"Charles Stross - Merchant princes 02 - The Hidden Family" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

Hjorth is of course responsible for the well-being of all beneath his roof. In
accordance with your orders I requested that he see to Lady Helge's security." A
moment's pause to let the implication sink in. "Whether he complied with your
orders bears investigation."

The duke stopped pacing, standing in front of the broad picture windows that
looked out across the valley below the castle. Heavily forested and seemingly
empty of human habitation, the river valley ran all the way to the coast,
marking the northern border of the sprawling kingdom of Grainmarkt from the
Nordmarkt neighbors to the north. "And the lady Olga?"

"She protests in the strongest terms, my lord." The secretary shrugged slightly,
his face expressionless. "I sent Roland to attend to her personally, to ensure
she is adequately protected. For what it's worth, there were no identifying
marks on the bodies. No tattoos, no indications of who they were. Not Clan. But
they had weapons and equipment from the other side and I amтАФstartledтАФthat Lady
Olga, even with help from our runaway, survived the incident."

"Our runaway is my niece, Matthias," the duke reminded his secretary. "A rather
extraordinary woman." His expression hardened. "I want tissue samples,
photographs, anything you can come up with. For the hit squad. Get them
processed on the other side, run them across the FBI most-wanted database, pull
whatever strings you can find, but I want to know who they were and who they
thought they were working for. And how they got there. The palace was supposed
to be securely doppelgangered. Why wasn't it?"

"Ah. I have already looked into that." Matthias waited.

"Well then?" The duke clenched his hands.

"About three years ago, Baroness Hildegarde ordered our agents on the other
sideтАФvia the usual shell companyтАФto let out-one side of the doppelganger
facility to a secondary Clan-owned shipping company she was setting up. It was
all aboveboard and conducted in public at Beltaigne, approved in full committee,
but the shipping company moved away a year later to more suitable purpose-built
facilities, and they in turn sub-let the premises. It was walled off from the
original bonded store and converted into short-lease storage, leaving it wide
open. Purely coincidentally, it covered the New Tower, and parts of the west
wing of the palace were left undoppelgangered. Helge wouldn't have known enough
to recognize this as unusual, but it left most of her suite wide open to attack
by world-walkers from the other side."

"And where was Oliver, Baron Hjorth while this was going on?" the duke asked,
deceptively mildly. A failure to doppelganger the palace correctlyтАФto ensure
that it was

physically collated with secure territory in the other universe to which the
world-walking and occasionally squabbling members of the Clan had accessтАФwas not
a trivial oversight, not after the blood feud or civil war that had killed three
out of every four members of the six families only a handful of decades ago.