that wall.”
“Okay. What now?” she asked.
“Pick up the two cases-yes, I know they’re heavy, you only need to hold them clear of the floor for a minute. Do you think you can do that? And focus on that cupboard on the wall. I’ll look away and hit this button, and you do what comes natural, then step out of the square-fast. I’ll be through in a couple of minutes; got an errand to run first.”
“And-oh.”
She saw the motorized screen roll up; behind it was a backlit knot like symbol that made her eyes swim. It was just like the locket In fact, it was the same as the locket, and she felt as if she was falling into it. Then her head began to ache, viciously, and she slumped under the weight of the suitcases. Remembering Roland’s instructions, she rolled them forward, noting that the post room looked superficially the same but the screened cupboard on this side was closed and there were some scrapes on the wall.
“Hmm.” She glanced around. No Roland, as yet. Well, well, well, she thought.
She glanced down at the case she’d carried over, blinked thoughtfully, then walked over to the wall with the pigeonholes, where another case was waiting. One that hadn’t been prepared for her. She bent down and sprang the catch on it, laid it flat on its side and lifted the lid. Her breath caught in her throat. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. She’d been hoping for gold, jewels, scrolls, or maybe antibiotics and computers. This was what she’d been afraid of. She shut the case and stood it upright again, then walked back to the ones she’d brought over and concentrated on quieting her racing heartbeat and smoothing her face into a welcoming, slightly coy smile before Roland the brilliant reformer, Roland the sympathetic friend, Roland the lying bastard scumbag could bring his own suitcase through.
Who did you think you were kidding? she wondered bitterly. You knew it was too good to be true. And indeed it had been clear from the start that there had to be a catch somewhere.
The nature of the catch was obvious and ironic with twenty-twenty hindsight, and when she thought about it she realized that Roland hadn’t actually lied to her. She just hadn’t asked the right questions.
What supplied the family’s vast wealth on her own, the other, the American side of the border? It sure wasn’t a fast postal service, not when it took six weeks to cross an untamed wilderness on pack mules beset by savage tribes. No, it was a different type of service-one intended for commodities of high value, low weight, and likely to be interrupted in transit through urban America. Something that the family could ship reliably through their own kingdoms and move back and forth to American soil at their leisure. In America they made their money by shipping goods across the Gruinmarkt fast; in the Gruinmarkt they made their money by moving goods across America slowly but reliably. The suitcase contained almost twenty kilograms of sealed polythene bags, and it didn’t take a genius with degrees in journalism and medicine to figure out that they’d be full of Bolivian nose candy.
She thought about the investigation she’d been running with Paulie, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead she began whistling a song by Brecht-Supply and Demand-as she picked up her own suitcase and headed for the elevator to her suite.
My long-lost medievalist world-walking family are drug import/ export barons, she realized. What the hell does that make me?
Alone in her apartment with the door locked, Miriam began to unpack her suitcase full of purchases. She’d arrived to find the maids in a state of near panic: “Mistress, the duke, he wants to see you tomorrow lunchtime!” In the end she’d dismissed them all except for Meg, the oldest, who she sat down with for a quiet talk.
“I’m not used to having you around all the time,” she said bluntly. “I know you’re not going to go away, but I want you to make yourselves scarce. Ask one of the electricians to put a bell in, so I can call you when I need you. I don’t mind people coming in to tidy up when I’m out of my rooms, but I don’t want to be surrounded all the time. Can you do that?” Meg had nodded, but looked puzzled. “Any questions?” Miriam asked. “No, ma’am,” Meg had replied. But her expression said that she thought Miriam’s behaviour was distinctly strange.
Miriam sighed and pointed at the door. Maybe if I act like they’re hotel staff… “I’ll want someone to come up in about three hours with some food-a tray of cold stuff will do-and a pot of tea. Apart from that, I don’t expect to see anyone tonight and I don’t want to be disturbed. Is that okay?”
“Yes’m.” Meg ducked her head and fled. “Okay, so that works,” Miriam said thoughtfully. Which was good because now she had some space to work in, unobserved.
Fifteen minutes later the luggage was stowed where Miriam wanted it. Her new laptop was sitting on the dresser, plugged in to charge next to a stack of unopened software boxes. Her new wardrobe was hung up, awaiting the attentions of a seamstress whenever Miriam had time for a fitting. And the escape kit, as she was already thinking of it, was stashed in the suitcase at the back of the wardrobe.
“Memo.” She picked up her dictaphone and strolled through into the bathroom. It was the place she found it easiest to think. Cool white tiles, fine marble, nothing to aggravate the pounding headache she’d been plagued by for so much of the past week. Plus, it had a shower-which she turned on, just for the noise. “Need to look for a bug-sweeping kit next time I get time on the other side. Must try the beta-blockers too, once I’ve looked up their side effects. Wonder if they’ve got a trained doctor over here? Or a clinic of some kind? Anyway.”
She swallowed. “New memo. Must get the dictation software installed on the laptop, so I can transcribe this diary. Um. Roland and the family business bear some thought.” That’s the understatement of the century, she told herself. “They’re… oh hell. They’re not the Medelin cartel, but they probably ship a good quantity of their produce. It’s a family business, or rather a whole bunch of families who intermarry because of the hereditary factor, with the Clan as a business arrangement that organizes everything. I suppose they probably smuggled jewels or gold or something before the drugs thing. The whole nine yards about not marrying out-whether the ability is a recessive gene or not doesn’t matter-they’ve got omerta, the law of silence, as a side effect of their social setup. In this world, they’re upwardly mobile nobles, merchant-princes trying to marry into the royal family. In my world, they’re gangsters. Mafia families without the Sicilian in-laws.”
She hit the “pause” button for a moment.
“So I’m a Mafia princess. Talk about not getting involved with goodfellas! What do I make of it?”
She paused again and noticed that she was pacing back and forth distractedly. “It’s blood money. Or is it? If these people are the government here, and they say it’s legal to smuggle cocaine or heroin, does that make it okay? This is one huge can of worms. Even if you leave ethics out of the question, even if you think the whole war on drugs is a bad idea like prohibition in the twenties, it’s still a huge headache.” She massaged her throbbing forehead. “I really need to talk to Iris. She’d set me straight.”
She leaned her forehead against the cool tiles beside the mirror over the sink. “Problem is, I can’t walk away from them. I can’t just leave, walk out, and go back to life in Cambridge. It’s not just the government who’d want to bury me so deep the sun would never find me. The Clan can’t risk me talking. Now that I think about it, it’s weird that they let Roland get as far as he did. Only. If he’s telling the truth, Angbard is keeping him on a short leash. What does that suggest they’ve got in mind for me? A short leash and a choke collar?”
She could see it in her mind’s eye, the chain of events that would unfold if she were to walk into an FBI office and prove what she could do-maybe with the aid of a sack of cocaine, maybe not. Maybe with Paulie’s CD full of research, too, she realized, sitting up. “Shit.” A dawning supposition: Drug-smuggling rings needed to sanitize their revenue stream, didn’t they? And the business with Biphase and Proteome was in the right part of the world, and the Clan was certainly sophisticated enough… if her hunch was right, then it was, in fact, her long-lost family’s investments that Paulie was holding the key to.
In the FBI office first there’d be disbelief. Then the growing realization that a journalist was handing them the drugs case of the century. Followed by the hasty escalation, the witness protection program offers-then their reaction to her demonstrated ability to walk through walls. The secondary scenarios as the FBI realize that they can’t protect her, can’t even protect themselves against assassins from another world. Then blind panic and bad decisions.
“If the families decided to attack the United States at home, they could make al Qaida look like amateurs,” she muttered into her dictaphone, stricken. “They have the resources of a government at their disposal, because over here they’re running things. Does that make them a government? Or so close it makes no difference? They’re rich and powerful on the other side, too. Another generation and they’ll probably be getting their fingers into the pie in
