1635: The Eastern Front

Chapter 35

Southwest of the Wolsztynr

Mike Stearns was irritated but trying not to show it. The last few days had put everyone's nerves on edge. As the crow flies, the distance from Zielona Gora to the town of Wolsztyn was about twenty-five miles. In good weather and with decent roads, an army could march that distance in a day and a half, two days at the outside. But they weren't crows, and the few roads had been in terrible condition. It had taken them three days to get to the town. Mike had pushed the last day's march into the evening, so they'd be able to get a couple of miles north of Wolsztyn. But from here, they still had maybe ten miles to go before they reached Gustav Adolf and his Swedish forces. Mike was going to try to cover that distance by late afternoon, but it was more likely that they wouldn't make until the following day.

At that, they were doing better than the First or Second Divisions, even though they'd had to come a longer way. Knyphausen and the duke of Brunswick-Luneburg had discovered-too late to do anything about it-that the area west of the Obra river in their vicinity had been turned into what almost amounted to a swamp. They were lucky if they moved their divisions four miles in a day.

They weren't going to be able to help Gustav Adolf in his coming battle. None of the USE divisions were. The way things looked now, the Third Division would be the first to arrive, but unless Koniecpolski decided not to launch an attack-and Mike could see no reason he would do so-they wouldn't get to Lake Bledno until after the battle was over.

According to the radio reports Mike had gotten, the king of Sweden had taken positions just south of the town of Zbaszyn, on the northeast shore of Lake Bledno. The weather had finally cleared and the planes had been back in the sky for the last two days, so they'd known where Koniecpolski's forces were. They'd arrived in Zbaszyn the night before and would surely be attacking the Swedes right about…

Now, Mike figured.

It was amazing how rapidly the grand hetman had gotten to Zbaszyn. Apparently, Koniecpolski had left his infantry and heavy artillery in Poznan and come south with just his hussars and light artillery. But that still gave him a third again as many men as the king of Sweden had with him. Maybe half again as many. Troop counts made from aircraft were only approximations.

True, all of the Swedish troops were now armed with SRG rifled muskets firing Minie balls. Some of their units, in fact, had copies of the French Cardinal breechloader that USE armories were now making. (It seemed fair enough to swipe the French design, seeing that they'd swiped it from the up-time Sharps rifle.)

The problem was that the officers and noncoms of Gustav Adolf's Swedish army were mostly old school veterans, set in their ways and slow to adjust to the new realities produced by the SRGs. That was quite unlike the situation in the USE Army, which had been created almost from scratch over the past two years. Some of the officers were hidebound, yes; but almost all of the sergeants were young men who'd recently volunteered. They didn't have any bad habits to get rid of.

The fact that Jeff Higgins had taken it upon himself to pester the division's commanding general with a trivial issue he should have taken up with the quartermasters was making Mike even more irritated. Captain David Blodger, the up-time quartermaster who handled technical supplies and material, could have done Jeff a lot more good than Mike.

But since he was still feeling a little guilty over the way he'd handled Jeff at Zielona Gora, Mike did his best not to let his aggravation show. They were taking a brief halt in the march anyway, to let the units in the rear close up the column, so he didn't really have anything pressing at the moment. A "forced march" didn't actually mean soldiers were constantly marching, despite the term itself.

"I don't understand why you brought this problem to me, Colonel Higgins." Mike leaned over in his saddle and looked down at the object in Jeff's hand, a radio transmitter and receiver that had obviously seen better days. At a guess, a horse had stepped on it. "Captain Blodger can get your regiment a replacement radio, I'm sure."

Jeff shook his head. "I guess I didn't make myself clear, sir. This isn't one of the regiment's radios."

Mike was finding it harder and harder not to snarl at Higgins. What was he? A major general doubling as the division's lost and found department?

"Not that I see why you care, but if you're that concerned about it-again, see Blodger. He can find out which regiment lost the damn thing and get-"

"Sir! Excuse me, sir, I'm still not making myself clear. This radio doesn't belong to anybody in this division. Anybody in the whole USE Army, in fact."

Mike stared at the radio again. It looked like one of the division's radios.

Well…?sort of. In a way. The same way any such radio looks about the same as its equivalent to someone who doesn't know much about radios and doesn't really care about the differences anyway so long as the thing works.

In short, someone like Mike Stearns.

"It's not?"

"No, sir. I didn't think I recognized it, but just to be sure I checked with Jimmy Andersen. He says this is a knock-off made in Hamburg of one of the models that the army uses. He says we've never used this brand because the manufacturer had fly-by-night financing and went bankrupt after making not more than a few dozen of them. Jimmy says the whole lot was bought at an auction in Hamburg by somebody in Amsterdam. Well, by an agent for somebody in Amsterdam who was probably serving as an agent for somebody else. You know how it is."

Mike felt his face stiffen. He was probably going pale, too. "Where did you find this?" he asked.

"I just spotted it this morning, by accident, when I was passing by one of the soldiers who had it stuck in his pack. When I asked him, he said he'd found it in an alley behind one of the houses in Zielona Gora. He figures a horse stepped on it and broke it. But he liked it as a war souvenir. It's different."

"Oh, Jesus," Mike whispered. "It's a Polish radio. It's got to be."

Jeff nodded. "That's what I'm thinking. And it's why I brought it to you. I got to thinking about it and it occurred to me I've never heard anyone mention anything about the Poles having radios."

"That's because we didn't know they did-and, like idiots, blithely assumed they couldn't. Being dumb Polacks, like they are."

Jeff chuckled. West Virginia had enough people with Polish ancestry to have a slew of Polack jokes. Nothing like Chicago or Milwaukee, of course.

"How many Polacks does it take to screw in a light bulb?" he said.

"It's not funny, Colonel. It really isn't."

Jeff stared at him. Then, his face got stiff too. "Oh, hell. You mean we really never considered that they might have radio communication?"

"No, Colonel, we didn't. It goes a long way toward explaining how and why Koniecpolski's been able to maneuver his forces so well, doesn't it?"

Mike dismounted. As they always did whenever a halt was called, Jimmy Andersen and his three assistants had quickly set up a little tent for the radio so he could get whatever might be the latest reports or instructions. Mike walked over, opened the flap of the tent and passed through.

Jeff dismounted and came after him, still carrying the radio. He didn't really have a good reason to do so, since the tent was so small there wouldn't be room for him anyway. He just liked to get off a horse any excuse he got.

A minute later, Mike came out.

As the march was about to resume, Jimmy Andersen came out of the tent and approached the division's commanding general. Behind him, his assistants began taking down the tent and packing away the radio equipment. Colonel Higgins had already left to rejoin his regiment.

Andersen looked up at Mike, back in his saddle. "Bad news, sir. I just got a weather report. It looks like there's another storm coming. It'll probably hit us around noon today."

Mike stared down at him, then stared off to the west. Huge storm clouds covered the sky and were obviously headed their way.

He felt like saying No shit, Sherlock. But that would probably be beneath the dignity of a major general and it would certainly hurt Andersen's feelings.

You always had to make allowances for tech people. Their skills were so useful that you just had to accept the fact that if someone like Jimmy Andersen got struck by lightning, the first thing he'd do if he survived was get on the radio to find out if there were thunderstorms in the area. In those halcyon days before the Ring of Fire, of course, he would have gone online to find out.

Schwerin, capital of Mecklenburg Province

United States of Europe

Jozef Wojtowicz had set up a safe house for himself in Schwerin before he'd gone to Wismar. He thought he could lie in hiding here until whatever manhunt was launched for him exhausted its energies.

He assumed that the military police who interrogated Morton would deduce soon enough that the agent who'd suborned him was either Polish or working for Poland. Who else would have taken the risk? Any person familiar with the Baltic grain trade would know that the pretext he'd used was preposterous. If there were no USE interrogators with that knowledge in Wismar, all they had to do was walk over to Wieczorek's tavern and ask the Polish grain dealers who habituated the place.

Where would they look for this Polish agent, then?

Magdeburg, of course-but they really wouldn't expect him to hide there. The capital city's CoC was too pervasive, too well organized. A stranger, especially a foreigner, ran a greater risk of being noticed there than anywhere else.

The fact that such a stranger was a foreigner wouldn't be held against him in Magdeburg the way it might in some cities in the USE. Although the CoCs called for the unification of the German people into one nation, their ideology was not particularly nationalistic. There were CoCs in a number of European countries and they all shared the same basic political program. The Italian CoCs also called for national unification.

The problem with hiding in Magdeburg wasn't that people would be hostile, it was simply that he'd be noticed more quickly, and by an organization that was sophisticated and well organized on a city-wide basis.

Hamburg was another obvious possibility, as were Luebeck and Hannover. Big cities where a foreigner could hide easily.

Jozef had considered them, in fact. The problem was that they were in western provinces and he wanted to be as close to the border as he could manage. If he did have to make a desperate attempt to escape back into Polish territory, he'd find that much easier to do from Mecklenburg than places farther west.

Escaping into Poland from Pomerania would be even easier, of course. But to do that, he'd have to be in Pomerania, which he detested. The only city in the miserable province that would be tolerable would be Stettin, and Stettin was crawling with Swedes. Suspicious Swedes, with a nasty turn of mind when it came to Poles and anything Polish, as you'd expect from a pack of bandits in their ill-gotten lair. (The city's proper name was Szczecin. Always had been, always would be, and damn anyone who said otherwise.)

Ideally, he'd have gone to Grantville. Jozef loved Grantville. And with his uncle as his paymaster, he could even afford the outrageous rents.

Alas, it was not to be. He'd spent too much time in Grantville, early in his career as a spy, before he'd learned how to stay invisible. There was too much risk of being spotted.

Where then?

He'd settled on Schwerin because it was the capital of Mecklenburg province. Since the Dreeson Incident just a short time ago, the place had become a hotbed of radicalism, especially its capital. Young firebrands holding forth on every corner.

More importantly for Jozef, such centers of youthful radicalism produced certain cultural developments, almost like a law of nature. For every firebrand spouting ideology on a corner, there would be a poet spouting verses in a tavern.

Jozef wrote poetry, as it happened. Not very good poetry, but that would be all to the good. A mediocre poet would blend in perfectly where a man with literary talent might be noticed.

So it was. His first night in a nearby tavern was uneventful. He made a few acquaintances.

The second night, the same.

The third night, he was urged to recite some of his own poetry. Which he did, to reasonable applause. To fit the crowd's taste, he'd slightly adjusted a poem he'd once written on the subject of sunrise to make it politically appropriate. (Not hard to do. A sun rising, a people rising; the rhymes just had to be tweaked a bit.)

The fourth night, the same, with the added benefit of finding female company. It turned out that for this crowd of people, anything foreign carried a certain romance and panache.

The fifth night, the same again, with the female company more affectionate still.

The sixth day, catastrophe.

"Hey, Mateusz,"-so was he known here; Mateusz Zielinski-"there's somebody you have to meet."

He had no desire to meet anyone, particularly, especially when he was eating a late breakfast. But since the person doing the introduction was the young woman who'd just provided him with another very enjoyable twelve hours, he felt obliged to do as she wished.

The person to whom he was introduced was a young fellow named Karsten Eichel. It took him no more than three minutes to get to the purpose of the introduction.

"You're for the overthrow of serfdom in Poland, I'm sure. I heard your poem about the people rising. Well, I'm in the CoC here and I can introduce you to somebody who knows"-here, a brief intake of breath-"Krzysztof Opalinski. The Krzysztof Opalinski, I mean."

Eichel sat there at the table across from Jozef, looking very pleased with himself. Jozef had had a cat once who had almost the same expression on its face when it plopped a freshly caught rodent at Jozef's feet.

The Krzysztof Opalinski. That would be the same Krzysztof Opalinski whom Jozef had known since he was six and the Opalinski was three. His good friend Lukasz Opalinski was Krzysztof's older brother. Lukasz had set off to become a hussar for Poland's king and Sejm, and with equal vigor and enthusiasm Krzysztof had set off to overthrow that selfsame king and Sejm. Such was the nature of the Opalinski family.

"He's in Poland now, of course, doing his righteous work," continued Eichel. "But my friend can get you across the border so you can rejoin the struggle." He rose and leaned over the table, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I'll bring my friend here tonight."

And off he went.

During his stay in Grantville, Jozef had been introduced to the work of the English playwright Shakespeare-who was almost a contemporary, oddly enough-and become quite taken by it. So the appropriate thought came to him instantly:

Hoist with his own petard.

Indeed. He had to flee Schwerin, at once. To where? He had no idea, as yet, but surely a destination would come to him.

He rose from the table, gave his companion a most friendly smile-she really had been splendid company if you excluded her final demonic impulse-and said, "I'm afraid I have to leave."

She looked distressed. "Now? But…?Where are you going?"

He was already walking away. "The seacoast of Bohemia," he said over his shoulder.

Stockholm

Ulrik dumped the documents onto the bed next to him. Had his physical condition allowed, he'd have used a much more dramatic gesture. Hurling them into the fireplace would have been his own preference, albeit counterproductive. Still, even being able to pitch them onto the floor would have been nice.

The problem was that he might want to pick them up later, in order to illustrate a point from some part of the text. He was completely incapable of such a motion and would be for some time to come. Baldur would pick them up for him, if he insisted, but the Norwegian's ensuing sarcasm would be tedious. So would Caroline Platzer, but her ensuing lecture on psychological self-control and the need thereof especially for a prince in line of succession would be even more tedious. Kristina might or might not, depending on her mood of the moment.

It wasn't worth it. Thankfully, his wounds had not impaired his most necessary skills for the task at hand. The bullet that had broken two of his ribs-thank God for good Danish buff coats, or he'd probably be dead-had also left that whole side of his torso aching and immobile. The bullet that had creased his skull-thank God also for good Norwegian bearskin hats, which had probably kept the bullet from piercing his skull-had stunned him for a moment and left a wound that bled badly, as head wounds always did.

But neither of the injuries had affected his brain. He could safely ignore Caroline's warning that he might have suffered a mild concussion. Americans were notorious for seeing perilous injuries everywhere. Many of them even went so far as to oppose corporal punishment for errant children. Speaking of insane.

Nor, best of all, had the injuries affected his tongue.

"Colonel Forsberg, I repeat: Your theory makes no sense."

The colonel stood by the bed, his head bend slightly downward but his back straight as a ramrod. An instrument which, in Ulrik's considered opinion after dealing with the man, had been inserted into his rectum at the age of two and never been removed since.

Forsberg pointed a finger at the papers. The finger was rigid too. Everything about the colonel was rigid. How did he manage to bathe?

"The evidence is in the documents themselves, Your Highness. It says right there, in black and white, that Richelieu was behind it all."

"I know what the documents say, Colonel. But that's not really the issue, is it? The real question is whether we can place any credence in these documents. To put it a different way, why should we assume that documents which were oh-so-conveniently left for us to find by people who planned to murder us-did murder Her Majesty-should be taken at face value?"

It was clear from the expression on Forsberg's face that Ulrik was wasting his time.

Again.

But Forsberg didn't really matter, in the end. Kristina had been following Ulrik's logic since the day after the incident, when he'd recovered enough to start thinking. Her brain might be only eight years old, but it was a superior organ-considerably superior-to those taking up space in the skulls of most of Stockholm's officials.

"And why did they leave the documents at all?" she said. "Why not simply destroy them? They came here to kill me and Ulrik and Mama, not to found a library."

That made no dent in Forsberg's certain convictions either, of course.

Ulrik decided to try one last time, before he simply began acting peremptorily. He disliked doing that, since he'd found that imperiousness on the part of a prince invariably produced resentment, and some of those resentments could last for years and create trouble long after their initial cause was half-forgotten.

"And consider this, Colonel Forsberg. This should register because you were there yourself and personally witnessed the deed. What happened when you cornered two of the assassins on Uto island? The one with the limp and his companion?"

That had happened two days after the incident. All reconstructions of the plot, including Ulrik and Baldur's, were agreed that seven assassins had to have been involved. Possibly more, but a minimum of seven.

Four of them had been killed in the course of the attempt itself. Two by Ulrik; two by Baldur.

Two more had fled in a boat but had been eventually tracked to Uto island. Ulrik had recognized one of them after the bodies had been brought back to Stockholm. That had been the man who'd shot him. The other, the one whom the soldiers said had been limping and had a badly bruised knee, he didn't know. But since he'd been caught in the company of the man who shot Ulrik, it was reasonable to conclude that he'd been one of the six men who came directly for him and Kristina in Slottsbacken.

That left whoever had murdered the queen. That had been done with a rifle, not a pistol. Whoever the man was-he might have had an accomplice with him-he remained at large. All they had in the way of evidence was the badly bludgeoned corpse of the old tailor whose shop he'd used as a shooting stand. The tailor's wife had been no help, because she'd been visiting her sister halfway across the city.

Forsberg still hadn't answered Ulrik's question. From the look on his face, he was probably confused by its sheer simplicity.

"What happened, Colonel?" he repeated.

"Well, I don't exactly know what to say, Your Highness. We found them and caught them."

Kristina practically spit. "Didn't! You didn't catch them. They were already dead."

The colonel looked offended now. Was there any bottom to this pit?

"That's as may be, Your Highness," Forsberg said stiffly. "But they'd not have killed themselves if we hadn't had them trapped with no way to escape."

Ulrik threw up his hands. "Exactly! That's the whole point, Colonel. Once he saw there was no escape, the man with the limp shot his companion in the back of the head and then turned the pistol on himself. Do you think a professional spy in the employ of the French crown would have done such a thing?"

The colonel's face was blank.

Blank. Blank. Blank.

This was pointless. Ulrik might as well have been arguing with the Black Forest or the Harz Mountains.

"The point, Colonel, is that only a man with powerful ideological convictions would have behaved in such a manner. And the willingness of his companions to join him in such a daring assassination scheme-they had little chance of escaping, and they must have known it-speaks to the same point."

He retrieved some of the documents he'd scattered on the bed sheets, lifted them up, and then dropped them back. The gesture exuded disgust.

"Nothing about the idea that these men were Richelieu's makes any sense. Not their behavior, not the preposterous idea that supposedly professional assassins would scatter about enough documents to bury a moose, and perhaps most of all, the very logic of the documents themselves."

He pointed an accusing finger at one of those documents. Not because it deserved to be singled out for condemnation, but simply because it was the nearest. Ulrik had to economize even his finger-pointing. Any movement of his upper body was likely to trigger off a spasm of pain.

"Colonel, why in the world would Richelieu's intendant Etienne Servien have sent these men detailed-even lovingly detailed-analyses of political and military developments in Europe? None of which developments, I will point out, had any relevance to their task at hand and all of which were developments that happened months ago."

He was tired. Very tired. He didn't have much strength.

"Never mind, Colonel. I am superseding your authority in this matter." He cocked an eye at Kristina. "Assuming my betrothed concurs, of course."

Kristina nodded happily. "Sure! But what do you want to do?"

Carefully, Ulrik levered himself a bit more upright. "The wonders of up-time technology. Baldur, go get the palace's radio operator. I'm going to speak directly with the king. If he's not available, then I'll talk to Chancellor Oxenstierna."

Baldur nodded and left. Colonel Forsberg began issuing protests.

"You can go now!" commanded Kristina. And, a protest or two later, so he did.

Baldur returned sooner than Ulrik expected he would. He had a peculiar expression on his face.

"Ah…?I didn't have to find the radio man, Your Highness." The honorific was unusual, coming from Baldur in private. Norddahl gestured toward the door. "He was on his way here already."

The radio operator came in.

"We're going to talk to Papa!" Kristina's voice was full of cheer.

The radio operator stared at her. His face, Ulrik suddenly realized, was as pale as a sheet. The man looked down at the message in his hand, as if he were helpless; too weak to even lift it.

"Papa!" cried Kristina.