The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) (7 page)

Mike knew he was tired, but it was only when he misentered the code to switch off his intruder alarm twice in a row that he got a visceral sense of how totally out of it he was.
Whoa, hold
on!
He leaned against the wall and yawned, forced himself to focus, and deliberately held off from fumbling at the manically bleeping control panel until he’d blinked back the fuzz
enough to see the numbers.
Two days?
he wondered vaguely as he slouched upstairs, the door banging shut behind him.
Yeah, two days
. A night and most of a day with the SOC team
picking over the bones of the buried fortress, then a night and most of the next morning debriefing the paranoid defector in a safe house. Then more meetings all afternoon, trying to get it through
Tony Vecchio’s head that yes, the source was crazy – in fact, the source was bug-fuck crazy with brass knobs on – but he was an
interesting
crazy, whose every lead had
turned over a stone with something nasty scuttling for cover from underneath it, and even the crazy bits were internally consistent.

Mike stumbled past the coat rail and shed his jacket and tie, then fumbled with his shoelaces for a minute. While he was busy unraveling the sacred mysteries of knot theory, Oscar slid out of
the living room door, stretched stiffly and cast him a where-have-you-been glare. ‘I’ll get to you in a minute,’ Mike mumbled. He was used to working irregular hours; Helen the
cleaner had instructions to keep the cat fed and watered when he wasn’t about, though she drew the line at the litter tray. It turned out that unlacing the shoes took the last of his energy.
He meant to check Oscar’s food and water, but instead he staggered into the bedroom and collapsed on the unmade bed. Sleep came slamming down like a guillotine blade.

A couple of hours later, Oscar dragged Mike back to semiwakefulness. ‘Aagh.’ Mike opened his eyes. ‘Damn. What time is it?’ The elderly tom lowered his head and butted
his shoulder for attention, purring quietly.
I was dreaming, wasn’t I?
Mike remembered.
Something about being in a fancy restaurant with – her
. That ex-girlfriend, the
journalist. Miriam. She’d dumped him when he’d explained about The Job. It’d been back during one of his self-hating patches, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have been that
brutal with the truth, but experience had taught him – ‘Damn.’ Oscar purred louder and leaned against his stomach.
Why was I naked from the waist down? What the hell is my
subconscious trying to tell me?

It was only about six o’clock in the evening, far too early to turn over and go back to sleep if he wanted to be ready for the office tomorrow. Mike shook his head, trying to dislodge the
cobwebs. Then he sat up, gently pushed Oscar out of the way, and began to undress. After ten minutes in the shower with the heat turned right up he felt almost human, although the taste in his
mouth and the stubble itching on his jaw felt like curious reminders of a forgotten binge.
Virtual bar-hopping, all the after-effects with none of the fun
. He shook his head disgustedly,
toweled himself dry, dragged on sweat pants and tee, then took stock.

The flat was remarkably tidy, considering how little time he’d had to spend on chores in the past week – thank Helen for that. She’d left him a note on the kitchen table,
scribbled in her big, childish handwriting: MILK STAIL, BOUT MORE. He smiled at that. Oscar’s bowls were half-f, so he ignored the cat’s special pleading and went through into what
had been a cramped storeroom when he moved in. Now it was an even more cramped gym, or as much of one as there was space for in the bachelor apartment. He flipped the radio on as he climbed wearily
onto the exercise bike:
Maybe I should have held the shower
? he wondered as he turned the friction up a notch and began pedaling.

Fifteen minutes on the bike then a round of push-ups and he began to feel a bit looser. It was almost time to start on the punch bag, but as he came up on fifty sit-ups the phone in the living
room rang. Swearing, he abandoned the exercise and made a dash for the handset before the answering machine could cut in. ‘Yes?’ he demanded.

‘Mike Fleming? Can you quote your badge number?’

‘I – who
is
this?’ he demanded, shivering slightly as the sweat began to evaporate.

‘Mike Fleming. Badge number. This is an unsecured line.’ The man at the other end of the phone sounded impatient.

‘Okay.’
More fallout from work. Head office, maybe?
Mike paused for a moment, then recited his number. ‘Now, what’s this about?’

‘Can you confirm that you were in a meeting with Tony Vecchio and Pete Garfinkle this afternoon?’

‘I –’ Mike’s head spun. ‘Look, I’m not supposed to discuss this on an open line. If you want to talk about it at the office then you need to schedule an
appointment – ’

‘Listen, Fleming. I’m not cleared for the content of the meeting. Question is, were you in it? Think before you answer, because if you answer wrong you’re in deep
shit.’

‘I – yes.’ Mike found himself staring at the wall opposite. ‘Now. Who exactly am I talking to?’ The CLID display on his phone just said NUMBER WITHHELD. Which was
pretty remarkable, on the face of it, because this wasn’t an ordinary caller-ID box. And this wasn’t an ordinary caller: his line was ex-directory, for starters.

‘A minibus will pick you up in fifteen minutes, Fleming. Pack for overnight.’ The line went dead, leaving him staring at the phone as if it had just grown fangs.

‘What the hell?’ Oscar walked past his ankle, leaning heavily. ‘Shit.’ He tapped the hook then dialed the office. ‘Tony Vecchio’s line, please, it’s
Mike Fleming. Oh – okay. He’s in a meeting? Can you – yeah, is Pete Garfinkle in? What, he’s in a meeting too? Okay, I’ll try later. No, no message.’ He put the
phone down and frowned. ‘Fifteen minutes?’

*

Once upon a time, when he was younger, Mike had believed all the myths.

He’d believed that one syringe full of heroin was enough to turn a fine, upstanding family man into a slavering junkie. He’d believed that marijuana caused lung cancer, dementia, and
short-term memory loss, that freebase cocaine – crack – could trigger fits of unpredictable rage, and that the gangs of organized criminals who had a lock on the distribution and sale
of illegal narcotics in the United States were about the greatest internal threat that the country faced.

Also, when he was even younger, he’d believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

Now
. . . he still believed in the gangs. Ten years of stalking grade-A scumbags and seeing just what they did to the people around them left precious little room for illusions about
his fellow humanity. Some dealers were just ethically impaired entrepreneurs working in a shady, high-risk field, attracted by the potential for high profits. But you had to have a ruthless streak
to take that level of risk, or be oblivious to the suffering around you, and the dangers of the field seemed to repel sane people after a while. The whole business of illegal drugs was a magnet for
seekers of the only
real
drug, the one that was addictive at first exposure, the one that drove people mad and kept them coming back for more until it killed them: easy money. The promise
of quick cash money drew scumbags like flies to a fresh dog turd. Anyone who was in the area inevitably started to smell of shit sooner or later, even if they’d started out clean. Even the
cops, and they were supposed to be the good guys.

Ten years ago when he was a fresh-faced graduate with a degree in police science – and still believed in the tooth fairy, so to speak – he’d have arrested his own parents
without a second thought if he’d seen them smoking a joint, because it was the right thing to do. But these days, Mike had learned that sometimes it made sense to turn a blind eye to human
failings. About six years in, he’d gone through the not-unusual burnout period that afflicted most officers, sooner or later, if they had any imagination or empathy for their fellow citizens.
Afterward, he’d clawed his way back to a precarious moral sense, an idea of what was wrong with the world that gave him something to work toward. And now there was only one type of drug
addict that he could get worked up over – the kind of enemy that he wanted to lay his hands on so bad he could taste it. He wanted the money addicts; the ones who needed it so bad
they’d kill, maim, and wreck numberless other lives to get their fix.

Which was why, a decade after joining up, he was still a dedicated DEA Special Agent – rather than a burned-out GS-12 desk jockey with his third nervous breakdown and his second divorce
ahead of him, freewheeling past road marks on the long run down to retirement and the end of days.

When the doorbell chimed exactly twenty-two minutes after the phone rang, the Mike who answered it was dressed again and had even managed to put a comb through his lank blond hair and run an
electric razor over his chin. The effect was patchy, and he still felt in need of a good night’s sleep. He glanced at the entry phone, then relaxed. It was Pete, his partner on the current
case, looking tired but not much worse for wear. Mike picked up his briefcase and opened the door. ‘What’s the story?’

‘C’mon. You think they’ve bothered to tell me anything?’ Mike revised his opinion. Pete didn’t simply look tired and overworked, he looked apprehensive. Which was
kind of worrying, in view of Pete’s usual supreme self-confidence.

‘Okay.’ Mike armed the burglar alarm and locked his front door. Then he followed Pete toward a big Dodge minivan, waiting at the curb with its engine idling. A woman and two guys
were waiting in it, beside the driver, who made a big deal of checking his agency ID. He didn’t know any of them except one of the men, who vaguely rang a bell.
FBI office
, Mike
realized as he climbed in and sat down next to Pete. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked as the door closed.

‘Questions later,’ said the woman sitting next to the driver. She was a no-nonsense type in a gray suit, the kind Mike associated with internal audits and inter-agency joint
committees. Mike was about to ask again, when he noticed Pete shake his head very slightly.
Oh
, he thought, and shut up as the van headed for the freeway.
I can take a hint
.

When he realized they were heading for the airport after about twenty minutes, Mike sat up and began to take notice. And when they pulled out of the main traffic stream into the public terminals
at Logan and headed toward a gate with a checkpoint and barrier, the sleep seemed to fall away. ‘What
is
this?’ he hissed at Pete.

The van barely stopped moving as whatever magic charm the driver had got him waved straight through a series of checkpoints and onto the air side of the terminal. ‘Look, I don’t know
either,’ Pete whispered. ‘Tony said to go with these guys.’ He sounded worried.

‘Not long now,’ the woman in the front passenger seat said apologetically.

They drove past a row of parked executive jets, then pulled in next to a big Gulfstream, painted Air Force gray. ‘Okay, change of transport,’ called their shepherd. ‘Everybody
out!’

‘Wow.’ Mike looked up at the jet. ‘They’re serious.’

‘Whoever they are,’ Pete said apprehensively. ‘Somehow I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, Toto.’

A blue-suiter checked their ID cards again at the foot of the stairs and double-checked them using a sheet of photos. Mike climbed aboard warily. The government executive jet wasn’t
anything like as luxuriously fitted as the ones you saw in the movies, but that was hardly a surprise – it was a working plane, used for shifting small teams about. Mike strapped himself into
a window seat and leaned back as the attendant closed the door, checked to see that everyone was strapped in, and ducked inside the cockpit for a quiet conference. The plane began to taxi, louder
than any airliner he’d been on in years. Minutes later they were airborne, climbing steeply into the evening sky. In all, just over an hour had elapsed since he answered the phone.

The seat belt lights barely had time to blink out before the woman was on her feet, her back to the cockpit door, facing Mike and Pete. (A couple of the other guys had to crane their heads round
to see her.) ‘Okay, you’re wondering where you’re going and why,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘We’re going to a small field in Maryland. From there you’re
going by bus to a secure office in Fort Meade where we wait for another planeload of agents to converge from the west coast. Refreshments
will
be served,’ she added dryly,
‘although I can’t tell you just why you’re needed at this meeting because our hosts haven’t told me.’

One of the other passengers, a black man with the build of a middleweight boxer, frowned. ‘Can you tell us who you are?’ he asked in a deep voice. ‘Or is that secret,
too?’

‘Sure. I’m Judith Herz. Boston headquarters staff, FBI, agent responsible for ANSIR coordination. If you guys want to identify yourselves, be my guest.’

‘I’m Bob Patterson,’ said the black man, after a momentary pause. ‘I work for DOE,’ he added, in tones that said
and I can’t tell you any more than
that
.

‘Rich Wall, FBI.’ The thin guy with curly brown hair and a neat goatee flashed a brief grin at Herz.
Undercover?
Mike wondered.
Or specialist?
He didn’t look
like a special agent, that was for sure, not wearing combat pants and a nose stud.

‘Mike Fleming and Pete Garfinkle, Drug Enforcement Agency, Boston SpecOps division,’ Mike volunteered.

They all turned to face the last passenger, a portly middle-aged guy with a bushy beard and a florid complexion who wore a pinstriped suit. ‘Hey, don’t all look at me!’ he
protested. ‘Name’s Frank Milford, County Surveyor’s Office.’ A worried frown crossed his face. ‘Just what
is
this, anyway? There’s got to be some
mistake, here. I don’t belong – ’

‘Yes you do,’ said Herz. Mike looked at her.
Five assorted cops and spooks, and a guy from the
County Surveyor’s Office?
What in hell’s name is going on
here?
‘I’m sure all will be revealed when we arrive.’