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CHAPTER 20

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Ufa Kremlin

December 14, 1637

Ivan Borisovich Petrov looked over the new aqualator design. Russia’s aqualator industry was growing. The up-timers were focused on digital computers. You could build digital aqualators. In fact, almost all the aqualators were at least partly digital. But you could also build analog aqualators, and aqualators that were both digital and analog. Both slide rules and calculators would solve problems, but the slide rule was simpler to make. The new radio station aqualators used a “slide rule” structure to get the best frequency and a digital system to count the errors in the checksum.

Ivan understood about a third of the technology. He had a solid overview and knew enough to know when the boffins at the Dacha were blowing smoke. Here, he was pretty sure, they weren’t. But the radio system aqualators had a great deal of what in electrical computers would be called ROM. And the ROM wasn’t programmable at all. You plugged in a ROM component, and it solves a particular sort of problem, and only that sort of problem.

It was something that they could quite possibly sell to the USE, or if the USE wasn’t interested, to the Ottomans.

There was no knock on his door. It opened and Director Budanov came in. “I hope that’s a report on who leaked the information to Birkin’s staff.”

“No, sir. It’s a report on the new aqualators.”

“Who cares?”

“Most of the radio techs.”

Budanov just looked at him.

“I have people correlating who had access to the information. But until they finish, there isn’t much I can do.”

“So I’ll report to the czar that you have made no progress.” Budanov slammed the door on his way out.

Ivan sighed. According to Miroslava, this was likely a two-murder problem. That is, in Vasilii’s books, it often took more than one murder for the detective to gather enough information to determine who the murderer was. That if the murderer stopped at one, they never would have been caught. And, in the real world, a disheartening number of murders were never solved. And all too often, when a murder was “solved,” it wasn’t. Instead, some handy scapegoat was caught and condemned for a murder he had nothing to do with.

Sighing again, Ivan got up, put on his heavy woolen greatcoat, and left. He caught a tram and rode it down Irina Way to the Diogenes Club.

There were two workmen hanging a sign over one of the doors. It said STRANGER’S ROOM, and, careful to avoid getting the sign dropped on his head, he slipped in the door. There was a guard in the foyer, and Ivan pulled out a laminated card. It had his picture on one side, and he showed it to the guard. After looking at it and looking at him, the guard let him through. A waiter showed him to a table, and a few minutes later Alla came out.

“Hello, Ivan,” the girl said. “We’re still working on the building, but the kitchen is open. The chef has a new recipe, beef Bourguignon over mashed turnips. Or you can have it over scalloped potatoes.”

Potatoes were brought to Russia shortly after Bernie Zeppi got to Russia and had taken the country like the Polish hussars couldn’t manage. The peasants loved them because of how much food you could get compared to wheat or rye. The Volga had spread them and there were potatoes being harvested from Moscow to the Caspian Sea and the Ural Mountains, but turnips had been here longer and were still more prevalent.

“What do you recommend?”

“Try the turnips. They work well and give a solid meal.”

Ivan made his order, and Alla was right. The turnips worked well enough, and the beef stew was good. After eating, he went to an office down the hall from the Stranger’s Room, where Vasilii was fiddling with an aqualator.

“Does Miroslava have any new ideas about who our mole might be?”

“Not exactly,” Vasilii said. “Alla has an idea if you want to try it.”

“What is it?” Ivan asked cautiously. In his opinion, Alla Lyapunov was a kid. And his personal belief was that if the Diogenes Club wasn’t being quietly supported by the czar, it would already be a failure. But Ivan had been keeping his personal beliefs personal for most of his life.

“Arrange another murder,” Vasilii said with a grin and waited for Ivan to react. Ivan looked at him and he continued. “Introduce a juicy piece of intelligence that your mole is going to want to get to Birkin as quickly as possible.”

“What sort of information?” Ivan asked. “It took the Muscovy desk months to turn Colonel Popov. Birkin, it turns out, is a popular commander and most of his people are personally loyal to him, even when they aren’t all that enamored of the chaos that has taken over in Moscow.”

“The Muscovy desk?”

“It’s not official. That would entail recognizing Muscovite Russia as a separate state. And the official position of Czar Mikhail is that Moscow and, well, that part of Russia that is northwest of Kazan is in rebellion. And after the rebellion is over and the miscreants are hanged, the people of Moscow will be allowed the option of becoming a state in the United Sovereign States of Russia, or becoming the personal fief of Czar Mikhail. He expects them to become states.”

“I know he does. That’s why I asked about the Muscovy desk. Look, I want to get Miroslava and Alla into this. Then let’s adjourn to one of the meeting rooms.”

✧ ✧ ✧

A very few minutes later they were seated in a small wood-paneled room with a button to call the serving staff if they were wanted. They were in plush chairs and joined by Miroslava Holmes and Alla Lyapunov, who had brought a tray of cookies in the shape of little trees with green icing.

“You were telling me about the Muscovy desk?” Vasilii said.

Ivan looked at Miroslava and Alla. “As I said, it’s unofficial. But we need something. We have to deal with them while this stationary war is going on. And I’m not saying General Lebedev is wrong in his approach.” Ivan also felt that General Lebedev was too young for his rank, and believed that calling him General Tim only heightened the effect. And, yes, Ivan Borisovich Petrov felt he was too young for his rank too. And Vasilii knew it, and liked to tease him about it.

“So the unofficial Muscovy desk of the Embassy Bureau spends months getting an agent into Birkin’s . . . ”

Alla trailed off as Ivan shook his head.

“Spent months turning one of Birkin’s top subordinates.”

“How did you do that?” Alla asked.

“A woman named Valeria. She was a former serf who escaped after Mikhail’s Emancipation Proclamation. She showed up on our doorstep only a few weeks after I got here. I never met the woman, but she knew what the Embassy Bureau was and what it did and volunteered.

“She was given a bit of training and late last winter she was sent to Birkingrad as the daughter of a merchant with a load of caps for caplocks. Birkin bought the caps and she set up a tailor shop in Birkingrad. She met and romanced Colonel Popov, and persuaded him slowly to support Czar Mikhail.

“They were just starting to get good information when, suddenly, Colonel Popov was killed in a brawl. But Colonel Popov wasn’t a brawler and didn’t like that tavern. And General Birkin hasn’t investigated the death.

“Our conclusion is that Birkin or, more likely, one of his top subordinates, ordered the murder because they realized he was the leak. The thing is, we can’t figure out any way for them to have figured it out, except that someone told him. Because in a separate incident, Valeria’s shop was robbed and the robber killed her and the two tailors she had working for her. Again, there was no investigation, and Birkin doesn’t like crime in Birkingrad.

“On the other hand, our courier is fine. Still going back and forth from Kazak to Birkingrad every few nights.”

“So someone here told Birkin about Colonel Popov and the woman, but not about your courier?”

“Either that, or they were told about the courier and were told to leave him alone.”

“It has to be something that Birkin will need to know soon,” Miroslava said.

“What has to be something Birkin needs to know?”

“The information you leak,” Alla said.

“I’m not going to leak any information,” Ivan said indignantly.

“He’s right,” Vasilii said. “By now everyone in the Embassy Bureau knows that Ivan is in charge of finding the leak. If he suddenly leaks some vital information, someone is going to smell a rat.”

“Yeah,” Alla agreed. “And, besides, he probably couldn’t carry it off.”

Ivan looked at her for a long moment, and then said, “You’re probably right.”

“What you need to do is find someone else, someone that you can trust and who can’t be the spy, and get them to leak it.”

“Leak what?”

“The fact that General Tim has figured out a way to take out Birkingrad.”

“There is no way to take out Birkingrad,” Ivan said.

“Of course there is,” Alla insisted. “General Tim came up with it. He’s a military genius. Everyone knows that.”

“Actually, it’s General Maslov who is the military genius. General Lebedev is simply a decisive and effective commander,” Ivan said. “And everyone knows that they’ve been working on the problem of fortifications for the last year and are no closer to finding an answer now than they were when they were both lieutenants.”

“Yes, I know that,” Alla said. “But General Tim has had a eureka moment, and he’s fairly confident that he’s figured out a way to take Birkingrad. He’s not sure if it’s applicable to other fortified positions, and he wants to talk it over with General Maslov before discussing it with the czar, or the general staff, or anyone, really. All that anyone really knows is he wants permission to either go visit General Maslov or bring General Maslov back to Ufa to work out the details.”

“You know, after what Ivan did to the Zunghars,” Vasilii said, “people might just believe that.”

“Yes, but to what purpose? Even if they do believe it, which I am not all that confident of, there’s nothing for them to do about it.”

“That’s true.”

“Kill General Tim,” Miroslava said calmly. “That would be their only option. If they leave him alive, he’s a threat to Birkingrad, and even to the rest of Muscovite Russia.”

Vasilii laughed. “Tim’s been a threat to Muscovite Russia since he took out the Nizhny Novgorod garrison at Bor. They haven’t killed him yet.”

“Lack of opportunity,” Miroslava said.

“It’s not done,” Alla said. “Shooting the other side’s general when it’s not even a battle. It’s not done.” Then she sat back. “That’s what the idea of the new trick to take Birkingrad will do for us. Give Birkin enough reason to put aside custom and decency and order General Tim’s execution.”

“It’s still not enough,” Ivan said, interested in spite of himself. “Even if Birkin was desperate enough to order it, he still couldn’t do it.”

“Then we leak that Tim is going to do something dangerous,” Vasilii said. “Well, something that would expose him to an enemy attack.”

“Let me get this straight,” Ivan said. “You want me to paint a great big target on General Lebedev’s back, then parade him in front of Birkin’s sharpshooters?”

“They don’t need to actually find him where we say. They just have to go look there,” Alla said, then added enthusiastically, “We offer different locations to different suspects and see where Birkin’s men go looking.”

“It might well work,” Vasilii said, “and even if it doesn’t, listening to the rumor over the next few days might tell you who’s careless with secret information.”

“You’re going to have to find multiple people in the Puzzle Palace to leak information for you.”

“That’s not going to be easy. Most of the people in the Puzzle Pup Tent are not actually very good liars.”

The Embassy Bureau fulfilled the roles of the state department, the CIA, and the NSA for Russia. But seventeenth-century Russia wasn’t late twentieth-century America. It had a lot fewer people and a whole lot less of an intelligence apparatus. In fact, while Vladimir Gorchakov and Brandy Bates had been in Grantville, they’d generated more actual intelligence than the whole rest of the Embassy Bureau, because Grantville was spy central for most of Europe, having agents from all of western Europe. There were even Spanish agents operating in Grantville, though they mostly reported to individual Spanish noblemen, not the king. And Murad had a whole group of agents, most of them French, working for him. So the analytical section of the Embassy Bureau was way smaller than a Puzzle Palace. It was more pup-tent size, even though it did have a couple of aqualators.

That was the thing Ivan Borisovich had going for him. It was a much smaller pool of suspects than there would have been in up-time America.

They spent the next couple of hours working out the details of how it might be done. But Ivan flatly refused to do it on his own. “We have to tell Czar Mikhail what’s going on and, for that matter, we need to tell General Lebedev, to make sure that he’s not actually in any of the places that the Muscovites expect him to be.

“And I can’t go visiting Czar Mikhail right now. There are too many eyes on me.”

“Alla can,” Vasilii said. “She visits the palace fairly regularly to play with Princess Irina.”

Alla grimaced. It was true. Her year as a kitchen servant was all very romantic and heroic to the ten-year-old princess, as well as the eight-year-old heir apparent, and Alla was smart enough to know that such a connection was going to be vital as Alexi and Irina grew up. So she acted as a trusted elder friend, and was kind to the children. And she actually liked them, though she was coming to leave the interests of childhood behind and sometimes found their focus on games and toys a bit boring.


Royal Palace

December 15, 1637

“I need to talk to your father,” Alla told Alexi while they were playing a war game based on the war between the USE and Poland.

Alexi was insisting that Alla play the Poles, which Alla felt was more than a bit unfair.

“Papa’s busy,” Alexi said as though it was an automatic answer. Czar Mikhail was busy. So was Czarina Evdokia. But they did make time for the children in the evening. The other side of that deal was that the kids knew that they weren’t supposed to interrupt their parents during the day.

“It’s important,” Alla said, then leaned in. “And secret. It’s Club Diogenes business.”

“What’s it about?” Alexi demanded.

“It’s need to know.”

“I’m the heir apparent. I need to know everything.”

Which was exactly what Alla should have expected him to say.

“And I’m an imperial princess and an investor in the Diogenes Club,” Irina said. Which was legally true. The government’s investment in the Diogenes Club was substantial, and done through Irina. She wasn’t a majority shareholder, but she was on the board of directors.

Alla cudgeled her brain, then said, “It’s not up to me. Ask your father after we talk.”

That didn’t satisfy them, and she was pretty sure that Czar Mikhail wasn’t going to be happy with her solution either. But after complaining a bit more, they all trooped over to the czar’s office. The secretary, a middle-aged man with a short graying beard and a not quite double chin, made them wait till the commoner president left. The constitution of the Sovereign States was a set of compromises, including the use of two co-presidents, one who had to be a commoner and one who had to be a noble. As long as they agreed, decisions on policy usually didn’t come to Mikhail, but if they didn’t agree Czar Mikhail was the deciding vote.

Then the secretary buzzed the czar to tell him they were there.

“Send them in.”

When they went in, they found Czar Mikhail holding a hunk of gold as big as his fist. He held it up. “It’s from the Kazakh field.”

Alla looked at it. “Wow.”

“Cool!” Alexi said. He’d picked the word up from Bernie Zeppi and used it more than Alla thought entirely necessary.

“Yes, very cool. The gold and silver from the mines is going a long way toward keeping the confidence in Sovereign States money high, at least locally. However, according to Iosif Borisovich Petrov in Grantville, the Sovereign States money has dropped a lot on the Grantville and Magdeburg exchanges, and isn’t even traded on the Amsterdam exchange.”

“So send the gold to Amsterdam and buy up all the rubles,” Irina said.

“That’s an excellent plan, Irina. I think we’ll do it.”

“You should send them to Grantville,” Alexi insisted. “Grantville’s more important than the Netherlands. Well, the USE is more important than the Netherlands.”

“Also a good point. Now, how do we get the gold there without giving half of it to General Shein?”

“Put it on a plane,” Alla offered. “If you can send planes all the way to the other end of Kazakh, you can send them west to the USE.”

“Not through Muscovy, I can’t.” Mikhail grimaced.

“Go south,” Alexi said. Alexi had a three-foot globe in his room and a large atlas. “I can find a route.”

“Can you really?” the czar of the United Sovereign States of Russia asked with a bemused expression on his face.

“I think so.” Alexi’s enthusiasm was waning a bit as the prospect became closer to real.

“Very well. You map out a route from here to Grantville where they can get fuel. Irina, you help him. After all, you helped him interrupt my work.”

“That’s really my fault, Your Majesty,” Alla said. “Well, Ivan Borisovich’s fault, and Vasilii and Miroslava’s, as well.” She was wearing a vest over her blouse, and from the vest, she pulled some folded sheets of paper.

He took the sheets and read through them carefully, while Alla and the children waited. Then he looked up. “This is burn-before-reading stuff.” Then he looked at the two children. “You two did well in bringing Alla to me for this. So no punishment. And order whatever you want for dessert tonight. If Alla brings you something like this again, you have my permission to interrupt. But we can’t tell anyone that you’re allowed. That too has to be a secret.”

“What’s it about?” Alexi asked, pointing at the sheets of paper.

Czar Mikhail—and it was Czar Mikhail, not Papa—looked at them. “It’s going to be vitally important at times for you to know things and then act like you don’t have the least idea of them. For both of you.” He handed the sheets to Alexi. “Share with your sister.”

Irina didn’t wait. She came over and read over Alexi’s shoulder. She was two years older and three inches taller than her little brother.

Alla looked on in shock. What was he doing, giving them this sort of information?

He looked at her and winked. After the two royal children had read the sheets, Czar Mikhail took the sheets and put them in the fire in the fireplace, so that they burned to ash in a few moments.

“All right. Alla, tell Ivan Borisovich Petrov that the plan is approved, but I want you to let Tim know what’s going on.” Then he looked at the children. “Now tell me how you’re going to keep this a secret. It’s important not just that you don’t tell anyone, but that no one even knows you know a secret. At least not this secret.”

“We know a different secret,” Irina said. “What secret, Papa?”

“The secret airplane route to Grantville!” Alexi crowed.

“You don’t keep a secret by shouting it out,” Alla said, and Alexi blushed.

“Good. You two run along and work on the secret route to Grantville. Alla, stay a moment.”

✧ ✧ ✧

After the children were gone, Mikhail looked at her. “You’re wondering why I told them about your plan, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I grew up in a snake pit. Alexi and Irina won’t have that advantage. If you want to call it that. But they are going to have to learn to keep secrets, and to do that, you need practice. The same goes for you. You’ve had your share of living in secret, and I know you can keep your mouth shut when you need to, but you do need to know how to misdirect attention from the secret that no one can know to the secret that people can find out without any great damage being caused by it.

“In this particular case, it’s a fairly safe secret. Neither Alexi nor Irina have much contact with anyone in the Embassy Bureau, especially the Muscovy desk. So they know the secret, but who are they going to tell? And even if they let it slip, even if one of their nursemaids is a spy—possible but unlikely—by the time the information makes its way to Birkin or the Muscovy desk, it will be too late. But I will get to see how well my two eldest keep secrets and how trustworthy their maids and tutors are.

“You are now the official supersecret conduit from the Diogenes Club to me. Which will make things easier. As you go out, send my secretary in. I need to let him know that the children were summoned so that I could give them a project and didn’t interrupt my day.”

Which Alla did, and then followed the children back to their quarters in the palace.

✧ ✧ ✧

As his secretary came in Mikhail smiled at the man. “Matvey, I have a few things for you not to know.”

Matvey rolled his eyes. “I take it this has to do with the children, Your Majesty?”

“Yes, officially I summoned them and they brought Alla along to tell me something about some service that the Diogenes Club is offering. I’m afraid I didn’t think of that till just now. Oh, and the children will be deciding on dessert for tonight’s dinner. Please let the czarina know.”

“And why did you summon them?” Matvey asked. “Just so I can disapprove of the right thing.”

“They are going to be mapping out a route for a Hero-class airplane to take to get from here to Grantville without going through Muscovy-controlled Russia, Poland, or the Ottoman Empire.”

“You have already decided to send Bernie and Natasha to Grantville by the southern route, and why would that be secret?”

“So the children will have a secret project and so we can determine how well their maids keep quiet.” Mikhail gave Matvey a look then continued. “The real secret part is what is going to be in the plane.”

“Which is?”

“A bit over a ton of gold.”

“Do we have that much gold?”

“Barely. It’s going to pretty much clean out our reserves.”

“Then why?”

“Because we have to restore confidence in the Sovereign States ruble. Most especially, we have to do it in such a way that Ron Stone and Her Serene Highness Millicent Anne Barnes are paid back.”

“A ton of gold won’t do that.”

Mikhail nodded. A ton of gold was only a bit over twelve million USE dollars. As the economies of Europe had boomed over the last four years the price of gold had increased, but not as much as the value of an American dollar.

“We know that, but it will help—and restoring faith in the Sovereign States ruble doesn’t require that we ship enough gold to buy back every ruble in Grantville. Just that they know we mean to make sure that those people who have rubles can spend them at a decent rate of exchange.”

Matvey, who was basically conservative, wasn’t sure he agreed. But the czar was the czar, and by now Matvey was convinced that Czar Mikhail was a proper czar, hard enough and strong enough to rule Russia. He saw his job as facilitating that, so as he left the room, he was thinking of a good excuse for the children to have brought that young woman from the Diogenes Club with them. He remembered the upset over the pastries. That had, in a way, been the origin of the Club.

So, once he got to his desk, he wrote out an order, sealed it with his seal, and had a messenger take it to the children’s room.

✧ ✧ ✧

Back in the children’s room, Alla and Irina watched as Alexi opened the sealed official order Matvey had sent. He read it and laughed. “We’re ordering dessert from the Diogenes Club.”

“What?” Irina asked, and about that time their younger sister Anna came up, followed by the youngest, Martha.

“Let me see,” Anna demanded.

Alexi looked again at the note.

In regard to the new delivery service of the Diogenes Club, your father confirms that you may order dessert from the Diogenes restaurant.

Alexi realized that even if Anna read it, it wouldn’t give anything away. Anna was seven and Martha six, so both were just starting to learn to read. Alexi showed them the letter. And both of Alexi’s younger sisters started insisting on their favorite desserts.

The noise brought the nannies and the children’s tutor over. And they learned that the Diogenes Club was now offering delivery.

“Only to the royal family!” Alla said quickly, then added, “At least for now.”

It took a few minutes and some questioning from Alla about what the czar and czarina liked for dessert before the orders were complete, then Alla made her excuses and took a carriage back to the Diogenes Club.

✧ ✧ ✧

In the Diogenes Club, the knowledge that they would be providing dessert for the royal family hit the restaurant staff like a hurricane. Czar Mikhail was incredibly popular in Ufa and so were the children. They were also all aware of how people would react. The knowledge that the royal children considered ordering dessert from the Diogenes Club as a special treat would be really good for business.

“Elina,” Alla announced, “you will be making orange marmalade stuffed vol-au-vents. We will also be providing chocolate ice cream. And, not for dessert, but I want a dozen of your flakiest croissants to serve with whatever they are having for dinner.”

Having thrown the kitchen into turmoil, she sent a reservation confirmation to Ivan Borisovich Petrov at the Embassy Bureau in the Ufa Kremlin.


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