The Bloodline Feud (Merchant Princes Omnibus 1) (17 page)

Miriam’s eyes were nearly bulging as she tried to make sense of this. ‘You mean there’s no telegraph?’ she asked.

‘We
are
the telegraph,’ he told her. ‘As for the rest of what’s in these suitcases, it’s mostly stuff that only comes from the east and is expensive in the
west. Like, for example, diamonds from India. They’re expensive enough in the Gruinmarkt and almost impossible to get in the Outer Kingdom – it’s much cheaper to ship them across
the Boreal Ocean by barque than the western ocean by junk, especially since the Mongols refuse to trade with the east. Or penicillin. The ability to guarantee that a prince’s wife will not
die of childbed fever is worth more than any amount of precious stones.’

‘And going the other way . . .’

‘More messages. More diplomatic intelligence. Spices and garnets and rubies and gold from the Outer Kingdom’s mines.’

Miriam nodded. The elevator doors opened onto the underground garage, and she followed him out into the concrete maze.

Several vehicles were parked there, including a long black Mercedes limousine – and her own slightly battered Saturn. Roland headed for the Merc. ‘Once we’ve fitted your car
with some extras, you can use it – if you want,’ he said. ‘But you can use any of the other cars here, too.’

Miriam shook her head, taking in a sleek Jaguar coupe parked behind a concrete column. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ she murmured.
What would it do for my independence?
she wondered, watching as Roland opened the Mercedes’s trunk and lifted the suitcases into it. The two-million-dollar card in her purse was much more intoxicating than the wine last night,
but didn’t feel as real.
I’ll have to try it,
she realized.
But what if I get addicted?

*

The Mercedes was huge, black, and carried almost a ton of armor built into its smoothly gleaming bodywork. Miriam only realized this when she tried to open the passenger side
door – it was heavy, and as it swung open she saw that the window was almost two inches thick and had a faint greenish tint. She sat down, pulled her seatbelt on, and tugged the door shut. It
thudded into position as solidly as a bank vault.

‘You’re serious about being attacked,’ she said soberly.

‘I don’t want to alarm you,’ said Roland, ‘but the contents of those two suitcases are worth the equivalent of twenty million dollars each on the other side. And there
are several hundred active family members that we know of – and possibly ones we don’t in hidden cells established by their family elders to gain a competitive edge over their rivals in
the Clan. You’re unusual in that you’re a hidden one who was never intended to be hidden. The families
in camera
could raid us, and unless we took precautions, we’d be
sitting ducks. A young man like Vincenze – ’ he shrugged – ‘maybe a bit more mature. Waiting on a street corner. Can set off a bomb or walk up behind someone and shoot him,
then just vanish into thin air. Unless there’s a doppelgänger on the other side or maybe a hill where over here there’s a cleared area, there’s no way of stopping
that.’

‘Twenty million.’

‘At a very approximate exchange rate,’ Roland offered, starting the engine.

Bright daylight appeared from an electrically operated door at the top of the exit ramp. He put the Mercedes in gear and gently slid forward. ‘We’re fairly safe, though. This car has
been customized by the same people that made Eduard Shevardnadze’s car. The President of the Republic of Georgia.’

‘Should that mean something?’ asked Miriam.

‘Two RPG-7s, an antitank mine, and eighty rounds from a heavy machine gun. The passengers survived.’

‘I hope we’re not going to encounter that sort of treatment,’ she said with feeling, reaching sideways to squeeze his fingers.

‘We aren’t.’ He squeezed back briefly, then accelerated up the ramp. ‘But there’s no harm in taking precautions.’

They came up out of the ground near Belmont, and Roland chauffeured them smoothly onto the Concord turnpike and then the inner ring road and the tunnel. Roland took a circuitous root, spending
as much time in tunnels or on fast highways as possible. They exited the highway near Logan International, and Roland drove toward the freight terminal. Miriam relaxed against the black leather. It
smelled like a very expensive private club, redolent of the stink of money. She’d been in rooms with billionaires before and any number of sharkish venture capitalists, but somehow this was
different.

Most of the billionaires she had met were manipulative jerks or workaholics, obsessive and insecure about something or other. Roland, in contrast, was ‘old money’ – old and
unselfconscious, mature as a vintage wine. So old that he’d never known what it was like to be poor – or even upper-middle class. For a moment, she felt a flash of green-eyed envy
– then remembered the two-million-dollar ballast in her purse.

‘Roland, how rich am I?’ she asked nervously.

‘Oh, very,’ he said casually. He swung the Mercedes into the entrance to a parking lot, where an automatic barrier lifted – also automatically – and then brought them to
a halt in front of an anonymous-looking office with a FedEx sign above it. ‘I don’t know for sure,’ he added, ‘but I think your share may run to almost one percent of the
Clan’s net worth. Certainly many millions.’

‘Oh, how marvelous,’ she said sarcastically. Then more thoughtfully, ‘I could pay all Iris’s medical bills out of the petty cash. Couldn’t I?’

‘Yes. Help me with the suitcases?’

‘If you help me sort out Iris’s medical bills. Seriously.’

‘Seriously? Yes, I’ll do that.’ She stood up and stretched, then waited while Roland lifted the heavy cases out of the trunk. She took one and followed him as he rolled the
other up to the door, swiped a magnetic card, and entered under the watchful eye of a security camera.

They came to a small office where a middle-aged man in a white shirt and black tie was waiting. ‘Today’s consignment,’ said Roland. ‘I’d like to introduce you to
Miriam. She might be making runs on her own in future – if things work out. Miriam, this is Jack. He handles dispatch and customs at this end.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Jack, handing Roland a board with a three-part form ready to sign. ‘This is just a formality to confirm I’ve received everything,’ he added
for her benefit. Balding, overweight, and red-faced, Jack was about as homely as anyone she’d seen since she’d been pitched headfirst into this nightmare of aristocracy. Miriam smiled
at him.

‘There, that’s it, then,’ he said, taking the papers back from Roland. ‘Have a nice day, now!’

‘My best to your wife,’ Roland replied. ‘Come on, Miriam. Time to go.’

‘Okay.’ She followed him back to the car. He started the engine and eased them back out into the local traffic around the light industrial area. ‘Where next?’

‘Oh, we pick up the cases for the return leg, then we’re at liberty,’ he said. ‘I thought you wanted to do some shopping? And some other things to see to? How about a
couple of hours at Copley Place and messing around Back Bay, then lunch?’

‘Sounds good,’ she agreed.

‘Okay.’ He pulled over, into another parking lot. ‘Give me a hand again?’

‘Sure.’

They got out and Miriam followed him into yet another office. The procedure was the same in reverse: Roland signed a couple of forms and this time collected two identical, ribbed aluminum
suitcases, each so heavy that Miriam could barely carry hers. ‘Right, now into town,’ he said after he lifted them both into the car’s trunk. ‘It’s almost ten
o’clock. Think you’ve got time to hit the shops and be back by five?’

‘I’m sure I have.’ She smiled at him. ‘There’s some stuff I could do with your help for, actually. Want to hang around?’

‘Delighted to oblige.’

*

The Copley Place shops weren’t exactly ideal, but it was totally covered and had enough stuff in it to keep Miriam occupied for a couple of hours. The platinum card
didn’t catch fire – it didn’t even show signs of overheating when she hit Niemann Marcus and some less obvious shops for a couple of evening outfits and an expensive piece of
rolling luggage.

After the first half hour, Roland did what many polite men did: zoned out and smiled or nodded whenever she asked him for an opinion. Which was exactly what Miriam was hoping for, because her
real goal wasn’t to fill her wardrobe with evening dresses and expensive lingerie (although that was an acceptable side effect), but to pull out a bundle of cash and use some of it to buy
certain accessories. Such as a prepaid cell phone and a very small Sony laptop with a bundle of software (‘If I can’t go back home, I’ll need something to write my articles
on,’ she pointed out to Roland, hoping he wouldn’t figure out how big a loss-leader that would make it). She finished her spree in a sports shop, buying some outdoor tools, a pocket GPS
unit, and a really neat folding solar panel, guaranteed to charge her laptop up – which she picked up while he was poking around a display of expensive hunting tackle.

She wasn’t totally sure what she was going to do with this stuff, but she had some ideas. In particular, the CD-ROMs full of detailed maps of the continental United States and the other
bits of software she’d slipped in under his nose ought to come in handy. Even if they didn’t, she figured that if Angbard expected her to shop like a dizzy teenager, then she ought to
get him used to her shopping like a dizzy teenager.
That way he’ll have one less handle on me when I stop,
she thought.

Twelve thousand dollars went really fast when she was buying Sony notebooks, and even faster when she switched to Hermès and Escada and less well-known couture.

But it felt unreal, like play money. Some of the clothes would have to be altered to fit, and delivered: She took them anyway. ‘I figure it can be altered on the other side,’ she
murmured to Roland by way of explanation. He nodded enthusiastically and she managed to park him for a few minutes in a bookshop next door to her real target, a secondhand theatrical clothing shop
for an old-fashioned long skirt and shirtwaist that could pass for one of the servants’ outfits.

Theatrical supplier, my ass
, she thought.
The escape committee supply store is more like it!

Around two o’clock she took mercy on Roland, who by this time was flagging, checking his watch every ten minutes and following her around like a slightly dejected dog. ‘It’s
okay,’ she said, ‘I’m about done. How about we catch that lunch you were talking about, then head back to the house? I’ve got to get some of these clothes altered, which
means looking up Ma’am Rosein, and then I need to spend a couple of hours on the computer.’

‘That’s great,’ Roland said with unconcealed sincerity. ‘How about Legal Seafood for lunch?’

Miriam really didn’t go for clam chowder, but if it kept him happy that was fine by her. ‘Okay,’ she said, towing along her designer escape kit. ‘Let’s go
eat!’

They ate. Over lunch she watched Roland carefully. He was about twenty-eight, she noted. Dartmouth. Harvard. Real Ivy League territory and then some. Classic profile. She sized him up carefully.
Shaves well. Looks great. No visible bad habits, painfully good manners.
If there wasn’t clearly something going on, I’d be drooling. Wouldn’t I?
She thought. In fact,
maybe there’s something in that?

Maybe that’s why Angbard is shoving us together. Or not. I need to find out more about the skeletons in the Clan closet and the strange fruit rotting on the family tree.
And there
were worse ways of doing that than chatting with Roland over lunch.

‘Why is your uncle putting you on my case?’ she finally asked over dessert, an exquisite crème brûlée. ‘I mean, what’s your background? You said he
was thinking one step ahead. Why you?’

‘Hmm.’ Roland stirred sugar into his coffee, then looked at her with frank blue eyes. ‘I think your guess is as good as mine.’

‘You’re unmarried.’ She kicked herself immediately afterward.
Very perceptive, Ms. Holmes.

‘As if that matters.’ He smiled humorlessly. ‘I have an attitude problem.’

‘Oh?’ She leaned forward.

‘Let’s just say, Angbard wants me where he can keep an eye on me. They sent me to college when I was eighteen,’ he said morosely. ‘It was – well, it was an
eye-opener. I stayed for four years, then applied to Harvard immediately. Economics and history. I thought I might be able to change things back home. Then I decided I didn’t want to go back.
After my first year or so, I’d figured out that I couldn’t stay over here just on the basis of my name – I’d have to work. So I did. I wasn’t much of one for the girls
during that first degree – ’ he caught her speculative look – ‘or the boys.’

‘So?’
Personal Memo: Find out what they think of sex, as opposed to marriage. The two are not always interchangeable.
‘What next?’

‘Well.’ He shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I wanted to stay over here. I got into a graduate research program, studying the history of economic development in the Netherlands. Met a
girl named Janice along the way. One thing led to another.’

‘You wanted to marry her?’ asked Miriam.

‘Sky Father, no!’ He looked shocked. ‘The Clan council would never have stood for it! Even if it was just over here. But I could buy us both a house over here, make believe
that – ’ He stopped, took a sip of coffee, then put his cup down again. All through the process, he avoided Miriam’s gaze.

‘You didn’t want to go back,’ she stated.

‘You can cross over twice in a day, in an hour, if you take beta-blockers,’ he said quietly. ‘Speaking of which.’ He extracted a blister pack of pills from his inner
pocket and passed it across to her. ‘They do something about the headaches. You can discharge your duty to Clan and family that way, keep the post moving, and live nine-tenths of your life
free of . . . of . . . of . . .’

Miriam waited for him to sort his tongue out.

‘Jan and I had two years together,’ he finally said quietly. ‘Then they broke us up.’

‘The Clan.’ She turned the pack of pills over and over, reading the label. ‘Did they – ’