Ring of fire II

Chapter 3. The Elf

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

November 1634

Noelle Murphy-Noelle Stull, now, having just changed her name legally-finished her report, and leaned back in her chair. Sitting at the desk in his office, Tony Adducci did the same. He looked to Carol Unruh, sitting in another chair facing the desk, at a diagonal from Noelle.

"Seems pretty complete to me, Carol. I'm not a lawyer, of course."

Noelle had to keep herself from smiling. "Not a lawyer" was putting it mildly. In point of fact, Tony Adducci's formal education extended to a high school diploma and two years at Fairmont State, from which he'd left to get a job in the mines without even picking up an AA degree. The main reason he'd been selected to be the secretary of the treasury for the New United States, not long after the Ring of Fire, was because he'd helped Frank Jackson keep the books for Mike Stearns' UMWA local. In those days-as was still the case, more often than not-Mike selected his administrators primarily because he thought they were solid men he could rely on, pedigrees and credentials be damned. And, in the case of posts like Tony's, knew that they were honest.

Noelle's suppressed smile would have been simply one of amusement, however, not derision. When all was said and done, Mike's crude method had worked pretty well. It had given the new government he'd been forced to set up in the midst of crisis and chaos a great deal of solidity and unity, however rough the edges might have been, and he'd simply shrugged off charges of "UMWA favoritism."

As the years had passed since the Ring of Fire, a number of those initial appointees had been gently eased out, when it turned out they simply weren't up to the job. But Tony had kept his post through all of the transformations-from the NUS as an independent principality, to its later status as a semi-independent principality within the Confederated Principalities of Europe, to its current (and hopefully final) manifestation as one of the provinces within the federal United States of Europe. Ed Piazza, who'd replaced Mike as the president of the SoTF after Mike became the prime minister of the USE and moved to Magdeburg, was no more inclined to replace Adducci than Stearns had been. He was capable, honest, and made up for his own lack of training by knowing how to use the skills of subordinates or associates who did have it.

Such as Carol Unruh, in fact, Ron Koch's wife although she'd kept her own name. Carol was the assistant director of the Department of Economic Resources, one of the branches of the Treasury Department. Her academic background might have been on the skimpy side for an equivalent position in the universe they'd come from. But by post-RoF Grantville standards, she was highly educated. She had a BA in mathematics and statistics and had taken graduate courses in the same subjects. She'd squeezed in the graduate courses on a part-time basis while she was bringing up her two children, but she'd always planned to go back full-time and finish her doctoral program once the kids were out of the house and she could really concentrate. Nobody much doubted she would have, either, except that the Ring of Fire had put paid to those plans as well as many others. Still, she was qualified enough to have been accepted as the University of Jena's instructor in statistics, whose male faculty was normally hostile to the idea of women teaching at the university level, outside of medicine and a few other special subjects.

"Oh, it's plenty good enough to put Horace Bolender behind bars," she said.

"Keep him behind bars," Tony growled. "Noelle and Eddie already got that much accomplished. The fucking bastard."

"He hasn't been convicted yet, Tony," Carol pointed out. "In fact, I think he's even going to manage to raise the bail money."

Again, Noelle had to fight to keep from smiling. Not at Tony's praise but at Carol's reaction. Unruh had the sort of prissy sense of duty that compelled her to add the caution-given that, in cold-blooded personal terms, she stood to benefit the most if Horace Bolender got convicted. Her title of "assistant" director was something of a formality these days. Bolender had been the director of the Department of Economic Resources, until Carol's suspicions and the investigative work by Noelle and Eddie Junker that those suspicions engendered had turned up plenty of evidence that the man had been using his post to feather his own nest.

Now, Carol was actually running the department, and everyone expected that it wouldn't be long before President Piazza made her the official director. Where a different sort of person in her position might have been pushing for a conviction, Unruh was being meticulously fair-minded and scrupulous.

That spoke well of her, of course, but Noelle still thought it was silly. She and Eddie had nailed the bastard, sure enough. It hadn't even been all that hard, once they started digging. Like untold thousands of officials before him, Bolender had been sloppy about his demands for kickbacks before he assigned contracts. That was due more to arrogance than actual stupidity, probably, but the end result was no different. It was easy for an up-time official to get careless on the subject of bribes, since most down-timers took bribing officials to be a routine cost of business.

He'd get a long, hard sentence, too. Bolender was not the first up-timer to have been caught breaking the law, but he was far and away the most prominent. Judge Tito was well known for his lack of leniency toward up-timers, because he was bound and determined to prove to the citizens of the SoTF-which had one million people in it all told-that the tiny percentage of them who were of American origin weren't going to be getting any special treatment or favors from the law.

Tony looked back at Noelle. "What else looks to be turning up? Besides Bolender and the Cunninghams and Norman Bell, I mean."

"Nothing definite, yet. But Eddie and I are still digging. We don't think we rooted it all out, by any means. We're almost certain that Stan Myers' tip regarding Mickey Simmons is a good one."

"How about Myers himself?" asked Carol. "It wouldn't be the first time a crook tried to deflect suspicion by fingering somebody else."

Noelle shook her head. "Eddie and I don't think Stan's dirty. For one thing, because we just don't. Beyond that, Stan's in charge of the fire department's training program. He simply doesn't have access to the kind of temptation to ask for kickbacks that somebody like Bolender did. He's got a hard enough time, as it is, getting volunteers for the fire department, given all the other economic opportunities around."

Tony chuckled. "True enough. I can remember my dad complaining when he had to pass the dispatcher a five dollar bill to get work out of his union's hiring hall. Which was not the UMWA," he added self-righteously. "But those jobs paid well, so he thought it was worth the baksheesh. Most of the fire department posts are volunteer. Don't pay anything more than expenses."

Carol nodded. "I was just raising the possibility. I like Stan, myself, and I've never gotten any sense he was crooked. Mickey Simmons, though…" She made a face. "Well, I should keep personalities out of it, I suppose."

"He's a prick," stated Adducci. "He's always been a prick. Why the hell it took Lorraine so long to give him the heave-ho was always a mystery to me." He straightened up in his chair. "Just for the record. But I agree we should keep personalities out of it. There is such a thing as an honest assho-uh, butthead, here and there. But I won't be surprised at all if Mickey turns out not to be one of them."

He mused for a moment, apparently lost in remembrances of things past. "He really is a Grade A prick. But let's move on to the rest. How about the down-timers, Carol? Any decision yet from the attorney general?"

"I just talked to Christoph yesterday. He feels in an awkward position, given that he's a down-timer himself, so he stressed that he'd defer to your judgment on the matter. Still, he thinks it would be a mistake to press charges against any of the down-timers, if their only involvement was having their arm twisted into paying the kickbacks. I'm inclined to agree."

Adducci grunted. "Yeah, so am I. Not that seventeenth-century Germans haven't got at least as fine-tuned a sense of lawyering as any West Virginian ever did. They knew damn good and well they were breaking the law too. Still, you have to make allowances for the chaos caused by fifteen years of war half-wrecking the Germanies. People slide into bad habits in situations like that. For us to run around hammering everybody probably wouldn't be a good idea. Still, this is it, folks. You also gotta watch out for being paternalistic about these things. Down-timers ain't children. Once these cases break and we start putting people in prison, let's make sure the message gets out to every businessman in the province who's thinking of cutting a deal beneath the table. Do it again, and we'll bust you, sure and certain."

Noelle thought their attitude was probably the right one to take, though she was even more inclined than they were not to err on the side of paternalistic tolerance. It's just their traditional ways, baloney. Her partner Eddie Junker was a down-timer, and he'd never had any trouble recognizing that paying a kickback was just as illegal, if not perhaps as personally reprehensible, as demanding it in the first place.

That said, she was a little relieved. Her relations with Eddie had gotten awkward lately, and she was pretty sure she knew the reason. Now, with this decision having been made, she could see her way clear to straightening it out.

Adducci raised an admonishing finger. "But! That only applies to down-timers whose involvement was simply paying the kickback. Any of them who got more, what you might call enthusiastic and enterprising about the business, we'll go after them just like we are the up-timers."

For the third time in half an hour, Noelle had to fight to keep a smile from her face. That wouldn't be a problem for her, at least. Claus Junker might have been willing enough in the enthusiasm department, but when it came to "enterprise" it was just a fact that Eddie's father was a hopeless nincompoop. He bore about as much resemblance to a criminal mastermind as…

She tried to think of anyone she knew who could possibly be as inept as Claus Junker at the art of "making a deal." The only person she could come up with was her own mother.

She must have choked, or something.

"What's so funny, Noelle?" asked Carol.

"Ah… nothing. Just an idle thought."

Janos Drugeth's agents in Grantville, the Englishmen Henry Gage and Lion Gardiner, seemed bound and determined to waste more time continuing the recriminations.

"In particular," said Gage with exasperation, "I told you to stay away from the Barlow family!"

Gardiner scowled at him. "And I did-until I was approached by Neil O'Connor, who is part of the affair because you recruited his father Allen."

Gage looked defensive. "We need the O'Connors. Between the father's knowledge of steam engines and the son's experience working on aircraft, they'll be invaluable. And we need Peter Barclay and his wife, too. They both have experience in mechanical design."

"We don't need-"

Gage threw up his hands. "Of course we don't need their crazy daughter! But the Barclays insisted that their children had to be part of the bargain, or they wouldn't agree." Sullenly, he added: "It's not my fault. It's certainly not my fault that the oldest girl Suzi Barclay lives in a state of sin with Neil O'Connor, and she told him, and he told his father, and-"

He broke off there. Gardiner picked it right up, now with a sneer on his face.

"-and she also told her friend Caryn Barlow, who is almost as crazy as she is-not surprising, being the daughter of Jay Barlow-and she told her father and there we were. In the soup."

"Enough," said Janos stolidly. Rubbing the back of his neck, he looked around the small apartment his two subordinates had been renting on the outskirts of Grantville. At least they had enough sense to be packed and ready to go. "This is pointless-and we have little time remaining."

He gave Gardiner a cold eye. "Do restrain your indignation. It was you, after all, who recruited the Simmons fellow. Who has no skills I am aware of beyond embezzlement-and paltry skills at that, judging from the evidence."

It was Gardiner's turn to look defensive. "That wasn't my doing. The O'Connors insisted that their employee Timothy Kennedy should be included also. Seeing as he was very skilled in the steam work and was now disaffected from his wife-"

Seeing his chance, Gage interrupted with a sneer. "Who just happens to be the sister of Anita Masaniello, who just happens to be the wife of Steve Salatto, who just happens to be the American official in charge of administering Franconia."

Gardiner glared up. "As I recall, you thought recruiting Kennedy was a good idea at the time yourself. He seemed tight-lipped enough. How was I-or you-to know that he was good friends with Mickey Simmons and Simmons was up to his neck-"

"Enough!" growled Janos. He wiped his face tiredly. Part of his weariness was due to the rigors of the hard and fast journey he'd made from Vienna, much of which had been on horseback through forests and mountains to evade the USE's border patrols. Most of it, though, was simply weariness at the whole business.

He was still aggravated by Istvan's foolishness in having hired these two English adventurers as his direct agents in Grantville, as much as he was aggravated by the adventurers themselves. But, being fair to all parties, he also recognized that most of the problem was simply due to the nature of the work involved. This miserable business the Americans called "covert operations."

True, Gardiner and Gage were mercenary adventurers. On the other hand, they spoke fluent-now even idiomatic-English in a town of English speakers whose usage of the language was eccentric to begin with, by seventeenth-century standards. It was doubtful that any regular Austrian agents could have penetrated so deeply and quickly into the disaffected elements among the Americans. That was true even leaving aside the thugs who infested the so-called Club 250, who were automatically suspicious of any central Europeans. None of the thugs themselves were of any particular interest to Austria, which could recruit plenty of thugs of its own. But the Club 250 served as something of a liaison venue for other disaffected up-timers that Austria was interested in. Gage and Gardiner could go there easily. Between their excellent knowledge of the American idiom and the fact they were English-for reasons still somewhat murky to Drugeth, the American bigots who patronized the Club 250 made an exemption for Englishmen-the two of them could habituate the place where, if Janos went himself, he'd likely face a fracas.

True, also, many-no, most; perhaps all-of the Americans they were seeking to recruit were not what any sane man would consider upright and moral persons. At best, their guiding motives were nakedly mercenary. For some of them, such as Simmons, you could add a desire to escape apprehension by the SoTF's authorities for criminal activity. For others, like the O'Connors and their employee Timothy Kennedy, their extravagant and careless spending habits had led them to drive a seemingly prosperous business into a state of near-bankruptcy.

As for the "craziness" of the Suzi Barclay girl, a subject on which both Gage and Gardiner could expound at length, what was to be expected from the offspring of such parents?

He rubbed his face again. In the end, all the problems were simply inherent to the business itself. If a man insists on sticking his hand into a marsh looking for gold, he can hardly be surprised if he retrieves filth and leeches as well as the gold he was looking for.

And…

There was gold there, sure enough. Being fair to the two. Whatever the moral and mental characteristics of the up-timers whom Gage and Gardiner had recruited to move to Vienna and provide the Austrian empire with technological skills and advice, there was no question that they'd assembled an impressive group. Amongst them, there was extensive knowledge of American machining techniques, mechanical design, and steam engine design, not to mention the seemingly ubiquitous knowledge that American males had with regard to automobile engines. There was even a fair knowledge of aircraft principles, something which was in scant supply even among Americans.

Still, it was a mess. The original plan had been modified after the end of the war between the USE and the League of Ostend brought a period of peace. That, combined with the outcome of the Congress of Copenhagen and the decision of the SoTF to relocate its capital from Grantville to Bamberg, was producing a massive wave of emigration of Americans out of Grantville to other parts-and not all of them to somewhere else in the USE. It seemed as if every nation in Europe had launched a recruitment program here, even the French.

Most of those who chose to leave the USE, of course, went to either Prague or Copenhagen or the Netherlands. Bohemia and Denmark were allied to the USE; and, while the new kingdom in the Low Countries was not, it enjoyed quite friendly relations these days. Nowhere in Europe had the now-romantic figure of the Netherlands' new queen Maria Anna assumed such legendary proportions as it had in Grantville. "The Wheelbarrow Queen," they called her, often enough. Even the rambunctious and surly commoners of Magdeburg seemed inclined to favor the Netherlands, monarchy or not.

Janos had hopes that, eventually, that same romanticism might help relations between the USE and his own nation. Maria Anna was, after all, a daughter of the Habsburgs and one of the new emperor's two sisters. At one time-not more than a few months ago-an archduchess of Austria itself.

It was too early for that, of course. Everyone in the USE was expecting a new war to begin the coming spring, with Saxony and Brandenburg, and everyone was assuming-accurately, alas, unless Janos could persuade the emperor otherwise-that Austria would weigh in on the side of the USE's enemies. Still, Janos had hoped to keep tensions between Austria and the USE, especially its Americans, to a minimum. Sooner or later, he was sure Austria would have to seek peace with the USE, and he didn't want any more in the way of festering anger than was inevitable in the course of a war.

So, clearly and unequivocally, he'd told Istvan Janoszi to instruct his agents to keep any transfer of personnel and equipment from Grantville within the limits of the law, as the Americans saw it.

That hadn't seemed too difficult a project, at the time. The up-timers had sweeping notions on the subject of personal liberties, which included the right to emigrate and included the right to maintain personal property in the process. The key figures, the O'Connors and the Barclays, were in a position to do that. Simply move themselves and their businesses to Vienna. Impossible, of course, to move the actual physical plants, but they could certainly take with them all of their technical designs-"blueprints," those seemed to be called-and even much of the moveable equipment. Over time, if not immediately.

Unfortunately, what Janos hadn't foreseen was the inevitability of what followed. Like anything dragged out of a swamp, be it gold-colored or not, the Barlows and the O'Connors were sticky. They had relatives and friends, the relatives and friends had their own such-and among them, what a surprise, were some individuals whom no one in their right mind would want to encourage to move into his own country.

And so, a legal enterprise had become an illegal one. Not only were some of these people going to be fleeing the authorities of the USE, they were going to be taking goods and possessions with them that they had no legal right to take.

For a moment, Drugeth considered simply forbidding any such goods. But he dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came to him. First, because that was bound to produce a quarrel with the would-be emigrants, and there was no time left for such a quarrel. Second, even more simply, because Drugeth really had no way to know which goods were legal and which weren't, in the first place. Once the expedition got to the Austrian border, he had a large cavalry unit waiting to escort them all the rest of the way to Vienna. But from here to the border, he'd have only Gage and Gardiner to assist him in keeping control over the up-timers.

What was he to do? Insist on a search of the wagons, not even knowing what he was looking for?

It was just a mess, that's all. A marshy muck. But Janos had crossed marshes and swamps often enough, since he took the Austrian colors. Though he was only twenty-five years old, he had plenty of experience as a soldier. He figured he could manage this, well enough.

"Tomorrow morning, then," he said. "We start to leave as early as possible."