CHAPTER 17
Ufa Spies
Ufa
November 20, 1637
Ufa was a boomtown. Being on the Belaya River, it had access to the Kama and Volga River systems. It was geographically on the eastern edge of the river system that connected western Russia. Czar Mikhail had moved the capital to Ufa in June of 1636. That move and the people who followed it had caused a great deal of growth. The fact that trade had been temporarily interrupted during the active siege of Kazan had slowed things a little, but not all that much. Russia was used to frozen rivers in winter and knew how to deal with trade interruptions. Warehouses filled over the winter and emptied into the Volga River system in the spring. And since the introduction of up-timer tech, those warehouses filled faster and fuller.
A great deal of Portland cement and aggregate made its way to Ufa as soon as the ice on the Volga melted, and that concrete was poured and shaped into buildings, roads, and sewers over the summer of 1637. This had the added advantage of making Ufa quite possibly the city with the lowest unemployment in Russia.
And as the Nicky made its way around Ufa coming in to land, Brandy Bates Gorchakov, who’d left the Scout in Almaty, saw again what the city was turning into.
The city was a huge sprawling mess, full of people, concrete, glass, and steel, with the Ufa Kremlin and the Ufa Dacha the twin hubs from which the city expanded. In Ufa there were indoor toilets, flush toilets. There was hot water, heat, and there were hotels with elevators.
“Ufa Control to Nastas’ya Nikulichna. We need you to make another circle. The Lydia Litvyak is about to take off.”
The Lydia was the latest Hero-class airplane. They were alternating between male and female names. The Lydia was going to be on the Ufa–Shavgar run. This plane was named after a Russian female pilot of World War II in the other timeline.
Obedient to the tower, the Nicky took another wide loop around Ufa while the Lydia took off and headed south. Then they landed. Home sweet home.
Finally down, and with the Nicky in the hands of the maintenance crew, which was by now quite used to Hero-class airplanes, Vlad, Brandy, Vasilii, Miroslava, Yury and Ariq took a tram from the Ufa River to the Kremlin. The trams traveled on a single iron-capped wooden rail that went down the middle of a tarmac street and used a small steam engine to travel at about ten miles an hour. They were open to the air, but did have a roof in case of rain or snow.
As they went along, people climbed on, usually not waiting for them to stop, but instead running and grabbing a pole and jumping on, riding for a couple of blocks, then jumping off again.
When they got to the front of the Kremlin, the tram stopped, and Vlad, Brandy and crew dismounted at a more leisurely pace.
There were guards in the fur-lined baseball caps that had become part of the Sovereign States uniform. One of the guards asked for their ID, and they presented them, and got saluted.
Then they were escorted to the czar’s office.
✧ ✧ ✧
“So, do you want to go west or east?” Czar Mikhail asked, standing in front of his desk and not offering anyone a seat.
“Your Majesty?” Vladimir asked.
“I think I’ll send Bernie and Natasha west. If I send you two back to Grantville, you’ll take little Mikhail with you and not come back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s the Heroes. We don’t have enough of them, and by the time we do, they will no doubt be outmoded by something new. But we have a few now, and we can use them to move vital supplies to Shavgar and even eastern Kazakh. But we can also use them, with the cooperation of the Don Cossacks, to fly south of Muscovite Russia and Poland and link up with Baby Albrecht’s Army of the Sunrise.” Albrecht Wallenstein, the king of Bohemia, had recently died, leaving his infant son the crown. There was a regency council and the death hadn’t slowed the Army of the Sunrise in their advance east. “And from there, all the way to Grantville with a planeload of gold to clear your debts to Ron Stone.
“But we can also use one to go east and map out a steam train route to the Pacific.”
“We’ll run out of gas,” Vasilii said. “They use more fuel than we expected, and even if they didn’t, there aren’t any fuel depots, unless you count the ones that are set up along the route in Kazakh.”
“Vadim has come up with a new firebox.”
“What sort of a new firebox?” Vasilii asked cautiously.
“Do I look like an engineer?” Mikhail asked. “It will let you use wood or coal, if you find any coal.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Brandy blurted.
“Do I?” Mikhail asked with a grin. “I thought I was quite serious. But you can keep thinking I’m joking if you want to. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. I’m sure you’re serious,” said Vasilii. “But you are going to need a new engineer. Because I’m going to kill Vadim!”
“Now you see the difference, Princess Brandy. Vasilii does have to be kidding. Not that I don’t sympathize, but Vadim was working at my order. Did you think I wasn’t reading your reports on the fuel efficiency and supply chain problems?” Czar Mikhail shook his head and finally waved them all to seats and took his own.
“We need a route to the sea. Some sea. Preferably a seaport that isn’t frozen solid for half a year or more. We need a way of getting our goods to markets in the west, even if it takes us through the South China Sea and around the Cape of Good Hope.
“Airplanes will help. Especially cargo and passenger planes like the Heroes, but we still need a port. A port that can support steamships, or at least ships that have a steam engine to get them through the doldrums. And the only place we’re going to get that without going to war with Sweden or the Ottoman Empire is on the Pacific.
“So I need someone to fly over Siberia and map out a route to the Pacific. And that team also needs to be able to make deals with the native tribes and with China and the Qing dynasty, which isn’t in charge yet, but according to the histories is expected to be soon. The Ming dynasty seems to be cracking up ahead of schedule. I need you to go to China and buy me a port.”
“I don’t speak Chinese,” Vladimir protested.
“You think Natasha does, or Bernie?” Mikhail asked. “Yury and Ariq both speak Chinese.”
“We speak it well enough to argue about the price of silk or beer, Your Majesty,” Yury said, “but if you expect us to negotiate a trade deal, China’s going to end up owning Moscow.”
“I hope we can avoid that,” Mikhail said, “but in any case, over the next couple of weeks, you’re going to need to plan your campaign, and I want you on your way by mid-December at the latest.”
He looked over at Miroslava. “Meanwhile, Ivan Borisovich Petrov would like to have a few words with you, Miroslava. Please have a chat with him on your way out.”
It was a clear dismissal.
Embassy Bureau, Ufa Kremlin
November 20, 1637
Simeon Budanov looked over at Ivan Borisovich Petrov with resentment flavored with just a touch of satisfaction. Simeon was the head of the Embassy Bureau of the United Sovereign States of Russia. But he was fully aware that Czar Mikhail didn’t trust him and often went around him to Ivan Borisovich. He assumed that the young sprout was after his job. “Well, Petrov, have you found the spy?”
“No, General,” Ivan said politely. As the head of the Embassy Bureau, Budanov’s rank was the equivalent of a lieutenant general. And Ivan knew better than to be casual about such things with Budanov. The man was looking for an excuse to fire him. That was why he’d gotten this job, which had nothing at all to do with the Grantville desk.
“Why not? You’ve had a week.”
A week ago, an ad in the Pravdivyye Fakty contained what everyone in the Embassy Bureau was sure was a code group. The Pravdivyye Fakty was a “newspaper” that reported on scandals and rumors, and had little regard for the truth or factuality of its reporting. Well, at least it isn’t claiming that the Czarina had a baby with space aliens, yet, Ivan thought. The rest of the paper was filled with personal ads, and a week ago one of those ads contained the following:
AR VE CH D
BE GS DW F
With five more such groups. Everyone knew that it was a key group for a book code and the Pravdivyye Fakty was full of such things, but the day after they saw that one, one of their agents in Birkin’s army was executed. While printed in Ufa, the Pravdivyye Fakty was shipped to Kazan and arrived there the same day. It had taken them three days to confirm that this was the message that was involved in the death. And they still didn’t know it for sure. It was just the process of elimination.
There was a knock on the door.
“Yes!” Simeon Budanov shouted, though it was Ivan’s door.
The door opened and Miroslava Holmes came in, followed by Vasilii Lyapunov.
“What are you doing here?” Simeon Budanov snarled.
It was Vasilii who answered. “We’re just back from Almaty.”
“This is a secure area. You can visit with Ivan when he’s not at work.”
Vasilii looked at Budanov, and Budanov looked back, while Ivan prayed that Vasilii, and especially Miroslava, would hold their tongues.
After a long moment, Vasilii looked at Ivan and said, “In that case, please drop by the Dacha this evening, Ivan.”
They left and Ivan was left with Simeon Budanov. Simeon spent the next fifteen minutes saying very little, just as offensively as he could.
Ufa Dacha
November 20, 1637
Alla welcomed her “parents” home with cautious friendliness. She was happy enough for them to be back and she wanted their approval for the restaurant she was planning. But she still didn’t completely trust them. And she was fully aware that her real parents never would have agreed to her being involved in an inn of any sort.
Vasilii was polite, but uncertain. Miroslava was indifferent in a positive way. That is, she didn’t actually care that much about food as long as it wasn’t objectionable, spoiled or otherwise dangerous to eat, and felt that if Alla wanted to open a restaurant, it was no more silly than anything else she might want to do.
Alla was still trying to convince Vasilii of the viability of the project when Ivan Borisovich arrived.
Ivan Borisovich looked like a younger version of his father, whom Alla had met in Moscow. He was short, a bit overweight, sturdy, a no-one of a man. He was just like his dad, but his dad was the one who had arranged for her to escape from Moscow and he was the one who’d been here to meet her when she’d arrived. That whole branch of the Petrov family was living proof of the notion that looks could be deceiving.
“Should I go to my room?” Alla asked. She didn’t want to blow the restaurant by looking like she was too nosy and making Vasilii angry.
Ivan Borisovich looked at her and considered. “No, I don’t think so. You’ve shown that you have discretion when you need it. And if you’re sitting here with us, we can’t be discussing anything secret, can we?” He smiled and suddenly he looked a lot less bovine than he had before.
So Alla got to listen as Ivan laid out the case of the spy in the Embassy Bureau for Miroslava.
“Are you really sure it’s this message?” Alla asked after Ivan was finished. “After all, there were more messages the day before and it might have taken them a while to decode them and decide what to do. Or it might have been something else that tipped them off about your spy.”
Ivan nodded. “It’s a good question. We’re about eighty-percent sure that it’s this message. Several of the other encrypted messages, we’ve been able to decrypt. And not everyone has access to an aqualator.”
“But you don’t actually need an aqualator,” Alla said.
Miroslava nodded. “I wouldn’t need one.”
“You’re a special case, Miroslava. Most people who don’t use an aqualator to do the encrypting end up going with early code groups. The aqualators do a lot of the work of encrypting, and without them people get lazy. We spent a lot of time back in the Moscow Dacha looking at spy novels and stories about the advances in encryption and how they failed in history, and we have experts in the field here. We also have aqualators. Aqualators that are more powerful than the Colossus Mark 2 used in World War II in that other timeline. That lets us crack a lot of the commercial encryption that comes across our desk. But we still need to know the code book. Fortunately, a lot of people use a group of books and always use the same book for their messages. It’s easier that way, less work for the person encoding the message and for the person decoding it. The problem here is this isn’t one of the books we know about.”
“That doesn’t explain why you think they are using an aqualator,” Vasilii said.
“It’s the high numbers. The natural thing to do when you’re encoding something is to start at the beginning of the code book and look for the code phrase you’re after. That means that your string is usually going to be somewhere early in the book. But an aqualator will automatically start at a random point in the code book and search from there. So the pages won’t be low numbers.
“The groups represent page number, line number, letter number, and length. And they make patterns that an aqualator can find because people get lazy, and do things habitually. If, for instance, they happen to know where in a book a word or phrase is, they will use the same location several times because it’s easier than looking for a different location in the code book that had the same phrase. A properly programmed aqualator won’t do that.
“So we know that all of the other messages in that copy of the Pravdivyye Fakty were encrypted by people who didn’t have an aqualator, but just knew the technique. And aqualators are expensive. We have them. Birkin has them, but most people don’t.”
“We have them at the Dacha,” Vasilii said. “We use them in design work. It wouldn’t be hard for someone at the Dacha to use one without anyone knowing.”
“And that’s the problem. A few years ago there would have been just one at the Dacha and one in the Kremlin. But now there is one with every new radio station. They are being mass produced, here and in Moscow.”
“Yes, but not that mass produced,” Vasilii said. Vasilii kept up with technical innovation. There were several technical journals being published. Now they were published in English, Amideutsch, and two were published in Russian, one in Moscow and another in Ufa. Vasilii read each and every one intently.
Alla knew that because she’d been the one to make sure that the packages of technical journals were loaded onto the planes making the trip from Ufa to Almaty. She knew that Miroslava read them too, though she didn’t have Vasilii’s technical background. In this sense, she was the opposite of her famous fictional cousin. Miroslava was convinced that there was no such thing as useless information. She read everything she could get her hands on.
While Alla had been thinking about all that, the conversation had moved on.
“What was that in your office today?” Vasilii asked. “You could, as Brandy is wont to say, ‘cut the tension with a knife.’”
“Simeon Budanov is afraid that I want his job.”
“Do you?” Miroslava asked.
As tactful as ever, Alla thought, though Ivan Borisovich didn’t seem to mind.
“Perhaps eventually. I am not immune to ambition, but it’s actually more that I wish someone competent had Simeon Budanov’s job, or at least someone that would let me do my job.”
“The Grantville desk?” Vasilii asked with a grin.
“Okay, I grant that this hardly falls within the proper scope of the Grantville desk. But when Czar Mikhail calls me in and asks me to look into something, what am I supposed to do?”
“You are supposed to direct him to the bureaucrat whose job it is,” Vasilii said, still grinning. “So we are informed by the unwritten regulations of the bureaus.”
“I know, but it’s Mikhail. How did it happen that our nothing of an emperor has turned into a leader who invokes that sort of loyalty in a staid and solid bureaucrat like me?”
“Clearly, the up-timer witches Brandy Bates and Tami Simmons cast a spell on him,” Alla said. “At least that’s what they were saying in the servants’ quarters all over Moscow.”
“That must be it then,” Ivan Borisovich agreed. Then he sat back and rubbed his temples. “Meanwhile, for the sake of my job, please try to avoid dropping in on me in my office.”
“Czar Mikhail’s orders,” Vasilii said.
“What you need is a place to meet that isn’t either of your jobs,” Alla said. “Say a restaurant that you both frequent. With a discreet staff who can pass messages without anyone the wiser.”
And suddenly everyone was looking at her. Ivan Borisovich with consideration and Vasilii with something close to anger. It was clear he knew what she was doing, and didn’t approve of her doing it to him.
Miroslava, on the other hand, seemed to know what she was doing, but did not care.
“Alla, I know you want to start a restaurant and we will consider allowing it, but . . . ” He trailed off, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.
“Diogenes!” Miroslava not quite shouted.
“What?” Ivan asked. “You mean the Diogenes Club from the Holmes stories? That’s not a restaurant.”
“No, but it does have the Stranger’s Room,” Miroslava said. Then, looking at Alla, “and I guess that they could serve food in the Stranger’s Room, even serve food to people who aren’t members.”
That was the beginning of the Diogenes Club of Ufa. In the meantime, there was still a mystery to solve, and Miroslava agreed to look into the matter.
Ivan filled them in on the chain of events, and the next day Miroslava and Vasilii were on their way to Kazan.
Dominika’s and Zia Chernoff’s townhouse, Ufa
November 21, 1637
“Vasilii said I could start looking for places,” Alla told Dominika and Zia Chernoff. “But the name, if it happens, is set. It’s going to be the Diogenes Club and the restaurant is only going to be a part of it.”
“Diogenes the Cynic, the Greek philosopher?” Zia Chernoff asked.
“I guess,” Alla agreed uncertainly. “But it’s based on this club in the Sherlock Holmes stories. You know Miroslava thinks of that storybook character as some sort of a cousin or something.”
“There are worse peculiarities in families,” Zia said, and Dominika nodded.
Alla, by now, knew that both Zia and Dominika had issues with their families. Alla’s only issue with hers was that they’d all been murdered by Sheremetev’s dog boys back in Moscow, except for her and Crazy Cousin Vasilii in Ufa. Her new family was weird, but important in a way that her parents had only thought they were. So maybe they were right and Cousin Sherlock should be considered a part of her family.
“Find me a copy of the Sherlock Holmes stories, please,” Zia asked.
“That’s no problem. We have the whole set translated into Russian. In fact, Cousin Vasilii, who was a mystery buff before he met Miroslava, translated ‘The Sign of the Four.’”
Zia shook her head and repeated, “Bring us copies so we can read them.”
Then the discussion went back to what they needed. Money wasn’t going to be much of an issue if they got permission. Both the Lyapunov and the Chernoff families were rich. They’d been rich back in Moscow and were even richer here in Ufa. Besides, Princess Irina had a proprietary interest in the place. The trick was going to be to get approval.
Zia Chernoff was in touch with her brother back in Muscovy and had managed to convince him not to have his granddaughter killed. At least, she thought she’d convinced him. They weren’t taking any chances. The baby had multiple bodyguards. But real or not, part of that agreement was the fact that Zia had agreed to cooperate with Kirill in regard to family businesses. This gave Kirill insider information on what was going on in Ufa. And that brought to mind the issue of codes and cyphers and the difference between them. Alla didn’t mention the case that Miroslava was now working on for Ivan Borisovich. Alla had a reputation for being able to keep private things private, and she intended to keep it.
But she did take note of how Zia contacted her brother and made a mental note to tell Miroslava about it.
Kazan Kremlin
November 21, 1637
Miroslava and Vasilii were brought directly to General Tim and in moments they were alone together.
“What’s going on?” Tim asked as soon as they were alone.
“What do you know about Colonel Popov?” Vasilii asked.
“He’s on General Birkin’s staff, or he was. According to my sources, he died in a tavern brawl a few days ago.”
“He was an asset of the Embassy Bureau,” Vasilii said. “The tavern brawl, if it happened at all, was arranged.”
“You’re saying they found out?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it can’t have been my people. We didn’t even know he was on our side.”
“No, the leak was apparently from the Embassy Bureau,” Vasilii agreed.
“We’re here to try and see what we can learn from the way the information was transmitted,” Miroslava added.
“What?”
“How Colonel Popov sent information from Birkingrad to Kazan. There were only a limited number of people who knew who the agent was. Of necessity, those few included the person who transmitted the information from Colonel Popov to Kazan, where it was sent on to the Embassy Bureau in Ufa.”
Tim looked at them. “Budanov doesn’t want you investigating.”
“Budanov doesn’t know we’re investigating.” Vasilii clarified. “He’s assigned discovering the mole in the Embassy Bureau to Ivan Borisovich Petrov. On the basis of the fact that Petrov, whose job is the Grantville desk, wasn’t in the need-to-know group who knew that the spy in General Birkin’s camp was Colonel Popov, which has the added benefit of making Ivan Borisovich a pariah among the Embassy Bureau.”
“No one likes to be the target of an investigation.” Tim nodded. “So what do you need from me?”
“Access to your records and an overview of how the information travels between Kazan and Birkingrad.”
✧ ✧ ✧
Four hours later, Miroslava and Vasilii were lying on the battlements of Kazan, watching with a pair of binoculars as soldiers and civilians slipped across the no-man’s-land between Kazan and Birkingrad, mostly carrying large backpacks.
It turned out that both command staffs knew about the trade in goods between the two cities, and both found it useful. Things made in Moscow or Novgorod were shipped to Birkingrad, where they made their way to Kazan and were from there shipped to Ufa or Perm. Things like magnetometers from the Moscow Dacha made their way to Perm, where they were used to help find deposits of copper, silver, chromium, and iron.
And that was just one example. At the same time, the aqualators made in Ufa were better than those made in Muscovite Russia and they were making their way in the other direction. So was Caspian Sea caviar and freeze-dried sturgeon steaks, which made their way to Moscow to be reconstituted and cooked for the tables of the great and the grand.
Trade went on, and both generals allowed it because the benefits were greater than the damage. Besides, both generals knew that the other side was too strong to attack with the forces they had, so there was very little actual benefit in making the life of the Russian soldiers on the other side more difficult.
It was a phony war in practice.
So Miroslava watched as every few minutes a person or small group would make their way from a gate in Kazan to one in Birkingrad, and a few minutes later back to Kazan.
They took careful note of who was making the trip and how often, because they were trying to find out if the agent who took the messages from Birkingrad to Kazan was compromised. This was made more difficult because the source of at least some of those messages was dead. Still, the mailman made his trip right on schedule, which at least suggested that he didn’t know that Colonel Popov was no longer among his customers.