[center][b]Imperial Ottoman Airship Lines Passanger Airship, Odessa shuttle service, over the Black Sea[/b][/center]
The First Class dining area was well lit, and enjoyed a fantastic view of the Black Sea. The entire room had been done up in a grand old style, reminiscent of the old Turkey, from before the Constitution and other such things had put an end to excess.
Of course, the Empire could affoard extravagence now, but the auster asethic of the first years of the Constitutional period remained visible in most of the new construction in Istanbul or Ankara, especially publicly funded construction. Private construction was another matter, and even if the British or American style "glass towers" were popular, many of the newer structures made some sort of nod in their architectural lay-out to the rich cultural heritage of the Empire.
It was in some ways pleasant to see such signs of luxury - it was certainly more pleasant to pass the hours of the long airship flight to Odessa in the splendor of First Class than in the more cramped conditions of Second Class. And, it showed just how far the Ottomans had come in so short a time, something which was good to see... especially when so much would depend on them, so shortly.
Herbert Addams smilled at his own meandering thoughts, and turned his attention back to the menu. It was written in both Russian and Turkish, although the Russian cyrillic characters were smaller, and placed bellow the western script that spelled out the menu in Turkish. No Persian was used, he noted - even if the Ottoman Empire now encompased all of what had once been Persia, its elite was still solidly Turkish, so that even if more Persians as a percentage of the populace were literate than was the case amoung the Arabs, Persian writting had not yet infiltrated the places of the wealthy. And it wasn't as if the Persiand weren't learning Turkish quickly enough as it was...
He kept smilling, and when the white uniformed steward came to take his order, he requested the fish with a little white wine. The Turks still drank less than most Europeans, even if their old prohibitions were gone, and he tended to see that as a strength, moderation and all that.
His order placed, he sat back and began to enjoy the rest of the flight. It would still be a few hours before he arrived, and his work began...
[center][b]Odessa, Russian Empire[/b][/center]
Herbert stood quietly to one side of the airship's dinning area, watching the Odessa skyline approach. It was impressive, to see a city come nearer from aboard an airship, but then it always was.
Odessa was one of the main cities of the Russian Empire, almost as important as St. Petersburg or Moscow, and as such it had not a few of the grandoise monuments that had come to symbolize Russia to outside observers.
He thought he could make out the train station, and amused himself by trying to follow the smoke trails of trains going here and there down bellow - Odessa was a transit center for rail as well as air. There was a little snow on the ground, he could tell, and that amused him - he'd been uncomfortable in the Mediterranian heat in North Africa barely two weeks ago, and now he was going north again, north towards Russia this time, not Imperial Germany. Which was probably a good thing, he wouldn't want to be seen by... well, by certain individuals, especially after that affair in Munich, during Oktoberfest, although that had been over a month ago, and the correct people and done the correct things, so that there was no official record, no alert put out against his name... and that was good. It was hard enough to travel without the Germans being angry at him.
Herbert walked back to his chair and took a seat, luxuriating in the cushions. A steward approached, offered him a choice from a finely made wooden box of cigars, and he took one. It was good that the Ottomans had helium filled airships, so that a man could smoke if the mood took him, not like with the third-rate hydrogen airships some nations were using - he remembered reading about a disaster with the Mexican national airship line, how one of their craft had caught fire, and since it was filled with hydrogen... well, it had been a disaster after all. But the Ottomans knew what they were doing, he reassured himself. He was not a fearful man, but the thought of an airship falling from the sky in flames... it was an unpleasant thought in the extreme.
He wondered, as he took a deep drag on the cigar, which was excelent and Cuban unless he missed his guess, the Spanish always knew how to make cigars, what it was that had made his mind turn towards disaster. Certainly plans were in motion that would prove terribly important and terribly vulnerable, but... he had been doing so well up until now. There was no reason to worry.
He wondered, as he gazed out of the observation windows and savored the cigar, was he that afraid of the tasks waiting for him in Russia? He mulled that thought over, scratching at the itching beard he'd started to grow after the Munich affair. And, he decided quietly that the truth was that he was indeed that worried. He'd come so far, and now there was this single task that would prove the most difficult of any he had so far performed. He was frightened. But he had dealt with frightening things before, and everything had come out right then. A little voice whispered in the back of his mind: But that was then, this is now. And he forced it down, and turned his attention outwards, away from rumination. He even picked up the Russian language newspaper the stewards had brought him after dinner, he'd already devoured the Turkish language paper, and... he wanted to know something about what the official Imperial Russian line was, these days. The Turkish newspaper had shown him something of what the Turkish people thought these days, but little of what the government thought. Althought it had had quite a lot to say about what the people thought of the government... it was nice, he decided, to read Turkish newspapers. They had a free press, after all, and it was pleasant to see that, sometimes. Freer than Germany, when you got down to it, much freer than the Russian press, which was owned and operated almost wholly by the Russian government.
The news items were... unremarkable. Something about Taiping spies and assassins in the Russian Far East, which was hardly news - the Taipings drove the Russians mad as they struggled to stop their evangalism into Russian territory. The British felt much the same, although since they only had India, the Himalyas acted as enough of a barrier to keep out the worst of the Taiping efforts... more effective than the Great Wall, was the joke amoung the Russian garrisons in Mongolia, although they would never dare say it in public of course, and it would never be printed... the other items were of similar levels of pointlessness - Argentinia offending the Spanish viceroy in South America, Portugese troop movements in Brazil, perhaps another pointless colonial war... buissness as usual.
In a way, it was reassuring that they covered such things - it meant that more important things weren't going on. At least, he reflected, in the open...
Well, Abdul, if you've read this far, then you liked it, I hope. I posted this here because you aren't going on the old site anymore, and I wanted you to see this. At this point, I want to let you know that I disagreed with your kicking - you were flamed, after all. I also want to, well, beg you to return to the old site - it's a poorer place without your presence.
