The Trade of Queens

“If I may continue? Thank you. Those of you tasked with nuclear weapons security know more about the consequences of that particular event than I do; to those who aren’t, we’re in the process of upgrading our risk management model and temporarily escalated security is already in place for those parts of the inventory which suffer from compromised ARM. We’re not going to lose any more nukes, period.

“Meanwhile, the background to this particular empty quiver event is that DEA’s initial approach to the Clan was that they were a major narcotics ring—narcoterrorists on the same scale as the Medellin Cartel, with an additional twist. Estimates of their turnover are in the four-to-six-billion-dollar-per-year range, and a membership in excess of a thousand individuals—and should be dealt with accordingly. What became apparent only later was that the scope of the threat, intrusions from another world, a parallel universe, is unprecedented and carries with it many unknown unknowns, if I may steal a phrase from the top. What we failed to appreciate at first was that the Clan were effectively a parallel government within their own nation, but not the government—an analogy with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan is apposite—and that the local authorities wanted rid of them. The situation was highly unstable. I am informed that negotiations with the Clan for return of the stolen weapons were conducted, but internal factional disputes resulted in the, the consequences we’ve all witnessed this week.”

Which was flat-out half-truths and lies, but the real story wasn’t something it was safe to talk about even behind locked doors in Crypto City: Smith’s boss, Dr. James, had anticipated a response, but not on this scale. Calculations had been botched, as badly as the decision in early 2001 to ignore the festering hatred in the hills around Kabul. “We need to get the hard-liners to talk to us, not the liberals,” Dr. James had explained. Nobody had anticipated that the hard-liners’ idea of a gambit would be a full-dress onslaught—or if they had, they were burying the evidence so deep that even thinking that thing was a life expectancy-limiting move.

“I can’t discuss the political response to the current situation,” Smith continued, speaking into a hair-raising silence, “but I’ve been told I can mention the legal dimension. Other FTO officials are briefing their respective departments today. As of now, FTO and the existence of the extradimensional threat are no longer super-black, although the content of this briefing remains classified. The briefing process is intended to bring everyone up to speed before the orders start coming down. I’ve been told to alert you that a military response is inevitable—the president is meeting with the survivors of the House of Representatives and there is a briefing going on behind closed doors right now—and the War Powers Act has been invoked. White House counsel and the attorney general’s office agree that the usual treaty obligations requiring a UN mandate for a declaration of war do not apply to territory physically located within our own national borders, and posse comitatus does not apply to parallel universes—this remains to be confirmed by the Supreme Court, but we anticipate a favorable outcome.”

As three of the four Justices who died in the attack were from the liberal side of the bench—by sheer bad luck, they’d been attending an event at GWU that morning—this was an extreme understatement: The new Supreme Court, when it could be sworn in, would be handpicked to make Chief Justice Scalia happy.

Smith took a deep breath. “So, to summarize: We have been attacked by a new kind of enemy, using our own stolen weapons. But we’ve been studying them covertly, and we’ve got the tools to reach out and touch them. And we’re going to show them exactly what happens when you mess with the United States.” He stared straight at one of the generals in the front row, who had been visibly containing himself for several minutes. “Thank you for your patience. Now are there any questions?”

The floodgates opened.

*   *   *

The day after his failed attempt to leak all over Steve Schroeder’s news desk, Mike Fleming deliberately set out to tickle the dragon’s tail. He did so in the full, cold foreknowledge that he was taking a huge personal risk, but he was running short on alternatives.

Driving from motel to strip mall and around and about by way of just about any second-rate road he could find that wasn’t an interstate or turnpike, Mike watched the news unfold. The sky was blue and empty, contrail-free except for the occasional track of a patrolling F-15; as on 9/11, they’d shut down all civilian aviation. The fire this time had not come from above, but few people knew that so far and as gestures went, grounding the airliners was a trivially easy way to signal that something was being done to protect the nation. It was the old security syllogism: Something must be done, this is something, ergo this must be done. Mike drove slowly, listening to the radio. There were police checkpoints on roads in and out of D.C.; the tattered remnants of Congress and Supreme Court were gathering at an Undisclosed Location to mourn their dead and witness the somber inauguration of the new president, a sixty-something former business tycoon from Wyoming. A presidential address to the nation scheduled for the evening: unreassuring negatives leaking from the Pentagon, This isn’t al-Qaeda, this isn’t the Iranians, this is something new. The pro-forma groundswell rumble of rage and fury at yet another unheralded and unannounced cowardly attack on the sleeping giant. The nation was on the edge of its nerves, terrified and angry. Muslim-Americans: scared. Continuity of Government legislation was being overhauled, FEMA managers stumbling bleary-eyed to the realization that the job they’d been hired for was now necessary—

At a pay phone in the back of a 7-Eleven, Mike pulled out a calling card and began to dial, keeping a nervous eye on his wristwatch. He listened briefly, then dialed a PIN. “Hello. You have no new messages.”

He hung up. “Shit,” he muttered, trudging back towards the front of the shop, trying hard not to think of the implications, not hurrying, not dawdling, but conserving the energy he’d need to carry him through the next day. He was already two miles away as the first police cruiser pulled up outside with its lights flashing, ten minutes too late: driving slowly, mind spinning as he tried to come up with a fallback plan that didn’t end with his death.

If only Miriam’s mother had left a message, or Olga the ice princess, he’d have more options open—but they hadn’t, and without a contact number he was out in the cold. The only lines he could follow led back into an organization answering to a new president who had been in cahoots with the Clan’s worst elements and wanted the evidence buried, or to a news editor who hadn’t believed him the first time round—and who knew what Steve would think, now that the White House was a smoking ruin?

I blew it, he thought bleakly. Dr. James has likely declared me a rogue asset already. Which was technically correct—as long as one was unaware that James himself was in it up to his eyes. The temptation to simply drive away, to take his papers and find a new life in a small town and forget he’d ever been Mike Fleming, was intense. But it wouldn’t work in the long term, he realized. The emergency administration would bring in the kind of internal ID checks that people used to point to when they wanted to denounce the Soviets. They’d have to: It wasn’t as if they could keep world-walkers out by ramping up the immigration service. What can I do?

His options seemed to be narrowing down. Work within the organization had gone out the window with that car bomb: The organization wanted him gone. Talk to Iris Beckstein—about what? Talk to the press—no, that had seemed like a good idea yesterday: funny how rapidly things changed. He could guess what would happen if he fixed up another meeting with Steve Schroeder any time soon. Steve would try to verify his source, be coopted, spun some line about Mike being a conspirator, and reel him in willingly; and Mike had no tangible evidence to back up his claims. Try to turn a coworker—look how well that had worked for Pete Garfinkle. Pete had confessed misgivings to Mike; shortly thereafter he’d been put in a situation that killed him. Mike had confessed misgivings to Colonel Smith; shortly thereafter—join up the dots. The whole organization was corrupt, from the top down. For all he knew, the bombs—his knuckles whitened upon the steering wheel—did WARBUCKS have big enough balls to deliberately maneuver the Clan into giving him everything he wanted, on a plate? To have helped them get their hands on the bombs, and then to have provoked them into attacking the United States? Not a crippling attack, but a beheading one, laying the groundwork for a coup d’etat?

The scale of his paranoia was giving Mike a very strange sensation, the cold detachment of a head trip into a darkened wilderness of mirrors: the occupational disease of spies. If you can’t trust your friends, the only people left to trust are your enemies, he reminded himself. Miriam had tried to warn him; that suggested, at a minimum, something to hope for. But FTO’ll be watching her house. And her mother’s. In case anyone shows. He forced himself to relax his grip on the wheel and pay attention to his surroundings as a pickup weaved past him, horn blaring. How many watchers? Maintaining full surveillance on a building was extremely expensive—especially