Ring of Fire II

by Eric Flint

  "I understand." Frederik Hendrik nodded. "But I will not allow this move unless I get what I asked for. Without some point of contact with the rest of the world, Amsterdam's business community will die."

  Back in the embassy the news was good. "This is so not a problem, Rebecca." Jimmy Andersen laughed.

  "It really isn't," Jeff agreed. "Radio isn't a secret. Long distance communications without great, big towers is the secret. We can get radio for Amsterdam and Antwerp, no prob."

  "Not even," Jimmy enthused. "We'll set up a station here and one in Antwerp. We'll put great, big, hulking cables in both places. It'll be neat."

  "A CW link," Jeff added, "forty or so words a minute . . ."

  Rebecca felt her eyes begin to glaze over. Techno-geek was a specialized language, one she didn't understand. She escaped as quickly as she could, and let Jeff and Jimmy indulge their preference without her presence.

  "Antwerp?" Don Fernando asked, as they walked along. "That is surprisingly generous of Frederik Hendrik. I agree to Antwerp and I appreciate Frederik Hendrik's offering it. Actually, and just between the two of us, I like the idea of split reserves as well. It has political consequences that could prove useful. Now, about these trading concessions, what does that Dutch merchant want?"

  Miguel stifled a guffaw. "Sire, is it really the proper thing to call another prince a merchant? I'm quite sure he would be offended by this." The garden was mostly dormant at this time of year but it was well-arranged. It was a pleasant place to walk and think, even in winter.

  "The man deals like a merchant. If he acts like a merchant, I'll call him a merchant. We are not—and you may tell him so—we are absolutely not, going to allow foodstuffs to be transported into the city, if that's what he wants. Nor will we open our lines while he ships in cannon or shot. Gunpowder is out, too."

  "He doesn't ask for that, and I don't believe he would think for a moment that you would agree to it, either. However, he does ask that raw materials, like leather for the boot makers, clay for the potters, be allowed through the lines. And he asks that goods, finished goods, be allowed out."

  Don Fernando grasped his head between his own hands and pretended to tear his own hair. "Gah! What did I call him? A merchant, wasn't it? This is a military operation, is it not? We are here to take the city, are we not? And yet Frederik Hendrik wants to continue to do business, even through a siege? I am astounded, truly astounded."

  Miguel couldn't hold the guffaw back any longer. He broke into laughter, and laughed until the tears ran down his face. Don Fernando, after one amazed look at his usually serious aide, began to laugh also. At first, it was only a small snicker, but it grew and grew, until he, too, was laughing uproariously.

  Don Alfredo, who most definitely was a merchant, and quite a good one, waited patiently for the mirth to subside. Eventually, Don Fernando wiped his eyes and calmed down a bit. Still trying to repress more laughter, he said, "Well, Don Alfredo, what do you say to the merchant of Amsterdam's latest proposal?"

  "I can't speak to the military effect, Your Highness, but speaking as a merchant, I would think it a very good idea. I will go further, even. What do you want when you have taken Amsterdam? Do you wish a denuded city that will take decades to recover from the siege, like Antwerp? Or would you prefer a prosperous city, one that has not been destroyed?"

  "Very well." Don Fernando sighed. "I will allow raw materials through the lines, after the wagons have been thoroughly inspected, and I will allow goods to be exported, as well. However, I will allow export only if my army is allowed to purchase goods as well. After all, equipment does wear out, you know. I, myself, could use a new pair of boots. Why not allow it, after all?"

  Don Alfredo looked a bit pained, like he wanted to say something or perhaps use the toilet. "What is it, Don Alfredo? You think I ask too much?"

  "You do not ask enough, Your Highness, not nearly enough. Remember . . . taxes. Taxes on everything that goes in," Don Alfredo waved his hand one way, "and taxes on everything that comes out," he waved his hand the other. "You are the rightful prince, Your Highness. It's only your due. And since you are a good and gracious prince, you don't want your subjects to suffer under a harsh or usurious double tax.

  "I believe you should suggest that Frederik Hendrik must stop taxing imports and exports from Amsterdam. He will not agree to this, of course, so a compromise must be reached. A compromise that will insure that the taxes are fair and reasonable, I hope. Your Highness will receive some needed revenue. True, Frederik Hendrik will receive some revenue, but he is trapped in Amsterdam."

  No one was laughing now, but slowly Don Fernando and Miguel began to smile. Most of Don Fernando's advance into the Dutch Netherlands had been stopped not by lack of arms but by lack of money and supplies.

  "I will consider this proposal. Of course, we will have to make some arrangements for the future, after I have succeeded with this siege." Don Fernando nodded. "You have served Spain very well this day, Don Alfredo. Now I want you to tell me what the results of this agreement will be."

  "The Wisselbank is still the Wisselbank," Don Alfredo said. "Now, though, it will have offices in Antwerp and an extra army in defense of most of its reserves. Antwerp already has an exchange, true. The addition of the Wisselbank and the lending bank will go a long way toward helping Antwerp in its recovery. With the trade agreements, the small merchants and tradesmen of Amsterdam will stay in business.

  "The taxes both to you and to Frederik Hendrik will continue supporting your armies. Eventually, you will take Amsterdam or reach an agreement with Frederik Hendrik and, through it all, business will go on. The people of the Low Countries, Spanish and Dutch, will suffer less than in most wars. Probably much less."

  Don Alfredo got a thoughtful look and seemed to be more thinking out loud than speaking to the prince. "I think someday there will be a statue in Amsterdam, of you and Frederik Hendrik shaking hands. Something like that, anyway. I believe that someday the history books will call you 'the wise.' "

  * * *

  "As I said, Rebecca." Frederik Hendrik smirked. "I knew that Antwerp would be accepted. What is your answer to my requirement?"

  "It turns out that it will be no problem at all. We will use 'great, big, hulking cables' as Jimmy Andersen describes them. They will be attached to already standing towers here and in Antwerp. That way, even the presumption that we need obvious means to transmit over long distances will be preserved. It will be expensive and you and Don Fernando will have to bear the cost. On the other hand, you will make back the cost of introduction in no more than a year of regular use. Or so I am compellingly informed by Fletcher Wendell and David Bartley."

  Frederik Hendrik smirked some more. "Marvelous." He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. Every agreement he could make now was a step toward the larger agreement that would end the siege. Further, each agreement made the siege less damaging to Amsterdam and the Dutch Netherlands in general.

  Then Rebecca told him about the taxes Don Fernando had suggested. "Who is advising that pup, Rebecca? Whoever it is I want him assassinated. No, even better, I want to hire him." He laughed.

  The counteroffer was subtle. If he agreed, the siege of Amsterdam would become much less of a drain on Don Fernando's resources, a result that Frederik Hendrik preferred to avoid. Unfortunately, he knew he had to agree to this compromise. It was a good one, and would allow Amsterdam's craftsmen to continue their work. They would be able to keep their shops open, and do more than just survive the siege. The merchants would come out of the siege whole, or at least close to it. Amsterdam produced a lot of finished goods, and would now be able to continue to sell them.

  Frederik Hendrik was almost sure now that when the siege of Amsterdam ended it would be through negotiations, not combat. Don Fernando was someone he could negotiate with. "We will be haggling over the amount of tax to go to each prince for some time. We will also haggle over who will collect the taxes and where, I expect. When do you expect the radio eq
uipment from Grantville? The Wisselbank and the lending bank need to reopen their doors to merchants outside of Amsterdam."

  "Messages have already been sent to Grantville and the messengers will find the providers unusually prepared, I'm told. All by chance, of course." Rebecca smiled. "There will be supplies that have been collected for other uses available. Fortunately, they'll be ready to go.

  "I warn you, this will not be cheap," Rebecca continued. "The radios must be made from expensive up-time parts and involve long steel cables. Then there are the batteries and a generator for power and regular maintenance. All these things will cost money, and a good bit of it. Once it is done; however, communication between Amsterdam and Antwerp will be nearly instantaneous."

  "It depends on what you're ordering," David Bartley told David Heesters. He had been meeting regularly with Amsterdam's factor for OPM since the party had first been allowed access to Amsterdam. "If it's local items, you're probably going to have to order it through the Spaniards. Anything else will have to go through Antwerp."

  "Antwerp?"

  "That's where they've decided to establish a branch of the Wisselbank."

  "There will be people who won't like that," Herr Heesters pointed out. "Much of Amsterdam's success was, in a sense, stolen from Antwerp. People will be afraid Antwerp will steal it back." They were sitting in Herr Heesters' office in his townhouse. There was a Van Dyck on the wall, David noticed.

  "You see, at the beginning of the war, the Spanish were very hard on anyone who was not Catholic and unpaid Spanish troops sacked the city. Many of the merchants of Antwerp escaped to Amsterdam. They came here, where it was safer to practice their faith and where they could do business without the Spanish inquisition poking its nose where it didn't belong. Later, Antwerp was blockaded by our fleet as part of the war for independence. Our stock exchange was actually copied from theirs, as well.

  "Now it looks like things are going full circle. We are besieged and the Wisselbank is opening a branch in Antwerp. God has an interesting sense of humor, don't you think?"

  "Yes," David answered, all the while thinking about airplanes, fast food and the Internet. "The Ring of Fire and its consequences are proving to be quite . . . unusual."

  "Damn it," Fletcher exploded. "I have a wife and two daughters back in Grantville, not to mention a job. Why is it us that have to go to Antwerp?"

  "We're the people they can agree on," Don Alfredo answered. "Frederik Hendrik has few people he can trust and he needs most of them where they are. Most of the city council fled when the siege began. Don Fernando is not allowing just anyone to leave Amsterdam, but we can go. This is only reasonable in a siege, as you know, since the point of a siege is to keep people in. We have freedom of movement, citizens of Amsterdam do not."

  "Coleman, have you heard the latest?" Henry Dreeson asked. "The guilder is going up again. It seems like the mission to Amsterdam has been a success, at least so far. We're hearing good things."

  "I've heard all sorts of things, Henry," Coleman answered. "I've heard that orders for the Higgins machines are coming in. Trust that group to take care of themselves, all right."

  "You're being a little uncharitable, aren't you, Coleman? Of course, David Bartley and Franz Kunze are going to take care of the HSMC and OPM. He's a businessman and that's what people in business do. The guilder is going up, that's the important thing," Henry pointed out. "It was only, what, a few months ago that we were worried about it falling forever?"

  "This one will do, I think," Karl remarked. "It's tall enough, and it has the space we need. What do you think, Don Alfredo, Herr Kunze?"

  "It will be well enough," Franz answered, looking at the building. "We must see these managers and have a meeting. I wish someone from Amsterdam could have come with us, to make recommendations. How do we know that the men Don Fernando agreed to will actually do their best for the bank, and not merely the best for themselves?"

  "I'll have to check my figures," Jimmy Anderson advised. "We'll need to consider structural stress. Also we'll want to talk to whoever knows the most about the building, what it was constructed from, whether the builder took any short cuts. We don't need internal space in the radio tower, so we can rig a wire connection from the tower to the bank and the Antwerp exchange. How is the city council reacting?" Jimmy Anderson had been borrowed from the USE embassy because the merchants had failed to bring a radio-head along.

  "Rubbing their hands together and chortling a lot," Don Alfredo answered. "They aren't fond of Amsterdam. I think the biggest problem is going to be that Antwerp will try to 'rip off' Amsterdam rather more than His Majesty."

  "I wouldn't count on that," Franz said. "From what I hear Philip is already upset about the way Don Fernando is handling the campaign here. He isn't being the 'defender of the faith' that Philip wanted and he is not nearly unpopular enough to suit either Philip or Frederik Hendrik."

  "Do you think the Antwerp city council will be a problem?" Fletcher wondered.

  He was answered with an eloquent Gallic shrug.

  The building would do, Jimmy decided, after spending a week taking measurements and doing tests. He'd done the same thing in Amsterdam. Sometimes being the designated genius was a pain in the tail, as far as he was concerned.

  The radio tower needed a tall building, partly for appearances' sake, and one that could take the stress from the cables and the wind blowing through them. It needed to have anchorages for the antenna cables and probably some balancing cables. Even Don Fernando was getting into the act, making an additional request that they find a building where he might make future connections to other cities someday.

  Don Alfredo de Aguilera was thinking too. He had come to Grantville from Madrid the first time he visited. He was a subject of the Spanish crown, but now he had met His Highness, Don Fernando, and knew that was where his loyalty lay. More and more it was looking like the Spanish empire was going to break apart in this world before it had in the other one that the up-timer books described.

  At first Don Alfredo had hoped that the shock of the future knowledge would weld the empire back together. It didn't look like that was going to happen. Castile was even more set in its ways and more determined to have its own way by force of arms, in spite of the evidence that this method would not work. On the other hand, the people of the provinces were heartened by the knowledge of eventual liberation and anxious to hurry it along.

  * * *

  It was done. The months spent in Amsterdam had borne really big fruit. The guilder was recovering nicely throughout the USE, and OPM's guilders had been spent on products in Amsterdam and Antwerp where they were worth considerably more. David conservatively estimated that those products were worth a bit over a hundred million New U.S. Dollars. "So, David, you never did tell me why you bought the guilders," Karl said.

  "No, I didn't." And David said no more. Karl probably knew by now and the option to sell the guilders at cost would not be used now anyway. Still, Fletcher Wendell had some reservations about Prince Karl Eusibus von Liechtenstein. It was true that Karl had been quite helpful, but he had had a lot to lose. How helpful he would have been if he hadn't been heavily invested in the guilders was another question. David didn't exactly disagree with Mr. Wendell's assessment of Karl. He just figured it was the way people were.

  "So what are your plans now that you have seen a bit of the world?" Karl let the question of buying guilders drop.

  David looked out the window of the train that was taking them the last miles to Grantville and considered. Right after the Ring of Fire he had figured he would be going into the army when he finished high school. He still figured that he would be in the reserves. After OPM got started, he had been told that he would not be accepted into the regular service. He was doing a crucial job, according to the government. He guessed it was, in a way. "I don't know. The factories going up in Magdeburg are impressive as all get out."

  "True enough. But most of them are at least partially owned from Grantville a
nd Grantville still has the phones and computers," Karl said. "Unless you're going to settle down to run a single factory, I think Grantville is the place to be, at least, for the next few years."

  "Back in a few hours, eh, David?" Fletcher smiled, joining them. "I'm about ready to get back home."

  "Same here," David agreed, as Fletcher sat down. "I'm glad things got worked out, but it took a while longer than we planned, didn't it?"

  "Yes it did, indeed," Fletcher nodded. "I'll be glad to see all my girls."

  "We were discussing the future," Karl said, "I'm going to have to come to some understanding with Wallenstein, somehow. But I'm keeping my place in Grantville. I suspect that much of the business of the USE and Europe will be conducted there for some time to come."

  "I don't know about that," Fletcher said politely enough. "Magdeburg is the capital of the USE and rapidly turning into an industrial center. I imagine that the treasury and the USE Fed will be located there, probably sometime soon. A lot of the banking will have to be conducted there. The switch from the New U.S. dollar to the USE dollar is going to keep the bank hopping for a while."