Rule 34 - Charles Stross [127]
Your tongue swells abruptly, and you cough. “To whom am I speaking?”
“This is Bhaskar.” Whoever Bhaskar is, he sounds amused. “And you are?”
“This is the Scottish consulate,” you say, your voice barely above a dry-mouthed whisper. “I need to talk to the colonel.”
“The—you say the Scottish consulate?”
“Yes.” You swallow, hoping the phone app they gave you is adequately encrypted. “There’s a problem.”
“A problem. And for this problem you need to talk to Felix Datka.” His tone sharpens.
“Yes.” You realize you’re clutching the edge of your desk as if it’s a life-belt. “I know what you’re doing, what you’re using me for, and I don’t, I can’t . . .”
“Wait, please. Ah, Felix—you, you had better explain this to the colonel himself. He will speak to you now.” There’s a muffled noise, as of a phone being passed between hands, and then a new speaker.
“This is Felix Datka. Identify yourself.”
The background music has stopped. “It’s Anwar, Anwar Hussein. From Edinburgh, your honorary consul.”
The colonel snorts superciliously. “And you are calling because . . . ?”
All your indignation comes boiling up at once.
“My cousin’s dead, Colonel. Since your man arrived in my city, with his curious demands. Surely this is not a coincidence? And it is not bad enough being held up to ridicule by the other diplomats of this city, oh no! Everybody knows that Issyk-Kulistan is a front for some strange diplomatic game. And the trade delegations with the bread mix that is a culture medium for illegal nanosystems, you have me handing this stuff out openly as if on the street-corner! Where the police can find me, red-handed! And this week, this week even the news stops. There is no news, as if you cannot even be bothered to maintain the pretense! Have you no decency, sir?”
There is no sound from the other end of the phone, but a glance at the screen tells you the connection is still there.
“Sir?”
There is a pause. Then Datka asks, softly, meditatively, terrifyingly: “What do you mean, ‘bread mix’?”
Light-headed and nauseous, you collect your possessions and walk out of the consulate. You leave behind: the safe and its contents, the travelling trunk with its commercial samples of bread mix, the laptop, the furnishings, the stale posturing and lies. You are going home, home to your family and your future and the things that matter to you. Fuck Adam and his stupid get-rich-quick scheme, scamming scammers. Fuck Colonel Datka and his secret policeman’s eyes. Fuck the colonel’s man Christie, whoever he is. You don’t need any of them. They can’t give you back Tariq’s annoying jokes, his sly word-play. They can’t give you an extra minute to say good-bye to your cousin. And if they can’t do that, how heavily should your children’s futures weigh on your shoulders?
If it comes to it, you’ll turn yourself in to Mr. Webber and shop the lot of them. Go back inside Saughton, if that’s what it takes to keep them away from Bibi and the bairns.
You are hungry—you forgot to make yourself breakfast this morning—and you are sick at heart as you march determinedly towards the tram stop. You’re walking away from a good solid job that was paying you—well, it wasn’t paying you well in purely monetary terms, but it got you respect. And after what you threw in Colonel Datka’s face (or more accurately, his ear) you have zero expectation of keeping the job. Bibi will be livid. She’ll also be exhausted from sitting up all night with Aunt Sameena and Uncle Taleb and the kids, and she’s probably back at work by now—
Yes, you can see all this. Nevertheless.
You check your phone for the tram schedule, and it flashes a red warning at you: delays expected due to an accident on Leith Walk, get the bus instead. You can see at least one tram with your own eyes, but who knows how the network works? So you stop by the foot of the Mound, outside the big art gallery, and poke at the time-table. You’ve hit the morning lull after rush hour, it seems, when half the buses