“I did,” she hesitated, “calculations. I think it is possible to do, but the chances? It is win all or lose all.”
Andrew stood up and went over to her side, the others gathering around him. He stood silent, scanning the map, then the plan written out, and finally the calculations. It was the details of the plan Vincent had forwarded to him just prior to the assault. He looked over at Vincent; there was the slightest flicker of a smile tracing the corners of his mouth.
“Impossible,” Webster announced sharply, breaking the silence.
Andrew looked over at Hans and saw the eyes of his comrade shining brightly, and he felt a stab of fear, knowing what it undoubtedly meant.
“I rejected this idea out of hand less than a week ago,” he finally announced.
“That was a week ago,” Varinna replied. “Today is today, the day after a defeat. Just minutes ago I heard you admit that we shall lose the war. If we are to lose the war, then this plan should go forward.”
“Why?” Emil asked, leaning over the table to study the lines on the map. “I think anyone who goes on this, particularly the airship operation is doomed to die.”
“Because it won’t matter then,” she announced smoothly. “The men who go would die anyhow if they stay home. If they go and die, and lose, then it is the same. If they go, and die, but change the path of the war to victory, then it is a sacrifice that is worth it.”
Andrew marveled at her cold precise logic, which cut straight to the heart of the matter.
As if from a great distance he could hear the grandfather clock chiming the hour-it was midnight.
All waited for him to speak. He was torn. He so desperately wanted to grab this, to cling to it, to see it bring them to a change in fate. Yet he feared it as well and all that it suggested and held, especially for Hans.
“This is what I’ve dreamed of all along. I say go,” Hans finally said, breaking the silence. Andrew turned, looking into his eyes again.
Andrew finally nodded.
“We do it. Start preparations at once.”
Who was it? Kal stirred uncomfortably, the pain was numbing but he had known worse, losing an arm, the beatings old Boyar Ivor, might his soul burn in hell, had administered.
Yet who did it?
He opened his eyes. His wife, sitting at the foot of the bed, roused from her sleep and started to get out of the chair. Her features were pale, heavy cheeks looking.pasty in the candlelight.
He motioned for her to sit back down, but she was already at the side of the bed.
“Water, my husband?” she whispered.
He started to shake his head, but the pain was too much.
“No, nothing.”
“I made some broth, beef, your favorite.”
“No, please.”
He looked around the room.
“Emil?”
“He left. Said I was to fetch him if you wanted.”
“Where?”
“He’s at the colonel’s home.”
“Ah, I see.”
He knew she would not relent with her attentions until she could do something, so he finally let her pull the blankets up, even though the night was so hot. He remained quiet, staring at the candle as she finally settled back into her chair and picked up her knitting which had fallen to the floor when she had dozed off.
Why would Emil be at Andrew’s? Were they planning something?
Not Andrew. Never Andrew. In the beginning he could have so easily become boyar himself. No one would have objected, least of all me, he reasoned. I was just peasant, he was already officer, like a noble and he was the liberator. Instead he propped me up, trained me, made me the president.
But was that so I could always follow what he desired. Bugarin said as much, that a Yankee could never rule for long, so he had chosen a dumb peasant to be his shield. He wondered on that thought for a moment. There was a certain wisdom to it, for in the end never did I go against what Andrew desired; therefore, in a way he did rule without all the bother of it.
“Not Andrew,” he whispered.
She stirred, ready to get up again and he allowed his eyes to flutter shut. She settled back down in her chair.
Bugarin? Logical. Blame it on Flavius. I’m dead, Flavius is killed by the mob, Bugarin becomes president and then boyar again. So guard against Bugarin. But it just might have been Flavius after all. Yet if I had died, we would not have lived an hour in the city of Suzdal.
Who then?
I have lost Congress. Bugarin has the votes of those who want an end to it. The Roum congressmen are in terror, lost with the news of Marcus’s death. If I continue the war as Andrew wants, then they will block it, splitting the Republic. If I try to stop it, what will Andrew do?
An inch to the right Emil said. But one inch, and I would not have to worry about this. I would be standing before Perm and his glorious son Kesus, all cares forgotten. Yet Tanya would still be here, the grandchildren, their half-mad father Vincent.
Ah, now there is a thought. Vincent is the warhawk. Could he be the mask behind the mask? Andrew would never do it, but Vincent was capable. If Bugarin tried a coup, Andrew would block it but might fall as well. Then it would be Vincent.
No. What was it Emil called it? A word for too much fear. But it was troubling, and he could not go to sleep.
The fact that he had asked for the meeting had caught him by surprise. Walking into the main hall of the Capitol Building he stopped, looking to his right toward his own chambers. The building was empty except for the lone military guard posted under the open rotunda. It had been started in the year before the start of the Bantag War. Though Keane insisted that construction must go forward in spite of the war, the less than half-completed dome was now covered with canvas.
He turned to his left and walked into the meeting chamber of the House of Representatives. Often he had heard the shouted debates coming from this room, and he found it distasteful, a rowdy mix of foreigners and lowborn peasants. At least the fifteen members of the Senate were, except for one or two, of the proper blood, even those from Roum, in spite of their being cursed pagans.
“Senator Bugarin. Thank you for coming.”
The chair behind the desk turned and the diminutive Flavius was staring at him. He was lean and wiry, a mere servant in the house of Marcus and now the Speaker.
Though he loathed the type, Bugarin could sense that Flavius was a soldier’s soldier, one whom the veterans who predominated in Congress could trust whether they were of Rus or Roum. And since the pagans were the majority, of course their man would control this half of Congress.
Bugarin said nothing. He simply approached the chair, waiting for this one to rise in front of a better. Flavius, as if sensing the game, waited, and then slowly stood, favoring his right leg, giving a bare nod of the head in acknowledgment of the man who controlled the other half of the legislators.
“I’ll come straight to the issue,” Flavius said in Rus, his accent atrocious to Bugarin’s ears. “We both know that poor soldier who was murdered today had nothing to do with the assassination attempt.”
“How do you know?” Bugarin asked politely.
Flavius extended his hands in a gesture of exasperation. “We might disagree on a great many things, but to assassinate the president. Never.”
“Are you saying he acted alone then?”
“You know precisely what I am saying. The boy was innocent. He should have been standing in these chambers receiving a medal rather than being hung by a Rus mob.”
“So you are saying we murdered him?”
“Damn you,” Flavius muttered in Latin, but Bugarin could sense what was said and bristled.
“The Republic is dying; we can still save it,” Flavius continued, gaining control of his temper.