Borja felt heat in his face. “‘Purported’ collusion? Do you question his guilt?”

  Dolor neither cowered nor became confrontational. “I do not question-nor do I presume-anything, Cardinal Borja. I simply observe that, until you have convened the Consistory to hear the charges, and a court to assess guilt and deliver a verdict, Urban VIII’s crimes technically remain ‘purported,’ do they not?”

  Borja tried to look imposing, but feared that he might have only effected a bad-tempered sulkiness. “In time of war, with traitors all about, a man-even a man such as you, Senor Dolor-takes risks when splitting legal hairs in favor of rebels and heretics.”

  “Now, as always, I refrain from intemperate behaviors or claims.”

  Borja considered that comment. He could not determine whether Dolor meant it as an oblique accession to the cardinal’s warning, or a defense of his original statement. In which lay the comment’s disturbingly elegant ambivalence. “So, let us return to the matter of my troublesome predecessor.” Borja watched carefully; to call Urban his “predecessor” was a test, for it was not technically accurate, either. But he needed to be sure that Dolor was a loyal operative, not a legal stickler. Indeed, any impulse toward such formal proprieties could become a considerable liability to Borja later on.

  But if Dolor nursed any reservations regarding Borja’s presumed ascension to the cathedra, the agent showed no sign of it. “Urban VIII’s location and apprehension-if he is still alive, and not buried beneath the rubble of the Castel Sant’Angelo-is a difficult task. Much hard work will be required. And some luck, also.”

  “Luck? Are you saying this task is beyond your skills?”

  “Your Eminence, I am saying that while no sparrow falls-or hides-without God’s awareness, mortal man has no such omniprescience, for he is not omnipresent. And finding a single man is not an easy a task. How many persons have seen Urban VIII-or any pope-close enough to be able to make a positive visual identification? And I am quite sure Urban will no longer be wearing the raiment and accoutrements of his holy office; he will be plainly dressed and adorned. And, if he did escape Rome, I suspect he has had some extraordinary help in remaining hidden.”

  “Extraordinary help? From whom?”

  “From the up-timers and their allies, Your Eminence.”

  “Have you heard rumors that he is with them, then? Have you already made this much progress?” Borja could not stop himself from leaning forward in sudden, savage hope.

  “No, Your Eminence, but it seems a logical deduction. The reports from those troops who were at Hadrian’s Tower at the time of the explosion suggest that there may have been one or more up-time weapons used to defend the walls and, later, to clear the path of Urban’s presumed escape. But this is hearsay, and many who might have been more reliable witnesses were sent skyward with the stones of the Castel Sant’Angelo, or buried under them.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We continue our search on all fronts, Your Eminence. Your men continue to excavate the ruins in search of Urban’s corpse. At the same time, we search for the missing cardinals-particularly the last of the Barberinis, Urban’s nephew Antonio. And also for the members of the USE embassy that left Rome. Finding them is likely to be much easier, and will almost certainly give us a sure path to Urban.”

  “Very well. Now, my secretary informed me yesterday that you sent word of having uncovered new information regarding this recent fiasco in Chiavenna.”

  Dolor nodded. “As first suspected, Cardinal Ginetti has escaped, along with the up-timers. He was sighted by an ally in Chur.”

  “And has it also been confirmed that the rest of the fugitives were originally members of the up-time embassy that was previously here in Rome?”

  “Yes, Your Eminence. The Moor who attracted general notice in Chiavenna was the famous up-time doctor, James Nichols. The very large man who figures so prominently in the combat reports matches the many descriptions we have of Admiral Simpson’s son Thomas. We have less concrete reports of the women, but their descriptions conform to what we expected: that Simpson’s wife Rita and Nichols’ aged concubine Melissa Mailey were traveling with them. All four are reported as speaking the up-time dialect of English.”

  “And there was another with the party, no?”

  “At least one, possibly two. The other we know of spoke fluent Italian, but we lack any reliable data on the younger man who remained mostly at their inn. He might have been the one shot through the head just beyond Piuro, or that might have been a fifth person, who could have been part of the embassy staff.”

  “‘Could have been’? Did we not have informers among the embassy staff? Did we not compile a list of its personnel and servants?”

  “The Church did, Your Eminence, but that information gathering was carried out by the Jesuits. Who are, of course-”

  “Yes, yes; the Roman branch of that order is in Urban’s camp more than ever, and are still taking orders from that cadaverous old wolf Vitelleschi. So, since the Jesuits are no longer serving the true Holy See, we do not have a complete list of the embassy staff.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Well, very little of this is new information, Senor Dolor. I fail to see why you alerted my secretary that you had new facts pertinent to the events in Chiavenna.”

  “I come to those now, Your Eminence. The surgeons have completed their post mortem examination of the soldiers slain along the banks of the Mera, just east of the Gallegione cataract.”

  “And?”

  “What the surgeons found corroborates the accounts we received from the handful of survivors. Our soldiers were all killed by up-time bullets or balls, or close copies thereof.”

  “So the up-time fugitives had help?”

  “A great deal of it, apparently. All the survivors report that the speed and regularity of the enemy gunshots were unprecedented.”

  “Again, indicative of up-time weapons.”

  “Exactly. And we recovered these-”

  Dolor stretched out a hand and laid three objects on the center of Borja’s desk. Two were finger-sized brass tubes, sealed or capped on one end. The other was broader, shorter, but again made of brass: rather like a small toy drinking cup for a little girl’s doll. “And what are these?”

  “These objects are called cartridge casings. These two”-he pointed to the longer ones-“are for a rifle or carbine with a bore size that the up-timers call forty-seventy-two.”

  “So this is up-time ammunition?”

  “Not exactly. Although the design of the ammunition and the guns which fire it are of up-time origin, we are fairly sure that these cartridges are merely copies of the originals. They were made in this world, and use black powder rather than the powerful up-time explosive compounds. This means they generate less power. This would therefore also suggest they were not used in a self-loading gun-which seems to require that extra power-but rather, in one which requires physical manipulation after every shot. Our confidential agents in the USE report that there is one such weapon that is being regularly constructed in this bore-size: it is called a Winchester 1895.”

  “And what is this squat cartridge casing’?”

  “This is even more interesting; this is the casing of a shotgun shell.”

  Borja scowled at the unfamiliar term.

  “It is their term for a fowling piece, Your Eminence, although they often load it with heavier shot, for large game or humans. It seems that after the combat, the force which rescued Simpson’s group combed the area to retrieve as many of these spent casings as possible. A prudent step, but in the dark, impossible to perform perfectly.” He indicated the three cartridge casings.

  Borja nodded, then realized the deeper mystery latent in Dolor’s report. “And what made you request the more detailed autopsies, and close surveys of the ambush site, Senor Dolor? Indeed, it seems you had already begun to suspect intervention by USE forces equipped with up-time weapons.”

  Dolor shrugged. “How else could we have lost so many men in a night engagement which lasted very briefly? And how is it that so few of our men survived long enough to close and bring their swords into play?

  Borja frowned. “A full company of our own troops could exert such a force of musketry, I imagine.”

  “Yes, Your Eminence. One Spanish company might- might — have enough firepower to kill half its number of men in so short a time. But that company would have to boast many other abilities, as well. It would have to be a company that was capable of almost invisible movement, since there was no earlier or subsequent report of any unit moving in the Engadine or the Val Bregaglia. It would have to be a company that-unless it had access to an up-time radio-magically knew when and where to meet Simpson’s suddenly fleeing group. It would have to be a company that could vanish into thin air immediately after the ambush, for the trail leading beyond the Silsersee was clearly a false lead. And lastly, it would have to be a company that, in the course of all its actions, left no more signs or spoor than might two squads.

  “Your Eminence, we do not possess a company that could do all that. But a few squads of well-equipped up-timers or their trained proxies could do so, particularly if they had already been briefed on Simpson’s group, and were following contingency plans to aid it in the event of an unexpected crisis.”

  Borja rubbed his prominent chin. “So you believe up-time radios were involved, as well?”

  “The coordination of our foes precludes any other alternative. How else can we explain Cardinal Ginetti’s sudden change of itinerary? How did he know to meet Simpson’s group in Chiavenna, and where and when to do so? How else could the rescuing forces know when and where to meet the group, once it was fleeing? But in addition to radios, the up-timers were also equipped with an unusual amount of good luck.”

  “How so?”

  “Your Eminence, I suspect that the troops that rescued Simpson’s group were already in the area when they were needed. It takes weeks for the USE to send operatives from Grantville to the Val Bregaglia. So how do we explain the presence of these rescuers in the Val Bregaglia at the very moment they are needed? Not in response to anything we have done; Michael Stearns and his advisor Nasi would have had to dispatch them southward toward the Alps the very minute they learned of our attack upon Rome. But why would they do so? Out of some vague notion that their troops would simply prove useful somehow? To act on such an impulse, Stearns and Nasi would have to be either fortune-tellers or fools-and they are neither.”

  “So you are saying that the forces that rescued Simpson’s party were already en route for another, specific purpose, and they just happened to be on site when needed?”

  “It is hard to envision anything else, Your Eminence.”

  “So why were they there?”

  “Discovering the answer to this is a critically important task, upon which I will concentrate all my skills.”

  “Very well. There remains one other mystery I would have answered, though.”

  “Yes, Your Eminence?”

  “These confidential agents who picked up Ginetti’s trail even before he arrived in Chiavenna, and who Simpson and his group killed at the crotto — who were they working for? Not us, as first suspected?”

  “No, not us. And I fear their actual employers shall never be known. The four bodies left in our possession were searched for identifying papers, or other suggestions of their origin, but there was nothing.”

  “Yes, but what of the one who survived, the one that Simpson reportedly knocked senseless during an argument in the crotto?”

  “As feared, he escaped. From the beginning, the authorities leaped to the conclusion that the one survivor was a victim, not part of another plot. Consequently, he was not watched carefully enough. A moment’s inattention on the part of his warders and he was gone, back to whoever holds his leash. But I think we can be sure of one thing: if these armed, nameless men were indeed following Ginetti, assassination was not their primary purpose.”

  “What? Why do you think this?”

  “Because they could probably have overcome Ginetti’s guards easily enough on the road. A preliminary night ambush at some lonely spot in the Valtelline, and then Ginetti’s weakened party would have been easy prey on a subsequent day. No, I believe these confidential agents were not there as killers, but as coursers; they were sent to put pressure on Ginetti, or perhaps, on whomever he was traveling to meet. If some of Ginetti’s party had died, I’m sure that would not have bothered their employer. But what the seeming assassins did accomplish-even though they died without inflicting any injury whatsoever-was to create a local furor and propel the up-timers into desperate flight. Which our soldiers responded to. And, as these things usually do, the entire situation soon spiraled out of control, ripe with possibilities for becoming a debilitating international incident.”

  “A pity we cannot discern more than this. I would like to have interrogated the survivor of these unknown agents.”

  “Your Eminence, I think you are fortunate that such an interrogation is now beyond our power.”

  “And how could interrogating the agent of an unknown, but obviously inimical, political entity be detrimental to us? I should think you, who traffics in secrets for a living, should understand that information is the most important tool at our disposal, the sword we wield with rapierlike precision to frustrate our foes’ shrewdest gambits and deepest plots.”

  “Yes, Your Eminence-but just like that rapier, information is a double-edged sword. And if my guess is right, had the agent revealed the identity of his employers, it could have had disastrous effects upon our alliance with the French.”

  Borja felt his mind spin purposelessly. “The French?” he heard himself say.

  “”Yes, Your Eminence. For I believe these purported assassins were sent by the French-but not Richelieu. I suspect the assassins were told they were getting orders from Paris, but that the actual hiring agent was a member-or simply a proxy-of the Huguenot radicals, possibly the same ones who were behind the attempt on Urban last year.”

  “But what would the Huguenots gain by having us believe that the French crown had sent assassins after Ginetti?”

  “I believe that was only part of the Huguenots’ motivation. Let us consider the events more broadly. In being compelled to foil the presumed assassins, Simpson’s party attracts attention to the fact that the USE is sending its nationals home through Milanese, and therefore nominally Spanish, territory. Not exactly a violation of law, but then again, Simpson’s party was not traveling openly. They did not declare their identity and presence freely, and were thus traveling without the papers they needed. A wise choice: we would probably have put them in the same dungeon as Signor Stone. At the very least, we would have detained them for an extended period. They represent immense leverage for us.

  “Now, had we managed to interrogate the misinformed survivor of these assassins, I suspect they would have told us-erroneously-that they were instruments being wielded by Richelieu’s hand, poised in yet another perfidious attempt to kill Michael Stearns’ relatives and friends. And in the same instant, we would come to believe that the French cardinal’s hand was also trespassing upon our territory, and doing so in a manner that violates the agreement we have with the French in Chiavenna: that they have unrestricted right of passage and trade, but that military and legal matters are to be referred to Milanese authority.

  “Of course, Richelieu would legitimately deny his involvement. Naturally, we would not believe him, and would close Chiavenna and the passes to both the French and the USE. The incident would put the League of Ostend in jeopardy and could even lead to separate-maybe even coordinated-USE and French action to reopen the transalpine trade routes. It would certainly give both of them cause to support the interests of both Venice and the Swiss provinces of Grisons in the Val Bregaglia, and the Valtelline as well. And we can no longer count on regional support from our former allies in Tyrol, not since its regent Claudia de Medici has made overtures to seek membership in the USE.

  “In short, any successful investigation into the origins of the assassins following Ginetti would have obligated us to pass information to Philip that could have resulted in a disaster for our already overtaxed empire. We were most fortunate, then, that the up-timers-and the confidential agents who were following them-all escaped or died.”

  A moment after Dolor stopped speaking, Borja felt the world resteady itself around him. That the Earth had such devious minds in it was unsettling to him. Such intelligence ought to be a tool to enable direct, manly action, not serve as the handmaiden to conniving plots and perfidies. But, since that was not the case, he was quite glad that Olivares had sent him Pedro Dolor. “Well, then, it seems that God has smiled upon us in this matter. Or, to indulge in one of the up-timer’s sayings, these two wrongs-our failure to apprehend the up-timers and also to retain custody of the last assassin-have made a right. You are dismissed, Senor Dolor.”

  The man bowed and exited.

  As he left, Borja murmured, almost as an afterthought, “ Vaya con Dios.” He doubted there was any chance of that being the case.

  As Pedro Dolor exited Borja’s office he was still stifling the urge to rebut the cardinal’s penultimate insipidity. No, two wrongs did not make a right. In Chiavenna, there had been two signal failures that, this time, just happened to cancel each other out in terms of any larger political damage. It was luck. It was certainly not the sign of insuperable Spanish supremacy, nor the hand of God working in its favor: just blind, dumb luck-of which they were running out as quickly as Philip’s treasury was running out of reales.

  Upon reaching the cavernous vestibule of Villa Borghese, in which Borja had first established his headquarters, and then residence, Dolor was joined by a short, swarthy man. No more than 5’ 4” in height, but almost as wide in the shoulders, he emerged from the shadows of one of the many colonnaded galleries. He fell in step with Dolor. “Well?” he asked.