He figured the church would make a suitable compromise for a meeting location. On the one hand—the key, critical hand—it was located within striking distance of Torstensson's regiments. On the other hand, it was a church. For all the incredible bloodshed that had engulfed Europe since the great war began in 1618, churches were still, more often than not, respected as sanctuaries. Even in the war's worst massacre, the sack of Magdeburg, those residents who had managed to find refuge in the city's Dom had had their lives spared.
So, he kept the substance of power while giving the city councilmen some reason to assume he wasn't actually out for their blood.
Once they reached the church, it took a bit of time for the wherewithal for a negotiation to be assembled. But, eventually, it was done. And by then it was two o'clock in the afternoon.
Right about when Mike had planned.
He looked at his watch, ignoring the keen-eyed interest of all the negotiators. Copies of up-time books were practically flooding Europe by now, but few people had ever actually seen in person one of the fabled up-time watches.
"Ah, blast it. We're running out of time. General Torstensson told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn't have a settlement by three o'clock—that's just one hour, and twenty of minutes of it will be needed to send him word—he'd storm the city."
Mike lowered the watch. "Generals, you know—and he's a stubborn Swede, to make it worse. Refused to give me any leeway at all."
Five minutes were wasted with indignant protests. Most of them, but by no means all, coming from the city councilmen. Mike waited patiently enough, since from his standpoint the more time they wasted, the stronger his bargaining position became. This was just another of life's many illustrations of Dr. Johnson's remark on the subject of a short time span concentrating the mind wonderfully.
Eventually, that thought seemed to occur to the city councilmen also. Silence fell over the ramshackle collection of tables around which everyone was sitting in the church's nave.
"Here's where we start," Mike said. "Hamburg's days as an independent city are over. Done. Finished. Don't even bother raising that issue, because the answer is 'absolutely not.' Emperor Gustav Adolf's patience was used up by you folks over the past few months, and there's nothing left. Perhaps more to the point, I can assure you that Torstensson's regiments outside the walls have no patience at all. I either go out there in a little over half an hour and tell them that they can march into the city as its legal protectors—they'll maintain discipline; you can rest assured of that—or they'll come in and sack it."
Silence. Mike waited a minute or so.
"Splendid. Now, let's move on to other matters. First, the emperor wishes me to assure Hamburg's representatives that he has no intention of abrogating or limiting their traditional and well-established rights as merchants. In fact, he plans to encourage Hamburg's prosperity by establishing it as the chief port for the United States of Europe."
That stirred up a pleased hubbub that lasted for quite a while, until Mike added: "You do understand, I trust, that will require a major naval base in the city."
That brought very sour looks from the city councilmen. Even some of the CoC delegates didn't look entirely enthusiastic at the prospect.
Hard to blame them, of course—seeing as how the ships that would be stationed there would presumably be commanded by the same man who'd just turned the Wallenlagen into a stone-and-brick equivalent of the city's traditional pounded meat patties that would someday, in a New York that didn't exist yet, be sold as "steak in the Hamburg style" and eventually add the word hamburger to the English language after Jewish immigrants started substituting ground beef for pounded beef.
Mike had learned that little tidbit from Morris Roth, before the jeweler left for Prague. He'd added it to the accumulating pile of evidence that the world was an interesting place, no matter what anybody said.
The councilmen's expressions were still very . . . pickled, you might say.
Mike shrugged heavily. "Look, people, face facts. The USE will need a naval outlet onto the North Sea just as much as it needs a commercial one. If we don't put the main naval base in Hamburg"—here, he added a weary sigh—"we'll have no choice but to develop another town. Most likely Bremerhaven."
That did the trick. Simpson himself, they would prefer to do without. But they were no dummies, and knew full well that a major naval base in Bremerhaven ran the risk of spilling over into an expansion of Bremerhaven's commercial significance. The ghastly prospect loomed that Hamburg might find itself with a serious rival for the North Sea trade.