Free The Traders' War (Merchant Princes Omnibus 2) by Stross Charles Page B

New York
State.’
    On the screen, something peeled off Morgan’s wrist. He rubbed it some more, then turned the faucet off, raised his arm, and peered at whatever the plaster was concealing.
    ‘Checking our records, it appears that Mr. Morgan has purchased over sixty handguns this way, spending rather more on them than he pays in rent. That’s in addition to his other
duties, which appear to include smuggling industrial quantities of pharmaceutical-grade narcotics. Now, this is where it gets interesting. Watch the screen.’
    Mike blinked. One moment Morgan was standing in front of the washbasin, peering at the inside of his wrist. The next moment, he was nowhere to be seen. The cell was empty.
    Off to one side, Frank from the Surveyor’s Office started to complain. ‘What
is
this? I don’t see what this has got to do with me. So you’ve got a guard taking
kickbacks to fool with the videotape in the county jail – ’
    The lights came up and the door opened. ‘Nope.’ The man standing in the doorway was slightly built, in his early forties, with receding brown hair cropped short. He smiled easily as
he stepped into the room and stood in front of the screen.
It’s him
, Mike realized with interest. The commentator with the dry sense of humor. ‘That wasn’t something we
pulled off a tape, that was a live feed. And I assure you, once those data packets arrived here
nobody
tampered with them.’
    Mike licked his lips. ‘This links in with what Greensleeves was saying, doesn’t it?’ he asked.
    ‘It does indeed.’ The man at the front of the auditorium looked pleased. ‘And that’s why you’re here. All of you, you’ve been exposed in some way to this
business.’ He nodded at Mike. ‘Some of you more than others – if it wasn’t for your quick thinking and the way you escalated it via Boston Special Operations, it might have
been another couple of days before we realized what kind of intelligence asset you were sitting on.’
    ‘Greensleeves?’ Pete asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. ‘You mean the kook?’
    Mike shook his head.
Source Greensleeves
, who called himself Matthias, and who kept yammering on about hidden conspiracies and other worlds in between blowing wholesale rings like they
were street-corner crack houses –
    ‘Yes, and I’m afraid he isn’t a kook. Let me introduce myself. I’m Lieutenant Colonel Eric Smith, Air Force, on secondment to NSA/CSS, Office of Unconventional Programs.
I work for the deputy director of technology. As of an hour ago, you guys are all on secondment from your usual assignments to a shiny new committee that doesn’t have a name yet, but that
reports to the director of the National Security Council directly, via whoever he puts on top of me – hence all the melted stovepipes and joint action stuff. We’ve got to break across
the usual departmental boundaries if we’re going to make this work. One reason you’re here is that you’ve all been vetted and had the security background checks in the course of
your ordinary work. In fact, all but one of you are already federal employees working in the national security or crime prevention sectors. The letters have gone out to your managers and you should
get independent confirmation when you get back home to Massachusetts and New York after this briefing round and tomorrow’s meetings and orientation lectures.’ Smith leaned against the
wall at the front of the room. ‘Any questions?’
    The guy from the DOE, Bob, looked up. ‘What am
I
doing here?’ he rumbled. ‘Is the NIRT a stakeholder?’
    Smith looked straight at him. ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘The Nuclear Incident Response Teams are stakeholders.’
    There was a hissing intake of breath: Mike glanced round in time to see Judith Herz look shocked.
    ‘We have reason to believe that theft of fissionable material is involved.’

FERTILE DISCUSSIONS
    The Countess Helge and her attendants traveled in convoy with other residents of