There were any number of answers to that question, but only the most paranoid one stood up to scrutiny: that this material was toxic or contagious, and only a translator who was already hopelessly compromised by exposure to secrets and lies should be given access to it. Mike had worked with source GREENSLEEVES in person, had been infiltrated into a Clan palace in the Gruinmarkt, and knew some of the ugly little truths about Dr. James and his plans. James wants me here so he can keep an eye on me, Mike realized, staring at the calendar behind his monitor one afternoon. He gets some use out of me and meanwhile I'm locked down as thoroughly as if he'd stuck me in one of those holding cells. He shivered slightly, despite the humid warmth that the air conditioning was fighting a losing battle to keep at bay.

The further into the tapes he got, the dirtier he felt. Someone-probably Matt, but he had an uneasy feeling that there was someone else in the loop-had wired a number of offices, both in the Gruinmarkt and, it appeared, in locations around the US. And they'd recorded a whole bunch of meetings in which various deeply scary old men had talked business. Much of it was innocent enough, by the standards of your everyday extradimensional narcoterrorists-move shipment X to port Y, bribe such a local nobleman to raise a peasant levy to carry it, how many knights shall we send, sir?-but every so often Mike ran across a segment that made him sit bolt upright in alarm, doubting the evidence of his own ears. And some of this stuff went back years. These recordings were anything but new. And bits of them, mixing broken English with hochsprache, were unambiguous and chilling in their significance:

"Another five hundred thousand to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America," said the old guy with the chilly voice and the accent like a fake Nazi general in a 50's war movie. "Feed it through the top four pressure trusts."

"What about the other items?…"

"Commission those, too. I believe we can stretch to sixty thousand to fund the additional studies, and they will provide valuable marketing material. Nobody looks at the source of this funding too closely, the police and prisons lobby discourage it." A dry chuckle. "The proposal on drug-screening prisons will be helpful, too. I think we should encourage it."

Mike paused the tape again and sat, staring at the computer screen for a while. The skin in the small of his back felt as if it was crawling off his spine. Did I just hear that? He wondered bleakly. Did I just hear one of the biggest cocaine smugglers in North America ordering his accountant to donate half a million dollars to a zero-tolerance pressure group? Jesus, what is the world coming to?

It made economic sense, if you looked at it from the right angle; it was not in the Clan's interest for the price of the commodity they shifted to drop-and drop it surely would, if it was legalized or if the pressure to keep up the war on drugs ever slackened. But for Mike Fleming, who'd willingly given the best years of his life to the DEA, it was a deeply unsettling idea; nauseating, even. Bought and sold: We're doing the dealers' work for them, keeping prices high.

His fingers hunted over the keyboard blindly, stabbing for letters as he stared through the glass screen, eyes unfocused. Eventually he stopped and pressed PLAY again.

"-Tell them first, though: They'll need to make suitable accounting arrangements so that it doesn't show up in the PAC's cash flow if they're audited."

A grunt of assent and the conversation switched track to inconsequentialities, something about one of the attendees'-a count's-daughter's impending wedding, gossip about someone else's urgent desire to obtain the current season of Friends on tape or DVD. And then the meeting broke up.

Mike hit the PAUSE button again and massaged his forehead. Then, glancing mistrustfully at the screen, he scribbled a note to himself on the legal pad next to the mouse mat: LOOK INTO CREATIVE ACCT. RE. PAC PAY-OFFS? And: COUNT INS-MANN'S DAUGHTER'S MARRIAGE -› POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS. It was a tenuous enough lead to go on, but the Clan's political entanglements were sufficiently personal that it might be-he was willing to concede to himself-that the wedding gossip was actually the most important news on this tape.

Then he pressed PLAY again.

Whatever device Dr. James's mole had been using to bug these meetings seemed to be sound-triggered, with about a thirty-second delay. Mike waited for the beep as the machine rolled on to the next recording, ready to laboriously translate and transcribe what he could. It was the old man, the duke, again, talking to a woman-younger, if Mike was any judge of such things, but…

"I'm not happy about the situation in D.C., my lady."

"Is there ever anything to be happy about in that town, your grace?"

"Sometimes. The trouble is, the people with whom we do business change too fast, and this new gang-this old gang, rather, in new office-they get above themselves."

"Can you blame them? They are fresh in the power and glory of the new administration. 'The adults are back in charge.'" (A snort.) "Once they calm down and finish feeling their oats they will come back to us."

"I wish I could share your optimism."

"You have reason to believe they'll be any different, this time?"

(Pause.) "Yes. We have worked with them before, it's true, and most of the team they have picked works well to protect our interests. For example, this attorney-general, John Ashcroft, we know him well. He's sound on the right issues, a zealot-but unlikely to become dangerously creative. He knows better than to rock the boat. An arms-length relationship is sufficient for this term, no need to get too close… our friends will keep him in line. But what concerns me is that some of the other positions are occupied by those of a less predictable disposition. These Nixon-era underlings, seeking to prove that they could have-yes, like the vice president, yes, exactly."

"You don't like the current vice president? You think he is unfit?"

"It's not that. You know about the West Coast operation, though-"

"Yes? I thought we terminated it years ago?"

"We did. My point is, WARBUCKS was our partner in that venture."

(Long pause.) "You're joking."

"I'm afraid not. He's one of our inner circle."

"But how-it's against policy! To involve politicians, I mean."

(Sigh.) "At the time, he was out of office. Swore blind he was going to stay out, too-that's when he began developing his business seriously. The complaints of financial opacity in Halliburton that came out during the Dresser Industries takeover-whose interests do you think those accounting arrangements served? And you must understand that from our point of view he looked like the perfect cutout. Respectable businessman, former defense secretary with heavy political and business contacts-who'd suspect him?"

"Crone Mother's tears! This should not have been allowed."

"May I remind you again that nobody saw it coming? That if we had, it wouldn't have happened?"

"What are you going to do about it?"

"What we always do, when they're too big to take down: I'm afraid we're going to have to pay him tribute."

"It's going to be expensive, Angbard. He's their king-in-waiting-indeed, he may actually be their king-emperor in all but name. The idiot child they've placed on the throne does not impress with his acumen. Someone must be issuing the orders in his stead."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure, my lady; he's strong-willed and I'm told he's not as stupid as he looks when the glare of the public gaze is shuttered. And I am not certain you're right about the cost of tribute, either. WARBUCKS is as rich as one of our first circle, and from his office in the Old Executive Office Building he has more power than many of our relatives can even conceive of. So we cannot buy him with money or cow him with threats-but there is a currency a man of his type craves, and he knows we can pay in it."