll come after you. They'll hunt you down wherever you run to," Mike predicted.

"Let them try." Olga shrugged. "Mr. Fleming,

I

didn't choose to fight the US government; I'm not Osama bin Laden. Your former vice president, he—well. We have a rule. When we do business with outsiders, we have a rule:

no politicians.

WARBUCKS quit politics, in the late eighties: That's when our West Coast subsidiary approached him—well. Water under the bridge. It was a serious oversight, but one we are in the process of rectifying. My question to you is, what are you going to do now? Paulette tells me your agency has tried to kill you. What do you

want?

I can give you money—we've got more than we know what to do with, we can't take it where we're going—or I can offer you asylum—"

"I want the files," said Mike.

"The. What?"

"Your files on WARBUCKS."

"Huh?" Paulette looked confusedly between them.

"WARBUCKS started this. I wouldn't be here now if I didn't know a deliberate provocation when I saw one. This is all happening because he wants to cover up his past complicity with the Clan, and because the existence of the Clan is now a matter of public record. An awful lot of people are going to die to cover up his secret." Mike's frustration sought a way out. "People who have nothing to do with your nasty little family trade, or with me, or with WARBUCKS. Listen, I don't much care for you. If it was business as usual I'd arrest you

right now

and put you away on racketeering, money laundering, and drugs charges. Oh, and the illegal firearm." He gestured at Olga's bag and she twitched a hand towards it; he shrugged. "But it's not business as usual—probably never will be, ever again. The man who you guys have fallen out with is

running my country.

He's corrupted

my