Anne Cathrine's indignation vanished. "Papa!" That wail was downright piercing.
Christian finally lowered the finger. "Well, I should," he insisted, followed by a truly majestic harrumph, complete with quivering royal mustachios.
"But-magnanimously-I won't. Take him to his new cell! Ulrik, make sure it's done properly. I want no daredevil last-moment escapes from-"
His sneer was just as majestic.
"Mr. Secret Agent, James Bond, 007. Ha!"
And, bundled off Eddie was, by the two soldiers, with Ulrik following behind.
Anne Cathrine came with them, and stayed in the new cell for half an hour, making sure Eddie was properly dried and tucked into his new bed. So he wouldn't catch a chill, or something. She must have repeated the term delicate at least a dozen times, to Eddie's disgruntlement.
It didn't occur to him until several days later, to wonder why the king of Denmark had let his daughter do any such thing.
Not until Ulrik and Baldur came barreling into the room. With Anne Cathrine in tow.
Wide-eyed, from his perch in front of the window, Eddie watched Baldur spread some sort of large diagram-sketch, rather-across the small table in the center of the room.
"We must be quick, Eddie," said the prince, in a low voice. He glanced over his shoulder. "One of the guards is likely to mention something to his captain, and the captain might… Well, never mind."
Ulrik turned back to the sketch and pointed down at it. "This is another lie, isn't it?"
Hesitantly, Eddie came over. Once he was close enough, he recognized the sketch. It was a depiction-very good one, too-of the huge radio tower that the USE had erected in Magdeburg.
"Uh… Well, no, it's actually pretty accurate."
"Eddie!" Ulrik, normally as even-tempered a man as Eddie had ever met, was obviously on edge and seemed to be controlling his temper. "Stop it. I know it's accurate. It was drawn by one of our best spies. But that's not what I meant, and you know it. You don't need this, do you?"
Eddie glanced at Norddahl. The Norwegian's gaze seemed very icy. Of course, with his color eyes, that came fairly naturally. It was impossible to tell if he was really angry or not.
For a moment, Eddie wondered which of the two had figured it out-the prince himself, or his hireling?
Probably Baldur, if for no other reason than the natural injustice of the universe, which the past half a year had made so blindingly clear to Eddie. In a world run according to sane and rational principles, it would be a shy and bespectacled seventeenth-century geek equivalent who'd manage to deduce, just from matching various entries in an encyclopedia against each other, that radio didn't actually require huge towers hundreds of feet tall. Not for every purpose, at least, especially military ones.
In this universe, of course-mad universe; insane; irrational; unreasoning; worst of all, deadly dangerous to hapless peg-legged West Virginia country boys-it was entirely fitting that the deduction would be made by a man who only needed maybe an earring to be the spitting image of Captain Morgan, Pirate Extraordinaire.
So Eddie imagined, at least. Of course, for all he knew, Captain Morgan had actually been spectacled and geeky-looking.
"I need to know now, Eddie." The prince's voice was low, but very steely and very insistent.
Eddie took a deep breath, and glanced out the window. He couldn't really see the Oresund, from here, but he hardly needed to.
"Did you mine it?" he asked.
"Yes. But I doubt it'll do any good."
Eddie looked away. "No, probably not. Whatever else he is, John Chandler Simpson is nobody's dummy. He's probably forgotten more about mines than you or I will ever learn."
He gazed at the sketch for a moment. "I won't tell you anything that might bear on my admiral's operations. Or that of my nation's armed forces, for that matter. If you can't accept that, then you might as well haul out the tongs and the pincers."
To Eddie's surprise, Ulrik laughed softly. "I can just imagine that." He gave Anne Cathrine a quick, sly glance. "Do I do it over her dead body? Not likely, I think. You're so frail, you know-and she's like a she-bear on the subject."
The king's daughter sniffed. "He is delicate. Partly why I'm so fond of him. Not coarse and crude, like some people I know."
Norddahl smiled thinly. "You wouldn't think that, if you'd been introduced to the lad the way I was. Watching the berserk steer a speedboat into a warship and barely managing to jump off at the last minute."
Eddie had only fragmentary memories of all that. What he did remember for sure, though, was that he hadn't been steering the speedboat. The overpowered Outlaw had simply been running wild, after Larry was killed, and had hit the Danish warship by accident.
On the other hand, he'd never told anyone that, either. He would, when and if the time came to report to Admiral Simpson. But as long as he was in Danish captivity, he'd figured the legend worked to his advantage.
Probably, anyway. It was hard to tell, sometimes. But he thought he could detect, more often than not, that ancient Norse spirit lying under the seventeenth-century patina. Barely lying under it, in Baldur's case.
Eddie Cantrell, the Delicate Berserk. There were times he thought he might go mad, in this new world.
Then again-in his more honest moments-he'd admit that he'd never felt quite so alive in West Virginia. "Wild, Wonderful," was the proud claim on the state's license plates-but he'd never met a girl like Anne Cathrine there, now had he?
Or a prince like Ulrik, for that matter. Or an adventurer like Baldur Norddahl. Talk about wild and wonderful.
"Agreed?" he asked.
Ulrik nodded. "Yes, agreed."
Eddie looked down at the sketch again. "It's too late now for any of it to matter, anyway. Well, except-"
He gave Ulrik a sharp glance. "What do you know about our people locked in the Tower of London? I want a straight answer, Ulrik, or I'm not saying anything more."
The prince shook his head. "We know very little, Eddie. Not even my father. That's the truth. More to the point, perhaps, we don't care, either."
He made a little grimace, then. "Charles is hardly what you'd call a bosom friend of Denmark. About all I can tell you is that, at last report-a week ago, perhaps-your embassy was still locked in the Tower."
Before Eddie could say anything, Ulrik added, "I will not pass anything on to anyone who might pass it on further to the English. My solemn vow, on that, Lieutenant Cantrell. I care only for Denmark. The whole League of Ostend can go to hell in a handbasket, to use your charming expression. With that idiot Charles leading the rest."
"Fair enough. The answer to your question is that, no, it's not exactly a lie." Eddie tapped the sketch. "For the purpose of general broadcasting to a large audience, you really do need something like this. Especially in this day and age, when we're in the Maunder Minimum. But for a lot of military or diplomatic purposes, you don't. When all you want to do is transmit narrowly to specific locations or parties."
Ulrike sighed, his head sagging. "In other words, my father's assumption-everyone's assumption, all along-that there was no way for Gustav Adolf to coordinate his various forces was completely baseless."
"Well… I wouldn't say 'completely' baseless. It's still not that easy to do, you know, not even with radio. And there's a pretty tight range limit. But, yes, you're basically right. The admiral has radio capability, and he'll be able to notify the emperor in Luebeck once he's entered the Kattegat and is within range of a radio carried by one of the airplanes. Which…"
Eddie looked back out the window. "Should be any day now, I figure. Unless you were lying last week when you told me he'd gotten out of the Elbe. Or unless there was a huge storm in the North Sea I haven't heard about."