Kühlewein and Westvol looked back at him with lowered eyebrows, obviously waiting for a reaction that they weren’t sure they wanted to experience. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.
“Fine. Maybe it was an accident, or carelessness, or simple stupidity. I am not sure I believe it, but let’s say it was. We cannot afford—Can Not Afford,” making sure they heard the emphasis in his voice, “to have another such event occur.”
Both the other men nodded their heads with vigor. They understood that losing big money was a Bad Idea in more than one respect.
Schardius leveled an index finger at Kühlewein. “Therefore you, Herr Mayor Kühlewein, will stress to Leonhart Kolman there must be no repeats of this event. Feel free to loose the flensing knife of your tongue and flay him in slow inches.”
Kühlewein nodded, with a hard set to his mouth and no compassion in his eyes.
“And you,” Schardius shifted the finger to Westvol, and sighted down it like a gun barrel. “You will say nothing, and do nothing, of any sort out of the ordinary.” Westvol nodded, opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Schardius sighed. “Spit it out, man.”
“What about the newspapers?”
Schardius sat up straight. “Oh, do not tell me you have been talking to newspapermen!”
“No, no,” Westvol hastened to assure him. “One reporter tried to interview me about the Polizei report on the fire, but I told him I could not spare the time right then. But he will try again, I am sure.”
Westvol looked nervous at confessing this, but for once Schardius was not angry with the man; he was actually delighted with him.
“Good. Perfect, in fact. And in the future, if newspapermen contact either of you about anything dealing with this contract or project, just tell them that you have no comment and that the partners in the project will make a joint statement soon.”
He was going to leave it at that, but decided he’d best make sure they knew what he expected. “And if they do contact you, you will tell me about it immediately. Understood?”
Both men nodded. Schardius had to suppress a snort at the thought that the race to be Dee might be even again.
* * *
“So, how are rehearsals going?” Mary Simpson asked, as she passed a cup of coffee to Amber Higham. They were in Mary’s parlor again. That was her usual place for small meetings. She said the informality relaxed everyone.
Amber didn’t care. The combination of good coffee and the heat emanating from the cast iron heater in the corner made the parlor one of her favorite places in Magdeburg during the winter. February had proven to be even colder than January so far, and January had not been warm by anybody’s definition. She remembered one of the science guys back in Grantville talking about a Little Ice Age. From the sensations her toes were reporting, it wasn’t particularly little.
“Rehearsals are going well,” Amber replied, in her usual precise use of the English language. “In fact, we are actually a bit ahead of schedule in terms of learning lines and notes. I’m going to start blocking in another day or two.”
The two women sat in companionable silence for several moments, just sipping coffee and enjoying the moment.
Mary finally set her cup down. “So, give—how is Marla doing?”
Amber shrugged. “As far as I can tell, fine.”
She had been keeping strict watch on the young woman. Amber knew all about dealing with grief and stress; not from having lost a child, but from a particularly messy and tempestuous divorce after she’d caught her first husband in the costume room with the latest ingénue—again. Character assassination was the most civil of the techniques his lawyer had leveled against her, until she finally agreed to a rather less-than-equitable settlement just so she could get it over and done with. Then she’d retreated from Chicago to Grantville, where she licked her wounds for longer than she liked to admit. So, yeah, she knew something about grief.
“She’s focused, staying on task, and she’s learned—or learning, rather—in short order a part that might have challenged Beverly Sills.” Amber shrugged again. “Only problem I see is that she’s still a bit short on stamina. I have to rein her in, keep her from pushing too hard.”
“Good.” Mary seemed to relax a bit. “I hated to draft her so soon, but if we were going to have a prayer of pulling Arthur Rex off, we had to have her.”
Amber nodded. “Oh, yeah. Heinrich outdid himself with this one. There are parts of it that sound like Puccini and Verdi rolled into one. But that rewrite of the two lead women’s roles—killer stuff, in more ways than one.”