The Dreeson Incident(211)

Still, good habits were worth maintaining for their own sake.



"Mecklenburg?" asked Gunther.



"The orders have been transmitted," said Francisco. "To Pomerania as well, although that'll obviously take more time to unfold."



The orders had already been sent to all the other provinces and imperial cities. But Mecklenburg and Pomerania required more circumspection. They also had army radio posts, with reliable operators. But since both provinces were directly administered by the Swedes, with the emperor himself as their duke, they had a higher proportion than usual of Swedish soldiers. In fact, the provinces were used as training areas where the up-timer soldiers could train Gustav Adolf's own forces how to use the new technology.



There were not very many Swedes in the Committees of Correspondence. Swedish soldiers were not actively hostile to the CoCs, as a rule, they just didn't find them particularly relevant to their own situation. There was no great social unrest in Sweden. In fact, the emperor—just a king, to the Swedes—was quite popular among his countrymen.



"It's done, then," said Gretchen. Her expression suddenly became rather disgruntled. "I wish I was out there myself."



Nasi smiled. "Surely you're not that bloodthirsty?"



She gave him a cold look. "Henry Dreeson brought some real happiness—well, contentment, at least—to my grandmother. Who needed it, if ever a woman did. And now, she's a widow again. So do not presume to think how bloody I might like to be, if I could have all my wishes."



Achterhof made an impatient gesture. "Cut it out, Gretchen. You're needed here, at headquarters, and you know it perfectly well."



He was right, and she knew it. But she still wished she could be leading one of those fierce columns, beginning to spread across the Germanies. Many, from the capital cities of the provinces. Some, from other strongholds.



By dawn tomorrow, there would be no known anti-Semitic agitators or groups in Luebeck or Hamburg. By dawn of the next day, none within fifty miles of those cities. A week from now, none within a hundred miles or more.



There weren't very many in Thuringia, anyway. But whatever there were, would all be gone by then also.



Franconia would take longer. Anti-Semitism had deep roots there. But the Ram had more experience with armed struggle than the usual CoCs, and quite recent experience. Franconia would be scoured clean, soon enough—and probably scoured more thoroughly than anywhere. Constantin Ableidinger and his closest associates were handling the matter directly.



Elsewhere, the process would be more ragged. In some places—Hesse-Kassel and Brunswick—the local committees had been instructed not to push matters to an open confrontation with the official authorities. Just . . . strike some hard blows, and then pull back and see. It was quite possible that Landgrave William and Duke Georg would decide to finish the job themselves, once they realized the peril of doing otherwise. The landgraves of Hesse-Kassel had never allowed anti-Semitism much leeway anyway, not for centuries. And Duke Georg was now far too reliant on Jewish financing for his booming new petroleum industry to have any truck with the anti-Semitic swine either.



But, however long it took, and however it was done, it would be done. That long-festering boil in German politics would be lanced, finally. Crushed; shattered; destroyed; drowned in its own blood and gore. Reaction would have to make do thereafter without that sturdy support. And the same with witch-hunting.



And—best of all, from Gretchen's viewpoint—by the time it was all over the Committees of Correspondence would have been transformed. For the first time, that often fractious and disorganized movement would have acted coherently, in unison, on a national scale. And in a directly military manner.



There was no way to know what the future might bring. But whatever came, the CoCs would be ready for it.





Francisco still had his doubts. But . . .



First, he did understand the reasoning, as Mike Stearns had laid it out. Harsh and cold that reasoning might be—even cruel, you could fairly say. Within two weeks, the Germanies would have several thousand more corpses than they would have had otherwise.



But Francisco didn't question the reasoning. Like his employer, Nasi had now spent a great deal of time studying the history of another universe. Not, as many foolish people did, because he thought he could predict the future in this one, but simply to find the underlying patterns. The logic of developments, as it were.



One thing was clear. Anti-Semitism had always played an important role in European politics, but the phenomenon could be quirkier than it looked. Francisco had been quite fascinated to discover, for instance, that during the Holocaust the two safest places for a Jew in those parts of Europe under the Nazis had been Italy and Bulgaria—both of which had fascist governments themselves.