The Merchant’s War полностью

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 CLEANSWEFP 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 Hashed and doors unlocked.

"Okay, talk." Mike's stomach twisted. Last lime someone said thai 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."

"Okay." She hit the gas hard, pushing out into a too-small gap in the traffic: a horn blared behind them for a moment, then they were clear. "But they'd better be worth it."

Mike swallowed again. "Listen. You know the spooks are calling the shots. I got dragged off into fairyland, but you don't have to follow me down the rabbit hole."

"Too late. I'm in charge of the team that's watching you. I just found out about it yesterday. If it's not you, who am I meant to be keeping an eye open for?"

"Someone who may be able to tell us whether he was bluffing or if there really is a bomb-and if so, where he might have planted it."

Herz swung left into the passing lane. "Good answer." Her fingers tightened on the wheel. "That's what I wanted to hear. Is it true?"

Mike took a deep breath. "The NIRT guys are still working their butts off, right?"

"Yes..."

"Then in the absence of a forensics lead or an informant you're not delivering much value-added, are you? They're the guys with the neutron scattering spectrometers and the Geiger counters. You're the detective. What did the colonel tell you to do?"

Herz took an on-ramp, then accelerated onto the interstate: "Stake you out like a goat. Watch and wait, twenty-four by seven. You're supposed to tell me what to do, when to wrap up the case."

"Hmm." What have I gotten myself into here? "I really ought to get the colonel to tell me whether I can fill you in on a couple of codewords."

Herz set the cruise control and glanced at him, sidelong. "He told me you'd been on something called CLEANSWEEP, and this is the follow-up."

Mike felt the tension ease out of his shoulders. "I hate

the fucking spook bullshit," he complained. "Okay, let me fill you in on CLEANSWEEP and how I got my leg busted up. Then maybe I can help you figure out a surveillance plan..."

Miriam watched from the back room while Erasmus systematically looted his own shop. "Go through the clothing and take anything you think you'll need," he told her. "There's a traveling case downstairs that you can use. We're going to be away for two weeks, and we'll not be able to purchase any necessities until we reach Fort Kinnaird."

"But I can't just-" Miriam shook her head. "Are you sure?"

"Whose shop is it?" He Hashed her a cadaverous grin. "I'll be upstairs. Got to fetch a book."

The traveling case in the cellar turned out to be a battered leather suitcase. Miriam hauled it up into the back mom and opened it, wrinkling her nose. It looked clean enough, although the stained silk lining, bunched at one side, made her wonder at its previous owner's habits. She stuffed the contents of her valise into it, then scoured the rails in the back for anything else appropriate. There wasn't much there: Erasmus had run down the stock of clothes since she'd last seen the inside of his shop. A search of the pigeonholes behind the counter yielded a line leather manicure case and a good pen. She was tucking them into the ease when Erasmus reappeared, carrying a couple of books and a leather jewelry case.

"What's that?" she asked.