"So. You give me a copy of the weather forecast every evening. We can meet in this tavern or anywhere else you'd prefer."
"Here's fine," said Morton. "I come here every day after work anyway. But what good's the forecast going to do you when you need it in Poland?"
A flicker of intelligence. Amazing. Best to stamp it out quickly, lest it spread.
"I'll have couriers ready, on the fastest horses."
Anyone with a knowledge of geography would have understood immediately that that was absurd. No string of horses could possibly get a weather forecast from Wismar to Poland before the weather itself arrived and made the whole exercise pointless. What Jozef was actually going to do was transmit the information on his own radio. The messages could be easily coded, since they'd be short. Even if a USE radio man should happen to stumble upon the frequency, they wouldn't know what was being transmitted.
But Jozef was certain that Morton wouldn't realize he was being duped. The man obviously had no idea where Poland was in the first place. Nor the name of its capital, the language its people spoke, or…?anything. Jozef had once met a man more ignorant of the world than this sergeant. But he had the excuse of being an illiterate Lapp reindeer herder.
Finally, Morton's brain got around to the core of the matter. "How much you say you'll pay me?"
Poznan, Poland
The grand hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth peered down at the object in the hand of his nephew's agent.
"Amazing," he said. "I thought they needed huge towers to work."
The agent shook his head. "That was a lie that the Americans spread at first. They call it 'disinformation.' It's true that radios work better with big towers, especially transmissions, but they're not necessary." He hefted the receiver. "I can only use this effectively in the morning and evenings. What they call the windows. But I'll be able to get the boss's transmissions."
Stanislaw Koniecpolski nodded, and dismissed the agent with a motion of his hand. He then turned to face young Opalinski, who was seated in a chair in the small salon. Lukasz still had a haunted look on his face.
"It is no crime to be defeated, young man," the grand hetman said gently. "Especially not when you return with such useful information."
Opalinski made a face. "It may not be so useful as all that."
Koniecpolski shrugged. "Anything will help. Gustav Adolf will bring some fifty thousand men into Poland. I will have perhaps forty thousand with which to oppose him, ten thousand of whom are Brandenburgers." He scowled. "I'm not counting Holk's men, assuming the king ignores my advice and hires the swine. Making things still worse, half of the Swede's infantry will be armed with rifled muskets, where I have but a thousand of the French breechloaders."
Opalinski perked up a bit. "You got them, then?"
The grand hetman nodded. "Yes, and I think I'll have at least two thousand SRGs by the time we confront him. They've made enough of those by now to create a sizeable black market and for once"-the scowl came back-"the Sejm isn't being miserly."
He took a seat near Opalinski. "Finally, Gustav Adolf will have his airplanes and his APCs. The first, from what I can determine from the reports I've gotten, have a somewhat limited capability as weapons. On the other hand, they provide superb reconnaissance."
"In good weather," said Lukasz.
"As you say. In good weather. Much like the APCs, which you describe as being invincible war machines against men-"
Lukasz completed the thought. "But by no means invincible against terrain and weather. I warn you, though, I got that mostly from listening to Lubomir Adamczyk and some of the other hussars who survived the battle." His face tightened. "I did not see very much myself, after…"
"After you led an almost successful charge with only two hundred hussars against the same flying artillery that crushed the French cavalry at Ahrensbok. Stop flagellating yourself, young man. We're Catholics, not heathens." A smile removed the sting from the last words and turned them into a jest.
The grand hetman signaled a servant standing by a far wall. "Some wine," he said, when the man came over.
As the servant went about his task, Koniecpolski turned back to Lukasz. "Regardless of who made the observations, I think they're accurate. The only way I can at least partially nullify the Swede's many advantages is to refuse to meet him on terrain and under weather conditions that favor him. I will have to maneuver as long as necessary"-his expression became bleak-"and allow as much ravaging by the enemy as I must, in order to fight a battle under those conditions which favor me. Or, at least, counter some of the enemy's strengths."
The servant returned, with a bottle and two goblets. After he poured the wine and retreated, Koniecpolski raised his goblet.
"Once again, my precious nephew has done right by us. A toast! Here's to drenching rain and blinding fog and the Swedish bastard's downfall."
Chapter 23
Dresden
Dresden was chaos. The cavalrymen escorting the ambulance wagons to the army hospital were making no more headway than an old woman pushing a cart.
So it seemed to Eric Krenz, anyway. He stuck his head out of the rear flap of the covered wagon and tried to look forward. But that was impossible, between the stupid design of the wagon-what idiot thought it was a good idea to turn a nice open wagon into a heat trap?-and the relative immobility produced by his healing wound.
Disgusted, he flopped back onto the bench. "What we need are some Finns." He made chopping motions, as if wielding an ax. "Haakaa paalle! Haakaa paalle! That'd clear the way for us, see if it wouldn't."
"Shut up." A Pomeranian corporal whose name Eric couldn't remember said that through clenched teeth. "You're giving me a headache."
Judging from his condition, Eric didn't think the fellow would be suffering much longer. But perhaps that was just wishful thinking. The corporal had been groaning and moaning most of the way here, when he wasn't snarling at everyone else if they moaned and groaned.
Well, it should be over soon. A nice army hospital, friendly nurses, what could be better?
He must have said it out loud. The soldier slumped next to him, a young lieutenant whose name Eric had also forgotten, raised his head. "You've been to one?"
"Well. No. Never seen one, in fact. But the stories all agree. Especially about the friendly nurses. What's your name again?"
"Nagel. Friedrich Nagel."
"Eric Krenz. A pleasure." They shook hands.
"It's a pigsty," was Nagel's summary. He nodded toward the one and only nurse visible in the huge…?whatever the room was. Judging by the sour smell and the dank walls, probably one of the adjoining castle's less frequently used storerooms.
"As for that nurse," the lieutenant continued, "let us pray that she never comes near us. Lest she become friendly."
Eric wasn't entirely sure the nurse was a "she" to begin with. The distance was great enough that it was difficult to tell.
The Pomeranian corporal started moaning and groaning again.
"And to think our lives will end here," mused Nagel. "Such is ignominy."
"Do you think we could get something to eat?"
"Must you dredge up my worst fears?"
They got nothing to eat that night beyond a half-loaf of bread. The same nurse came through two hours later, followed by two orderlies carrying baskets full of bread. At each pair of cots, the nurse would take out a loaf, rip it into halves, and hand them to the wounded soldiers, then, without saying a word, move on.
The orderlies were female. Mediocre versions of the gender, to say the least. But definitely female.
Eric still wasn't sure about the nurse.
An hour later, the same trio passed down the line of cots in the great vaulted room again. This time, the orderlies were carrying buckets of water, from which the nurse would fill what looked like an old soup ladle-best not to think about the precise nature of the soup-and place it to the mouth of each soldier. The one poor fool who tried to hold the ladle bowl in his own hand to keep it from spilling got the ladle snatched away and his ear boxed.