One hoped, at least, that the link was well and completely broken. It would be unfortunate if Ducos found out. Potentially quite dangerous, also. Ducos and his fanatics were a murderous lot.
Ducos might find out, of course. It was not beyond the realm of the possibly that he would. Ah, well. C'est la vie!
PART TWO
September 1634
Under amazement of their hideous change
Chapter 6
Grantville
Ed Piazza looked at the packet of papers that Martin Wackernagel had just dropped directly into his hands.
Wes Jenkins was very conscientious. He hadn't sent them by SoTF government mail. Like Henry Dreeson, he thought of this project as a "politicking trip," Ed supposed.
And he wouldn't have wanted to put them in the mail. That was probably prudent. The mail was a great thing for inquiring after the health of your great-aunt Gladys, but the fact remained that under the postmastership of Johan van den Birghden, the USE postal system was not exactly impermeable to snooping. Any more than the imperial system under the Thurn und Taxis family was impermeable to snooping.
So Wes had paid a private courier, like almost everybody else who wanted to be as sure as possible that confidential or sensitive information got from here to there without an intermediate detour into the hands of someone else's spies.
"He paid you at the other end?"
Wackernagel nodded and smiled.
Ed thought that he'd never let that smile anywhere near his daughter. How the man had managed to remain a bachelor this long, in a world that didn't have effective contraceptives and did have shotgun weddings…
Ed might be as straight as a stick himself, but that didn't mean he couldn't recognize a guy with the masculine equivalent of come hither when he saw one.
The courier waved and walked out the door. Ed waved absentmindedly in return.
Now all they had to do was talk Henry into going on a tour of Buchenland and coax it into a solidly pro-Fourth of July Party stance before Mike called new elections. Which they should be able to do. The news had arrived a couple of days ago that Mary and Veronica had reached Basel and were safely in the USE embassy with Diane Jackson.
Plus, the word from Franconia was that the Ram Rebellion had pretty much wound to its end with the face-down of Freiherr von Bimbach by Anita Masaniello.
Which left the problem that some group of unknown recalcitrants had kidnaped more than half of the SoTF administrators in Fulda, including Wes Jenkins himself.
Which was where Henry would be going.
Wes must have sent the paperwork before they got him.
Ed got up and walked over to the window.
Nothing he could do about Wes and the others from here. Anyway, the folks over in Fulda had already managed to get Harlan Stull and Roy Copenhaver back. They'd radioed that in yesterday. Plus Fred Pence and Johnny Furbee. That had come in this morning, barely in time for him to get a news release out.
Ed would have to work on faith that they'd do as well with Orville and Mark. And Wes and Clara. And the abbot. He'd spent a lot of time these last few years doing that-working on the faith that the people he'd sent out to do an impossible job would accomplish it.
If Derek Utt and his people didn't find the others. Well, then Buchenland would need something like a visit from Henry Dreeson more than ever.
He picked up the phone. "Chad, can you get hold of Joe, Tony, and the rest of the crew? See if we can meet with Henry for lunch? Somewhere quiet, so not the Gardens. Not Cora's. See if the back room at Tyler's is free."
"Basel's better than 'somewhere in Bavaria,' " Henry admitted. "But it's still not exactly 'right here in Grantville.' "
Arnold Bellamy, who was twirling his knife in his fingers, said, "You're weakening."
"I've talked to Tony Jr.," Tony Sr. said. "Well, we've sent a lot of Morse Code back and forth since he first raised up Bernadette and told her that the ladies were there."
"Not a little bit proud of that boy of yours, are you?" Joe Stull grinned.
"Not a 'little bit,' no," Tony answered agreeably. "He's pretty sure we'll be able to get them out of Basel. So I figure," he looked at Henry, "that we might as well go ahead and do the planning for your trip. Then, when we get the actual news that Horn or somebody else on our side has collected them, you'll be ready to go ahead and start out."
Henry pushed his plate back and leaned forward, elbows on the table and fingers steepled. "I've still got that house full of kids to deal with. Jeff and Gretchen are still in Amsterdam and I don't mind saying that I'm getting sort of exasperated by the whole thing. Not that Will and Joey and the older ones aren't pretty well behaved as kids go, but they're her job. Not mine. Not Annalise's. And really not Ronnie's." He leaned back. "Now that I've gotten that off my chest.. ."
"How're you going to handle it?"
"Well, with Ronnie's niece staying with us now, it's a different kettle of fish than it was a couple of months ago. Thea and Nicol are grown-ups. In their twenties and married and expecting a baby. So they can house sit. Babysit. Plus, I've talked to Enoch and Inez. They've agreed to supervise. Sort of at a distance, with Nicol and Thea on the spot. Since the Cavriani girl staying with them is Annalise's best friend, they'll have plenty of excuses to drop by and sort of cast an eye over the way things are going."
Arnold started twirling his knife in the opposite direction. "Knew you were going, didn't you?"
"Yep." Henry nodded. "Even before I admitted it to myself, I guess. Haven't done any traveling since the Ring of Fire-never been farther than Jena-and it's sort of a pity to waste what amounts to my first and only trip to Europe, I suppose. I'd better go see something outside West Virginia County and the middle of Thuringia before this hip gives out, if I want to see it at all."
"Good news about Orville Beattie and Mark Early."
Ed smiled broadly. "I really enjoyed that phone call I made to Lisa this morning. And I have to admit that I stood right there while Tanya radioed it into Mike Stearns' office in Magdeburg, pretending that I could hear Susan stand up and shout. I was principal when Mark and Susan graduated. Three years apart, but my stint covered them both. And all three of Orville and Lisa's kids. Shane-he's the youngest-was finishing his sophomore year the spring that the Ring of Fire hit and I had to turn things over to Len Trout."
He paused a minute.
Arnold raised an imaginary glass. "Absent friends."
Ed nodded. "So, yeah, it felt real good." He looked at Arnold. "Real, real, good. Thanks for coming down from Magdeburg to back me up on handling this. Did Tanya get the press release out?"
"First thing. And I phoned Henry. Any word about Wes and Clara? Or the abbot?"
Ed shook his head. "No. Well, not yet."
"Do you think we really ought to let Henry go if things don't calm down over there in the next couple of days? The people who did this-some of them, at least-could still be in Buchenland County. Could make another try. The mayor of Grantville would make a tempting target."
"Right now, I don't think we could stop him. He's gone into his old-fashioned stump speaker mode. Even…"
"Even what?"
"Tried to talk young Muselius from over at Countess Kate's into going along to translate for him. Henry's not one to overestimate the quality of his German. Muselius can't go. The beginning of the school year is too busy. But he's persuaded one of Kastenmayer's sons, Cunz, the one who's about to finish up his law degree at the University of Jena, into doing it. Muselius also talked the boy's exam committee into accepting a paper analyzing the trip as his honors thesis in constitutional law under Arumaeus, so he won't have wasted a semester."