Empire Games Series, Book 1(20)
Spies
A PRISON CAMP NEAR BOSTON, TIME LINE THREE, JANUARY 2004
“I think it’s quite simple. To use an analogy from US history in my time line, imagine this is Cape Canaveral and we’re their captured Nazi rocket scientists,” Miriam Beckstein told her audience.
It was hot inside the crowded wooden hut, which was a small mercy. There was little enough fuel this winter, in the wake of the revolution that had brought down the British imperial crown in the Americas. But the privileged detainees in this hut had a stove and a supply of good Appalachian coal; droplets of water condensed on the inside of the windows, forming slug trails rather than freezing to the glass.
“That’s an ambitious proposal.” Helmut ven Rindt was doubtful. A chunky fellow, formerly part of the Clan’s security organization, he was efficient if given a goal. But he wasn’t the most imaginative of leaders. “It seems to me we’ve got more immediate problems.” He raised a bushy eyebrow and looked round at everyone—the dozen or so members of the surviving Clan leadership who’d made it this far. “Like being imprisoned, and our families being held hostage. Just to start with.”
After a rogue Clan faction had bombed the White House and Capitol, the US nuclear counterstrike had utterly destroyed their home country, the Gruinmarkt, in time line one. The survivors had sought exile here, in time line three, but the situation had been complicated, to say the least, by the recent revolution. Helmut continued, giving voice to the complaints Miriam had heard only whispered quietly so far.
“This isn’t our home. In this new time line, we have no power and no future—unless we take action.” Helmut stood as he spoke, emphasizing words with gestures, fist striking palm in vehement emphasis. “Nor are the radical rabble well-disposed toward our kind. We should do better to seek exile in the French Empire and reestablish our trade on the other side of the Atlantic—”
By “trade” he meant paperwork-free shipping: the Clan had become phenomenally rich by smuggling narcotics into the United States via their home time line. Miriam suppressed a shudder. She’d been given a leather trench coat by their captors: a gesture of privilege for the leader of the Clan refugees. Worn over a cable-knit sweater and heavy wool skirt it was at least right for the climate. Now she pulled it tight around her shoulders, as if against a sudden draft. The old trade—smuggling—was how the Clan had gotten into trouble in the first place, and if Helmut thought restarting the trade was a good idea, so must a whole lot of other relatives.
“We can’t go back.” She shook her head, denial personified. “They’ll be on the lookout for us everywhere in time line two: everybody knows about us, thanks to those idiots. Trying to restart the traditional smuggling trade in Europe or China is a nonstarter. Also,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “the American government will come after us if they see signs of suspicious activity.”
Helmut wasn’t dropping it: “Look out there!” he said, angrily gesturing at the iced-over window. “This is where they’ve put us!” Beyond the window, rows of snowcapped barracks huddled together in chilly solidarity within high brick walls topped with broken bottles set in hastily applied mortar. Guards with bolt-action rifles patrolled beyond the wall. These were the Special Prisoner quarters, given over to the world-walkers, asylum seekers from a parallel universe where history had taken a different course. “It’s insupportable! I know you sought alliance with the revolutionaries, but they treat us like—”
“Stop your foolishness!” Iris Beckstein erupted. She looked older than her sixty years, and she was slowly dying. Hunched inside the hood of the half-broken invalid chair their captors had donated, she shuddered briefly, then glared at ven Rindt with a death stare she’d clearly inherited from her mother, the dowager duchess. “Pursuing the old trade is what put us in this camp, in case you’ve forgotten. And we’re not doing badly compared to the neighbors.”
The rest of the camp was full of Politicals—captured Royalist troops and members of the aristocracy who hadn’t made it onto the refugee ships in time to escape the revolution that had toppled the British Empire in early 2003. After the civil war, the Politicals didn’t rate heating and full bellies in the famine-struck winter of the Emergency. Almost two feet of snow lay on the ground outside the huts. Prisoners working under guard removed the frozen bodies from the Politicals’ side of the camp every morning. The Clan refugees, in contrast, had fuel for their stoves and food for their children.
“It can’t be worse than—”
“For once in your life, just shut up and listen,” Iris grumbled, then subsided in a fit of coughing.
“Mom? Are you all right?” Miriam asked anxiously.
Iris waved away the offer of help: “’M surviving,” she said hoarsely. “Been better. Carry on.”
Helmut, possibly due to some residual respect for authority, was momentarily silent. Miriam took advantage to continue her urgent pitch. “Helmut is absolutely right that we’ve got no power or influence here. But I think we can remedy that. Our new goal must be to make ourselves indispensable. And the easiest way to do that is to give them information. We can give them technological and industrial know-how—knowledge this time line won’t discover themselves for many decades.”