The Merchants’ War

readers to spot a bunch of plotters running a coup!”

“Language, Colonel, please.”

“Shi—sorry.” Eric shook his head, angry at his own loss of control. “I’m upset. We’ve now lost two high- clearance, high-value agents and an AFSOCCOM specops team and we’ve only really been up and running for fourteen weeks.”

“I feel your pain,” James said dryly. Eric stared at him, taken aback. “But I’m going to have to brief the vice president tonight on all the progress we haven’t been making, and believe me, chewing on ground glass would be less painful,” he added. “Now. I’ve heard from Herz. How’s CLANCY going?”

“Badly.” CLANCY was the ongoing investigation into the nuclear device that Source GREENSLEEVES claimed was planted somewhere in the Boston/Cambridge area, before he’d so inconveniently managed to get himself killed. “We hadn’t found anything really noteworthy—a couple of meth labs, a walled-up cellar full of moonshine left over from the nineteen twenties, that sort of thing—until Judith turned up her anomaly yesterday. I was half-convinced GREENSLEEVES was lying to us, but now—well, I don’t think we can afford to take that risk.” He shivered. “Just who the he—heck stuck a B-53 bomb on blocks in a warehouse and set it to go off on a ten-year timer?”

“Is that a question?” Doctor James leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingertips again, and the piranha- like set of his lips quirked slightly. Is he trying to smile? wondered Eric.

“Only if I’m not treading on any classified toes,” Smith said warily.

“It’s not a healthy question to ask. So I suggest you don’t ask me about it. Then I won’t have to tell you any lies.”

“Ah.” Smith dry-swallowed.

“Even if I did know anything about it. Which I don’t,” James said, with a twitch of one eyebrow that spoke volumes.

“Right. Right.” Change the subject, quick. The fact that they were sitting in a secure conference cell that was regularly swept for bugs didn’t mean that nobody was listening in, or at least recording the session for posterity: all it meant was that nobody outside the charmed circle of the National Security infrastructure was eavesdropping. But what kind of black operation would involve us nuking one of our own cities? Smith filed the question away for later.

“Well, we’re looking for a needle in a haystack. The original idea of taking the county planner’s database and data mining it for suspicious activities is sound in principle, but it yields too many false positives in a city the size of this one. I mean, there are tens of thousands of business premises, many tens of thousands of homes with garages or large basements, and if only one percent of them flag as positives for things like lack of visible tenants or occupants, zero phone use but basic utility draw for heating, and so on, we’re swamped. It might be a bomb installation, or it could equally well be Uncle Alfred’s old house and he died six months ago and the estate’s still in probate or something. Or it could be an overenthusiastic horticulturist trying to breed a better pot plant. On the other hand, hopefully the neutron scattering spectroscopes our NIRT liaisons are getting next week will allow us to make an exhaustive roving search. And we can cover for it easily, by telling the truth—we’re testing a bomb detector for terrorist nukes. Everyone will assume we’re worried about al-Qaeda, and if we actually do find GREENSLEEVES’s gadget…well, do you suppose the VP would like to make hay with that?”

The raised eyebrow was back. “I suppose you have a point.” James nodded slowly. “Yes, that would kill two terrorist threats with one stone.” Eric relaxed slightly. “What else do you have for me?”

“Well, I’m not saying we’re not going to get another break—I think it’s only a matter of time—but I can’t give you a time scale for quantum leaps. I think if we can reactivate CLEANSWEEP, or figure out some way around the bottleneck in our logistics chain we might be able to progress on CLANCY through other avenues. I mean, if we can get our hands on some useful intelligence about the Clan’s nuclear capability that could open up some avenues of inquiry about where GREENSLEEVES got his hands on a gadget, and where it might be now. But for the time being, we’re not really pursuing a specifically intelligence-led investigation. Getting back into the Gruinmarkt is, in my opinion, vital—and the more force we can project there, the better.”

“I see.” James made a brief note on his pad. “Well. I’m hoping we’ll have a solution to the logistics issues shortly.”

“More couriers? A target for COLDPLAY?”

“Something better.” He looked smug.

Eric leaned forward. “Tell me. Whatever you can. Is this more of that harebrained physics stuff from Livermore?”

“Of course.” Then something terrifying happened: Doctor James actually smiled. “I think it’s time to bring you in the loop on the, as you put it, logistics side of things. There’s a cross-disciplinary team under Professor Armstrong from UCSD who’ve been working on a subject under, um, closed conditions. They haven’t worked out everything that’s going on yet, but they’ve made some fascinating progress that points to a physical explanation for their anomalous capability. I’m going to be flying out there tomorrow morning, and I was hoping you could join me.”

Eric glanced at his desk. It’d mean another couple of nights away from Gillian and the boys, and more apologies and tense silences at home, but it needed to be done. “As long I can be back here by Friday—if nothing new comes up in the meantime—I should be able to fit it in.” Briefly, he let his bitterness show: “it’s not as if I’m needed for the post-CLEANSWEEP debrief, or to report CLANCY as closed out.”

“Then you’ll accompany me.” Doctor James rose abruptly, his expression as warm as any killer robot’s. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment it wouldn’t do to be late to…”

Begin Transcript:

“You called for me, sir.”

“Indeed I did, indeed I did. I trust you’ve been keeping well. Any trouble getting here?”

“Only the—not really. Not given the prevailing afflictions. I was most surprised to be summoned, though. Under the circumstances.”

“Well, you’re here now. Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable, this may take some time—I must apologize in advance for any interruptions, I am somewhat busy at present.”

“There is nothing to apologize for, sir.”

“Ah, but there will be. I’m afraid I’ve got another delicate task for you. One that will require you to visit the new world and spend some considerable length of time working there on your own initiative.”

“But, the fighting! Surely I’m of use there?”

(Clink of glassware.) “Glass of wine?”

“Ah—yes, thank you sir.”

(More clinking of glassware.) “Your health, my lady.”

“And yours, your grace. Sir. I don’t understand. Is this more urgent than dealing with the pretender? As a need of immediacy?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” (Pause.) “Then I’ll do it, of course. Whatever mysterious task you have in mind.”

“I wouldn’t be so fast to accept. You may hear me out and deem it a conflict of loyalty.”

“Conflict of—” (Pause.) “Oh.”

“Yes. I am afraid you’re not going to like this.”

“It’s about her grace, isn’t it?”

“Partly. No, let me be honest: mostly. But, hmm, let me think…how clear are you on her current circumstances?”

(Tensely.) “She didn’t tell me anything. Before—whatever.”

“Indeed not, and I did not summon you to accuse you of any misdeeds. But. What is your understanding of what she did?”

(Pause.) “Lady Helge has many bad habits, but her incurable curiosity is by far the worst of them. I was led to believe that she stuck her nose into some business or other of Henryk’s, and he slapped her down for it. Confinement to a supervised apartment under house arrest, no contact with anyone who might conspire with her, living on bread and water, that kind of thing. Is there more to it?”

“Yes, you could say that.” (Sigh.) “You could hold me responsible, as well. I—placed certain evidence where I expected her to encounter it. It was in the context of a larger operation which you are not privy to. I expected her to rattle some cages and shake loose some useful fruit that were previously hanging out of reach. She has a