The Trade of Queens

It made her sick to her stomach. She’d spent the first two days in bed, crying and throwing up on trips to the bathroom, certain that the FBI were going to break down her door at any moment. The stakes she’d signed up for were far higher than she’d ever imagined, and she found she hated herself for it: hated her earlier moment of pecuniary weakness, her passive compliance in following Miriam down her path of good intentions, her willingness to make friends and let people influence her. She’d caught herself looking in the bathroom cabinet at one point, and hastily shut it: The temptation to take a sleeping pill, or two, or enough to shut it out forever, was a whispering demon on her shoulder for a few hours. “What the fuck can I do?” She’d asked the bourbon bottle on the kitchen table. “What the fuck can I do?”

Today … hadn’t been better, exactly; but she’d awakened in a mildly depressive haze, rather than a blind panic, knowing that she had two options. She could go to the feds, spill her guts, and hope a jail cell for the rest of her life was better than whatever the Clan did to their snitches. Or she could keep calm and carry on—she’d seen a foreign wartime poster with that line, once—carry on doing what Miriam had asked of her: sit in an office, buy books and put them in boxes, buy stuff (surveying tools, precision atomic clocks, laboratory balances: What did she know?) and stash it in a self-storage locker ready for a courier collection that might never arrive.

Get up. Drink a mug of coffee, no food. Go to the office. Order supplies. Repackage them with an inventory sheet, to meet the following size and weight requirements. Drive them to the lockup. Consider eating lunch and feel revulsion at the idea so do some more work, then go home. Keep calm and carry on (it beats going to Gitmo). Try not to think …

Paulette drove home from the rented office suite in a haze of distraction, inattentive and absentminded. The level of boxes in the lockup had begun to go down again, she’d noticed: For the first time in a week there’d been a new manilla envelope with a handwritten shopping list inside. (She’d stuffed it in her handbag, purposely not reading it.) So someone was collecting the consignments. Her fingers were white on the steering wheel as she pulled up in the nearest parking space, half a block from her front door. She was running short on supplies, but the idea of going grocery shopping made her feel sick: Anything out of the routine scared her right now.

She unlocked the front door and went inside, switched the front hall light on, and dumped her handbag beside the answering machine. It was a warm enough summer’s day that she hadn’t bothered with a jacket. She walked through into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, purposely not thinking about how she was going to fill the evening—a phone call to Mother, perhaps, and a movie on DVD—and that was when the strange man stepped out behind her and held up a badge.

“Paulette Milan, I’m from the DEA and I’d—”

She was lying down, and dizzy. He was staring at her. Everything was gray. His mouth was moving, and so was the world. It was confusing for a moment, but then her head began to clear: I fainted? She was looking up at the living room ceiling, she realized. There was something soft under the back of her head.

“Can you hear me?” He looked concerned.

“I’m.” She took a couple of breaths. “I’m. Oh God.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you like that—are you all right? Listen, do you have a heart condition—” No. No. She must have shaken her head. “Do you know Miriam Beckstein?”

Paulie swallowed. “Shit.”

Everything, for an instant, was crystal clear. I’m from the DEA. Do you know Miriam Beckstein? The next logical words had to be, You’re under arrest.

“I need to talk to her; her life’s in danger.”

Paulie blinked. Does not compute. “You’re from the DEA,” she said hesitantly. Pushed against the carpet. “I fainted?”

“Uh, yes, in the kitchen. I never—I carried you in here. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I wanted to talk, but I was afraid they might be watching.”

Watching? “Who?” she asked.

“The FTO,” he said. Who? she wondered. “Or the Clan.”

The brittle crystal shell around her world shattered. “Oh, them,” she said carelessly, her tongue loosened by shock. “They ring the front doorbell. Like everyone else.” Bit by bit, awareness was starting to return. Chagrin— I can’t believe I fainted—was followed by anxiety—Who is this guy? How do I know he’s DEA? Is he a burglar?—and then fear: Alone with a strange man.

The strange man seemed to be going out of his way to be nonthreatening, though. “Do you want a hand up?” he asked. “Figure you might be more comfortable on the sofa—” She waved him away, then pushed herself upright, then nodded. Things went gray again for a moment. “Listen, I’m not, uh, here on official business, exactly. But I need to talk to Miriam—” She rose, took two steps backwards, and collapsed onto the sofa. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“No,” she heard herself say, very distinctly. “I’m not okay. Who are you, mister, and what are you doing in my house?”

He hunkered down on the balls of his feet so that he was at eye level to her. “Name’s Fleming, Mike Fleming. I used to know Miriam. She’s in a whole bunch of trouble; if you know what she’s been doing this past year, you’d know that—if you know about the Clan, you’re in trouble, too. That goes for me, also.” He paused. “Want me to go on?”

“You’re.” She stopped. “Why did you tell me you’re DEA?”

“I was, originally—still carry a badge they issued. I’d prefer you not to phone them just yet to verify that. See, I’m willing to put my neck on the line. But I want to get to the truth. You know about the Clan?”

Paulie shook her head. “If I say anything, you know what those people will do?” She was saying too much, she vaguely recognized, but something about this setup smelled wrong.

“Which people? The Clan, or the Family Trade Organization?” Fleming paused. “I’m not in a position to arrest you for anything—I’m not here on official business. I need to talk to Miriam—”

“Wait.” Paulette tried to pull herself together. “The what organization? You want to talk to her? About what?”

Fleming looked at her quizzically. “The FTO is a cross-agency operation to shut down the Clan. I was part of it until, uh, about a week ago. It was an attempt to get all the agencies whose lines the Clan crossed to sing from the same hymn book. I came in from the DEA side when source GREEN—a Clan defector called Matthias—walked in the door. I’ve seen Miriam, about three months ago, in a palace in a place called Niejwein—want me to go on?”

Oh Jesus, save me—he’s the real thing. She shook her head numbly. “What do you want?”

“Like I said, I need to talk to Miriam. She’s in terrible danger—FTO has been penetrated. The president used to work with the Clan, back in the eighties and early nineties. He’s the one behind this mess, he deliberately goaded them into using those nukes, and there’s worse to come. He’s running FTO. All the oil in Texas— every version of Texas—that’s what he’s after, that and a state of emergency at home to give him carte blanche to do whatever the hell he likes. I’ve tried to put out a warning via the press, but my contact didn’t believe me until the attacks, and now—”

“You went to the press?” Paulette stared at him as if he’d grown a second head. “What did you have?”

“Nothing!” His frustration was visible.

“But you found me,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, after I turfed her house. Which is under police watch and booby-trapped; I found an old planner of hers, played back the answering-machine tape—”

“Shit.” She tried to stand, failed for a moment, then got her suddenly shaky knees to behave. “There was a tape?” If you found me, they could find me.

“Relax. Those agencies you’re thinking about don’t talk to each other at that level. You’re probably safe, for now.”

Probably safe and her cousin Don’t worry had helped many a girl get pregnant, in Paulie’s opinion, and when the canoodling in question might lead to the queue for the execution chamber at Gitmo rather than a hospital delivery room, chancing it was not on her roadmap. “No, forget