She marched in carrying her back pack, stopped in front of the Captain’s desk, and did a standard, “Private Russo reporting for duty,” followed by a salute. It sort of felt odd. She had been in the army for less than two months, and Lowery Eckerlin had been her neighbor from down the street. She had known him since she was probably five years old, and as a kid had eaten more than a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at his kitchen table in the summer, with his wife and his daughter Katie. Which added to the whole odd feeling as she stood in front of his desk, saluting.
He stood up and smiled broadly at her. He looked a lot thinner than the last time she saw him back in Grantville, his downtime uniform shirt hung loosely on him. He also looked a lot older than the middle-aged dad she remembered. He still wore the pants of his old police uniform from up-time, as well as his service Glock on his belt. He had been a policeman in Fairmont before the Ring of Fire, and he was basically the same sort of thing here. In charge of security. “At ease, Mary.” He came around the desk and opened his arms wide. “Come here and give me a hug, kid. How’s your Mom doing?”
Mary smiled and hugged him back. “Thanks for asking, sir. She is doing pretty well. Dad is working on some drugs with the Stones, and she hasn’t got any worse. So we are okay with that.”
“That’s great. Good to hear. Your Dad doing okay too?” He went to his office door and closed it with a smile at the receptionist outside. His office was small, with one wall full of windows and a fireplace against another wall, a blaze burning warmly. There was little ornamentation, other than a battered up-time file cabinet with a sturdy lock welded to it, his desk which looked like a salvaged table that was half charred from fire, and a couple of mismatched chairs. There were some framed certificates on the wall, one of which was a service commendation from his days on the Fairmont police, the other was his Associate’s degree in Criminal Justice. Along with the pictures of his family, there was one thick file on his desk, tied with red tape, and stamped ‘SECRET’.
Mary took all of this in quickly and answered him. “He’s doing great, he likes teaching and he feels he is making a big difference. Everyone else is about the same. How about you? Er- you, sir?”
“Everyone is good, Mary. Thanks for asking. Busy, you know how it goes.” He pushed one of the chairs in front of his desk closer to it. “Sit down, I've something to show you. And forget about the ‘Captain’, you can call me Lowrey.”
“Well, Capt- er rather, Mr. Ecke - err, gah! This is hard. And weird. Can I call you just Mr. Eckerlin like I used to when I was a kid?”
He smiled. “Sure. You know the old joke, call me anything you like, just don’t call me late for dinner!”
Mary laughed, Mr. Eckerlin always had the worst ‘dad jokes’ in the neighborhood. “I can work with that!”
He sat at his desk, and his smile faded to a serious expression. “I didn’t call you here for a social visit Mary.” He touched the file in front of him. “I want to—” there was a sharp knock on the door and it opened a crack. Mary heard the receptionist.
“Captain, there are some Ram delegates here to see you, they say it’s important.”
He sighed. “Okay, Fraulein Fitz. Tell them I will be done in a moment. Give them some beer --or something stronger. I will be out in a moment.”
“They specifically said to remind you of your open-door policy.” The woman raised an eyebrow at the Captain.
∞ ∞ ∞
“My door is always open, just not when someone is in here. Give them my apologies and I will be out in a moment.” His face looked as if he might have regretted saying that his door was ‘always open’ sometime in the past. Germans could be very literal sometimes when it came to that sort of thing. Especially disciples of Constatin Ableidinger. Mary smiled sympathetically. He focused back on Mary, puffing his cheeks as he blew out his breath. “Looks like we won’t have much time to chat. I need to talk to you for a bit.”
“Okay, Mr. Eckerlin. You got me.”
“If I said that a person is a Fugger, what would you say to that?”
Mary laughed. “I would guess that you were setting up one of your terrible dad-jokes.”
He laughed too. “Yeah, some of those were pretty bad, weren’t they? But, not this time. It’s actually a name.” He turned the file around so that the big ‘SECRET’ stamp faced her.
“Seriously?” This had to be a joke.
“A very important one.” He looked dead serious. “One of the most important. You see, the Fugger—that's what they are called, - not Fugger's' want to hire a genuine up-timer."
"Okay…"
"And, after a lot of consultations, they have requested you.”
Mary's eyes went very round. “M-Me? But why would these Fugger,” she sniggered a little to herself at the name, “want to hire someone like me? And who the heck are the Fugger, no 's' at the end??”
Eckerlin leaned back in his office chair and smiled. “Good questions. First of all, they are rich. Very rich. Arguably the richest family in the world. Think Bill Gates, or Sam Walton rich, and you get the idea. Remember them?” Mary nodded. “Only in this time, they are richer than the governments.” He pushed the thick file a little closer. “It’s all in here.”
Mary purposely ignored the folder on the desk. “Okay, so they are rich. Lots of down-timers are rich. If they want a trained chimpanzee up-timer in their court, then they can just go to Grantville and hire one. Heck, Captain, one of the biggest losers in town got paid to go to Moscow.”
Mr. Eckerlin agreed. “The Fugger family at one time were financing the Spanish Hapsburgs and the Kingdom of Spain. At the same time. They financed the throne of the Holy Roman Empire for the Hapsburgs. Heck, Mary, they basically bought the throne for the Hapsburgs. They own silver mines, gold mines, they even own holdings in the Americas.” He leaned forward and gave the file a little nudge towards her, and she caught herself looking down at it. She looked back to face him. He was smiling. “It says in this briefing somewhere that the old man Fugger was the richest person that ever lived, or ever will live.”
Mary leaned a little closer to the file. “Wow. You said they were financing the Hapsburgs? Do they still?”
“Not all by themselves. Like any good corporation, they diversified. But they are a major banking family. As the family grew, the assets and wealth spread out among three basic branches of the family. This branch,” he nudged the file a little closer, “is one of the three. Based in Tyrol, near Innsbruck. Have you heard of Innsbruck? They had the winter Olympics there one year, way back uptime in the sixties, I think. Supposed to be beautiful country. Anyway, the Fugger basically bought themselves dukedoms there for a stable long term income. Silver mines there don’t produce quite like they used to.”
Mary pushed an errant strand of her straight black hair behind her ear and furrowed her brow. “If these people have so much money, why are you asking me? I mean, I assume they are connected at the very top, right?” Mr. Eckerlin nodded and leaned back in his chair. “So a request like this would come down from the very top?”
“They asked for some recommendations through back channels. Our intelligence folks got involved, and your name came up. They wanted someone who was female, and could be a teacher. We think you are right for the job.”
She sat back into her chair. “Wow,” her brow furrowed again. “I just got here.” She thought about the dark basement with witch-burning files and frowned. “Not that I'm saying yes, but what would these people want me to do? You said teacher?”
“Yup. It looks like a teacher and consultant. Teaching is one part of the official job description. A hired member of the staff.” He paused, and chewed his lip, thinking. “We hope that you do teach. We hope you teach these kids correctly, because they are all going to have a major influence on the future.”
She nodded at him. She knew the ‘hearts and minds’ teams here in Franconia had a major impact, in more ways than one, in easing the transition to a more democratic local a
nd regional government, as well as opening up the area to the idea of freedom of religion. And helped to stop the witch burnings. “That makes sense. But what I don’t get is why we would want to do this. Grantville, and the Swedes. I mean, they - the Fugger - are the enemy, aren’t they?”
Mr. Eckerlin leaned back in his chair again. He smiled and nodded slightly to give her encouragement. “Where have the troop movements been this fall? Where have people been going?”
“Well, a lot of guys have gone north. I got a friend in TACRAIL that’s up there, along the border with Poland. And there are some with Wallenstein too. But still north. With Bavaria still messed up, and the Duke Bernhardt hunkered down south of here, I was thinking that I was going to do a lot of paperwork. Not much action, excepting a Ram Rebellion or two.”
Mr. Eckerlin nodded ruefully. “It appears that most of the action is going to be with the north. Poland, maybe more. I dunno, it’s way above my pay grade. This is all off the record, you understand.”
“I understand.” She pointed at the big red ‘SECRET’ stamp on the cover of the two inch thick file. “But what about my Mom? There are some things I need to do once I get out of the Army. I mean, I don’t regret enlisting, everyone did it, and my parents agreed it was the right thing to do, and it pays okay, but I need to take care of my Mom. How long will this take?”
“They are looking for a two-year commitment.” Then he leaned forward, with his dead serious expression again. “And you also understand that you will be expected to write a lot of letters home. Detailed letters. Occasionally encoded letters, depending on the content.”
“A spy?” She felt her heart skip a beat or two. She didn’t know if it was because she was frightened, or excited.
“Well, technically you would still be in the army.” He shrugged slightly.
“I see.” She swallowed, her mouth was a bit dry.
He pushed the file all the way towards her, to the edge of the old scorched table. Mary saw concern and kindness in his eyes. “I knew you since you were in diapers, Mary. I can’t order you to take this job. There are some dangers. That's the world we live in now. But you should think of your mother. It's one of the reasons I pushed for you. You'll be still drawing your army pay, and the Fugger will be covering your room and board, clothing, travel expenses, and a very nice salary - and I mean a very, very nice salary that should take care of your mom for a long time. I mean, they are willing to pay a lot of money for this position, it’s all in the file.”
She paused and looked up at what had been, before the Ring of Fire, simply “Mr. Eckerlin”, her down the street neighbor when she was a kid. Now, he was a tired looking man, handling things far beyond what he had ever thought he would. Thinner than she remembered him from summers in Grantville. Making decisions that would echo down the centuries. Maybe she could too, somehow, with this job. That was an intriguing thought. Plus, her mother and her whole family needed the money; that was true. But-- “Is it because I'm Catholic that they are looking at me? One thing I've learned with this assignment is what religion you are counts for a whole heck of a lot when dealing with down-timers. I mean, one of the reasons they sent me here to Wurzburg, is because I’m Catholic. I assume these folks are Catholic too?”
“You would be correct. With a hotline to the pope. And part of the deal is that they will protect you from the Inquisition.”
“The – Inquisition!? Holy crap Mr. Eckerlin! I thought that was only in Spain.”
“No, in Bavaria too. And this is on the border of Bavaria and what we used to call Austria. But don’t sweat the Inquisition thing, they are not nearly as powerful as they used to be, nothing to worry about. It’s all in the briefing.”
She gave him a sideways glance. “I s’pose I should make a joke here about nobody expecting the Spanish Inquisition, but that’s usually your department, the bad jokes.” They both smiled for a moment.
“Well, this time it’s no joke. They have it in the contract, and a lot of lawyers have already looked at it.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Mary shook her head and thought about the box of files she found. “I guess there’s nothing funny about those guys at all. The Inquisition. The witch trials here in Wurzburg were bad enough. With the Inquisition, when the accused is found to be a witch,, and they always are, any money, land, or business they keep. Self sustaining system. We have a lot of people in Venice, Vienna, and Rome, and all over the place and they don’t bother us, do they?”
“No, they don’t. But it’s one of the things our people were concerned about, so we negotiated it up front. Lots of lawyers, of which Germany has an excess, I'm learning." He rubbed his forehead. "And there will be a month or so of training before you go. We will give you a lot of background on the family, and some espionage training for encoding and decoding documents. Nothing with too much skullduggery, mostly communication and procedures training. It isn’t like you are going to be an assassin or anything, you are going to teach a bunch of kids, and adults, and let us know if anything interesting happens.” He paused, then tapped the thick bundle in front of her. “You really need to read the files, Mary.”
She hesitated for a moment, and thought of her Mom, who really needed the money. And if these Fugger guys were for real, and worth that much, then maybe she could take care of her mom the way she needed to be taken care of. And if she really thought about it, sitting in a cold basement looking through tragic tax records was brutal, and at the same time as boring as anything. Really boring. Finally, she reached for the file.
“One more question.”
“Shoot, Mary.”
“Mountains, right? You think I could take my skis?”
Chapter 2 Short Good Bye
Grantville Late April, 1634
"T
hree days isn’t enough time to catch up, Mary. This whole thing is happening way too fast.” Addie Russo was a frail woman, but direct, so her statement was just that. A statement of fact, tinged with regret, trying not in induce guilt in her daughter, only pass along her frustration. The two women, mother and daughter, stood in the tiny kitchen in the Russos’ three-bedroom ranch style house. “Your father isn’t going to be able to see you before you leave. He’s at the hospital in Magdeburg teaching this week, and he won’t be home until Sunday at the earliest. Can’t you stay so that he can see you, at least?”
“No, Mom. They want me there as soon as possible, so I’m flying out in the morning on the Monster. A seat opened up. I thought I was going to have a few more days, but they said ASAP, so ASAP it is. And the sooner I get there, the sooner I will start to get paid. I will be there before lunch, if the weather is good.”
“I’ve been so worried about you since you enlisted in the army. I was worried that you might be shot, or captured….”
“...Mom, we have been over this before. I was stationed about as far from any action as you could get. Frank Jackson had to let us girls enlist, but he didn’t have to put us any place where we might get hurt. The duty in Wurzburg wasn’t what you could call exciting. But the money was okay, and it all came here like I planned.”
Addie poured herself some hot water for tea, and one for her daughter. As she got the tea caddy out of the cabinet, she lost her balance slightly and clutched at the countertop. Mary saw it, and ignored it. She knew her mother wouldn’t want to make a fuss, so Mary kept quiet.
Addie turned back to Mary, and began to fix the tea. Mary could see that she was holding back her emotions. Addie chatted nervously. “Dear Lord, these down-timers like the most gaudy flower arrangements we can come up with. And the colors! Never knew that Baroque was so ugly sometimes. It’s wild some the stuff they like. Worse than the 1960s with all of the bold and bright stuff. And what we can get for arrangements now is pricing most folks out of the market. Trouble is, there aren’t enough flowers, and we are starting to get into making silk and paper ones. Origami too. The louder the better.”
Mary stood up from the kitchen table, took the teapot from
her mother’s hands and set it aside. They hugged for a time. “Mom, all the money I make is coming here, you should be able to hire someone to come in and look after you a couple of days a week, and if you need to visit doctors, there should be no problems. I’m doing this for you and Dad, you know that, don’t you?”
They stood and hugged in the tiny bright kitchen. Finally, her mother broke the embrace, turned to the sink, grabbed one of the dishtowels hanging nearby, and wiped her eyes and then her hands in quick succession. She finally turned back to face Mary. “Are you sure this is what you want to do? Fly away to the middle of Austria and play nanny?”
“Well, first of all it isn’t Austria. At least not yet. It’s Tyrol, controlled by Claudia de Medici. It’s her kingdom, or dukedom, or some such thing. She’s the regent, her son is technically the ruler. But she is in charge.” Mary took both of her mother’s hands in hers. “Mom. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I’m not even twenty. I didn’t know up-time and I don’t know down-time. But, what I do know is that whatever it is I choose to do will be harder than what it would have been back home. Nobody- nothing is equal, things are all out of kilter and cheated to those with the positions. Maybe that’s why I’m going there, to see how it’s supposed to work with the folks who run things in this world. The muckety- mucks. You always said it wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew, didn’t you?”
“They don’t even have plumbing.”
“Mom. Seriously. They didn’t in Wurzburg either. And I’m taking cheat sheets. Plumbing is one that always gets asked about. One of the Nasi spy-clan gave me a batch of them from the library, including some stuff on accounting, the Federal Reserve System and a bunch of others. All in a folio. Also some other books, and some things for decoding messages and such. Most of it will have to come overland, though, I need to keep it light for the airplane. I can’t take much luggage.”
Up-Time Pride and Down-Time Prejudice Page 2