Ring of Fire II(192)

The issue was of sufficient concern that Janos had even raised it with the emperor himself, the day after he arrived back in Vienna. But Ferdinand had dismissed the problem.



"Let's be realistic, Janos. There was no possible way to keep secret the fact that three Americans with mechanical experience were moving to Vienna—not to mention the two complete automobiles they brought with them. Ha! You should have seen the huge wagons and their teams when they lumbered into the city. They could barely fit in the streets, even after I ordered all obstructions removed."



The emperor drummed his fingers on the armrest of his chair for a moment, and then shrugged. "The enemy was bound to fit a spy into the mix, unless they were deaf, dumb and blind—and if there's any evidence that either Michael Stearns or his Jewish spymaster are incompetent, it's been impossible to find. So be it. Vienna is full of spies—but now, in exchange for allowing another, we've gotten our first significant access to American technology. I can live with that, easily enough. At least, this time, we probably know who the spy is to begin with. That'll make it easier to keep an eye on him."



Janos had his doubts, but . . . Technically speaking, although the USE and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were political enemies, the two nations were not actually at war. Furthermore, from what he could tell, he thought the USE's Prime Minister Stearns was trying to keep an open conflict from breaking out, at least for the moment. That would be almost impossible, of course, if—as everyone suspected would happen next year—the USE's emperor Gustav Adolf launched a war of conquest on Saxony and Brandenburg. In that event, Austria would most likely join the conflict.



For the time being, however, Stearns seemed content to let the death of Ferdinand II and the accession of his son to the Austrian throne serve as a reason to keep the peace. The new monarch's surprising decision to publicly renounce any claim to being the new Holy Roman Emperor and replace that with his new title of "Emperor of Austria-Hungary" had no doubt gone a long way toward that end. Contained within the formalities of the titles was the underlying reality, that Austria realized the days it could directly control—or try to control—all of the Germanies was at an end. Ferdinand III's public renunciation of the title of Holy Roman Emperor meant, for all practical purposes, that the Holy Roman Empire itself was now a thing of the past. Henceforth, presumably, Austria's interests and ambitions would be directed toward the east and the south, not the north and the west.



The Turks hadn't been pleased by that announcement, to say the least. But the enmity of the Ottoman Empire was more or less a given, no matter what Austria did. The Turks had plenty of spies in Vienna too, which was the reason Ferdinand had sent Janos Drugeth on an inspection tour of the Balkan fortifications, the day after he made the announcement—even though that had required Janos to be absent from the scene during the later stages of the technology transfer from Grantville that he had largely developed. The emperor's decision to send off one of his closest confidants on such a tour of the fortifications was a none-too-subtle way of letting the Turks know that Ferdinand realized they would be furious at his decision. And they could swallow it or not, as they chose.



The automobile was finally gliding to a stop, just in front of the three American mechanics who stood waiting. From the placid looks on their faces, it seemed they hadn't been much impressed by the ability of Austria's new emperor to move faster on land than any monarch in this history of this universe.



That was as good a way as any to distinguish up-time mechanics from down-time statesmen and soldiers—or down-time fishwives and farmers, for that matter. Anyone else who'd seen Ferdinand III racing around a track like that would know that a very different man sat on the Austrian throne from the former emperor, these days.



Assuming they hadn't figured it out already, which most of them would have, by now. In the first two months of his reign, Ferdinand III had forcefully carried through a major realignment of his empire in ways that his stolid father would never have imagined. The old man was probably "spinning in his grave," to use an American expression.



First, he'd pressured his father—on his deathbed, no less—to rescind the Edict of Restitution. At one stroke, at least in the legal realm, ending the major source of conflict with the Protestants of central Europe.



Second, within a week of his father's death, he'd renounced the title of Holy Roman Emperor—that was something of a hollow formality, since he hadn't had the title anyway—and replaced it with the new imperial title.



Third, and perhaps most important, he'd jettisoned his father's reluctance to even acknowledge the up-timers' technological superiority in favor of an aggressive policy of modernizing his realm. Ferdinand could move just as quickly on that front because, as the prince and heir, he'd set underway Drugeth's secret mission to Grantville. "Secret," not simply from the enemy, but from his own father. Had Ferdinand II learned of it, while he was still alive, he would have been even more furious than he was by his daughter Maria Anna's escapades.