The grand indoor plaza was sixty up-time feet across and the ceiling was held up by two rows of concrete trees with trunks a yard wide. They started branching at nine feet and reached their full extension twenty-three feet above the floor.
Fletcher Wendell looked around and whistled, and Karl started to smile. Then Fletcher said, “This place is going to need an army to keep it clean.”
Karl led the way into the plaza, pointing out the various shops that surrounded it. There were quite a few and about half of them were already open. They would stay open even as the floors above were built.
* * *
In the basement of the tower, Father Montilla walked down the hall, carrying an ordinary lantern with the wick so low it sputtered. He needed just enough light to see, and the light sockets in the basement were empty of light bulbs. There weren’t yet enough electric lights to go around, and the shops on the first floor were getting what there were.
He angled the lamp so that the light fell at his feet. He didn’t want to call attention to himself.
He made his way to the door of Gundaker von Liechtenstein’s storage room and pulled out the sheet of paper that held the combination. It was a down-time-made multiple-dial lock based on a bicycle lock. It didn’t take him long to get it unlocked and go into the storage room.
Once inside, he closed the door, turned up the lamp and looked around. The room was twenty by twenty up-time feet and packed high with pallets of barrels marked as holding apples. Father Montilla knew that the barrels held fine grain black powder. There were four barrels to a pallet. The pallets were stacked two high and three deep, in three rows.
Father Montilla moved along one wall to the back of the room and took off his back pack. From the back pack, he took a lead acid battery, ceramic but based on an up-time motorcycle battery. Then a fifteen foot roll of insulated wire, copper multistrand, tight wrapped in linen thread, made in Magdeburg. Then a small hand-powered wood drill, again made in Magdeburg, this time based on an up-time spring-powered screwdriver. Also a twenty-four-hour clock made in Halle from an up-time design. The fact that it was a twenty-four-hour clock was important because security on the actual day of the wedding was going to be tight. He could slip in the day before the wedding to do the final prep.
First, he got down on his knees and, snaking his arms around, managed to drill a small hole in a back barrel, out of sight. It shouldn’t matter, but this was important, and he didn’t want some idiot knocking things awry by accident or noticing gunpowder leaking out of the barrel. The hole was a little bigger than the blasting cap, so he wrapped the cap in a piece of cloth before shoving it into the hole.
Carefully he stripped insulation from one end of his wire and attached it to one of the leads to the Grantville-made blasting cap. He unrolled the wire and cut a length of about three feet, then carefully threaded the wire between the slats of the pallet and the bottom of the barrel, then snugged the wire tight. He stripped the other end of that wire and attached it to a stud that he had placed at two P.M. on the face of the clock.
He attached a second length of wire to the hour hand so that when the the hour hand reached two o’clock in the afternoon, the two wires would come together. He measured out that second length so that it would reach to one pole of the battery but didn’t attach it.
He measured off a third length of wire, leaving himself a fair amount of slack, and stripped the ends. He threaded this wire under the barrel and attached one end to the blasting cap’s other lead. Again he made sure the other end of the wire would reach the battery, then cinched the wire in against the slats of the pallet and the staves of the barrel.
He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his cassock. That had been hot work, and he was a scholar, not a tradesman. But he was also a man of God, doing his duty.
* * *
“You know you can still get out of this,” her dad said, and Sarah wanted to kick him. They were in the Goldberg Candy Store, just off the main entrance to Liechtenstein Tower, waiting for the final wedding rehearsal to begin. The plaza was filled with chairs and benches for the invited guests. Liechtenstein and BarbieCo guards were at each and every entrance. The generator in the basement was running and the lights were on.
In just a few minutes, assuming she didn’t kill him first, her dad was going to walk her down the aisle to meet Karl and they would practice getting married. What made the all-too-predictable offer even more irritating was that a tiny part of her wanted to take him up on it. Not because of Karl, but because of the baggage that came with him.
This would be the final lock on the cage for her. Court princess, the head of the banking system for the Austro-Hungarian empire, princess of the House Liechtenstein, countess of this, baroness of that, the wife of the head of government of territories in two countries. Sarah Wendell was about to be swallowed by Princess Sarah, and as much as she loved Karl, it scared the hell out of her.
“We’re ready,” said Countess Fortney.
* * *
Three hours later, as the guards were leaving, a priest came wandering in, ostensibly looking for a Book of Hours. When no one was looking, he slipped down the stairs into the still dark basement. He lit his lamp using a Magdeburg-made Zippo lighter, then made his way to the storeroom rented by Gundaker von Liechtenstein. He unlocked the door and slipped in. He turned up the lantern and went to work. He wound and set the clock using his Hamburg-made pocket watch. The minute hand on the clock he bent outward so that it wouldn’t bind the hour hand that was going to slowly drag the wire into contact with the stud. He checked the battery, getting a shock, and attached the leads. Then he left. It wasn’t till he was back upstairs that he realized that he still had the lock in his pocket. He considered going back down but decided against it.
CHAPTER 38
January 15, 1636
The Hofburg Palace, Vienna
The morning was cold and crisp, but the sun had come out and there wasn’t a cloud within a hundred miles of Vienna. They wouldn’t dare, not today. Empress Mariana looked out the window at the beautiful day and made a decision. “There will the one more royal at the wedding. We’ll bring the baby,” she pronounced.
“Ferdinand the latest?” the emperor asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s a beautiful day and by the time we go to the wedding it won’t even be that cold. Besides, the tower is lovely, what there is of it. On the inside, at least. I love the arching concrete pillars.”
The emperor of Austria-Hungary shrugged acceptance and rang for the servants. It was best to get the preparations underway.
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna
“They are taking the heir?” Father Montilla hissed. The bomb was in place, the clock running, and there was no way at all get back into the the Liechtenstein building, not today. “You have to stop them!”
“How would you suggest I do that?” Father Lamormaini hissed back. “Shall we walk up to the Hofburg and tell them there is a bomb? Or perhaps we should kidnap the imperial prince?
“No. God is talking to us here. It falls to us to understand his meaning.”
“Are we then to destroy the House of Habsburg entire? The Austrian branch, and Netherlands branch, leaving only the Spanish Habsburgs? I admit that has a certain appeal, but with France and William of Orange in the way, it will be difficult at best for Spain to reassert control.”