“Possibly . . . or possibly your man misinterpreted a scam of the Sheremetev family and the only place the depots were ever intended to be was in the pockets of the Sheremetevs.” Millerov shrugged. “At this point we’ll likely never know for sure and it doesn’t matter anyway, because we are sitting here in Muscovite territory. They aren’t going to apologize. They’re going to deny and the depot isn’t here. They’ll demand reparations. Granted, the Truce of Deulino expired in July of 1633. His Majesty has refused to give up his claim on the Russian throne and Russia hasn’t given up its claim to Czernihów or Smolensk. So legally Poland is at war with Russia, but up to now it’s been a pretty phony war. Little fighting and even less talking. The war is going to get a lot more real now, one way or the other. So it would be best to win it. Yes?”
Eliasz Stravinsky nodded. “If we go back now, we’ll look like idiots. Not very good for the career, that.”
Janusz Radziwiłł nodded almost against his will. He was still convinced that the reports had been accurate. The Muscovites were planning to take Smolensk and much of Lithuania, just like they had tried in that other history. But probably—as had happened before—corruption in their ranks had interfered. Still, the Cossack was right. It didn’t really matter now.
Chapter 52
“Men coming in,” the scout said as he rode up to the general.
“That’ll be the mercenaries from Rzhev,” General Izmailov said, then looked at Tim. “Take word the column is to halt. Officer’s Call at the front.”
“Halt the column. Officer’s Call, sir, at the leading unit,” Tim told the commander of each unit as he rode down the line.
It was the third day of marching toward Rzhev. And this halt would probably cost them two miles. When he got back to the front, Tim saw that General Izmailov was speaking to the sergeant leading the mercenaries who had sent the riders to inform Moscow of the invasion.
“So tell me, Sergeant,” General Izmailov was asking, “why did you abandon your post?”
“What post, General? We were ordered to Rzhev to guard a supply depot. When we got there, there was no supply depot. No quarters and no pay. My people were living in tents outside Rzhev. You can’t guard what isn’t there, sir, and we were never assigned to guard Rzhev.” The sergeant pulled a set of orders out of his pack and handed them to General Izmailov.
General Izmailov looked over the orders and snorted. Then he handed them to Tim and went on to the next question. “Did you keep in contact with the invading force?”
The burly sergeant shook his head. “No. We didn’t see any more of them and I don’t have the men to spare.”
“Are the invaders coming this way? Heading to Tver? Did they even continue on past Rzhev, or did they stop there?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Sergeant Hampstead admitted.
Tim read over the orders and information in the packet, and stopped. Ivan Petrovich Sheremetev. Well, that explained why the foreign mercenaries had been sent off to guard a nonexistent supply depot. It was almost funny. The lesser Sheremetev’s greed had, for once, worked to Russia’s benefit. If the mercenaries hadn’t been in Rzhev, the Poles might have bypassed the place altogether and headed straight for Tver. With no warning to the Kremlin until they had already taken Tver.
General Izmailov turned to a discussion with the dirigible’s pilot. After discussing the dirigible and its capabilities for a few minutes, the pilot, “Nick” Ivanovich, said, “General, if we loose the tether, we can see more. I can usually get twenty miles an hour when I use the engines, assuming the engines work. And if the wind isn’t bad when I get up there.”
“When they work?” Izmailov looked dubious. “When they work?”
“They do . . . mostly,” Nick said. “The engines aren’t really the problem. Sometimes there is considerable leakage in the steam lines. If the steam isn’t leaking too bad, I can stay up for ten hours or so. If everything goes right, I can get from here to Rzhev and back before dark.”
Izmailov thought for a few moments. “All right. We’ll try it. But at the least problem abort the mission and get back here.” He turned back to the mercenary. “Sergeant, your officers were delayed in Moscow but we expect them to be joining us in a day or so. You and your men are to fall in at the end of the column as we pass.”
* * *
Everything didn’t go right for Nick Ivanovich. The problem was the winds. They were southerly and fairly strong at five thousand feet. Weaker, but still southerly, at five hundred. Testbed didn’t have a compressor; it couldn’t lift the weight. So it couldn’t pump hydrogen out of the bladders and then get it back. Once the hydrogen was gone, it was gone. It did have a couple of hydrogen tanks so it could go up and down a little bit.