The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) by Stross Charles Read Free Book Online

off one wall of the kitchen led down into
the low-ceilinged cellar. With perfect hindsight, Mike had to admit, deciding to clean house while recovering from a broken leg and a nasty little infection was not one of his most sensible moves.
But once he’d gotten down those steps, it turned out that filling garbage sacks and trying to figure out how to dismantle the dead drier that had been stranded down here for years was a whole
lot easier than trying to figure out how to get back up the stairs. Especially because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it around the tight bend at the top, and having to phone for
help to dig him out of his own cellar would do his self-image no good at all.
( You’re a special agent working for a secret government organization and you had to call in help to
climb
a staircase?
What is this, the CIA?)
    So naturally the phone rang while he was stuck in the basement.
    Mike swore. The bell rang twice more as he disentangled himself from the cable of the defunct drier and hopped around the work-bench, trying to find the extension handset behind the pile of
rusting paint cans and the overflowing toolbox. ‘Yes?’ he barked, making a one-handed grab for the phone and simultaneously putting too much weight on his bad leg.
    ‘Is that Mr Fleming?’ It was a woman’s voice, a noisy office providing unwelcome background context.
If this is a junk call
. . . Mike felt a hot flash of anger, echoing
the pain in his right ankle. About a week and a half ago he’d trodden on a mantrap – a medieval antipersonnel mine, as Sergeant Hastert had put it – and with the cracked bone,
torn ligaments, and nice little infection he’d picked up, he’d been lucky to keep the leg.
    ‘Who is this?’ Mike demanded.
    ‘I’m Letitia, from Family Home Services. Can I speak to Mr. Fleming, please?’
    The spark of helpless anger passed rapidly. ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ He glanced round instinctively. ‘Free to talk.’ No,
not
a telesales call; the background
office noise was a recording and the company name a cover. ‘It’s Tuesday today, isn’t it?’
    ‘No, it’s Wednesday,’ said the woman at the other end of the line, who wasn’t called Letitia any more than it was any day other than Monday. ‘You’re late for
your CAT scan. Dr. James wants to see you as soon as possible, and as it happens we’ve got a slot free right now – are you free now?’
    Mike glanced round at the dusty basement again, his pulse quickening. ‘I believe I can fit you in.’
    ‘Good. An ambulance will collect you in fifteen minutes, if that’s convenient?’
    ‘I’ll be waiting.’ The usual pleasantries, and Mike hung up the handset, staring at it in surprise. So the colonel’s boss wanted to talk to him? But the colonel knew damn
well what shape his leg was in, and the boss man was in the loop, so what could he want . . . ?
    Mike began to smile, for the first time in days.
    The ambulance that pulled up outside his front door twenty minutes later looked just like any other, and the two paramedics made short work of wheeling Mike – sitting up, chatting, no need
to alarm the neighbors unduly – into the back of their vehicle. The door shut, and there the resemblance stopped: Normal ambulances didn’t have door gunners in black fatigues riding
behind the one-way glass windows. They didn’t roll like a foundering ship beneath the weight of armor, either; and they especially didn’t come with passengers like Dr. James, whose
specialty was distinctly nonmedical.
    Dr. Andrew James scared the crap out of Mike Fleming, with his Ph.D. from Harvard and the flag pin that had lately replaced the tiny crucifix on his lapel. Gaunt and skinny and utterly
dedicated, James attended to the ills of the body politic with all the care you could expect of an apprentice engineer of human souls; and if an amputation was required, he could get a consent form
any time he liked, signed by the office of the vice president.