“Children,” Miriam sighed. She caught Olga’s eye.
“I didn’t notice you making an effort to find any suitable alternatives!” the duchess snapped. “And it got the Wu and Hjorth factions to stop murdering each other. Would you rather the feuding had continued? We’d both be dead a dozen times over by now!” She was breathing deeply. “You’ve got no sense of duty,” she said bitterly.
“The feuding, in case you’ve been asleep, was caused by forces outside our control,” Iris retorted. “You gained precisely nothing, except for a wife-beating son-in-law. Your
granddaughter,
now, has actually done something useful for the first time in living memory in this Clan of parasites. She’s actually uncovered some of the reasons
why
we’ve been messed up for so long. The least you could do is apologize to her!”
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Hildegarde said stiffly. But Miriam saw her grip on Hjorth’s arm tighten.
“Don’t worry, my dear,” Oliver Hjorth muttered in her ear: “You’re quite right about them.” He cast a poisonous stare at Miriam. “Especially
that
one.”
“You—” Miriam was brought up short by Olga’s hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t,” Olga said urgently. “He wants you to react.”
For the first time, Hjorth smiled. “She’s right, you know,” he said. “On that note, I shall bid you adieu, ladies. If I may conduct you back to civilized conversation, madam?” he added to the dowager.
Iris stared bleakly at the receding back of her mother. “I swear she’ll outlive us all,” Iris muttered. Then she glanced at Miriam. “There’s no justice in this world, is there, kid?”
“What was she talking about?” Miriam asked slowly. “The treachery thing.”
“An old disagreement,” said Iris. She sounded old and tired. “A bit like picking at scabs. Most families have got the odd skeleton in the closet. We’ve got a whole damn graveyard in every wardrobe, practicing their line dancing. Don’t sweat it.”
“But—” Miriam stopped. She remembered her wine glass and took a mouthful. Her hand was shaking so badly that she nearly spilled it.
“You won,” Olga said thoughtfully.
“Huh?”
“She’s right. You went eyeball to eyeball with the baron, and he blinked. They’ll know you’ve got balls now. That counts for everything here. And I—” Iris stopped.
“You got your mother on the defensive,” said Miriam. “Didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” Iris said uncertainly. “Old iron-face must be rusting. Either that, or there’s a deep game I don’t know about. She never used to concede
anything
.”
“Iron-face?”
“What we called her. Me and your aunt Elsa.”
“I have an aunt, too?”
“Had. She died. Olga, if you don’t mind taking over my chair? Miriam seems to be having trouble.”
“Died—”
“You didn’t think I had it in for the old bat just because of how she treated
me,
did you?”
“Oh.” Miriam bolted back the rest of her wine glass, sensing the depths she was treading water over. “I think I need another glass now.”
“Better drink it quick, then. Things are about to get interesting again.”
* * *
There was a low bed with a futon mattress on it. It occupied most of a compact bedroom on the third floor of an inconspicuous building in downtown Boston. The bed was occupied, even though it was late morning; Roland had been awake for most of the night, working on the next month’s courier schedule, worrying and reassigning bodies from a discontinued security operation. In fact, he’d deliberately worked an eighteen-hour shift just to tire himself out so that he could sleep. The worries wouldn’t go away.
What if they find her incompetent?
was one of them. Another was,
What if the old man finds out about us?
In the end he’d slugged back a glass of bourbon and a five-milligram tab of diazepam, stripped, and climbed into bed to wait for the pharmaceutical knockout.
Which was why, when the raid began, Roland was unconscious: dead to the world, sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted, twitching slightly beneath the thin cotton sheet.
A faint bang shuddered through the walls and floor. Roland grunted and rolled over slowly, still half-asleep. Outside his door, a shrill alarm went off. “Huh?” He sat up slowly, rubbing at his eyes to clear the fog of night, and slapped vaguely at the bedside light switch.
The phone began to shrill. “Uh.” He picked up the handset, fumbling it slightly: “Roland here. What is it?”
“We’re under attack! Some guys just tried to smash in the front door and the rooftop—”
The lights flickered and the phone died. Somewhere in the building the emergency generator cut in, too slowly to keep the telephone switch powered. “Shit.” Roland put the handset down and hastily dragged on trousers and sweater. He pulled his pistol out of the bedside drawer, glanced at the drawn curtains, decided not to risk moving them, and opened the door.
A young Clan member was waiting for him, frantic with worry. “Wh-what are we going to do, boss?” he demanded, jumping up and down.
“Slow down.” Roland looked around. “Who else is here?”
“Just me!”
“On site, I mean,” he corrected. He shook his head again, trying to clear the Valium haze. At least he could world-walk away, he realized. He never removed his locket, even in the shower. “Is the door holding?”
“The door, the door—” The kid stopped shaking. “Yessir. Yessir. The door?”
“Okay, I tell you what I want you to do.” Roland put a hand on the kid’s shoulder, trying to calm him. He was vibrating like an overrevved engine. “Calm down. Don’t panic. That’s first. You have a tattoo, yes?”
“Y-yessir.”
“Okay. We are going to go below then, and—when did you last walk?”
“Uh, uh, hour ago! We brought the lord secretary over—”
“The secretary?” Roland stopped dead. “Shit. Tell me you didn’t.” The kid’s expression was all the confirmation Roland needed.
“Wh-what’s wrong?”
“Maybe nothing,” Roland said absently.
Shit, shit,
he thought.
Matthias.
It was a gut-deep certainty, icy cold, that Matthias was behind this. Whatever was going on. “Follow me. Quickly!” Roland grabbed his jacket on the way out and rummaged in one pocket for a strip of pills. With his hair uncombed and two day’s growth of beard, he probably looked a mess, but he didn’t have time to fix that now. He dry-swallowed, pulling a face. “Go down the stairs all the way to the bottom, fast. When you get to the parcel room, pick up all the consignments in bin eleven that you can grab and cross over immediately. If men with guns get the drop on you, either cross immediately or surrender and let them take you, then cross as soon as you can, blind. Don’t try to resist; you’re not trained.”
“You, sir?” The kid’s eyes were wide.
“Me neither.” Roland shrugged, tried a grin, gave up. “C’mon. We’ve got to get word out.”
He clattered down the concrete emergency stairwell taking the steps two at a time, stopping at the ground floor. He motioned the kid on down. “Send word as soon as you get through,” he called. Then he stopped, his heart hammering.
“Sir?” He looked up. It was Sullivan, one of the outer family guards who lived on the premises.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “Tell me!”
A hollow boom rattled through the corridor and Sullivan winced. “We’re on skeleton strength,” he said. “They’re trying to batter down the door!” The front door was armored like a bank vault, and the walls were reinforced. A normal ram wouldn’t work, it would take explosives or cutting tools to get through it.
“Who?” Roland demanded.
“Cops.”
“How many we got here?”
“Nine.”
“I just sent the kid away. Walkers?”
Sullivan just looked at him.
“Shit.” Roland shook his head, dumbfounded. “There’s
nobody
?”
“Martijn and young Poul came in with the lord secretary this morning. They’re the only walkers who’ve come over since Marissa and Ivar finished their shift last night. And I can’t find Martijn or his lordship’s proxy.”
“Oh.” Everything became clear to Roland. “How long can we hold out?”
“Against the feds?” Sullivan shrugged. “We’re buttoned up tight; it’ll take them time to bring in explosives and cutting gear, and shields. At least, it will if we risk shooting back.”
“The escape tunnel—”
“—Someone sealed it at the other end. I don’t think it would help, anyway.”
“Let’s hit the control room.” Roland started walking again. “Have I got this straight? We’re under siege and I’m the only walker who knows. The lord secretary came over, but he went missing before the siege began. So did his number-one sidekick. The outer rooms are shuttered and locked down and we’ve got supplies, power, and ammo, but no way out because somebody’s blown the escape tunnel. Is that it?”
“Pretty much so,” Sullivan agreed. He looked at Roland tensely. “What are you going to do?”
“What am I going to do?” Roland paused in the office doorway. “Shit, what
can
I do?” He opened the door and went in. The control room had desks with computer monitors around the wall. CCTV screens showed every approach to the building. Everything looked normal, except for the lack of vehicular traffic and the parked vans on every corner. And the van parked right up against the front door. Obviously the ram crew had used it for cover.
“We have half a ton of post in transit at any one time,” Roland thought aloud. “There’s about fifty kilos of confidential memos, documents, shit like that—enough to flame out the entire East Coast circuit.” There was a knock on the door. Sullivan waved in the man outside, one of the colorless back-office auditors the Clan employed to keep an eye on things. “We’ve got another quarter of a ton of produce in transshipment. It was due out of here next week. That’s enough to bankroll our ops for a year, too.”
Sullivan looked pissed. “Is that your priority?” he demanded.
“No.” Roland waved him down. “My priority is number one, getting all of us out of here, and number two; not letting that fucker Matthias take down our entire operation.” Sullivan subsided, leaning back against the door frame with a skeptical expression. “It’s going to take eighteen walks to pull everyone out—more than I could do in a week. And about the same to pull out the goods.” Roland pulled out a chair and sat. “We can’t drive away or use the tunnel. How long for them to get in? Six hours? Twelve?”
“I think it’ll be more like three, unless we start shooting,” Sullivan opined.
“Shooting—” Roland froze. “You want me to authorize you to shoot at FBI or DEA agents. Other than in self-defense.”
“It’s the only way,” said the auditor, looking a little green.
“Huh. I’ll table it.” Roland unfrozen, drummed his fingers on the nearest desk. “I
really
don’t like that option, it’s too much like sticking your dick in a hornet’s nest. They can always point more guns at us than we can point back at them. Has anyone phoned the scram number?”
“Huh?” Sullivan looked puzzled. “Bill?”
“Tried it five minutes ago, sir,” the auditor said with gloomy satisfaction. “Got a number-unavailable tone.”
“I am beginning to get the picture. Have you tried your cell phone?”
“They’ve got a jammer. And snipers on the rooftops.”
“Shit.”
I
am
going to have to make a decision,
Roland thought.
And it had better be one I can live with,
he realized sickly.
“Someone needs to walk over and yell like hell,” Roland said slowly. Sullivan tensed. “But, I’m working on the assumption that this is deliberate. That bastard Matthias, I’ve been watching him.” It was easy to say this, now. “I sent the kid, what’s his name?”
“Poul,” Bill offered.
“I sent him over alone.” Roland’s eyes went wide. “Shit.”
“What are you thinking?” Sullivan leaned forward.
“My working assumption right now is that Matthias has betrayed the Clan. This is all preplanned. He rigged this raid to cover his escape. So he isn’t going to want any random courier walking into Fort Lofstrom and raising the alarm, is he?”
Sullivan’s eyes narrowed as Roland stood up. “You and I,” he announced, trying to keep his voice from shaking, “are going to cross over together. I know what you’ve been thinking. Listen, Matthias will have left some kind of surprise. It’s going to be a mess. Your job is to keep me alive long enough to get out of the fort. Then there’s a, a back route. One I can use to get word to the Clan, later today. It’ll take me about six or seven hours to get from Fort Lofstrom to Niejwein, and the same again to come back with a bunch of help—every damn courier I can round up. I’m assuming Matthias sent everyone away from the fort before pulling this stunt. Can you hold out for twenty-four hours? Go into the sub-basement storm shelter with all the merchandise and blow the supports, bring the building down on top of you?” He addressed the last question to Bill, the auditor.
“I think so,” Bill said dubiously.
“Right. Then you’re going to have to do that.” Roland met his eyes. “We can’t afford for the feds to lay hands on you. And whatever you think I’m thinking, I figure you’re too valuable to write off.
Any
family member, inner or outer, is not expendable in my book. Sullivan, think you can handle that?”
Sullivan grinned humorlessly at him. “I’ll do my best.” He nodded at the auditor: “He’ll be back. Trust me on this.”
* * *
The extraordinary meeting resumed with an argument. “The floor is open for motions,” quavered the ancient Julius. “Do I hear—”
“I have a motion!” Miriam raised her hand.
“Objection!” snapped Baron Hjorth.
“I think you’ll find she already has the floor,” Angbard bit out. “Let her speak first, then have your say.”
“Firstly, I’d like to move that my venture into New Britain be recognized as a Clan subsidiary,” Miriam said, carefully trying to keep a still face. It was bitterly disappointing to risk ceding control, but as Olga had pointed out, the Clan took a very dim view of members striking out on their own. “As part of this motion I’d like to resolve that the issue of this sixth family be dealt with by participants in this subsidiary, because clearly they’re the members most directly affected by the situation.”