The Saxon Uprising(90)

He wondered, for a moment, by what circuitous route that message had come to him. Through Rebecca Abrabanel, of course—the message itself had come directly from her. But how and from whom had she gotten it?

Given the content of the message itself, it had to have come from Luebeck. He couldn’t think of any other plausible explanation.

He’d read the message enough times to have it memorized by now, and went over it again in his mind.

May soon need aircraft available for important passengers within two weeks. Military aircraft not suitable. No other civilian aircraft available in time. What are possibilities at your disposal?

He couldn’t keep from grinning. “What an utterly charming idea!”

It would cost him a small fortune, though. Not even Richter would agree to demolishing entire city streets without recompensing those dislocated. There wouldn’t be any immediate return, either, most likely. It would just have to be written off as a loss.

On the other hand…

Ultimately, when all was said and done, he was in the business of exchanging and facilitating favors. The actual collection of information—espionage, as such—was simply the first step in the process. Most spies and spymasters never went beyond that step, of course. That was not the least of the reasons that most spies died young and poor and most spymasters lived in garrets. The real profit was all in what you did with the information.

He was sure he knew what lay behind that message. So, what was it worth to have a very large favor owed to him by two people who might someday be the two most powerful people in the world? The two most influential people, at any rate, power being an increasingly elastic phenomenon.

Quite a lot, he decided. Easily worth a small fortune.

He went back to the desk and rang the little bell that sat there. A moment later, his secretary appeared.

Nasi was already writing the message. “I need to have this sent immediately by radio. Well, by nightfall, at any rate. It’s going to Dresden so we may need to wait for the evening window.”

He had his own radio in his headquarters. Quite a good one, too. But radio transmission and reception was what it was, and Dresden was on the other side of the Erzgebirge.

As it turned out, conditions were suitable for immediate transmission. So, to his surprise, Jozef Wojtowicz found himself summoned back to the Residenzschloss by late afternoon, no more than a few hours after he’d left it.

When he got back to Richter’s headquarters, he found her there in the company of a stocky young German. He recognized the man immediately, although they’d never actually met. He was Eddie Junker, the pilot.

“New plans,” said Richter. “Let me show you.”

Again, he came to stand next to her. This time, though, she had a map of the city proper in front of her. Her finger was placed on the big square and then traced a route down the large street leading south.

“We need this entire street widened. For at least fifty yards, maybe a hundred. Remove enough of the buildings to make the street”—she cocked an inquisitive gaze on Junker.

“I want at least sixty feet. That’d give me twice the wingspan of the plane. Anything less gets too risky.”

She nodded. “That means widening it about thirty feet. If we’re lucky, we can do that by just removing the first row of buildings on one side of the street. But if we need to, we’ll level them on both sides.”

Removing the first row of buildings—

Level them on both sides, maybe—

“I’m assigning you and all your Poles to the project,” Richter went on. “I’ll give you as many more people as I can free up. This project takes priority over everything else except defending the walls against a direct assault.”

Back to hauling rocks. Did God have a grudge against Poles in general? Jozef wondered. Or was the Almighty specifically enraged at him for some reason?





Chapter 27


Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe

Rebecca Abrabanel tried to think of any other possibility she hadn’t explored, when it came to available aircraft. The exercise was more in the way of a formality, though—the sort of final double-check a careful person will do just to remind themselves to be careful—than anything she expected to produce results. There simply weren’t all that many aircraft in existence in January of 1636. Most of those were military, furthermore—and Jesse Wood had made clear that he wasn’t lending any of the air force’s planes to this purpose.

He’d told Rebecca that himself, when he came to pass along the message from Luebeck.

“Sorry, Becky, but I talked it over with the admiral and John’s adamant on the subject. I think he’s probably right, and it’s not something I’m going to buck him on. We’ve kept the navy and the air force out of this ain’t-quite-a-civil-war. Formally, anyway. It’s true we’ve bent the rules into a pretzel, but we haven’t broken any. But if we did this…”