The Kremlin Games(145)
“So the czar didn’t willingly retire to the hunting lodge but was held there.” Cherakasky sneered. “I suspected that, but decided to give you your chance because war with Poland would have been a disaster, however well we did in Rzhev. But having him and his family, you—you bumbling fool—kidnapped him, then lost him. You’re finished, Sheremetev. I’m going to the Boyar Duma and you’ll . . .”
Bang!
The sound of the pistol was loud in the closed room. Sheremetev swung the pistol to point at Patriarch Joseph. “Forget the bribe. You’ll support me or you’ll be where he is now.”
The guards rushed in and then stood there looking back and forth between Sheremetev and his gun, and Cherakasky bleeding out from a sucking chest wound on the floor, and Patriarch Joseph, who stood stunned.
“Petrov, who of these are trustworthy?” Sheremetev spoke quickly, waving his gun at the other guards. The problem was that most of the Boyar Duma’s guards owed their primary loyalty to the various boyars of the Duma, not to Sheremetev.
Petrov didn’t hesitate that Sheremetev noticed. Instead he simply drew his own pistol and pointed it at the official section leader. “I’ll need your weapon, Sergeant. You’ll get it back after things are settled.” He then gave quick, concise orders for two other men to take the weapons of the other three men in the detail. All the while explaining that it would be better for the disarmed men if they were in no position to interfere. “No one can blame you for what happens after you’re locked up, fellows.”
After the guards had been restrained, Sheremetev gave orders to the rest. Three boyars were to be arrested. “Patriarch Joseph and I have a few things to talk over.”
As Sheremetev was cleaning his own house in Moscow, the riverboats were carrying the czar, Natasha and Bernie to Bor.
* * *
In Bor, Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov, commanding the dirigible Czarina Evdokia, got the message first and immediately ordered the arrest of his second-in-command. He privately rather liked Nick, but Nick was on the wrong side. He also ordered the arrest of the station commander of the Bor Streltzi, who had also been a Gorchakov appointee. A man, as it happened, who outranked him, according to the new order of ranks that had been introduced since the arrival of the up-timers. But the new ranks didn’t mean all that much yet, when compared to the traditions of Russia. What mattered was who you owed your allegiance to. Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov owed his to the Sheremetev family, which meant the czar was on the wrong side, too. He prepared the dirigible for flight so he could provide tracking information and force the czar back into the hands of the Boyar Duma where he belonged.
Ruslan Andreyivich over-rode the political officer, who wanted to have Nick and the former commander executed. He wasn’t by nature a vicious man, just utterly pragmatic. Besides, after this had all settled out, he would be working with these people or their relatives. The less blood on his hands, the easier that would be.
He didn’t arrest Ivan the baker’s boy for two reasons. One, Ivan was too junior, and two, he was a Sheremetev connection who had gotten the post by virtue of his tie to Boris Timofeyevich Lebedev, so should be quite dependable. He considered promoting the lad to take Nick’s place, but he couldn’t. Ivan was, after all, the son of a baker. Streltzi. He couldn’t be placed over members of the service nobility.
* * *
“You know,” Tim commented, “when you came back to Murom, you didn’t realize that word had reached the town to arrest you. But we can be pretty sure that word has reached Bor. They may think that we’re heading directly Ufa, but to get to Ufa by river we have to go right by Nizhny Novgorod and Bor.”
“Do you think they will be ready for us?” Bernie asked. He’d seen Tim in the war games at the Moscow Kremlin and had been impressed by the kid in Murom.
“I don’t know.” Tim said. “That is, I don’t know how they will be ready for us. What they will have done to prepare for us. By now they know we are on the river but some of the messages we picked up when we stopped at that radio telegraph station suggested that much of the Streltzi from Nizhny Novgorod are out beating the woods looking for the princess. Getting the order to go into the field to the city that Streltzi are stationed in is easy with the radio links, but getting the order to go back home to them once they are in the field is a lot harder. Unlike the up-timer radios, the spark gap units that we are building here are not portable. Well, you can put one on a riverboat . . .”
“The strategic situation?” Natasha said. “Let’s keep to the point.”