1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [87]
"Whenever her half-crazed mother lets her roam loose, you mean."
"Yes. But that happens often enough—and when it does, she invariably seeks out the company of the Dane. Not so?"
His companions both nodded. Brillard went on. "And whenever the two of them are together—"
"Three of them," Mademann interrupted. "That Norwegian never leaves Ulrik's side."
"Two, three, it doesn't matter. The point I was making is that they do not restrict themselves to the interior of palace. To the contrary. They always leave it to go elsewhere. More often than not, to the Storkyrkan."
He nodded toward Stockholm's cathedral. "She probably needs the respite, after being for too long with her mother."
Mademann looked back and forth from the palace to the church. "Here, you're saying? Right here in the open?"
"Why not? All of you except me. You can trap them here, and at close range. Between all of you, it should be easy enough."
He shrugged. "Escape may be difficult. But we always understood that."
"And you'd deal with the queen? Alone?"
"It's the only way it can be done anyway. She almost never leaves the palace, and when she does it's under heavy guard."
"And then she goes to the cathedral also. So why not—?" Locquifier broke off as he came to the answer himself.
"The princess never goes at the same time she does," said Mademann. "She waits until the queen has left and is almost back to the palace. Then . . ."
He whistled softly. "I see your plan now, Mathurin. You position yourself to strike down the queen just as she's passing through the entrance. It'll have to be a sunny day, though, when she's using an open carriage."
"Has to be a sunny day in any event," said Brillard. "You can't risk misfires in the rain."
Locquifier seemed a bit dubious. "A difficult shot."
"Not so difficult as all that—especially if Charles can get me a Cardinal breechloader. An SRG will be a little more accurate, but it won't give me the chance for a second shot."
Mademann had been stroking his beard thoughtfully. "So your shot would be the signal. As soon as we hear it, the rest of us come out into the street. We should be able to hide well enough in the alleys. If all goes well, we'll catch the Dane and the girl before they've reached the cathedral. Then we make our separate escapes."
He, too, now looked a bit dubious. "Tricky timing, though."
But Locquifier's doubts had vanished. "It's the only way," he said firmly. "The instructions from Michel and Antoine were very precise. We must succeed in the full task. This is the only way to do it."
Once Guillaume Locquifier came to the conclusion that a given plan was ordained by Michel Ducos, he would be unyielding in his determination to stick to it. Under other circumstances, Mathurin Brillard had often found that annoying. But under these, he didn't mind at all.
He began giving some thought, for the first time, to methods of escape. It was unlikely he could do so, of course, given the ambitious scope of the project. But perhaps not impossible. Especially since the others would draw most of the attention, as numerous as they were and coming out in the open to fire pistols. He hadn't come up with the plan for that reason, to be sure. Mathurin was cold-blooded, but not that cold-blooded. Nonetheless, the plan having been agreed to, there was no reason he shouldn't take advantage of its unfortunate but inevitable results.
Part Four
September 1635
The light of setting suns
Chapter 21
Berlin, Capital of Brandenburg
Mike Stearns had never visited Berlin up-time. But he had a distinct memory of a collection of photographs he'd once seen of the city, especially the Brandenburg Gate and the magnificent tree-lined boulevard Unter den Linden.
Neither was here, now. The Brandenburg Gate didn't exist at all. And where Unter den Linden would be in a future world, in this one there was nothing more than a bridle path that led to the elector's hunting ground in the Tiergarten.
There was really no part of Berlin in the year 1635 to attract sightseers, beyond