Ring of fire II (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  Tony chuckled. "True enough. I can remember my dad complaining when he had to pass the dispatcher a five dollar bill to get work out of his union's hiring hall. Which was not the UMWA," he added self-righteously. "But those jobs paid well, so he thought it was worth the baksheesh. Most of the fire department posts are volunteer. Don't pay anything more than expenses."

  Carol nodded. "I was just raising the possibility. I like Stan, myself, and I've never gotten any sense he was crooked. Mickey Simmons, though…" She made a face. "Well, I should keep personalities out of it, I suppose."

  "He's a prick," stated Adducci. "He's always been a prick. Why the hell it took Lorraine so long to give him the heave-ho was always a mystery to me." He straightened up in his chair. "Just for the record. But I agree we should keep personalities out of it. There is such a thing as an honest assho-uh, butthead, here and there. But I won't be surprised at all if Mickey turns out not to be one of them."

  He mused for a moment, apparently lost in remembrances of things past. "He really is a Grade A prick. But let's move on to the rest. How about the down-timers, Carol? Any decision yet from the attorney general?"

  "I just talked to Christoph yesterday. He feels in an awkward position, given that he's a down-timer himself, so he stressed that he'd defer to your judgment on the matter. Still, he thinks it would be a mistake to press charges against any of the down-timers, if their only involvement was having their arm twisted into paying the kickbacks. I'm inclined to agree."

  Adducci grunted. "Yeah, so am I. Not that seventeenth-century Germans haven't got at least as fine-tuned a sense of lawyering as any West Virginian ever did. They knew damn good and well they were breaking the law too. Still, you have to make allowances for the chaos caused by fifteen years of war half-wrecking the Germanies. People slide into bad habits in situations like that. For us to run around hammering everybody probably wouldn't be a good idea. Still, this is it, folks. You also gotta watch out for being paternalistic about these things. Down-timers ain't children. Once these cases break and we start putting people in prison, let's make sure the message gets out to every businessman in the province who's thinking of cutting a deal beneath the table. Do it again, and we'll bust you, sure and certain."

  Noelle thought their attitude was probably the right one to take, though she was even more inclined than they were not to err on the side of paternalistic tolerance. It's just their traditional ways, baloney. Her partner Eddie Junker was a down-timer, and he'd never had any trouble recognizing that paying a kickback was just as illegal, if not perhaps as personally reprehensible, as demanding it in the first place.

  That said, she was a little relieved. Her relations with Eddie had gotten awkward lately, and she was pretty sure she knew the reason. Now, with this decision having been made, she could see her way clear to straightening it out.

  Adducci raised an admonishing finger. "But! That only applies to down-timers whose involvement was simply paying the kickback. Any of them who got more, what you might call enthusiastic and enterprising about the business, we'll go after them just like we are the up-timers."

  For the third time in half an hour, Noelle had to fight to keep a smile from her face. That wouldn't be a problem for her, at least. Claus Junker might have been willing enough in the enthusiasm department, but when it came to "enterprise" it was just a fact that Eddie's father was a hopeless nincompoop. He bore about as much resemblance to a criminal mastermind as…

  She tried to think of anyone she knew who could possibly be as inept as Claus Junker at the art of "making a deal." The only person she could come up with was her own mother.

  She must have choked, or something.

  "What's so funny, Noelle?" asked Carol.

  "Ah… nothing. Just an idle thought."

  Janos Drugeth's agents in Grantville, the Englishmen Henry Gage and Lion Gardiner, seemed bound and determined to waste more time continuing the recriminations.

  "In particular," said Gage with exasperation, "I told you to stay away from the Barlow family!"

  Gardiner scowled at him. "And I did-until I was approached by Neil O'Connor, who is part of the affair because you recruited his father Allen."

  Gage looked defensive. "We need the O'Connors. Between the father's knowledge of steam engines and the son's experience working on aircraft, they'll be invaluable. And we need Peter Barclay and his wife, too. They both have experience in mechanical design."

  "We don't need-"

  Gage threw up his hands. "Of course we don't need their crazy daughter! But the Barclays insisted that their children had to be part of the bargain, or they wouldn't agree." Sullenly, he added: "It's not my fault. It's certainly not my fault that the oldest girl Suzi Barclay lives in a state of sin with Neil O'Connor, and she told him, and he told his father, and-"

  He broke off there. Gardiner picked it right up, now with a sneer on his face.

  "-and she also told her friend Caryn Barlow, who is almost as crazy as she is-not surprising, being the daughter of Jay Barlow-and she told her father and there we were. In the soup."

  "Enough," said Janos stolidly. Rubbing the back of his neck, he looked around the small apartment his two subordinates had been renting on the outskirts of Grantville. At least they had enough sense to be packed and ready to go. "This is pointless-and we have little time remaining."

  He gave Gardiner a cold eye. "Do restrain your indignation. It was you, after all, who recruited the Simmons fellow. Who has no skills I am aware of beyond embezzlement-and paltry skills at that, judging from the evidence."

  It was Gardiner's turn to look defensive. "That wasn't my doing. The O'Connors insisted that their employee Timothy Kennedy should be included also. Seeing as he was very skilled in the steam work and was now disaffected from his wife-"

  Seeing his chance, Gage interrupted with a sneer. "Who just happens to be the sister of Anita Masaniello, who just happens to be the wife of Steve Salatto, who just happens to be the American official in charge of administering Franconia."

  Gardiner glared up. "As I recall, you thought recruiting Kennedy was a good idea at the time yourself. He seemed tight-lipped enough. How was I-or you-to know that he was good friends with Mickey Simmons and Simmons was up to his neck-"

  "Enough!" growled Janos. He wiped his face tiredly. Part of his weariness was due to the rigors of the hard and fast journey he'd made from Vienna, much of which had been on horseback through forests and mountains to evade the USE's border patrols. Most of it, though, was simply weariness at the whole business.

  He was still aggravated by Istvan's foolishness in having hired these two English adventurers as his direct agents in Grantville, as much as he was aggravated by the adventurers themselves. But, being fair to all parties, he also recognized that most of the problem was simply due to the nature of the work involved. This miserable business the Americans called "covert operations."

  True, Gardiner and Gage were mercenary adventurers. On the other hand, they spoke fluent-now even idiomatic-English in a town of English speakers whose usage of the language was eccentric to begin with, by seventeenth-century standards. It was doubtful that any regular Austrian agents could have penetrated so deeply and quickly into the disaffected elements among the Americans. That was true even leaving aside the thugs who infested the so-called Club 250, who were automatically suspicious of any central Europeans. None of the thugs themselves were of any particular interest to Austria, which could recruit plenty of thugs of its own. But the Club 250 served as something of a liaison venue for other disaffected up-timers that Austria was interested in. Gage and Gardiner could go there easily. Between their excellent knowledge of the American idiom and the fact they were English-for reasons still somewhat murky to Drugeth, the American bigots who patronized the Club 250 made an exemption for Englishmen-the two of them could habituate the place where, if Janos went himself, he'd likely face a fracas.

  True, also, many-no, most; perhaps all-of the Americans they were seeking to recruit we
re not what any sane man would consider upright and moral persons. At best, their guiding motives were nakedly mercenary. For some of them, such as Simmons, you could add a desire to escape apprehension by the SoTF's authorities for criminal activity. For others, like the O'Connors and their employee Timothy Kennedy, their extravagant and careless spending habits had led them to drive a seemingly prosperous business into a state of near-bankruptcy.

  As for the "craziness" of the Suzi Barclay girl, a subject on which both Gage and Gardiner could expound at length, what was to be expected from the offspring of such parents?

  He rubbed his face again. In the end, all the problems were simply inherent to the business itself. If a man insists on sticking his hand into a marsh looking for gold, he can hardly be surprised if he retrieves filth and leeches as well as the gold he was looking for.

  And…

  There was gold there, sure enough. Being fair to the two. Whatever the moral and mental characteristics of the up-timers whom Gage and Gardiner had recruited to move to Vienna and provide the Austrian empire with technological skills and advice, there was no question that they'd assembled an impressive group. Amongst them, there was extensive knowledge of American machining techniques, mechanical design, and steam engine design, not to mention the seemingly ubiquitous knowledge that American males had with regard to automobile engines. There was even a fair knowledge of aircraft principles, something which was in scant supply even among Americans.

  Still, it was a mess. The original plan had been modified after the end of the war between the USE and the League of Ostend brought a period of peace. That, combined with the outcome of the Congress of Copenhagen and the decision of the SoTF to relocate its capital from Grantville to Bamberg, was producing a massive wave of emigration of Americans out of Grantville to other parts-and not all of them to somewhere else in the USE. It seemed as if every nation in Europe had launched a recruitment program here, even the French.

  Most of those who chose to leave the USE, of course, went to either Prague or Copenhagen or the Netherlands. Bohemia and Denmark were allied to the USE; and, while the new kingdom in the Low Countries was not, it enjoyed quite friendly relations these days. Nowhere in Europe had the now-romantic figure of the Netherlands' new queen Maria Anna assumed such legendary proportions as it had in Grantville. "The Wheelbarrow Queen," they called her, often enough. Even the rambunctious and surly commoners of Magdeburg seemed inclined to favor the Netherlands, monarchy or not.

  Janos had hopes that, eventually, that same romanticism might help relations between the USE and his own nation. Maria Anna was, after all, a daughter of the Habsburgs and one of the new emperor's two sisters. At one time-not more than a few months ago-an archduchess of Austria itself.

  It was too early for that, of course. Everyone in the USE was expecting a new war to begin the coming spring, with Saxony and Brandenburg, and everyone was assuming-accurately, alas, unless Janos could persuade the emperor otherwise-that Austria would weigh in on the side of the USE's enemies. Still, Janos had hoped to keep tensions between Austria and the USE, especially its Americans, to a minimum. Sooner or later, he was sure Austria would have to seek peace with the USE, and he didn't want any more in the way of festering anger than was inevitable in the course of a war.

  So, clearly and unequivocally, he'd told Istvan Janoszi to instruct his agents to keep any transfer of personnel and equipment from Grantville within the limits of the law, as the Americans saw it.

  That hadn't seemed too difficult a project, at the time. The up-timers had sweeping notions on the subject of personal liberties, which included the right to emigrate and included the right to maintain personal property in the process. The key figures, the O'Connors and the Barclays, were in a position to do that. Simply move themselves and their businesses to Vienna. Impossible, of course, to move the actual physical plants, but they could certainly take with them all of their technical designs-"blueprints," those seemed to be called-and even much of the moveable equipment. Over time, if not immediately.

  Unfortunately, what Janos hadn't foreseen was the inevitability of what followed. Like anything dragged out of a swamp, be it gold-colored or not, the Barlows and the O'Connors were sticky. They had relatives and friends, the relatives and friends had their own such-and among them, what a surprise, were some individuals whom no one in their right mind would want to encourage to move into his own country.

  And so, a legal enterprise had become an illegal one. Not only were some of these people going to be fleeing the authorities of the USE, they were going to be taking goods and possessions with them that they had no legal right to take.

  For a moment, Drugeth considered simply forbidding any such goods. But he dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came to him. First, because that was bound to produce a quarrel with the would-be emigrants, and there was no time left for such a quarrel. Second, even more simply, because Drugeth really had no way to know which goods were legal and which weren't, in the first place. Once the expedition got to the Austrian border, he had a large cavalry unit waiting to escort them all the rest of the way to Vienna. But from here to the border, he'd have only Gage and Gardiner to assist him in keeping control over the up-timers.

  What was he to do? Insist on a search of the wagons, not even knowing what he was looking for?

  It was just a mess, that's all. A marshy muck. But Janos had crossed marshes and swamps often enough, since he took the Austrian colors. Though he was only twenty-five years old, he had plenty of experience as a soldier. He figured he could manage this, well enough.

  "Tomorrow morning, then," he said. "We start to leave as early as possible."

  Chapter 4. The Biker

  Three days later, in the evening, over the sandwiches they were having by way of a working meal on the folding table in Noelle's apartment, she finally nailed her partner.

  "All right, Eddie, spill it. I got the word from Carol Unruh over lunch today. For what it's worth, she and Tony Adducci and Christoph Wieland officially decided that no charges would be pressed against any down-timer unless they were actively involved as one of the arm-twisters. Just paying the bribes, we'll let it go. This time, anyway."

  Eddie Junker laid his half-eaten sandwich down on the plate, then stared at it for a moment, before sighing.

  "It has been difficult. I've felt bad about it. Not saying anything to you, I mean."

  "Yeah, I can see that. How deep was your father involved?"

  Eddie shrugged, uncomfortably. "Not as deep as I'm sure he would have liked to have been. Dear God in Heaven, when will my father learn that he has the business sense of… of…"

  "My mother," Noelle said crisply. For a moment, they both shared a laugh. Noelle's mother Pat was to good sense what a junkyard was to orderly. The woman wasn't stupid. She just didn't seem to have a clue how to separate abstractions from their application to the real world.

  In her favor, though, Noelle thought but didn't say out loud, at least Pat wasn't greedy. Something which couldn't be said for Claus Junker.

  "The point is, Eddie, nobody's going to go after your dad. But I'd like to know if there are any leads there."

  Eddie used the time it took to finish the sandwich to compose his thoughts. Then: "I think so, yes. Do you know a man-an up-timer-by the name of Jay Barlow? And another one by the name of Allen O'Connor?"

  Noelle stared at him for a moment. "Jay Barlow, yeah," she said abruptly. "He used to be a car dealer before the Ring of Fire, mostly used cars-and he was pretty much a poster boy for what people think of used car dealers."

  Eddie frowned. "Which is… what?"

  "Never mind. Crooked sleazeball is close enough. The kind of guy whose stock in trade was passing off lemons."

  "I thought you said he sold automobiles."

  "Never mind, like I said. Some other time I'll enhance your vocabulary of up-time slang. But right now I want to concentrate on the other guy. Allen O'Connor, you said?"

  "Yes. I think he's actually
the more important of the two, although my father's direct dealings were with Barlow."

  Noelle chuckled. "Well, yeah, I can believe that. In the TO of organized crime, like any other enterprise I can think of, you'll find the Jay Barlows of the world pretty regularly enrolled under the rank of 'foot soldier.' "

  "What's a 'TO'?"

  "Table of Organization. Like I said, later for the vocabulary lesson."

  She scratched the tip of her chin, forgetting for a moment her long-standing vow to eliminate that mannerism on account of it drew attention to her chin. She thought it was on the pointy side, which was especially unfortunate given the shape of her ears, which were also too damn close to being pointed. Add into the miserable bargain her too-slim figure, which she'd had since she was a kid, even before she started exercising regularly. She began that regimen after the scares she'd experienced in Franconia during the Ram Rebellion convinced her she'd better be in top physical condition.

  All she needed, in her position, was for people to think she was some kind of elf.

  Catching herself, she stopped. Then, tugged at her earlobe. Then, silently chided herself and brought the hand firmly down on the table. "O'Connor, on the other hand, has the potential to rise to higher levels. Did rise to higher levels, in fact, not long after the Ring of Fire, when he set up a steam engine business."

  "So did Barlow," Eddie pointed out. "He's the partner and co-manager of the Grantville-Saalfeld Foundries and Metalworks-which is quite an important and profitable enterprise. More so than O'Connor's steam engine corporation, really."

  Noelle sneered, forgetting momentarily her long-standing vow never to sneer on account of it made her look like an impudent elf. "Yeah, sure-but that's due to the other partner, Bart Kubiak, who's the brains of the outfit. I heard-never mind where-that the only reason Bart asked Jay to become his partner-and he doesn't have anything close to an equal share in the business, by the way, just a token amount-is because Billie Jean Mase sweet-talked him into it and Bart wanted her to relocate to Saalfeld to be his office manager."