1636:The Kremlin games rof-14 Read online

  “Natalia Petrovna Gorchakov, may I introduce Cass Lowry. Cass, this is Vladimir’s sister, Natalia Petrovna. And this is her aunt, Madame Sofia Gorchakov. And this is Anya, our accountant.”

  Bernie thought he’d done a credible job on the introduction until Cass opened his big mouth.

  “If you’re Vladimir’s sister, why isn’t your name Natasha? That’s what Brandy said, Natasha.”

  Bernie sort of kicked Cass in the ankle and made a face at him. “I’ll explain later,” he murmured. “Just say hello-and be polite, will you?”

  Cass glared a bit, but nodded. “Ma’am, I’m pleased to meet you. I did bring a load of letters for you. They’re from your brother and Brandy. And there are some presents, too. They’re in one of the boxes.”

  Natasha nodded graciously. “My thanks. We appreciate your trouble and invite you to share our hospitality at the Dacha for a while. Vladimir Petrovich was pleased that you accepted his commission.”

  “Yeah, well, I stung him pretty good on the fee.” Cass snickered.

  Bernie knew there was going to be trouble sooner or latter. Cass was acting like he was still up-time and still a football star. “Natalia Petrovna, we will take our leave of you for the moment,” Bernie said. “My friend and I need to have a talk. If you will excuse us?”

  Natasha inclined her head. “Certainly, Bernie. Perhaps we shall see you and Cass at dinner?” Bernie suppressed a groan. Cass, Natasha, dinner… what was wrong with that combination? Bernie didn’t want to think about it.

  Dinner was tense, to say the least. The Russians were showing restraint and Cass needed to be in restraints. He was behaving like a boor, to the point where Bernie was seriously considering knocking him out. Unfortunately, most of the Russians present understood quite a bit of English. Natasha had an aptitude for language and was getting fairly close to fluency.

  To make things still worse, it turned out that Cass had an aptitude for language also. Bernie hadn’t expected that at all. He was certain that if she’d been present, their former Spanish language teacher in high school, Guadelupe DiCastro, would have been struck dumb with astonishment. Bernie had gotten a B-minus in her class but Cass had almost flunked it completely.

  Cass wasn’t actually stupid, though, although he could sure put on a good imitation. When he decided to learn something and applied himself, he could usually manage it pretty well. So, on the long trip here he’d apparently learned some Russian. Not enough to really get by, but enough to be able to insult people in two languages instead of just one.

  It was worse for Anya, Bernie was pretty sure, because this was her first time at the nobility’s table. Her friendship with Natasha was still fairly new, after all.

  “Yeah,” Cass was saying, “winding up back here before the world got civilized was sort of hard. It was a boon to the here-and-now, but God was playing a nasty trick on us up-timers. Wars all over the damn place, the food sucks, and there’s all this religious bullshit, too. Every time you turn around someone is in your face about religion. When the Ring of Fire made it clear that none of your religions had a clue what God had in mind.”

  Father Kiril was having dinner with them. Kiril was a nice guy. Luckily, he spoke almost no English at all so he couldn’t follow what Cass was saying,

  Natasha could, however. Her face was cold as she regarded Cass. “Indeed. And you did? Have a clue, I mean. Didn’t you say that back up-time you could have avoided all the difficulty by simply moving? Could you not?”

  “No. The big guy didn’t tell us either, but then if he had you would have gotten a ghost town.”

  Cass managed to leer and look superior at the same time, and Bernie was more and more sure he was going to have to hit him. The problem was that what Cass was saying was close enough to what a lot of up-timers, and more than a few down-timers, believed to hurt. Certainly if Bernie’s family had known the Ring of Fire was coming, they would have gotten his mom out of the Ring. Bernie would probably have opted to stay in the twentieth century, given the choice. He hadn’t joined the Peace Corps, had he? It was also true that the presence of the up-timers had turned out to be of considerable benefit to the down-timers, at least the large majority of those affected, one way or the other. Looked at one way it looked like God had drafted the up-timers to rescue the seventeenth century from itself. That the up-timers were God’s chosen representatives; whether they wanted to be chosen or not.

  Then Cass laughed raucously and snorted beer up his nose.

  When all the spewing and coughing was finally over, Bernie looked at Cass. He was pretty drunk. “I think I’ve had enough, Cass. I’m going to crash. You ready?”

  Cass was a little bleary from the vodka he had consumed, but wasn’t ready for sleep, apparently. “No, dude. I don’t think so. You go on. I’ll just keep this lady company.” He was eyeballing Anya in a way that Bernie didn’t like at all.

  Natasha’s already cold face froze. Anya looked scared. Bernie could see it happening.

  “I, myself,” Natasha said, “am quite tired. You gentlemen feel free to enjoy… whatever it is that you enjoy. Until the morning, then. Come along, Anya, Aunt Sofia.” Natasha rose and swept from the room, casting a telling glance over her shoulder. Aunt Sofia’s glance was even more telling.

  Bernie got the message. Cass had to learn to behave properly.

  “That one will get himself killed,” Vladislav Vasl’yevich murmured. “Soon, I expect.”

  “Not by us, though, and preferably not in Russia. Let some other nation do the world the service.” Natasha agreed with his assessment. Cass Lowry was a barbarian. “I know he’s already said things that would be reason for a duel. Certainly most would already have been punished for those remarks. But the czar will want to meet him, just as he met Bernie, and Russia needs what he knows. Vladislav Vasl’yevich, we need to avoid any incident. You’ll have to restrain yourself and your men.”

  “At least Bernie did not intentionally insult. This one, though..” Vladislav shook his head. “He is a different type of man. He thinks himself a boyar’s son, protected by his father’s position. He seems to think that everyone in Russia is a peasant.”

  Cass was a bit drunk. Not much, just enough to take the edge off. He was wondering what the fuck was Bernie’s problem. After all, Bernie got the fancy job here in Russia, with all the servants and lots of money. What did Bernie have to complain about? Had the idiot gone native? Could have happened, he figured. Bernie had been all alone with a bunch of down-time barbs for over a frigging year. “What is your problem, man? They’re just down-timers. They need us, we don’t need them. Ain’t you figured that out yet? Hell, even up-time kids are getting rich.”

  “So what are you doing here, Cass? Since you’re so rich, I mean?”

  Cass flushed. “Cheap shot, man. The breaks haven’t been going my way. It’s Stearns’ fault. Treating the down-timers like they’re real Americans and selling us out to the Swedes like he done.”

  “Cass, we’re not in high school anymore.” Bernie stared at him intently. “Some breaks are coming your way, sure enough. Broken arms, broken legs and a busted head. One of the ladies you were hitting on is a frigging knyazhna, Cass. That’s Russian for princess. Don’t think for a minute that her guards won’t cut off your dick and feed it and the rest of you to the pigs.”

  “What the hell is your problem, Bernie boy? Afraid of the competition?” Cass pulled his new Peacemaker and pointed it casually in Bernie’s direction. He liked the gun and how it made him feel strong and dangerous. It was modeled loosely on the Colt Peacemaker but made in a down-time gun shop. “Anyone wants to cut me, they had better bring a whole lot more firepower than these candy-asses have.”

  Bernie froze.

  At first Cass thought he had made his point, but Bernie wasn’t really looking scared. Mostly he was looking pissed off.

  It occurred to Cass that pointing a loaded gun at Bernie might be pushing it a bit. He really hadn’t meant to piss Bernie off, not til
l he got the lay of the land, anyway. Especially, he hadn’t meant to let Bernie-boy know that he was competition.

  “Hey man, it’s no big deal,” he said, putting away the gun. “If you got dibs on her, I’ll back off.”

  Cass knew he was smarter than Bernie. He hadn’t done well in school, but that was because school just bored him. Besides, he was a football star. He didn’t need to bust his hump in English class. He knew he could pick up what Bernie was doing pretty quick. He could probably push Bernie out, if he wanted to. But he wasn’t going to put up with much crap from the dumb-ass down-timers. Not him. Not ever.

  Chapter 42

  Cass winced at the bright sunshine when he walked out the door three mornings later. “Oh, man, that hurts.”

  “Think you might want to be a little more careful with the booze?” Bernie’s smirk was irritating. “Sun shining off snow can really dazzle you, but the biggest part of your problem is your hangover. Three days and three hangovers. No wonder it hurts.”

  “Maybe,” Cass muttered. Drinking was about the only thing he was enjoying. Well, that and the girls. Every place they stayed had servant girls. Even staying away from Bernie’s boss-and wasn’t it a laugh that a girl was the boss in Russia-wasn’t hard, not when you had all those other girls around.

  Bernie put on his heavy coat. “You ready? Let’s get a move on. This trip is taking forever. I wish the car was running, I really do. Steering and braking with no power while being towed behind a team of horses is a real pain.”

  “What did you expect? The thing sat on blocks for years, man.” Cass snorted. “Let’s go. Get to this Dacha place and see if you can get it running.”

  Hours in the carriage with only a couple of troops who didn’t speak English was a real bore. But Cass didn’t want to ride on one of the carts out in the open and especially didn’t want to be on horseback. Too cold for that, by half. It was the usual order today. Out ahead of everyone, a double column of ten guards on horseback spread out. Then came the rolling stock. First came the fancy-ass sleigh that the women were in. Cass hated to admit it, but it was actually kind of neat. Boxy, but still sort of streamlined and buffed to a high gloss. Then Bernie was freezing his ass off in that old junker of his. Cass was behind Bernie’s car in his carriage. Then all the carts with all the stuff the Gorchakov dude had sent. At the end of the line there were six more guards. Plus guards in some of the rolling stock.

  Bernie patted the dash. “Oh, yeah. Once I get it running it will be able to do thirty miles an hour at least. Even on these roads and pulling a bunch of stuff.”

  Vladislav Vasl’yevich was riding beside Bernie’s car just then. Partly because he was actually interested in how it worked and could see lots of military applications for these motorized vehicles. Mostly, though, over the course of a day’s travel, he would spend time all along the column. He checked everything, several times a day, to make sure everything was working and looked for trouble before it happened.

  Vladislav had seen and reported on hundreds of military applications in the time that Bernie had been at the Dacha. He hadn’t exactly been ignored. The czar now had a. 30–06. It was handmade with gold engraving, but there was a very limited supply of bullets. There were people making new guns, flintlocks, but only in small numbers, as experiments. There were the war games in the Kremlin. But in Vladislav’s opinion the military had been slow to consider the potential usefulness of the up-timers’ innovations in weapons and tactics.

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing that…” Vladislav stopped at the shout from the front of the column and shots ringing out. “Bandits! To the knyazhna.” He looked around to assess the situation.

  The road here curved from southeast to east. The bandits had either been spotted by the guards out in front or had sortied too early. Probably spotted-that shout had been Petr Kadian’s. It was a large party, it must be. This many trained solders wouldn’t be easy to overcome. From the noise, there were probably around thirty or forty bandits. Most were hitting the front of the column, and the outriders on the north side, which was the inside of the curve. That meant that Vladislav’s men were more spread out than the bandits were and the bandits could react a little faster. Vladislav noted in passing that Bernie was trying to get his. 30–06 out of the back seat of the car. That could help, depending on how Bernie held up in combat.

  Surprisingly, the other outlander, Cass, was out of his carriage and running toward Bernie’s car. “Get down!” Vladislav shouted. “Get down before you get shot!”

  What was the man doing? Vladislav wondered. He was playing with the back of Bernie’s car. The back of the car opened like a great mouth, hiding Cass from Vladislav’s view.

  There hadn’t been bandits in this area for years. It was too well patrolled. Not out of fear of bandits, but to provide warning of an attack by Poland. Vladislav waved to the embassy bureau troops who were bringing up the rear. “To the knyazhna! Don’t worry about the carts, protect Natalia Petrovna and Bernie!” They could probably replace the stuff in the carts if they had to, but they had to protect the princess and Bernie. Vladislav shot one of the bandits and dropped the pistol. He drew the second. He always carried one in each boot and two in his belt.

  “ Yeeeehaaaw! ”

  Vladislav looked around, startled by the scream. Cass had reappeared from the back of Bernie’s car and was carrying a long gun of some sort. He was running at the woods on the north side of the road, screaming like a banshee. Clickety boom, came the noise. And again. Clicktey boom. Clicktey boom. Two bandits were down, one with most of his head blown away. Vladislav watched as Cass cut to the right. Clickety boom. Cut left. Clickety boom. Cass ran in some sort of wild pattern that the attackers couldn’t follow. Neither could Vladislav.

  Crack. A different noise sounded. One of the bandits fell from a horse. Since most of the bandits had been on foot, Vladislav figured he was probably their leader. They should have been paying attention to Bernie instead of Cass, who stood behind his car taking well-aimed shots at the attackers. He was propped up on the front of it, rather. Vladislav could see his head and shoulders. The bandits would be lucky to see his head, or the. 30–06 that was killing them. It would take a special miracle to actually hit a target that small.

  Bernie had frozen for a moment, when the attack began, immobilized by another flashback to the battle of the Crapper. But as he usually did, he managed to shake it off quickly. Store it away, rather; he never did really shake off those memories.

  A familiar detachment came over him. He reached over the back seat, got his rifle, opened the glove compartment and took out a box of ammo. Then he got out of the car and took position using the hood as a firing stand.

  Immediately, he spotted a man on horseback and shot him out of the saddle. Then he looked for Cass. The idiot had managed to take out at least two attackers because they’d been completely caught off guard by his broken field charge and weren’t accustomed to the rate of fire of an up-time pump-action shotgun. But they were fighting men and they were all around him. Bernie could see a bandit already taking aim at Cass from the side.

  Bernie took him down. One shot. All he needed. He wasn’t in the league of someone like Julie Sims when it came to sheer marksmanship but he was very steady in a fight. At this close range and with a modern rifle, that was plenty good enough.

  Lowry gunned down another bandit at point blank range. But for the first time one of his opponents fired back before he fell. He missed because Lowry’s rush unsettled him, but they wouldn’t all miss.

  There was another bandit just beyond Cass, aiming at him. Bernie took him down. A bandit next to him. He went down too.

  Another flashback paralyzed Bernie for an instant. Furiously, he drove it under. But he’d been out of it long enough for Cass to shoot down another bandit-and three bandits to fire at him.

  Blind luck-Cass lost his footing and fell. The bullets passed harmlessly over him. He hadn’t done that intentionally, though. In fact, it was obvious he hadn’
t even seen the three men to his left.

  Bernie shot one of them. The other two immediately ducked for cover. Bernie fired two more shots to keep them down, giving Lowry a chance to get away. Then he started reloading the rifle.

  Vladislav looked around again. The situation wasn’t as bad as it had at first appeared. The attackers had been spotted before most of the column was in the trap. Bernie had apparently gotten their leader, who’d been trying to shift his troops. And Cass, the madman, had spread panic in their ranks-which was made all the worse by Bernie’s deadly covering fire.

  Meanwhile, Vladislav’s men were pushing against their northwestern flank and pinning most of them away from the body of the column. Vladislav wanted to charge the bandits; to use the loss of their leader and the panic. A charge now, even with the few men he had, would break them and send them running. If these were all there were. But, what if there was another group? His job was to protect the knyazhna and Bernie, not to leave them unprotected while he went on a boar hunt.

  The American madman was now out of position. Hopefully, he was out of ammunition as well and would choose to stay down. Cass was well into the trees. Vladislav knew he was going to lose men he couldn’t afford if he rescued the maniac. Yet keeping the up-timers alive was vital. While he was considering his options, there was another new sound.

  Bernie was firing again, having apparently reloaded. It was a heavy covering fire, not aimed at anyone in particular-the bandits in that area were all cowering from him now-but just intended to protect Lowry.

  That should do, Vladimir thought. And now he could see that the bandits were falling back.

  “Hold!” Vladislav shouted. “Don’t chase them. Hold your positions.” Vladislav hated to do it, but their job was to protect, not chase. “Back!” he shouted. “Back!”