1636:The Kremlin games

Chapter 78

As Natasha, Bernie and the rescue team were driving away from the palace at Murom, a radio message came in.

PRINCESS NATALIA GORCHAKOVNA WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH DEATH OF TWO MEN AT ARMS AND THE SEVERE WOUNDING OF CASS LOWRY. REPORT SIGHTINGS TO MOSCOW AND DETAIN. BY ORDER OF THE BOYAR DUMA AND THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL FOR CZAR MIKHAIL. END MESSAGE.

The radio operator was one of Natasha’s loyal men. Alas, his boss wasn’t.

Partly out of fear, and partly out of greed, Petr Timofeyivich used the order from the Boyar Duma and the czar to release Captain Ivan Borisovich Lebedev and his men.

Control of Murom passed quickly-but not firmly-back into the hands of Sheremetev loyalists. This had very little effect on anything. Most of the people in Murom were keeping their heads down and staying just as far from politics as they could manage.

A radio message was sent to Moscow telling that the princess had been spotted, but had left before the message ordering her detention had arrived.

For the next several hours, things were very tense in the halls of government in Murom. Captain Lebedev didn’t even attempt to keep the lid on, raging around the palace. Lieutenant Lebedev, however, had made friends with the Streltzi and urged them to wait and remain calm.

The Dodge traveled slowly, pulling a down-time made trailer behind it. The trailer carried some twenty of Natasha’s men at arms led by Vladislav Vasl’yevich. In order to avoid jarring the men too much, Bernie kept the speed down to around twenty miles per hour, and often much less than that. The thirty-two mile trip to the hunting lodge took three hours. It was evening when they approached the hunting lodge.

“You need to warn me before we get there, Natasha,” Bernie said. “We need to stop the car a mile or so away from the lodge and let the boys in back out of the trailer.”

A few minutes later Natasha told Bernie to stop. “The path goes forward, then turns right. After the turn, you can see the lodge.”

Bernie consulted with the armsmen, including one of her huntsmen who was very familiar with this particular lodge. “How close can you get before you’re spotted?”

“It depends on who’s doing the spotting,” the huntsman said. “If it was you I could tap you on the shoulder before you knew I was there.”

“Maybe you better go scout for us then.”

“I can do that.”

The wait seemed to last forever, but it wasn’t really that long before the huntsman came up behind Bernie and said “Boo.” Bernie grinned and turned to face the man. He’d spotted him well before time. The huntsman grimaced. “So what did you see, Boo?” Bernie asked.

“About a hundred yards east of the lodge, there are several tents and a paddock with maybe twenty horses. Considering the size of the lodge, I don’t see how there can be more than thirty or so men, at most.”

“All right,” Bernie said. “You and the men infiltrate. Natasha and I will drive in just like we own the place.”

Vladislav Vasl’yevich started to object but was interrupted.

“I do own the place,” Natasha said.

“Fine. We’re the distraction, Natasha. Ride in like the queen of England, order them off your property. And while they’re arresting us, the rest of these guys will get the drop on them.” Bernie didn’t have to explain “get the drop on them.” He’d already done that. Many times.

And, in essence, that’s what they did.

Bernie drove up to the house, with the horn blaring. Most of the horses in the area panicked. Half a dozen men came out of the tents and one man came out of the house itself.

Natasha emerged from the car, using her most regal manner. “What are you people doing at my lodge? You’re trespassing. Get out at once!” Then, apparently seeing Czar Mikhail for the first time, she added, “Except, of course, for Your Majesty. You are always welcome on my lands.”

The czar was looking as shocked as anyone. But it wasn’t he who spoke. It was a man Natasha had never seen before, who was dressed in a black fur coat with a silver dog’s head clasp. Sixty years before, Ivan the Terrible had created a band of enforcers called the Oprichniki who were recognized by their black fur coats and the severed dog’s heads they carried. Later Ivan had outlawed them and made it a crime to even say the word Oprichniki.

This man and the six he had with him, also wearing the clasp, weren’t the same Oprichniki as Ivan had had. A silver dog’s head wasn’t the same as the severed head of a real dog. Still, the symbolism was unmistakable.

“You are under arrest!” the latter-day Oprichniki said.

Feeling more than a little pale herself, Natasha turned to the czar and waved at the man in black. “Did you authorize this, Your Majesty?”

She was unutterably relieved to see the little, almost unconscious, shake of the czar’s head.

The black coat spoke again. “Seize them!”

“Hold!” Natasha shouted. “You have no authority here and none over me! The only one who could give you such authority is right here and he hasn’t done so.”

Her arguments went unheeded and the troops kept right on coming. Then she heard Bernie.

“Hey, Dogboy!” he shouted. “That fancy silver puppy won’t stop a bullet.”

When Natasha looked, Bernie was holding a large up-time revolver pointed at the chest of the Oprichniki.

“My men will kill you and the princess!” the Oprichniki shouted back.

“Could be,” Bernie acknowledged rather more calmly than Natasha really would have preferred, “but you will still be dead.”

“They will be dead before then,” came another voice, as calm as Bernie’s but much colder. Looking over, Natasha saw that Vladislav Vasl’yevich had come out from the gap between two of the tents, followed by several of his men. All of them had their weapons raised and ready to fire.

The czar himself was looking a bit conflicted about the rescue. The dogboy still under Bernie’s gun was looking very angry. But the confrontation was over, obviously. The man could be as angry as he wanted, he had no chance against the odds he was facing.

So, Bernie turned toward Natasha and began re-holstering his gun. But she was staring past him looking at Dogboy and the czar. Then her expression changed. Bernie turned back to see Dogboy pulling out a pistol of his own and pointing it, not at him or Natasha, but the czar. The czar was looking back at Dogboy with a half-frightened, half-resigned expression on his face. As though the fate that he had been dodging all his life had caught him at last.

Then Vladislav Vasl’yevich jumped, knocking the czar out of the way.

Bernie fired, Dogboy fired. Vladislav Vasl’yevich went down, spraying the czar with his blood.

Dogboy went down, too. Wounded in the shoulder, not dead, but he’d lost his gun.

A couple of the other dogboy guards took the gunshots as a license to resume hostilities, but Vladislav Vasl’yevich’s men began firing at them immediately. Numerically, the two groups were about evenly matched, but the Gorchakov guards were equipped with the brand new AK4.7 cap-lock repeaters. The. 7 modification was only partly to the gun. The center fire chambers could be fit into a clip that was shifted right to left, one chamber every time the lever-action was opened and closed so that it was fire, cock, fire, cock. The dogboys, on the other hand-with standard Sheremetev pecuniary habits-were equipped with the cheaper AK3 flintlocks.

It was a damp day, too. The only dogboy gun that came to bear squarely on its target misfired. The end result was a simple massacre. After seeing Vladislav Vasl’yevich gunned down, his men were in no mood to take prisoners- any prisoners, not just the two who’d raised their guns.

Two of the dogboy guards survived, but they were badly wounded. Meanwhile, another group of Natasha’s guards had rescued the czarina, the nurse, her husband, and all the children.

They questioned the chief dogboy who was, as it turned out, an Oprichniki of the Boyar Duma. So this was the form that Sheremetev’s political officers were to take. Ivan the Terrible’s Oprichniki had been his personal secret police and ultimately had proven to be more trouble than they were worth. But they had included many people that would, in later years, prove very important-including Patriarch Filaret and Boris Godunov. So the Boyar Duma, also in need of a force to put down dissension, had created an updated version.

A contingent of that new organization had been given the job of guarding the czar. Their commander, the one with the dog’s head clasp, was under orders to kill the czar, but only if it looked like the czar might escape. The same orders were in place for the czar’s family, but only if the czar was dead first. The Boyar Duma didn’t want Mikhail free and after revenge for a dead family. They didn’t, even Dogboy insisted, want Mikhail dead. Just out of the way while they did what was needed to keep Russia safe from the corrupting influences that Mikhail and his father had allowed in. Russia needed a strong hand. The Russian people tended to become bandits and brigands if they were given too much freedom.

“Look, folks,” Bernie said after a while. “This is all very interesting and I’m sure quite socially relevant, but is this really the time for a debate on political philosophy? They were going to kill you, Your Majesty. Maybe not now, but once they were sure of themselves. At best, they would keep you and your whole family prisoners for the rest of your lives. Meanwhile, the bad guys are after us and I don’t want to stick around to find out what they’ll do if they catch us. It’s your country, Your Majesty. If you want to stay here and trust to the good offices of the Boyar Duma, and that fink Sheremetev, that’s your choice. But we need to leave.”

The nurse, Tami Simmons, spoke up. “We’re going with you! I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but I don’t want my kids here when these guys’ friends show up.”

The czarina agreed, and then so did Mikhail. So, the czar and czarina and their kids would ride in the Dodge with Bernie and everyone else they could fit would ride in the trailer. That still left half a dozen of Natasha’s guards without transport. They took the horses in the paddock. All of them. They would need remounts and didn’t want to leave the dogboys with transportation. There was serious talk about killing the dogboys. And as a sort of compromise, Czar Mikhail had them swear on pain of death not to serve the Boyar Duma anymore.

Bernie didn’t figure the oaths would last past the time it took them to get over the horizon, but he didn’t really care either. Natasha’s guardsmen were to make their way back to Murom as fast as they could and if Natasha wasn’t there when they arrived, at the very least orders would be.

Bernie, the czar and the czarina talked as Bernie drove them slowly over the rough roads, fields, and trails back to Murom. And by the time they got there, the czar had decided.

Well, the way Bernie figured it, the czarina decided and the czar went along. Mikhail Romanov didn’t strike Bernie as the forceful type. The decision was that the czar, czarina and the children would go to Bor, take possession of the dirigible Czarina Evdokia, and then decide where to take it.

Bernie thought about arguing for Grantville, but decided not to. The truth was, Grantville and its USE were now more of a foreign country to him than Russia was. To the extent that Bernie Zeppi felt he had a king-not much-that king was Mikhail Romanov, not Gustav Adolf.