Grantville Gazette 35 gg-35

by Paula Goodlett (Ed)

  And more often than not the customer would leave muttering about how "the up-timer was a proper noble, kind and understanding, not like the sort we have around here."

  Next David would walk over to the main supply tent, transfer to the goods to the Third Division and receive the government chit that the merchant or farmer didn't want. That the customer was right not to want, because, as it turns out, there is a real difference between some farmer off in Saxony sending in a chit and an army officer with his own lawyer turning in the selfsame chit. The difference isn't so much of a question of will it get paid at all, though there is some of that. Mostly it's a question of when it gets paid.

  David had access to the military radio, he had a lawyer in Magdeburg and knew several people in the Treasury. From the supply tent he went to the radio room and sent the codes on the chits to Magdeburg and the funds were transferred from the government account to David's account. Then David sent off another radio message to his agent in Magdeburg, specifying the purchases to be made and where they were to be sent. It would arrive in a few weeks or a couple of months, depending on the waiting list for that product. There was always a waiting list and the customers were told that as well. Still, they were happy with the deal for the most part.

  Since David had set this up on his own hook and using his own credit, primarily as a way of helping to make sure that the army had the supplies it needed, he didn't feel the least bit guilty about the profit he made.

  After all, it wasn't like they could buy such goods with Saxon thalers. John George's paper thalers were supposed to be exchangeable for one ounce of silver on demand in Dresden. Demanding that silver was a threat to the duke's realm and a palpable insult to the duke, both of which were criminal acts in Saxony. "Here's your silver, you're under arrest for treason against the duke" is not the sort of response that makes one want to run down to the treasury for some hard currency. To date, no one had actually received any silver in exchange for a Saxon thaler with a picture of John George on the front and now no one ever would. On the Grantville currency market the Saxon thaler was valued at about two cents American money. Well, it had been. When the first of Gustav Adolph's troops crossed the border, it dropped off the exchange all together. But they still circulated in Saxony because they were, mostly, all there was. Any silver currency in Saxony had obeyed Gresham's law and retreated to under someone's mattress.

  ****

  "Don't you Americans have a term for this? Profiteering, isn't it?" Colonel McAdam's sneer wasn't quite as confident as he apparently thought it was.

  About the time they hit Dresden, Colonel McAdam noticed the profit David was making and was pissed. Both because he hadn't gotten in on it and because it wasn't anything the Third Division couldn't have been doing right along. David's initial proposal had been close enough to what he had ended up doing on his own that the evolution was obvious in hindsight. All of which made the colonel look and feel more than a little foolish.

  "Sir, you gave me permission, and, no, I'm not profiteering. I also resent the suggestion that I am." It might be taking a bit of a chance, David thought, but he wasn't letting this blowhard start any rumors that might damage his reputation. If Colonel McAdam resented David's success, that was fine. Even so, David himself was out of reach because McAdam had specifically given David permission to do what he was doing.

  "Humph. Your Sergeant Beckman, however . . ."

  David glanced over at Beckman, then glared a furious glare at him. The sergeant wilted. "Sergeant Beckman was not authorized for that transaction, sir, as he will admit."

  Sergeant Beckman's unauthorized trading of army supplies would probably have brought him up on much more serious charges if it had happened back up-time. Here in Saxony in the year of our Lord 1635, he might reasonably expect it to be ignored. Except, of course, that the colonel was pissed at his CO. He got busted to corporal.

  The army's departure from Saxony was met with more regret than relief by the Saxon merchant class. Not only were all those solders leaving, taking with them their monthly pay, but Third Division took with it the best access to the new goods they'd had since, well, ever.

  Near Zielona Gora

  David listened as General Stearns asked him to develop a way to magically supply the Third Division with even less of a logistics train than they had had in Saxony. He stared at the table, not seeing it at all. Instead he was seeing a spread sheet of consumables that they didn't have and what his business contacts had told him might be bought in the area around Zielona Gora

  "Pretty tricky, sir," he said after he'd gone over the charts in his head. "There's no chance of using TacRail like we did in the Luebeck campaign?"

  The general shook his head. "We're not fighting French and Danes here, Lieutenant Bartley. Leaving aside his own cavalry, Koniecpolski's got several thousand Cossacks under his command. They're probably the best mounted raiders in Eurasia, except for possibly the Tatars. TacRail units would get eaten alive before they'd laid more than a few miles of track, unless we detailed half our battalions to guard them. Which we can't afford to do."

  David nodded. He'd been expecting the answer. And he knew darn well that the locals wouldn't be taking chits. Not here, not even at sword point. It would take guns, lots of them, and dead bodies for demonstrations. Not something the general would sanction, thank God. And not something that David would do even under direct orders. This would require thinking outside the box. "That leaves what you might call creative financing."

  "That's what I figured-and it's why I called you in."

  Yep, that was just going to thrill the shit out of Colonel McAdam. "The regular quartermasters are already kinda mad at me, sir. If I-"

  "Don't worry about it. To begin with, I'm pulling you out of the quartermaster corps altogether. You'll be in charge of a new unit which I'm calling the Exchange Corps."

  "Exchange? Exchange what, exactly?" David looked at the general carefully and got back a grin that was more than a little scary. Suddenly David remembered that the general used to be a prizefighter.

  "That's for you to figure out," the general said, still with that "I'm going to enjoy ripping your arms off" grin. "Whatever you can come up with that'll enable us to obtain supplies from the locals without completely pissing them off. No way not to piss them off at all, of course. But the Poles have had as much experience with war over the last thirty years as the Germans. They'll take things philosophically enough as long we aren't killing and raping and burning and taking so much that people die over the winter."

  David went back to starring at the charts in his head. Personally, he doubted that the locals were quite as sanguine about having their crops stolen for pieces of worthless paper as the Prince of Germany thought they were. He was going to have to come up with some way of getting goods, manufactured goods, through. Enough to create the belief that the pieces of paper weren't worthless. Maybe steam barges up the Oder. "Okay," he said eventually. "I've got some ideas. But I'll need a staff, General. Not too big. Just maybe three or four clerks and, ah, one sort of specialist. His name's Sergeant Beckmann. Well, Corporal Beckmann, now. I got him his stripe back but then he ran afoul of-well, never mind the details-and got busted back to corporal."

  "Where is he now? And what sort of specialist is he?"

  "He's right here in the Third Division, sir. One of the quartermasters in von Taupadel's brigade. As for his specialty . . . Well, basically he's a really talented swindler."

  "Okay, you got him-and we'll give the man back his sergeant's stripe. May as well, since I'm promoting you to captain."

  David felt himself smiling. It was silly and he knew it, but little nerd boy was going to be a captain in the army. Yes, he was a millionaire, but that wasn't the sort of status that had mattered before the Ring of Fire. Before the Ring of Fire, his world had been a world of tough kids and kids who got picked on. David had been among the kids that got picked on. His world hadn't had millionaires in it, but it had had army people and an army c
aptain wasn't in the picked on category.

  Zielona Gora

  He was less happy a few days later after Zielona Gora had been taken. David Bartley hated sitting on his ass. It was a discovery he had made recently, not having had much opportunity to do so since he was fourteen and the Ring of Fire happened. But of the "hurry up and wait" of the army, it was the "wait" part that bothered him more than the "hurry up" part.

  Luckily, there were things to do. David headed for the radio shack. He needed some help figuring out how to create a market out of nothing. And he needed to set up some kind of legal framework for the Exchange Corps.

  There was suddenly a lot to do.

  The sprinkling rain on the way to the radio shack didn't bother him at all.

  Yet.

  He sent messages off to Magdeburg, Grantville and Badenburg. He had cleared the structure of the Exchange Corps as a stock corporation with the general and rumors about it had started almost immediately. That was probably Johan's work. Troopers in the division wanted to buy in. So he had investors before he had a company or any but the most basic notion of what sort of company to build. He sought advice from older, wiser heads in the business community that had migrated to the Ring of Fire area in the last few years. He sent more messages to Magdeburg, instructing his agents to set up the Third Division Exchange Corps as a corporation.

  ****

  "All right, Captain Bartley, tell me about the Third Division Exchange Corps Corporation," Colonel McAdam said.

  "General Stearns ordered me to set up an Exchange Corps before we took Zielona Gora, sir," David said. The colonel just looked at him. David continued, "Forming it up as a corporation gives people confidence in it. It's listed on the Magdeburg and Grantville Exchanges. The price of its stock is reported with the stock reports on the radio and in the newspapers. It's not going to march through, steal your stuff, and be gone. So people will be willing to wait a bit for the goods to arrive. We can buy grain and wine . . . they make a decent white here, sir . . . or they will, once they get in some equipment. And pay them in contracts for the equipment they need to set up industries."

  "Like you did in Saxony but with less equipment to start with? And you're doing this on your own like you did in Saxony, too?"

  "No, sir. That's another reason for the corporation. The troops in Third Division will be able to buy in to the Third Division Exchange Corps by filling out a form and having a percentage of their monthly pay set aside for it, just like they can buy insurance. That's so that the men will have an interest, but also because we need the money. And a few bucks a month from four thousand men is a lot of money."

  "Four thousand?"

  "I was being a bit conservative. I figure we have a good chance of getting half the men to put up ten to twenty bucks a month, depending on their personal circumstances and attitudes. Call it four thousand men and ten bucks apiece, that’s forty thousand bucks a month to buy goods manufactured along the Elbe and ship them here. Zielona Gora is a mostly a trade town, a bit of wine, like I said, but mostly trade. So far the Thirty Years' War hasn't treated it very kindly. But now that it's back in the USE, heck, even if it was in Poland it would be near the border, so it makes a pretty good conduit for trade between the USE and Poland."

  "We're unlikely to be here long enough to do that."

  "Yes, sir, but we can set it in motion. And Third Division has wounded who need new employment. Especially in the Hangman. They took a beating."

  Colonel McAdam and the Division's S4 bought several thousand shares and Brigadier Schuster and the 2nd Brigade bought even more.

  ****

  "You told me three weeks ago that it would be here in ten days!"

  David looked up from his work and wished he hadn't. "Come now, mein Herr. You know as well as I do that rain, this kind of rain anyway, causes delays,"

  "Ten days! This is twenty-one! I want my parts or I want my money!"

  "Fine. I will instruct the cashier to return your money, including the membership fee. When the goods arrive, they will be sold to someone else. Someone not quite so discomforted by the standard delays involved in shipping goods through a war zone in the middle of winter."

  "I didn't say . . ." Herr Kopenskii ran out of steam as he realized that yes he had said. "I didn't mean . . ." Again the pause. David knew what he'd meant. Partly it was just the standard "let's see what I can get out of the delay" that David suspected would be going on in any time and place where people did business. But in this case, that was only part of it. Everyone knew by now that the king and been injured and that for now Wettin and Oxenstierna were running things. What would happen to his investment if the USE abandoned Zielona Gora and he was left with a receipt for goods that would never arrive. Herr Kopenskii had taken a considerable chance on Mike Stearns reputation and, for that matter, David's.

  The Prince of Germany and David Bartley had said there would be a permanent Third Division Exchange Club Store in Zielona Gora, and that goods ordered would be delivered, but what if Third Division was ordered out of Zielona Gora? What if Zielona Gora was given back to Poland?

  "The Exchange Club will remain even if Zielona Gora is yielded back to Poland," David said with confidence he wished he felt more strongly. The store was a golden-egg-laying goose for whoever owned Zielona Gora, because it provided a way to get industrial goods to the western edge of Poland or the eastern edge of Germany at something approaching a reasonable price. But David had seen too many golden-egg-laying geese turned into pate de foie gras by stupid nobles, and if Poland hadn't cornered the market on stupid nobles, it was certainly a major supplier. Still, the odds were that the USE would keep Zielona Gora, at least for a while. "Captain von Baruth will be staying on to manage the store, even if the division is transferred."

  Captain Eric von Baruth was a member of the Hangman Regiment who was wounded in the taking of Zielona Gora. He also was a college-educated son of the lower nobility who spoke German, Polish, French, English, Latin and Amideutsch. Which made him acceptable to the local merchant community. He was a member of the CoC, which made him acceptable to the Third Division 's more radical elements. He was very good with figures and a competent organizer. Which made him acceptable to David. He was also missing one leg from the calf down, which was why he was quite pleased to be offered the job of managing the Exchange Corps Superstore in Zielona Gora.

  It took some more cajoling but David sent Herr Kopenskii on his way, if not happy at least not hollering fraud.

  ****

  Sergeant-at least for now-Beckmann snorted as he watched Herr Kopenskii leave. Beckmann would have taken his money back if he'd been in Kopenskii's shoes. The risk was too great for the gain. Then he looked at Captain Bartley. Well, maybe not. Bartley had what Beckmann thought of as an impractical streak. Still, the lad made it work for him and his man Johan Kipper was pragmatic enough to give you nightmares if it came down to it. Beckmann cleared his throat. "Radio messages, sir."

  The captain gave Beckmann a half smile and started reading through them. Beckmann had already read them, of course. The Third Division Exchange Corps Corporation was now an officially registered corporation on the Magdeburg and Grantville exchanges. Ownership was two million shares, a half million of which were held as reserve by the Third Division. A million of which were available to sell to members of the Third Division. And half a million of which would be sold on the various stock exchanges to raise capital. The prospectus listed it as a wholesaler of manufactured goods with outlets to be established. The outlet in Zielona Gora had been established in advance of actual establishment of the corporation.

  All of which was beside the point because the next radio message was a "for your information" that Third Division had been ordered to Prague to support "our ally, King Venceslas V Adalbertus of Bohemia."

  Beckmann knew this news was not that bad. Not in and of itself. They would have to do some setting up but they could handle it. But moving meant more set-up expenses and the Division was broke. Cap
tain Bartley called it a cash flow problem and insisted that nothing the size of a division was ever really broke. But to Beckmann the Division was broke. Oh, the men would still get their pay and ammunition, and other goods would still arrive.

  Beckmann shook his head at the weirdness of up-timers. How the same hard-ass officer who had men shot for getting a bit rowdy could turn around and pay for the rebuilding of Zielona Gora, a town that had gotten itself shot up fighting his division, made no sense to Beckmann

  Meanwhile, the Division's discretionary funds were pretty much tapped out and start-up funds for the Exchange Corps weren't there.

  ****

  Adolph looked at the note that had been hand-delivered to him. It was from Herr Krupt, who was David Bartley's agent in Magdeburg. "Herr Bartley would be most grateful if you could see your way clear to providing him with six eight-horse power steam engines for the use of Third Division Exchange Corps."

  "I won't do it. I don't care if he did back me." Adolph's face was a bit more florid than usual, he could feel it.

  "Ah, the Bartley kid strikes again." Heidi Partow grinned. "He's a sneaky little shit, I grant you. I figured he was a waste of space up till the Ring of Fire. Even after it. I still can't figure out what he does. If he actually does anything. It was my little brothers who designed the sewing machine making machines, you know." Heidi crossed her eyes like she was looking at the sentence she'd just said and not liking what she saw.

  Adolph couldn't help but grin at her expression. Then his smile faded. "He manages," Adolph said. "And he's darned good at it. And, yes, I do know that your brothers developed the machines to make the parts of the sewing machines. I know because David told me so every time the subject came up. And if you think he was irritating as your little brother's friend, how do you think you would have liked having him as your stepbrother?" Adolph sighed. "Still, I'd like to help him out because, well, when I needed the money to start this place, he's where I got it. And because it's the Prince's Division."