The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (80 page)

‘It’s okay, little brother. I’ve got it.’ Yul hooked a finger into each eye socket and spun the skull upside down for Huw to examine. It had been picked clean long ago
and had aged to a sallow dark yellow-brown, but the teeth were all there.

‘Look.’ Huw pointed at the upper jaw. ‘Bony here has
all his dentition.
And.’ He peered at them. ‘There are no fillings. It’s like a plastic model of
what a jawbone ought to be. Except for this chipped one here, this incisor.’

‘Whoa!’ Hulius lowered the skull reverently. ‘That’s some orthodontist.’

‘Don’t you get it?’ Huw asked impatiently.

‘Get what?’ Yull asked flippantly.

‘That’s not dentistry,’ Huw said, gritting his teeth. ‘You know what it’s like back home! The Americans, they’re good at faking it, but they’re not
this
good.’ He glanced at the door on the inner wall.
No obvious hinges,
he realized.
Fits beautifully.
‘Domes the size of a sports stadium that try to heal
themselves even when you crack them open with a nuke. Metal walkways made out of titanium. Perfect dentistry.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Have you got the ax?’

‘Sure.’ Yul nodded. ‘What do you want me to hit?’

‘Let’s see what’s inside that door,’ Huw decided. ‘But then we leave. Magic wands? Dentistry.’

‘They’re more advanced than the Americans,’ Elena commented. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes. I’m not quite sure what it means, though . . .’

‘What about their burglar alarms?’

‘After all this time?’ Huw snorted. ‘Let’s see what else is in here. Yul?’

‘I’m with you, bro.’ He winked at Elena. ‘This is a real gas!’

And with that, he swung the fire ax at the edge of the door.

*

The Boeing Business Jet had reached cruising altitude and was somewhere over the Midwest, and Brill had just about managed to doze off, when her satellite phone rang.

‘Who’s speaking?’ She cleared her throat, trying to shake cobwebs free. The delay and the echo on the line made it sound like she was yelling down a drainpipe.

‘It’s me, Brill. Update time.’

‘
Scheiss
– one minute. I’ll take it in the office.’ She hit the button to raise her chair then stood up and walked back towards the door at the rear of the
first-class cabin. Rather than a cramped galley or a toilet, it opened onto a compact boardroom. As the only passenger on the luxury jet – a refitted Boeing 737 airliner – she had it
all to herself except for the cabin attendants, but she still preferred to have a locked door between herself and any flapping ears. ‘Okay, Olga. What ails you?’

‘Are you secure?’

Brill yawned, then sat down. Beyond the windows, twilight had settled over the plains. It was stubbornly refusing to lift, despite the jet’s westward dash. ‘I’m on the BBJ,
arriving at SFO in about three hours. I was trying to get some sleep. Yes, I’m secure.’

‘I’ve got to report to Angbard, so I’d better keep this brief. I went to see Fleming today. You know what that little shit Matthias did? He convinced the DEA, this new FTO
outfit, everybody who matters, that he’d planted a gadget in downtown Boston. Then he managed to get himself killed before he could tell them where it was. So now they’re blaming us,
and they want it handed over.’

‘He
what?
’ Brill blinked and tried to rub her eyes, one-handed.

‘I’m not kidding. Fleming wasn’t kidding either – at least, he believed what he’d been told. I played dumb with him, pretending not to know what he was talking
about, but afterwards I went and told Manfred and he ran an audit. The little shit was telling the truth. One of our nukes is missing.’

‘
God on a stick!
If the Council finds out – ’

‘It gets worse. Turns out it’s one of our FADMs. Long-term storable, in other words, and there’s a long-life detonation controller that’s
also
turned up missing.
The implosion charges were remanu-factured eighteen months ago, so it’s probably nearing a service interval, but those charges were modified to survive storage under adverse conditions for up
to a decade. If we don’t find it, we’re in a world of hurt – what do you think they’ll do if Boston or Cambridge goes up? – and if we
do
find it and hand it
over as a sign of our commitment to negotiate, it’ll take them all of about ten seconds to figure out where it came from.’

Brilliana closed her eyes and swore, silently for a few seconds. She’d known about the Clan’s nuclear capability; she and Olga were among the handful of agents whose job would be to
emplace the weapons, if and when the shit ever truly hit the fan. But the nukes weren’t supposed to go walkies. They were supposed to sit on their shelves in the anonymous warehouse,
maintained regularly by the engineers from Pantex while U. S. Marine Corps guards patrolled the site overhead.

Based on a modified W54 warhead pattern, the FADMs were a highly classified derivative of the MADM atomic demolition device. They’d been built during the mid-1970s as backup for the
CIA’s Operation Gladio, to equip NATO’s ‘stay behind’ forces in Europe, after a Soviet invasion, with a storable, compact, tactical nuclear weapon. Most nukes required
regular servicing to replace their neutron-emitting initiators and the plastic explosive implosion charges. The FADM had been tweaked to have a reasonable chance of detonation even after several
years of unmaintained storage; the designers had replaced the usual initiator with an electrically powered neutron source, and added shielding to protect the explosive lenses from radiation-induced
degradation. The wisdom of supplying underground cells with what was basically a U. S. inventory-derived terrorist nuke had been revisited during the Reagan administration, and the weapons returned
to the continental USA for storage – but they’d been retained long after the other man-portable demolition nukes had been destroyed, because the advantages they offered had been too
good for certain spook agencies to ignore. More recently, the current administration – pathologically secretive and dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 – had wanted to pack every
available arrow in their quiver, even if some of them were broken by design.

And they
were.
Because the Clan, with their ability to get into places that were flat-out impossible for home-grown intruders, had been treating them as their own personal nuclear
stockpile for the past two decades.

‘Listen, why are you telling me this? Why haven’t you briefed Uncle A? It’s his headache – ’

‘Uncle A is fielding another problem right now: the pretender’s just rolled over the Hjalmar Palace and there’s a three-ring, full-dress panic going down in Concord. He’s
pulling me in – I’m supposed to be looking for a thrice-damned mole, who everybody tells me is probably a disgruntled outer family climber, and in case you’d missed it,
we’ve got a civil war on. The bomb’s been missing for months, it’ll wait a couple of hours more. But I think when you get back from the west coast you’re going to find that
locating it is suddenly everyone’s highest priority. And I’ve got a feeling that the spy who’s feeding Egon and the nuclear blackmail thing are connected. Matt wasn’t
working alone, and I smell a world-walker in the picture. So I figure you and I, we should do some snooping together.’ She paused. ‘Just what are you doing out in California, anyway? Is
it something to do with the Wu clan?’

Brill sighed. ‘No, it’s Helge. We’ve located her. While I was flailing around in Boston doing the breaking and entering bit, she mailed me a letter via the New Britain office
at Dunedin. The duty clerk caught it in time, opened it, and faxed the contents on: meanwhile we identified her aboard a westbound train that’s en route for Northern California. I need to
find her before the New Britain secret police arrest her. So I’m taking a shortcut.’

‘Huh. Much as I like her, isn’t finding Matt’s plaything a slightly higher priority?’

‘Not when she’s carrying an heir to the throne, Olga.’ She waited for the explosion of spluttering to die down. ‘Yes, I agree completely. You and I can have a little talk
about professional ethics with Dr. ven Hjalmar later, perhaps? Assuming he survives the current unpleasantness, I’d like to make sure that he needs a new pair of kneecaps. But you’ve
got to admit that we’ll need a king – or queen – after we nail Egon, won’t we? And if he really
did
artificially inseminate her with Creon’s seed, and if we
have witnesses to the handfasting, then it seems to me that . . . well, which would you rather deal with? Egon trying to have us all hanged as witches, or Miriam as queen regent with Uncle A
pulling the strings?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Olga said grimly. ‘She’ll be furious. Gods, that’s why he sent you, isn’t it? She trusts you. If anyone can get her calmed down and
convince her to play along, it’d be you. But if not . . .’

‘Uncle A wants her back in play,’ Brill said, mustering up what calm she could. ‘But if she’s left loose, she’s as dangerous as that time bomb you’re hunting.
Isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘She was getting too close to James Lee, the hostage,’ Brill added.

Olga’s voice went flat. ‘She was?’

‘We don’t need another faction on the board,’ Brill said.

‘No. I can see that.’ Olga paused. ‘You’ll just have to charm her, won’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Brill agreed. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to sleep. Give my regards to Uncle.’

‘I’ll tell him. Bye . . .’

Quietly closing the boardroom door behind her, Brill padded back to her first-class chair. She paused at the storage locker next to it, and opened it briefly: the specialized equipment was
undisturbed, and she nodded, satisfied. It was the biggest single advantage of flying on the Clan’s own executive jet, in her opinion – in the course of her business she often required
access to certain specialized items, and commercial airlines tended to take a dim view of her carrying her sniper kit in hand luggage. She sat down and strapped herself in, then tilted her chair
back and dimmed the overhead lights. Tomorrow was going to be a long day, starting with arranging a reception for a train at a station she didn’t even know the precise location of, and trying
to make contact with Miriam one jump ahead of the Homeland Security Directorate goon squad who’d surely be waiting for her when the train arrived.

It was a good morning for flying, thought Rudi, as he checked the weather station on the north tower wall.
No, make that a
great
morning.
After all,
he’d never flown over his homeland before. It would be a personal first, not to mention one in the eye for the stick-in-the-muds. Visibility was clear, with a breeze from the southwest and
low pressure, rising slowly. He bent over the anemometer, jotting down readings in the logbook by the dawn light. ‘Hans? I’ll be needing the contents of both crates. Get them moved into
the outer courtyard. I’ll need two pairs of hands to help with the trike – make sure they’re not clumsy. I’ll be down in ten minutes.’

‘Aye, sir.’ His footman, Hans, gave him an odd look, but hurried down off the battlements all the same. He clearly thought his master was somewhat cracked.
Well, he’ll
change his mind before the day is out,
Rudi told himself.
Along with everyone else. Just as long as nothing goes wrong.
He was acutely aware that he hadn’t kept his flying hours
up since the emergency began, and there were no luxuries (or necessities) like air traffic control or meteorology services over here.

In fact, he didn’t even have as much fuel as he’d have liked: he’d managed to squirrel away nearly twenty gallons of gas before some killjoy or other – he harbored dark
suspicions about Erik – had ratted out his scheme to Riordan, who’d had no option but to shout at him and notify the duke. Who in turn had threatened to have him flogged, and lectured
him coldly for almost half an hour about the idiocy of not complying with long-standing orders . . .

Rudi had bitten his tongue while the duke threatened to burn the trike, but in the end the old man had relented just a little. ‘You will maintain it in working order, and continue to
practice your skills in America, but you will
not
fly that thing over our lands without my explicit orders, delivered in person.’ Eorl Riordan wasn’t the duke, but on the other
hand, he was in the chain of command: and that was enough for Rudi.
Flying today
.

It took him closer to half an hour to make his way down to the courtyard, by way of his room – his flying jacket and helmet were buried deeper than he’d remembered, and he took his
time assembling a small survival kit. Then he had to divert via the guardhouse to check out a two-way radio and a spare battery. ‘Where do you think you’re going, cuz?’ asked
Vincenze, looking up from the girlie magazine he was reading: ‘A fancy dress party?’

Rudi grinned. ‘Got a date with an angel,’ he said. ‘See you later.’

‘Heh. I’ll believe it when I see it –’ But he was talking to Rudi’s back.

Down in the courtyard next to the stables, he found that Hans had enlisted a couple of guards to move the crates, but hadn’t thought to bring the long tubular sack or the trike itself.
‘Come on, do I have to do everything myself?’ he demanded.

‘I didn’t know what you wanted, sir,’ Hans said apologetically. ‘You said it was delicate . . .’

‘Huh. Okay. Come here. Take this end of the bag. I’ll take the other. It’s heavy. Now! The courtyard!’

Half an hour later, performing in front of an audience of mostly useless gawpers (occasionally he’d need one of them to hold a spar in position while he tightened a guy-wire), Rudi had the
wing unpacked and tensioned. At eight meters long and weighing fifty kilos the Sabre 16 had been murder to world-walk across – it was too long to fit in the Post Office room – but it
was about the smallest high-performance trike wing he’d been able to find. At least he’d been able to unbolt the engine from the trike body. ‘Go get the trike,’ he told Hans
and the guards. ‘Push it gently, it’ll roll easily enough once you get it off the straw.’

Another half hour passed by in what felt like seconds. By then he’d gotten the wing mounted on top of the trike’s mast and bolted together. The odd machine – a tricycle with a
petrol engine with a propeller mounted on the back and a pair of bucket seats – was beginning to resemble a real, flyable ultralight. He was double-checking his work, making sure there was no
sign of wear on any of the cables and that everything was secure, when someone cleared his throat behind him. He glanced round: it was Eorl Riordan, along with a couple of sergeants he didn’t
recognize. ‘How’s it going?’ asked Riordan, his tone deceptively casual.