Mike found Gustav Adolf waiting for him in one of the many rooms of Luebeck's Rathaus, which he'd turned into his central headquarters for the siege. He had only one aide with him, Colonel Nils Ekstrom. He and his brother Siguard were among the small circle of Swedish officers that Gustav used for the most delicate matters. That was a signal, in itself, that the emperor wanted to be able to speak freely—which, with Gustav, usually meant bluntly. If he'd had his usual coterie of officers, he'd be quite a bit more discreet. But Ekstrom was his closest adviser in Luebeck, and Mike knew the emperor had complete faith in him.
Mike had to struggle a little to keep his expression solemn. There was something about the bearing of the emperor and the colonel—perhaps they were breathing a bit too heavily, it was hard to know exactly—that made it clear to Mike that they'd just gotten here themselves. Having walked there very quickly, so they wouldn't have to admit to Mike that they'd actually been standing on the city walls watching his plane land, just as if they were one of the city's bumpkins, instead of awaiting his presence in royal serenity.
As was his way, Gustav went right past the usual formalities.
"So!" he half-bellowed. "Deny it if you will! It was you who gave the order to pass our medical secrets to the damned Spaniards outside Amsterdam." The sneer that followed was as royal as you could ask for. "Or will you try to claim—I believe you scheming up-timers call it 'plausible deniability'—that the fault was entirely that of the nurse. Anne—Anne—"
He cocked an eye at Ekstrom.
"Anne Jefferson," the colonel supplied. "Although it might be Anne Olearius, now. She was to be married to that Holstein diplomat, I'm told, and she may insist on that peculiar American custom of women changing their last names to their husbands'."
"It's actually an English custom in its origins, I believe," Mike said mildly. "They're not married yet, anyway. As for the other, Your Majesty, the answer is yes. Of course I'm the one who gave the order. Leaving aside the fact that she's no more careless than any good nurse, why would Anne have been carrying the formula with her in the first place—when she was simply posing for Rubens?"
"Ha! You admit it, then!"
That was . . .
About a three-quarter bellow. Between the volume, the tone, and various subtleties in the emperor's expression lurking under the bull walrus ferocity on the surface, Mike decided Gustav Adolf was in negotiating mode. He did have a temper, and he was perfectly capable of throwing a genuine royal tantrum at whatever subordinate had roused his ire. But he was very shrewd, too, and knew that his famous temper could also serve as a useful bargaining ploy.
It was all old hat, for Mike. In times past, when he'd been the president of his mine workers local having a confrontation with management, Quentin Underwood had used exactly the same tactic. Granted, Gustav was much better at it—not to mention having the status of an emperor instead of a mere mine manager, to give weight to the thing. But a bargaining tactic is a tactic, no matter how different the circumstances of the negotiation.
So, he responded with his usual riposte. Calm, forebearing reason. Not quite suggesting that the emperor was a five-year-old having a childish fit, but bordering on it.
" 'Admit' is hardly the correct term, Your Majesty. The ploy was obviously to our benefit and could not possibly do us any harm."
"Do us no harm! You may well have saved the lives of thousands of enemy soldiers—the same ones baying at our allies in Amsterdam like a great pack of wolves."
"Oh, hardly that, Your Majesty. To begin with, chloramphenicol is so hard to make in any quantities—even for us, much less the Spaniards—that providing them with the formula was almost entirely a symbolic gesture. I doubt if more than a dozen Spanish soldiers will benefit from it, over the next year—and they will be entirely top officers, not the men who would be storming the ramparts. As for the rest—"
He shrugged. "My wife tells me that after the first week, the Spanish have not been pressing the siege. And pressed it even less, after we passed them the formula. They're behaving like watch dogs, not wolves. Which makes perfect sense, since the cardinal-infante is really aiming at a settlement, and would far rather keep Amsterdam and its productive population intact than see it all destroyed in a sack."
Gustav glowered at him, for a moment. "Still. Michael, you are trying to maneuver me. Do not deny it!"
Mike decided it was time to show a little of the bull walrus himself. So he almost sneered. Not quite. "Oh, for the love of—"
Now, a sigh, almost histrionic. Not quite.
"Gustav II Adolf, you've been a king for over twenty years—and a smart one, to boot. You know perfectly well that every adviser you have is trying to 'maneuver' you—if you insist on that term—practically every time they talk to you."
"Not me," said Ekstrom mildly.
Mike glanced at the colonel, and gave him an acknowledging nod. "No, Nils, not you. Not directly, at least. But—don't deny it, since we seem to be demanding that all cards be placed up on the table—your whole stance toward the emperor is a maneuver, in one sense. Yes, I know you simply try to help him determine what his own wishes really are. That's part of what a monarch needs."
Mike smiled. "Let's say that the emperor is using you as a tool to maneuver himself, if you prefer."
Ekstrom smiled back. "Yes, I would prefer it. And it's not a bad description of my duties"—he glanced apologetically at the emperor—"if Your Majesty will allow me the liberty of saying so."
Gustav puffed out his thick blond mustache. "And why not? Since my prime minister takes far greater liberties."
He began pacing a little, half-stomping in the heavy cavalry boots he favored. That was a familiar sign to Mike—to Nils also, judging from the slight look of relief on the colonel's face. It meant the sumo wrestler preliminaries were over, for the most part, and the serious negotiations were about to begin.
"And you think we should do everything in our power to move that along," the emperor said. Almost growling the words, but not quite.
"Yes, Your Majesty, I do."
"Why? Michael, I am quite certain that when I launch our counteroffensive in the spring that I will crush the Danes and beat the French bloody. That stinking traitor Bernhard also, if he lets his arrogance rule him instead of his brain, and gets in my way. The Spaniards too, if they come out into the field."
"But they won't," said Mike firmly. "I don't care what they promised the French. The Spanish shed most of the blood in the naval war, and they are in no mood to do the same on land. Don Fernando has never sent more than a token force to the siege here. And when the fighting starts in the spring, he'll only move his main forces out just far enough to look like he's doing something—but will make sure he can get back behind his fortifications if your offensive succeeds."
He gauged that the time was right to adopt informality. "Gustav, on that subject we have—being blunt, the Committee of Correspondence in Amsterdam has—superb intelligence. Partly, by the way, as a side effect of the medical assistance we've been providing the army outside the walls of the city. Gretchen's made sure that at least half of those medical advisers are CoC members."
That roused the emperor's temper again, as Mike had known it would. But since it would happen in any event, best to get it out of the way now.
"That damned Richter! All we need in the mix is that she-devil in Amsterdam! And that was your doing, too! Deny it!"
"Well, in this instance, I will deny it," said Mike patiently. "None of us had any idea the NUS embassy to the Netherlands would wind up getting trapped in a siege in Amsterdam. Or"—he arched an eyebrow—"are you now suggesting I somehow manipulated Richelieu and Christian IV and Charles I and Philip IV into forming the League of Ostend and launching a sneak attack on the Dutch? If so, that makes me the devil himself."
Gustav waved a meaty hand impatiently. "Fine, fine. You did not plot and scheme to plant Richter in Amsterdam. She's still there, stirring up trouble."
Mike maintained the same patient tone. "By all accounts the city's population is not restive at all. Gretchen's people are actually helping to maintain morale and discipline. Becky tells me that Fredrik Hendrik has now had three meetings with her, all of which went quite cordially."
Gustav stopped his pacing and frowned. "Is that true?"
"Yes, it is. Even Gretchen is now willing to admit that a good settlement in the Low Countries would be preferable to a deepening of the conflict. So Becky tells me, anyway." Mike smiled. "Mind you, Gretchen's definition of a 'good settlement' is pretty astringent."
"Ha! I can imagine! Not only complete freedom of religion but sheer anarchy of expression and belief!" The emperor's mustache was practically quivering.
Mike responded a bit stiffly. "I simply think of it as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the freedom to assemble. We have the same principles encoded in the constitution of Thuringia, as you well know, and—as you well know, also—I am doing my level best to incorporate them in the new constitution of the USE. I probably won't be able to pull it off—yet—because I think Wilhelm will win the election. But those are my beliefs, and I will not waver from them."
The emperor got a distracted look on his face. "Speaking of which, when do you propose to hold the elections?" He gave Mike a look through those bright blue eyes that reminded Stearns that the emperor was a very shrewd man, beneath the sometimes blustery exterior. "You know—if you were a proper schemer and plotter—you would hold the elections right in the middle of the campaign. Most Germans would be more comfortable with Wilhelm Wettin as their prime minister, I think also. But . . . in time of war? I'm not so sure, Michael. You might get reelected."
Mike shrugged. "And so what? The war would be over, soon enough, and then I would face a reluctant electorate when it came time to implement the policies I want. Better, I think, to let things unfold at their own pace. Once Germany has the experience of Wettin in power, people may feel differently about things."
Ekstrom had been following the discussion closely, and by now had become an astute observer of the politics of the USE. "You think he will insist on restricting the franchise? That will be the explosive issue, you know, not the religious business. I wouldn't think Wilhelm would be that stubborn."
Gustav Adolf was now listening intently also, but not saying anything. There was more in his stance and expression of an interested and curious observer than that of a ruler who had to make a decision any time soon. Mike wasn't positive, but he didn't think Gustav had any definite opinion on the subject of who should—and should not—be a citizen of the United States of Europe.
There was no reason he needed to have one, after all. Not yet, at least. His title of Emperor of the USE might be abstractly more prestigious than his title of the King of Sweden, but Gustav's real power stemmed from the latter, not the former. In Sweden, he ruled as a monarch, with none of the constitutional restrictions he faced as emperor of the new German nation. And as thorny and potentially volcanic as the problem of defining citizenship was for Germans, it was simply not an issue in Sweden.
"Left to his own devices, Nils," Mike said, "I think Wilhelm would prefer to just let the controversy over citizenship die a natural death. He knows that my party will introduce a proposal for complete and universal adult suffrage, whether I'm still the prime minister or simply the leader of the opposition. And no matter what, I can't see any realistic outcome of any election held within the next year or two that didn't produce a legislature at least one-third of whose members belonged to my party. In the lower house, we might even wind up with a majority. So all Wilhelm would have to do is quietly see to it that enough of his supporters agreed to it. And since the prime minister has no say-so over measures adopted in a special constitutional convention, he couldn't even be blamed for not vetoing it."
"But . . ." The emperor cocked his head.
Mike shrugged again. "He owes too many favors, Gustav. Way too many. He made the mistake—this is my opinion, anyway—of going for a quick victory instead of taking the time to solidify his position. Those 'Crown Loyalists' of his are not really a political party so much as a coalition of several different parties, first of all. Second, they don't have anything you could properly call a program. What they have is basically just a pastiche." He grinned, rather sarcastically. " 'What we don't like about Mike Stearns,' is really all it amounts to—which is not the same thing as 'what we believe.' And finally—"
He started scratching his jaw, in an old mannerism, before remembering Francisco Nasi's insistence that it was a bad habit for a political leader. Before she left, Becky had told him the same thing.
"And finally"—he dropped his hand—"the only real cement that holds that ramshackle 'party' of his together is a complicated crosshatch of favors exchanged between Wettin and a large number of people, most of whom—almost all of whom, except for Quentin Underwood and a few other up-timers—are noblemen of one sort or another. There are a few of them, like the landgrave and landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, who are smart enough and secure enough that I think they'd just as soon see the citizenship issue buried. Ironically, I think Wilhelm's brother Ernst feels the same way about it."
That last sentence was as much of a question aimed at the emperor, as it was a statement. Ernst Wettin had decided to let his brother Albrecht assume the position of Duke of Saxe-Weimar after Wilhelm abdicated in order to run for office in the Commons. Instead, Ernst had accepted Gustav Adolf's offer to become the imperial administrator for the Upper Palatinate. Officially, he still retained his title as one of the dukes of Saxe-Weimar, but that no longer really meant very much.
Gustav nodded. "Yes, I think you are right. Judging from what I hear from General Banér, at least. Ernst is too fussy for Banér's taste—of course, almost anyone is too fussy for that man—but he never issues the sort of complaints about stupid petty aristocrats that he normally bestows on German noblemen."
Mike decided to let the matter drop, for the moment. He was tempted to probe a little further, to see if he could get the emperor to take a definite stance on the citizenship issue. But . . .
One thing at a time. He had an immediately pressing issue to deal with. And one that he could no longer handle by—he'd admit to himself the charge had been true enough—maneuvering Gustav Adolf. To do what needed to be done now, he had to have the emperor's full agreement, or it would all unravel come next spring.
Gustav, as perceptive as he normally was, spotted the moment also. "You want to keep driving the negotiations with the Spaniards. Or rather—since what you obviously have in mind is splitting the Spaniards—with the cardinal-infante."
"Yes."
Gustav, cheerfully defying all counsels concerning the proper mannerisms for august political leaders, began tugging at his mustache. "It's tempting, Michael. Yes, it is. As God is my witness, I can think of few things that would delight me more than seeing those stinking Habsburgs divided and quarreling among themselves as much as possible."
He left off the mustache-tugging and held up an admonishing finger. "But! Two things concern me. The first—the simplest—is that I am also sure I can overrun the Netherlands myself."
Catching sight of Colonel Ekstrom's slight wince, the emperor barked a laugh. "You too! Another skeptic!"
He went back to his mustache-tugging. "Well. I should have said, the three northern provinces. None of them have any great allegiance to the United Provinces, being mostly Catholics. I agree it would be unwise to try to push further, into the Dutch heartland."
Mike took a deep breath. They had now entered very perilous territory. For all that he basically liked and admired Gustav Adolf, he never let himself forget that at bottom the king of Sweden was not that much different from any monarch of the time. He was an imperialist, at heart. For seventeenth-century rulers, grabbing as much land as possible was second nature. The nationalist sentiments that would dominate Europe before too long were still nascent in most places, although you could easily see them emerging if you looked and knew what to look for.
But no monarch did, not even Gustav Adolf. They thought in dynastic terms, not national terms—even those of them who, like Richelieu or Gustav himself, had carefully studied the histories brought back in time through the Ring of Fire. There was simply that deep-seated part of them that didn't quite believe that any ramshackle dynastic territory they built up would surely come to pieces, sooner or later, if it didn't have firm roots in popular sentiment.
Again, however, Mike decided to let it slide. He was pretty sure that Gustav's desire to add three small Dutch provinces to his dynasty wasn't really important to him. Assuming Gustav won the war, Mike intended to keep just enough to allow the USE Navy to dominate the Zuider Zee, if need be. His own motives were mostly as a way of throttling the life out of the slave trade while it was still in its infancy. But he was fairly certain that Gustav would settle for that, over time, simply as a token of his triumph.
The emperor's real territorial ambitions were toward the east. First, once the war with the Ostenders was over, Mike knew that Gustav was determined to punish the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony for their treacherous behavior by expropriating their territories outright. He'd do what he'd already done with Mecklenburg and Pomerania, simply add them to the USE as provinces.
So much, Mike had no quarrel with. In fact, he was for it. Saxony—even Brandenburg in this day and age, which hadn't yet undergone its metamorphosis into Prussia—were both German lands. But the problem was that any war with Saxony and Brandenburg was almost sure to bring in the Poles, and Gustav would then use that as a pretext to try to conquer Poland. Or a good chunk of it, at least. From his point of view, why not? Poland and Sweden had been fighting for decades, and it wasn't as if the king of Poland didn't claim that he should rightfully be the king of Sweden. Serve the bastard right.
Except, if that happened, Mike knew full well that the USE would simply be tying an albatross to its neck. Giving itself the same grief with Poland that, in a different universe, the Russians had done—more than once, and it had never worked.
But . . .
Let it slide, just let it slide. That was going to be quite literally a battle royal, when it happened. But it was a problem that wouldn't arise for about a year—and Mike had the situation in the Low Countries on his plate right now.
It was better, for the moment, to deal with Gustav's other objection. Mike was pretty sure he knew what it was going to be—and, if so, he thought he could persuade the emperor to follow his advice.
"And your second reservation, Your Majesty?"
Gustav dropped his hand from the mustache and spread both arms wide. "Oh, come, Michael! Surely it's obvious. The inevitable result of your plotting and scheming—your wife's, too! even worse than yours!—will be a powerful realm in the Low Countries. More than that. A united Netherlands is bound to sweep into it any number of the surrounding small principalities. What you propose is nothing less than the recreation of old Burgundy. And is that—"
Gustav went right back to his mustache-pulling. A bit enviously, Mike reflected that there were some advantages to being a king. To hell with advisers nattering you about perfectly comfortable habits. L'État, c'est moi—and that includes the damn mustache.
"Is that really in the interests of the United States of Europe?" Gustav concluded. "Or Sweden, for that matter, especially since—I will brook no arguments on this, Michael—you know I have every intention of recreating the Union of Kalmar. Once I've finished pounding that drunken Danish bastard Christian into a pulp."
There was no way Mike was going to stick his thumb into that issue. Not now, anyway. Personally, he had reservations concerning the emperor's plan to forge the first united Scandinavian realm since the Middle Ages. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't—but, either way, it was not an issue that directly confronted the USE.
"Look at the problem the other way, Gustav. You read the histories. Half the grief suffered by Europe—the western part, anyway—came from that endless back-and-forth between the Germans and the French over the territory in the middle. In the here and now, and all the way through the next two centuries, mostly as a result of French aggression. Thereafter, usually, because the Germans got strong enough to respond in kind. And to what purpose, in the end?"
The emperor scowled slightly, but said nothing.
"No purpose at all—but tens of millions of people lost their lives in the process. So I think it would be wise to do what we can to forestall the mess altogether. And I can think of no better way to do it than to create a nation in the middle which is powerful enough—unlike the Holland and Belgium of my old universe—that both the French and the Germans have to think twice before they decide to pick a fight.
"Besides that," he pressed on, "having a commercially prosperous and industrious Netherlands will be to our benefit economically. And they can't ever pose a real military threat, because even a recreated Burgundy simply can't have a large enough population to field big armies."
"They could certainly become a major naval power," Ekstrom pointed out. "The Dutch have managed that much on their own, even today."
There wasn't much vehemence to his statement, though. It was more in the way of an observation than an argument.
Mike didn't even have to answer that himself, in the event, since Gustav Adolf did.
"I am not much concerned about that, Nils," he said. "Without Denmark, they can't bottle us up in the Baltic. And"—here, a heavy shrug—"I do not foresee us having to squabble with them much with regard to the world beyond."
He was eyeing Mike by the time he finished, but didn't add anything. Mike was almost certain that Gustav knew how unyielding Mike intended to be over the slave trade—an issue that would certainly produce clashes with the Dutch, no matter what political entity emerged in the Low Countries. True, the Dutch weren't involved much in the slave trade yet—but "yet" was the operative term. They almost surely would be, within a decade at the latest. The same powerful commercial dynamics that had led them to become one of the leading nations in the slave trade in Mike's former universe applied just as fully in this one.
But, as with the issue of USE citizenship, the slave trade was simply not an issue that a king of Sweden cared much about. Not directly, at least. Neither Sweden nor any of the Scandinavian countries had been significant players in the slave trade, in the world Mike came from, and there was not much likelihood they would be in this one either.
Like Mike himself, the emperor had enough sense to let issues slide for a time, that didn't need to be dealt with immediately. His gaze was very keen, now, his eyes seeming to be as blue as blue could get.
"All right, Michael. Let's get down to the heart of things. You did not undertake such a flamboyant and somewhat risky venture as flying into Luebeck—I admit, it was splendid for the morale of my soldiers—simply to chat with me. You have something specific in mind. Something you suspect—ha!—I would dismiss out of hand if it came to me in the form of a radio message."
"Yes, I do. Here's what I propose . . ."
Gustav didn't explode, when Mike finished. Not in a temper tantrum, at least. He did, however, erupt into a truly imperial spasm of uproarious laughter.
"Ha! Ha!" he finally managed to exclaim. "Never since Menelaus has a husband displayed such an obsession for a wife! But that pitiful Greek wench simply launched a thousand ships and destroyed a city, so her husband could bed her again. To do the same to your wife, you propose to launch an entire nation!"
Mike could have argued that, of course, any which way from Sunday. It was actually not true at all that a crude desire to see his wife again after an absence of many months—fine, copulate with his wife again—was the motive impelling him forward.
Well, not the first one, anyway. Not even the second. The third, he'd grant.
But he said nothing. Partly because that third motive was pressing so closely on the first two that he wasn't quite sure he could pull it off with a straight face. And partly because the ribaldry had put Gustav in such a good mood.
"The cardinal-infante would have to agree to a cease-fire, though," Ekstrom cautioned. "I don't see any way you could land the plane in the city itself."
Mike nodded. "Well, yes. That would have to be part of the deal—and as good a way as any to test his trustiworthiness."
Finally done with his laughing, Gustav peered at Mike. "And you are willing to be the bait? Well, I can see that. She is a very beautiful woman. And not unfaithful, like that wretched Helen. What was Menelaus thinking, the idiot?"