and not enough weapons, either.”
“So we keep our mouths shut,” Natasha said. “We wait and we don’t cause trouble. For now, Director- General Sheremetev is busy making sure his position is consolidated. Shuvalov isn’t the worst. Let’s hope he’s left in charge here.”
The worst, as Anya well knew, certainly wasn’t Colonel Shuvalov. In her opinion, the worst was Cass. She didn’t like the way he looked at her, not at all. And she didn’t like the way he was treating the other girls at the Dacha.
And she dreaded the day Colonel Shuvalov left. Cass would have no restraints. More and more, Anya was convinced that they would have to escape.
Well, she’d done that before. But never with a princess in tow, much less an up-timer.
“He’s not the worst,” Aunt Sofia pointed out.
“He’s not the worst, he’s not the worst, he’s not the worst!” Natasha chanted and threw her hands in the air. “I know perfect well that he’s not the worst, dammit.”
“You’ve been around Bernie too long,” Sofia said. “Stop using that word, even in English.”
Natasha turned a stone face to her. “He’s not the worst. But he’s not what I want.”
“What do you want, child?”
“I don’t know yet. I haven’t had a chance to learn what I want.”
That wasn’t really true. She knew it-and judging by the expression on her face, her aunt Sofia knew it too. What Natasha wanted was Bernie, but that seemed as remote as the moon.
She paused a moment. “I want Vladimir. I wish I could talk to my brother.”
“Damn their eyes!”
For a moment, Brandy thought Vladimir was quoting another book. Then she realized that he was angrier than she’d ever seen him.
They were in the salon. She was reading a book and Vladimir was trying to catch up on the endless paperwork. He’d just opened the latest dispatch bag from Moscow. “What’s wrong?”
“You know that delayed mica shipment?” Vladimir leaped out of his chair and began pacing. “It wasn’t delayed because of weather or bandits. Well, not real bandits. The Boyar Duma delayed it. On purpose. They’ve also taken Czar Mikhail and his family hostage, along with that nurse and her family.” He thrust the letter toward her. “Look at this! Just look at it!”
Brandy was forced to push the papers away from her face. “Calm down, Vladimir. And talk sensibly. What else has happened?”
He pulled the papers back, then read from them. “Because of its vital importance to the state, the Dacha has been placed under guard.” Vladimir threw the paper onto the table. “That means they’ve got Natasha. And Bernie.”
Over the next few days, after Vladimir had calmed down a bit more, Brandy was able to read a translation of the offending papers.
Czar Mikhail and his family were safe, if being held hostage was safe. Not that they were officially being held hostage. They had “been moved out of Moscow to ensure the czar’s safety.” The up-time nurse Tami Simmons and her family were being held in the same place as the czar, so, again, they were safe. The manager at the mica mine, while nothing had yet been done to him, was being held under suspicion of “involvement in the recent unpleasantness.” Accusations of corruption had been laid against the manager… and against Vladimir himself.
No shipments of anything would be sent from Moscow or from Vladimir’s own lands. He was, effectively, broke.
Bernie and Natasha, along with the rest of the Dacha staff, were in “protective custody.”
Chapter 71
March 1636
“We will be having guests,” Colonel Shuvalov said.
Natasha looked up at his comment. “Guests?”
“Yes. Representatives from the Ottoman Empire. They have been looking at factories on the Don and Volga rivers and we have been told to be circumspect in what we show them.”
Natasha hated to ask Shuvalov, but she needed to know. “What is going on?”
“The government is looking for new allies in case Gustav Adolf and the USE decide to look east for new lands to conquer.”
“Insanity!”
“Actually, it’s not,” Shuvalov said, with what sounded like real regret. “You know that Sweden is perfectly willing to bite off pieces of Russia. Our access to the Baltic is now Swedish Ingria and we pay taxes to Sweden on every cargo that sails from Nyen. The USE is rapidly becoming the richest, most industralized, nation in Europe.. Yet the Swedes still complain about our holding back the grain shipments when they know we lost a quarter of this year’s crop to the early storm.”
“But the up-timers would never let…”
“Let? ‘Let’ is not a word used with kings, Princess Natalia. Besides, Michael Stearns lost their election. He is no longer the prime minister-for that matter, unless he recovers from his battle injuries, Gustav Adolf is no longer the emperor.”
“You really don’t care about anything, do you?” Natasha spat. “Whatever your master says, you parrot him!”
Shuvalov looked at her and Natasha realized that she might have gone too far. Shuvalov was Sheremetev’s man and Director-General Sheremetev was the most powerful man in Russia. Since Sheremetev had taken power there had been a purge of the bureaus the like of which hadn’t been seen since Ivan the Terrible. The Dacha and the Grantville Section had gotten off fairly lightly-in large part because between them they were the goose that was laying the golden eggs. But even they weren’t untouched. Boris had lost several people who were considered politically questionable and the Dacha remained under guard.
“Director-General Sheremetev is a great man. He is not perfect. No one is, even those touched by God. He’s right about where the threat comes from. The Limited Year hasn’t been repealed and the bureau men aren’t screaming about it anymore. They’re too busy covering their asses by kissing his. The purge in the bureaus has been extreme, but it hasn’t been entirely political. A lot of the deadwood has been removed and there is greater opportunity for those with more talent and fewer family connections. Peasants aren’t just going to look for gold in the mountains, they are finding factory jobs all along the Volga. The jobs aren’t wonderful, but they are better than being a farmer.
“As to the director-general’s foreign policy… However noble of character the up-timers may be, they aren’t in control of the USE. They have influence out of proportion to their numbers, but those numbers are minuscule. Poland is probably less of a threat to us than the axis of Sweden and the USE. From where we sit, the biggest difference between Napoleon or Hitler and Gustav Adolf is that his army would probably do quite well in a winter war in Russia. He was born and raised in Sweden, after all. If he should decide to take Poland and keep coming east, we will be facing a force that outnumbers us and outguns us, led by a man who is quite possibly the greatest general of our time. We will need allies. All of them we can get.
“Natalia Petrovna,” Shuvalov said, “I take no joy in the thought of war with the up-timers. But I learned at an early age that what I want doesn’t control what happens.”
Director-General Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev rode his horse up to the gates of the Dacha compound at the head of a troop of personal cavalry. He had still not made up his mind what to do about the Dacha. His cousin, Ivan Petrovich, wanted it. Wanted it badly. And Ivan Petrovich, corrupt as he was, had support within the family and the
