The Merchants’ War

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 mean?—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 take 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…”

BAM.

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 took 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.”

BAM.

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 take 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 battering 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.”

“Ri-ight,” drawled Rich. Judith glared at him, keeping her face frozen. That’s right, I’m a woman in black from a secret government agency, she thought. I’ve got no sense of humor and you better not get in my way. Even if the black outfit was a wind cheater with a big FBI logo, and a pair of 501s.

The cop recoiled slightly. “Hey, what’s up with you guys?”

“You have no need to know.” Judith relented slightly. “Seriously. You won’t read about this in the newspapers, but you’ve done a good job here today.” She winced slightly as another sledgehammer blow spalled chips off the edge of the hole in the wall. Which was growing now, to the point where a greased anorexic supermodel might be able to wriggle through. A large slab of wall fell inward, doubling the size of the hole. “Ah, showtime. If you guys could get the jack into position and then clear the area I think we will take it from here.” If only Mike Fleming was about. This is his fault, she thought venomously.

Ten minutes later the big orange jack was screwed tight against the top of the opening, keeping the cinder blocks above the hole from collapsing. The SWAT team was outside in the parking lot, packing their kit up and shooting random wild-assed guesses about what the hell it was they’d been called in to do, and why: Judith glanced at the wristwatch-shaped gadget strapped to her left wrist and nodded. It was still clean, showing background count of about thirty becquerels per second. A tad high for suburban Boston, but nothing that couldn’t be accounted for by the fly ash mixed into the cinder blocks. The idea of wearing a Geiger counter like a wristwatch still gave her the cold shudders when she thought about it, but that wasn’t so often these days, not after three weeks of it—and besides, it was better than the alternative.

A big gray truck was backing in to the lot tail-first. Rich waved directions to the driver, as if he needed them: