Amiens, France
“Lord Turenne, we have finished searching their gear. Nothing suspicious, sir.”
Turenne nodded and dismissed his orderly with a wave. He had watched from a narrow casement window when, hours ago, the strange trio had first approached the portcullis of his “testing facility.” They had surrendered their arms as though they expected to do no less, submitted to the further indignity of a close personal search, and were then led into the courtyard to await a more thorough check of their rucksacks and gear.
While waiting on that process, Turenne had compared their self-written letters of introduction with the fragmentary dossiers he already possessed on two of the three men. The French intelligence was patchy at best, but confirmed that such persons did exist, that the individuals in the courtyard answered to their general descriptions, and that the positions and abilities they claimed in their letters certainly conformed to those attributed to them by the analysts in Paris. But neither source provided any clue as to why the group’s two persons of note might be traveling together or why they desired an audience with Turenne himself. However, they had both been clear and politely specific regarding that latter point: they were not interested in speaking with the senior military authorities in Paris, nor Turenne’s chief of staff Robert du Barry. They required an audience with Turenne. Otherwise, they explained—again politely—they would take their leave, and take their proposal elsewhere. Given his busy schedule, Turenne would normally have dictated a brief note, wishing them bon chance and pleasant travels to whoever was the next influential person on their list.
But one of the two credentialed strangers was an American technical expert. The other was the storied son of an exiled Irish earl, and had played a pivotal role in repulsing Frederik Hendrik’s drive on Bruges just four years ago. If Turenne had ever encountered a more peculiar pair of traveling companions, he could not recall it.
There was the anticipated knock on the door. Turenne elected to stand. “Enter.”
Du Barry, along with two guards armed with Cardinal breech-loading carbines, brought the unlikely duo into Turenne’s office. Du Barry looked to Turenne, who waved a desultory hand at him. “I am safe here, Robert. You may go.”
With a backward bow, du Barry and the two guards departed—and headed to join two other guards secreted in small rooms adjacent to this one, the entrances concealed behind bookcases and mirrors. The code “I am safe here” had sent them to these secret stations to oversee their viscount’s protection.
However, as the door closed behind Turenne’s security entourage, the land-displaced Irish earl and the time-displaced American looked at the walls, and then exchanged glances. Then they looked at Turenne. And smiled faintly.
So much for preserving the impression of trust and a private meeting. Turenne surprised himself by returning their smiles. “Please understand, gentlemen, in my position, to be contemptuous of possible risk is to be contemptuous of one’s own life.”
The taller and younger of the two spoke. “We understand completely, Lord de la Tour d’Auverge.”
He waved away that title like cobwebs. “My dear Comte, er, Earl of Tyrconnell, let us dispense with these titles. They are so cumbersome, particularly mine. I am simply Turenne.”
“And by that usage, I am simply O’Donnell.”
“And your companion?”
The American stepped forward, hand half-extended, but then he glanced at the room’s bookcases and mirrors. Mon Dieu, is it so obvious? Turenne came around his desk. As he extended his hand in the American fashion, he imagined a nervous du Barry whelping kittens in his sally port. “I welcome your hand, Monsieur—?”
“McCarthy, Michael McCarthy. Junior. A pleasure, Lord Turenne.”
Plain manners and plain spoken, but forthright, honest, and unbowed. Turenne had heard this about most of the Americans. To many of his aristocratic peers, it made the up-timers intolerable abominations, like ogres who had learned enough of the ancient virtues of Athens and Pericles to become both supremely ridiculous and dangerous at the same time. But Turenne found the effect refreshing. He could already anticipate how, with a man of this demeanor, one could get to ideas, could get to agreements, and could get down to work, very quickly. And without the interminable folderol of titles, and protocols, and curtsies. “I welcome both of you to my, well, you might call them ‘experimental laboratories.’” And with that greeting, Turenne resumed his seat. And waited.
O’Donnell heard the unasked question in the silence. “We apologize for taking the liberty of seeking you at your place of work, and with no proper application for an audience. But our circumstances and the import of our proposal are both such that this direct approach seemed best, if regrettably brusque.”
“I see. Which explains much, Lord O’Donnell, since you could certainly have asked one of your correspondents for a thoroughly adequate introduction.” Or could have used them to bypass me altogether, Turenne observed silently. “Unless I am misinformed, your seal is well-known to the pope and Philip of Spain.”
Hugh nodded. “It is.”
“Yet here you are, on my doorstep, without any of the letters of introduction which would have assured you of immediate audience, and spared you the distasteful experience of being searched and examined like a common highwayman.”
The American answered. “Had Lord O’Donnell secured those letters, he would also have alerted those same persons to our meeting with you.”
Turenne nodded and looked at the displaced earl. “Lord O’Donnell, if I am not mistaken, you have been in the court, and then direct service, of Archduchess Infanta Isabella of the Spanish Lowlands, since you were two years of age. Have you now chosen to seek service elsewhere?”
The Irishman’s face took on a melancholy expression. “I had little enough ‘choice’ in the matter, given what the histories of Grantville have shown me.”
“I can sympathize, sir. My own career was changed as a result of those documents. Cardinal Richelieu advanced me on the strength of deeds I had not yet performed, and now, never can, for that history has been irreversibly changed. Is it the same with you?”
“According to their books, I am a dead man in seven years.”
Turenne felt his stomach contract, suddenly cold. “Mon Dieu—Lord O’Donnell, my apologies. I had no idea, or I would not have spoken with such insouciance.”
O’Donnell waved aside the apology. “We all have different fates. And that was mine if I remained in Spanish service. And probably the fate of many hundreds of my countrymen, as well. And all for naught.”
Turenne had read a précis of the European histories that had arrived with Grantville. “Sir, again you have my sympathies, but I must also be frank. I see no promise that the new history we are now embarked upon will make France any more ardent a supporter of Irish interests. Given the recent combination of our fleet and England’s to defeat the Dutch, I must sadly project that there might even be less reason for hope.”
“I do not place my hope in France, Lord Turenne. I place it in you.”
The surprise of those words left Turenne both baffled and a bit wary. “Me? Why me?”
But it was McCarthy who answered. “Because, Lord Turenne, your nationality isn’t what’s important in this case. What’s important is that you obviously understand, really understand, the kind of changes my town has brought to your world.”
“Your opinion flatters me, Monsieur McCarthy. But then why is the earl of Tyrconnell not joining his banner to that of your USE, and Grantville in particular? It is the very embodiment of those changes.”
“Which is probably why that’s not the wisest choice for Lord O’Donnell. His former liege King Philip isn’t exactly a fan of ours, and vice versa. Besides there’s the matter of his men’s Roman Catholicism.”
Turenne nodded. Of course. Many of O’Donnell’s “Wild Geese” were extremely devout Roman Catholics, and most had been driven from their lands to make room for resettled Protestants. Their religious fervor and grudges would be a poor fit for the USE, which, despite its lopsided polyglot of different faiths, was founded upon the strong military spine and current leadership of the Swedish Lutheran Gustav Adolf. “So then, Mr. McCarthy, I suppose it is your presence which is the greater mystery. As I understand it, you still retain your post as a Senior Instructor at Grantville’s Technical College. If I also understand correctly, I would be a fool not to detain you on the spot and make your future freedom contingent upon your helping us with any number of mechanical challenges that my researchers currently find insurmountable.”
McCarthy smiled. “But you won’t do that.”
Turenne kept himself from bristling at the American’s self-assured tone. “Oh? And why not?”
“Well, first, it’s not the kind of man you are.”
“Indeed? And just how would you know what kind of man I am?”
“I know about the letter you wrote to Mike Stearns last year, expressing regret that your men killed Quentin Underwood during their raid on the oil field at Wietze.”
Turenne suppressed any physical reaction to McCarthy’s observation, even as he thought: Interesting: that epistolary gesture has borne some diplomatic fruit, after all.
McCarthy continued. “Detaining me would also ruin any hope of accord with Lord O’Donnell, thereby permanently and personally inflaming the Irish regiments in the Low Lands against you and France. But most important, forcing me to work for you wouldn’t accomplish anything, since you obviously know that men who work against their will neither give you their best work, nor can they be trusted.”
Turenne nodded. “All true. But I find it odd that you do not include your status as an American as a further restraint upon me. After all, keeping you against your will could be inflamed into an international incident.”
McCarthy shifted. “If I were here as a representative of the USE, that would be true. But I’m not here in that capacity.”
Turenne studied McCarthy carefully. “No?”
“No, Lord Turenne. Right now, I’m a free agent.”
“You have renounced your citizenship in the USE?”
“No. But I’ve never taken a day off from my work at the college. It took me a few months to persuade my bosses, but I arranged to take all those days at once, added to a leave of absence. They didn’t like that much, but they don’t really have any one else with my skills.” He shrugged. “I can do as I please with that time.”
“And it pleases you to come here for—a visit?”
If McCarthy found the bathos amusing, he gave no sign of it. “I came here to make money, Lord Turenne.”
Who, being unaccustomed to such a frank admission of monetary need, neither expected nor knew how to respond to McCarthy’s statement. And it seemed that McCarthy himself had not been entirely comfortable uttering it. Unsure how to navigate this delicate impasse, Turenne leaned back—
—just as O’Donnell leaned forward: “Lord Turenne, Mr. McCarthy is a proud man. His father, Don McCarthy, is severely ill and requires constant and increasing care. More care than Michael can readily afford.”
Turenne experienced a moment of utter social disorientation. “But does not the American government—?”
“With your indulgence,” interrupted the Irish earl smoothly, “neither the USE nor Grantville itself provide for the private needs of even its most important personages. Within reason, they are expected to see to their own expenses.”
Turenne looked at Michael and found two subtly defiant but pride-bruised eyes looking back at him. If this was an act, it was an extraordinarily good one. “I see,” said Turenne, who remembered something else connecting pride and the name “McCarthy” in the intelligence he’d read on Grantville. Specifically, the McCarthy family was noted as holding an extensive book collection, and ardent political sympathies, that were both radically pro-Irish. And here sat an up-timer named McCarthy with a displaced Irish earl. The pieces were coming together. “So now I know why you are here. But I still have no idea what it is you wish to propose.”
McCarthy’s posture did not change, but his eyes became more expressive, less defensive. “We propose to help you with some of your current ‘logistical initiatives,’ Lord Turenne.”
Turenne was not sure whether he should be amused or aghast at the blithe certainty underlying such an offer. “And just what initiatives are those, Mr. McCarthy?”
“Well, to start with, I think we have a way to help you achieve some of your long-term objectives in the Caribbean.”
Turenne frowned. “Mr. McCarthy, I am rather busy, but out of deference to your background, I made time for this meeting However, I hardly think that France needs to consult with you—or, respectfully, the earl of Tyrconnell—on its strategic posture in the Caribbean.”
McCarthy shrugged. “I don’t propose to advise you on general regional strategy, Lord Turenne. I have a very specific objective in mind.”
“Oh? And that would be?”
“Trinidad.”
Turenne leaned back a little and narrowed his eyes. With every passing second, the conversation was becoming more interesting and also more dangerous. Michael McCarthy, Jr., and perhaps higher-ranking Americans, had been doing their homework, evidently. And now began the delicate dance—for which Turenne had little taste—of learning how much the Americans knew and conjectured, even as McCarthy might now be trying to determine the same thing about him and France’s own speculations. Turenne studied the expressionless up-timer and thought: he is a mechanic, a man who works with wheels. And he himself may be filled by wheels within wheels. A spy? Perhaps. But perhaps an emissary, as well. And both roles would require extreme discretion at this point.
“Trinidad,” echoed Turenne eventually. “An interesting location to focus upon. Why there?”
“The petroleum deposits at Pitch Lake. They’re right on the surface.”
“True. But why would I want to travel across the Atlantic for oil?”
“For the same reason you took all the engineering plans from the oilfield at Wietze before you disabled the facility. You wouldn’t have been interested in those plans if you didn’t realize that France needs its own aircraft, vehicles and other systems dependent upon internal combustion engines. And that, in turn, means France must have oil. And getting oil quickly necessitates owning surface deposits that you can access with only minimal improvement to your current drilling capabilities.”
Turenne acknowledged the truth of the deductions with a wave of his hand. Denying something so obvious would only make him seem childish. “So, even if we accept your conjecture, I am still no closer to getting oil, even if I am willing to cross the Atlantic. Pitch Lake is held by the Spanish.”
“It is on a Spanish island. That’s not quite the same thing.”
So they also had access to tactical intelligence on Trinidad. That was interesting. “You seem unusually familiar with, and sure about, the disposition of Spanish forces on Trinidad,” he said.
McCarthy nodded. “A young American visited the island not too long ago, on board a Dutch ship. They landed near Pitch Lake and there were no Spanish to be seen, just a few of their native allies. So as regards Pitch Lake, either the Spanish don’t know what they’re sitting on, don’t know what to do with it, or don’t care about it.”
A concise and accurate summary of all the possibilities. But the dance of dueling intelligence portfolios was not yet over. “Even if it is true that the Spanish have no town or garrison at Pitch Lake, it does not follow that the Spanish are inherently uninterested in it. It is a relatively short sail to Cumana and even Puerto Cabello, where they have a considerable depth of power. In order to hold out against a response from those bases, one would need a small flotilla, at least, to hold Pitch Lake.”
“That presumes the Spanish are even aware you have taken possession of it.” And McCarthy almost smiled.
So here at last was the first hint of something mysterious, unprecedented: a sure sign that the conversation would soon turn toward an unforeseen up-timer capability, upon which this pair was obviously basing their proposal. “And you have a way to ensure that the Spanish would remain unaware if Pitch Lake were to be seized?”
“Not permanently, but long enough that you wouldn’t need to commit large forces to landing and initial defense. Sizable forces would only be needed once Pitch Lake was securely invested and held, to further fortify and secure it against Spanish attempts at reconquest.”
“You speak of summoning ‘sizable forces’ as if I was the French military commander of the Caribbean, Mr. McCarthy. I assure you, I have no such authority. Nor does our senior factor on St. Christopher.”
“I am aware of that, Lord Turenne. That is why our proposal for seizing Pitch Lake calls for only one ship.”
“One ship?”
“Yes, Lord Turenne. A prize hull, currently at moorings in Dunkirk. The Fleur Sable.”
Turenne frowned. The Fleur Sable was a severely damaged Dutch cromster, recently taken by the “privateers” operating out of Dunkirk. She had earned mention in his intelligence dispatches when two confidential agents in her crew—one English, one French—both attempted to negotiate with the victorious pirates in the name of their respective governments. Heads (theirs) had rolled in the confusion and the ship, a potential item of international embarrassment, remained unsold and unrepaired. As Turenne remembered her, the oversized Fleur Sable was square-rigged at both the fore- and mainmasts and lateen-rigged at the mizzenmast, meaning that she was not only capable of making an Atlantic crossing in good shape, but also had reasonable maneuverability in capricious winds.
Turenne looked at his two visitors with newfound regard. They had selected this hull carefully and well. And they obviously knew that, given his contacts and authority in the region, Turenne could acquire a single battered (and therefore under-priced) hull for “experimental purposes” easily enough. But that did not dispose him toward ready agreement. “And how do you expect me to crew this Dutch sieve?”
O’Donnell answered. “Among the ranks of the Dunkirk privateers, there are currently French sailors, and even a few officers, who were unjustly dismissed from Louis XIII’s service in disgrace. As I hear it, almost all of them wish to return to his service, and success on a mission such as this might dispose him to hear their appeals with greater favor.”
Turenne was careful to make no motion, change not one line in his face. Merde! The audacity—and elegance—of the plan! And it just might work, if this odd pair did indeed have some way of seizing Pitch Lake without being intercepted first or detected shortly afterward. “His Majesty might indeed see fit to restore such men to his favor and service, but I am of course powerless to make such a promise.”
O’Donnell smiled. “I fully understand, Lord Turenne.”
Turenne wondered whether Richelieu would want to send him a medal or send him to the headsman when this operation was finally revealed. But France needed oil, easy oil that could be reached by her neophyte drillers, and Trinidad’s accommodating seeps and shallow deposits were a matter of record, well-detailed in the books at Grantville. But there were still problems with the plan. “Of course, you have not yet discussed who will land on Trinidad itself and take control of Pitch Lake.”
The big-shouldered Irish earl nodded. “Well, let us begin by acknowledging that this force cannot be made up of French soldiers, lest you officially embroil your sovereign in an attack upon Spain.”
“Exactly. So who would serve as the landing party and foot soldiers?”
O’Donnell cleared his throat. “My men. Five dozen, hand-picked.”
I should have seen that coming. “And they will serve France because . . . ?”
“Because you will provide sustenance for the rest of my tercio while they are on this mission.”
“And so let us presume you have reached and invested Pitch Lake with your forces. In whose name do you intend to claim it, for what country? Ireland?”
“A tempting idea, but rather futile, wouldn’t you agree? No, I will take it as a private possession, for sale to the highest—or preferred—bidder. So you see, my part of this operation is to be a purely corporate venture.”
Turenne’s head was dizzy with the possibilities and pitfalls. Corporations seizing national holdings? Was the word “corporation” just a legitimizing euphemism for “free company?” Would private ownership by dint of military conquest be recognized by any other sovereign state? On the other hand, what would national recognition matter if the “corporate” forces held it firmly? And the Dutch East India company had already made several forceful rebuttals to the common monarchical contention that all the lands of the Earth rightly belonged to sovereigns, who then bestowed their use upon a descending pyramid of vassals.
However, despite the foreseeable legal wrangling, Turenne saw one other certainty clearly enough: by proposing that he take Pitch Lake as a private entity, O’Donnell was allowing France to remain blameless of overt conquest. Of course, once O’Donnell’s seizure of Pitch Lake was fait accompli, it was almost certain that Richelieu would move quickly to purchase the site. And then France would have its oil, and Turenne would be able to fuel the machines needed for the nation’s defense. But still, the most nagging problem of all was that—“Logic and precedent dictates that the operation cannot be carried out by one ship. Unless, as you claim, your single ship can arrive at Pitch Lake completely unseen and land its small force intact, having suffered no losses in chance encounters. And so I must ask: can you do this?” He looked at McCarthy, certain from O’Donnell’s expression that the answer did not lie with the Irish earl. “Can your American technology turn a small ship invisible?”
“No, but if you can see far enough ahead, you can detect and dodge opposing ships. Before they detect you.”
“And do you have some means of seeing farther ahead than the lookout in a crow’s nest?”
“I don’t,” said McCarthy. “But a friend of mine does.”
“Oh? What friend? The German fellow you came with, the one downstairs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what does he do? Build very tall masts?”
“No, sir. He builds hot air balloons.”
Turenne, despite his well-practiced self-control, couldn’t keep himself from snapping forward in his chair. “He builds what?”
“Hot air balloons, Lord Turenne. Right now, Siegfried’s got a model that carries about twelve pounds aloft.” McCarthy shrugged. “I think with a little guidance, some material support, and access to the inventories of your silk merchants—”
Turenne was on his feet, calling to the door and then the walls. “Orderlies. Please bring in the other visitor.” After nodding briefly at O’Donnell, he turned back to the up-timer. “Mr. McCarthy, did you have plans for this evening?”
“Well, yes. I—”
“Your plans have just changed.” Turenne finally smiled at the American. “And if all your hypotheses are correct, you will need to clear your itinerary for the next six months.”