“One of these days you’d better try and kick the habit,” Pete said mildly. “It can’t be doing your kidneys any good.”
“Listen, I run on coffee,” Mike insisted. “Lessee—”
He thumbed rapidly through the internal mail, sorting administrative memos from formal letters—some branches still ran on paper, their intranets unconnected to the outside world—and a couple of real, honest, postal envelopes. He stacked them in three neat piles and switched on his PC. While he waited for it to boot he opened the two letters from outside. One of them was junk, random spam sent to him by name and offering cheap loans. The other—
“Holy shit!”
Pete started, nearly going over backwards in his chair. “Hey! You want to keep a lid—”
“Holy shit!”
Pete turned around. Mike was on his feet, a letter clutched in both hands and an expression of awe on his face. “What?” Pete asked mildly.
“Got to get this to forensics,” Mike muttered, carefully putting the letter down on his desk, then carefully peering inside the envelope. A little plastic baggie with something brown in it—
“Evidence?” asked Pete, interestedly: “Hey, I thought that was external?”
“You’re not kidding!” Mike put it down as delicately as if it was made of fine glass. “Anonymous tip-offs ‘R’ us!”
“Explain.”
“This letter.” Mike pointed. “It’s fingering the Phantom.”
“You’re sure about that?” Pete looked disbelieving. Mike nodded.
“Jesus, Mike, you need to learn some new swear words, holy shit doesn’t cut it! Show me that thing—”
“Whoa!” Mike carefully lifted the envelope. “Witness. You and me, we’re going down to the lab to see what’s in this baggie. If it’s what the letter says, and it checks out, it’s a sample from that batch of H that hit New York four months ago. You know? The really big one that coincided with that OD spike, pushed the price down so low they were buying it by the ounce? From the Phantom network?”
“So?” Pete looked interested. “Somebody held onto a sample.”
“Somebody just sent us a fucking tip-off that there’s an address in Belmont that’s the local end of the distribution chain. Wholesale, Pete. Name, rank, and serial number. Dates—we need to check the goddamn dates. Pete, this is an inside job. Someone on the inside of the Phantom wants to come in from the cold and they’re establishing their bona fides.”
“We’ve had falsies before. Anonymous bastards.”
“Yeah, but this one’s got a sample, and a bunch of supplementaries. From memory, I think it checks out—at least, there’s not anything obviously wrong with it at first glance. I want it dusted for fingerprints and DNA samples before we go any further. What do you think?”
Pete whistled. “If it checks out, and the dates match, I figure we can get the boss to come along with us and go lean on Judge Judy. A break on the Phantom would be just too cool.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Mike grinned ferociously. “How well do you think we can resource this one?”
“If it’s the Phantom? Blank check time. Jesus, Mike, if this is the Phantom, I think we’ve just had the biggest break in this office in about the last twenty years. It’s going to be all over Time Magazine if this goes down!”
In the hallway outside the boardroom, the palace staff had busied themselves setting up a huge buffet. Cold cuts from a dozen game animals formed intricate sculptures of meat depicting their animate origins. Jellied larks vied with sugar-pickled fruit from the far reaches of the West Coast, and exotic delicacies imported at vast expense formed pyramids atop a row of silver platters the size of small dining tables. Hand-made Belgian truffles competed for the attention of the aristocracy with caviar-topped crackers and brightly colored packets of M&Ms.
Despite the huge expanse of food, most of the Clan shareholders had other things in mind. Though waiters with trays laden with wine glasses circulated freely—and with jugs of imported coffee and tea—the main appetite they exhibited seemed to be for speech. And speech with one or two people in particular.
“Just keep them away from me, please,” Miriam said plaintively, leaning close to Olga. “They’ll be all over me.”
“You can’t avoid them!” Olga insisted, taking her arm and steering her toward the open doors onto the reception area. “Do you want them to think you’re afraid?” she hissed in Miriam’s ear. “They’re like rats that eat their own young if they smell weakness in the litter.”
“It’s not that—I’ve got to go.” Miriam pulled back and steered Olga in turn, toward the door at the back of the boardroom where she’d seen Angbard pushing her mother’s wheelchair, ahead of the crush. Kara, her eyes wide, stuck close behind Miriam.
“Where are you going?” asked Olga.
“Follow.” Miriam pushed on.
“Eh, I say! Young woman!”
A man Miriam didn’t recognize, bulky and gray-haired, was blocking her way. Evidently he wanted to buttonhole her. She smiled blandly. “If you don’t mind, sir, there’ll be time to talk later. But I urgently need to have words with—” She gestured as she slid past him, leaving Kara to soothe ruffled feathers, and shoved the door open.
“Ma!”
It was a small side room, sparsely furnished by Clan standards. Iris looked around as she heard Miriam. Angbard looked round, too, as did a cadaverous-looking fellow with long white hair who had been hunched slightly, on the receiving end of some admonition.
“Helge,” Angbard began, in a warning tone of voice.
“Mother!” Miriam glared at Iris, momentarily oblivious.
“Hiya, kid.” Iris grinned tiredly. “Allow me to introduce you to another of your relatives. Henryk? I’d like to present my daughter.” Iris winked at Angbard: “Cut her a little slack, alright?”
The man who’d been listening to Angbard tilted his head on one shoulder. “Charmed,” he said politely.
The duke coughed into a handkerchief and cast Miriam a grim look. “You should be circulating,” he grumbled.
“Henryk was always my favorite uncle,” Iris said, glancing at the duke.
“I mean, there had to be one of them, didn’t there?”
Miriam paused uncomfortably, unwilling to meet Angbard’s gaze. Meanwhile, Henryk looked her up and down. “I see,” she said after a moment. “Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?”
“Helge.” Angbard refused to be ignored. “You should be out front. Mixing with the guests.” He frowned at her. “You know how much stock they put in appearances.” Harrumph. “This is their first sight of you. Do you want them to think you’re a puppet? Conspiring with the bench?”
“I am conspiring with you,” she pointed out. “And anyway, they’d eat me alive. You obviously haven’t done enough press conferences. You don’t throw the bait in the water if you want to pull it out intact later, do you? You’ve got to keep these things under control.”
Angbard’s frown intensified. “This isn’t a press conference; this is a beauty show,” he said. “If you do not go out there and make the right moves they will assume that you cannot. And if you can’t, what are you good for? I arranged this session at your request. The least you can do is not make a mess of it.”
“There’s going to be a vote later on,” Iris commented. “Miriam, if they think you’re avoiding them it’ll give the reactionary bastards a chance to convince the others that you’re a fraud, and that won’t go in your favor, will it?”
Miriam sighed. “That’s what I like about you, Ma, family solidarity.”
“She’s right, you know,” Henryk spoke up. “Motions will go forward. They may accept your claim of title, but not your business proposals. Not if names they know and understand oppose it, and you are not seen to confront them.”