Free The Trade of Queens by Charles Stross Page A

the meeting was to be the renewal of an old alliance. And Elder Huan intended to make Reynolds an offer that would secure the safety of the family throughout the current crisis.
    *   *   *
    For his part, Reynolds—a thickset fellow with brown hair, thinning at the crown, and half-moon pince-nez that gave him an avuncular appearance even when supervising interrogations—was looking forward to the meeting for entirely the wrong reasons.
    â€œI want you and two squads to be ready outside the front door. Place another squad round the back. Plain clothes, two steamers ready for backup.” He smiled, not warmly. Brentford, his secretary, nodded and scribbled in his notebook. “You should arrest everyone in the building or leaving it after my departure, unless I indicate otherwise by displaying a red kerchief in my breast pocket. Special Regime Blue, with added attention. The charges will be resisting arrest, treason, membership of a proscribed organization, and anything else that occurs to you. Have the Star Tribunal ready to sit on them and I’ll sign off on the execution warrants immediately. Do you have that?”
    Brentford nodded, impassive. These were not unusual orders; Citizen Reynolds took a very robust approach to dealing with subversives. “The, ah, exception, sir? Do you have any other instructions to deal with that case?”
    â€œNo.” Reynolds made a fist, squeezing. “If anything comes up I’ll handle it myself.”
    â€œThe danger, sir—”
    â€œThey’re petty smugglers and racketeers, citizen. I dealt with them before, during the Long Emergency; it’s almost a certainty that they want to deal themselves a hand at the table, in which case they’re in for a short, sharp surprise. I merely reserve the final judgment in case there’s something more serious at hand.” He stood, behind his desk, and straightened his uniform tunic, flicking invisible dust motes from one black lapel. “Plain clothes, I say again. I’ll see you at eight.”
    Reynolds strode to the door as Brentford saluted. He didn’t look back. Brentford was a reliable party man, a typical functionary of the new organization: He’d do as he was told, and look up to Reynolds as a bluff fellow who led from the front, as long as he occasionally indulged in eccentricities such as periodically going into the field to gather up nests of vipers and traitors with his own hands.
    Reynolds didn’t smile at the thought. There were risks attached to this behavior, and he didn’t hold with taking risks unless there was something he held to be personally important at stake. Maintaining his carefully constructed public image was all very well, but placing himself in front of a desperate fugitive’s knife was … it was undignified . On the other hand, sometimes it was necessary to deal with former Polis informers himself, to insure that they fell downstairs or swallowed their suicide pills. He considered it to be a small mercy—far less unpleasant than what fate held in store for them in the ungentle hands of his enthusiastic staff in Interrogations and Inquiries.
    Citizen-Commissioner Stephen Reynolds was more than willing to go into the field in person and meet past friends—especially if it meant that he could silence them before they could spill their guts to the interrogators in the BIS basements.
    *   *   *
    The venue Eldest Huan had chosen for the meeting was a tiny front-room bar in a public house in Menzies Gate, a run-down suburb on the edge of what, in another world, would be called Brooklyn. His foot soldiers had paid the owner handsomely to take his wife and six children and two servants and move out for the night: a three-month amnesty from protection money, and a wallet bulging with ration coupons. “I want privacy,” Huan had told One-Eye Cho, “and I want a safe exit. See to it.” The