Chapter 5
Emperor Gustav II Adolf’s headquarters
Linz, Austria
Temporary capital of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire
After Rebecca finished her summary of the situation, the three men in the room looked at one other. More precisely, Mike Stearns and Ed Piazza looked at Gustav Adolf for a few seconds, then at each other for even less time, and then back at the emperor. For his part, Gustav Adolf studied one of the paintings on the wall of the rather small room he used for meetings like this one. It was a portrait of his grandfather, Gustav Vasa, who had led Sweden’s war of independence against Denmark and founded the Vasa dynasty of which Gustav Adolf was a member.
There was a portrait of Gustav Adolf’s grandfather anywhere he went, except for brief visits. Occasionally, he would add another and invariably smaller portrait of his own father, Charles IX. There were never portraits of the other rulers of Sweden who had followed Gustav Vasa until Gustav Adolf came to the throne in 1611.
And for good reason. Mike Stearns liked to joke—although not in the emperor’s presence—that Sweden had been ruled during that era by the Brothers Grimm. The founder of the dynasty had been succeeded by his oldest son, Eric XIV, who had gone mad and been overthrown by his younger half brother, John III. (Who, for good measure, had seen to it that Mad King Eric was then poisoned.)
Brother John was not mad, but he was no prize as a ruler. He was hot-tempered and violent, and prone to paranoia. A worse legacy, though, was that he married a princess of the ruling family of Poland and Lithuania, Catherine Jagiellon, and had a son by her named Sigismund. This not-so-jolly fellow would become Sigismund III, the king of Poland and Grand Lithuania in 1587, to which he added the titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland upon his father’s death in 1592—only to lose those titles three years later when the Swedish Riksdag forced him to abdicate to his uncle Charles—the third and last of the Brothers Grimm—because Sigismund insisted on remaining Catholic instead of accepting the Lutheran church which now dominated Sweden. This was the origin of the bitter feud between the two branches of the Vasa dynasty that had now been raging for decades.
After contemplating his grandfather for a while, Gustav Adolf turned his attention back to the other occupants of the room.
He looked to Mike first, which was a breach of protocol given that Piazza was now the prime minister of the USE and Stearns was a mere major general. But Ed didn’t take offense. Reality was what it was, and all of them knew that while Mike was scrupulous about not formally intruding onto Piazza’s turf—or his wife Rebecca’s, for that matter—he didn’t mind informally wandering through it rather freely.
Besides, this was primarily a military issue. For now, at any rate.
“What do you think?” the emperor asked.
“We should go for it,” Mike replied immediately. “Leave aside Morris Roth’s concerns. It is to our benefit to open as many fronts against the Ottomans as we can.”
Gustav Adolf stroked his mustache and then gave his goatee a little tug. He favored a Vandyke, as did many men of the time.
“I doubt if Murad will devote many of his own troops to the task of suppressing Transylvania,” he said. “He’ll order his vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia to do it. And since neither Wallachian nor Moldavian troops are among those we’re facing, it wouldn’t really take much pressure off us.”
His tone was that of a man simply making an observation, not being argumentative.
“I don’t disagree with any of that,” said Mike. “You’re right, Your Majesty—for the moment. But if our intervention alongside Bohemia’s succeeds in establishing an independent Transylvania, that situation could change.”
The emperor issued a soft snort. “The Balkans being what they are.” After a moment, he added: “You’re right, of course.”
The complexities of Balkan politics went back centuries. The relations between masters and vassals were a lot more fluid than the terms themselves suggested. A strong and independent Transylvania would put pressure on all the neighboring vassal states of the Ottoman Empire. Even if they remained formally “vassals,” they would have greater room for maneuver—which would, in turn, force the Turks to devote more attention and quite possibly more military forces to the region.
For the first time, Piazza spoke up. “What concerns me is our own resources. Can we do it? What I mean is—”
“Do we have the military forces we could free up?” the emperor finished for him. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Mike, though. “What would you propose?”
Again, Mike’s answer came immediately. “Send in the Hangman.” His lips quirked. “Sorry, old habit. I mean the Silesian Guard.”
“All of it?”
Mike nodded. “That will immediately add about three thousand troops to the ones the Bohemians already have. Not a lot, perhaps, but they’ve got a solid core of veterans and very high morale. And we should be able to feed in more forces as time goes by.”
Rebecca was frowning. “Can we rely on just one newly trained brigade of Thorsten Engler’s to defend Silesia?”
Gustav Adolf planted his hands on his thighs and leaned forward. That was a sign that he was getting enthusiastic. They were all familiar with his mannerisms, by now.
“Not a problem,” he said. “First, there is little chance anyone will be threatening Lower Silesia in the near future. The Bohemians have ceded it to us and the Poles and Lithuanians have more than enough on their plates, between our forces besieging Poznań and the thrashing the Galicians just gave the Lithuanian magnates outside Krakow. So… ”
He stroked his mustache again. “Just as I explained to Brigadier Engler not so long ago. Silesia is a superb location in which to complete the training of the new divisions he has been building up. That will provide the province with more than enough military forces for their needs. By all accounts, the situation there has settled down nicely. I will readily state that whatever disputes I have with the young woman’s reckless political views, she is a superb organizer.”
His eyes widened. So did Mike’s.
So did Rebecca’s. “But, you can’t—”
“Of course!” said the emperor. “We’ll send in Richter as well.”
Mike was nodding. “Not alone, of course. She’ll need a staff; other organizers. A printing press, that goes without saying.”
“You can’t be serious!” protested Rebecca.
Piazza shook his head. “Sure they can, Rebecca. These two?”
Roth town house
Prague, capital of Bohemia
Once the small talk was over and the servants had all been dismissed, Francisco Nasi gave Morris Roth a quizzical look. At least, his gaze was quizzical. The twisted little smile below it…not so much.
“So why is a younger brother of the prince of Transylvania—what’s that American expression?—‘camping out’ with you for so long? He’s been here in Prague quite a while.”
“He’s not ‘camping out’ with us now.” Judith had a startled expression on her face. “He’s been moved to Wallenstein’s castle.”
Morris’ expression was just exasperated. “I knew he was being careless. Hopefully, you’re the only one who noticed.”
“That’s doubtful,” said Francisco, blowing on his teacup to cool the liquid down. “If Rákóczi were Jewish and had restricted his outings to the Josefov…maybe. Even then, the odds would have been no better than even. Don’t think for a moment that the Ottomans don’t have Jewish spies.”
He blew on the cup again. “But gallivanting the way he did all over Prague? I don’t think there’s much chance he wasn’t spotted by an enemy agent. It’s always a problem, conducting diplomatic relations when you don’t have radio access to the other party—the one who can decide, I mean, which in this instance is Prince George Rákóczi. The envoy has to dawdle about for weeks—sometimes months—while a decision gets made. Naturally, they get bored, and unless they’re very disciplined, they will get careless.”
Now he took his first sip. “Still too hot,” he pronounced, and set the cup down on the side table next to his chair. “On a more positive note, at least he kept his mouth shut—seems to have, anyway—on the subject of why he was here.”
The cocked, quizzical look was back. “So. Are you going to tell me or not?”
It didn’t take Morris more than five minutes to fill Nasi in on the situation. The Sephardic spymaster, once a courtier in the Sublime Porte, was so familiar with the politics of Europe and the Middle East that he could fill in most of the blanks himself.
Once Morris was finished, Francisco took a drink from his tea, which had cooled enough. As he set the cup back down, he said: “And you want me to do what for you, Morris? Please be specific. Precise would help, too.”
Morris wasn’t surprised by the bluntness. Nasi had moved to Prague more than a year earlier and he’d come to know him fairly well.
“Two things, mainly. I need the best intelligence I can get, and that generally means you.”
“You already have Uriel,” Nasi pointed out. “He’s very good.”
“Yes, he is—and he will continue to work for me. But he’s gotten pretty old for fieldwork.”
Nasi didn’t argue the point. Morris thought he’d mostly raised it just to buy himself a little time to think.
“What else?”
“The use of your pilot and plane whenever possible.”
Nasi took another sip of tea. He’d obviously expected that request as well. “And what else?”
Morris shrugged. “Hell, Francisco, you’d know the answer to that question better than I would. Whatever else might help the commander of an army about to blunder its way into a region of the continent he knows almost nothing about except that it’s reputed to be full of vampires.”
“That’s incorrect, you know. Wallachia is where Vlad Tepes started those silly fables. The Transylvanians had little to do with it.”
Morris spread his hands in a triumphant gesture. “You see how great my need is for good intelligence?”
Nasi smiled, drained the rest of his cup, and set it down. There was something decisive about the movement.
“All right, Morris. I’m a bit ashamed of myself, since to a degree I’m toying with you.”
Both stared at him. Judith said, “Huh?”
“I wasn’t sure exactly why Pál Rákóczi was here, but I could make an educated guess—and my guesses on subjects like this are very educated. Assuming I was right, I realized I’d finally have to make a decision regarding your so-called Anaconda Project.”
It was Morris’ turn to say “Huh?”
Francisco spread his hands. “I’ve been skeptical since the beginning that your scheme would do much good. The size of the populations involved—Jewish and Gentile both—and the intractability of the conflict seemed like insurmountable problems, at least in the time you had available. Which was no more than fifteen years when you started and is now down to a dozen.”
He shrugged. “I thought the best you’d be able to do would be to provide a refuge for a portion of the Jews caught up in the coming pogrom—and a small portion at that.”
“But you’ve changed your mind?” asked Judith.
“Not…exactly. I still think it’s a daunting challenge. But I no longer think it’s insurmountable. Especially—and this brings us back to the matter at hand—if you can find an anchor in Transylvania.”
He leaned back in his chair. “It’s an unusual place, in so many ways. Between the ethnic and religious mix, you have everything in Transylvania. Mostly Hungarians and Germans—whom they call ‘Saxons’ there. And the offshoot of Hungarians known as Székelys. When it comes to religion, you have Christians of every stripe, Jews, even a Christian sect that’s becoming Jewish.”
Morris frowned. “Who is that?”
“You never heard of the Sabbatarians? They began as a radical Unitarian group of Hungarian extraction, but as time went on they came to believe that the logic of Unitarianism was that the Jews had been right all along.” He chuckled. “Mind you, there aren’t too many rabbis outside of their own ranks who agree with them—or welcome their evolution, for that matter.”
Judith shook her head. “I—we”—she glanced at her husband—“never heard of them.”
“That’s hardly surprising. Why would anyone in a small mining town in what used to be your West Virginia have heard of a small—there aren’t more than twenty thousand of them—and rather peculiar sect of Jews in Transylvania who were wiped out centuries earlier?”
“What do you mean, ‘wiped out’?” demanded Morris.
“The Transylvanian Diet gave the Sabbatarians an ultimatum. As of the end of 1635, they had to join one of the four accepted Christian denominations—those are Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Unitarianism—or be persecuted. Most of them refused, naturally, and the persecution has already begun in this timeline. So far, it has not been too severe, though.”
Morris’ face grew hard. “And as soon as the Grand Army of the Sunrise shows up, it’ll stop altogether.”
Nasi nodded. “Yes, I imagine so. I imagine Prince Rákóczi understands that himself—and is quite willing to forego the persecution. The point I’m making is that if you can link Bohemia with Transylvania, you will have taken some great strides toward creating a political situation—call it a political reality, rather—that will make pogroms such as Chmielnicki’s impossible. Or at least squelchable, if they do get started.”
His own expression grew hard. “Having thousands—eventually tens of thousands, I think—of well-armed Jews with military experience living in the region will make even Cossacks think twice. And you are the one creating that new reality.”
He planted his hands on the armrests. “So here is what I will do. Yes, I will provide you with as much intelligence as I can—which will be quite a bit, because I can get Denise and probably Minnie to travel with your forces.”
Judith didn’t look entirely thrilled with that news. “Uh…Francisco…Denise Beasley…well, what I mean is… ”
Nasi laughed outright. “The rambunctious girl you remember has changed a lot, Judith. Grown a lot, anyway. She’s still pretty rambunctious. For her part, Minnie is as shrewd as anyone comes and an extraordinarily good student. Which, I’ll admit, is not Denise’s strongest suit.”
Judith muttered something that sounded like to put it mildly, but Morris shook his head. “Honey, leave off. I was at Krakow; you weren’t. I don’t have any problem with Denise—especially if Minnie’s with her.”
He cocked his head. “But will she be? The last I heard she was pregnant with Archduke Leopold’s kid and was planning to settle down with him. At least by seventeenth-century royal mistress values of ‘settle down.’”
Nasi laughed again. “She’s not that far into her pregnancy. More to the point, she’s getting bored. Life as the paramour of an Austrian archduke isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. Yes, I’m sure she’ll agree. Provisions will have to be made, of course. But—”
He shrugged. “Whatever its faults in other ways, the seventeenth century is quite good at making provisions for the delivery and care of royal bastards.”
Judith muttered something else. It might have been talk about damning with faint praise.
But Morris didn’t really hear. He was thinking ahead. “If Denise and Minnie come… ”
Nasi nodded. “Yes. That means you just also got what amounts to your own little air force. Not so little anymore—we’ll have a Jupiter, a Dauntless, and two Dvoraks, with no doubt more to come later.” He smiled. “I’m even thinking of calling them Nasi’s Tigers.”
Morris chuckled. “After Chenault in World War II, eh?”
Francisco shrugged. “Eddie would quit if I didn’t let him join them with his plane. My plane, technically. But he’ll be spending most of his time learning to fly the new Jupiter. The USE air force agreed to train a couple of other pilots for us, who can fly the Dauntless and flesh out the Jupiter’s crew.”
“Don’t you need it yourself?”
“Eddie or Tuva can handle my occasional needs. Which are very occasional these days, on account of the demands”—he gave Judith a glance that could be translated as what is it with women and weddings, anyway?—“of my marital negotiations.”
Judith smiled. “How is that coming, by the way?”
“Slowly and sometimes painfully. Marrying into the inner circles of the largest Jewish community in the world is easier said than done, even if you come with my resources and connections.”
Her smile was now bordering on a grin. “Especially a Jewish community that is so orthodox they haven’t even invented the term ‘Orthodox’ yet. And they’re Ashkenazim, to boot, where you’re not only Sephardic but Ottoman. In your origins, anyway.”
“Very recent origins—so recent that most of my family still lives in Istanbul. It would be a lot easier if I was trying to marry a girl raised in the Reform tradition, but so far the only Jews in the world who fit that description are the two of you.”
“And Jason Gotkin,” Morris said, sounding defensive.
Judith looked dubious. “I think the best you can say about Jason’s convictions these days is that they might fit within Conservative Judaism. Except that doesn’t exist today either.”
Francisco shook his head again. “We’re drifting from the subject I want to raise next.”
“Which is?”
“My need for the occasional use of a plane is about to get easier to fill anyway.” He sat up straight and smiled. “As you must have heard by now, Bohemia has developed its own aircraft industry.”
“Is it really that far along?” asked Morris. “I got the impression they were still at the prototype stage.”
“A foul calumny. They have just completed the first functional aircraft. Three of them, in fact.” His smile widened. “And we’ve already sold them!”
“To who?”
“Well, one of them to me, of course. At a cut-rate price, I might add.”
Morris gave him a suspicious look. “Aren’t you a part owner of that company?”
“I own a few shares of stock, yes. But the company could well afford to give me a discount since we just sold the other two planes to the richest Jew in Prague.”
Morris’ eyes widened. Judith laughed. “And now you’ve got your own air force, husband!”