“Because it would be obvious where it came from,” Matt explained with exaggerated patience. “The entire policy of the Clan for the past hundred and seventy years has been to maintain a shroud of secrecy around itself. Selling drugs that were clearly harvested on another world would not, ah, contribute to this policy.”
Mike nodded at Pete. “Switch the goddamn recorder on again.” He turned back to Matthias. “Summary. There exists a, a parallel world to our own. This world is not industrialized? No. There is a bunch of merchant princes, a clan, who can travel between there and here. These guys make their money by acting as couriers for high-value assets which can be transported through the other world without risk of interception because they are not recognized as valuable there. Drugs, in short. Matthias has kindly explained that his last heroin sample contains an, um, carbon isotope balance that will demonstrate it must have been grown on another planet. Either that, or somebody is playing implausibly expensive pranks. Memo: get a mass spectroscopy report on the referenced sample. Okay, so that brings me to the next question.” He leaned toward Matthias. “Who are you, and how come you know all this?”
Matt extracted another cigarette from the packet and lit it. “I am of the outer families—I cannot world-walk, but must be carried whensoever I should go. I am—was—private secretary to the head of the Clan’s security, Duke Lofstrom. I am here because”—he paused for a deep drag on the cigarette—“if I was not here they would execute me. For treason. Is that clear enough?”
“I, uh, think so.” Pete had walked round behind Matt and was frantically gesturing at Mike, but Mike ignored him. “Do you have anything else to add?”
“Yes, two things. Firstly, you will find a regular Clan courier on the 14:30 Acela service from Boston to New York. I don’t know who they are, so I can’t give you a personal description, but standard procedure is that the designated courier arrives at the station no more than five minutes prior to departure. He sits in a reserved seat in carriage B, and he travels with an aluminum Zero-Halliburton roll-on case, model ZR-31. He will be conservatively dressed—the idea is to be mistaken for a lawyer or stockbroker, not a gangster—and will be armed with a Glock G20 pistol. You will know you have arrested a courier if he vanishes when confined in a maximum security cell.” He barked a humorless laugh. “Make sure to videotape it.”
“You said two things?”
“Yes. Here is the second.” Matt reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, silvery metallic cylinder. Mike blinked: on first sight he almost mistook it for a pistol cartridge, but it was solid, with no sign of a percussion cap. And from the way Matt dropped it on the tabletop it looked dense.
“May I?” Mike asked.
Matt waved at it. “Of course.”
Mike tried to pick it up—and almost dropped it. The slug was heavy. It felt slightly oily and was pleasantly warm to the touch. “Jesus! What is it?”
“Plutonium. From the Duke’s private stockpile.” Matt’s expression was unreadable as Mike flinched away from the ingot. “Do not take my word for it; analyze it, then come back here to talk to me.” He crossed his arms. “I said they were a government. And I can tell you everything you need to know about their nuclear weapons program . . .”
A lightning discharge always seeks the shortest path to ground. Two days after she discovered Duke Angbard’s location to be so secret that nobody would even tell her how to send him a letter, Miriam’s wrath ran to ground through the person of Baron Henryk, her mother’s favorite uncle and the nearest body to Angbard in age, position, and temperament that she could find.
Later on, it was clear to all concerned that something like this had been bound to happen sooner or later. The dowager Hildegarde was already presumed guilty without benefit of trial, the Queen Mother was out of reach, and Patricia voh Hjorth d’Wu ab Thorold—her mother—was above question. But the consequences of Miriam’s anger were something else again. And the trigger that set it off was so seemingly trivial that after the event, nobody could even recall the cause of the quarreclass="underline" a torn envelope.
At mid-morning Miriam, fresh from yet another fit of obsessive GANTT-chart filing, emerged from her bedroom to find Kara scolding one of the maidservants. The poor girl was almost in tears. “What’s going on here?” Miriam demanded.
“Milady!” Kara turned, eyes wide. “She’s been deliberately slow, is all. If you’d have Bernaard take a switch to her—”
“No.” Miriam was blunt. “You: go lose yourself for a few minutes. Kara, let’s talk.”
The maid scurried away defensively, eager to be gone before the mistress changed her mind. Kara sniffed, offended, but followed Miriam over toward the chairs positioned in a circle around the cold fireplace. “What troubles you, milady?” asked Kara, apprehensively.
“What day is it?” Miriam leaned casually on the back of a priceless antique.
“Why, it’s, I’d need to check a calendar. Milady?”
“It’s the fourteenth.” Miriam glanced out the window. “I’m sick, Kara.”
“Sick?” Her eyes widened. “Shall I call an apothecary—”
“I’m sick, as in pissed off, not sick as in ill.” Miriam’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m being given the runaround. Look.” She held up an envelope bearing the crest of the Clan post. Its wax seal was broken. “They’re returning my letters. ‘Addressee unknown.’ ”
“Well, maybe they don’t know who—”
“Letters to Duke Angbard, Kara.”
“Oh.” For a moment the teenager looked guilty.
“Know anything about it?” Miriam asked sweetly.
“Oh, but nobody writes to the duke! You write to his secretary.” Kara looked confused for a moment. “Then he arranges an appointment,” she added hesitantly.
“The duke’s last secretary, in case you’ve forgotten, was Matthias. He isn’t answering his correspondence any more, funnily enough.”
“Oh.” A look of profound puzzlement crept over Kara’s face.
“I can’t get anywhere!” Miriam burst out. “Ma—Patricia—holds formal audiences. Olga’s away on urgent business most of the time and on the firing range the rest. I haven’t even seen Brill since the—the accident. And Angbard won’t answer his mail. What the hell am I meant to do?”
Kara looked faintly guilty. “Weren’t you supposed to be going riding this afternoon?” she asked.
“I want to talk to someone,” Miriam said grimly. “Who, of the Clan council, is in town? Who can I get to?”
“There’s Baron Henryk, he stays at the Royal Exchange when he’s working, but he—”
“He’s my great-uncle, he’ll have to listen to me. Excellent. He’ll do.”
“But, mistress! You can’t just—”
Miriam smiled. There was no humor in her expression. “It has been three weeks since anyone even deigned to tell me how my company is doing, much less answered my queries about when I can go back over and resume managing it. I’ve been stuck in this oh-so-efficiently doppelgangered suite—secured against world-walking by a couple of hundred tons of concrete piled on the other side—for two months, cooling my heels. If Angbard doesn’t want to talk to me, he’ll sure as hell listen to Henryk. Right?”
Kara was clearly agitated, bouncing up and down and flapping her hands like a bird. In her green-and-brown camouflage-pattern minidress—like many of the Clan youngsters, she liked to wear imported western fashions at home—she resembled a thrush with one foot caught in a snare. “But mistress! I can arrange a meeting, if you give me time, but you can’t just go barging in—”