Sheremetev laughed. "Leontii is a fine man, but not nearly subtle enough for this. The new political officer for the Dacha is… Anya."
It was all Anya could do to keep her face still, even though she knew that very stillness was a tell in its own way. Sheremetev had to have done this on purpose; it was his way. Even his carrots were sticks. A promotion and a betrayal all in one. His means of keeping loyalty, to make any other loyalty impossible. She glanced at Natasha and the look of shocked enlightenment on her face gave Anya courage in a strange way. She knew that Natasha would be telling herself that she had always known, but Anya knew better. Natasha hadn't liked Anya because Anya was a peasant and was better at math than Natasha was. And especially because Anya was fucking Bernie, not going to bed alone.
That last thought sent Anya's gaze to Bernie who was looking at her like she had two heads. She turned her eyes away. Looking at Bernie was dangerous. Anya couldn't afford to let what she felt show on her face. Which brought her back to Sheremetev. He was examining her like she was one of the scientist's butterflies. A dead insect pinned to a plank for examination. She stood, bowed and smiled an easy, friendly smile. It was a smile she had practiced for years. "Thank you for your trust, my lord. You may depend on me."
"I was quite sure I could," was Sheremetev's smug reply. Then he turned to Natasha. "The Dacha will continue to run very much as it has in the past, save that projects must be cleared by Anya. To make sure that the results are, ah… desirable." Anya knew what that meant. Projects which would enhance Sheremetev's wealth, status or power would be approved. Those that detracted from those things would be disapproved. She tried not to look at Bernie. She tried not to think of Bernie.
Bernie, for his part, wasn't thinking very much at all. His time in Russia had taught him enough to keep him from trying to go across the table at Anya. No, he wouldn't have done that anyway. Maybe storming out of the room. Yep. That was probably what he'd have done back up-time. Mostly what he was doing was trying to take it in. Anya was a spy for Sheremetev. Funny, he couldn't even figure out why that would be such a betrayal. Sheremetev was just another Russian, a member of the high families just like Natasha and Vladimir. He was in the Duma and had as much right to information from the Dacha as anyone in Russia. Besides, the Dacha leaked like a sieve anyway. It was supposed to. The Dacha wasn't supposed to keep stuff secret; it was supposed to take the knowledge freely given by the up-timers and put it in a Russian context so that it could be used to make Russia a better place.
Somehow, in spite of all that, it was still a betrayal. Anya had been lying to him all along. Everything she had said or done since he got to Russia had been a lie.
Well, I suppose I should have expected this, Anya thought. She reached for one of the boxes. "Tell me, Irina, why my things are all over the place here."
Irina was a bit of a snot, one that Anya wasn't at all fond of. So she pretty well expected the girl's smirk, even though the words hurt.
"Bernie said that the Comrade Political Officer could requisition whatever room she wanted," Irina said. "And that if it was his room, he'd just as soon sleep with one of the horses."
Of Bernie himself there was no sign. He was out checking on a new steam engine. Which, Anya knew perfectly well, didn't need checking on. So the political officer requisitioned a room in the Dacha. One of the good ones. Not Natasha's… though she thought about it. She was angry enough.
At an undisclosed location somewhere in Russia
Mikhail Romanov, Czar of all the Rus, bounced his daughter on his knee with a mixture of relief and profound loss. The relief was because he and his family were safe-at least for the moment. The loss was not for the loss of power, but for the loss of his father.
Mikhail had been told that his father had died of a stroke during the riots and that was entirely possible. Filaret, Patriarch of Russia, had in fact had a series of minor strokes before the riots started and his response to the riots was quite likely to have led to another one, quite possibly fatal. Still, the timing was suggestive. Filaret would never have gone along with Sheremetev's takeover and he had the connections to fight back. Mikhail couldn't help the belief that one of Sheremetev's agents had managed to get close enough to the patriarch to help the stroke along. The possibility that Filaret was still alive was no more than a fantasy.
Mikhail knew that he should be fighting Sheremetev because of those suspicions and for the good of Russia. But he wasn't. He knew virtually nothing of what was going on in the wider world. He had no basis to plan and, for now at least, he and his family were being treated quite well. Also, from what he did know, Sheremetev's plan depended on his continued safety.
Life was full of strange twists of fate and even more so when you were living in a time of miracles. The Ring of Fire had seemed a wild rumor when they had first heard it. Sending Vladimir to check it out had been a precautionary measure. But it had all proved to be true. Vladimir had stayed in Grantville to learn the secrets of the up-timers and Boris had brought an up-timer back with him. Bernie had started out as little more than a dictionary of up-timer English on legs. But being used as a dictionary has side effects. Poor Bernie had found himself in school. Mikhail laughed a little at that thought. One student and hundreds of anxious teachers, each insisting that he learn enough to explain some other artifact of a language was foreign to even those that spoke seventeenth century English. Mikhail could sympathize with Bernie's predicament; he wasn't a scholar by choice either. And he, like Bernie, had been forced by circumstances into a role he wasn't well prepared for when he had been dragooned into becoming czar of Russia.
Come to that, Vladimir wasn't a trained spy. That was Boris. Still, Vladimir was doing an excellent job-aided and abetted by the up-timers free way with their knowledge. He and Boris had kept Russia from the Smolensk War, even before Boris brought Bernie to Russia. Vladimir had married a up-timer girl and was well situated in their community. And quite openly, for the most part, sending tons of copied books to Moscow, along with information on innovations made since the Ring of Fire as down-time craftsmanship had combined with up-time knowledge. That part was harder, from what Mikhail understood, because some of the new businesses were much more secretive than the State Library of Thuringia Franconia. Still, Boris had left Vladimir a good core organization and Vladimir had expanded it. So the Dacha and the Gun Shop, Russia's industrial and military research and development shops, were well supplied with up-timer knowledge.
That knowledge, combined with Russian ingenuity and a willingness to go with simple, workable solutions rather than slavishly copy everything the up-timers were doing, plus a brute force approach that involved putting lots of people to work on projects that the up-timers could probably do with a lot less, had stood Russia in very good stead. Both industrially and in the recent battle over Rzhev. Russia had the beginnings of an electronics industry at the price of several people accidentally electrocuted. Telegraphs and telephones in the Kremlin and radios-soon-with experiments on tubes and transistors, Mikhail was told. So far unsuccessful. A test dirigible built and used at Rzhev and a much larger one under construction. Plumbing at the Dacha and starting to appear other places, including parts of Moscow. New rifled muskets with replaceable chambers for the Army and new breach-loading cannon as well. New pumps for clearing mines of water and for creating vacuums. Which apparently had a myriad of uses. Improved roads, steam engines… the list went on and on. Sucking up labor almost as fast as the new plows and reapers freed it, perhaps faster. The free peasantry-what was left of it-had been among the first to go to the factories and set up their own, along with the musketeers who were Russia's traditional merchant class.
Mikhail was less happy about some of the policy changes that Sheremetev had come up with. He didn't mind the wood railroad to Smolensk, but selling to the Turks bothered him.
Moscow, the Grantville Bureau
Boris filled out paperwork and tried not to think about what was happening. Sheremetev was an idiot who had no concept of how to treat people to get the best work out of them. He couldn't inspire or motivate, save through threats. But, for now at least, the threats seemed to be working. Sheremetev had complete control of the Duma through a combination of bribes, coercion and outright threats. Worse, he was what the up-timers called a micromanager, and his decisions were wrong more often than not.
It wasn't that Boris disagreed with Sheremetev's assessment of the general situation in Europe.
The Swede was much more dangerous than the Pole. That had to be clear to anyone except an idiot.
But Boris didn't think Sheremetev really believed in paper money. Boris didn't really believe in it himself, in spite of the fact that he had seen it work in Grantville. But Sheremetev was pushing it as hard or harder than Czar Mikhail had been and the czar had believed in it and at least seemed to understand it. Boris figured that Sheremetev was just using it to sucker people into giving him gold and working for nothing.
Just outside the Ring of Fire, near Grantville
"Sheremetev is teaching us a lesson," Vladimir explained. "He's also tempting us, putting pressure on to see if we will defect. Well, if I will defect. You hold dual citizenship."
"What lesson?" Brandy asked.
"Don't try to hold up the Russian government. Or, more accurately, don't fail to cut him in on it."
"So how bad is it?"
"Bad! It's the advances." The ruble, now a paper currency, with the face of Czar Mikhail and the double-headed eagle on the face and the Moscow Kremlin and a Russian bear on the back, was valued at less than half the value of the Dutch guilder in spite of the fact that it was supposed to be equivalent to the silver ruble coin that had twice the silver of the Dutch guilder. Partly that was because the czar and Duma had issued rather more rubles than they really should have. But mostly it was because the Dutch merchants resented the heck out of the paper ruble. It had changed the whole trading landscape in Russia. Dutch merchants had gone from absolutely vital to convenient. And the price they paid at Arkhangelsk for grain, cordage, lumber, and other Russian goods had more than doubled.
Partly out of resentment, the Dutch wouldn't deal in Russian paper money or money of account based on Russian money. They would still accept Russian coins, but their refusal to deal in Russian paper had its effect. "If the canny Dutch merchants wouldn't take paper rubles, there must be something wrong with them. Right?" So rubles traded in Grantville, Venice and Vienna at less than a quarter of face value. And that was if you were basing face value on the amount of silver in a ruble coin. If you figured it in the price of a bushel of grain at Arkhangelsk versus the same bushel at Amsterdam, it traded at less than a tenth of its face value.
And it's really hard to make a profit if you're losing more than nine-tenths of your money to arbitrage. Vladimir spent his rubles where they would buy something, then shipped the goods to the USE for resale, just like he had been doing from the beginning. And, like any good man of business, he tried to find buyers in advance rather than shipping the goods on spec. What Sheremetev objected to was how much of the money Vladimir was investing in Grantville and the USE. Sheremetev wanted Vladimir to buy silver and gold and send it back to Moscow. Which made no sense at all. If Vladimir was going to do anything along those lines, he would be buying paper rubles in Grantville with silver where he could get a lot of them, then shipping the rubles back to Moscow where they would buy more.
Vladimir had contracts to sell five thousand stacked-plate mica capacitors, plus several tons of other mica products. But what he didn't have was this quarter's shipment of mica and mica-based components. Also missing were a couple of hundred miles of cordage, several tons of Russian hardwoods, plus sundry other goods. In other words, several million American dollars worth of goods, which he was morally and legally obligated to provide. And about half of it had been paid for in advance. He was insured against loss at sea. With Swedish control of the Baltic, the insurance hadn't been all that expensive.
What he wasn't insured against was Sheremetev and the Duma preventing him from bringing out the goods. Goods that had never sailed from Nyen, Saint Petersburg it would have become in that other history. Goods that had never even reached Swedish Ingria. It wasn't just that money wasn't coming in-money that had already come would have to be paid back with penalties for non-delivery.
Vladimir wasn't broke exactly. He was now deeply in debt. In some ways it was better than being broke, but in others much worse. Partly to gain access to the developing tech and partly just because it was good long-term financial strategy, he had invested in some of the more long-term projects. He was, for instance, fairly heavily invested in three of the companies that were working on down-time manufacture of automobiles. And he was the major investor in a group that was working on the tubes for microwaves. They didn't expect results for years, but they were working on it and Vladimir was the primary backer of the research. Microwave tech was just too useful to ignore because it was hard to do.
Vladimir hadn't been particularly extravagant in his investments, or at least he didn't think he had. There was room in his financial structure for occasional delays or even an outright disaster. Most of the time. But not just now. Just now he was, ah, making a movie. "Well, the advances and the movie."
"Oh! Now don't blame me!" Brandy said.
"I didn't say a thing," Vladimir protested. "You asked."
Brandy, or rather Judy the Younger, had introduced him to the producer. Gino Bianchi, a down-timer from Italy who had a great deal of experience in producing plays and extravaganzas. He also had Els Engel to play Rebecca Stearns, Agnes Engel to play Kathy Melton, for whom the Las Vegas Belle was named, and Karl Shubert to play Hans Richter. Der Falke, The Falcon, wasn't really the Hans Richter story, though he had a major role. It was the story of the forming of the USE. In fact they had almost called it The Birth of a Nation, but the mixture of laughter and disgust from the up-timers had killed that name.
"It's going to make a fortune once they finish it," Brandy added. Der Falke was over budget and behind schedule, in part because the differences between staging a play and making a movie were so great and in part because it was just plain hard to do the air scenes. They knew what they wanted-they had all seen Star Wars after all-but getting it was another matter.
"I know and we could cover the cost well enough if it weren't for
…" Vladimir waved vaguely eastward indicating the political events in Russia. "As it is, the money we put into the film, and more, is needed to cover the missing shipment. We've got to find a way to get the goods from Russia to the USE. And I can't set anything up with Natasha because anything I send will probably be seen by Sheremetev before Natasha gets it. If she gets it at all."
"How much time do we have?"
"Several months, perhaps three to six. But that's only if we can be sure that we can get the stuff out of Russia. If we can't, we need to start cutting back as soon as possible."
"Well, I can send a fruitcake," Brandy said, "but given how well secured the Dacha is, I don't know if she will get it. And I don't see how we will know until the stuff shows up or doesn't."
"We will be having guests."
Natasha looked up at Anya's comment. "Guests?"
"Yes. Representatives from the Ottoman Empire. They have been looking at factories on the Don and Volga rivers and we have been told to be circumspect in what we show them."
Natasha hated to ask Anya but she needed to know. "What is going on?"
"The government is looking for new allies in case Gustav Adolph and the USE decide to look east for new lands to conquer."
"Insanity!"
"Actually, it's not," Anya said with what sounded like real regret. "You know that Sweden is perfectly willing to bite off pieces of Russia. Our access to the Baltic is now Swedish Ingria and we pay taxes to Sweden on every cargo that sails from Nyen. And peasants run from Ingratioto be serfs in Russia, while the Swedes complain and threaten about their running and our use of Arkhangelsk, even though it's iced in half the year. Suddenly Gustav has all these new weapons, the USE is rapidly becoming the richest, most industralized, nation in Europe… Yet still he complains about our holding back the grain shipments when he knows we lost a quarter of this year's crop to the early storm."
"But the up-timers would never let…"
"Let? 'Let' is not a word used with kings, Natasha. Besides, Mike Stearns is not the prime minister anymore. Do you really think Wettin would even try to stop Gustav?"
"You really don't care about anything, do you?" Natasha spat. "Whatever your master says, you parrot… the party line!"
Anya looked at her and Natasha realized that their relative positions were not what they had seemed. She was still a princess, but Anya had the ear of a boyar and-for now at least-the most powerful man in Russia. It also occurred to her that pissing off someone with the ear of what amounted to the shogun of Russia might not be the best idea in the world. Since Sheremetev had taken power there had been a purge of the bureaus the like of which hadn't been seen since Ivan the Terrible. The Dacha and the Grantville Bureau had gotten off fairly lightly-in large part because between them they were the goose that was laying the golden eggs. But even they weren't untouched. Boris had lost several people who were considered politically questionable and the Dacha remained under guard.
Then Anya said, "Actually, I despise him. Both because of what he has done to me and because he is, in general, a nasty piece of work. Unless you happen to be a close friend. However, that doesn't blind me to what he is doing. The Limited Year hasn't been repealed and the bureau men aren't screaming about it anymore. They're too busy covering their asses by kissing his. The purge in the bureaus has been extreme, but it hasn't been entirely political. A lot of the deadwood has been removed and there is greater opportunity for those with more talent and fewer family connections. Peasants aren't just going to look for gold in the mountains, they are finding factory jobs all along the Volga. The jobs suck, but they are better than being a farmer.
"As to Sheremetev's foreign policy… However noble of character the up-timers may be, they aren't in control of the USE. They have influence out of proportion to their numbers, but those numbers are miniscule. Poland is probably less of a threat to us than the axis of Sweden and the USE. From where we sit, the biggest difference between Napoleon or Hitler and Gustav Adolph is that his army would probably do quite well in a winter war in Russia. He was born and raised in Sweden, after all. If King Gustav should decide to take Poland and keep coming east, we will be facing a force that outnumbers us and outguns us, led by a man who is quite possibly the greatest general of the seventeenth century. We will need allies. All of them we can get.
"Natalya Petrovna," Anya said, "I take no joy in the thought of war with Bernie's people. But I learned at an early age that what I want doesn't control what happens."
"Bernie seems to think so, but our research has shown that you spend much more in fuel for moving the same weight with heavier than air craft," Grigorii Mikhailovich explained rather more fully than Filip Pavlovich Tupikov thought was really necessary.
"Bernie?" Lufti Pasha asked.
"A member of our staff hired from, ah, central Germany," Filip said. Bernie was gone while the Turks were visiting the Dacha. This was for three reasons. First, the Turks didn't officially acknowledge that the Ring of Fire had happened. They knew about it. Filip imagined that every beggar in Istanbul knew about it. But they didn't acknowledge it. So, it made it easier for the delegation if he wasn't there. It would help to avoid slips of the tongue. The second reason was that it would be much easier to keep the topics of conversation to what they were doing and avoid giving away technical details of how they were doing it if Bernie wasn't around. At least it was supposed to. Filip gave Grigorii a look. And finally, Bernie was just likely to say something stupid about the Turks and their presence if he was here. He had been difficult to live with since Anya's promotion and the revelations of her previous job.
"I understand." Lufti Pasha smiled at Filip. Clearly a man who knew how to play the game. "Will we be meeting him?"
"I am afraid not," Filip said. "He is supervising the installation of a phone system at Dedovsk." Not that the phone group needed Bernie's supervision. "Now, if you will come this way, we will show you the chemistry labs, where we do not attempt to turn base metals into gold. Rather we make dyes and medicines… and if we can get better access to your naphtha, we will be making fuels and plastic materials."
"Send him a jar of Sophia's special borscht," Anya said. She was getting just a little tired of Natasha unloading on her about the actions of Sheremetev. It wasn't her fault that he wanted to make the point that Vladimir was still under his authority even in Grantville.
Natasha looked her, clearly confused. "What?"
Amateurs, Anya thought. "Like the onion apple pecan cake." She watched as Natasha went so pale that she wouldn't even need the white pancake makeup that, in spite of everything, was still popular in Russia among the upper class. It was quite enjoyable to see. "Surely you didn't think I wouldn't know?" Anya kept her voice light and even managed to put a bit of surprise in it. Sort of like a teacher explaining to a student that yes, she was aware that two plus two equals four.
"Sheremetev? Does he…"
"No, I don't think so. Your sister in-law seems quite a bright young lady. The cakes are good because it is quite unavoidably obvious if they are tampered with. All that crust. And, considering the list of ingredients, it's unlikely that anyone would filch one to eat at home."
"Then how?"
"The hole in the middle! You failed to eat the evidence… which is understandable, I guess. But you also failed to crumble up the cake remains, which was just plain stupid!"
"Who examines table scraps?"
Anya looked at her. Could Natasha really be that naive? Then she realized that in just that one place, Natasha could be that naive.
"I'm sorry, Princess, truly I am. I didn't realize how sheltered you have been." Anya paused then spoke in as dry and dispassionate a voice as she could manage. "People who live on the border of starvation examine table scraps as automatically as breathing. We do it in the hopes of easing the constant pain in our bellies. And we keep right on doing it even after the threat of starvation is gone. It becomes a habit that can stay with us the rest of our lives. At least, it has with me. Besides, when my time at the edge of starvation ended, my time of training began. There, failure to notice things was severely punished. I never knew what I was supposed to notice so I tried to learn to notice everything."
Anya had spoken more than she'd meant to. Which didn't invalidate her training or experience. She still watched Natasha, noting the reaction. It wasn't understanding that she saw in Natasha's face, but perhaps the first realization that there might be something in Anya to understand. That the labels "spy" and "traitor" weren't all it took to define Anya in her totality. And that, in turn, sparked a realization in Anya that there might be more in Natasha than was encompassed by the up-timer expression "rich bitch."
It wasn't much, but it was a beginning. It was unlikely that Natasha and Anya would ever become bosom buddies. However, something approaching mutual respect might be possible. Perhaps even an alliance of sorts. Even so, that was for later. For now…
"Actually, I doubt that the restrictions on your brother's exports are aimed as much at you or him as they are at the king of Sweden. What are capacitors used for?"
"Radios mostly, the ones we're sending. A few of the really big ones are probably for use in power plants or the big radio stations," Natasha said.
"So, command and control of their armies and propaganda?"
"If you want to look at it that way, I guess."
"Believe me, that's the way His Most High Excellency looks at it." Anya shrugged. "Not that he objects to inconveniencing your family. I'm told that having to deal with people he can't control upsets his liver. And you aren't that popular with most of his support group." Quite a few members of the boyar class had gone from being dismissive of the Dacha and what it might produce to resentful of the Yaroslav's semi-exclusive control of the technology. Not that even semi-exclusive wasn't overstating the case. Aside from the part given over to the government and the rights sold to other groups, more than half of the stuff produced in Russia based on information from Grantville and the Dacha was produced without license. A blacksmith would get a good look at a new plow or a scraper and copy it on his own. Glass works were springing up all over the place and who was to say where they got the formula they were using? Ice houses, using natural and manmade ice, canning and freeze drying plants were also springing up. And the list went on.
It was true that the Yaroslav family generally got it first. That early access made it possible for them to arrange partnerships with merchants and manufacturers that were producing significant profits. As they had gained in wealth, they gained enemies among the great families.
Natasha nodded agreement. "Do you think the exports are a danger to Russia?"
"It's not that important," Anya said, "not when compared to the information your brother provides the Dacha. "
"Do you think you could…"
Anya was already shaking her blond head. "Not a chance. Whether it's to bring Vladimir to heel, send a message to Gustav or because he just wants more silver where he can get his hands on it, Sheremetev isn't going to change his mind about it. You will have to find a way around the restrictions." She considered a moment, then continued. "I would suggest going through a Polish merchant. Someone who is friendly with Sheremetev and has connections with one of the banks in the USE. Not an Abrabanel but perhaps an Abrabanel connection."
"That will take time to set up and Vladimir needs the goods now."
"Does he need the goods or just assurance that they will be coming?"
"The goods would be best, but assurance would probably work."
"You'll need to send him that bottle of borscht then."
Anya watched as Natasha tried to work out why she was helping, then gave up the effort. "Why?"
"Bernie!" The word exploded with rather more force than Anya would have preferred. Since Sheremetev's revelation they had barely spoken. Anya had no idea how to deal with the situation. Because, for the first time she could remember, she cared what someone else felt about her. Not with her head, but with her heart.
Natasha was looking at her, head tilted like some sort of inquisitive crow. Or perhaps a vampire getting ready to dine, if the half smile was any indication. "Do you want him back or want him dead?"
Anya took a breath to get herself under control. "I know whose fault this is and it's not Bernie's."
"Whose fault is it?" Natasha seemed truly curious.
Anya's first response was that it was her fault. That was what had prompted her comment. But she had really had very little choice. Telling Bernie the truth would have been dangerous to him and, especially, to her. Even if he had accepted it and tried to keep her secret, Bernie was not a good liar. Besides, by the time she had any reason to tell him it was probably already too late. So… Sheremetev? His fault? No, not really. He was just doing what any boyar class player might be expected to do and if he hadn't, she never would have met Bernie in the first place. Fate? God? Anya believed in God, but the god she believed in was an autocrat like Sheremetev, even more difficult to please and more likely to punish than the caring, beneficent being Bernie believed in. Anya had long since given up any hope of satisfying the God of Abraham or looking to him for succor.
Which brought Anya back to… "Mine," she said with a certain finality. Whatever the other factors, Anya knew that she had betrayed Bernie's trust.
Natasha was expecting Anya to blame Sheremetev. She was expecting justifications, excuses, reasons why Anya had been forced into what she had done. And by now she knew enough to realize that there would have been quite a bit of truth in them. Some things Leontii had mentioned about Anya and her family. The cold, simple "mine" was the last thing she expected. She had to regroup.
Bernie hadn't exactly been a joy to be around since the revelation of Anya's spying. Nor had Anya been. But…
Natasha wondered… could it possibly be? True love? Could Anya, cold as she was, truly be in love with Bernie?
"You want him back, don't you?" Natasha asked.
There was dead silence for longer than Natasha could have imagined.
"Yes." Anya's voice was soft. "I do want him back."
Natasha thought for a few moments. "Bernie isn't… subtle, Anya. He may realize that you didn't have a choice, but he may not. Have you talked to him at all?"
"Talk to him how? The moment he sees me enter a room, he's back out the door. I think he's only eating because the women in the kitchen are slipping him food so he doesn't have to come inside."
"Hm. I could, perhaps…"
"You'd talk to him for me?" Anya looked hopeful.
"Depends," Natasha said. "What can you do for me? And my brother?"
Embassy house, outside the Ring of Fire
The heavy, opaque glass jar arrived with a note explaining that Natasha's Aunt Sophia, having received and enjoyed the Apple Onion Nut Cake, had decided to reciprocate by sending Brandy a jar of borscht from her old family recipe. This statement was followed by a list of ingredients which would make a maggot vomit. With a post script from Natasha. "Vengeance is mine.:-)"
"At least, thank God," Brandy muttered, "We don't have to really eat this stuff."
"It would only be fair," Vladimir said. "After all, Natasha eats the cake."
"Yes, but the cake is actually good. The name just stinks." Brandy held the jar of borscht at arm's length. "Unlike this soup, which stinks to high heaven. And beyond."
They were alone in the kitchen-which wasn't an easy thing to arrange. Servants were all over the place, all of the time. Even at three in the morning, you were likely to find someone awake and doing something. Brandy had told Tate Garrett, their chef, that they needed some privacy. Tate managed to figure out a way to keep Kseniya, the priest's wife and their housekeeper, out of the kitchen overnight, even though it involved Tate producing something extra-special for breakfast. And it also involved owing Tate big time, at least according to Tate.
"Maybe we should have dumped it down the toilet…"
"Good Lord, no," Brandy said. "It'd be our luck that the plumbing would back up!"
It wasn't as bad as Brandy feared, once they'd gotten rid of the soup. Inside another well-sealed but smaller jar, was the latest intelligence from the Dacha.
"Hm…" Vladimir murmured.
"Hm?" Vlad's "hm" was the type that sounded like good things were happening.
"Well, I've got a name," Vladimir said. "And Natasha has outlined a plan. But we can at least assure our creditors that the merchandise is on the way."
"That's good."
Pyotr Chudinov looked over his mule train then gave the signal and started the trip to Vitebsk. He carried on his mules several capacitors-whatever those were-and one Russian steam engine made at the Dacha. Also several letters to a Polish factor he was acquainted with. Pyotr hadn't asked, but from Vitebsk the capacitors would travel down the Daugava to Riga which would put them in Swedish territory. Since he had paid his bribes, his main concern at this point was bandits.
And a bit of concern that someone might pry a bit too closely into certain items that were headed to a certain town in Germany.
All in all, it would be a lot better for Pyotr and his family if no one noticed that. Not that Pyotr would be taking them all the way. He would pass them off to a Polish merchant and where they would go from there Pyotr had no official idea. Not that it was hard to guess. Considering that Princess Natalya was sending them and where her brother was.
The Dacha
"And how is Gustav Adolph different from Adolph Hitler, in the up-timer histories," Misha asked.
"He's Swedish, not German." Nikolai laughed.
"Hitler was… would have been… Austrian, not German. Gustav made himself Emperor of Germany the same way Hitler did in that other history, and is at war with a lot of the same people. France, England, and maybe next year, Poland.
"Which would be just fine with me." Nikolai wasn't laughing now. "Damn Poles! With their false Dimitrys, murder and looting. At least we taught them a lesson at Rzhev."
"And after that?" Misha asked. "How long before Gustav's Operation Barbarossa?"
"He's too canny for that. After all, the histories make it quite clear how it turned out."
"Yes, because Hitler was a lousy general and didn't understand Russian winters. Gustav is a very good general and does understand Russian winters. But that doesn't make him less ambitious than that crazy up-timer. Just more dangerous."
Bernie had been paying a bit more attention to politics since Anya's revelation. And he was having a lot of trouble making sense of it all. He appreciated that Gustav Adolph had ridden to the rescue of Grantville in the Croat raid, but he didn't approve of the USE having a king or the New US being reduced to just another state. It seemed like Mike Stearns had given up too much of what America had been up-time. Maybe he had no choice but that didn't make Bernie any more loyal to some Swedish king and his German prime minister. By now Bernie had more friends in Russia than in Grantville. It wasn't that Bernie had any great love for the government of Russia, especially now, but America was gone. Left up-time.
And the USE seemed just another down-time nation. its up-timer ideals increasingly diluted by those of the down-timers. From where Bernie was sitting, there wasn't that much difference between Czar Mikhail with Sheremetev and King Gustav with Wettin. At this point, Bernie just hoped that the kings, emperors and czars of the world didn't start a war that had up-timer fighting up-timer. He honestly didn't know what he would do if that happened.
Meanwhile he had work to do. The telephone systems they were working up for the Russian cities used telephone operators that switched the calls by hand, but they wanted an electromechanically switching system. The EMCM, Electro-Mechanical Calculating Machine already used solenoid switches for its memory and combinations of them to produce Nand and Nor gates so Bernie was having to look up Nand gates to figure out if they could be applied to the telephone switching system. After several hours Bernie found out that Nand was short for "not and" in Boolean algebra. He still didn't have a clue whether it could be used in a telephone switching system. But he sent the definition of a Nand gate, complete with the ones and zeros, to the phone guys. Then he went on to the next question someone wanted him to work on.
"Where are you headed, Tim?" Ivan Maslov asked, looking over Lieutenant Boris "Tim" Timofeyevich Lebedev's new uniform-complete with the new lieutenant's insignia with more than a touch of envy. Then he grinned. Tim was back in Moscow, a second lieutenant with considerable experience with latrines. Tim was still not as good as Ivan was at war games but was getting better.
Tim shuddered. "My uncle… he requires my report."
"But you did well at Rzhev! At least officially." Ivan didn't envy Tim his great uncle at all. He had met the old monster once and that was more than enough. But Tim's great uncle was, by good fortune, a supporter of the Sheremetev faction, which now controlled the Duma. Not one of the first supporters but he hadn't been purged, not even sent out of Moscow. General Shein, on the other hand, was now in charge of one section of the Siberian frontier, demoted and sent as far from Moscow as you could get and still be in Russia. From what Ivan had heard, General Shein had missed execution by a hair's breadth.
"My uncle is not limited to official channels," Tim said. "I'm to have a chat with him. Which translates to giving him a full report on everything that happened. It will take hours, I promise you. Hours! I won't be able to gloss over anything."
Ivan knew that Tim would much rather gloss over parts of what happened in Rzhev. More for Izmailov's sake than his own. Which was a pretty positive response to someone that had you cleaning out latrines.
Tim's great uncle was no one's fool and ten times as politically astute as Tim ever wanted to be. It had taken him all of a minute and a half to get through the fiction of the contingency plan. He had laughed at General Izmailov's notion of giving Tim a medal and then having him shot. A rough, cackling laugh, that seemed to come from the depths of hell. "A good plan," his uncle said when he finished laughing. "But he was wise not to carry it through. I would have regretted having a man of such wit put to death."
Tim waited. Silent. At attention.
"Well?" his uncle barked.
"Yes, sir. General Izmailov is a great general and a great asset to Russia."
"But a friend of Shein's, one of his proteges, in fact. Keep your distance from him, boy. Sheremetev's not fond of Shein. The war party didn't do well in this last shake up. I'll try to keep your general alive for you, but not to the point of risking the family. Now tell me about Khilkov. What went on? And why did Izmailov let him do it?"
Tim told him. It wasn't like General Izmailov had much choice, considering Khilkov's family connections. Then they went on to the situation in Rzhev and the Polish border in general.
"Rzhev was a screw up, sir," Tim said. "They didn't have the steam ships to take advantage of it, even if they had held the town. It really was magnates going off on their own."
"I don't doubt it, boy. That's what started Dimitryads. Poland uses its magnates to test the waters."
"Yes, sir. But they didn't have the logistic train to support it even if it had worked."
"You seem pretty sure of that, boy. The Poles are cavalry. They need their horses but can steal the rest."
Tim hesitated. He was in fact quite sure that cavalry would be trashed if it lacked infantry support and Russia controlled the rivers for troop transport. But his great uncle was a boyar of the Duma and ruled the family with an iron hand. "Not with us controlling the river with steam barges. War horses need grain, horseshoes, and so on. Cavalrymen need food and equipment-which breaks in the field-and gunpowder. They would do damage but with the steam barges to put troops in front of them and the walking walls and cannon… especially with the AK3s… they are going to run out of cavalry long before we run out of bullets. Over the course of an hour cavalry can outrun a steam barge, but over a day they can't keep up. With the dirigible to locate them…" Tim shook his head. "They wouldn't last a week."
"Tell me about the flying ship."
"It told us where they were. Which was important in Rzhev, but would have been even more important if the Poles had tried to push farther in. It would have let us see where they were going and get there first. They would have been forced from one trap to another, until they were utterly destroyed. Cavalry is doing well to cover thirty miles a day; a dirigible can cover that in an hour. Then go home and tell the infantry and mobile artillery where the cavalry is headed. Cavalry's day is over except as support troops. If that." Which was a risky thing to say because his great uncle had been a cavalry commander under Ivan the Terrible.
All in all, it was a grueling interview and Tim was happy to get back to the Kremlin. Though Tim didn't know it, the interview had a strong effect on the policies of the Duma. Cavalry, which had always been the province of the service nobility, was downgraded in importance and so was the service nobility. Instead, the musketeer class with its rifle companies would be given more support and respect. It wouldn't happen in a year or even a decade, but between the destruction of Khilkov's cavalry and the many reports, both official and unofficial, the writing was on the wall. Eventually, because the service nobility was the class that produced the bureaucrats and the musketeer class was the class that produced the merchants, the private sector would gain-a bit at a time-the ear of the government and the public sector would be heeded a bit less. The years of limited mobility would not be allowed to lapse. With inflation, that would mean that more and more of the peasants would be able to pay off their debts to the lesser nobility and seek factory jobs.
Totally by accident and without ever knowing it, Tim had struck a blow for freedom. A small blow. Even a tiny one. But who knows? Enough such tiny blows and even the massive edifice of Russian serfdom might eventually fall.
"At last, at last!"
Brandy had to grin. Vlad's happy dance was a combination of many things, not least of which was some old football player's antics after a touchdown. Where he'd ever seen it was beyond her. One of the best things about the seventeenth century was the lack of football, as far as Brandy was concerned. Every fall she did her own happy dance about that.
"Does he do that always?" The speaker was an old Grantville hand in a way. Karl Paschkewicz was a merchant from Silesia who was in and out of Grantville three or four times a year.
Brandy looked Paschkewicz, a bit surprised. "No, not really. But we'd been pretty worried about this shipment."
"I hope he's as happy when he finds out how much fell off the wagon on the way here," Paschkewicz muttered, and Brandy looked at him and raised an eyebrow in inquiry. "Ah, I have a message for the prince."
"From?"
"Perhaps I should speak to Prince Vladimir?"
Brandy looked him, then shook her head sadly. "If you say so. Vlad. Business." The dance stopped at Brandy's tone. "The shipment is not complete and Herr Paschkewicz has a message which he feels he must deliver to you."
"Not complete? How incomplete?" Suddenly there was nothing at all comical about Vlad's stance.
However, Brandy had to suppress a smile at the merchant's sudden gulp.
"Ah… the shipment was unexpected, Your Highness. Preparations had not been made. It was necessary to grease some palms. And the contents of the shipment were the only, ah, grease we had."
"Whose palms?"
Brandy didn't recognize the names but it was clear that Vlad did. They were Polish nobility. They talked about who had gotten what and how much. The most important items were mica-based electronics. Which both Russia and the USE would prefer not to have fallen into Polish hands. They would go a long way to providing the Poles with tactical range radios. Of course, the way the Polish nobility worked the fact that some Polish nobles had radios didn't necessarily mean the Polish government had them. The best Vlad could come up with was a maybe. If Russia or the USE ended up at war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it might be that they would be facing radio-equipped forces… or it might not.
The letter, it turned out, was from Cass Lowry. How he had found out that the shipment was coming here neither Vlad or Brandy could make a guess at, but he had figured it out and used the information to insert a letter into the shipment. The letter included quite a bit of complaining about the way he was being treated since Sheremetev had taken over plus a few tidbits about the Russian arms program. There was now production of caps and a simple change in the design of the removable chambers of the AK3, combined with replacing the flint with a hammer attachment. These changes turned the AK3 flintlock into the AK4 caplock. And just about doubled the rate of fire for as long as you had loaded chambers. Cass also talked a bit about the eastern frontier of Russia and Brandy wondered if he was planning to resign without notice.
"We have very little choice, Papa," Pavel said. "Ten thousand AK3s to the Turks, due… very soon. The gun shops will be working like mad."
Boris nodded. Things were getting better… mostly. Not so much for the Bureau men as for Russia in general. Food and silver were arriving from the Ottoman Empire. Wheat was expensive in Moscow but not yet too expensive. Steam engines, rifles and lots of other things were going south in exchange. Boris was concerned about the rifles, but not that concerned. No. That wasn't quite right Boris was really worried about the rifles but selling them to the Ottoman Empire wasn't the issue. The AK3 was an incredibly simple weapon to make. Selling one to the Ottoman Empire or the Poles or anyone else was as bad as selling a million of them and there was no way that they could keep the Ottoman Empire or the Poles or the Swedes, for that matter, from getting hold of an example rifle. So they might as well sell as many as they could. At least they weren't selling the Ottomans the breach-loading cannon. Though Boris wasn't at all sure that would do any good.
"And so, certain boyars gain more silver and gold from the, ah, southern trade," Boris said. "But at least they haven't shorted the grain supply… much."
"And our people are prepared." Pavel smiled. Potatoes had become incredibly popular among the peasants. You could hide a plot of potatoes from the taxman, or at least hide how many there were. There was considerable upset among the Bureau men about the amount of farming equipment that was going south. But it was quiet, underground resentment. "Three of our people have paid off their debt and gone to work for the railroad."
"Signing loan from the railroad?" Boris asked and Pavel nodded. Even with the economy expanding and with inflation, enough rubles for a peasant to pay his way out of debt were hard to come by. So companies that had the money had started using signing loans to clear the peasant's debt, or, more accurately, transfer it to the company. Since the railroad was owned by the Sheremetev family, it had plenty of money for signing loans.
Except for its habit of nicking other peoples serfs, the railroad from Moscow to Smolensk was a project that Boris strongly approved of. It was wooden rails, since Russia was well-supplied with wood. Iron and steel were way too expensive for such a massive project. Boris wondered about the railroad. Sheremetev tended to be on the pro-Polish-or at least the less-anti-Polish-faction in the Duma. The railroad could serve to facilitate trade with Poland, and through Poland with Austria-Hungary, but it could also be used as logistical support for an attack on Poland. Boris wondered which Sheremetev had in mind. Probably both.
Meanwhile the industrial base along the Volga was producing more and more goods. Mostly simple stuff. The stuff that didn't need that much infrastructure. But it was surprising how much fell into that category, when it wasn't competing with established products.
"And our factory?" Boris waited for his son to find the figures, then said, "Excellent. Absolutely excellent."
Freeze drying is expensive and time consuming when compared to canning… if you already have the infrastructure for a canning industry. It's much less so when it's competing against small-scale canning and down-time preservation methods. Once you had the foods freeze-dried, they were light weight and stayed good for a long time. Which made them highly prized, both by the military and the civilian population. Boris' family and some partners from the Grantville Bureau had put together a small freeze-drying plant near the family's lands and added a lot of gardening. Diced carrots, onions, peas, cabbage, beets, even berries, were all being diced up and freeze dried. Then sealed in waxed paper pouches and stored in crates. Quite a bit of it was sold to the army and more in Moscow. Aside from the extra income, it meant that they had fresh (or the next thing to it) fruits and vegetables even in late winter and early spring. Which did good things for the health of his family and his serfs.
The new farming equipment meant that he needed a lot less labor in the fields most of the time, which had given the serfs time for the gardening. Boris, with his connection to the Dacha and the information from Grantville and the Ring of Fire, was running a year or more ahead of his neighbors, which meant that his family was doing a lot better than others of the same rank. Which was a good thing because there was considerable inflation of paper money and silver was increasingly hard to come by. A paper ruble was-by law-worth the same as a silver ruble, but-in fact-worth less. How much less? No one knew. Gresham's Law was working at full force in Russia where the ruble was legally the same whether silver or paper, but not in Grantville where American dollars weren't tied to silver. Boris was, of course, paid in paper rubles-so the farm income was especially important.
Bernie peeked at Anya from under his floppy hat. He'd taken to wearing it lately, just to keep her from knowing that he was… looking at her. Longing for her, really.
The bitch. Why in the world couldn't he get her off his mind?
Cold hearted. Bitch. Spy.
Yargh! This had to stop. Had to.
He couldn't still love that… person who was trapped by her circumstances just as much has he was himself.
Could he?