Merchants War by Charles Stross

Author:Charles Stross [Stross, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-20T14:59:08.484000+00:00

Chapter 9

PURSUIT

The small house hunkered a short way back from the sidewalk, one of a row of houses in an area that wasn't exactly cheap — nowhere in Boston was cheap — but that had once been affordable for ordinary working people. Brilliana knew it quite well. She'd been watching it discreetly for over an hour, and she was pretty sure that nobody was home and, more important, nobody else was watching it. Which suited her just fine, because if it was under surveillance what she was about to do would quite possibly get her killed.

Swallowing to clear her over-dry mouth, Brill opened the car door and stepped out into the hot summer sunlight. She slung the oversized leather handbag on her left shoulder, discreetly checking that she could get a hand into it in a hurry, then let the door of the rental car swing shut. The key was in the ignition: the risk of someone stealing the car was, in her view, minor compared to the risk of not being able to get away fast if things went wrong.

The road was clear. She glanced both ways before crossing it, a final check for concealed watchers. I hope Paulie's all right, she fretted. The ominous turn of recent events was bad enough for those who could look after themselves. Paulette wasn't a player, and didn't have the wherewithal to escape if things spun out of control. And Brill owed her. Not that she'd had much time to demonstrate it, lately — the past week had run her ragged, and this was the first free day she'd had to spend in the United States for weeks.

She paused for a moment at the front door, straining for any sign of wrongness, then shrugged. The key slid into the lock and turned smoothly: Brill let herself inside, then closed the door behind her. "Paulie?" She called softly.

No reply. The house felt empty. Brill began to relax. She 's shopping, or at work. Whatever "work" meant these days — Brill couldn't be sure, but the huge mess that Miriam had landed in had probably cut Paulie loose from her sinecure. She glanced around the living room. The flat-screen TV was new, but the furniture was the same. Yo, big spender! Paulette wasn't stupid about money. She kept a low profile. Hopefully she'd avoided being caught up in the dragnet so far.

Brill put her bag down on the kitchen counter and pulled out a black box. Switching it on, she paced out the ground floor rooms, front to back, checking corners and walls and especially light fittings. The bug detector stayed stubbornly green-lit. "Good," she said aloud as she stashed it back in the bag. Next, she pulled out another box equipped with a telephone socket and extension cable, and plugged each of the phone handsets into it in order. A twitter of dialing tones, but the speaker on the box stayed silent: nobody had sneaked an infinity bug onto her landline. That left

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