Turenne gave the man an encouraging smile. Privately, he suspected the diagrams-all the documents, for that matter-wouldn't be half as useful as the few small parts from machines they'd be taking back to France. Now that he was here and could finally see these Wietze oil works, Turenne wasn't very impressed. Overall, the technology involved was nothing that France didn't have already, although it had never been used in quite this manner.
The trick, it turned out, was building the machines that could put the oil to use. Not so easy, that. But if France could do so, they'd have no trouble providing the machines with the fuel they needed, with what Turenne had learned from this raid. He was quite sure of that, now. Even if there turned out to be no oil fields in France suitable for the purpose, there were certainly some in the New World territories that the English king had sold to Richelieu. The raw product could be shipped across the Atlantic and refined in a French coastal city.
"Five more minutes," he said. "Then load what you have on the pack horses, and set fire to the building. Let the rest of the documents burn with it."
After he went outside, he headed toward the corpse of the man who'd been in possession of the up-time rifle.
"Have you figured out who he was?" he asked the subaltern he'd left in charge.
"Yes, Marshal." The officer held up one of those elaborate leather contraptions that American men were said to use instead of simple purses. Wallets, they were called, if Turenne remembered correctly.
Flipping open one of the small leather sheets, the officer showed Turenne a portrait. Not a painted one, but what the up-timers called a photograph. It filled perhaps one-third of the small document it was attached to, with the rest being a simple block of text.
The marshal looked from the photograph to the body lying on the ground. The corpse had fallen face up. By some peculiar quirk, very little of the blood that had painted half the wall of the shed behind the man had splattered onto his face, so the features were readily visible.
The photograph was that of the corpse, clearly enough. Turenne scanned the text alongside the photograph. The meaning of much of it wasn't clear, but one item sprang immediately to his attention.
The man's name. Quentin B. Underwood.
Turenne drew in a sharp breath, almost a hiss. He recognized the name, from intelligence reports that Richelieu's intendant Servien had provided. An American, and one of those who had become quite prominent in manufacturing and financial circles. Estranged from most of the Grantvilliards, lately, and now attached to Wilhelm Wettin's party.
There would be political repercussions from this killing, obviously. But Turenne simply had no idea what they might be. He still found the inner workings of the political affairs of the United States of Europe often puzzling.
Mentally, he shrugged. Whatever the repercussions, and however they might fall upon France, the man had been killed in the course of a military operation in which he'd been directly involved. He'd not been murdered; not been assassinated.
He looked now at the soldiers who were with the subaltern. One of them was holding an up-time rifle in his hands. The dead man's weapon, Turenne assumed.
"Were any of you directly involved?"
One of the soldiers lifted his chin. "Yes, Marshal. Me and"-a quick jab of the thumb at the man standing next to him-"Jules Lambert here, we shot him. Somebody else too, from the wounds, but I don't know who that was."
The soldier named Lambert was the one holding Underwood's rifle. He glared down at the corpse. "Fucking bastard killed Francois. We weren't even trying to shoot anybody any more, since they were all running away. Took us by surprise."
Turenne nodded. "Can either of you write?"
Both men looked dubious.
"Never mind, then. Just give your testimony to the subaltern here." To him, Turenne said, "Make up a report. It'll be something we can show the Americans, if need be, so keep it simple and factual. No rhetoric, you understand."
"Yes, Marshal. And what do you want done with the man's rifle?" The subaltern pointed to the up-time weapon in Lambert's hands.
There was a time when that rifle would have been almost invaluable. But that time was at least a year back, by now. Thibault and du Barry already had more than a dozen American guns in the workshop in Amiens. They didn't need another one, especially since this rifle looked to be a simple hunting weapon, and an old one at that.
"Was it your shot that killed him?" he asked Lambert. The soldier started to say something, then hesitated and looked at his mate. "Ah… hard to say, Marshal. Could have been either me or Edouard."
"The rifle's yours, then. I'll leave the two of you to decide how to divide it up." He gave them a smile. "I wouldn't advise sawing it in half, though. But you could certainly sell it and divide the money."
The two men looked at each other. Then Lambert hefted the rifle and studied it. "Better gun even than a Cardinal," he muttered. "Hate to sell it."
"Don't be foolish, Jules," said the other soldier. He stooped and plucked a small brass cylinder from the ground, lying not far from the corpse. "You have to have these to shoot the gun. Here, let me show you."
Edouard took the up-time rifle from his mate Lambert and operated the bolt, then showed him something that Turenne couldn't see from his vantage point. "See that?" the soldier demanded. "There's less than a handful left. Better to stick with a Cardinal. We'll sell it to some nobleman. Make a bundle."
Still smiling, Turenne walked off. Both soldiers were from rural areas, from their accents. The shrewd avarice of French country folk was a byword.
Shrewd in other ways than money, too. Turenne wondered by what happenstance a simple French cavalryman had become so familiar with up-time weapons. For a moment, he was tempted to go back and ask him.
But, he didn't. He knew the explanation would be perfectly innocent-and incredibly tortuous. Three years had passed since the Ring of Fire. By now, knowledge of all sorts of things American had spread across Europe, following an untold number of pathways. That part of Europe, at least, that was west of the Vistula and north of the Pyrenees and the Balkans.
Turenne knew from Servien that part of the reason Richelieu had developed such a deep if grudging respect for the USE's prime minister was that Michael Stearns had never made any attempt to keep that American knowledge a secret, beyond a few specific items. It was a policy that looked foolish at first glance, but actually wasn't foolish at all.
First, because keeping it all a secret would have been impossible anyway. Leaving aside spying and outright theft, the prices people were often willing to pay for such knowledge and items were enormous. There were a lot of coffers in Europe, and many of them were very large-and Americans were no more saintly than anyone else.
And, second-the truly cunning aspect-was that Stearns understood something that Europe's rulers were only beginning to grasp. This part of what Servien had told Turenne, he'd said quite ruefully. Just as was true in many legends and folk tales, supping from a demon's broth was a dangerous business. Much of that American knowledge came with consequences attached. There was a political, social and economic reality lying beneath those alluring devices. It was impossible, often enough, to simply take the device and leave the reality behind. Willy-nilly, using those same untold number of pathways, Stearns was steadily forcing his opponents to cede ground. Not physical terrain, but the more insubstantial terrain of law and custom that was the ultimate battlefield.
It would be interesting to see how it all turned out. Turenne was still a very young man, so he'd have decades to observe the process-assuming, of course, he didn't get killed in one of the wars that were sure to accompany it. The truth was, although he generally kept it to himself, he didn't really care much any longer exactly what might result, so long as France was still there at the end.
Hearing a peculiar noise, he looked up. As the sound grew louder, his eyes looked for the source and soon found it.