Eric Flint: Ring of fire II

"Can I interest you in a subscription to the Times? Makes a great after Christmas gift for yourself." He gulped. In the back of his mind he was envisioning what the shotgun would do to his face. Of course, he also knew that he would not be alive to see it. He figured flippancy could be the only way to go right now; it wasn't as if he had a whole lot of options right then.

Mike Stearns stepped out of the shadows. He looked at Paul for a moment, shook his head, softly chuckled and waved the shotgun wielding man back.

"On your feet." Mike extended his hand to help Paul get to his feet. "What the hell are you doing prowling around in the woods tonight? And before you ask, I already am a Times subscriber."

"I would say that shows your good taste, but I happen to know you subscribe to the Daily News and the Street as well," said Paul.

Another man came up to Mike. It took Paul a moment to recognize Harry Lefferts. "There were two of them," he told Mike. "We lost the trail of the other one, down by the creek. I'm fairly certain that it was a pain-in-the-butt reporter named Kuryakin. My men have been watching him for the last couple of days."

"Bloody great," muttered Mike. "So, Paul, you never answered my question."

Paul struggled to his feet, wiped himself off and pulled his notebook and a pencil out. "I'm doing my job, reporting. I've come to interview your visitor."

"Visitor? Visitor? I'm not sure what you're talking about," said Mike.

"Mike, let's cut the crap. You and those playmates of yours wouldn't be prowling around the woods at three in the morning any more than I would, unless something important was going on. You can deny it, but I'd know you were lying." This wasn't the first time Paul had run a bluff to get a story, though in the pit of his stomach he felt it wasn't a bluff. "The Times is going to run a story, speculating on just who that visitor might be and why you're going to all this trouble to hide him. Now, you can help me make this story as accurate as possible, or live with the consequences of not bringing me in on it."

Mike went immobile for a moment. The only sound, beyond those drifting in from the woods, was their breathing. It was almost two full minutes before he spoke.

"All right, come inside. There's someone that you need to meet."

The "visitor" was awake. It was not who Paul had expected.

Wallenstein was sitting up in bed, with several pillows behind him. He looked pale, even in the light from the single candle next to his bed. The man's lower jaw was wrapped in bandages. There was a bulge under the blanket that Paul suspected might be a loaded pistol.

Harry Lefferts stood in one corner of the room, an unhappy expression on his face.

"You, sir, present me with a moral dilemma," Paul said after Mike had introduced him. "You know I came here to get a story for my newspaper. But if I write it, I cause major problems not only for my government, which I don't mind doing, but possibly for all of Grantville."

Wallenstein picked up a pad and wrote quickly:

MORALS ARE FOR CHURCHMEN;

STATESMEN CANNOT AFFORD THEM.

"Thank you, Senor Machiavelli."

Wallenstein looked at Paul oddly but wrote nothing.

"We got word that he had survived Alte Veste through General Pappenheim, who came to us with a most unusual offer of alliance."

"Ah yes, Pappenheim. Or should we also be calling him Santa Claus?"

Mike smiled. "Not bad, not bad at all. He offered an alliance to help stir up a revolt in Bohemia plus a few other little political actions that could work to our advantage. The deal was he wanted our dentists to reconstruct the damage that Julie's bullet did. Then there is also the matter of Chmielnicki."

Paul didn't recognize the name, but then he had never been good with European history. He waited for an explanation.

"It's a massacre of ten thousand Polish Jews in 1648. Wallenstein says that if we help him he may be able to stop it."

Wallenstein handed a hastily scribbled note to Mike, who in turn offered it to Paul.

NO MAY. I WILL STOP IT.

BUT ONLY IF YOU HELP ME.

"You want me to sit on the story," Paul said. "That much is obvious."

His first impulse was to say to hell with this, publish the story and expose the whole deal. He wasn't fond of secret government plots, but he could see the logic implicit in what Mike seemed to be doing. It still didn't feel right to him.

"If I was to agree with what you're doing, and I am not saying I will, there is one other problem. Yuri may or may not have seen Wallenstein, but he knows that you were involved with Pappenheim. That can cause a lot of problems in and of itself."

"Then he has to be dealt with," said Lefferts, his voice quiet and without emotion.

"I hope you're not going to try to arrange an accident for him," said Paul.

"Paul, please. There are certain levels I won't stoop to," said Mike. "You know he's going to want to get that story published and he can do it. It's just a matter of time." There were newspapers outside of Grantville, some good, some bad. "We both know there are more than a few places that would be willing to publish it."

"If I agree to go along with you on keeping this quiet, I want an exclusive on it when you do go public," said Paul.

"Provided we haven't been exposed and strung up over this whole thing, you've got a deal," Mike said. "Seriously, I wish I were handing you an easy story to deal with, like a secret squad of ninjas setting up operations in Grantville, but I can't."

"Ninjas, yeah, I've heard those rumors, as well as the ones about aliens. You're sounding like you think I run the Weekly World News rather than the Grantville Times. Not that a fine upstanding gentleman like yourself would know anything about the Weekly World News."

"At least with Playboy you could claim that you were reading it for the articles." Mike laughed.

Paul nodded, only half listening. Later he could not say when the idea had hit him. It was just suddenly there.

"I know exactly what I'm going to do. I think you will like the idea."

"And that is?" said Mike.

"I'm going to do what I always do. I'm going to write the story about Wallenstein being alive and see it published." Paul grinned.

"Now, stop me if I've got this wrong, but isn't that exactly what we don't want to have happen?"

"Trust me."

Paul slid into a booth in the far corner of the inn's greatroom. The place was virtually empty at just after three in the afternoon. That was just fine with him; he could use a little down time. The beer and sandwich that sat in front of him looked very good.

From a chair near the booth he had picked up a copy of the latest sensation to sweep Grantville, the National Inquisitor. The paper had made its appearance five days earlier, turning up in bundles at taverns, stores and any place else that a crowd could gather. There was nothing in it to indicate who had published it; the only bylines on stories were obvious pseudonyms such as Sarah Bellum and Noah Ward.

With its glaring headlines and outrageous woodcuts, it was definitely distinguishable from the Times, the Daily News and, most certainly, the Street. The seventy-five point headline WALLENSTEIN ALIVE, LIVING IN SECRET WITH BIGFOOT said it all. A second story announced PAPPENHEIM BUYS CONDO IN GRANTVILLE.

Paul's experienced eye slid over the pages, checking the text, the layout and the content. Not that he needed to; he was quite familiar with every column inch of it. He had written most of it; and what he hadn't done had been penned by Mirari and a few others they had enlisted. The entire matter had been done in a dozen intense hours after his return from Edith Wild's house.

That this had been done without anyone apparently being the wiser still astonished Paul. In the back of his mind he had been convinced that someone would spot them and put two and two together, especially when they were distributing the papers.