Dr. Andrew James scared the crap out of Mike Fleming, with his Ph.D. from Harvard and the flag pin that had lately replaced the tiny crucifix on his lapel. Gaunt and skinny and utterly dedicated, James attended to the ills of the body politic with all the care you could expect of an apprentice engineer of human souls; and if an amputation was required, he could get a consent form any time he liked, signed by the office of the vice president. And he didn't waste time. "How's your leg?" he asked as the ambulance moved off.
"Still bad, but I can get about indoors. Last time I asked they said I'd be able to get the cast off in another five weeks, be back to normal in three or four months." Why is he asking me this stuff? Mike stared at him sidelong. It's not as if he can't pull my medical records any time he wants…
"Not good enough." James frowned, his lips forming a bloodless crease. "There's a change of plan."
Shit. Mike shivered under the thin thermal blanket the "paramedics" had draped over him. He could see what was coming next, like a freight locomotive glimpsed in the side window of his crossing-stalled car. He's cutting around the chain of command. Which means I'm in trouble. James was political, and even in the flattened wartime hierarchy of the Family Trade Organization he was several levels above Mike. If he was descending from on high to give Mike orders in person, it meant that either Mike's boss, Colonel Smith, was on the out-or that Mike was being snipped out of the org chart. Spoiled goods, a deniable asset, disposable on demand. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, keeping his face as still as possible.
The ambulance turned a corner and began to accelerate, swaying from side to side as it shoved across two lanes of traffic. "We've made a breakthrough in the past week, and it's led us to review our existing programs." James was looking at him, but not meeting his eyes. "You speak the bad guys' language, much as anyone does. We need you as an interpreter."
"But-"Mike shook his head, confused. "What about the negotiations?" Miriam's crazy mother and her sidekick, the blond sniper who looked like a Russian princess: They were supposed to be making contact, negotiating over the stolen nuke. "Don't you want-"
"Son, don't be naïve." Dr. James smiled, and this time he looked Mike in the eyes. Mike tried not to shiver; he'd seen a warmer smile on the face of the pet alligator he'd once tripped over in a drug dealer's pad. "The missing gadget has been retrieved so the negotiations are over. We don't need them anymore. Our job is now to hit these people so hard they won't ever be able to mess with the USA again." The ambulance bounced hard across a pothole and Mike's stomach lurched as he felt it accelerate down a steep gradient. "I don't think your contacts will be back, but if they are, it's kill-or-capture time."
"The phone?…" Colonel Smith had given him an untraceable mobile phone to pass on to the ice princess if the Clan wanted to negotiate.
"It's a Kidon special." Made by Mossad's-the Israeli secret service's-assassination cell. "It works fine, but there's ten grams of CS in the earpiece. If one of them tries to call us, that's one less bad guy to worry about."
"Oh." For a moment a vision of Olga's blond head flashed through Mike's mind, bloodied and slack-jawed. He bit down on his reaction: That's assassination! Quiet terror made him swallow, queasy. "If that's the way you're playing it." (You're a cop, he's a spook. You knew these things happened. So why's he telling you now?) "You said you want an interpreter, but you're not talking to the Clan. So what's going on?"
"There's been a breakthrough." Dr. James leaned back against the side of the ambulance, his death's head grin fading. "Pretty soon we're not going to need the freaks for transport anymore, so we're winding up to restart CLEANSWEEP. This time we've got the logistic support to set up a full-scale branch office on the other side. You'll be going over in about three months as a civilian advisor. But in the meantime, I've got a little extra job for you as soon as you're cleared for duty again. You've already got a clearance; you're going to need a higher one for this job. Unless you think there's something that might disqualify you?…"
Mike swallowed again. "Uh, what do you mean?"
James gestured irritably: "I can't tell you what you're needed for until you've been cleared. Additional background checks will be required. So this is your chance to come clean about anything you wouldn't want to disclose during a polygraph interrogation."
"You're offering me an amnesty?" Mike raised an eyebrow.
"Son, I don't care if you're f- sleeping with the Russian ambassador's grandson; all I care is that you're not keeping secrets from me, you're not going to embarrass me in front of an internal affairs polygraph, and you're up to, to listening in a bunch of conversations in gook-speak and translating them into English for me. And keeping a lid on it. So. Is there anything you really don't want to be quizzed about during your clearance interview?"
"I-" the penny dropped. "It's not CLEANSWEEP that's so damn secret, is it?" he said without thinking. "It's the content, isn't it? You've got some kind of source-"
"Mr. Fleming." Dr. James's stare was leaden. "What do we pay you for?"
Mike winced. "Sorry. Forget I asked." He took a deep breath.
"As for your question, I'm not blackmailable. Nothing to hide here." He tapped his chest. "So. When do I begin?"
"Soon as you go back to the office, son. You'll be scheduled for a full security re-cert within a couple of days, then I'll have some extra work for you. Which will go on your worksheet as routine admin, incidentally." James nodded to himself. "That should keep you busy right up until the invasion."
"Invasion?" Mike echoed incredulously. "You're going to invade the Gruinmarkt?"
"We're going to have to sooner or later. Unless you've got any better ideas for how we ought to handle the existence of such a major security threat to American soil?…"
"But how?"
James cast Mike a knowing look. "Ask me again when you're cleared."
Reception committee
Baron Otto Neuhalle was afraid of very few things; the wrath of gods, the scorn of women, and the guns of his enemies were not among them. He was, however, utterly terrified of one man-Egon the First, former crown prince and now self-proclaimed monarch of Gruinmarkt. Egon was a handsome-faced, graceful, hale, and charismatic young man who had all the pity of a rattlesnake for those who failed him. Even if Otto hadn't failed yet, failure nevertheless looked disturbingly possible in light of the witch-clan's continuing occupation of the Hjalmar Palace. And the cloud of dust he could see from his vantage point near the brow of the hill was almost certainly the vanguard of Egon's army.
"Another hour, sir," said Anders, who had materialized at his elbow while he peered through the witch-bought "binoculars."
"Nonsense, they'll be three at least-" He blinked. "Wait. What will be another hour?"
"The ammunition, my lord."
"Scheisse…" Otto turned back to the castle, barely visible behind its banked ramparts on the other side of the moat and the sloped killing apron. Bodies littered the ground before it, and clouds of smoke still billowed from the gatehouse his men had latterly abandoned. He'd gotten two of the witch-clan's machine guns out of the gatehouse to cover his soldiers' retreat, but things hadn't gone welclass="underline" The enemy forces had laid down a stupefying volume of fire, and they'd brought some kind of artillery with them, not honest cannon but an arquebus-sized tube that belched fingers of flame that exploded on impact. And his gunners, undertrained, had burned through their ammunition too fast. They weren't supposed to counterattack for at least a day. If it hadn't been for that flying spy… he shook his head. The buzzing witch-bird would cut less ice with his majesty than the heat-warped machine gun barrels and prematurely expended stockpiles of valuable, irreplaceable cartridges. "What word is there from Hern?"