Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

The darkness outside the window was complete and the stack of files before her was visibly shrinking when there came a knock at the door. "Come in," she called sharply: there was no possibility of a surprise police raid here, not without gunshots and explosions to telegraph their arrival.

The door opened and the rough-looking fellow outside cleared his throat. "Got a problem downstairs. Woman at the door, asking for you by name. Says Burgeson sent her."

"Was she followed?" Lady Bishop asked sharply.

"She said not, and I had a couple of the lads go 'ave a word with the hack what brought her. Nothing to fear on that account."

"Good." Lady Bishop breathed slightly easier. "Who is she? What does she want?"

"Figured we'd best leave that for you. She's not one such as I'd recognize, and she's dressed odd, like: Mai took her for a madwoman at first, but when she used your name and mentioned Burgeson I figured she was too dangerous to let go. So we stashed her in the cellar while we made arrangements."

"Right. Right." Lady Bishop nodded to herself, her face grim. "Is the Miller prepared?" "Oh, aye."

"Then I suppose you'd better bring her up here and we can get to the bottom of this, Ed. I shall start with an interview-to give the poor woman a chance to excuse herself. But when you come, bring Mai. In case we have to send her down."

She spent the minutes before Ed's return with the prisoner methodically prioritizing her remaining correspondence. Then she carefully moved the manila paper folders to a desk drawer, closed and locked her writing case, and tried to compose herself. In truth, Lady Bishop haled interrogations. However necessary it might be for I he pursuit of the declaration, the process invariably left her feeling soiled.

The rap at the door, when it came, was loud and confident. "Enter," she called. Edmund opened the door; behind him waited a woman, and behind her, the shadow of Mai the doorman. "Come in," she added, and pointed to a rough stool on the opposite side of her desk: "and sit down."

The woman was indeed oddly dressed. Is she an actress'! Margaret wondered. It seemed unlikely. And her outfit, while outlandish, was in any case both too well tailored and too dirty for a stage costume. Then Lady Bishop took a good look at the woman's face, and paused. The bruise on her cheek told a story: and so, when the woman opened her mouth, did the startling perfection of her dentistry.

"Are you Lady Bishop?"

Margaret, Lady Bishop stared at the woman for a moment, then nodded. "I am." She had the most peculiar feeling that the woman on the stool opposite her was studying her right back, showing a degree of self-assurance she'd have expected from a judge, not a prisoner. Titled? Or a lord's by-blow? "I'm Miriam Beckstein," said the woman. "I believe Erasmus has told you something about me." She swallowed. "I don't know how much he's told you, but there's been a change in the situation."

Lady Bishop froze, surprise stabbing at her. You're the Beckstein woman:' She turned to look at her assistants: "Ed, Mai, wait outside."

Ed looked perturbed. "Are you sure, ma'am?"

She gave him a hard stare: "you don't need to hear this." Why in Christ's name didn't you say it was her in the first place? She wanted to add, but not at risk of tipping off the prisoner about her place in the scheme of things.

Ed backed out of the room hastily and pulled the door shut. Margaret turned back to her unexpected visitor. "I'm sorry; we weren't expecting you, so nobody told them to be on the lookout. Do you know who struck you?"

Beckstein looked startled for a moment, then raised a hand to her cheek. "This? Oh, it's nothing to do with your men." A distant expression crossed her face: "The man who hit me died earlier this evening. Before I continue- did Erasmus tell you where I come from?"

Lady Bishop considered feigning ignorance for a moment. "He said something about a different version of our world. Sounded like nonsense at first, but then the trinkets started showing up." Her expression hardened. "If you think we can be bought and sold for glass beads-"

"I wouldn't dream of it!" Beckstein paused. "But, uh, I needed to know. What he'd told you. The thing is, I ran into some trouble. I was able to escape, but I came here because it was all I could do-I got away with only the clothes on my back. I need to get back to Boston and contact some people to let them know I'm alright before they, before I can get everything back under control. I was hoping..." She ran out of words.

Lady Bishop watched her intently. Do you really think I'm that naive? she asked silently, permitting herself a moment's cold anger. Did you really think you could simply march in and demand assistance? Then a second thought struck her: or maybe you don't know who you're dealing with...?

"Did Erasmus tell you anything about me? Or who I am associated with?" she asked.

Beckstein blinked. "He implied-oh." Her eyes widened. "Oh shit."

Lady Bishop stifled a sigh of exasperation. Indelicacy on top of naivety? A very odd mixture indeed.

The Beckstein woman stared at her. "Erasmus didn't tell me enough..."

Margaret made up her mind. "I can see that," she said, which was true enough-just not the absolution it might be mistaken for. Either you're really down on your luck and you thought I might be an easy touch, or perhaps you're really ignorant and in trouble. Which is it? "Tell me who you think I am," she coaxed, "and I'll tell you if you're right or wrong."

"Okay," said Beckstein. Margaret made a mental note- what does that word meant -then nodded encouragement. "I think you're a member of the Levelers' first circle. Probably involved in strategy and planning. And Erasmus was thinking about brokering a much higher-level arrangement between you and my, my, the people I represent. Represented." She swallowed. "Are you going to kill me?" she asked, only a faint quaver in her voice.

"If you were entirely right in every particular, then I would absolutely have to kill you." Margaret smiled to lake the sting out of her words before she continued. "Luckily you're just wrong enough to be safe. But," she paused, to give herself time to prepare her next words carefully: "I don't think you're telling me the entire truth. And given your suspicions about my vocation, don't you think that might not be very clever? I want the truth, Miss Beckstein. And nothing but the truth."

"I"- Beckstein swallowed. Her eyes flickered from side to side, as if seeking a way out: Margaret realized that she was shaking. "I'm not sure. Whether you'd believe me, and whether it would be a good thing if you did."

This was getting harder to deal with by the minute, Margaret realized. The woman was clearly close to the end of her tether. She'd put a good face on things at first, but there was more to this than met the eye. "I've seen Erasmus," said Margaret. "He told me about the medicine you procured for him." She watched the Beckstein woman closely: "and he showed me the disc-playing machine. The, ah, DVD player. One miracle might be an accident, but two suggest an interesting pattern. You needn't worry about me mistaking you for a madwoman.

"But you must tell me exactly what has happened to you. Right now, at once, with no dissembling. Otherwise I will not be able to save you..."

Judith Herz tensed unconsciously, steeling herself for the explosion, and crossed her fingers as the four SWAT team officers swung the battering ram back for a second knock. Not that tensing would do any good if there was a bomb in the self-storage room...

"Are you sure this is safe?" asked Rich Wall, fingering his mobile phone like it was a lucky charm.

Herz look a deep breath. "No," she snapped. What do you expect me to say? "According to Mike Fleming, the asshole who sent us on this wild goose chase has a hard-on for claymore mines. That's why-"she gestured at the chalk marks on the cinder block wall the officers were attacking, the heaps of dust from the drills, the fiber-optic camera on its dolly off to one side"-we're going in through the wall."

A cloud of dust billowed out. There was a rattle of debris falling from the impact site on the wall they'd started by drilling a quarter-inch hole, then sent a fiber-optic scope through with the delicacy of doctors conducting keyhole cardiac bypass surgery. The black plastic-coated hose had snaked around, bringing grainy gray images to the monitor screen on the console like images from a long-sealed Egyptian royal tomb. The dust lay heavy in the lockup room, as if it hadn't been visited for months or years. Something indistinct and bulky, probably a large oil tank, hulked a couple of feet beyond the hole, blocking the line of sight to the door to the lockup. The caretaker had kicked up a fuss when she'd told him they were going to punch through the wall from the other side-after unceremoniously ejecting the occupants' property-until she'd shown him her FBI card and the warrant the FEMA Sixth Circuit court had signed in their emergency in camera session. (Which the court had granted in a shot, the moment the bench saw the gamma ray spike the roving search truck had registered as it quartered the city, looking for a sleeping horror.) Then he'd clammed up and gone into his cubicle to phone the landlord.

"I think we're gonna need that jack," called one of the cops with the ram. His colleagues laid the heavy metal shaft down while two more cops in orange high-visibility jackets and respirators moved to shovel the rubble aside. "Should be through in a couple more minutes."

Judith glanced at Rich, who grinned humorlessly. "This is your last chance to lake a hike," she suggested.

"Naah." Rich glanced down. He was fidgeting with his phone, as if it was a lucky charm. "Let's face it, I wouldn't get far enough to clear the blast zone, would I?"

Judith suppressed a smile: "That's true." Go on, whistle in the dark. She shivered involuntarily. The guys with the haltering ram didn't know what they were here for: all they knew was that the woman from the FBI headquarters staff wanted into the storage room, and wanted in bad. She'd done the old stony stare and dropped an elliptical hint about Mideast terrorists and fertilizer bombs, enough to keep them on their toes but not enough to make them phone their families and tell them to leave town now. But Rich knew what they were looking for, and so did Bob, who was suiting up in the NIRT truck in the back parking lot along with the rest of his team, and Eric Smith, back in Maryland in a meeting room in Crypto City. "You could always step outside for a last cigarette."

"I'm trying to give up. Last cigarettes, that is." Rich shuffled from foot to foot as two of the cops grunted and manhandled a construction site jack into place beside the blue chalk X on the wall, where it was buckling ominously outwards.

"Okay, one more try," called one of the cops-Sergeant McSweeny, Herz thought-as the ram team picked up their pole and began to work up their momentum.

BAM. This time there was a clatter of rubble falling as overstressed bricks gave way. The dust cleared and she saw there was a hole in the wall where the ram had struck, an opening into the heart of darkness. The battering ram team shuffled backwards out of the way of the two guys with shovels, who now hefted sledgehammers and went to work on the edges of the hole, widening it. "There's your new doorway," said one of the ram crew, wincing and rubbing his upper arm: "kinda short on brass fittings and hinges, but we can do you a deal on gravel for your yard."