The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (22 page)

Mike found Smith in his office, a cramped cubbyhole dominated by an unfeasibly large safe. Smith looked tired and aggravated and energized all at once. ‘Mike! Grab a seat.’ He was
busy with something on his Secure Data Terminal – a desktop computer in NSA-speak – and turned the screen so that Mike couldn’t see it from the visitor’s chair. ‘Help
yourself to a Diet Coke.’ There was a pallet-load of two-liter plastic bottles of soda just inside the door – it was Smith’s major personal vice, and he swore it helped him think
more clearly. ‘I’m just finishing . . . up . . . this!’ He switched the monitor off and shoved the keyboard away from him, then grinned triumphantly. ‘We’ve got the
green light.’

Mike nodded, trying to look duly appreciative. ‘That’s a big deal.’
How big?
Sometimes it was hard to be sure. Green light, red light – when the whole program
was black, unaccountable, and off the books, who knew what anything meant? ‘Where do I come into it?’
I’m a cop, dammit, not some kind of spook
.

Smith leaned back in his chair. With one hand he picked up an odd, knobby plastic gadget; with the other he pulled a string that seemed to vanish into its guts. It began to whirr as he rotated
his wrist. ‘You’re going into fairyland.’

‘Fairyland?’

‘Where the bad guys come from. Official code name for Niejwein, as of now. Doc’s little joke.’
Whirr, whirr
. ‘How’s the grammar?’

‘I’m –’ Mike licked his lips. ‘I have no idea,’ he admitted. ‘I try to talk to Matt in Hochsprache, and I’ve got some grasp of the basics, but I
have no idea how well I’ll do over there until –’ He shrugged. ‘We need more people to talk to. When can I have access to the other prisoners?’

‘Later.’
Whirr, whirr
. ‘Thing is, right now they’re our only transport system. Research has got some ideas, but there’s a long way to go.’

‘You’re using them for transport? How?’ Mike frowned.

‘You’re a cop. You wouldn’t approve.’

I’m not going to like this
. ‘Why not?’

‘The first army lawyers we tried had a nervous breakdown as soon as we got to the world-walking bit – does
posse comitatus
apply if it’s geographically collocated with
the continental USA? – but I figure the AG’s office will get that straightened out soon enough. In the meantime, we got a temporary waiver via a signing order from the White House. If
these guys want to act like a hostile foreign government, they can
be
one – it makes life easier all round. They’re illegal combatants, and we can do what we like with them.
There’s even some question over whether they’re
human
– being able to cross their eyes and think themselves into another universe is kind of unusual – but
they’re still working on that line of legal argumentation. Meanwhile, we’ve found a way to make them cooperate.
Battle Royale
.’

‘What?’

Smith reached into one of his desk drawers and pulled something out. It looked like a giant padlock, big enough to go round a man’s neck. ‘Ever seen one of these?’

‘Oh shit.’ Mike stared, sick to his stomach. ‘The Shining Path used them . . .’

‘Yeah, well, it works for the good guys, too.’ Smith put the collar-bomb down. ‘We put one on a prisoner. Set it for three hours, give him a backpack and a camera, and tell him
to bury the backpack in the other world, photograph the location, then come back so we can take the collar off. We’re careful to use a location at least five miles from the nearest habitation
in fairyland, to stop ’em finding a tool shop. So far they’ve both come back.’

‘That’s –’ Mike shook his head, at a loss for words.
Ruthless
sprang to mind.
Abuse of prisoners
wasn’t far behind. Something about it crossed the
line that divided business as usual from savagery.

‘Before we sent them the first time, we showed them what happened when one of these suckers counts down. Trust me, we’ve got no intention of killing them unless they try to
escape.’
Whirr, whirr
. ‘But we can’t risk them getting loose and telling the Clan what we’re doing, can we?’

‘Crazy.’ Mike shook his head again. ‘So you’ve got two tame couriers.’

‘For very limited values of tame.’

‘So.’ Mike licked his dry lips.

The thing in Smith’s rapidly swiveling hand was now making a high-pitched whine. He caught Mike staring at it. ‘Gyroball exerciser. You should try it, Mike. They’re really
good. I’m spending too much time with this damn computer mouse, if I don’t exercise my wrist seizes up.’

Mike nodded jerkily.
What’s going on?
Smith was serious-minded, committed, highly professional, and just a bit more paranoid than was good for anyone. The collar-bomb thing had to
be a need-to-know secret. ‘So why are you telling me this?’

‘Because you’re going to cross over piggyback on one of our mules before the end of the month, and once there you’ll be staying for at least two weeks,’ Smith said, so
casually that Mike nearly choked.

‘Jesus, Eric, don’t you think you could give me some
warning
when you’re going to spring something like that?’ Mike paused. Since Dr. James’s visit
he’d known this was coming, sooner or later – but he’d been expecting more time. ‘Look, the lexicon and dictionary aren’t done yet, our linguists aren’t through
their in-processing, and Matt’s not competent to work on it on his own. If something goes wrong while I’m on the other side and you lose Matt’s cooperation as well, it’ll
seriously jeopardize my successor’s ability to pick up the pieces. Anyway, don’t I know too much? Last week I had a GS-12 telling me I’m not allowed to leave the country on
vacation, I can’t even go to fricken’
Tijuana
, and now you’re talking about a hostile insertion and a theater assignment? I’m a cop, not James Bond!’

‘Relax, Mike, it’s all in hand. We’ve cut orders for some army linguists, they’re already cleared. You don’t need to know everything about the contingency planning
that’s going into this. More to the point, by the time you go out into the field you’ll be far enough out of the core decision loop that even if the bad guys capture you, you
won’t be able to give them anything.’

‘That’s supposed to make me feel better? Listen, this is all ass-backward. We ought to be trying to arrest more couriers on this side before we even think about going over there. We
can secure our own soil without engaging in some kind of insane adventure, surely?’

Smith shook his head slowly, clearly disappointed. ‘You’re still thinking like a cop. I’d be right with you, except we’ve got a big tactical security problem, son.
We’re not dealing with some Trashcanistan where the State Department can make the local kleptocrats shit themselves just by sneezing: we’re in the dark. We have zero assets, SIGINT is
useless when the other guy’s infrastructure is pony express . . . We’re going to need to get intelligence on the ground, not to mention establishing a network of informers. We
don’t even know what local political tensions we can leverage. So we’ve got to put someone in charge on the ground with enough of an overview to know what’s important – and
the hat fits you.’

‘You’re talking about making me semi-autonomous,’ Mike said, then licked his lips. ‘What is this, back to the OSS?’ He was referring to the almost legendary Second
World War agency – the predecessor to the CIA – and the cowboy stunts that had led to its postwar shutdown.

‘Not entirely.’ Smith looked serious. ‘And yes, you’re right. Normally we wouldn’t let someone like you loose in the field, much less with the degree of autonomous
authority this job implies. It’s against doctrine. But you’re on the inside, you’re one of our local language and custom experts, and you can hand Matt over to someone else
– ’

‘But I can’t! Not if we want to preserve his cooperation and keep getting useful stuff out of him. He’s a key witness – ’

‘He’s not a witness,’ Smith said quietly. ‘You forget he’s an unlawful combatant. He’s just one who’s chosen to cooperate with us, and we’re
giving him the kid-glove treatment because of that. For now.’

‘He’s enrolled in the Witness Protection Program,’ Mike persisted. ‘Meaning he’s on the books, unlike your two mules. There’s no need to treat this like
Afghanistan; we can crack the Clan over here by handling it as an enforcement problem.’

‘Wrong. If you go digging you’ll find that Source Greensleeves has vanished from the DEA evidence trail and the WPP. Look, you’re looking at this with your cop head on, not
your national security head. The Clan are a geopolitical nightmare. All our conventional bases are insecure: they’re designed on the assumption that security is about keeping bad guys at
arm’s length – except now we’re facing a threat that can close the distance undetected. It’s like a human stealth technology. Nor are our traditional allies going to be
worth a warm bucket of spit. Firstly, they don’t know what we’re up against, and if they did, they’d be up against their own private insurgencies as well. Secondly, they’re
positioned badly – we can’t use ’em for basing, they can’t use us, the normal rules don’t apply. And then it gets worse. Imagine what al-Qaeda could do to us if they
could hire these freaks for transport. Or North Korea?’

‘Oh.’ Mike hunched his shoulders.
The spooks have legitimate fears
, he told himself.
But how do I
know
they’re legitimate? How do I know they’re not
seeing things?
Then:
But what do we really know about the Clan? What makes them tick
?

‘Some of those sneaky bastards we call allies would stab us in the back as soon as look at us,’ said Smith, mistaking Mike’s thoughtful silence for complicity. ‘This
isn’t the Cold War anymore, and we’re not up against godless communism, we’re up against drug smugglers
sans frontières
. If you think the Dutch are going to be any
use – ’

Mike, who had been to Amsterdam on business a couple of times, and had a pretty good idea what the Dutch authorities would think about drug smugglers with a plutonium supply, held his silence.
Smith’s venting was just that – effusions born of the frustration of fighting an invisible foe with inadequate intelligence and insufficient reach. More to the point . . .
They’ve dragged me into their covert ops world
, he realized.
If I make a fuss, will they let me out again?

‘Phase one,’ Mike said when Smith ran down. ‘When does it kick off? What should I be doing?’

Smith scribbled a note on his yellow legal pad. ‘I’ll e-mail you the details, securely. First briefing is Tuesday, kickoff should be week after next. You’d better keep your
overnight bag by your desk, and be prepared to relocate on my word.’ He paused. ‘In a couple of days you’re going back to school, like Dr. James said. You’ll be studying
Spying 101. It’ll be fun . . .’

*

Mike had been home for barely an hour when the entryphone rang.

Home wasn’t somewhere he saw a lot of these days: since joining the magical mystery tour from spook central, his personal life had been patchy at best. From working the mostly regular
hours of a cop – regular insofar as they varied wildly and he could be called out at odd times of day or night, but at least got shifts off to recover – he’d found himself putting
in eighty- to hundred-hour weeks in one or another of the secure offices the Family Trade Organization had established. Helen the cleaner had taken Oscar in for a couple of weeks at one point, and
the tomcat still hadn’t forgiven him. That hurt; he and Oscar went back a long way together. Oscar had been with him before he’d been married to his ex-wife. Oscar had watched
girlfriends come and go, then mostly had the place to himself since 9/11. But everyone had to make sacrifices during wartime – even elderly tomcats.

Mike had showered and unloaded the dishwasher and stuck a meal in the microwave, and he was working on a tin of pet food for Oscar (who was encouraging him by trying to trip him up) when the
doorbell rang. ‘Shit.’ Mike put the can down. Oscar yowled reproachfully as he fumbled the handset of the entryphone. ‘Yes?’

‘Mike?’ It was Pete Garfinkle. Pete had moved sideways into Monitoring and Surveillance lately. ‘Mind if I come up?’

‘Sure, be my guest.’

By the time Pete knocked on the apartment door, Oscar was head down in the chow and Mike was well into second thoughts. The microwave oven buzzed for attention just as the door rattled.
‘Come on in. I was just about to eat – ’

‘S’okay.’ Pete held up a plastic bag. ‘I figured you wouldn’t turn away a six-pack, and I hit Taco Bell on the way over.’ The bag clinked as he planted it on
the kitchen table.

Mike nodded. ‘Grab a chair. Glasses in the top cupboard.’

‘Glasses? We don’t need no steenkin’ glasses!’

Mike planted his dinner on a plate, still in the plastic container, and grabbed a fork and two glasses. ‘Mm. Smells like . . . chicken.’ He pulled a face. ‘I’ve got a
freezer-load of sweet ’n’ sour chicken balls, can you believe it? The job lot was going cheap at Costco.’

‘Lovely.’ Pete eyed Mike’s food warily, then twisted the cap off a bottle. ‘Sam Adams good enough?’

‘It’ll go down nicely.’ Mike started on his rice and chicken as Pete poured two bottles into their respective glasses. ‘What’s with the Taco Bell thing? I thought
Nikki liked to cook.’

Pete shrugged sheepishly. ‘Nikki likes to cook,’ he said. ‘
Healthy
thing, y’know? Once in a while a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,
’specially if it involves a barbecue and a slab of dead meat. And when it’s not barbecue season, a dose of White Castle, or maybe Taco Bell . . .’

‘I see.’ Mike ate junk food out of necessity born of eighty-hour working weeks: Pete ate junk food because he needed a furtive vice and most of the ordinary ones would cost him his
job. ‘What’s she doing?’

‘It’s her yoga class tonight.’ Pete took a long mouthful of beer. ‘Figured I’d come by and cheer you up. Chat about a little personal problem I’ve been
having.’

Mike looked at him sharply. ‘Beer first,’ he suggested. ‘Then let’s take a hike.’ Pete didn’t
do
personal problems: he had what by Mike’s
envious standards looked like an ideal marriage. He especially didn’t drop around co-workers’ apartments to vent about things, which meant . . . ‘Is it that thing we were talking
about over lunch the other day?’