The Kremlin Games(30)

“So you decided to send a copy of everything. I know, Father. I even agree.” Pavel’s face was serious, his dark eyes intent. “That doesn’t change the fact that spending the next ten years of their lives translating minutia about people who will never even be born seems a pointless, career-ending job to most people.”

Boris sighed. “I had hoped it would be more popular. It is a secure position, doing important work, if not the most exciting. A safe place in the bureaus.”

“That’s the problem, Father.” Pavel shrugged. “It’s not secure unless the Grantville Section becomes secure.”

Boris was left with an office and a budget and not nearly enough people who read and wrote English and Russian. The budget . . . for the moment he had plenty of money. Well, lands. The government of Russia ran on a formalized barter system because there was not nearly enough money to support the economy they had. That would be changing soon. The Assembly of the Land and the Boyar Duma were almost agreed on the form the Czar’s Bank would take.

The delay in the formation of the Czar’s Bank wasn’t caused just by the haggling over who got what. There was plenty of that, to be sure, but the politicians were also waiting for more excerpts from up-time economics books. They all wanted the money to work, even the fair number of boyars and other officials who didn’t believe that paper money would ever be worth anything.

* * *

Two days after Boris got back he had a visit from Princess Natalia. She came to his home, had tea with his wife, and talked to him about getting Andrei Korisov out of her Dacha.

“I don’t care that much that he is no doubt spying for Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev or one of that clan. Anyway, they have other spies, I don’t doubt. It’s what he’s doing with the servants of the Dacha. They are terrified to go near his little shop for fear of being drafted to pull a trigger on the latest of his experiments.”

“Is he getting results?”

Natasha sighed. “Yes, I think so, and so does Bernie. Not that Bernie is any more pleased about his methods than I am. Bernie and Filip worked up a string and pulley system for pulling the trigger and a paper cage to measure the outgassing.

“Andrei Korisov thanked them for the paper cage because it gives a more accurate read on the direction of force than a screaming, running peasant does. He just grunted about the string and pulley system for bench-firing the rifle. Apparently, saving peasants from maiming or death is not an issue of concern. Bernie, just back from Moscow and the slow plague, wanted to kill him and I wanted to let him. Even Filip was upset, and you know how conservative he is.”

Which Boris actually didn’t, but he nodded anyway. It was what you did when a princess told you that you knew something you hadn’t known. “So, Princess, clearly you have something in mind?” he asked when she had run down a little.

“Yes. I want to give him to the army or to the Grantville desk. Anywhere. I don’t really care. I just want him out of the Dacha. Bernie will still consult on weapons development and maybe the army can find him some criminals to pull his triggers for him. As long as they aren’t my people, I don’t really care.”

This was a very natural thing for a member of the nobility to say, though Boris knew most up-timers wouldn’t think so. There was a certain coldness that came with the territory. Let the monster go kill other people if it was inconvenient to stop him, just so long as they weren’t her people.

“If you try to give him to me, the bureaus will scream,” Boris said with some regret. There were contracts to be had, not just with the main army but with the Streltzi of all the towns and cities in Russia. “I would suggest you give him to the Streltzi bureau, and through them to the army. They will be thrilled.”

Which was what they ended up doing. The Gun Shop, as it came to be known, was placed at another small town about thirty miles south of Moscow and about twenty miles away from the Dacha. If there was need, they could get in touch with the Gun Shop or it could get in touch with them. And in the meantime, Andrei Korisov was out of Natasha’s hair and no danger to her servants.





Chapter 20



July 1632



“Order Kameroff to take his battalion to the west.” Bernie grinned as the barely bearded Russian wearing two stars on his collar moved his finger along the map, over a set of hills then northwest along a river. “He is to take dispatch riders and notify us at the first sign of the enemy.”

This was not the war games Bernie had played as a kid. There was no fog of war in Afrika Corps, or the other war games Bernie played. There, everyone could see what the other side was doing. Not in this game, which had been designed by army officers instead of geeks.