"Charles Stross - Merchant princes 01 - The Family Trade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

"No, Mom, I use it every day. I couldn't do my job without it. I just don't know
enough about modern multiple sclerosis drug treatments to risk second-guessing
your specialist, all right? I might get it wrong, and then who'd you sue?"
"If you say so." Iris snorted. "You didn't come here just to talk about that,
did you?"
Damn, thought Miriam. It had always been very difficult to pull one over on her
mother. "I lost my job," she confessed.
"I wondered." Iris nodded thoughtfully. "All those dotcoms of yours, it was
bound to be infectious. Is that what happened?"
"No." Miriam shook her head. "I stumbled across something and mishandled it
badly. They fired me. And Paulie ... Remember I told you about her?"
Iris closed her eyes. "Bastards. The bosses are bastards."
"Mother!" Miriam wasn't shocked at the languageтАФIris's odd background jumped out
to bite her at the strangest momentsтАФbut it was the risk of misunderstanding.
"It's not that simple; I screwed up."
"So you screwed up. Are you going to tell me you deserved to be fired?" asked
Iris.
"No. But I should have dug deeper before I tried to run the story," Miriam said
carefully. "I was too eager, got sloppy. There were connections. It's deep and
it's big and it's messy; the people who own The Weatherman didn't want to be
involved in exposing it."
"So that excuses them, does it?" asked Iris, her eyes narrowing.
"No, itтАФ" Miriam stopped.
"Stop making excuses for them and I'll stop chasing you." Iris sounded almost
amused. "They took your job to protect their own involvement in some dirty
double-dealing. Is that what you're telling me?"
"Yeah. I guess."
"Well." Iris's eyes flashed. "When are you going to hang them? And how high? I
want a ringside seat!"
"Ma." Miriam looked at her mother with mingled affection and exasperation. "It's
not that easy. I think The Weatherman's owners are deeply involved in something
illegal. Money laundering. Dirty money. Insider trading too, probably. I'd like
to nail them, but they're going to play dirty if I try. It took them about five
minutes to come up with cause for dismissal, and they said they wouldn't press
charges if I kept my mouth shut."
"What kind of charges?" Iris demanded.
"They say they've got logfiles to prove I was net-surfing pornography at work.
They ... theyтАФ" Miriam found she was unable to go on speaking.
"So were you?" Iris asked quietly.
"No!" Miriam startled herself with her vehemence. She caught Iris's sly glance
and felt sheepish. "Sorry. No, I wasn't. It's a setup. But it's so easy to
claimтАФand virtually impossible to disprove."
"Are you going to be able to get another job?" Iris prodded.
"Yes." Miriam fell silent.
"Then it's all right. I really couldn't do with my daughter expecting me to wash
her underwear after all these years."
"Mother!" Then Miriam spotted the sardonic grin.
"Tell me about it. I mean, everything. Warm a mother's heart, spill the beans on
the assholes who took her daughter's job away."
Miriam flopped down on the big overstuffed sofa. "It's either a very long story