“I guess we’d call it a hybrid property-and we stay no longer than we have to,” Sharon answered. “When you meet with Tom Stone in Venice, Don Estuban, he should have a more remote spot selected for us.”

  Miro inclined his head. “It shall be my first item of business with him. But would he not already have sent word if he had found something?”

  Sharon frowned. “Yes, which has me more than a little worried.”

  Ruy slipped an arm around her shoulder. “Such matters take time, and cannot be rushed,” he soothed. “After all, what would one answer if asked, ‘why such a hurry to find a country villa?’ I think we cannot safely respond, ‘ah, well, you see, we must have a house in which to hide a pope.’”

  She smiled. So did Urban. Mazzare suspected that the brief lip-crinkling of Vitelleschi was a sign of amusement, also. “At least,” Mazzare offered, “it is a little easier to hide in this day and age. The depictions of a person being sought aren’t even as good as the ‘wanted: dead or alive’ handbills that were used in my world in the American West.”

  “Truly? Even with your wondrous photography?”

  “Photographs-or rather printing them out-was too expensive in frontier areas. Besides, even if the likenesses I’ve seen resembled His Holiness-and they don’t-not many people are willing to post them. Italy’s ardent Roman Catholics have no desire to turn their pope over to anyone, let alone a brutal usurper like Borja.”

  “They might, if he offers a reward that piques Italy’s equally ardent greed.” Vitelleschi’s rejoinder was the crisp, arid declamation of a dedicated moralist.

  Mazzare shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He turned toward Urban. “Either way, Your Holiness, we must announce that you are alive, and we must do so as quickly as possible. Every day we are silent increases the likelihood that Borja can finally break the will of Rome’s people, and can bring more of the Consistory’s remaining fence-sitters aound to supporting him.”

  Sharon pursed her lips. “I hate to ask this, but might it already be too late? I mean, has the belief in the rightful pope been so badly shaken that the people are already looking elsewhere?”

  Vitelleschi’s voice was firm with professional conviction. “No, Ambassadora Nichols. For a while, the people will simply be shocked. And then they will be outraged. Only once that rage has passed could it be said that we have waited too long.”

  “And not having my body to parade will cause a long delay indeed,” Urban observed. Then, with his small, trademark smile, he said, “One should not choose a new pope before the old one is dead. After all, two popes at once? If Mother Church is the bride of Christ, we would be inviting our Savior to become a bigamist.”

  Cardinal Barberini guffawed so suddenly that he almost choked on his chicken; Ruy managed not to laugh, but his smile was almost as wide as his mustache. Miro politely looked elsewhere to conceal whatever expression passed over his face. Vitelleschi looked like an offended school marm determined not to acknowledge the witty quip of a prized, but occasionally mischievous, charge.

  Mazzare managed to keep his smile wan. “And that observation also highlights something about Borja’s probable intents.”

  Urban sobered immediately. “You mean, that as in your American West, I am wanted ‘dead or alive’?”

  Mazzare shook his head regretfully. “I suspect Borja is less interested in the ‘alive’ option. Given the fate of the cardinals in Rome, I presume he would prefer you were killed attempting to resist the lawful agents of the Church.”

  “Strange. I would have thought the lawful agents of the Church would still be my agents.”

  Mazzare returned Urban’s small smile. “Yes, I would have thought so, too. But we up-timers have a saying: possession is nine-tenths of the law. Borja possesses the Holy See, even though you possess the pontifical title. Unless you were to walk right back in there and order him out, your absence from the Holy City complicates any assertion that its agents are your agents.”

  “Quite right. So, just as it is universally known that Borja now possesses the Vatican, it must become just as widely known that I still possess my life.”

  Sharon tapped an index finger meditatively against the much-stained tabletop. “I wonder: should we use the Committees of Correspondence to spread news about your survival, and to confirm the rumors of how all the cardinals were killed in cold blood?”

  Miro frowned. “If you choose to do so, I recommend you release the information all at once, and through written materials cached at a drop point that the Committee members are informed of later on.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, if Borja now has someone working for him who is more professional than Quevedo, the Committees will be under surveillance. Any direct contact will surely lead assassins to wherever you may hide. Consequently, your contact with the world must be outbound only, and never suspected as coming from your embassy. Any inbound traffic is too perilous to countenance.”

  Ruy nodded. “Don Estuban could not speak more truly or wisely, my heart. I have some-small experience-with this kind of affair. If Borja is willing to spend enough reales to maintain constant surveillance, his agents could snatch up any person arriving at the embassy in Venice, or the Committees, who is suspected of bearing messages from you.”

  Vitelleschi’s eyes were emotionless. “And, as Senor Casador y Ortiz might confirm, Borja’s agents will be neither gentle nor patient in the methods they use to extract information from your couriers.”

  Sharon shuddered. “Okay. No Committees, then. Or a one time news-blast, at most.”

  “Yes,” her husband agreed, “I think it would be wise to limit it to that.”

  Urban sighed. “Your talk is most prudent, and most upsetting. I can accept a death sentence upon my head, but I have great misgivings about how my presence endangers my best and truest friends, who’ve aided me, unasked, in this dark hour. My heart tells me-”

  “Your heart tells you how to behave as a man, Your Holiness, but you must rely strictly upon your head when deciding how to act as pope.” Vitelleschi somehow combined shadings of both compassion and remonstrance in his otherwise dry voice. “Even our friends here-most of whom are not Catholics-still understand the great urgency of keeping you alive, of keeping the papacy from falling into the hands of that monster Borja. And besides, do you really think that if you took flight it would save them? Tell me, Senor Casador y Ortiz: in your experience of such matters, how would Borja’s agents alter their search, if they were to somehow learn that His Holiness had departed from your protection?”

  “It would have no effect upon them, Your Eminence. Except to make their job easier.”

  Urban, who was schooled in the intricacies, but not the gruesome particulars, of espionage, leaned forward. “Explain this if you would, my son.”

  “I am honored to be of service to Your Holiness, but it is my deep shame to possess the needed expertise in these matters.”

  “Please continue,” the pope instructed.

  Mazzare felt, rather than saw, some weight seem to rise off Ruy’s shoulders, as if it was a burden he had become so accustomed to carrying, that he no longer heeded it. The Spaniard sat straighter, prouder-if that were possible. “Here is what would happen if you left us, Your Holiness. If they were to find this place, but after you departed from it, Borja’s agents would torture every individual-no matter their age or sex-for any information as to your possible whereabouts, companions, preparations, anything of relevance. And then they would put everyone to the sword and the house to the torch.”

  “To conceal their misdeed.”

  Ruy nodded. “But even if they found and slew you first, they would still attempt to determine and annihilate the place from whence you had fled.”

  “Why this needless barbarity?”

  “It is not needless from their perspective, Your Holiness. Consider: you might have left further instructions here, or key correspondence with princes and ministers inimical to Borja. You might have been gathering evidence that would incriminate him, gathering secret support from those cardinals who are not yet willing to decry him publicly. In short, why should Borja believe that all the damage you could do him will die with you? It might well have been left with your intimates, before you struck out on your own. And so he would come here, interrogate, torture, and slay-without exception and without mercy.”

  The room was very still. Mazzare, like everyone else, was staring at Ruy, whose dark eyes seemed to be seeing inward as well as outward. “I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz swear that this is true.” But this time, he uttered his trademark oath quietly, almost like a prayer.

  Or a confession.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Two days later, Estuban Miro stifled a yawn as he waited for Tom Stone to arrive back at the embassy in Venice. Word had it that the American pharmaceutical magnate had stayed late over on the mainland in Mestre, personally attending to what he had dubbed a “quality control problem” in one of the new jointly owned chemical refineries he had founded in the past half year.

  Ironic, since Miro had been in Mestre himself last night. But not wanting to waste the early hours of the day, he had left both Lefferts’ Wrecking Crew and North’s Hibernians slumbering as he emerged into the predawn glimmer to catch the first available boat from the mainland, which the locals dubbed Terraferma. So he was among the first visitors to arrive on Venetia, that day. And what did he get for all his troubles? A reasonably cushioned chair and a small cup of passable coffee as he waited for the USE’s ambassador to Venice to return. Eventually.

  Miro stifled another yawn. He’d been working on a sleep deficit for the past two nights. In Padua, he had tried to excuse himself from the dinner table early, pleading his early departure the next morning. Somehow that never happened; every time he started to rise, someone refilled his glass, or asked a question, or embroiled him in a debate. In short, no matter how Miro had tried to get away from that spattered, partially charred, richly served table of good cheer, he couldn’t make good his escape. Probably just as well. While it was superficially just a meal with intelligent companions, it had also been a rite of passage.

  Among the up-timers, it had been a kind of assessment concluding with a provisional adoption. Mazzare’s cordiality had deepened into potential friendship over the course of their joint balloon journey from Jena to Chur, and the up-time cardinal’s opinion obviously held great sway with both Sharon and Ruy.

  But it had probably been more crucial in securing the benign toleration and cooperation of Father-General Vitelleschi and Cardinal Barberini. Miro had been thoroughly briefed on the former before arriving in Italy. A reputation for stern measures and judgment in his professional life had colored the depictions of Vitelleschi; he was purported to be humorless and vinegary. As Miro had learned, this was a profound misperception. In some ways, he suspected Vitelleschi might have had the most incisive and even blasphemous wit of them all; he just elected not to show it. The younger Barberini had imbibed many of the prejudices of his patrician class: a lack of ease around Jews, a reluctance to have dealings with them. But his uncle’s cosmopolitanism had also rubbed off on Antonio Barberini, who, over the course of the evening, warmed to Miro and his wry interjections.

  But Urban-he was the hardest of them to figure. Possibly, because he is most like me, thought Miro with a smile, thinking how that observation would have scandalized every Catholic in the room. With the probable exception of Urban.

  For Urban VIII’s was a face and consciousness that had very obviously been washed by many waters, not all of which had been pure or calm. He loved life, enough so that he did not ruin his existence by being desperate to retain it above all other things. Yet he also was intrigued by the possibility of what lay beyond. Urban’s speech and attitudes did not reflect a rigid expectation of the shape that Heaven or Hell might take, nor the face of God or the malice of Satan. Before he had become a pope, he had been Maffeo Barberini, head of his powerful family, a creature of his time, versed in arts and letters and the lofty heresies of the Greeks and Romans. No, Pope Urban VIII was not a simple man, and his thoughts and plans clearly moved on many levels simultaneously.

  When the dinner group had finally pushed back from the table in search of their beds, Miro was glad to have stayed awake so late; it had been crucial for him to be accepted by these groups with whom he would now be working. But he also dreaded rising the next day, and riding to Venice.

  Or rather, to Mestre. The entire traveling party-numbering almost thirty-was hot, dusty, and parched when they reached Mestre just before sundown. It had made no sense to push the horses any harder, and the timing had not been fortuitous. The last boat to the main island was a black shadow receding into the lagoon’s red-orange reflection of the sunset sky. That had meant retracing their steps away from the dockside, until they found a predictably over-priced, under-staffed inn in which to spend the night.

  A night that had been all too short: five hours after finally settling in, the inn’s ostler had jostled Miro awake, as he had requested. Morning ablutions, a quick walk back to the docks, waiting for the first ready boatman-and now, here in the embassy, wondering about the odds of getting a second cup of coffee before Tom Stone came up the stairs two at a time, one top-tuft of hair truant from the rest of his somewhat trimmed gray-silver mane. He got to the top of the stairs, saw Miro, frowned, and then his brows rose. “Oh, yeah. Right. You’re the guy. Miro. From back home. Sorry I got delayed-uh, detained. I was over in Mestre helping out my partners.”

  “Yes. I was told. I wasn’t waiting long.” Miro rose, put out a hand, smiled. “Mr. Stone, I’m Estuban Miro.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I got the messages about you from Grantville. Great to meet you.” The hand-shake was vigorous; unpolished, yes, but very enthusiastic and genuine.

  Stone waved off the help of one of the waiting embassy staff, opened the door to his office himself, and apparently presumed Miro would follow without invitation, as if he was simply an acquaintance who had come to call at his home. Miro trailed along. He was impressed at the size of the chamber but doubted Stone had anything to do with the opulent decor incorporating tasteful Renaissance hints and flourishes. Tom flopped down behind the plateau that was his desk and smiled at Miro over the top of it. Then, his hand halfway through waving his visitor toward a seat, Stone reconsidered the arrangements with a frown; he quickly rose up, came around and sat in a chair directly opposite the one Miro was already standing behind.

  “No desks today,” Stone explained. “At least not with someone from home. Hey, have a seat; take a load off, Don Estuban. You’ve come a long way without a lot of rest, from what I hear.”

  Miro smiled. “That would not be an exaggeration.”

  “Want some breakfast?”

  “Thank you, no; I had a light meal before coming here,” Miro lied, hoping that the sudden contradictory growl from his stomach remained inaudible to Stone.

  Apparently it did. Tom replied with the strange, neck-bobbing nod that was his wont, and looked uneasily out the window. “I don’t mean to rush you, Don Estuban, but-”

  “Mr. Stone, there is no need for apologies. If I had family members in the clutches of Borja, I would want to get down to business, too.”

  Tom smile gratefully. “I’m glad you understand, Don Estuban, really I am. I don’t want to seem rude but-well, Frank and Giovanna are on my mind. Pretty much all the time.”

  Miro noticed the faint blue rings under his host’s eyes but said nothing.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “First, Mr. Stone, have there been any further developments? I haven’t received a situation report since Chur.”

  Stone went back in his seat with a sigh and a grimace. “No. No ransom demands. Not even anyone to talk to. The Spanish ambassador here claims ignorance of Borja’s actions. ’Course, he’s probably telling the truth; seems all the Spanish big shots in Italy were taken as much by surprise by Borja’s actions as was Rome itself.”

  Miro nodded. “Unfortunately, with no remaining embassy in Rome, we are unable to get any new information on the situation there. Even Don Francisco Nasi’s intelligence networks have gone silent. We cannot tell if they have been discovered and eliminated or are merely unable to send messages because of the political and domestic chaos prevailing in the city.”

  Tom nodded. “So-what’s the plan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wait a minute. Mike radioed that you were in charge of the rescue operation-”

  “I am in charge of the mission sent down here to Italy, but that mission has three separate mandates: protect the pope, recover your son and daughter-in-law, and coordinate with you. I only know the specifics of the objectives I am to be directly involved in. Harry Lefferts is in charge of the rescue operation, and I must remain unaware of his plans.”

  Tom nodded again. “Yeah, yeah. Compartmentalization of information, right? So even if someone grabs you, you can’t tell them anything about any of the other plans.”

  “That is correct. And that is why you will no longer be hearing from the ex-Roman embassy after it relocates.”

  “What? Not even by radio?”

  “Not routinely. Other than brief, coded status reports at prearranged times, radio communications will be of an emergency nature only.”

  “Why?”

  “It is unlikely, but the Spanish may have procured radios. If they have, it is even more unlikely but still possible that they have acquired a working knowledge of signal triangulation. Which could lead them directly to the pope.”

  “Whoa. Signal triangulation is a bit out of the Spaniards’ league, isn’t it? Hell, it’s out of our league, I thought.”

  “Not quite, and between up-timer defectors and all the down-time radio operators you have trained that have since left your service, the Spanish could easily gather the resources necessary to get an initial sense of the embassy’s final hiding place if it sends radio transmissions. Which reminds me; might I have the list of new safe houses compiled by Giuseppe Cavriani?”