Chapter 32

June 7, 1940

I had pursued the ideal of the perfect World Cup despite the great expense because of one vision that had sustained me throughout the process. That on the first day of the tournament the Francois representative, through gritted teeth and despite his obvious reluctance, would be forced to admit that he couldn't find anything to complain about. Sometimes, in my dreams, he even cried.

Reality, as usual, didn't live up to my expectations.

"C'est magnifique! What a wonderful event!"

Monsieur Beauregard, the Francois ambassador, had been effusive in his praise for the beauty of our new stadiums from the moment that he saw them. Now that the World Cup was upon us, he was full of praise for the pageantry of the opening ceremony, the enthusiasm of the crowd, and even the food on offer at the stadium. The worst part was that, as far as I could tell, he was being completely sincere.

"You're too kind," I said, mustering up my best professional smile.

"And this suite! To be among the crowd, to watch the game, and yet also to be able to carry on a decent conversation," he said, before kissing his own fingers for some reason. "Wonderful."

In all honesty, the suite was impressive. Visha had gone a little overboard with the design of the chancellor's suite, but I couldn't argue with the results. The room was broader than the other private suites and extended deeper into the building. As a result, we were able to host over thirty movers and shakers without having to worry much at all about elbow room.

At the rear of the room, away from the field, there was a connection to a private kitchen. Visha had arranged for a buffet table to be set up near that wall with a constantly replenished array of finger foods. The game could be seen from just about anywhere within the suite, but for those dedicated to catching every piece of the action there were two rows of seating at the front of the room. A bar with associated bar stools was at the same level as the rest of the room, while a step down led to a row of seating that was almost flush up against the glass separating us from the action.

The twin attractions of the food and the game action ensured a steady flow of guests circulating around the room. As did the waiters, circulating with a broad variety of drinks. My own spot near the center of the room acted as another focus of attention, especially for the more blatant brown nosers.

I maintained my uncomfortable smile and looked to the side. Fortunately, the woman I was looking for was nearby. I reached out and tugged Visha over to stand next to me.

"Ambassador, please allow me to introduce my deputy chancellor, Viktoriya Serebryakova," I said. "It's thanks to her hard work that this whole event has come together so well."

If I ever wanted Visha to take over as chancellor, I was going to have to raise her profile, both inside and outside of the country. Letting her ad lib on television had been a calculated risk, but I thought her charm points had come through in the end. Judging by her current deer-in-headlights expression, getting her used to dealing with big shots was going to be a long term project.

"Ah, hello," Visha said, reaching out her hand.

"Mademoiselle," Beauregard said, taking her hand before smoothly bending over brushing his lips against her skin. "You must be as capable as you are beautiful."

I waited for her to brush him off, but Visha seemed to have frozen in place. Beauregard had straightened up, though he kept her hand clasped in his. The pause had started to become awkward, but Visha still didn't say anything.

I finally resorted to pantomiming that I had just seen somebody across the room. "Pardon me, ambassador, I need to borrow Visha for a moment."

I wrapped my arm around hers and dragged Visha off towards the more sparsely populated front of the room. This early in the match, it seemed the food was more of a draw than the entertainment. Fortunately, whatever had caused Visha to freeze up didn't have hold of her legs, so she was able to follow along beside me gracefully enough. I stopped near the wall, in a little bubble of privacy. Turning to the side, I saw that Elya had read the mood and was directing traffic away from us for the moment.

"Are you all right?" I asked, leaning in close so that we wouldn't be overheard.

"Sorry," she said, looking down, "he just startled me, is all."

Naturally, after reincarnating into the past as a young girl, I was aware that I lived in a society with rather old-fashioned ideas about women. There was equality in terms of who was allowed to pick up a rifle and shoot at the emperor's enemies, but women were still expected to tolerate a lot of behavior that would have merited a report to HR in my previous life.

I'd been able to avoid that kind of nonsense by being promoted to major and having over fifty confirmed kills before my thirteenth birthday. I'd also had a whole lifetime's worth of memories that allowed me to resist the social pressure that otherwise might have molded my behavior. Visha, on the other hand, while an accomplished mage, was also far too kind. Even if she could have easily delivered the broken bones that would have convinced lecherous men to keep their hands to themselves, she would never do so on her own initiative.

Fortunately, she had a friend like me. I wanted Visha to learn how to move confidently through any kind of social circles. I didn't intend to open her up to a campaign of harassment. If men felt comfortable carrying out such blatantly unwarranted hand-holding right in front of me, I hated to think of what she might feel forced to endure when I wasn't around.

"There's no need to let him touch you like that," I said, patting her on the shoulder in sympathy. "He's just an ambassador. The Francois Republic could replace him easily enough."

They might think us prudish if we kicked an ambassador out over sexual harassment, but that would be a small price to pay in order to teach anybody watching that Visha was off limits.

"I don't mind," Visha said, shaking her head. "He's just being friendly."

As I'd feared, she was far too kind. She had always been enthusiastic in destroying the enemies of the Empire, but she refused to devote the same sort of effort fighting for her own cause

"Well, I mind when some lothario thinks he can put his paws on you just because he's friendly!" I said. "My deputy chancellor's person is sacrosanct."

The only way Visha would stand up for herself was if she was doing it on behalf of someone else. I felt a little guilty about being so manipulative, but I didn't have any other choice. Fortunately, Visha seemed to sense my kind intentions.

"All right," she said, favoring me with a smile. "I understand."

"Good," I said, before I tugged her back into the center of the room. "Let's take a look at the game."

We were able to find a clear area in front of the bar that offered an unobstructed view. Since the chancellor's suite was, of course, at midfield, we could see the whole field clearly. Somewhat to my surprise, the sight before us was not the Albish team easily pushing the Americans around. A glance at the scoreboard confirmed my suspicion that nobody had even scored a goal yet.

I had scheduled this game first for two reasons. First, it allowed us to show off our television technology to two large countries that shared the same language at the same time. Second, the strength of the Albish team was one of the biggest draws for the tournament as a whole. Together, it meant that we should have decent television viewership and an enthusiastic crowd. I hadn't really expected the Americans to make it a close game.

Well, it was early. Football wasn't exactly a high scoring game to begin with. And yet, studying the field, I didn't see any obvious mismatches. If anything, the American team seemed more energetic. As I watched, the Albish team brought the ball across midfield before their player tried a lateral pass. He either mis-hit it or mis-judged the situation, as an American player came flying forward and stole the ball without breaking stride.

"Bloody hell!"

The familiar voice and unfamiliar emotion threw me for a moment. I brought my attention back to the suite to find Mr. Lloyd and his two attendants standing below us, their noses almost pressed to the glass. Mr. Lloyd had made a very brief appearance near the buffet earlier in the evening, but it seemed he was putting the game ahead of his diplomatic duties for the moment.

I looked back up and watched the play develop, complete with Mr. Lloyd's commentary.

"How can you bring that slop to an international competition? Get back! Get back! This is your fault, help fix it! No! Watch the pass! The pass! No-"

Just as Mr. Lloyd had feared, the American who had stolen the ball had charged forward and drawn the attention of the entire Albish defense. As the goalie and both defenders closed in on him, he slid the ball across the field. His teammate had run up to support him and was completely unmarked. It was an easy tap in goal, bringing a roar from the crowd that temporarily drowned out Mr. Lloyd's ongoing complaints.

I didn't think the crowd was particularly partial one way or the other. Mostly they were cheering for the excitement of a goal being scored. Perhaps there was a little bit of an inclination to cheer for the underdog, but they probably would have cheered just as loudly if Albion had just scored. That would be cold comfort for Mr. Lloyd, of course.

I maneuvered Visha until we were out of earshot of the Albish group before I asked the question that was bothering me. "Isn't Albion's team better than this?"

"They should be," Visha said, before chewing on her lip. "Well, there was that report from Elya."

"Oh?"

"A group of Albish players went out after curfew," she said, glancing around to make sure she wouldn't be overheard. "They came back late, and drunk."

Apparently there was at least one disadvantage that came along with having train service that conveniently connected the stadium village to the heart of München. I cocked my head in thought. "We just let them go?"

"We put a few guards in place to make sure the players were safe," Visha said, shrugging. "It's not a prison camp."

Fair enough. I kept the pair of us moving until we were on the opposite side of the suite from Mr. Lloyd's group, then grabbed a couple of the seats on the lower level. Visha and I had worked hard to prepare this event. There was no major diplomatic crisis that I needed to worry about for the moment. We could afford to take some time to enjoy what looked to be a surprisingly competitive game.

ooOoo

June 14, 1940

The Americans ended up charging out to a four to one lead at halftime, then weathering the Albish counterattack in the second half to hold on for a five to four victory. The unexpected result sent shock waves through the sporting world, or at least the Albish press. The anger and vitriol directed towards the national team's coaches reached the sort of level I usually associated with the articles about me.

As far as I could tell, nobody ever wrote even a single article thanking me for establishing the group stage instead of going straight to single elimination matches, as the original plan would have done. Not that I ever expected gratitude from the Albish, but I had after all saved their team from going straight home in humiliation, however inadvertently. Well, I could just add it to the list of unappreciated kindnesses I had done for others.

In the second round of group stage matches held on Wednesday and Thursday, Albion's team quieted some of their critics by crushing the Aegyptus squad, seven to one. However, the Unified States managed to scrape a win against the Waldstatte Confederacy, one to nothing. As the Confederacy had won their match against Aegyptus, this meant that the Unified States had already clinched the victory in their group, while Albion still needed at least a draw in their upcoming game in order to go through to the elimination rounds.

Germania had also secured its spot in the elimination rounds by edging out Peru in a high scoring game before treating the Dacian football team much as I had treated their army during the Great War. The match against Hungary would determine whether we finished in first or second place. The first place teams would have the privilege of starting the elimination rounds in the same city in which they played their group stage games, while the second place finishers rotated among the competition sites.

I was reviewing those happy sporting facts in my head in order to distract myself from the trepidation that I felt as Maximilian Ugar hemmed and hawed and refused to come to the point. The man had asked for an emergency meeting, rarely a good sign. I also couldn't think of many happy surprises that could come out of a nuclear research program.

"General Ugar," I finally said, interrupting his small talk, "while I'm happy for your daughter, I can't imagine that you asked for this meeting in order to discuss her performance at school."

"Ah, yes," he said, before he came to attention, almost as if bracing himself to take a blow. "We recently succeeded in creating a man made nuclear chain reaction. We have also verified that the magical shielding developed to protect against radiation is effective against higher exposure than previously believed."

Well, there were two sentences I never wanted to hear one after the other. I held back a sigh. "What happened, exactly?"

He seemed relieved at my relatively mild reaction. "Our scientists believed that a sustainable reaction could be created by use of uranium and heavy water. The result was more energetic than anticipated. Fortunately, the mages were able to shield observers from both the super heated steam and the radiation."

He paused for a moment, looking at me. I gestured for him to continue. Better to get it all out at once.

"The remaining solid materials melted through two of the three layers of containment and halfway through the outer concrete vessel before cooling into a stable mass."

That was just about as horrifying as I had feared it would be. I almost wanted to ask if Dr. Schugel had been seen in the area before the test.

"If not for those mages," I said, "you'd be here telling me that all of our scientists were dead?"

"Well, I wouldn't be here," he began, before stopping and clearing his throat when I glared at him. "Um, yes, essentially. We're all very grateful for your foresight."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Why did none of our nation's scientists have a functioning survival instinct? Sometimes I felt like the only sane person in the country.

"What do you plan to do now?"

He visibly brightened. "Well, we'd like to get some more heavy water from Legadonia. Besides that, there's some interesting work to be done analyzing the remains of the last experiment."

With the thawing of our relations with the Legadonia Entente, cross border trade had started to pick up. One small portion of that, which I hoped the rest of the world had overlooked, had been the purchase by the University of Berun of small batches of heavy water from Legadonia for experimental purposes. That small trickle, combined with the small trickle of our locally generated heavy water, had been stockpiled until we had enough for the most recent experiment. Now that most of it was radioactive steam dissipating over the Germanian countryside, we naturally would need more in order for the next round of experiments.

Of course, a sudden gigantic purchase of heavy water would no doubt raise eyebrows around the world. I was also concerned that the scientific response to a life-threatening disaster was to try to replicate it as soon as possible. Not disappointed, not surprised, but concerned.

I stood, fixing General Ugar with my best glare.

"I expected better from you, General," I said. "The top priorities on this project are safety and secrecy. The scientists can lose track of that, but not you. Never you."

He nodded, shoulders slumping.

"The heavy water purchases will continue as they have been. You will go back to the project and create a report describing what went wrong and how it can be avoided in the future," I said. I paused to look him up and down. "After that, we'll see."

He nodded again, then saluted and left the room after I waved a hand in dismissal.

Once he left, I sank back into my seat with a sigh. The Max Ugar that I knew was a calm, level-headed individual. I was counting on him to be the voice of sanity on my behalf. I hoped that he had just gotten swept along by the enthusiasm of the scientists and the desire for quick results. If he could get his head on straight, he would be a valuable asset to the country. Otherwise, I'd need to have a replacement ready to go. I could hardly allow our nuclear program to carry on without a steady hand at the rudder.

I had lost enough nights of sleep worrying about leaving my successor with a nuclear monopoly. I hadn't even considered the disasters that might happen along the way. It was enough to make me want to cancel the program altogether. Unfortunately, as disturbing as it was to consider what our mad scientists were doing with our uranium stockpile, it would be even worse if other countries had nukes and we didn't. I'd just have to do my best to guide the program in the right direction.

If all went well, I could retire in a rational world of mutually assured destruction.

ooOoo

June 14, 1940

Later that afternoon, Elya came into my office with a pile of press clippings. I greeted her with a smile. While I hardly considered myself an expert in public relations, at least for this little project my future knowledge had some practical use. To be fair, it was probably present day knowledge over in America, but the Empire had been notoriously maladroit in its dealings with the media. Compared to the Imperial days, I was confident that our efforts looked like some expert had come back in time and pitched in.

"How's it going?" I asked.

Eventually, I wanted to establish a system of access journalism. By doling out perks to journalists, both in the form of access to newsworthy information and direct bribes, we could then shape what they published by threatening to take those perks away. By keeping our threats vague and somewhat arbitrary, we could train journalists to avoid even the possibility of making us upset. A beautiful web of self-censorship would stretch around the world, protecting our interests and serving our needs.

Of course, we were still in the early days of the process. For now, we were mostly just paying journalists in the hopes that they would say nice things about us. We had laid out the quid, so to speak, with no means of enforcing the pro quo. We had taken a few baby steps in that direction. Players and coaches in the World Cup had mandatory press availability times, access to which was controlled by the World Cup Committee and therefore by the government. We just hadn't done anything with that power so far.

It was just about time that we yanked somebody's access in order to serve as an example to the others.

"Oh, it's wonderful!" Elya said. "Everybody is writing such nice things."

Elya was an eternal optimist. It was part of what made her such a joy to be around and contributed to her effectiveness as an employee. It also meant, however, that I had to take her top level evaluations with a grain of salt, especially when she was happy.

"Everybody?"

"Well," she allowed, "two of the gentlemen from Hungary haven't sobered up enough to write anything coherent enough for publication."

If the worst thing to come out of this was some wasted beer money, then things really were going well.

"What about the articles that have been published? Give me the highlights."

"Most of them have focused on the games, though they usually praise our stadiums. Oh, here!" she said, sliding a few clippings out of the pile. "Three different American papers ran feature stories comparing our rapid creation of the stadium villages to their rapid proliferation of shanty towns. Hoopervilles, I think they call them."

I whistled. What a brutal attack. Superficially compelling, emotionally riveting, and completely unfair. Our stadium villages had been built through great efforts by the government, while their Hoopervilles had been thrown up by homeless bums at the end of their ropes. Not that the average reader would see through it, not when they were looking at pictures side by side for comparison.

Americans really didn't pull any punches when they went after each other. I wasn't going to wade into that fight, though. I was no crusader for truth or full disclosure. I'd just be content that they were saying nice things about Germania for now.

"The biggest story has been Miss Caldwell's series, Roads of Germania," Elya continued. Seeing my look of confusion, she clarified. "She's the one who has been touring the country in a borrowed People's Car."

"That poor girl," I said. Her editors must have insisted on it as a publicity stunt. American newspapers would stuff people into a phone booth until it broke if they could sell papers with the picture they got out of it.

"Actually, she seems to be enjoying herself," Elya said. "She loves the People's Car, and she's praised just about every place she's visited. She was particularly impressed with the televisions that you had seeded around the country."

That was suspicious. I didn't see how anybody could travel for long distances in the People's Car and end the journey in a good mood.

"The New Amstreldam Observer had to do an extra print run, since her first story was so popular," Elya continued. "Since then, the new installments have been nationally syndicated."

I tapped my fingers on my desk, lost in thought. There was no way that heartfelt praise of Germania was getting printed across the Unified States. Besides the laughable idea of an American praising our under powered little bug, a modern American woman driving through our countryside would find it, at best, quaint.

Elya's blind optimism was most pronounced when it came to me, or to projects that I had a hand in. It was probably one of the factors that kept her from seeking out a more lucrative job in the private sector, but it also meant that she could hardly fathom the idea that somebody wouldn't be impressed by something I had done, let alone that they would make fun of me. She would read an article subtly lampooning our cheap cars and our rustic citizens and their fascination with a tiny little television, and come away thinking it was sincere praise. Fortunately, I didn't let her obvious hero-worship of me go to my head, so I was able to prepare a rational response.

It was tempting to yank Miss Caldwell's press credentials and kick her out of the country, but I knew it would be the wrong move. The damage had already been done. If anything, kicking her out would just give her fresh new material to write about. Not to mention that the other American outlets would no doubt show solidarity with their countrywoman.

Americans, like their Albish cousins, put a great deal of weight on whether one was a "good sport." Responding to their insults with anger would only earn further derision.

"First things first," I said. "Take the press credentials back from those Hungarians and cut them off from the perks we've been giving out."

"Yes," Elya said, making a note of it.

While I didn't really care about wasting such a trifling amount of money, there was no denying that those men had behaved atrociously. Even their fellow reporters would have to admit that they had abused the privilege they'd been given to the point that it ought to be taken away. We were even on friendly terms with the Hungarian government, so there could be no accusations of bias in our judgment.

The point would be made, though, however gently. We had handed out generous privileges, and we could take them away.

"Second, reach out to Miss Caldwell and arrange an interview, preferably before the elimination round begins," I said. "I assume that you can track her down from her articles."

"Of course," Elya said. "Only, she'll be interviewing...?"

"Me."

Since I couldn't punish Miss Caldwell, I would have to reward her.