Part III:
March, 1634
She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift.
Chapter 21
Francisco Nasi looked out of the window at the winter snowscape, savoring the cool air of the window alcove after stifling in the heat of the offices. Growing up in Istanbul, he had come to relish, cherish even, the cool of northern Europe. When, that is, it was not raining. The first year in Grantville had been marvelous, while the air conditioning still worked. Most of it had broken down since, one way or another. Still, the summers had been tolerable.
The winters were still marvelous, though, even here in Magdeburg. Nasi missed the hills around Grantville, but there had been no way to keep that town as the capital of the now greatly expanded United States of Europe. Henceforth, Grantville would be the capital of a province, not a nation. The small United States restricted to Thuringia had not lasted even two years. It had given way—given birth, more accurately—to a much larger nation that encompassed perhaps half of the Germanies. A nation great enough, in fact, to add “of Europe” to its title without causing the slightest snicker anywhere. Many scowls, of course, and more than a few curses; but no snickers.
Magdeburg was the capital of that new nation. And, since Mike Stearns had been appointed as its prime minister by the USE’s Emperor Gustav II Adolf, he’d transferred himself and his staff to the city on the Elbe.
It was a brand new city, in everything but its name. Tilly’s army had destroyed the old Magdeburg less than three years earlier, massacring most of the population. The people living here now—pouring in every day—were as new to Magdeburg as were the buildings they moved into and labored in. Between becoming the capital of the USE and the industry rising up in and around the city, Magdeburg was now a boom town, with all the completely uncharming characteristics thereof.
Still, Nasi liked the place, at least in the winter. The raw, flamboyantly industrial ugliness of the city was disguised by snow; it even seemed to improve the flatness of the landscape. Nasi had always had to travel to see snow, in his youth. To have it right outside his door could make him forget his dignity. He’d even been known to throw snowballs.
He smirked slightly about that. Rising before dawn—no great feat at this latitude—he had walked to work past a small gang of schoolboys earning pocket money by shoveling entrances clear. Out of the corner of his eye, he had seen one of them bend to prepare a snowball practically behind him, and had turned and let the junior-league bushwhacker have it between the eyes with the snowball he’d had in his pocket. He’d gotten pelted, of course, but it had been worth it for the look on the little rascal’s face.
And now he was going to savor another expression. He’d had time to read the morning paper before Mike Stearns came to the office, and Mike was now at his desk taking a moment to look at the day’s news. He should be reaching the offending piece about . . .
Now.
“Why, that son of a bitch,” Mike murmured. Then, louder: “What an asshole.”
Nasi permitted himself a small moment of self-congratulation. He was coming to anticipate the prime minister perfectly—his reaction to some things at least—and certainly his reading speed.
“Francisco?”
“Yes, Michael?” Nasi had also learned some of the American habits of informality. That mode of address, used back in Topkapi, would have earned him a bowstring around the neck and a place of his own at the bottom of the Sea of Marmara.
“Did we send Joe Buckley to Venice?” Mike’s tone could have been used to etch steel.
Nasi turned away from the window and smiled. “No, we did not.”
Mike rested his elbows on his desk and his head in his hands. “Francisco, are our spy networks up to finding someone in France—a village idiot, maybe, in a remote province—who will actually believe that?”
Nasi pantomimed giving the matter heavy consideration, cupping his chin in his hand and frowning, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. “No, Prime Minister. Perhaps, did God lend us the service of his every djinn and angel—to use your heathen terms—we might scour Europe and find one such unworldly trusting fool. But certainly not in France.”