Ring of Fire III

Chapter Three

Magdeburg, late January 1635

“What do you think, Ed?” Mike Stearns tipped his chair back. “I’m really glad that I caught up with you before you left. All this campaigning has left me getting up in the morning not sure whether I’ll be going north or south or east or west before the day is out.”

Ed Piazza steepled his fingers. “First, to be honest, I’m just surprised. I can’t say it’s the last thing that expected, because it wasn’t on the list. The possibility that the regent of Tyrol might do this never even crossed my mind.”

“Do you see any disadvantages?” Francisco Nasi asked.

“From the perspective of the SoTF? Hell, no. It would be great for us. But, then, again, it’s no skin off our noses to add another mainly Catholic province to the USE. Wettin and the Crown Loyalists may not be so happy, given that one of their themes is ‘narrower citizenship’ and another, slinking along under the ground with the anti-Semitic agitation, is still ‘we’re here to defend Protestantism against the forces of the anti-Christ on Earth.’ How’s Gustav reacting?”

Mike pantomimed a cat pouncing upon a bird. “I doubt that he’s ever seen a piece of real estate that he didn’t classify as a desirable acquisition. He tends to stop and think about the complications offered by the inhabitants after he’s taken that irreversible first bite. If he can acquire it without expending any of his military resources, it’s ‘Roll over, Beethoven’ or ‘Full speed ahead. Damn the torpedoes.’ ”

“There will be complications,” Nasi said. “Swabia…”

“Every time somebody shows up to talk to me about Swabia,” Mike grumbled, “I think I understand what Shakespeare said better-that bit about dying a thousand deaths before you die. Not that I would want to call myself a coward, but when it comes to thinking about the geography down in the southwest, I flinch. Clearly, my hopes at the Congress of Copenhagen were premature. To say the least.”

“My darling,” Rebecca said. “I doubt that you will ever understand how things work in the southern portions of the Germanies. You would love to have one villain-Duke Maximilian. You could fight him. Perhaps, you could even endure his having a limited number of allies. You could fight them. But, truly, outside of Bavaria, which is fairly good sized, mostly in Swabia all you will find is that you are being bitten to death by little, almost invisible, ants.”

“Up-time, we said, ‘Nibbled to death by ducks.’ Or, sometimes, by fishes. ‘Better to be snapped up by a crocodile than nibbled to death by minnows.’ It depended on the context.”

“What do you think?” Hermann of Hesse-Rotenburg asked. The USE secretary of state fiddled with his pen. “Perhaps we can ask Basel to take this on.”

Frank Jackson shook his head. “Don’t listen to him, Mike. Diane is swamped with Swiss affairs, with Baden and its problems, and with the possibilities of what Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar might do next even though he doesn’t show any sign of doing it right now. Tony Adducci-young Tony-is a big help to her, but he’s just an assistant. Besides, she’s assigned him to the anti-plague preparation team. Anti-plague prevention team. The team that’s supposed to prepare to prevent the plague. Whatever the hell they’re calling it.”

Hermann fiddled some more. “Somebody needs to go to Tyrol, or else the regent needs to come to us. Face-to-face discussions. Radio is wonderful, but not for something this complex.”

“She’s been here before,” Nasi pointed out. “She flies on the Monster. But she says that she can’t, right now. Something has come up.”

“So pick someone. Send someone,” Mike said. “Have done with it.”

This time Hermann twirled his pen in a circle on his tablet. “Who?”

“Philipp Sattler,” Nasi said. “That’s one of the reasons Gustavus picked him as his personal liaison to the USE administration. He’s from Kempten, right down in the middle of that Swabian chaos.”

“If things come up that are higher than his pay grade?”

“It’s hard to get much higher than the emperor’s personal liaison, Hermann. Not unless you go yourself.”

The secretary of state gave one of his rare smiles. “I can always ask my brother Wilhelm if he’s willing for Amalie to undertake an occasional mission for the government. After all, it’s customary for women of high rank used as diplomatic negotiators. She and the regent might like one another.”