“No,” I said innocently. “What about you, Joff?”
“I’ve got to go,” he repeated, staring at his watch. “Remember what I said, sister dearest!”
And he and Miles walked off toward the crowd that had started to gather around the wrecked car.
“I swear I can smell burning cheese,” said Landen as I shut the front door.
“Probably Mrs. Berko-Boyler cooking next door.”
Outwardly I was worry-free, but inside I was more nervous. A chunk of burning Camembert on your doorstep meant only one thing: a warning from the Swindon Old Town Cheese Mafia-or, as they liked to be known, the Stiltonistas.
16. Cheese
The controversial Milk Levy from which the unpopular Cheese Duty is derived was imposed in 1970 by the then Whig government, which needed to raise funds for a potential escalation of war in the Crimea. With the duty now running at 1,530 percent on hard and 1,290 percent on smelly, illegal cheese making and smuggling had become a very lucrative business indeed. The Cheese Enforcement Agency was formed not only to supervise the licensing of cheese but also to collect the tax levied on it by an overzealous government. Small wonder that there was a thriving underground cheese market.
Thanks for tipping us the wink about the dodo fanciers,” I said as we drove through the darkened streets of Swindon two hours later. A tow truck had removed the wreckage of the fanciers’ car, and the police had been around to collect statements. Despite its being a busy neighborhood, no one had seen anything. They had, of course, but the Parke-Laine-Nexts were quite popular in the area.
“Are you sure we weren’t followed?” asked Millon as we pulled up outside an empty industrial unit not a stone’s throw from the city’s airship field.
“Positive,” I replied. “Have you got buyers for it?”
“The usual cheeseheads are all champing at the bit, recipes at the ready. The evening air will be rich with the scent of Welsh rarebit to night.”
A large seventy-seat airship rose slowly into the sky behind the factory units. We watched while its silver flanks caught the colors of the late-evening sun as it turned and, with its four propellers beating the still air with a rhythmic hum, set course for Southampton.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” said Millon.
I beeped the horn twice, and the steel shutters were slowly raised on the nearest industrial unit.
“Tell me,” said Millon, “why do you think the Old Town Stiltonistas gave you the flaming Camembert?”
“A warning, perhaps. But we’ve never bothered them, and they’ve never bothered us.”
“Our two territories don’t even overlap,” he observed. “Do you think the Cheese Enforcement Agency is getting bolder?”
“Perhaps.”
“You don’t seem very worried.”
“The CEA is underfunded and knows nothing. Besides, we have customers to attend to-and Acme needs the cash. Think you can liberate five grand by tomorrow morning?”
“Depends what they’ve got,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “If they’re trying to peddle common-or-garden Cheddaresque or that processed crap, then we could be in trouble. But if they’ve got something exotic, then no problem at all.”
The roller shutter was high enough to let us in by now, and we drove inside, the shutter reversing direction to close behind us.
We climbed out of the van. The industrial unit was empty except for a large Welsh-registered Griffin-V8 truck, a long table with leather sample cases lying on it and four men wearing black suits with black ties and sunglasses and looking vaguely menacing. It was all bravado, of course-Scorsese movies were big in the Welsh Republic. I tried to see by the swing of their jackets if any of them were packing heat and guessed that they weren’t. I’d only carried a gun once in the real world since SpecOps was disbanded and hoped I never had to again. Cheese smuggling was still a polite undertaking. As soon as it turned ugly, I was out.
“Owen Pryce the Cheese,” I said in a genial manner, greeting the leader of the group with a smile and a firm handshake, “good to see you again. I trust the trip across the border was uneventful?”
“It’s getting a lot harder these days,” he replied in a singsong Welsh accent that betrayed his roots in the south of the republic, probably Abertawe. “There are dutymen everywhere, and the bribes I have to pay are reflected in the price of the goods.”
“As long as it’s fair price, Pryce,” I replied pleasantly. “My clients love cheese, but there’s a limit to what they’ll pay.”
We were both lying, but it was the game we played. My clients would pay good money for high-quality cheese, and as likely as not he didn’t bribe anyone. The border with Wales was 170 miles long and had more holes than a hastily matured Emmentaler. There weren’t enough dutymen to cover it all, and to be honest, although it was illegal, no one took cheese smuggling that seriously.
Pryce nodded to one of his compatriots, and they opened the sample cases with a flourish. It was all there-every single make of cheese you could imagine, from pure white to dark amber. Crumbly, hard, soft, liquid, gas. The rich aroma of well-matured cheese escaped into the room, and I felt my taste buds tingle. This was top-quality shit-the best available.
“Smells good, Pryce.”
He said nothing and showed me a large slab of white cheese. “Caerphilly,” he said, “the best. We can-”
I put up a hand to stop him. “The punks can deal with the mild stuff, Pryce. We’re interested in Level 3.8 and above.”
He shrugged, set the Caerphilly down and picked up a small chunk of creamy-colored cheese.
“Quintuple Llanboidy,” he announced, “a 5.2. It’ll play on your taste buds like the plucked strings of a harp.”
“We’ll have the usual of that, Pryce,” I muttered, “but my clients are into something a little stronger. What else you got?”
We always went through this charade. My specialty was the volatile cheese market, and when I say volatile, I don’t mean the market-I mean the cheese.
Pryce nodded and showed me a golden yellow cheese that had veins of red running through it.
“Qua druple-strength Dolgellau Veinclotter,” he announced. “It’s a 9.5. Matured in Blaenafon for eighteen years and not for the fainthearted. Good on crackers but can function equally well as an amorous-skunk repellent.”
I took a daringly large amount and popped it on my tongue. The taste was extraordinary; I could almost see the Cambrian Mountains just visible in the rain, low clouds, gushing water and limestone crags, frost-shattered scree and-
“Are you all right?” said Millon when I opened my eyes. “You passed out for a moment there.”
“Kicks like a mule, doesn’t it?” said Pryce kindly. “Have a glass of water.”
“Thank you. We’ll take all you have-what else you got?”
“Mynachlog-ddu Old Contemptible,” said Pryce, showing me a whitish crumbly cheese. “It’s kept in a glass jar because it will eat through cardboard or steel. Don’t leave it in the air too long, as it will start dogs howling.”
“We’ll have thirty kilos. What about this one?” I asked, pointing at an innocuous-looking ivory-colored soft cheese.
“Ystradgynlais Molecular Unstable Brie,” announced Pryce, “a soft cheese we’ve cloned from our cheese-making brethren in France-but every bit as good. Useful as a contact anesthetic or a paint stripper, it can cure insomnia and ground to dust is a very useful self-defense against muggers and wandering bears. It has a half-life of twenty-three days, glows in the dark and can be used as a source of X-rays.”
“We’ll take the lot. Got anything really strong?”
Pryce raised an eyebrow, and his minders looked at one another uneasily. “Are you sure?”
“It’s not for me,” I said hastily, “but we’ve got a few serious cheeseheads who can take the hard stuff.”
“We’ve got some Machynlleth Wedi Marw.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“It’s what you asked for-really strong cheese. It’ll bring you up in a rash just by looking at it. Denser than enriched plutonium, two grams can season enough macaroni and cheese for eight hundred men. The smell alone will corrode iron. A concentration in air of only seventeen parts per million will bring on nausea and unconsciousness within twenty seconds. Our chief taster ate a half ounce by accident and was dead to the world for six hours. Open only out of doors, and even then only with a doctor’s certificate and well away from populated areas. It’s not really a cheese for eating-it’s more for encasing in concrete and dumping in the ocean a long way from civilization.”