1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [140]
Jeff chuckled. West Virginia had enough people with Polish ancestry to have a slew of Polack jokes. Nothing like Chicago or Milwaukee, of course.
"How many Polacks does it take to screw in a light bulb?" he said.
"It's not funny, Colonel. It really isn't."
Jeff stared at him. Then, his face got stiff too. "Oh, hell. You mean we really never considered that they might have radio communication?"
"No, Colonel, we didn't. It goes a long way toward explaining how and why Koniecpolski's been able to maneuver his forces so well, doesn't it?"
Mike dismounted. As they always did whenever a halt was called, Jimmy Andersen and his three assistants had quickly set up a little tent for the radio so he could get whatever might be the latest reports or instructions. Mike walked over, opened the flap of the tent and passed through.
Jeff dismounted and came after him, still carrying the radio. He didn't really have a good reason to do so, since the tent was so small there wouldn't be room for him anyway. He just liked to get off a horse any excuse he got.
A minute later, Mike came out.
As the march was about to resume, Jimmy Andersen came out of the tent and approached the division's commanding general. Behind him, his assistants began taking down the tent and packing away the radio equipment. Colonel Higgins had already left to rejoin his regiment.
Andersen looked up at Mike, back in his saddle. "Bad news, sir. I just got a weather report. It looks like there's another storm coming. It'll probably hit us around noon today."
Mike stared down at him, then stared off to the west. Huge storm clouds covered the sky and were obviously headed their way.
He felt like saying No shit, Sherlock. But that would probably be beneath the dignity of a major general and it would certainly hurt Andersen's feelings.
You always had to make allowances for tech people. Their skills were so useful that you just had to accept the fact that if someone like Jimmy Andersen got struck by lightning, the first thing he'd do if he survived was get on the radio to find out if there were thunderstorms in the area. In those halcyon days before the Ring of Fire, of course, he would have gone online to find out.
Schwerin, capital of Mecklenburg Province
United States of Europe
Jozef Wojtowicz had set up a safe house for himself in Schwerin before he'd gone to Wismar. He thought he could lie in hiding here until whatever manhunt was launched for him exhausted its energies.
He assumed that the military police who interrogated Morton would deduce soon enough that the agent who'd suborned him was either Polish or working for Poland. Who else would have taken the risk? Any person familiar with the Baltic grain trade would know that the pretext he'd used was preposterous. If there were no USE interrogators with that knowledge in Wismar, all they had to do was walk over to Wieczorek's tavern and ask the Polish grain dealers who habituated the place.
Where would they look for this Polish agent, then?
Magdeburg, of course—but they really wouldn't expect him to hide there. The capital city's CoC was too pervasive, too well organized. A stranger, especially a foreigner, ran a greater risk of being noticed there than anywhere else.
The fact that such a stranger was a foreigner wouldn't be held against him in Magdeburg the way it might in some cities in the USE. Although the CoCs called for the unification of the German people into one nation, their ideology was not particularly nationalistic. There were CoCs in a number of European countries and they all shared the same basic political program. The Italian CoCs also called for national unification.
The problem with hiding in Magdeburg wasn't that people would be hostile, it was simply that he'd be noticed more quickly, and by an organization that was sophisticated and well organized on a city-wide basis.
Hamburg was another obvious possibility, as were Luebeck and Hannover. Big cities where a foreigner could hide easily.