“You’ve considered the usual routes, I take it? An assassination team from the other side?”
“Yes, your grace. It would be suicidal. For one thing, as I said, he sleeps among his men, in the field, always moving—for another, he has body doubles. We have identified at least two of them on different occasions, and they’re good actors: there is a good chance we would be striking at a puppet rather than their master. Finally, he has bodyguards. And I fear we have been too liberal with our gifts over the past decades: either that, or they’ve captured some hedge-lord’s private cabinet of arms, because I have confirmation that his Majesty’s hand-men carry MP-5s.”
(Pause.) “All right, so the Pervert’s a hard target. Now. The strategic picture?”
“Certainly, your grace. The enemy has divided his forces into battalion strength raiding units. They’re in the field and they’re hurting us. It’s a—this is embarrassing—a classic insurgency. The royal battalions fall on our outlying villages, hit them hard, massacre and destroy everything they can get their hands on, then disappear into the forest again. It’s absolutely not how you’d expect an eastern monarch to fight, it’s downright dishonorable—but it’s how the Pervert is fighting. He’s serious, sir, he’s trying to force us to divide our strength. And he’s succeeded. We’ve had to move as many dependents as possible over to the other side, and keep couriers on standby everywhere. And even that’s not enough. We’ve used helicopters to rush armed detachments into position on the other side a couple of times, and it worked on that bastard Lemke—he won’t be burning any more villages—but the more we do it, the greater the risk that the Americans will notice. He’s got us on the defensive, and each time he hits us we either lose a village or we lose men we can’t afford to—and he gains honor. This week I’ve lost eleven dead and fourteen injured badly enough they won’t be fighting again for months. That’s not including the outer family members, dependents, servants, peasants and the like. I think we’ve accounted for a good couple of hundred of the foe, but they’re not stupid: usually the first warning of an attack we have is when a cannon ball comes through a manor house door. There’s a limit to what a lance with M-16s and a SAW can do against a battalion of dragoons and a cavalry squadron—some of whom have Glocks.”
“Ah, yes. I thought you’d bring that up. Be glad you don’t have to explain it to the council, Eorl Riordan. They know it’s wrong, but they still can’t help but petition for protection, which is why three quarters of our number are guarding strategic hamlets or sitting in helicopter hangars on the other side. It’s what we exist for, and we’re being nibbled to death by mice. What would you do, were you in charge?”
“I’d set out a mouse trap, your grace. We can’t afford to suffer the death of a thousand cuts—Clan Security has, what? Two hundred inner family? Nearly a thousand armed and trained retainers? And up to six hundred world-walkers to call in for the corvee, if we need logistic support. The usurper outnumbers us five to one, but we’ve got SAWs and two-way radio while they’re limited to roundshot, grapeshot, and horseback couriers. We should be able to massacre those raiding parties, if we can just once anticipate not only their next target, but their path of advance.”
“Hmm. Suppose I were to tell you exactly where the enemy is planning to mass for a major strike, next Tuesday. Not just one of their battalions, but three of them, a goodly chunk of the royal army. Would that enable you to prepare a suitable reception for him?”
“Would—your grace! Please say it’s true!”
(Pause.) “The source is…troubling. I would not completely discount all risk of it being a deliberate leak, intended to lure us into a trap. Still. Be that as it may, I am informed—by one who stands to profit from that information—that there is a high probability of an attack on Castle Hjorth within the next two weeks. Which strikes me as suicidal, given the location and defenses of the castle, so I advise you to bear in mind the possibility that even if my source is telling the truth, they are not telling us everything. But, having said that, I want you to work out what we’re going to do about it. Because if it is true, my informer tells me that the Pervert himself will lead the attack. And this might be our best opportunity to kill him and end the war.”
END TRANSCRIPT
Interaction
As it happened, Mike didn’t get to go home that day—or the next. “You live on your own in a second-floor apartment, and you’ve got a lovely spiral fracture plus soft tissue injuries and a damaged Achilles tendon, Mr. Fleming. Listen, I’ll happily sign you out—if you fill in a criminal negligence waiver for me, first. But I really think it’s a bad idea right now. Maybe tomorrow, when we’ve got you a nice fiberglass box and a set of crutches, after we set you up with an appointment with physio. But if you check out today, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
The time passed slowly, with the inane babble of daytime TV as a laugh track, interrupted occasionally by nursing orderlies and interns checking up on him. Smith hadn’t left him any reading matter, classified or otherwise, and he was close to climbing the walls by the morning of the second day after Smith’s visit, when he had a surprise visitor: Judith Herz, the FBI agent who’d been sucked into Family Trade at the same time at Mike.
“Smith sent me. You’re checking out,” she said crisply, and dropped an overnight bag on the chair. “Here’s your stuff, I’ll be back in ten.”
She shut the door briskly, leaving Mike shaking his head. What got her so pissed? He opened the bag and pulled out the clothing. It was the stuff he’d been wearing over a week ago, before the CLEANSWEEP mission ran off the rails. He shook it out and managed to get the trouser leg over his cast without too much trouble. By the time Herz opened the door again, he was buttoning his jacket. “Yes?” he asked.
“I’m your lift.” She waved a key fob at him. “You going to be okay walking, or do you need a wheelchair?”
Mike frowned. “I’ll walk. Give me time, I’m not used to these things.” He eased his weight onto the crutches and took an experimental step forward. “Let’s go.”
She said nothing more all the way to the parking lot. As they neared a black sedan Mike’s impatience got the better of him. “You’re not in the taxi business. What’s the big problem?”
“I wanted to talk to you without eavesdroppers.” She squeezed the key fob: lights flashed and doors unlocked.
“Okay, talk.” Mike’s stomach twisted. Last time someone said that to me, he ended up dead.
She opened the passenger door. “Here, give me those, I’ll put them in the trunk.” A minute later she slid behind the wheel and moved off. “Your house is under surveillance.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She gave him a look. “Like that, is it? Care to explain why?”
“Because—” he stopped in mid-sentence “—what business of yours is it?”
She braked to a stop, near the end of the exit ramp, looking for a gap in the traffic. “It’d be kind of nice to know that I’ve been taken off hunting for a ticking bomb and told to stake out a colleague’s house for a good reason.” Her voice crackled with quiet anger.
Mike swallowed. Good cop, he realized. What to say…? “It’s not me you’re staking out. I’m expecting a visitor.”