1634: The Baltic War (37 page)

"Don't look at me, Sherrilyn," he said. "I think it's a splendid idea, myself."

"
Et tu
, Felix?" the woman muttered.

He smiled, the expression making him seem much less gloomy, then moved into the center of the room and took the poster from Harry and held it up in front of her.

"What more do you want, Sherrilyn? You, especially, being an American and thus obsessed with forms and documents and paperwork."

"And just what is the point of that wisecrack?" she demanded.

"I'd think it was obvious. First thing any proper bureaucratic American wants when someone applies for a job is a resumé. And here it is—complete with the best character references you could ask for. Three officers, feared enough by the earl of Cork that he wants them dead."

"Doesn't say that," she protested.

Felix waited.

"Well, not exactly," she added. Then, after glancing again at the poster held up in front of her: "All right, all right, fine. Sure, and any moron knows the truth. It's easier to bring in somebody dead than alive, anyway."

She gave the three officers a sour look, and then transferred it to Liz herself. "I withdraw my objections. But I still don't like the idea."

"Right," said Harry, clapping his hands. "Captain Leebrick, we'll discuss your pay later. Don't worry, we're not misers. And you certainly don't have to worry about getting out of England. For the moment, though, I'd like your opinion. You
have
been inside the Tower of London, I hope?"

"Oh, yes, many times. So have Richard and Patrick."

"Once had the assignment of transferring old ordnance into the keep, in fact," added Richard. "Spent a week and a half in the Tower. Went all over the place."

"I knew this was a great idea. Juliet, would you be so kind as to haul out the diagram we've been fumbling with? We can move the kitchen table out here and finally get that damn thing up to snuff."

Juliet headed for one of the rooms. Two of the men moved toward the kitchen. Harry bestowed that quite amazing grin on everyone in general and no one in particular.

"I'll think I'll retire the Sherlock monicker," he announced. "Fu Manchu Lefferts, that's me. You know, the guy that was Sherlock's enemy."

Sherrilyn squinted, painfully. "God save us. Harry, Sherlock Holmes' archenemy was Professor Moriarty."

"Oh. Well, can't have that. I ain't got a tweed jacket with elbow patches."

"How about Harry the Merciless?" suggested Felix.

"Got a nice little ring to it, doesn't it?" mused Harry.

"God save us," repeated Sherrilyn. "God save us all."

Liz thought it was probably a good sentiment. But whether it was or not, the glance Sherrilyn gave her now was more of an appealing one than a hostile one.
Us all,
clearly enough, was a term that had just been expanded to include four more people.

The Elbe, near Dömitz

"You can't do this! You're destroying my property! It's illegal!"

Admiral John Simpson stood on the foredeck of the SSIM
Constitution
, his back to the closed port stoppers of the wing ten-inch guns, and glanced at his wristwatch while Freiherr von Bleckede frothed.

"Unfortunately, Freiherr," Matthias Schaubach said reasonably, "Time is no longer—"

"Be
silent
!" Bleckede literally stamped his foot, glaring at the ex-salt merchant who had inherited the thoroughly unpleasant task of negotiating with the scores of people—like Bleckede—who controlled the existing means of navigation along the Elbe.

Or, rather,
Simpson thought coldly,
the scores of people who
used to
control the means of navigation
.

"I refuse to permit this!" Bleckede snapped. "If you dare to—"

"Excuse me, Freiherr von Bleckede," Simpson said, looking up from his watch, "but I'm afraid this entire conversation is rather pointless. Unless, of course, you are prepared to resort to force."

Schaubach hid a smile behind a suddenly raised hand as Simpson quirked one eyebrow. The admiral simply gazed attentively at Bleckede, without once so much as glancing at the escorting cavalry and volley gun crews watching with interest as Simpson's Marine combat engineers placed the charges.

Bleckede seemed to swell to even greater dimensions, and his face turned a remarkable shade of puce. For a moment, Schaubach entertained the hope that apoplexy was about to carry the man off—
and leave the world a better place, afterward
, the Magdeburger thought tartly. But he was disappointed. Instead, the baron drew a deep breath and clenched his jaw.

"Of course I can't 'resort to force,' Admiral!" he said after a moment. "But that doesn't change the fact that—"

"Freiherr," Simpson said, "Herr Schaubach has been attempting for months to negotiate a mutually satisfactory solution to our problem. You, unfortunately, have declined to cooperate with that effort. Well, we've run out of time, and we
are
going to move these ships down this river. Which, unfortunately, means that unless you wish to come with us, it's time for you to go ashore."

"But . . . but . . . !"

"I'm afraid this conversation is over, Freiherr," Simpson said coolly. "If you have any further points to make, I invite you to make them directly to Emperor Gustav. In the meantime, I have a schedule to keep. Lieutenant," he glanced at the uniformed, stonefaced Marine standing at Bleckede's elbow, "would you be kind enough to escort the baron ashore?"

"Of course, sir!" the Marine replied crisply in a broad, lower-class Saxon accent. It would, perhaps, have been untactful to have dwelt upon the undeniable gleam of pleasure in the lieutenant's eyes as he turned and bowed with exquisite courtesy to Bleckede.

"If you'll come this way, Freiherr," he invited. The baron glared at him, then started to turn back to Simpson, and the lieutenant, who was at least three inches taller than the dyspeptic, overweight, middle-aged aristocrat, took him politely but firmly—
very
firmly—by the elbow.

"I'm afraid I'll have to insist, Freiherr."

The Marine's tone was still polite, but just a bit more frigid than it had been a moment before, and Bleckede winced as the lieutenant's fingertips dug into the nerves of his elbow.

"I have friends close to the emperor!" the baron said, rather less forcefully. "I assure you, you haven't heard the last of this,
Admiral
."

"No doubt, Freiherr," Simpson agreed. "And now, good day."

He nodded to the lieutenant, and Bleckede was escorted courteously across to the rowboat moored alongside
Constitution
. He climbed down into it, still spluttering like eggs frying in bacon grease, and the grinning navy sailors at the oars promptly cast off and began pulling strongly towards the shore.

"Admiral," Schaubach said as the boat moved away, "did you enjoy that conversation as much as I did?"

"Probably," Simpson said judiciously. "At any rate, I've been looking forward to it for quite some time."

"As have I." Schaubach's profound satisfaction was evident, and Simpson chuckled.

"I must confess," the ex-salt merchant continued after a moment, "that I expected him to . . . see reason in the end."

"Some people are just too deeply committed to the way they
think
the world works to recognize the way it really does work," Simpson replied. In fact, as he was unhappily well aware, he had occasionally found himself in that particular group. "Usually, they discover their error rather . . . painfully," he added. And that, too, was something John Chandler Simpson knew about from personal experience.

"Well, it may be petty of me, but I can't deny that I feel a certain satisfaction that the good baron's refusal to cooperate means he won't be compensated for his losses," Schaubach admitted, and this time Simpson's chuckle of agreement was harder and harsher.

Freiherr von Bleckede was the owner of one of the
wehrleucken
. Unlike the majority of his counterparts, he had flatly refused to cooperate with the effort to get Simpson's squadron down the river. Work crews had labored through the wet and miserable winter to build temporary
staustufen
atop most of the existing
wehrleucken
. In some cases, where the owners had signed on enthusiastically to the original plan to improve navigation on the Elbe, the modifications were permanent, not temporary. In those instances,
the
wehrleucken
themselves had been raised to the new, higher level, with much wider spillways—effectively, locks controlled by movable wooden cofferdams. Those
wehrleucken
were now large enough—and deep enough—to allow the gunboats passage, and their owners could anticipate substantial future revenues from the increasing trade moving up and down the river.

Others, who had initially resisted, had capitulated when Schaubach mentioned that the emperor would be personally very grateful if they could only see their way to assisting his American allies and subjects at this particularly crucial moment. Since there had usually been at least a hundred or so of the emperor's Finnish cavalry standing rather prominently about and looking as disreputable as possible, even the most recalcitrant had generally found it within themselves to cooperate with their emperor in his time of need.

Those individuals had watched as their
wehrleucken
were raised by additional
staustufen
. In most instances, breaking the
staustufen
to allow the gunboats to surf through on the resultant wave had resulted in fairly moderate, repairable damage to the
wehrleucken
involved. In some instances, unfortunately, the damage had been much more severe. But because their owners had cooperated, they could expect reasonable compensation for their losses. Of course, "reasonable" as defined by Gustav Adolf might not be precisely the same amount
they
had in mind, but it was certainly going to be better than nothing.

And then there was that handful of individuals, like Freiherr von Bleckede, who had obstinately refused to see reason. There were no
staustufen
in their cases. Instead, they could anticipate visits from Simpson's demolition engineers.

And, unfortunately, Gustav Adolf, who was a firm believer in the stick, as well as the carrot, was about to prove remarkably resistant to
their
demands for compensation.

Too bad
, John Chandler Simpson thought cheerfully as he turned and started up the steep ladder to
Constitution
's bridge once more while Captain Halberstat carefully maneuvered his command into position. He could see spectators lining the banks, and every crewman who could had come topside to watch the show, as well. Although Halberstat and the other gunboat skippers had already done it several times, shooting the gap in the dam through the flurry of rushing water and foam was going to be exciting, for both spectators and participants, and Simpson grinned at the thought. He wasn't about to admit it, but he found the experience just as exhilarating as his most junior seaman did.

And this time, he reflected as the last of the engineers finished placing their charges and scampered for cover, it was going to be even more enjoyable than usual.

The Øresund, near Helsingor

"I'm none too happy with these things, Ulrik," said Baldur Norddahl. He was bestowing a very dubious look on the mine they were about to lower off the stern of the little ship into the Øresund. More precisely, a dubious look at the five flimsy-looking contact fuses that protruded from it, all of which were tied together by a thin cord. Once the mine's anchor was resting on the bottom somewhere between thirty and sixty feet below the surface, and the mine's depth was properly adjusted, Baldur would yank on the cord. That would remove the little pins that kept the fuses from being armed prematurely.

In practice, Baldur had told the prince, the act of yanking the cord itself would set off the mine one time in six. That could produce a dangerous situation for the mine-laying ship, of course. But it was not nearly as dangerous as taking the risk of fuses that were too sensitive.

"Don't blame you," said Ulrik. He would have added—for perhaps the thousandth time—
my father and his damned enthusiasms
, but in this instance that wouldn't have been fair. The king of Denmark had allowed his son to determine how to detonate the devices, since he wasn't very partial to them anyway. Ulrik had been the one to finally order this method, since it was the only one feasible in the time they had.

A pity, that. Ulrik had wanted to use the sort of manually controlled detonations by wire that Baldur had found in one of the copies of up-time texts. The Øresund was narrow enough here between Helsingor and Helsingborg—only three miles—that that had seemed feasible. But . . .

There just hadn't been enough time. By now, Baldur's artisans understood the basic methods for generating electricity, well enough. Getting a good enough current to pass through a long wire immersed in salt water, however, had proven to be a lot more difficult than they'd anticipated.

So, in the end, Ulrik had opted for the contact fuses. With the new percussion caps supplied to them by the French, those had been workable. Tricky—not to mention risky—but workable.

The men handling the mine slid it into the water. Ulrik straightened up and looked across the sound at Helsingborg, on the Scandinavian mainland. The town and its fortress belonged to Denmark in this era, as it had for a very long time. At some point in the middle of this century, however, it was "scheduled" to be taken by Sweden. The prince's father was determined to see that wouldn't happen, but as time passed Ulrik himself was becoming increasingly gloomier. He wouldn't be surprised if the Swedes held it by the end of the year.

Or the end of the summer. The young Danish prince knew that his father had been both foolish and reckless to throw his lot in with the League of Ostend. Richelieu and his assurances, bah!

There was simply not enough
time.
At best, even at the relentless pace Baldur and his men had been working, they'd only have perhaps a third of this narrowest part of the Øresund protected by mines before the ironclads arrived.

If they arrived at all, that is. Christian IV's courtiers were still assuring the king of Denmark that the foolhardy American admiral would come to ruin long before he could even reach the Skagerrak. That was possible, of course, but Ulrik had his doubts. He thought Simpson
would
come—but might very well avoid the mines altogether. The American admiral certainly had to be aware of the possible danger, and he'd also have figured out that the Øresund was the only one of the straits that his enemy could possibly have laid with mines. All he had to do was simply approach Copenhagen through the Great Belt. That would add many miles to his voyage, true enough—but what would that matter, if he could make the much longer voyage from the mouth of the Elbe through the North Sea, the Skagerrak and the Kattegat?

At which point, of course, he might ignore Copenhagen altogether. At least initially. Once he exited the Great Belt, he would be closer to Luebeck than to the Danish capital. He'd probably go after the Danish fleet in the bay outside the besieged city before he came to threaten the Danish capital.

But come he would, sooner or later; of that Ulrik had become almost certain. And if he came from the south, all the labor of planting these mines would have been useless. In the end, all they'd have would be the spar torpedoes.

Ulrik saw that Baldur seemed satisfied with the placement of the mine. The Norwegian planted a foot on the gunwale and took a tighter grip on the arming cord.

"Brace yourselves!" he hollered. "This is the joyous moment, boys."

Seeing the Danish sailors around him flexing their knees—the "minelayer's stance," they called it—and grasping whatever supports stood nearby, Ulrik did the same.

After glancing around to see that everyone was ready, Baldur gave the cord a heroic yank.

The prince held his breath. There was . . .

Nothing. Not a trace of the water column Baldur had warned him about, that could snap a ship caught by it right in half and break the legs of a man if he was standing stiffly. The fuses had been armed without being detonated.

"And wasn't that fun?" said Baldur cheerily, coiling the lanyard as he reeled it out of the water.

"We'd best return," said Ulrik. "My father insists that I attend the diving demonstration."

"Another joyous occasion," said Baldur. "I wouldn't miss it for all the world."

Ulrik could have said those sentences dripped sarcasm, but that would be inaccurate. They were saturated with sarcasm. Oozed it from every pore.

"Yes," said Ulrik. "Not for all the world."