1636_ The Saxon Uprising - Eric Flint [185]
Ferdinand kept peering at him from under lowered brows.
Now, Janos threw up his hands with exasperation. “The Americans have a word for this, you know. ‘Paranoia.’ ”
“Yes, I know. Demonstrating once again their tenuous hold on reality. Apparently they think people have no enemies.” He sniffed. “It’s like having a word for a fear of heights. Completely useless. Of course people are afraid of heights.”
Janos decide to wait out the imperial fit. It was true enough that emperors had lots of enemies.
After a few seconds, Ferdinand sighed and slumped back in his chair. “You’re certain?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. I am.” Janos thought formality would help here. “As certain as I’ve ever been of anything in my life.”
He leaned forward in his own chair, his hands extended in what was almost a pleading gesture. “Ferdinand, look at it this way. We’re in the beginning of March. If I’m right, Murad will have begun his troop movements. By the end of the month—no later than sometime in April—the first detachments will have begun arriving in Belgrade. Once that happens, you know perfectly well the invasion will be underway.”
After a moment, Ferdinand nodded. Like any Austrian ruler, even a young one, he knew the military realities. That great a mobilization of troops was simply too expensive for an empire—any empire, even one with the resources of the Ottomans—to use as a feint or diversion. If large numbers of soldiers started appearing in Belgrade in the spring, the Turks would be at the Austrian border by mid-summer at the latest.
And Austria had lots of spies in Belgrade.
“Go on,” he said.
Janos leaned back. “So let’s use the intervening weeks to establish private communications with the USE. Which we can do using Nasi in Prague as the intermediary.”
The emperor made a little snorting sound. “Who will no doubt use as his own intermediary a certain young woman who already has an Austro-Hungarian connection.”
“Well…yes, I imagine he will. It would make sense, after all.”
Ferdinand went back to gazing at him from under lowered brows.
“Oh, very well,” he said. “Set the process in motion.”
Solemnly, Janos inclined his head. He saw no need to burden the emperor with the knowledge that he’d already begun that process a week before, as soon as he returned to Vienna. What else were royal advisers for than to anticipate the decisions of their sovereign?
Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe
Since Mike Stearns hadn’t arrived yet, Gustav Adolf spent the first two days after his return to the capital mostly with his daughter. They had not seen each other for almost a year—a year in which a great many things had happened, including an assassination attempt on the girl that came very close to succeeding and the murder of her mother that very same day. Not to mention the near-death of her father and his subsequent mental collapse.
She had held up surprisingly well. No, extraordinarily well. He was very pleased with her.
No, immensely pleased.
Most of that pleasure was personal, nothing more than the sentiments any father would feel when one of his offspring demonstrated good qualities under pressure. Some of it, though, was dynastic and quite cold-blooded. It was a simple fact that the Vasa dynasty had come out of a crisis that might easily have turned into a disaster in better shape than ever. Its position in the United States of Europe was now extremely secure, even if its direct power might have declined a bit.
That was largely thanks to Kristina. The huge, cheering crowds that had greeted Gustav Adolf when he arrived in the capital had been there as much to applaud a father as a monarch. Kristina had been riding with him in the parade, and that much was blindingly obvious.
In a much darker way, the position of the Vasas in Sweden was stronger also. As part of his bargain with Oxenstierna when he took the throne in 1611, Gustav Adolf had restored the Swedish aristocracy’s privileges that his grandfather has stripped away from them. Now, with the chancellor’s betrayal and subsequent