The Eastern Front(46)

Eddie pursed his lips again. "How solid is that information?"

"As solid as possible, since I got it from Richter herself."

"Really? I'm a little surprised she was that forthcoming."

"She's shrewd. She figures I'd most likely find out about it anyway, if not all the details. This way she maximizes the chances that I'd agree, since I wouldn't be wondering what her motives were."

Eddie stared out the window for a moment. "So you're thinking that she's laying the basis for a later arrival. In case . . ."

"In case Dresden explodes. Yes. You'll need to take that into account when you investigate the possibilities of landing a plane in the area. There may be hostilities underway."

"Ah, marvelous. What I always wanted. Landing under fire while on a desperate mission."

Nasi smiled. "If it would make you happier, you could take Denise with you. On the exploratory trip, I mean. Not the possible later desperate mission under fire. I wouldn't care to answer to her mother for that."

Eddie winced. "Me neither."

Denise Beasley's mother was a formidable woman. On the other hand, Christin George did not try to rein in her daughter, either—which, given Denise's nature, would have been well-nigh impossible anyway.

Denise and Eddie were more-or-less betrothed now. Not in a manner that down-time Germans would have recognized as legally binding, true. What Denise herself called "going steady." But, perhaps oddly in such a willful girl, Francisco thought she was quite devoted to Junker.

Eddie was back to staring out the window. "We'd have to be gone for at least a month. I'd need to get a chaperone, for that long a trip. Christin is easygoing, but no mother of a seventeen-year-old girl is that easygoing." He mused for a few more seconds. "Denise will insist that Minnie come with us, of course. Which I don't mind, except Christin will never agree that Minnie Hugelmair constitutes what any sane person would call a ‘chaperone.' "

Nasi nodded judiciously. "That would indeed be madness."

Silence fell upon the room again. After perhaps a minute, Nasi chuckled. "The solution is obvious, I think."

Eddie winced. "She'll kill me."

"Oh, nonsense. I've always found Noelle Stull to be quite the adventuress."

"For God's sake, don't tell her that. Besides, she's all the way down in Bamberg now. And she'd have to get permission from her office, and as overworked as they are—

Francisco shook his head. "Actually, she's been in Grantville for the past week or so, packing her belongings. That's because she's got a new job and a new employer." He cleared his throat. "Who is me. So I foresee no problems."

Junker stared at him, then whistled softly. "I really never thought she'd accept your offer."

"Prague is closer to Vienna."

Eddie chuckled again. "Given that the fellow of her interest is a Hungarian officer in the service of the Austrians, and the Austrians are officially at war with the king of Bohemia, I'm not quite sure how relocating to Prague really puts Noelle any closer to Janos Drugeth. And who knows where he is these days, anyway?"

Francisco got a smug look at his face. "As it happens, I do."


Györ, Hungary, near the Ottoman border

Janos Drugeth felt an urge to wrap a cloak around himself, even though the temperature atop the bastion was quite warm. As you'd expect on a sunny day in July. He didn't have a cloak with him anyway.

That was just a reflex, from the considerable time he'd spent in his life in one of these Balkan fortresses. The fortifications were of the so-called trace italienne design. Medieval perpendicular stone walls, circular or square in design, had been unable to withstand gunpowder artillery. They'd been replaced by fortresses that were generally star-shaped, with triangular bastions that gave the defenders a good field of fire at any enemy getting close to the wall. Later designs—not applied to this particular fortress—added features like ravelins, hornworks and crownworks.

The walls were quite different, too. They sloped rather than being perpendicular. The construction materials used were earth and brick, whenever possible, rather than stone. In every particular, they were designed to absorb artillery fire rather than shed it. Each cannon ball digging into the walls simply became another piece of the structure.

All well and good. But come winter, these new-style fortresses seemed every bit as frigid as their medieval predecessors.

Below him, the Rába River meandered through the town of Györ. The view was pleasant, as was usually the case in the Balkans. Janos had often wondered what God's purpose might be, to couple such a lovely region with so much in the way of strife and misery. Of course, he imagined a Frenchman or an Englishman or a Spaniard—certainly a German—could have recited at least as long a litany of woes as any inhabitant of the Balkans.