realized he hadn’t instructed Graham and Gordon to tell him anything, just to bring him here. Scots tended to favor literal interpretations.
By then, the bodies of the chancellor and the three staff officers slain by Ljungberg had been carried into a side room. Gustav Adolf was resting on a narrow bed which had been brought into the tavern’s main room by servants. In the absence of any advice from Nichols—he wasn’t about to trust any of the doctors Oxenstierna had assigned to the king—Erik hadn’t been willing to risk moving his cousin any farther than necessary.
Wettin stared at Gustav Adolf. “Is he…?”
“Yes, he’s back. But—as you can see—he’s still subject to ills.”
Wettin shook his head. It wasn’t clear if the gesture was one of negation, denial, or simply to clear the man’s brain. He probably didn’t know himself.
“Where is Chancellor Oxenstierna?” he asked.
“The traitor is dead,” Colonel Hand said in a flat, cold tone of voice. “At the king’s command.”
That was stretching the truth. You could even argue it was mangling the truth beyond all recognition. But for the moment, Erik didn’t care—and who was there to dispute his claim? The surviving staff officers had been placed under arrest and taken away. The tavern keeper and his servants were so petrified they could barely speak.
“You can go look at his body yourself, if you don’t believe me,” he added, jerking his head toward the far door. “He’s in a room just beyond.”
Wettin shook his head again. “No, no. But…what do you want me to do”
Erik shrugged. “How should I know? I’m just the king’s cousin. You’re the prime minister of the nation. It’s on your head now.”
Luckily, Gustav Adolf recovered consciousness within an hour. After he was told of what had transpired, a sad look came to his face.
“So, my fault again. First Anders, now Axel.”
“It was not your fault, cousin. For one thing, I’m the one who decided to shoot him.”
The king’s thick shoulders shifted on the cot, in what passed for a shrugging motion. “What else could you do? But if I hadn’t lost control, Axel would still be alive.”
Erik was tempted to ask: For how long? Gustav Adolf had made clear in their earlier discussions that he was inclined to simply have Oxenstierna stripped of his posts and sentenced to internal exile for the rest of his life. What Americans called “house arrest”—except the house in question was one of the finest mansions in Sweden.
But whatever the king’s personal preferences might be, he’d also ordered Erik to launch a thorough investigation of what had transpired with Maximilian of Bavaria. If that investigation turned up proof that the chancellor had been involved in the treasonous plot—and Erik didn’t have much doubt it would—then Gustav Adolf would really have no choice. He’d have to order Oxenstierna’s execution.
Now that it was over, Erik decided it had all worked out for the best. His cousin’s guilt for having lost control was a pale shadow of the anguish he would have felt, had he been forced to order his chancellor executed himself. He and Axel Oxenstierna had been good friends for many years.
Erik, on the other hand, had never liked the bastard anyway.
Wettin floundered. But the king was back, and took charge himself.
“First—there is a radio station here, yes?—the news must be broadcast to the entire nation. Along with the following…”
That and what followed was the jabbering from Berlin that Noelle had been listening to when Denise and Minnie returned from the airfield.
“Oh, wow,” said Denise, after Noelle filled them in.
“Interesting times,” said Minnie.
Denise shook her head. “No, that’s a curse. Doesn’t apply at all. God, I hate to think what my life would have been like without the Ring of Fire. Can we say ‘boooooorrrrrring?’ ”
Noelle stared at her. Much the way she might have stared at a Martian. Or a mutant.
Chapter 53
The United States of Europe
All of the major newspapers in the country and many of the smaller ones came out with the story the next morning. It didn’t matter what day of the week they normally published. It didn’t matter whether they were morning papers or evening papers. Even if the edition was just a two-page special edition, nothing more than a broadsheet printed on both sides, they all published something.
The headlines varied from city to city and province to province, but the gist of them was essentially the same:
the emperor recovers
chancellor oxenstierna executed for treason
hundreds in berlin arrested
prime minister wettin freed and returned to power
the emperor orders a