David nodded. He'd been expecting the answer. And he knew darn well that the locals wouldn't be taking chits. Not here, not even at sword point. It would take guns, lots of them, and dead bodies for demonstrations. Not something the general would sanction, thank God. And not something that David would do even under direct orders. This would require thinking outside the box. "That leaves what you might call creative financing."
"That's what I figured-and it's why I called you in."
Yep, that was just going to thrill the shit out of Colonel McAdam. "The regular quartermasters are already kinda mad at me, sir. If I-"
"Don't worry about it. To begin with, I'm pulling you out of the quartermaster corps altogether. You'll be in charge of a new unit which I'm calling the Exchange Corps."
"Exchange? Exchange what, exactly?" David looked at the general carefully and got back a grin that was more than a little scary. Suddenly David remembered that the general used to be a prizefighter.
"That's for you to figure out," the general said, still with that "I'm going to enjoy ripping your arms off" grin. "Whatever you can come up with that'll enable us to obtain supplies from the locals without completely pissing them off. No way not to piss them off at all, of course. But the Poles have had as much experience with war over the last thirty years as the Germans. They'll take things philosophically enough as long we aren't killing and raping and burning and taking so much that people die over the winter."
David went back to starring at the charts in his head. Personally, he doubted that the locals were quite as sanguine about having their crops stolen for pieces of worthless paper as the Prince of Germany thought they were. He was going to have to come up with some way of getting goods, manufactured goods, through. Enough to create the belief that the pieces of paper weren't worthless. Maybe steam barges up the Oder. "Okay," he said eventually. "I've got some ideas. But I'll need a staff, General. Not too big. Just maybe three or four clerks and, ah, one sort of specialist. His name's Sergeant Beckmann. Well, Corporal Beckmann, now. I got him his stripe back but then he ran afoul of-well, never mind the details-and got busted back to corporal."
"Where is he now? And what sort of specialist is he?"
"He's right here in the Third Division, sir. One of the quartermasters in von Taupadel's brigade. As for his specialty . . . Well, basically he's a really talented swindler."
"Okay, you got him-and we'll give the man back his sergeant's stripe. May as well, since I'm promoting you to captain."
David felt himself smiling. It was silly and he knew it, but little nerd boy was going to be a captain in the army. Yes, he was a millionaire, but that wasn't the sort of status that had mattered before the Ring of Fire. Before the Ring of Fire, his world had been a world of tough kids and kids who got picked on. David had been among the kids that got picked on. His world hadn't had millionaires in it, but it had had army people and an army captain wasn't in the picked on category.
Zielona Gora
He was less happy a few days later after Zielona Gora had been taken. David Bartley hated sitting on his ass. It was a discovery he had made recently, not having had much opportunity to do so since he was fourteen and the Ring of Fire happened. But of the "hurry up and wait" of the army, it was the "wait" part that bothered him more than the "hurry up" part.
Luckily, there were things to do. David headed for the radio shack. He needed some help figuring out how to create a market out of nothing. And he needed to set up some kind of legal framework for the Exchange Corps.
There was suddenly a lot to do.
The sprinkling rain on the way to the radio shack didn't bother him at all.
Yet.
He sent messages off to Magdeburg, Grantville and Badenburg. He had cleared the structure of the Exchange Corps as a stock corporation with the general and rumors about it had started almost immediately. That was probably Johan's work. Troopers in the division wanted to buy in. So he had investors before he had a company or any but the most basic notion of what sort of company to build. He sought advice from older, wiser heads in the business community that had migrated to the Ring of Fire area in the last few years. He sent more messages to Magdeburg, instructing his agents to set up the Third Division Exchange Corps as a corporation.
****
"All right, Captain Bartley, tell me about the Third Division Exchange Corps Corporation," Colonel McAdam said.
"General Stearns ordered me to set up an Exchange Corps before we took Zielona Gora, sir," David said. The colonel just looked at him. David continued, "Forming it up as a corporation gives people confidence in it. It's listed on the Magdeburg and Grantville Exchanges. The price of its stock is reported with the stock reports on the radio and in the newspapers. It's not going to march through, steal your stuff, and be gone. So people will be willing to wait a bit for the goods to arrive. We can buy grain and wine . . . they make a decent white here, sir . . . or they will, once they get in some equipment. And pay them in contracts for the equipment they need to set up industries."
"Like you did in Saxony but with less equipment to start with? And you're doing this on your own like you did in Saxony, too?"
"No, sir. That's another reason for the corporation. The troops in Third Division will be able to buy in to the Third Division Exchange Corps by filling out a form and having a percentage of their monthly pay set aside for it, just like they can buy insurance. That's so that the men will have an interest, but also because we need the money. And a few bucks a month from four thousand men is a lot of money."
"Four thousand?"
"I was being a bit conservative. I figure we have a good chance of getting half the men to put up ten to twenty bucks a month, depending on their personal circumstances and attitudes. Call it four thousand men and ten bucks apiece, that’s forty thousand bucks a month to buy goods manufactured along the Elbe and ship them here. Zielona Gora is a mostly a trade town, a bit of wine, like I said, but mostly trade. So far the Thirty Years' War hasn't treated it very kindly. But now that it's back in the USE, heck, even if it was in Poland it would be near the border, so it makes a pretty good conduit for trade between the USE and Poland."
"We're unlikely to be here long enough to do that."
"Yes, sir, but we can set it in motion. And Third Division has wounded who need new employment. Especially in the Hangman. They took a beating."
Colonel McAdam and the Division's S4 bought several thousand shares and Brigadier Schuster and the 2nd Brigade bought even more.
****
"You told me three weeks ago that it would be here in ten days!"
David looked up from his work and wished he hadn't. "Come now, mein Herr. You know as well as I do that rain, this kind of rain anyway, causes delays,"
"Ten days! This is twenty-one! I want my parts or I want my money!"
"Fine. I will instruct the cashier to return your money, including the membership fee. When the goods arrive, they will be sold to someone else. Someone not quite so discomforted by the standard delays involved in shipping goods through a war zone in the middle of winter."
"I didn't say . . ." Herr Kopenskii ran out of steam as he realized that yes he had said. "I didn't mean . . ." Again the pause. David knew what he'd meant. Partly it was just the standard "let's see what I can get out of the delay" that David suspected would be going on in any time and place where people did business. But in this case, that was only part of it. Everyone knew by now that the king and been injured and that for now Wettin and Oxenstierna were running things. What would happen to his investment if the USE abandoned Zielona Gora and he was left with a receipt for goods that would never arrive. Herr Kopenskii had taken a considerable chance on Mike Stearns reputation and, for that matter, David's.