The Baltic War(173)

"Oh, yeah. Long as I'm not making any cavalry charges, anyway."



"No fear of that. You'll either be trotting in on a nice city road, or it's an ambush and you'll be dead."



"You could have maybe put that a little more delicately, Lennart," Mike groused.





An easy trot, it turned out to be, with no ambushes at all. In fact, by the time Mike got to the first CoC checkpoint, there was an official Hamburg delegation to meet him, along with the designated spokesmen for the city's CoC. Clearly enough, both sides in the dispute had seen his plane land, had their own sources of information that let them know who'd been coming in the plane—and neither one was about to let the other get the inside track on the ensuing negotiations.



Again, he found himself a little amused. Dinosaur-reactionary or wild-eyed-radical, or anywhere in between, Hamburg's citizenry had certain well-defined and long-established customs and attitudes that permeated all of them. Two stood out in particular:



They were devoted to their cussed independence, and every proper Hamburger from two-year-old toddlers on up was a natural-born businessman. Except for possibly Venetians, there were no people in Europe more addicted to mercantile deal-making and money-making schemes.



According to city legend, Emperor Barbarossa had declared Hamburg a city for free trading on May 11, 1189. It had been one of the major cities in the Hanseatic League during the Middle Ages, and had had its own navy since the fourteenth century. Although Hamburg had been occupied by the Danes twice during that time, it had managed to maintain effective independence by skillfully playing off Denmark against the Holy Roman Empire. The Wallenlagen, the massive fortifications that enhanced the city's defenses, had been constructed recently, starting in 1616, just to drive home the point to anyone who might object.



Independence was gone, now, and Mike was pretty sure even the most stubborn official on Hamburg's city council understood that. If they didn't, Mike would urge them to take a tour of their much-prized Wallenlagen. As much of the fortifications, that was to say, as Simpson's ten-inch guns had left intact as he passed through the city. Judging from what Mike had seen from the plane on his way in—he'd ordered Woody to overfly the city at low altitude twice before landing—that wasn't a whole lot. Not intact, anyway. There was plenty of rubble.



But that left the matter of Hamburg's commercial and trading rights and privileges still to be determined. The Hamburgers—both sides—were clearly hoping Mike had plenty of leeway for negotiation on that subject.



Which he did, in point of fact. In his radio exchanges with Gustav Adolf, the emperor had made it clear that while Hamburg's independence was to be eliminated—and no wiggling—he didn't care much about anything else. Neither did Mike, for that matter. His principal concern—which the emperor had expressed no opinion on, one way or the other—was to see to it that the power of the city's council was either broken altogether or so severely compromised and undermined that it could never regain its former control over the city.





Naturally—Mike almost felt like breaking into a rendition of "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof—the quarrels began over the shape of the table.



Figuratively speaking, anyway. The CoC delegates were adamant that the negotiations had to take place right there on the street just beyond the open gate—and Torstensson's eight regiments. They even had CoC members hauling chairs and a few tables from nearby taverns, for the purpose. The city council's delegates were just as adamant that the negotiations should take place in the Grossneumarkt, a large square on the city's western side which, just coincidentally, happened to be the location where the city's official militia assembled and practiced.



Mike let it go on for a few minutes, simply to establish the façade that he was a thoughtful fellow who considered all matters judiciously and ponderously. He might have even broken into "Tradition," except he really couldn't carry a tune that well.



Façade, though, is what it was. He'd already decided where he'd hold court—to call "negotiations" by their right name—before he'd passed through the gate. Torstensson had recommended the place to him.



"Enough," he said eventually. "We'll continue this in St. Jakobi church."



The city councilmen and CoC members squinted at him. Despite the age difference—the former, all middle-aged; the latter, mostly in their twenties—their expressions were almost identical. A painter might have called it "Owls, Suspicious."



"I'm not going to argue about this, people," Mike said mildly. "St. Jakobi's, it is." He turned toward his horse, giving loud orders to his cavalry escort. Soon thereafter, he set off, with the city's various negotiators trotting on foot in his wake.