The Family Trade

Fifteen minutes later the luggage was stowed where Miriam wanted it. Her new laptop was sitting on the dresser, plugged in to charge next to a stack of unopened software boxes. Her new wardrobe was hung up, awaiting the attentions of a seamstress whenever Miriam had time for a fitting. And the escape kit, as she was already thinking of it, was stashed in the suitcase at the back of the wardrobe.

“Memo.” She picked up her dictaphone and strolled through into the bathroom. It was the place she found it easiest to think. Cool white tiles, fine marble, nothing to aggravate the pounding headache she’d been plagued by for so much of the past week. Plus, it had a shower—which she turned on, just for the noise. “Need to look for a bug-sweeping kit next time I get time on the other side. Must try the beta-blockers too, once I’ve looked up their side effects. Wonder if they’ve got a trained doctor over here? Or a clinic of some kind? Anyway.”

She swallowed. “New memo. Must get the dictation software installed on the laptop, so I can transcribe this diary. Um. Roland and the family business bear some thought.” That’s the understatement of the century, she told herself. “They’re… oh hell. They’re not the Medelin cartel, but they probably ship a good quantity of their produce. It’s a family business, or rather a whole bunch of families who intermarry because of the hereditary factor, with the Clan as a business arrangement that organizes everything. I suppose they probably smuggled jewels or gold or something before the drugs thing. The whole nine yards about not marrying out—whether the ability is a recessive gene or not doesn’t matter—they’ve got omerta, the law of silence, as a side effect of their social setup. In this world, they’re upwardly mobile nobles, merchant-princes trying to marry into the royal family. In my world, they’re gangsters. Mafia families without the Sicilian in-laws.”

She hit the “pause” button for a moment.

“So I’m a Mafia princess. Talk about not getting involved with goodfellas! What do I make of it?”

She paused again and noticed that she was pacing back and forth distractedly. “It’s blood money. Or is it? If these people are the government here, and they say it’s legal to smuggle cocaine or heroin, does that make it okay? This is one huge can of worms. Even if you leave ethics out of the question, even if you think the whole war on drugs is a bad idea like prohibition in the twenties, it’s still a huge headache.” She massaged her throbbing forehead. “I really need to talk to Iris. She’d set me straight.”

She leaned her forehead against the cool tiles beside the mirror over the sink. “Problem is, I can’t walk away from them. I can’t just leave, walk out, and go back to life in Cambridge. It’s not just the government who’d want to bury me so deep the sun would never find me. The Clan can’t risk me talking. Now that I think about it, it’s weird that they let Roland get as far as he did. Only. If he’s telling the truth, Angbard is keeping him on a short leash. What does that suggest they’ve got in mind for me? A short leash and a choke collar?”

She could see it in her mind’s eye, the chain of events that would unfold if she were to walk into an FBI office and prove what she could do—maybe with the aid of a sack of cocaine, maybe not. Maybe with Paulie’s CD full of research, too, she realized, sitting up. “Shit.” A dawning supposition: Drug-smuggling rings needed to sanitize their revenue stream, didn’t they? And the business with Biphase and Proteome was in the right part of the world, and the Clan was certainly sophisticated enough… if her hunch was right, then it was, in fact, her long-lost family’s investments that Paulie was holding the key to.

In the FBI office first there’d be disbelief. Then the growing realization that a journalist was handing them the drugs case of the century. Followed by the hasty escalation, the witness protection program offers—then their reaction to her demonstrated ability to walk through walls. The secondary scenarios as the FBI realize that they can’t protect her, can’t even protect themselves against assassins from another world. Then blind panic and bad decisions.

“If the families decided to attack the United States at home, they could make al Qaida look like amateurs,” she muttered into her dictaphone, stricken. “They have the resources of a government at their disposal, because over here they’re ru

She flicked the “stop” button on her dictaphone and put it down, shuddering. It made a frightening amount of sense. I am sitting on a news story that makes the attack on the World Trade Centre look like a five-minute wonder, she realized with a sinking feeling. No, I am sitting in the middle of the story. What am I going to do?

At that exact moment the telephone out in her reception room rang.

Old habits died hard, and Miriam was out of the bathroom in seconds with the finely honed reflexes of a journalist with an editor on the line. She picked the phone up before she realized there were no buttons, nothing to indicate it could dial an outside line. “Yes?”

“Miriam?”

She froze, heart sinking. “Roland,” she said distantly.

“You locked your door and sent your maids away. I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

“ ‘All right.’” She considered her next words carefully. “I’m not all right, Roland. I looked in the suitcase. The other one, the one waiting in the post room.” Her chest felt tight. He’d lied to her: but on the other hand, she’d been holding more than a little back herself—

A pause. “I know. It was a test. The only question was which one you’d open. I don’t know if it makes any difference, but I was ordered to give you the opportunity. To figure it all out for yourself. ‘Give her enough rope’ were his exact words. So now you know.”

“Know what?” she said flatly. “That he’s an extremely devious conspirator or about the family’s dirty little secret?”

“Both.” Roland waited for her to reply.

“I feel used,” she said calmly. “I am also extremely pissed off. In fact, I’m still working out how I feel about everything. It’s not the drugs, exactly: I don’t think I’ve got any illusions about that side of things. I studied enough pharmacology to know the difference between propaganda and reality, and I saw enough shit in med school from ODs and drunk drivers and people coughing up lung cancers to know you get the same results whether the drug’s illegal or not. But the manipulative side of it—there’s a movie on the other side called The Godfather. Have you ever seen it?”

“Yes. That’s it, exactly.” He sounded dryly amused. “By the way, Don Corleone asked me to tell you that he expects to see you in his office tomorrow at ten o’clock sharp.” His voice changed, abruptly serious. “Please don’t shout at him. I think it’s another test, but I’m not sure what kind—whichever, it could be very dangerous. I don’t want to see you get hurt, Miriam. Or Helge, as he’ll call you. But you’re Miriam to me. Listen, for your own good, whatever he says, don’t refuse a direct order. He is much more dangerous than he looks, and if he thinks you’ll bite him, he may put family loyalty aside, because his real loyalty is to the Clan as a whole. You’re a close family member, but the Clan, by the law of families, comes first. Just sit tight and remember that you’ve got more leverage than you realize. He will want you to make a secure alliance, both to keep you safe—for the memory of his stepsister—and to shore up his own position. Failing that, he’ll be able to pretend to ignore you as long as you don’t disobey a direct order. Do you hear what I’m saying?”