Chapter 2
Roth town house
Prague, capital of Bohemia
“Checkmate!”
Morris Roth purposely avoided Len Tanner’s smug satisfaction as he studied the board for any possible escape his king might make. A brand-new chess set, carved in nice, polished birch; the pieces smooth and on well-balanced bases. A “welcome home” present from his wife, Judith, who had commissioned it from one of the most skilled Jewish woodcarvers in what used to be Prague’s Jewish ghetto. The “Josefov,” they called it, after an up-time historical reference that wasn’t really appropriate in this universe. The Josefov was still a very self-enclosed community, but was no longer legally a ghetto.
Morris studied his options. Nothing. Not a damn thing he could do about it. He’d made the wrong choice three moves ago. His king was trapped in a corner with no way out and no one coming to the rescue. Not even the queen, who sat quietly off-board, despondent in capture.
He sighed, shook his head, and flicked his king over. “You win.”
Len smiled and rubbed his hands together with great satisfaction.
“Don’t gloat too much, Len,” Morris said, taking his remaining pieces off the board and placing them aside, “you only won two out of three games. You’re no Bobby Fischer.”
“I don’t need to be,” Len said, taking his victorious pieces off the board and placing them alongside Morris’ vanquished. “As long as I’m better than you more often than not.” He winked.
Morris chuckled. “That’s not hard to do.”
He and Judith had invited Len Tanner and Ellie Anderson over for dinner, good wine, good conversation. They now sat huddled in the second-floor room that Judith had designated as the home’s official “living room.”
Home! More like a mansion, Morris thought. A beautiful home, in its way, but big and vacuous. In truth, too much for a humble up-time jeweler—and these days, military contractor—but the status he’d acquired in Bohemia in the years since they’d moved here pretty much required that he and Judith live in such a domicile. He insisted on calling it a “town house” even though most Jews in the Josefov and a fair number of Gentiles elsewhere in the city called it the Roth Palace.
Morris hated having to break up the pleasant conversation Judith was having with Ellie Anderson, but time was money, as was often said. The day was drawing to a close, and there were still other matters he needed to attend to before nightfall, other people he needed to see.
“Thank you both for coming by,” Morris said, snapping the chess pieces into their case. “I’m so glad to see you two again. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to return so soon, but now that I have, I wanted to talk to you both about an important matter.”
“Oh, shit,” Ellie said, rolling her eyes in wide circles. “Here it comes.”
Morris held up his hands like Job. “What?”
“Whenever you get serious like that,” she said, “you’re about to make my day fucking miserable.”
“Ellie,” Judith said, allowing a playful smirk to cross her face. “At least give my husband a chance to say something fucking bad before you accuse him of it.”
Ellie Anderson was, in up-time parlance, a potty mouth. This was nothing new, and four years in Prague, and six years down-time, hadn’t divested her of the trait. In truth, both he and Judith had never minded Ellie’s foul language. But in this case, Morris agreed with his wife: At least let me say something bad first before you accuse me of it.
“You both have done a marvelous job here in Prague,” he said, closing his chess set and leaning back comfortably with a fresh glass of wine. He took a sip. “I don’t think there’s a city in the world as interconnected as this one. I’d say, AT&L Bohemia has done well for itself.”
Which was very true. Len Tanner and Ellie Anderson were communication specialists, and in the four years that they had lived and worked in Prague, they had set up one of the most modern communication grids in all of Europe. Nothing so modern as to rival a moderately sized up-time city, but in the here and now, Prague was becoming the envy of the world in up-time-inspired communication systems. A radio and telephone system that stretched from one end of the city to the next. And a telegraph system as well, which oftentimes was more reliable than the other two. Bottom line: every block in Prague had some form of communication station, including the old Josefov whose once restrictive walls now had as many gaps in it as the South Mountain ridgeline in up-time western Maryland. Morris thought of that stretch of mountain range that had, in his old world, proven to be a critical juncture during the American Civil War. The skirmishes fought in those gaps had preceded the Battle of Antietam. He thought about all those up-time battles as he gathered his courage for the skirmish he was about to fight.
He cleared his throat. “When we first arrived here, you agreed to a five-year deal. You’d stay in town and establish AT&L Bohemia and make Prague an epicenter of modern communication. You’ve done that, and I thank you. I suppose that if you wish to leave Prague and go elsewhere, you’d have your pick of a dozen cities or more begging for the same treatment. If you wish to do so, then I will, in the end, not stand in your way. But—”
“Here we go… ”
“—I’d like you to help me continue, and complete, the Anaconda Project.”
“I understand that the Sunrise is still HQ’d near Krakow,” Len said, rising from an opulent, stiff-backed wooden chair and taking a more comfortable recliner near his wife. He accepted a fresh glass of wine from Judith. “Thank you, Judith.”
“Yes,” Morris said. “No reason to move the army until I know my next move.”
Len sipped and nodded. “I hear that Pappenheim has pretty much given you the boot. Is this true?”
Morris resisted a laugh. Stands to reason, he thought. In a city as connected as this one, word gets around. “More or less true, yes. He’s allowing me to pull the army back as far as Brno. He doesn’t want two armies in Bohemia at the same time, and I can scarcely blame him. If I were in his shoes, I’d not want a competing force in my country either, especially one comprising as many mercenaries as I have.
“We’ve achieved a great success in Poland against the magnates, but it’s not enough. Not yet. There’s more to do.”
“Where the hell are you going with this?” Ellie asked, waving off another glass of wine from Judith. “Thank you, no. And why do you need us? You’ve got good radio people, don’t you?”
“I do,” Morris agreed, “but we need more. Success breeds success, Ellie. Our success against the magnates has literally opened the floodgates. New volunteers are pouring into camp daily—most of them young Jewish men in and around Krakow. But also from Prague.” He motioned to the window. “Right now, there’s a caravan forming in the Josefov ready to head out at first light. New Brethren have come also, as well as more mercenaries offering their services—for a price, of course. Bottom line is, by end of May, the Grand Army of the Sunrise will have doubled, if not tripled, in size. Which means I don’t have enough communication equipment, specialists, you name it. I need you both to help me coordinate the effort.”
There was a pause as Len shot a glance at his wife. Ellie did not respond, which was more troubling to Morris than her frequent outbursts of colorful language. Her silence meant that she was either so angry that she couldn’t speak, or that she was actually contemplating the offer. Well, it wasn’t much of an offer yet.
“Why don’t you just refuse the new volunteers?” Len asked, finishing his wine, and handing the glass back to Judith with a smile and a nod. “Do you really need any more men, especially with the Galicians and Mike and his USE forces—”
“Yeah, well, see, therein lies the rub,” Morris said, relieving an itch on the back of his head. “I’ve already told the Galicians that we’ll not be fighting alongside them any further. It isn’t necessary, anyway. It’ll be a while before the Polish-Lithuanian powers-that-be can mount any sizable counterattack, if at all; they got badly whooped. And Mike has a nasty little fellow by the name of Murad IV to contend with. I cannot rely on him or the USE moving forward; perhaps they might assist in some small way, but I can’t rely on it. No. We’re going forward alone, guys, and that means I need communication techs like you.”
Len rubbed his chin, said, “What’s your need? Any prelim thoughts on that?”
Morris shook his head. “Not certain. At a minimum, I want to mimic the USE model of seven to twelve radios per one thousand men. I’d like more, of course, but I doubt there’s enough reserve radios in Prague to get by.”
Ellie grunted. “And I dare you to try to take them, Morris. Even at a good price, these Bohemians are going to push back hard. People are pretty comfortable now with the ease at which they can communicate with their neighbors. It’s like toilet paper: take it away, and you get shit everywhere.”
They all laughed at that one, though Morris did not disagree with her foul warning. “Not only that,” he said, “but getting them out of town without the mayor—or Pappenheim, for that matter—knowing of it…will be a challenge. But we’ll work it out. We have to. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Len crossed his arms. “Where do you intend on going, Morris? Where’s the Sunrise headed?”
“Don’t know yet.” He resisted checking the clock on the wall. He didn’t want to seem rude, nor was it right to suggest with any body language that their visit and this conversation wasn’t the most important thing on his mind right now. But he had a lot of things on his mind, and all of them queuing up and demanding equal attention.
Ellie lowered her brow. “Shouldn’t you know where you’re going before you make plans for us? I mean, a lot of what you’re going to need in terms of communication equipment will depend greatly on where you’re going.”
Again, a very true statement. “I know, and I apologize. I’m meeting with someone soon who may help provide counsel on that decision. But in truth, it doesn’t matter. No matter where I take the Sunrise, I’d want you with me. I need you.”
The pause this time was longer. Morris looked at his wife. She smiled, leaned over, and squeezed his hand. Judith had chosen not to engage in the conversation, and instead provide simple moral support. Under the circumstances, Morris preferred it that way. He didn’t want the offer to seem like they were both piling on the pressure. He needed Ellie and Len badly, but in the end, if they chose to decline and stay in Prague, he was not about to force them. He had no authority to do that, and even if he did, he would not exercise it.
Len whispered into Ellie’s ear. Ellie did the same with Len. They discussed the offer in whispers for a good five minutes. Finally, Ellie said, “Thank you, Morris, for the offer. But…Len and I have a good life here in Prague. The people rely on us for their radio and telephone services. Yes, there are more than enough good radio and telephone techs in the city that we wouldn’t be missed. But we’re in charge, and we have a responsibility to—”
She paused while she and Len watched Judith hand Morris a pad of paper and a pencil. Morris tore a sheet off the pad and scribbled something with the pencil. “Here’s my final offer.”
He handed the note to Judith who passed it over to Len.
Len and Ellie stared for two long minutes at the sizable number Morris had scribbled. Finally, Len took a breath and said, “You’re joking.”
Morris shook his head. “No, sir. As Staff Sergeant Barnes said in Platoon…‘I shit you not.’”
“Well, Ellie,” Judith said, letting her famous smile spread across her face, “did my husband just ruin your fucking day…or did he make it?”
Len folded up the paper and put it in his shirt pocket. “Okay, Morris. You win. When do we leave?”
✧ ✧ ✧
“I know why you’ve asked me here,” Jason Gotkin said, again refusing a sifter of wine from Morris Roth. He pointed his thumb toward the living room door. “I just saw Len and Ellie leave.”
Morris shrugged, pointed to his chess set. “Len and I just played a game of chess, that’s all. And Judith hadn’t seen Ellie in—”
“Morris, please. Enough with the small talk, the obfuscation. I have a bris to attend.”
“Mazel tov, by the way.” Morris finished his wine and set the glass down. “Being a rabbi suits you.”
“Morris—”
“Fine, fine.” Morris sat on a chair opposite Jason. He sighed, folded his hands together, sighed again. “Okay, here it is: I need you, Jason.”
“No!”
“The Sunrise needs spiritual guidance if we are to see the Anaconda Project to completion. I’ve got a lot of new recruits—raw recruits—joining by the day. They need someone like you, an up-timer, who can—far better than me—put their sacrifice into the proper context.”
Jason took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. He couldn’t decide if he was sweating because he was hot, or because of their conversation. Maybe both. “And what is that proper context?”
Morris seemed shocked at the question. “That their lives matter, Jason. That we, you and me, the people who came through that ring of fire, can give them a better life.”
Jason rubbed his face. “I provide that service here, in Prague, every day.”
Morris nodded. “Yes, I know you do. But Prague is not the focal point of our problems right now, Rabbi. Our cause is East. We’ve got to see this through, my friend, and I need you at my side.”
So true, and yet, it couldn’t come at a worst time. His semikah, his ordination, had occurred not three months ago. He was just getting his feet beneath him, winning the respect and trust of those he guided. It wasn’t easy for down-time Jews to trust an up-time rabbi. He was just earning that trust, and now he was being asked to leave?
“My wife will not allow it.”
“Like her father, Sarah understands this cause even better than you,” Morris said. “She’s a down-timer. She’s lived the oppression of the Josefov. And, I’ve spoken with Judith about it. She wants Sarah and the kids to come and live with her here until you return. It would be an honor.”
Jason grunted, eyed the half-full wine bottle, and tucked away his handkerchief. “And when will that be? When would I return?”
Morris shook his head. “I don’t know, my friend. When the project is finished.”
Months, years, perhaps. His kids would grow up in the dim light of a mansion. He wouldn’t even know his own children when he returned.
“Please, Jason.” He could see the desperation in Morris’ eyes. “I need you.”
Jason stood and walked to the window. He put his hands on the sill, ran his fingers over the smooth carpentry. Outside now, not far away, a caravan of Jewish recruits was assembling to march to Krakow and join the Sunrise. In fact, Jason had spoken just this morning to a few of the young boys packed up and ready to go. Boys who had no idea what they were marching to, and yet, they wanted to join that rising sun, no matter the cost. The cost could be their deaths, and yet, there they went. “You are sons of Abraham,” he had told them loudly as they readied to depart. “Be proud of who you are.”
“Okay, Morris,” Jason said, turning away from the window and the cool breeze. It felt good on his face. “I’ll go. But only on one condition.”
“Name it, my friend.”
Jason pointed to the wine bottle. “Pour me one of those. In fact, make it two.”