Read The Merchants' War for Free Online

mind. "I can see that," she said, which was true enough-just not the absolution it might be mistaken for. Either you're really down on your luck and you thought I might be an easy touch, or perhaps you're really ignorant and in trouble. Which is it? "Tell me who you think I am," she coaxed, "and I'll tell you if you're right or wrong."
    "Okay," said Beckstein. Margaret made a mental note- what does that word meant -then nodded encouragement. "I think you're a member of the Levelers' first circle. Probably involved in strategy and planning. And Erasmus was thinking about brokering a much higher-level arrangement between you and my, my, the people I represent. Represented." She swallowed. "Are you going to kill me?" she asked, only a faint quaver in her voice.
    "If you were entirely right in every particular, then I would absolutely have to kill you." Margaret smiled to lake the sting out of her words before she continued. "Luckily you're just wrong enough to be safe. But," she paused, to give herself time to prepare her next words carefully: "I don't think you're telling me the entire truth. And given your suspicions about my vocation, don't you think that might not be very clever? I want the truth, Miss Beckstein. And nothing but the truth."
    "I"- Beckstein swallowed. Her eyes flickered from side to side, as if seeking a way out: Margaret realized that she was shaking. "I'm not sure. Whether you'd believe me, and whether it would be a good thing if you did."
    This was getting harder to deal with by the minute, Margaret realized. The woman was clearly close to the end of her tether. She'd put a good face on things at first, but there was more to this than met the eye. "I've seen Erasmus," said Margaret. "He told me about the medicine you procured for him." She watched the Beckstein woman closely: "and he showed me the disc-playing machine. The, ah, DVD player. One miracle might be an accident, but two suggest an interesting pattern. You needn't worry about me mistaking you for a madwoman.
    "But you must tell me exactly what has happened to you. Right now, at once, with no dissembling. Otherwise I will not be able to save you..."

    * * *

BAM.
    Judith Herz tensed unconsciously, steeling herself for the explosion, and crossed her fingers as the four SWAT team officers swung the battering ram back for a second knock. Not that tensing would do any good if there was a bomb in the self-storage room...
    "Are you sure this is safe?" asked Rich Wall, fingering his mobile phone like it was a lucky charm.
    Herz look a deep breath. "No," she snapped. What do you expect me to say? "According to Mike Fleming, the asshole who sent us on this wild goose chase has a hard-on for claymore mines. That's why-"she gestured at the chalk marks on the cinder block wall the officers were attacking, the heaps of dust from the drills, the fiber-optic camera on its dolly off to one side"-we're going in through the wall."

    BAM.

    A cloud of dust billowed out. There was a rattle of debris falling from the impact site on the wall they'd started by drilling a quarter-inch hole, then sent a fiber-optic scope through with the delicacy of doctors conducting keyhole cardiac bypass surgery. The black plastic-coated hose had snaked around, bringing grainy gray images to the monitor screen on the console like images from a long-sealed Egyptian royal tomb. The dust lay heavy in the lockup room, as if it hadn't been visited for months or years. Something indistinct and bulky, probably a large oil tank, hulked a couple of feet beyond the hole, blocking the line of sight to the door to the lockup. The caretaker had kicked up a fuss when she'd told him they were going to punch through the wall from the other side-after unceremoniously ejecting the occupants' property-until she'd shown him her FBI card and the warrant the FEMA Sixth Circuit court had signed in their emergency in camera session. (Which the court had granted in a shot, the moment the bench saw the gamma ray