Neither of them, of course, had any idea who that man was. As Pam said to the disappointed policeman, all they knew was that he had been hauling signs out of Veda Mae Haggerty's garage and putting them on a handcart. She was sorry, but that was it. Although several other men were there when Pam came by, they had all been in the shadow of the garage, so she couldn't tell if any were among either the dead or the living demonstrators in custody. Missy said that by the time she caught up, there had been only two men, both had been outside the garage, and the second one had been wearing a ski mask.
Overall, the policeman was disappointed. He had been hoping for more. But, of course, it was only coincidence that the girls had been out walking the previous morning in any case, and it did provide a connection to Mrs. Haggerty.
Veda Mae simply refused to answer questions from the police. She said that she didn't have to. She challenged them to come back with a search warrant. For the time being, they left it at that. She wasn't likely to become a fugitive and eventually someone would be in a position to question her under oath.
When it crossed her mind that her grandson Blake was now a policeman, she refused to answer any questions he asked her, either.
She decided to warn Jacques-Pierre Dumais, the next time she saw him, that the police were asking about the signs he had stored in her garage.
Chapter 49
Magdeburg, March 4, 1635
The news about what was going on in Grantville reached Magdeburg, via radio, almost immediately. Even though it wasn't the best window, the radio people threw every bit of power they had, combined and consolidated, into getting out word of the incident.
From there, the news hit the streets almost at once. It was already being called "the Dreeson Incident." That was perhaps unfair to Enoch Wiley, who'd been the other man murdered, but most people assumed the mayor had been the target of the assassin, not the minister. Which, indeed, was true enough.
The other name spread widely by the news, of course, was Buster Beasley's. It wouldn't be long at all before Buster had become a national hero for those people inclined toward the CoCs or the Fourth of July Party, especially the youngsters. Not on the level of Hans Richter, perhaps, but awfully close.
Partly that was because he'd died in what all such people considered a good cause. By the spring of 1635, almost four years after the Ring of Fire, anti-Semitism and witch-hunting had become associated in the minds of just about everyone in Europe with opposition to the newly-arrived Americans and the changes they represented. And that was true whether the person was a partisan or an opponent of Mike Stearns and his people. If you were for Stearns and what he represented, then you were automatically opposed to anti-Semitism and witch-hunting, even if those two traditions had been deeply rooted in your family or craft or village. And if you were hostile toward Stearns and his people, then you tended—though not with quite the same rigor—to lean favorably toward anti-Semitism and witch-hunting, even if in times gone by you wouldn't have been.
Not very sensible, perhaps, but much of human social behavior is tribal and ritualistic rather than well-reasoned.
But, just as much, Buster's rapidly growing popularity as a folk hero was due to the sheer ferocity of his actions. This man was no "martyr," in the usual sense of the term. Yes, certainly, he wound up getting killed—but, oh, he took so many of the swine with him! Roland at Roncesvalles couldn't have done any better.
An interesting side effect of the incident was that, throughout the continent and in all of its many languages, the term "harley" became the commonly accepted term for motorcycle—despite the fact that most of the motorcycles in Grantville were actually of Japanese manufacture. And, even more quickly and thoroughly, the term "buster" became a term used everywhere to refer to a stalwart and upright fellow, not to be thwarted by miscreants.
By the evening, the word had reached almost every place else in Europe—not just in the USE—that had a receiver. The next day, the newspapers from Amsterdam to Frankfurt, to Paris, Venice, Prague, and Austria, were on the streets with it.
Almost the only places that had to wait for land communication were Spain and Poland.
In Stockholm, Charles Mademann studied the news reports carefully. Very carefully.
There was no chance now to carry out the planned assassination of Sweden's queen in co-ordination with the Grantville actions. Unfortunately, the weather had been uncooperative and Mademann's ship had been delayed in port. He hadn't been able to reach the Swedish capital until two days after the target date.
And there was no point in even considering the action at the moment, of course. Security had been tightened up considerably, even for someone like Maria Eleanora whom no one seriously thought was at risk.