“We’ve dealt with Mafia families.” Mike smiled encouragingly.
“They are not your Mafia.” Matt stared at him. “You are at war. They are a government. They will not respond as criminals, but as soldiers and politicians. I am here to defect, but if you are going to insist that they are ordinary criminals, you will lose.”
“Can you point to them on a map?” Mike asked, rhetorically. The informer shook his head. He looked faintly—disappointed? Amused? Annoyed? Mike felt a stab of hot anger. Stop playing head games with me, he thought, or you’ll be sorry.
Pete looked up. “Are we talking terrorists here? Like AlQaida?” he asked.
Matt stared at him. “I said they are a government. If you do not understand what that means we are both in very deep trouble.” He picked up the cigarette packet on the table and unwrapped it carefully. His fingers were long, but his nails were very short. One was cracked, Mike noticed, and his right index finger bore an odd callus: not a shooter’s finger, but something similar.
“There is more than one world,” Matt said carefully as he opened the packet and removed a king-size. “This world, the world you are familiar with. The world of the United States, and of Al-Qaida. The world of automobiles and airliners and computers and guns and antibiotics. But there is another world, and you know nothing of it.”
He paused for a moment to pick up the table lighter, then puffed once on the cigarette and laid it carefully on the ashtray.
“The other world is superficially like this one. There is a river not far from here, for example, roughly where the Charles River flows. But there is no city. Most of Boston lies under the open sea. Cambridge is heavily forested.
“There are people in the other world. They do not speak your language, this English tongue. They do not worship your tree-slain god. They don’t have automobiles or airliners or computers or guns or antibiotics. They don’t have a United States. Instead, there are countries up and down this coast, ruled by kings.”
Matt picked up the cigarette and took a deep lungful of smoke. Mike glanced over at Pete to make sure he was recording, and caught a raised eyebrow. When he looked back at Matt, careful to keep his expression blank, he realized that the informant’s hands were shaking slightly.
“It’s a nice story,” he commented. “What has it got to do with the price of cocaine?”
“Everything!” Matthias snapped.
Taken aback, Mike jerked away. Matt stared at him: he stared right back, nonplussed. “What do you mean?”
After several seconds, Matthias’s tension unwound. “I’m sorry. I will get to the point,” he said. “The kingdom of Gruinmarkt is dominated by a consortium of six noble houses. Their names are—no, later. The point is, some members of the noble bloodline can walk between the worlds. They can cross over to this world, and cross back again, carrying . . . goods.”
He paused, expectantly.
“Well?” Mike prodded, his heart sinking. Jesus, just what I need. The hottest lead this year turns out to be a card-carrying tinfoil hat job.
Matthias sighed. “Kings and nobles.” He took another drag at his cigarette, and Mike forced himself to stifle a cough. “Noble houses rise and fall on the basis of their wealth. These six, they are not old. They date their fortunes to the reign of—no, to the, ah, eighteen-fifties. Before then, they were unremarkable merchants—tinkers, really. Traders. Today they are the high merchant families, rich beyond comprehension, a law unto themselves. Because they trade. They come to this world bearing dispatches and gems and valuables, and ensure that they arrive back in the empire of the Outer Kingdom—in what you would call California, Mexico, and Oregon—the next day. Without risk of disaster, without delay, without theft by the bands of savages who populate the wilderness. And the trade runs on the other side, too.”
“How do they do it?” Mike asked. Humor him, he may have something useful, after all. Mentally, he was already working out which forms to submit to request the psychiatric assessment.
“Suppose a broker in Columbia wants half a ton of heroin to arrive in upstate New York.” Matthias ground his cigarette out in the ashtray, even though it was only half-finished. “He has a choice of distribution channels. He can arrange for an intermediary to buy a fast speedboat, or a light plane, and run the Coast Guard gauntlet in the Caribbean. He can try a false compartment in a truck. Once in the United States, the cargo can be split into shipments and dispatched via other channels—expendable couriers, usually. There is an approximate risk of twenty-five percent associated with this technique. That is, the goods will probably reach the wholesaler—but one time in four, they will not.” His face flickered in a fleeting grin. “Alternatively, they can contact the Clan. Who will take a commission of ten percent and guarantee delivery—or return the cost in full.”
Huh? Mike sat up slightly. Matthias’s habit of breaking off and looking at him expectantly was grating, but he couldn’t help responding. Even if this sounded like pure bullshit, there was something compelling about the way Matt clearly believed his story.
“The Clan is a trading consortium operated by the noble houses,” Matt explained. “Couriers cross over into this world and collect the cargo, in whatever quantity they can lift—they can only carry whatever they can hold across the gulf between worlds. In the other world, the Clan is invincible. Cargos of heroin or cocaine travel up the coast in wagon trains guarded by the Clan’s troops. Local rulers are bribed with penicillin and aluminum tableware and spices for the table. Bandits who can muster no better than crossbows and swords are no match for soldiers with night-vision goggles and automatic weapons. It takes weeks or months, but it’s secure—and sooner or later the cargo arrives in a heavily guarded depot in Boston or New York without you ever knowing it’s in transit or being able to track it.”
There was a click from across the room. Mike looked round. “This is bullshit,” complained Pete, stripping off his headphones. He glared at Matt in disgust. “You’re wasting our time, do you realize that?” To Mike, “Let’s just charge him with trafficking on the basis of what we’ve already got, then commit him for psych—”
“I don’t think so—” Mike began, just as Matthias said something guttural in a foreign language the DEA agent couldn’t recognize. “I’m sorry?” he asked.
“I gave you samples,” Matt complained. “Why not analyze them?”
“What for?” Mike’s eyes narrowed. Something about Matthias scared him, and he didn’t like that one little bit. Matt wasn’t your usual garden-variety dealer’s agent or hit man. There was something else about him, some kind of innate sense of his own superiority, which grated. And that weird accent. As if—“What should we look for?”
“The sample I gave you is of heroin, diacetyl morphine, from poppies grown on an experimental farm established by order of the high Duke Angbard Lofstrom, in the estates of King Henryk of Auswjein, which would be in North Virginia of your United States. There has never been an atomic explosion in the other world. I am informed that a device called a mass spectroscope will be able to confirm to you that the sample is depleted of an iso-, um, isotope of carbon that is created by atomic explosions. This is proof that the sample originated in another world, or was prepared at exceedingly enormous expense to give such an impression, for the mixture of carbon isotopes in this world is different.”
“Uh.” Pete looked as taken aback as Mike felt. “What? Why haven’t you been selling your own here, if you can grow it in this other world?”