The Clan Corporate

GOING IN

Recovery from fentanyl poisoning was relatively rapid: the pain came later. They kept asking questions, even when he was on a drip and hallucinating. “What happened? What did he say?” All Mike could do was shake his head and mutter incoherently. Later, he made a full statement. And another. A whole goddamn committee camped by his hospital bed for an afternoon, trying to come up with an agreed timeline for the fuckup. Mike was expecting to be suspended pending investigation, but from the noises they were making it sounded like they wanted to sweep everything under the rug, pretend Matt had never existed. Maybe that was how the DOD dealt with unwelcome problems: or maybe they just didn’t want to admit that they’d destabilized a willing defector. Later another committee came by to grill him about Matt’s nuclear threat, but when he asked what action they were taking on it they told him he had no need to know—from which he deduced that they were taking it very seriously indeed.

It didn’t matter to Mike. He was out of the loop, officially injured in the line of duty. He lay in bed for two days, numb with apathy and guilt, mind constantly circling back to worry at the same unwelcome realization. I fucked up. On the second day a card arrived from Nikki, an invitation to Pete’s funeral. And then, just as he was graduating from depression to self-loathing, Smith dropped in.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Which was a lie. “Not sleeping too good.”

“Yeah, well.” Smith mustered a sympathetic expression that looked horribly artificial to Mike. “We need you back on duty.”

“Huh?”

The colonel dragged the nearest chair over and sat down next to Mike’s bed. Mike peered at him, noticing the bags under his eyes for the first time, the two-day stubble. “I’d like to be able to give you a month off, refer you for counseling, and let you recover at your own pace. Unfortunately, I can’t. You were due into in-processing today and you’re on the critical path for CLEANSWEEP. And your immediate backup was Pete.”

“Oh.” Mike was silent for a moment. “I was expecting an enquiry, you know?”

“There’s been a board of enquiry.” Smith leaned forward. “We don’t have time to piss around, Mike. We had a video take on you when Source Greensleeves offed Pete and took you hostage, it turned up yesterday. Left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing, excessive compartmentalization in our security architecture, et cetera. Nobody’s blaming you for what happened; if anyone gets blamed it’s going to be me for sending you guys in in the first place. But. We’re moving too fast to play the blame game right now—”

Mike gestured at the table on the other side of the bed: “Pete’s funeral is tomorrow. I was planning on being there.”

Smith looked worried. “Shit, our schedule puts you on a ranch in Maryland—wait, hang on, it’s not like that. I’ll get you to the funeral, even if I have to bend a few rules. But I really do need you back on duty.”

Mike stared at him. “Spill it.”

Smith stared right back. “Spill what?”

“It.” Mike crossed his arms. “This setup stinks. Whatever happened to your professional assets? I thought you guys majored in infiltrating hostile territory. You’re the military, you go to exotic places and meet interesting people and kill them. I’m just a cop. Why do you need me so badly?”

“Hold onto that thought.” Smith paused for a moment. “Look, I think you habitually overestimate what we can do. We’re very good at blowing shit up, that’s true. And NSA can tap every phone call on the planet, break almost any code,” he added, with a trace of pride. “But . . . we’re not good at human intelligence anymore. Not since the end of the Cold War, when most of the old HUMINT programs were shut down. You don’t get promoted in Langley by learning Pashtun and going to freeze your butt off in a cave in central Asia for six years, among people who’ll torture you to death in an eyeblink if they figure out who you are. The best and the brightest go into administration or electronic intelligence; the people who volunteer for spying missions and get through the training are often, bluntly speaking, nutjobs. A couple of years ago we had to fire the CIA station chief in Bonn, did you know that? One of our top guys in Germany. He’d been invoicing for a ring of informers but it turned out he was a member of an evangelical church, and what he was really doing was bankrolling a church mission. Anyway, you’ve got a three-month lead on anyone we could train up to do the job, and whatever your own opinion of your abilities, you are not bad. You’ve done police undercover work and stakeouts and run informers—that’s about ninety percent of the skill set of a field agent. So rather than pulling one of our few competent field agents out of whatever very important job they’re already doing, and trying to teach them hochsprache, we figured we’d take you and give you the additional ten percent of the skill set that you’ll need.”

A long pause. “Bullshit. What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know damn well I’m unreliable. I’m not acculturated, I still think like a cop, even if you’re right and the job overlap is significant. I’m unreliable from a departmental point of view: I’ve got the wrong instincts. And this isn’t a Hollywood movie where delicate operations get handed to maverick outsiders. So. What aren’t you telling me?”

Smith shrugged. “I told them you’d see through it,” he said, glancing at the door. Then he reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a photograph. “When did you last see this woman?”

“Who—oh. Her. What’s she got to do with this?” Mike’s mouth went dry.

Smith glared at him, clearly irritated. “Now you’re the one who’s playing games. You’ve been through the clearance process, we know what color underpants you wear, we interviewed your ex-wife, we grabbed your home phone records.” He waved the photograph. “Confession is good for the soul, Mike. Level with me and I’ll level with you. How well do you know this woman?”

Shit. Should have guessed they’d figure it out. “There’s not much to tell.” Mike struggled to drag his scattered thoughts back together. “I met her a few years ago. She’s a journalist, she was doing a story about drug testing for the glossy she worked for. It worked out really well at first. Did a couple of dates, began to get serious.” How much do they want to know? It was still a sore point for him. “Yes, we did sleep together.”

“Mike. Mike.” Smith shook his head. “That’s not what this is about, not really, we’re not the East German Stasi.”

“Well, what did you want to know?” Mike glared at him. “She’s a journalist, Colonel. She wasn’t faking it. I picked her up at the office a couple of times. I didn’t have a fucking clue she was anything else! Let me remind you that I didn’t know the Clan existed, back then. None of us did. I don’t think she did, either.”

“I’m not—I wasn’t—” For a moment Smith looked embarrassed. “Carry on. Tell me in your own words.”

“It didn’t work out,” Mike said slowly. “We were talking about taking a vacation together. Maybe even moving in. But then something spooked her. We had a couple of rows—she’s a liberal, we got bickering over some stupid shit. And then—” He shook his head. “It didn’t work out.”

“How long have you known she was involved with the Clan?” asked Smith.

Mike shook his head. “Not known. Wasn’t sure.” But Pete was, he realized. And what Matthias said—“Listen, it’s over between us. Two, three years ago. I didn’t put two and two together about the woman who Source Greensleeves kept ranting about until he waved it in my face, and even then—how many journalists called Miriam are there?”

Smith put the photograph away. Then he nodded at Mike. “How would you characterize your relationship with her?” he asked.

“Turbulent. And over.” Mike reached over to the bedside stand and picked up a glass of water. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, it won’t work.”

“And maybe I’m not thinking what you think I’m thinking.” Smith suddenly grinned. “Honey traps were an old Stasi trick, and they didn’t work consistently—in this situation, the collateral damage from blowback if it goes wrong is too high. But can you confirm that you do—did—know Miriam Beckstein, journalist, last employed by The Industry Weatherman?”

Mike nodded.

“Well, there’s your explanation! Now do you see why you’re needed?”

Mike nodded warily. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, like Dr. James told you two weeks ago, we want you to set up a spy ring in Niejwein. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is that we now have a list of starting points for you. It’s a very short list, and she’s right at the top of it. If we’re right—if she’s a recent recruit, dragged in by her long-lost family—she may be a potential asset. As long as she’s inside the Clan, that is: she’s not a lot of use to us over here, except as another mule.”

Mike shivered momentarily, visualizing a collar bomb around a throat he’d buried his face in. “When?” he asked.

“We know roughly where the royal palace is, in Niejwein: it overlaps with Queens. Niejwein isn’t a big city, it won’t be hard for you to get there with the right disguise and cover story. Which, by the way, is that you’re a Clan member from the west coast. It won’t stand up to scrutiny, but from what we know about Niejwein it won’t come in for much unless you try and play it for real. They’re pretty primitive over there. And we’ve got an extra edge I haven’t mentioned. We captured a courier last week.”

“You did?” Mike sat up.

“And his dispatches.” Smith frowned at Mike. “You don’t need to know the details. Anyway, it seems your girlfriend is going up in the world. She’s due to be the guest of honor at a royal reception in two weeks time, and the document taken from the courier includes what appears to be an invitation to a country cousin.” Smith looked smug for a moment. “One of the things the Clan are good at is postal security—which works against them at times like this. As long as they don’t know we’ve got couriers working for us, you’re in the clear.”

“Hey, are you telling me . . .”

“Yes. You’re going to crash a royal garden party and make her an offer she can’t refuse.”

A week of twelve-hour days in a training camp on the edge of a sprawling army base couldn’t prepare Mike Fleming for the experience of his first world-walk. On the contrary: he’d been led to expect a glossy high-tech send-off, and instead what he was getting looked very much like a ringside seat at an execution.

It was nearly noon. His personal trainer, who he knew only as John, had woken him at six o’clock and rushed him through breakfast. John had a halting grasp of hochsprache, but insisted Mike speak nothing else to him, playing dumb whenever Mike lapsed into English out of frustration or in search of some un-mapped concept. Then he’d been taken on a tour of Facilities. A quiet woman who looked like she worked weekends in Macy’s kitted him out in what they figured would pass for local costume—no cod-medieval “men in tights” nonsense, but rough woolen fabric, leggings, and an overtunic and leather boots.

Next on his itinerary was the armory. A hatchet-faced warrant officer checked him out and told him what was what in English. “This is your sword. Nearest we’ve got to it is a cutlass, note the curve in the blade—forget point work. If you ever did any fencing at school, forget that too. This is strictly for edge work, German-style. Oh, and if you have to use it you’re probably dead. We don’t have a couple of months to work you up to competent. Luckily for you, you’re also allowed one of these.” He held up a nylon holster, already laden with a black automatic pistol. “Glock 20C, fifteen-round magazine, ten mill.” Just like the handguns “James Morgan” had been buying and, presumptively, a standard Clan issue. “You have two spare magazines. I take it you’ve checked out on one.” In answer to Mike’s mute head shake, he swore and glared at John: “What is it with you folks? Are you trying to get him killed?”

Half an hour on the range upstairs from the armory reassured Mike marginally and seemed to mollify the armorer. He could hit things with it, strip it down, and could reload and clean it. “Next trip,” said John. “We have a, a thing that flies—”

Thing that flies turned out to be John’s best attempt at saying helicopter in hochsprache. It gave Mike a splitting headache as it thudded along in the direction of Long Island. When it landed at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, John handed him a trenchcoat and a broad-brimmed hat. “Very funny,” he snarled, still half-deafened by the rotor noise.

“Wear it.” A minivan with blacked-out windows was waiting the parking lot: funnily enough, there were no other cars present.

“Huh.” Mike clambered down from the chopper and trudged across the barge to the minivan. The side door opened. Inside it, Colonel Smith was waiting for him.

“Sorry ’bout the cloak-and-dagger nonsense,” Smith said unapologetically as their driver pulled out into the approach road behind another minivan. Mike glanced over his shoulder as a third van discreetly joined the convoy. “Can’t take any chances.”

“What? Where are we going?”

“Nearest geographical cognate we could figure.” Smith pulled back his sleeve. He was wearing something that looked like a digital watch that had swallowed a mobile phone—after a moment Mike recognized it as a GPS receiver. Smith frowned. “Doesn’t work too well—too many skyscrapers.”

The minivan slid through the New York traffic in fits and starts, bumper to bumper with a yellow cab that had somehow intercalated itself in the convoy. Mike lost track of where they were going after a couple of minutes and a baroque detour around some roadwork. “What’s the setup?”

Smith opened a folder with red and yellow stripes along its cover. “Pay attention, you don’t get to take this with you. A courier is ready to take you across to Zone Blue. You go over piggyback. In Zone Blue, we currently have a forward support team of three—Sergeant Hastert, PFC O’Neil, and PFC Icke. They’ll look after you, also give the courier a bunch of crap to bring back over to us. You do exactly what the sergeant tells you. After you leave Zone Blue, they’ll exfiltrate. Let me emphasize, there won’t be anybody there. What there will be is a buried radio transmitter, like this.” Smith pulled an egg-shaped device with a stubby aerial out of his pocket. “You dig it up, push the button, and the backup team will be alerted to come check you out for shadows. If you’ve got unwelcome company, they will kill it or take it prisoner—at their discretion—or leave you the fuck alone. They will not be more than an hour away from you at any time, so if they don’t show up within an hour, someone’s in trouble. Procedure is to revisit the zone at daily intervals for one week, then back off to once a week for a month. You also need to memorize this. Directions to Zone Green, which is your fallback site. There’s no equipment or personnel there, so if you’re captured and tortured you can’t give anyone away, but if you go there you’ll be observed and contacted.”

Mike studied the sheet of typed directions, feeling a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead. It’s real, he realized. It’s not some kind of elaborate joke. It’s really going to happen. Nervous dread made a hollow nest in his stomach. “The palace—” He’d seen maps of that already, a big stone pile near a small town, at one end of a road lined with slightly smaller stone piles.

“Over the page.” A basic sketch map showed Zone Blue in relation to the palace. “There are complications to do with the transport protocol for this run.”

“What do you mean?” Mike looked up.

“It’s in the center of town. The courier may try to escape.” Smith stared at him. “You’re going piggyback. Hold out your hand.”

“What—”

Smith snapped a bracelet shut around Mike’s wrist. “Transmitter. Very short range. Here’s the key.” He handed Mike a key. “Turn clockwise to release the transmitter. Two twists anti-clockwise and it will send the detonate command. If Three tries to attack you—”

“Okay.” Mike stared at the thing, repelled and fascinated. “What do I do with it?”

Smith shrugged. “If it goes according to plan and Team X-ray meets you in, they hold Courier Three while you take the bracelet off and hand it to him. Then you send him back over to us and we take the necklace off and put him back in his box. If he tries to run, or attacks you, kill him.” He stared at Mike. “I’m serious. If he does either of those things, he’ll try to kill you. Wouldn’t you, in his situation?”

In his situation—Mike tried to get a handle on it, but his mind kept slipping up unwelcome channels, looking into irrelevances. “Courier Three—I thought you only had two?”

“Need to know.” Smith shook his head. “Look, we’re there.”

Manhattan wasn’t just skyscrapers; old brownstones still thrived in the shadow of the tall towers. Smith waited for the other minivans to draw up, then opened the door and led Mike up the front steps of an ordinary-looking house while half a dozen men and a couple of women in the sort of business attire that yelled “cop” stood discreet guard.

The house looked ordinary enough from inside—but Smith headed straight for an unobtrusive door and into what had probably been a living room before someone ripped out the furniture, boarded up the windows, installed antiblast paneling and floodlights, and spray-painted a big X in the middle of the floor. Now there was something sinister about it, a cramped, dark terminus that needed only a trapdoor and a dangling rope to turn it into a place of execution. “Wait here.”

Mike waited while Smith and two of his underlings bustled back out again. A minute later they returned, half-supporting and half-dragging a third man between them. He was unshaven and looked tired, bent forward with his hands cuffed tightly behind his back: his scalp had been shaved and there was a big dressing taped to one temple. As he looked around and saw Mike his eyes widened with fear. Then another of the anonymous guards stepped forward and swiftly clamped a metal collar around his throat.

“Shizz . . .” His knees sagged.

“Wait,” Mike said, trying his hochsprache. “You—carry—me. Yes?” He saw the other man’s eyes. The expression of terror began to fade. “Come—go—back here.” Mike paused. “Does he know what the collar is?” he asked Smith, lapsing into English.

Smith nodded.

“They take”—gesture at throat—“undress, off. You run”—tap at wrist, at the bracelet Smith had put there, then finger across throat. “Understand?”

“Yes,” said the prisoner. Then a gabble of words jumbled together too fast for Mike to parse.

“Slower.”

Courier Three fell silent. “Not kill.”

“No. You carry me.”

“I carry, yes, I carry!”

The courier’s head bobbed as if his neck had been replaced by loose springs. Mike tasted stomach acid, swallowed. This isn’t right. I’m supposed to capture more people, so we can use them like this? Even a prison cell had to be better than being led to a dingy room and having a bomb clamped to your neck.

“Ready?” asked Smith.

“Yeah.” Mike pointed to the X on the floor. “Stand here.” Courier Three crouched down on the spot, legs and arms braced. Mike looked at him, momentarily perplexed. “What do I do now?” he asked.

“You sit on him,” said Smith. He was holding something. “Go on.”

“Okay.” With some trepidation, Mike lowered himself onto Courier Three’s back. The man grunted. Mike could feel his spine, the warmth of his ribs through the seat of his pants. This is weird, he began to think, just as Smith held something under Three’s nose. Then the world changed.

Mike blinked at the darkness. Someone tapped him on the back of the head with something hard. “Say your name.”

“Mike Fleming.” His seat groaned and began to collapse, and he fell over sideways. “What the fuck—”

A thud was followed by a muffled groan. “Okay, wiseass, cut that out!” Light appeared, and Mike rolled over onto his back and tried to sit out.

Someone else was groaning—Courier Three? he wondered. “What’s going on?”

“All under control, sir,” drawled the man with the gun. “You just sort yourself out while we keep watch.”

Mike nodded, taking stock of the situation. He was in some kind of room with no windows, a door, a dirt floor, three armed strangers, and a captured Clan courier wearing a bomb around his neck. The good news was that the desperados were pointing their guns at the courier, the door, and the ground, respectively—which left none for him. Ergo, they were friendly. “Which of you is Sergeant Hastert?” he asked.

“I am.” Hastert was the one covering the ground. He grinned at Mike, an expression he’d have found deeply alarming if it wasn’t for the fact that any other expression would have been infinitely worse. Courier Three groaned again. Mike realized he was clutching his head. “Dennis, keep laughing boy here covered. Mr. Fleming, you’ve got the remote control. If you’d care to pass it to me, we can take care of the mule until it’s time for him to go home. Meanwhile, you ’n I’ve got some talking to do.”

“Okay.” Mike unlocked his bracelet with a shudder of relief and passed it to the sergeant, who leaned over Courier Three while one of the others kept his AR-15 pointed at the prisoner the whole time.

“Listen, you,” said Hastert. “This here won’t go off now—” He was speaking English, loudly and slowly.

“He doesn’t understand,” said Mike.

“Huh?”

“He doesn’t speak English. He thought we were going to kill him, back in New York.”

“Hmm.” Hastert stared at him with pale blue eyes. “You try, then.”

Mike stared at Courier Three. “You go. Soon, now, back over. Not die. Shoot if run? Yes.”

The prisoner nodded slightly. Then went back to groaning quietly and clutching his head.

“Not much to look at, ain’t he?” Hastert was genial.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Hastert opened the door and led Mike through into another bare room with a dirt floor, leaving the two other soldiers with their precious courier. There was a window in here, with wooden shutters, and Hastert switched off his flashlight. As Mike’s eyes adjusted he got a good look at what the sergeant was wearing: rough woolen trousers and jerkin over another layer that bulged like a bulletproof jacket. “We stay indoors during the day,” Hastert said, acknowledging his curiosity. “But this is a special occasion. Keep your voice low, by the way. It’s a crowded neighborhood.”

“You know where the palace is?”

“Yeah. We’ll get you there. Once laughing boy has gotten over his headache and gone home.”

“Huh.” Mike sank down into a crouch against one wall. It was whitewashed, he noticed, but the plaster or bricks underneath it were uneven. “This the best hotel you could get?”

“You should see how they live hereabouts.” Hastert shrugged. “This is the Sheraton. Let me fill you in . . .”

Mike tried to listen, but he was too tense. There were noises outside: occasional chatter, oddly slurred and almost comprehensible snatches of hochsprache. The thud of horses’ hooves passed the door from time to time, followed by the creak and rattle of carts. After about an hour, the inner door opened and one of the other soldiers came out. He nodded. “All done.”

Mike shifted. “What now?”

Hastert checked his watch. “One hour to go, then we move out. Jack, go dig out a couple of MREs, and you and Dennis chow down. Sir, do you know what this is?” He held up a radio transmitter, like the one Colonel Smith shown Mike earlier.

“Yes.” Mike nodded. “Radio transmitter. Right?”

“Right.” Hastert looked at him thoughtfully, then reached into a shapeless-looking sack on the floor beside him and pulled out an entrenching tool. “We’re going to put it in right—here.” He buried the gadget under a thin layer of soil and tamped it down, then scattered the residue. “Think you can find it?”

Mike mentally measured the distance from the door. “Yes, I think so.”

“Good. Your life depends on it.” Hastert didn’t smile. “Because when you get back here, we won’t be around.”

“I’ve been briefed.” Mike tried not to snap. It was warm and stifling in the dirt-floored shack, and the endless waiting was getting to him.

“Yes, sir, but I didn’t see you being briefed, so if you’ll excuse me we’ll go over it again, shall we?”

“Okay . . .” Mike swallowed. “Thanks.”

The next hour passed a bit faster, which made it all the more shocking when the inner door opened and the other two men came through. “Ready when you are, boss.” It was the taller one, O’Neil. Mike blinked. Hey, all three of them are white, he realized: a statistical anomaly, or maybe something else. No sugar trade here means no African slave trade. Just another logistics headache that Smith was dealing with behind his back, finding special forces troops who looked like locals.

“Let’s go.” Hastert stood up. “Far as the garden party, we’re your bodyguard. Once you’re inside, we’ll split. Anything goes wrong, make for the garden gate opposite the ceremonial parade ground—I’ll point it out to you.”

He opened the door. It was late afternoon outside, dusty and bright and hot, but with a breeze blowing off the sea that took the edge off the heat. The shack turned out to be one of a whole row fronting a narrow dirt track: a similar row faced them. Half the doors and windows were wide open, with chickens and geese wandering in and out freely to peck in the roadside dirt. There were people. Ragged, skinny children, stooped women and men in colorless robes or baggy trousers. People who looked away when Hastert stared at them, hastily finding somewhere else to go, something else to do. The road was filthy, an open gutter down the middle running with sewage. “Come on,” said O’Neil, behind Mike. “You’re blocking the door.”

Mike stepped forward, trying to project confidence. I’m a big man, he told himself. I’m armed, I’ve got bodyguards, my clothing’s new, and I’m well-fed. He glanced up the street. Nothing on this row was straight: whoever built it hadn’t heard of zoning laws, or even a straight line. A cart pulled by a couple of bored oxen, piled high with sacks, was slowly rattling toward them. Behind it, a mass of sheep bleated plaintively, spilling into doorways in a slow woolly flood. “Follow me, and try to look like you’re leading,” Hastert muttered.

The walk through the town seemed to take forever, although it was probably more like twenty or thirty minutes. Mike tried not to gape like a fool: sometimes it was hard. Smells and sounds assailed him. Wood smoke was alarmingly common, given that most of the houses were timbered. It almost covered up the pervasive stench of shit rising from the hot, fetid gutters. In the distance some kind of street vendor was shouting over and over again—briefly they walked past one edge of a kind of open square, cobblestoned and lined with a dizzying mess of stalls like open-walled huts. Wicker baskets full of caged chickens, scrawny and sometimes half-bald. A table covered in muddy beetroot. Rats, glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, scurrying under cover. Is this where she’s been living? he wondered, momentarily aghast. Remembering Miriam’s attitude to food hygiene and her nearly aseptic kitchen worktop, he suddenly had a moment of doubt.

Shit, who am I kidding? Mike wondered, tensed up as if he was about to go through the back door of some perp’s meth lab. This is fucking crazy! I’ve got barely any grasp of the language, no way out, I’m in a hostile city in a foreign country and if they get their hands on me—a sick certainty filled him as they reached a much wider road and turned onto it—and I’m supposed to be making contact with an ex-girlfriend who cut me dead last time I called her! He forced himself to straighten his back and move out into the clear middle of this road (no open sewers here), then took it in. Big stone walls to either side, imposing gatehouses with solid wooden doors. No windows at ground level. Multistory piles some way behind the walls, like pocket castles. That’s what they are, he suddenly realized. This place is primitive. No police, but heaven help you if the mob catches you stealing. The rich have their own small armies. Warlords, like Afghanistan. A moment later his earlier thought overtook the latest one, colliding in a messy train-wreck: And Miriam’s rich. She’s one of the people who own these castles. What does that mean?

There were more people hanging around this street, and stalls mounted on brightly colored cart wheels were selling food and (by the smell) slightly rancid beer to them. The road ended ahead, not in a junction but in a huge gate with a park beyond it. Or something that looked like a park. In the distance, a huge palace loomed above tents and crowd. Mike took a deep breath. “This it?” he asked Hastert.

“Yessir.” Hastert passed him a rolled-up piece of heavy paper. “This will get you in. I’m told it’s an invitation.”

“And you . . . ?”

“Got to stop at the gate, sir. Turns out there’s a law against bringing guards. You’re allowed to bear a gentleman’s arms, you’re supposed to be Sieur Vincensh d’Lofstrom, but we’re . . . not. See that side gate? We’ll run a rotating watch on it. Any trouble, hotfoot it there and we’ll provide a distraction while we guide you to Zone Green.”

“Check.” Mike glanced nervously at a passing bear, which watched him with oddly wise eyes until its owner jerked viciously on the chain riveted to its iron collar. “If I’m not back in four hours, you’ll know I’m in trouble.”

“Okay, four hours.” Hastert nodded. “Good luck, sir.”

“Thanks.” Mike shivered. “Hope I don’t need it.” He took a deep breath and glanced at the guards by the gate, their bright red and yellow uniforms and eight-foot poleaxes. The other side of the gate was a confused whirl of people and sounds and smells, a Renaissance Faire with added stench and more alcohol. Are you somewhere in there, Miriam? he wondered. And: What am I going to say when I find you? Aloud: “Here goes.”