Ring of Fire II Read online

  "Unless you have a cord of wood with you, shut the damn door!"

  Yuri made a big show of checking the pockets of his down jacket and thick leather chaps, in the processes of which he managed to push the door closed.

  "Nope, no extra wood here," he said with a grin.

  It wasn't that he was stupid, far from it. That much Paul had realized within five minutes of meeting Yuri. He just tended to be so enthusiastic that when he got an idea it pushed everything else, including common sense, out the back door.

  This was not the first time Yuri had shown up unexpectedly. It had become a regular habit since he had come striding into the Times' office and asked for a job as a reporter. He claimed to have worked for several "local papers" in other parts of Germany, Russia and farther south in the Balkans.

  Paul's father hadn't been that enthusiastic about hiring him, but Paul had convinced him to hire the young Russian anyway. As his father's chief of staff, and managing editor of the Times, he had some say in who was on the staff. There was something in Yuri's intensity, his willingness to follow a story no matter what, that reminded Paul of himself just a few years ago.

  Though there were moments, like this one, where he would have cheerfully strangled Yuri or taken a two-by-four to him, depending on what was handiest.

  "So why the late night visit?" asked Paul, picking up the papers from his table. They showed designs for a fountain pen that local craftsman could make. Paul shoved them into a box and guessed he wouldn't get any more work done on them tonight. He was a newspaperman at heart, but it never hurt to have several money-making enterprises going.

  Yuri began to pace back and forth, occasionally glancing toward the windows as if expecting someone to be looking back at him.

  "I've got a story, a big one. Okay, this goes back a few weeks," he said, "to the Christmas party at the high school."

  That party had been a brilliant stroke, if Paul did say so himself. It had helped improve the morale of all of Grantville; some of the up-timers had been having major problems coming to terms with their "new reality."

  "Yeah, Nina and I were there."

  "I saw you." Yuri grinned. He stopped, again, staring out the window. "But I also saw something else that apparently you missed entirely."

  "Such as?"

  Yuri turned to face Paul, the smile on his face a little too self-satisfied for the older man's liking. "How about General Pappenheim himself there in the school."

  "Gottfried Heinrich Pappenheim? You've got to be joking."

  "I wish I was. When that man shows up there is trouble. It was him, of that I'm sure; the birthmark on his face marks him. Besides, I stood a dozen feet away from him a couple of years ago and got a good look at the man," said Yuri.

  "Wallenstein's chief general, here? Now that might just be a story."

  "It gets better. I spotted him going into the, what do you call it, men's room. He came out dressed all in red. Julie Mackay made him start giving out presents to everyone."

  Santa? Pappenheim had been Santa? Try as he might, Paul couldn't recall the man's face; that red suit dominated everything.

  "Remember when 'Santa' disappeared down the hallway? I was in one of the classrooms and saw what happened. There was some altercation involving two men and a barrel of gunpowder. A few minutes later, I saw Pappenheim talking to Julie Mackay and President Stearns. I couldn't hear worth a damn, but I saw everything. I would swear on my mother's grave that the two of them knew who he was."

  This story sounded so fantastic that Paul wasn't sure if he should kick Yuri out or take him seriously. Not that Paul trusted the government. Oh, Mike Stearns and the rest, individually, were good men and he had no doubt that they were working for the general good. They were still politicians and that meant you had to keep your eye on them.

  Yuri pulled out several sheets of paper and passed them to Paul. "I've got it all written up. It can go in the next edition!"

  One thing you could say about Yuri, he did have easily read handwriting and knew how to put an article together. The story covered everything he had seen, plus a lot of speculation.

  "No, Yuri Andreovich. We can't run this story, not as it stands now," Paul said. "You cannot accuse the government of a secret conspiracy without proof."

  "I've spent the last week asking questions! All it's gotten me is a lot of blank stares and denials. Though I think Lefferts suspects something; I've been followed everywhere I go." Lefferts was Captain Harry Lefferts; he was part of the army but he also functioned as the head of Mike Stearns' special security unit that was directly under the President's authority.

  "I didn't say we wouldn't publish it, but before I will—Proof, we will need proof before we could even consider going to press with this," said Paul.

  Yuri stared at Paul for a long time. "Very well, I will get proof." His voice suggested that his idea of getting proof would look something akin to a bull in a china shop. Yuri pulled his jacket tight about him and headed out the door without a word. A moment later he opened it again and leaned part way in.

  "My byline, above the fold. Da?"

  "Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way."

  Yuri would not wait long, that much Paul knew. While the reporter was long on talent, he was at times short on patience, and Paul had a gut feeling that this could very well be one of those times.

  Pappenheim playing Santa at the Christmas party was just so bizarre that it could have happened. Now if Yuri had suggested it had been Wallenstein, that would have been too much. It wasn't that Stearns wasn't capable of making a deal with Pappenheim, Paul was fairly certain he would, if it were necessary. Like all the other up-timers, Stearns had been forced to adapt to political realities in the seventeenth century.

  Paul needed information, fast.

  That meant Mirari Sesma.

  Mirari was Basque. She had turned up in Grantville three months after the Ring of Fire. Just exactly why she had left the Pyrenees was a bit unclear; a few dropped hints suggested something about a vendetta, but she had never been forthcoming with details.

  Mirari had taken over one of the empty buildings in town and had set up a small café that turned out to be extremely popular. People came, they ate, they drank, they talked, and, most importantly, Mirari listened. Her dark hair and dark eyes gave her an exotic appearance, but her manner was such that people just trusted her. It wasn't long before Mirari seemed to know everything that was going on in town, and if she didn't know it, she could find it out.

  Paul found her in the back of her shop, just after closing at midnight. She was pouring a dark liquid into a cup. Before he could say anything she offered it to him and poured herself another.

  "Chocolate?" he asked, savoring the familiar taste.

  "I just got a supply in. I'll be saving it for special occasions," answered Mirari. "How is Nina?"

  "She's almost over the cold. That herb tea you left certainly helped." Mirari and Nina, Paul's wife, had met weeks before he had been introduced to her. By that time the two of them were like long lost sisters.

  "Besides drinking up my chocolate, what brings you out and about this late at night?"

  "You always did know how to cut to the point." Paul wrapped his hands around the cup, enjoying the warmth. "I've picked up a rumor that General Pappenheim has been seen in the area, the night of the Christmas party?"

  Mirari was hard pressed to keep from laughing. "You've got to be joking. He's not stupid enough to come anywhere near here, not without a very large army at his back. Have you seen the reward for his head?"

  Paul was very familiar with the reward. The Times had bid on and gotten the job of printing wanted posters of both Pappenheim and Wallenstein.

  "And you're serious about this?" asked Mirari.

  "Just see what you can find out, as soon as possible."

  "There is something going on," said Mirari. She had shown up at Paul's front door just after six the next evening. She seemed more than a bit unhappy. "Since noon I've
had the feeling I was being followed, though I saw no one. It's not a feeling that I like."

  Nina had been as pleased to see her as Paul was. The two women hugged and began talking about a half a dozen different subjects as the three of them sat down on the couch.

  Among other things that Paul discovered in the next few minutes was that Nina and Mirari were working on setting up some new classes at the high school and were even talking about going into business together. This was the first time that he had heard anything about that.

  "Hey, even the Times doesn't get every story." Nina laughed.

  "We can try," he told his wife.

  Mirari picked up a small glass vase from the coffee table and began to turn it over and over in her hand. "I've not been able to find anyone who might have seen Pappenheim the night of the Christmas party. Of course, there are the usual sorts of rumors about what he is doing, but none of them put him anywhere near Grantville.

  "One thing I did put together; it may be related to this, it may not, but some of Harry Leffert's men have been hanging around at all hours of the day and night near Edith Wild's house."

  "You're stumbling over Harry Lefferts' men, Yuri was sure they were after him. I am beginning to wonder if Lefferts might be the story, not Pappenheim," muttered Paul, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. "And what does Edith Wild have to do with it?"

  Edith Wild was a nurse, and a force of nature in the minds of many Grantville residents. She was a volunteer on the Red Cross Sanitation Squad, a job that required that type of personality to get the job done. She definitely took her duties seriously and would brook no interference in performing them.

  "I hadn't heard anything about Harry seeing Edith, and I'm not sure if even he could stand up to her should the situation arise," Nina said as she came back from the kitchen with a plate of cookies. "But I suppose it's possible."

  "I wouldn't lay odds on his surviving." Paul chuckled.

  "Are you sure you know the way?"

  Paul didn't bother answering the question, as he hadn't the last four times that Yuri had asked it. His companion did seem to have sense enough to keep his voice down to a whisper, though.

  They had been walking for the better part of two hours, gradually working their way through the forest toward the far end of Grantville. Edith Wild's house was less than a half hour's walk from the Times offices, but just walking over and knocking on her door was not going to get the answers that Paul and Yuri wanted. Paul still wasn't sure that he believed Yuri's story, but he had the definite feeling that something might just be going on.

  Paul had made a point of not going anywhere near Edith's house during the day, not that he normally did anyway. There wasn't that much to see anyway, beyond the home that Wild had occupied for more than half her life.

  There were enough other matters on his plate concerning the Times and several other business projects that his family had in the works to take up Paul's time as he waited at the office for Yuri. A note to Yuri had told him to show up at midnight. The Russian was there at 10 p.m., champing at the bit to get on with it. Paul had considered taking Mirari along, but she had made it clear that she was not interested. Besides, Yuri and she usually ended up arguing about some damn thing or another and they didn't need that tonight.

  "I still think that we should have gone this morning to the President's office and confronted him, in front of everyone. That way he couldn't have squirmed out of it," said Yuri.

  "That isn't the way the Times does things. We need proof, Yuri Andreovich. There may be something going on, there may not; it may just be a lot of things taken out of context. If you don't like it, you can take your story somewhere else," Paul said.

  Yuri muttered something, but it was in Russian and Paul couldn't be sure of exactly what he said.

  In the just over twenty-four hours since Yuri had come sneaking in the back of the Times, the weather had not changed, beyond adding a fresh layer of snow. It was still bitterly cold. The two men's breaths hung in the air, and the ground was frozen, grass crackling under their feet with every step.

  In spite of the weather, Paul did not feel safe in taking a direct route to Edith Wild's house. There was a chance that Yuri could be right, so they doubled back, crossing and recrossing their own trail, watching for any signs that they were not alone in the darkness.

  At one point, Yuri almost tripped over a pair of foxes who were prowling the bushes, looking for food and, no doubt, a warm place to spend the night. It was a sentiment that Paul had come to identify with in the last few hours.

  "We're alone," said Yuri. "Let's get on with it."

  As they neared the house there was a movement a dozen yards ahead of them. Paul tried to focus on it. Before he could say anything or point out the guard to Yuri, half a dozen figures came on them from three different directions. Voices and fists flew and chaos drew Paul in. There were no faces, just colors and shapes and sound.

  Yuri kept moving, dodging the attackers, until he reached the house. He boosted himself up toward a window, using a snow-covered box, hanging on the sill for only a matter of a heartbeat or two.

  Paul had little time to watch Yuri. He managed to land several good punches, his fists connecting with bare flesh and clothing. As he turned, Paul felt a sharp pain in the lower part of his back and then a matching one at the base of his neck that sent him crashing to the ground and into darkness.

  Paul opened blurry eyes and found himself staring at the business end of a double-barreled shotgun about eight inches from his face. A million miles away, at the other end of the weapon, Paul could just make out the face of a man he did not recognize.

  "Can I interest you in a subscription to the Times? Makes a great after Christmas gift for yourself." He gulped. In the back of his mind he was envisioning what the shotgun would do to his face. Of course, he also knew that he would not be alive to see it. He figured flippancy could be the only way to go right now; it wasn't as if he had a whole lot of options right then.

  Mike Stearns stepped out of the shadows. He looked at Paul for a moment, shook his head, softly chuckled and waved the shotgun wielding man back.

  "On your feet." Mike extended his hand to help Paul get to his feet. "What the hell are you doing prowling around in the woods tonight? And before you ask, I already am a Times subscriber."

  "I would say that shows your good taste, but I happen to know you subscribe to the Daily News and the Street as well," said Paul.

  Another man came up to Mike. It took Paul a moment to recognize Harry Lefferts. "There were two of them," he told Mike. "We lost the trail of the other one, down by the creek. I'm fairly certain that it was a pain-in-the-butt reporter named Kuryakin. My men have been watching him for the last couple of days."

  "Bloody great," muttered Mike. "So, Paul, you never answered my question."

  Paul struggled to his feet, wiped himself off and pulled his notebook and a pencil out. "I'm doing my job, reporting. I've come to interview your visitor."

  "Visitor? Visitor? I'm not sure what you're talking about," said Mike.

  "Mike, let's cut the crap. You and those playmates of yours wouldn't be prowling around the woods at three in the morning any more than I would, unless something important was going on. You can deny it, but I'd know you were lying." This wasn't the first time Paul had run a bluff to get a story, though in the pit of his stomach he felt it wasn't a bluff. "The Times is going to run a story, speculating on just who that visitor might be and why you're going to all this trouble to hide him. Now, you can help me make this story as accurate as possible, or live with the consequences of not bringing me in on it."

  Mike went immobile for a moment. The only sound, beyond those drifting in from the woods, was their breathing. It was almost two full minutes before he spoke.

  "All right, come inside. There's someone that you need to meet."

  The "visitor" was awake. It was not who Paul had expected.

  Wallenstein was sitting up in bed,
with several pillows behind him. He looked pale, even in the light from the single candle next to his bed. The man's lower jaw was wrapped in bandages. There was a bulge under the blanket that Paul suspected might be a loaded pistol.

  Harry Lefferts stood in one corner of the room, an unhappy expression on his face.

  "You, sir, present me with a moral dilemma," Paul said after Mike had introduced him. "You know I came here to get a story for my newspaper. But if I write it, I cause major problems not only for my government, which I don't mind doing, but possibly for all of Grantville."

  Wallenstein picked up a pad and wrote quickly:

  MORALS ARE FOR CHURCHMEN;

  STATESMEN CANNOT AFFORD THEM.