Seas of Fortune(28)
Doctor Phil sighed. “Perhaps we should talk about it privately. I will call upon you.”
There were no more questions. Hugh Lowe repositioned the mike. “Okay, our next speaker is going to bring us an update on the concrete project. . . .”
* * *
“Captain, I am Johann Georg Hardegg, an attorney from Rudolstadt. My clients were quite interested in your presentation last week. They think there could be some commonality of interest.”
“I beg your pardon?” said David. He had learned English in his youth, but he wasn’t sure whether that was what Hardegg was speaking.
“He thinks you can work together,” Kaspar explained.
“If you will follow me, I will introduce you to the principal members.”
They walked down an elegantly decorated corridor of the Higgins Hotel, and Hardegg knocked on the door. David heard a muffled “About time.”
There were both up-timers and down-timers in the room. David recognized several of them, and exchanged greetings with Hugh Lowe and Endres Ritter. There was no sign of Claus Junker.
The nobleman at the head of the table said, “My name is Count August von Sommersburg.” David bowed.
“Our group has some interest in that part of the world. For example, in Trinidad. It has great deposits of tar.”
“The place Sir Walter Raleigh visited when he needed to caulk his ships?”
“Yes, that’s right. We can use that tar in road building. Then there is a material called rubber. It’s used in the tires of our cars. The rubber comes from—call it the sap—of certain trees.”
David raised his hand. “I know nothing about trees.”
“That’s all right. We have a tree expert who wants to go to Suriname to study and do research. As for your proposed colony, Captain, hopefully it will be able to tap the Surinamese rubber trees. If not, we have some other economically interesting plants which we are hoping can grow there. Coconut palms, coffee, a few others. Of course, you should be looking for native plants of value.”
“Tell him about the other rubber trees,” urged Joseph Stull. He was informally handling transportation matters for the New United States and was likely to be named secretary of transportation when the NUS got around to creating that cabinet position.
The count nodded. “If we can’t get rubber from Suriname, you’ll have to go into the Viceroyalty of New Spain.” That formally encompassed Mexico, Central America, the Spanish West Indies and the southern United States.
David steepled his fingers. “They don’t exactly welcome foreigners.”
“The source we’re interested in is pretty far from the Spanish towns. Here, let me show you on a map.” He rolled one out on the table. He ran his finger along the coast from Honduras to Nicaragua. “We can work this stretch. The ‘Miskito Coast.’”
“Hmm,” said David. “That’s convenient. Here—” he twirled his finger over the Bay of Honduras “—that’s prime hunting ground for capturing Spanish galleons.”
Hugh Lowe shook his head. “We aren’t interested in privateering. We don’t see a distinction between it and piracy.”
“Oh, no? I think Dutch privateers capture a ship a week in that part of the world. Galleons, caravels and coasters. Ship and cargo worth as much as two hundred thousand guilders.”
Someone in the back of the room muttered, “Let’s keep our options open, then. It’s not like the Spanish are friendly to us.”
“You have been in sea battles, Captain?” asked the count.
Kaspar interrupted. “Captain de Vries is famous in that regard. He had some great victories against the Barbary pirates.”
“But no Spanish treasure ships came my way, unfortunately,” David admitted. “Or I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
* * *
“So, Captain, I understand that your only reservation to our ‘counterproposal’ is the choice of a woman, Maria Vorst, as your, uh, ‘Chief Science Officer.’”
“That’s right, Herr Lowe. I am sure that she knows her plants and all, but I don’t believe that she can possibly comprehend the rigors of an expedition.
“It is true that there are Dutch colonists already in Guiana—at Fort Kykoveral on the Essequibo—but I doubt that there are any white women among them. It would be one thing if she were going to stay in the new colony, but she intends to join us in exploring the rainforest.
“Moreover, it is quite possible that we will have to go to the Miskito Coast for this rubber, which will put her in hazard of capture, and worse, by the Spanish. How can I agree to put this delicate flower of Dutch society into such straits?”