“Of course, it could be that there simply wasn’t that much to see,” Nick reported a half hour later. Tim could see that General Izmailov was less than pleased. But Nick didn’t seem to be worried about it. Which Tim thought was very brave or very stupid. Then he looked over at Testbed, which the crew was still tying down for the night. He remembered that Nikita Ivanovich had been the first person to climb into it and had flown it without ropes to keep the wind from carrying it away. Tim still wasn’t sure whether that was brave or stupid, but the “very” gained a whole new level of magnitude.
“Tim! Testbed will be placed near the front in tomorrow’s order of march,” General Izmailov gritted. Tim knew that the general had seen the demonstration at the Dacha and had been planning to use the dirigible. But how were they supposed to know that it didn’t work at night? Granted, it was pretty obvious when you thought about it. Dark is no time to observe things.
* * *
“I don’t believe this,” Tim muttered. “We’ll never get there at this rate.” The march had put them about twelve miles west of Moscow. Worse, they were trying to move fast and doing it over good roads. The scrapers had improved the roads around Moscow quite a bit.
His friend and fellow student at the cadet corps, Pavel, nodded in agreement. “Bad enough the delays because of the confusion. But Colonel Khilkov and the fit he threw when we were setting out and he discovered that we were ahead of him in the line of march was just plain stupid.”
Tim figured the flare up was at least half Usinov’s fault with all the gloating he was doing. But he didn’t say so. Pavel was Colonel Usinov’s cadet aide de camp, and thought quite highly of him. “Just wait till he hears that General Izmailov is going to put Testbed near the front of the line tomorrow.” Tim threw his arms up and pretended to be having a fit. “Never let it be said that mere military necessity should trump social position in the Russian army. ‘My cousin is of higher rank than your uncle, so of course my company must be ahead of yours in the order of march.’” Tim spat on the ground. “Idiots. We’re all idiots. If we go on like this we’ll be defending Moscow from another Polish invasion and we’ll be doing it right here. You can bet that the Poles aren’t sitting on their asses in Rzhev arguing about who should be first in the line of march.”
Chapter 51
Tim could have bet that, but he would have lost. Because sitting on his ass arguing was precisely what Janusz Radziwiłł, the commander of the Polish forces, was doing. Not about the order of march, but what they should do now. Janusz, in his early twenties, was already the court chamberlain of Lithuania. That was a high post in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which he had gotten because of the influence of his cousin Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł, Grand Chancellor of Lithuania. Janusz was sitting with his two main subordinates discussing the absence of the arms depot that they had been expecting. It was a rerun of several discussions they had since they had gotten to Rzhev and discovered that the Russian invasion Janusz’ spy had informed him of was not nearly so near as they had expected.
“Ivan Repinov has confirmed everything,” Janusz insisted again.
Mikhail Millerov, commander of his Cossacks, snorted. “You can’t depend on anything that rat-faced little bureau man says. I’ve questioned many men and his sort is the hardest to get the truth out of. Not because he’s a strong man, but because he’s weak. He’ll tell you anything you want to hear and change his story five times in as many minutes.”
“Yet what he said makes sense and fits with what the agent reported,” said Eliasz Stravinsky, the commander of the western mercenaries. “Ivan Petrovich Sheremetev is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”
“Yes!” Janusz exclaimed. “That by itself explains the situation to anyone familiar with Russia. Ivan Petrovich commits graft as other people breathe, continuously and with very little thought. And as the nephew of Prince Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev, the third power behind Cherkasski and the patriarch.
“Fourth, if you count the czar,” Mikhail Millerov corrected.
“I don’t,” Janusz insisted. “Mikhail Romanov is his father’s puppet and everyone knows it. In any case, Ivan Petrovich has ample opportunity for that corruption. He got the contract for the depot and pocketed the money.”
Millerov nodded a little doubtfully, and Janusz continued. “My agent in the Muscovite treasury bureau spent considerable time putting together the pieces. Prince Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev was clearly in charge of making the arrangements. And naturally shifted contracts to where they would do his family the most good. Corrupt, every last one of them.” It didn’t occur to Janusz to wonder what someone on the outside might think of the Polish nobility.