"I'm sure you're impressed Captain, but . . ."
Casper smiled. "You are, of course, correct. I am here to beg the loan of your up-time binoculars."
"What do you need them for?" Puss asked as he opened the trunk at the foot of his cot to search for the binocular case.
"I've been ordered to reconnoiter the fortress at Königstein."
That was a fortress controlling the road and the Elbe River between Tetschen and Dresden. Technically it was in enemy hands, but the garrison wasn't trying to obstruct the movements of troops and supplies, at the moment. "And you want the best optics you can get," Puss said as he passed them over.
"I'll take good care of them," Casper promised as he stood to accept them. "If there is ever anything you need, you know who to talk to."
"Corporal Schlegel," Puss named Casper's company clerk.
"Precisely. Now, having gotten what I came for, I must be off."
Corporal Michael Cleesattel waited until the captain was gone before speaking. "How did your day go?" he asked Puss.
"About what you'd expect. We had to close down one tavern, and warn another couple to brush up their sanitation. Yourself?"
"A few warnings, but the tip about a twelve-year-old working at Schön's was on the money," Michael said. "Anna persuaded the kid to leave with her and Yorick. Hermann went with them."
Anna was Corporal Hermann Behrns' significant other and she'd demonstrated an ability to deal sympathetically with traumatized women and children back in Poland. Yorick, the dog Puss had adopted in Poland, had also been a great help there. "How did Schön take the girl walking out?" Puss asked.
"He didn't like it, but he paid her out the monies she was due and let her go. What else could he do?" Corporal Lenhard Poppler asked.
"Nothing," Puss admitted. Prostitution, even of twelve-year-old girls, was legal in Tetschen. Sexual slavery, though, was highly illegal. "I wonder if any of the other girls will follow suit."
"It's possible," Michael said. "There's plenty of honest work in Tetschen for anybody who wants it."
Mid-November, Grantville
The sun had set well before Sveta got home from another busy day working at the Armed Forces Press Division Grantville office. She removed her outdoor coat and swapped her boots for slippers in the mudroom before entering the warmth of the kitchen. The first person she saw was her mother-in-law. Sue Trelli was putting the finishing touches to the dinner the housekeeper had left in the oven.
"There's some mail for you from John," Sue announced when she saw who'd entered, "and Felix has something for you."
Sveta diverted to the tray where incoming mail was left and plucked out the parcel from her husband in its easily identified Military Mail envelope. Normally John just sent letters, but there was something other than a simple letter in this package. She used the letter opener to break the seal and peeked in as she made her way up stairs to her room. There was a letter and five smaller parcels. She tipped them out onto the bed. One of the smaller parcels had John's name and number on it, and Sveta recognized the names on the other four as belonging to his military police patrol. She broke open the parcel with John's name on it, and stared at the twenty pieces of paper inside. She knew what they were, as the news of the Third Division's new scrip had reached her office, but she didn't understand why John was sending them home. She put the beckies to one side and picked up his letter.
****
Sveta walked down the stairs not really any the wiser. She needed help, and went in search of John's father. She found him in the study with his feet up and his head in a book. "Pápa, John sent these home." She handed him the parcel of beckies.
Felix opened the package and looked at the first becky. Then he looked at the second. A moment later he was laying them out on his desk. "Oh, boy!" he said after laying out all twenty bills. "Where did he get these?"
Sveta held up the letter. "He says he and his patrol were assigned to guard the print shop where the beckies were being printed, and they all bought some."
"He did more than buy some," Felix said. "He bought the very first twenty one-becky bills to be printed."
She could see her father-in-law was excited, but why would he excited by twenty dollars in paper money? "What's so special about that?"
"It makes them potentially very valuable. Back up-time, mint condition, uncirculated number ones were selling for three thousand dollars. Of course, the number twos were selling for only seven hundred dollars."
Sveta looked at the beckies and wondered what they might be worth. "And numbers three through twenty?"
"A couple of hundred dollars."
She did the mental calculations and stared at Felix in disbelief. "Those pieces of paper are worth over seven thousand dollars?"
Felix shook his head. "Right now they're probably worth no more than a hundred dollars, two hundred max. But in a few years . . . you could take your seven thousand and add a zero or two."
"Now that's just getting ridiculous. No one would pay seven hundred thousand dollars for few bits of paper."
Felix grinned. "Okay, so two zeros might be pushing it. Still, one day, a collector might be willing to pay a small fortune for them."
Slightly mollified by the "one day" qualifier, Sveta passed him the packages with John's men's names on them. "John told me to ask you to put them somewhere safe."
Felix accepted the four additional packages and put them and John's beckies into a drawer. "Remember how you said you could have done better in your qualifying if you'd had your own revolver?"
Sveta nodded. "The trigger on the revolver they gave me was almost impossible to squeeze."
"Training weapon," Felix said knowledgably. "They keep the triggers heavy in those so recruits can't fire them accidentally."
"It would be nice if people could fire them deliberately," Sveta muttered. She was still annoyed at only qualifying as marksman on the service revolver.
Felix lifted a canvas bag out from under his desk and laid it on the table. "I agree, so I talked to Caleb about getting a couple of the new H&K Army revolvers. One for you, and one for John." He removed a wooden gun box from the bag and passed it to Sveta.
Even knowing how heavy the service H&K Remington had been, the weight of the box came as a surprise. She managed to place it in front of her without dropping it and opened the box to reveal a revolver and the usual cleaning kit. She recognized immediately that this revolver had a swing-out cylinder, which meant it was a cartridge weapon. She thumbed the latch and gently swung out the cylinder. It was a standard six-shooter, and it was empty. "Can I dry fire it?" she asked.
"Sure. It's a double action, so you don't have to manually cock it, but it's still got the factory default trigger setting. So it might be a bit heavy."
Sveta aimed at a vase on a bookshelf across the room and squeezed the trigger. Or at least she tried to squeeze it. She had to hold the revolver with both hands before she could cycle it. The second shot didn't come any easier. She turned to Felix. "I couldn't even shoot Marksman with this."
Felix held out a hand for the revolver. "All it needs is a little fine tuning. Then we'll visit the range so you can fire it."
Tetschen, late November
There was a rap of knuckles on the timber frame of the tent and Corporal Georg Schlegel poked his head through the flap. "Mail for Trelli, Poppler, Cleesattel, and Klein."
"Come on in," Michael invited the company clerk.
Georg entered with a couple of CARE parcels under his arms and some letters in his hand. He handed CARE parcels to Puss and Lenhard, and gave letters to Michael and Thomas. "What about Corporal Behrns?" Puss asked. "Didn't he get any mail?"
"Private Kühn is delivering mail to those living in lodgings, Sergeant," Georg said as he moved closer to the pot bellied stove heating the tent. "Do you mind if I warm myself by your stove?"
"Sure. Help yourself to some soup if you want," Puss said.
While Georg helped himself to some of the soup simme
ring on the stove, Puss turned to the important task of opening his parcel. The tent was quiet while the four men caught up on the news for home. Puss, reading the letter from his wife, chuckled.
"What's amused you, Sarge?" Michael asked.
"Sveta wants to try her hand at writing a book based on the script I wrote, but she needs my permission before a publisher will even look at it."
"Why?" Thomas asked. "I didn't think American wives needed their husband's permission to do anything."
"They don't, but the copyright laws mean no USE publisher will touch a manuscript based on my story without my written authorization." Puss waved the form that had accompanied Sveta's letter. "Who would be the best person to certify I signed this?"
"I would be," Georg said. "I have the company seal. If you would be so good as to follow me to my office, I can do that for you now and put it in the next post."
It took longer to prepare for the cold than it did to walk across to Georg's office and sign and seal the document. Georg slid the form into an official envelope and carefully wrote Sveta's name and address on it.
Suddenly they heard shouting and a soldier pushed his way into the office. "They're all dead! They're all dead!" Private Wolfgang Kühn cried the moment he saw Corporal Schlegel.
"Who is all dead, Private Kühn?" Georg asked the young soldier.
"Corporal Behrns, Frau Krohne, and the girl staying with them."
Puss stared at the man in disbelief. "You're sure?"
Wolfgang held up his bloodied hands. "They're dead. They've all had their heads smashed in."
Puss had personally smashed the head of a possibly rabid dog's head in and knew what it had looked like. He shook his head to try and rid it of the vision the man's words inspired. "We'd better get there and check."
Georg shoved the letter he was holding under his coat as he got to his feet. "You'll need a skilled tracker to follow the perpetrators. I'll find someone."
"Meet us at Corporal Behrns' lodgings," Puss called as he left Georg's office.
****
The sun was low in the sky as Puss and his men hurried up the street toward the house where Hermann and Anna were staying. Neighbors were crowding the doorway. When they saw Puss and his men approaching they opened a path.
"It's not pretty," a woman warned.
"Have you been in?" Puss asked, worrying about the destruction of evidence.
"Just to confirm that they were all dead." The woman laid bloodied hands on Puss' coat. "You are going to make whoever did this pay?"
Puss nodded. Then he gently pushed the woman away so he could enter the room. With the sun setting it was too dark to see much. "I need a light," he called through the door.
A couple of minutes later Michael entered with a copy of an up-time hurricane lamp. Under its weak yellow light Puss cast his gaze around the room. It was a shambles, with furniture and the straw packing from the mattress strewn everywhere. There had been a struggle, but Anna and Hermann had lost. Anna lay on the floor, a bloodied meat-cleaver beside her. She'd been killed by multiple blows from a blunt instrument, so the blood on the cleaver wasn't hers.
He checked Hermann next. He'd gone down fighting, but he'd still gone down. That left the girl, and Yorick. Puss had to force himself to walk to the back of the room where the bed was. As he approached the lamp illuminated the scene. It wasn't pretty. The girl had tried to protect herself from the blows by curling into a ball, and then there was Yorick.
Puss ran a hand down the broken body. Yorick had fought to the end. One of his canines was broken, and there were bits of cloth caught on his teeth. Tears ran down his cheeks as he caressed the bloodied head.
****
Corporal Michael Cleesattel glanced at Sergeant Trelli. He looked distracted, pained even. Michael edged closer to see what was so interesting, and saw Yorick. He stood and gestured for Lenard and Thomas to follow him.
"What's wrong with Sarge?" Lenhard asked.
"They killed Yorick," Michael explained.
"Bastards!" Thomas muttered. "What do we do now?"
"Catch whoever is responsible," Michael said.
Corporal Schlegel and a dozen soldiers were waiting for them when they stepped out of the house. "Where is Sergeant Trelli?" Georg asked.
"They killed Yorick," Michael said. For most people the idea that a dog was dead wouldn't explain their absence, but Captain Havemann's company knew Sergeant Trelli was a softy when it came to his horse and dog.
"Will he be all right?" Georg asked.
"He just needs time," Michael said. "And catching the people responsible will go a long way to helping him."
"Then we are in luck. Private Steger has found a trail of blood. It should be a simple matter to follow them to their lair," Georg said.
"Then what are we waiting for?" Lenhard asked.
Michael glanced towards the room Sergeant Trelli was in. "Thomas, can you try and get Sarge to follow us?"
Thomas nodded and headed back into the room.
"Right, let's be off, then," Michael told the waiting soldiers.
****
The trail led straight to the back entrance to Schön's brothel, something that came as no surprise to Michael. He checked the men Corporal Schlegel had brought with him and smiled. Only four of them were carrying guns, but they were new-build pump-action shotguns. The other men weren't exactly unarmed either, having a mix of two-handed axes and wrecking bars. It was possible that Georg had picked his men deliberately, because they had the appearance of an entry team from the house-to-house fighting at Zielona Góra.
Michael was inclined to just point them at the door and tell them to do their stuff, but he was a police officer, and the law of the land applied to him as well as everyone else. He advanced on the door and thumped on it with the butt of his revolver. When someone slid open the peep-slot he lifted his lantern so they could see his uniform. "Police. Three dangerous criminals have come this way. For your own safety, let us in."
"I'll have to check with the boss," the face in the slot said.
That, as far as Michael was concerned, was an attempt to delay the police, and it was all the excuse he needed to unleash violence. "Stand back from the door," he ordered before standing aside for the entry team to do their thing. They weren't a police entry team. The men Michael had unleashed were low on legal niceties, but strong on brute force. Two solid slugs smashed into the door jamb before a third soldier slammed shoulder-first into the door. He bounced off, but the door was loosened. A wrecking bar went to work and the door swung open.
Michael followed the entry team in, his revolver in one hand and a lantern in the other. They advanced past the cowering doorman and along a corridor. He could see the recently washed floor the entry team was following and gestured for the people behind him to follow. He was happy to see Thomas bringing up the rear with Sergeant Trelli
They followed the wet floor into a main corridor, where they found a maid cowering in a corner with a mop in her hands. Michael holstered his revolver and relieved the woman of her mop. "Blood?" he asked. She nodded. "Which way did they go?"
The woman didn't say anything but she sent a quick glance down the corridor. That was enough for Michael. He gave her back the mop and directed her back the way he'd come. "Get out. You'll be safer outside."
The woman hadn't taken more than a dozen steps before three men entered the corridor from the other end. Two of them were armed. The third was Matthias Schön, the proprietor. "What is the meaning of this outrage?" he demanded.
"Hot pursuit," Michael said. "We've followed three murderers into your establishment. For your own safety, I recommend that you leave until we have dealt with them.
One of the men looked like he wanted to use his pistol, but Matthias pushed the weapon down. "Why would murderers come into my establishment?"
"Maybe because they work for you," Lenhard suggested from behind Michael.
"That is slanderous!"
"The truth can't be slanderous,"
Lenhard muttered just loud enough for Michael to hear.
Michael ignored Lenhard and concentrated on keeping moving. He would have elbowed Matthias to one side as he went past, but the soldier ahead of him got to him first. He could see faces in doorways looking out into the corridor. There would be hell to pay if there were civilian casualties, so he stopped to call out. "Everybody! Out now. I can't guarantee your safety if you stay. Three armed and dangerous men have entered these premises. They have killed before, and have nothing to lose. So get out now."
There was screaming and squealing as people started moving. Corporal Schlegel's men guided people out of the building, except for Matthias and his two bodyguards, who stayed where they were.
"You too, Herr Schön. It's not safe for you to stay," Michael told him.
"I'm not leaving."
Michael shrugged. He wasn't overly concerned about Schön's personal safety. "On your own head be it." He turned to a couple of soldiers. "Take their guns."
Schön's bodyguards looked to resist giving up their weapons, until they realized they were facing half-a-dozen soldiers carrying a variety of weapons that they seemed only too eager to use. Corporal Schlegel took possession of the guns and tried to find somewhere to put them. In the end he opened his coat and thrust them under his belt, not noticing the envelope that fell from his coat, but Matthias Schön did. He bent down to retrieve it, but a foot from one of the men with Georg landed on it first. Matthias backed away while the solider picked it up and passed it back to Georg, who pushed it into an internal pocket of his coat.
With potential innocents clear and the risk of being shot from behind alleviated, Michael hastened after the entry team, who'd continued to follow the trail of blood. He was too late to give instructions, as the corporal in charge of the entry team positioned his men either side of the door and thumped the door with the butt of his shotgun. "Police! You're surrounded. Surrender or prepare to die."