The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (6 page)

He left by way of a staircase and a dim hallway, an electrical night-light guiding his footsteps. Finally, ‘Rudolf’ let himself out through the front door, which was itself unlocked.
The coat and hat he’d arrived in would be vanishing into the belly of the furnace that heated the law firm’s offices by day. In a few minutes there’d be nothing to connect him to
the man from the royal household other than a tenuous chain of hearsay – not that it would stop the Homeland Security Bureau’s hounds, but with every broken link the chain would become
harder to follow.

The main road out front was brightly lit by fizzing gas stands; cabs rumbled up and down it, boilers hissing as their drivers trawled for trade among the late-night crowds who dotted the
sidewalk outside cafes and fashionable eating houses. The music hall along the street was emptying out, and knots of men and women stood around chattering raucously or singing the latest ditties
from memory – with varying degrees of success, for the bars were awash with genever and scrumpy, and the entertainment was not noted for genteel restraint. Overhead, the neon lights blinked
like the promise of a new century, bright blandishments of commerce and a ticker of news running around the outside of the theater’s awning. ‘Rudolf’ stepped off the curb, avoided
a cab, and made his way across to the far side of the street. The rumble of an airship’s engines echoed off the roadstone paving, a reminder of the royal presence a few miles away.
‘Rudolf’ forced himself to focus as he walked purposefully along the sidewalk, avoiding the merrymakers and occasional vagrant.
Dear friends
, he thought;
the faces of
multitudes
. He glanced around, a frisson of fear running up his spine.
I hope we’re in time
.

Passing a penny to a red-cheeked lad yelling the lead from tomorrow’s early edition, ‘Rudolf’ took a copy of
The Times
and scanned the headlines as he walked.
Nader Reasserts Afghan Claim
. Nothing good could ever come from that part of the world, he reflected; especially Shah Nader’s thirst for black gold he could sell to the king’s
navy via the oiling base at Jask.
Saboteurs Apprehended in Breasil
. All part and parcel of the big picture.
Crown Prince James Visits Santa Cruz
made it sound like a grand tour of
the nation rather than a desperate hope that the Pacific warmth would do something to ease the child’s ailment. ‘Rudolf’ turned a corner into a narrower street.
Prussian
Ambassador Slights French Envoy at Gala Opening
: now
that
didn’t sound very clever, did it? As the joke put it, when the French diplomat said ‘Frog’ the Germanys all
croaked in chorus.
Murdock Suit: Malcolm Denies Slur
. All the best barristers arguing the big libel case on a pro bono basis – a faint smile came to the thin man’s face as he
read the leading paragraph, squinting under the thin glare of the lamps. Then he folded the paper beneath his arm, palming something between the pages, and strode on toward the intersection with
New Street. The crowds were thicker here, and as he stepped onto the pavement at the far side a fellow ran straight into him.

‘I say, sir, are you all right?’ the man asked, dusting himself off. ‘You dropped your paper.’ He bent and handed a folded broadsheet to ‘Rudolf’.

‘If you’d been looking where you were going, I wouldn’t have.’ ‘Rudolf’ snorted, jammed the paper beneath his arm, and hurried off determinedly. Only when
he’d passed the outrageously expensive plate-glass windows of the Store Romanova did he slow, cough once or twice into his handkerchief, and verify with a sidelong glance that the paper
clenched in his left hand was a copy of
The Clarion
.

Queen’s Counselor Denies Everything, Threatens Libel Suit!
screamed the headline. ‘Rudolf’ smiled to himself.
And so he should
, he thought,
and so he
should
. If
Farnsworth
said there was no substance to the rumors then he was almost certainly telling the truth – not that his loyalty was above and beyond question, for nobody
was beyond question, but his dislike for her majesty was such that if there had been any substance to the rumors, the dispatches he sent via Jack would almost certainly have confirmed them.
‘Rudolf’ took a deep, slow, breath, trying not to irritate his chest, and forced himself to relax, slowing to an old man’s ambling pace. Every second that passed now meant that
the incriminating letter was that much further from its origin and that much closer to the intelligence cell that would analyze it before making their conclusions known to the Continental
Congress.

At the corner with Bread Street, ‘Rudolf’ paused beside the tram stop for a minute, then waved down a cab. ‘Hogarth Villas,’ he said tersely. ‘On Stepford High
Street.’

‘Sure, and it’s a fine night fir it, sor.’ The cabbie grinned knowingly in his mirror as he bled steam into the cylinder and accelerated away from the roadside. His passenger
nodded, thoughtfully, but made no attempt to reply.

Hogarth Villas was a broad-fronted stretch of town houses, fronted with iron rails and a gaudy display of lanterns. It stretched for half a block along the high street, between shuttered shop
fronts that slept while the villas’ residents worked (and vice versa). One of the larger and better-known licensed brothels at the south end of Manhattan island, it was anything but quiet at
this time of night. ‘Rudolf’ paid off the cabbie with a generous tip, then approached the open vestibule and the two sturdy gentlemen who stood to either side of the glass inner door.
‘Name’s Rudolf,’ he said quietly. ‘Ma’am Bishop is expecting me.’

‘Aye, sir, if you’d just step this way, please.’ The shorter of the two, built like a battleship and with a face bearing the unmistakable spoor of smallpox, opened the door for
him and stepped inside. The carpet was red, the lights electric-bright, shining from the gilt-framed mirrors. In the next room, someone was playing a saucy nautical air on the piano; girlish voices
chattered and laughed with the gruff undertone of the clientele. This was by no means a lower-class dive. The doorman led ‘Rudolf’ along the hallway then through a side door into
understairs quarters, where the carpet was replaced by bare teak floorboards and the expensive silk wallpaper by simple sky-blue paint. The building creaked and chattered around them, sounds of
partying and other sport carrying through the lath and plaster. They climbed a narrow spiral staircase before arriving on a landing fronted by three doors. The bouncer rapped on one of them.
‘Here’s where I leave you,’ he said, as it began to swing open, and he headed back toward the front of the building.

‘Come in, Erasmus.’

Erasmus – Rudolf no more – set his shoulders determinedly and stepped forward.
No avoiding it now
, he told himself, feeling a curious sinking feeling as he met the opening
door and the presence behind it.

‘Ma’am.’ Most of the girls downstairs bared their shoulders and wore their fishtail skirts slit in front to reveal their knees, in an exaggerated burlesque of the latest mode
from Nouveau Paris. The woman in the doorway was no girl, and she wore a black crêpe mourning dress. After all, she
was
in mourning. With black hair turning to steel gray at the
temples, blue eyes and a face lined with worries, she might have been a well-preserved sixty or a hard-done-by thirty. The truth, like much else about her, lay in between.

‘Come in. Sit down. Would you care for a sip of brandy?’

‘Don’t mind if I do.’ The room was furnished with a couple of overstuffed and slightly threadbare chairs, surplus to requirements downstairs: a bed in the corner (too narrow by
far to suit the purposes of the house) and a writing desk completed the room. The window opened onto a tiny enclosed square, barely six feet from the side of the next building.

Erasmus waited while his hostess carefully filled two glasses from a brandy decanter sitting atop the bureau, next to a conveniently burning candle – the better to dispose of the
desk’s contents, should they be interrupted – and handed one to him. Then she sat down. ‘How did it go?’ she asked tensely.

He took a cautious sip from his glass. ‘I made the delivery. And the pickup. I have no reason to believe I was under surveillance and every reason not to.’

‘Not that, silly.’ She was fairly humming with impatience. ‘What word from the palace?’

‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘They seem to be most obsessed with matters of diplomatic significance.’ His smile slipped. ‘Like the way the French have pulled the wool over
their eyes lately. There’s a witch hunt brewing in the Foreign Service, and an arms race in the Ministry of War. The grand strategy of encirclement has not only crumbled, it appears to have
backfired. The situation does not sound good, Margaret.’

‘A war would suit their purposes.’ She nodded to herself, her gaze unfocused. ‘A distraction always serves the rascals in charge.’ She glanced at the side door to the
room. ‘And the . . . device? Did you give it to our source?’

‘I gave it to him and showed him how to use it. All he knows is that it is a very small camera. And he needs to return it to us to have the, ah, film developed. Or downloaded, as Miss
Beckstein’s representative calls it.’

Margaret, Lady Bishop, frowned. ‘I wish I trusted these alien allies of yours, Erasmus. I wish I understood their motives.’

‘What’s to understand?’ Erasmus shrugged. ‘Listen, I’d be dead if not for them and the alibi they supplied. Their gold is pure and their words –’ It was
his turn to frown. ‘I don’t know about the aliens, but I trust
Miriam
. Miss Beckstein is a bit like you, milady. There’s a sincerity to her that I find more than a little
refreshing, although she can be alarmingly open at times. There are strange knots in her thinking – she looks at everything a little oddly. Still, if she doesn’t trust her companions,
the manner of her mistrust tells me a lot. They’re in it for money, pure and simple, Margaret. There’s no motive purer than the pig in search of the truffle, is there? And these pigs
are very canny indeed, hence the bounteous treasury they’ve opened to us. They’re
our
pigs, at least until it comes time to pay the butcher’s bill. As Miss Beckstein
says, money talks – bullshit walks.’

She nodded. ‘The mint, the national debt, and the ability to debase the currency, has always been the criminal-in-chief’s best weapon, Erasmus. He could buy out the bourgeoisie from
under our banner in a split second, did he but recognize their importance. It’s time
we
recognized that, and acted accordingly.’

‘Well.’ Erasmus took a sip of brandy. It was fine stuff, liquid fire that warmed his old bag of bones from the inside out. ‘Judging from what your “intimate source”
told me, even if he recognized its importance he probably wouldn’t act on it until it was too late. Indecisive doesn’t begin to describe this one, milady. Stranded in a well-stocked
kitchen John Frederick could starve himself to death between two cookbooks. He looks solid with the machinery of state behind him, but if he’s forced to make tough choices he’ll dither
and haver until he’s half past hanging.’

‘Well, that’s his look out,’ she said tartly. ‘Was there anything we can
use
?’

‘Yes. If you don’t mind risking the source – at least, this week. It’s so big that it will leak sooner rather than later; the French have exploded a corpuscular petard.
Caught the navy napping, too; they weren’t supposed to have that high a command of the new physics. The flash was visible from Blackpool, apparently, and the toadstool cloud from
Lancaster.’

‘Oh.’ Her eyes widened. ‘And with wars, and rumors of wars – ’

‘Yes, milady. I think something is going to have to happen, sooner or later. The situation in Persia if nothing else is a source of friction, and the temptation to
send a message
to the court of the Sun King – I wouldn’t place money on it starting this year, but I can’t see him lasting out the decade without strife. John Frederick wants to leave his mark
on the history books, lest his son is followed rapidly by a nephew or cousin in the line of succession.’

‘Then let’s start making plans, shall we?’ She smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. ‘If the leviathan is determined to drink the blood of the people, there’s
going to be plenty to spare for the ticks.’

Erasmus shivered. ‘Indeed, milady.’

‘Well then.’ She put her glass down. ‘Which brings me to another matter I have in mind. I think it’s past time you arranged for me to meet this Miss Beckstein, who you
say is so like me. I have many questions for her; I’m sure we can trade more than toys once we understand each other better.’

Twelve weeks earlier:

Mike Fleming was on his way home from his office at the DEA, completely exhausted.

Sometimes, when he was extremely tired, he’d lose his sense of smell. It was as if the part of his brain that dealt with scents and stinks and stuff gave up trying to make sense of the
world and went to sleep without him. At other times it would come back extra strong, and any passing scent might dredge up a slew of distracting memories. It was a weird kind of borderline
synesthesia, and it reminded him uncomfortably of a time a couple of years ago when he’d been on assignment in some scummy mosquito-ridden swamp down in Florida. The hippie asshole he was
staking out had made the tail, and instead of doing the usual number with a MAC-10 or running, had spiked his drink with acid. He’d spent a quarter of an hour in the bathroom of his hotel
room staring at the amazing colors in the handle of his toothbrush, marveling at the texture of his spearmint dental gel, until he’d thrown up. And now he was so tired it was all coming back
to him in unwelcome hallucinatory detail.

Mike worked in Cambridge, but he lived out in the sticks. The T only took him part of the way, and as he stumbled onto the platform he realized fuzzily that he was far too tired to drive.
Did I really just pull a fifty-hour shift in the office?
he wondered.
Or am I imagining an extra day?
Whatever the facts, he was beyond tired. He was at the point where his
eyelids were closing on him, randomly trying to fool him into falling asleep on his feet. So he phoned for a cab, nearly zoning out against a concrete pillar just inside the station lobby while he
waited. The cab was stuffy and hot and smelled of anonymous cheap sex and furtive medicinal transactions. It was probably his imagination, but he could almost feel the driver watching him in the
mirror, the itchy, prickly touch of the guy’s eyeballs on his face. It was a relief to get out and slowly climb the steps to his apartment. ‘Hello, strange place,’ he muttered to
himself as he unlocked the door. ‘When was I last here?’