The card-playing had also been an icebreaker for increasing interaction with the Irish Wild Geese. However, with the exception of Wadding, who had apparently learned the rules simply by watching a few hands, they became more perplexed as the play progressed. The earl of Tyrone had pronounced the game as a debased variant of primero and turned his back upon it. Owen Roe-a bit more congenial than his young earl, and far more even-tempered-unsuccessfully tried to understand it as a new form of the English game brag. The other Irish might have found some interest in the game, but, between being poorer than indigent church mice, and more interested in chatting up the up-timers, their focus strayed from the rules and the cards.

  After that, the stormy Adriatic had kept them busy, scudding too close to the Dalmatian coast, beacons warning them away from headlands at the last safe minute on more than one occasion. Thomas suspected it was more the extraordinary competence of the crew-a mix of Croats, Ragusans, and Italians-that had saved them in these instances: their knowledge of the coast was uncanny, even at night.

  The Venetian lagoon had marked the abrupt end of the crew’s collective navigational knowledge, but one of the Italians had shipped out from piers on the Lido on two prior occasions, and so was able to guide them to their destination: San Francesco del Deserto, a small islet just north of St. Erasmo. There had been some debate over that choice; Harry and North had wanted to head straight in to Venice itself, simply because they knew of no other way to contact Tom Stone and the embassy. Wadding, in his typically quiet way, had pointed out that if Borja was indeed guilty of all that he seemed guilty of, then the main island would be watched by his confidential agents and should be avoided. Thomas had been pleased, but not entirely surprised, at Wadding’s revised opinion of the political realities in contemporary Italy. The boat ride had provided ample opportunity to disabuse good Father Luke of his rather optimistic hopes that Borja’s worst atrocities were, in fact, simply malign propaganda.

  Once apprised of the trail of evidence that connected the assassinations, disappearances, and almost capricious slaughter of civilians to Borja’s decrees, Wadding’s nimble and nuanced mind quickly became an invaluable asset. Their current billet was a case in point: only Wadding had known about the small Franciscan monastery on the islet of San Francesco del Deserto. It was a place that had few visitors, and all of those came for purposes of hermitage or induction. It had no commerce, the monks acquiring their scant needs from the smaller, rustic islands nearby. A perfect place to arrive in Venice and yet remain unobserved and quite comfortable.

  Bog hoppers or not, North admitted, the Irish were masters of surreptitious activity; they had little choice, given the stern occupation under which they struggled. Not that North would ever say so aloud, but he was of the opinion that his own countrymen had really gone too far in the subjugation of Ireland, and that there was now no way to reverse the situation, much less undo the damage. Of course, the Irish weren’t exactly shining exemplars of Christian charity and restraint, either. North suspected that when the parable of “turn the other cheek” was read out in Irish churches, the priests half-leaned out of their pulpits and whispered sotto voce behind a confidential hand, “except when the barstard is a feckin’ sassenach, o’ course.” Such were the contextualized pieties of the Emerald Isle.

  But also, such were its lessons in subtlety. At Wadding’s instruction, a sealed message had gone out yesterday at dawn, entrusted to the order’s youngest novice, who was traveling to nearby St. Erasmo for provisions. While there, he had sought and found a slightly younger childhood friend who was also an aspirant to the order. A brief chat after morning prayer, a blessing, and a lira, and that young aspirant was on his way to the main island to pass the ciphered message on to the couriers’ collective that handled afternoon deliveries to the USE embassy.

  And apparently, the message had reached the desired parties. Hopefully, it had also avoided detection by Borja’s many agents. But even if they had intercepted the communique, it would do them little good. The cipher was a disposable code, and was only one of the ways in which the monks had protected the message. Only a priest familiar with the legends of St. Francis, who had reputedly made a hermitage on the islet where they were hiding, would understand the allusive and symbolic cant in which it was written.

  But even if Borja’s agents somehow managed to decipher all of that, they would only have learned that Ambassador Stone and Don Estuban were requested to travel to San Francesco del Deserto this morning. How they would get there was a matter left to those summoned. They had no doubt employed a variety of precautions, probably involving a rendezvous of boats in the predawn, to defeat interception. And if Borja’s minions decided to land on the islet itself and attack Thomas turned around; Owen Roe O’Neill was inspecting his pepperbox revolver. Standing by his side, the earl of Tyrone was scowling at the weapon, muttering that a sword was the proper weapon of a warrior and a man. Harry Lefferts had just finished reassembling the shotgun he’d field-stripped after racing through his breakfast. More than half a dozen of the Irish, seasoned in the Low Countries campaigns despite their scant years, lounged about the kitchen door. Dangerous men in a fight, they huddled there like so many young boys, hoping for the favor of an extra roll or rasher of bacon from the indulgent friar-cook. Surveying this array of both mechanical and human weapons, Thomas North couldn’t help smiling at the thought of what a bunch of assassins would encounter if they foolish enough to attack this island. A fitting line from one of the up-time movies he had memorized suggested itself: “Go ahead; make my day.”

  “Well, are you coming- sassenach?”

  Thomas North looked up and found Owen Roe O’Neill looking at him. With a smile. “That would be ‘Lord Sassenach’ to you, cultchie.”

  “And that would be ‘Lord Cultchie’ to you, Lord Sassenach.”

  North couldn’t help smiling back. “It seems we have come to an agreement on the mutually odious nature of our relationship.”

  “So it seems. Now, are you coming, or are you planning on sneaking off and stealing the sacramental wine when no one’s about?”

  “You mean they leave it unlocked?”

  “Only because they don’t know about you. Come along, then.”

  Miro leaned back when North had finished giving his report. He looked at Tom Stone, who waved the four USE Marines out of the room to join the four already outside. He looked down the table at the O’Neills. John looked back, expressionless. Owen waited a moment for his earl to act, and then nodded at the Wild Geese, who joined the Marines. Miro nodded his thanks to Owen, who nodded back. John looked sideways at his much older cousin, annoyed.

  Tom Stone cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to clear the room, but we’re going to start talking plans. Seems like the moment to minimize the number of people hearing them.”

  John O’Neill crossed his arms. “I can trust my men. To the death.”

  “I believe that, Lord O’Neill, but tell me this: do they ever get drunk? Talk in their cups? Do they keep track of who’s new in a shared billet and who isn’t? Do they remember that every innkeep, serving girl, farrier, stable hand, prostitute might be a potential informer? Because only people who can maintain that kind of highly suspicious frame of mind should be in this room.”

  Which made Miro reflect, and not for the first time, that perhaps the earl of Tyrone himself should not be present. But such an exclusion was a diplomatic impossibility.

  John seemed a bit mollified by Tom Stone’s explanation, but not much. It was Wadding who found a way out of the growing silence. “Ambassador Stone, we are grateful that you agreed to meet us here on such short notice. It seems we have a number of mutual objectives, and I thought it wise for us to confer on how we might best combine our resources to achieve them.”

  Tom Stone glanced at Miro, thereby signaling that, as the ambassador, he was handing off the meeting to the acting chief of local field operations. Miro knew that Tom didn’t much like ambassador-ing, particularly not under these conditions. But protocol demanded his presence. John O’Neill, one of the two exiled princes of Ireland, had asked to meet him, and besides, any conversation that involved rescue plans for his son and daughter-in-law was a conversation Stone had insisted on being a part of, damn it.

  Miro leaned forward. “Father Wadding, as I understand it, you were the objective of the Colonels O’Neill.”

  “Technically, yes-but in actuality, that mission was just a stalking horse.”

  “You mean, if the O’Neills were apprehended in Rome, they could honestly claim that they had been sent after you, without alerting Cardinal Borja to the fact that they were also attempting to rescue the pope.”

  “That is correct. A venal sin concealing a mortal sin, as it were.”

  “I see. Now, about the mortal sin to which you refer-”

  The earl of Tyrone leaned forward aggressively. “Just say plain: do you have Urban in your care or not?”

  Wadding looked at the earl, made a gesture of patience, possibly also indirect admonishment; there was clearly history between those two.

  Miro looked at John O’Neill directly and answered, “Yes; the pope is under our protection.”

  The Irish in the room stopped as though frozen. The Wrecking Crew’s representatives weren’t much less surprised.

  Wadding was obviously the trained negotiator among the Irish; he was the first who recovered enough to ask, “Not that we are ungrateful for your extraordinary candor-but why did you tell us?”

  “Because, unless I am very much mistaken, you had already guessed as much.”

  Owen hid a smile; John’s expression softened; Wadding looked at Miro as if he had discovered a fascinating clue to a puzzle. “And how did you surmise this?”

  “By having a long acquaintance with human nature, Father Wadding. From what Colonel North has reported, this doctor of yours who stayed behind-Sean Connal, the representative of the earl of Tyrconnell-spent the days before you left Rome asking the Wrecking Crew to join him in speculating upon Urban’s whereabouts and fate. An innocent enough question, and perfectly reasonable, since it is on everyone’s minds and lips. But the Wrecking Crew’s command staff noticed that Dr. Connal did not as frequently engage them on this same topic.”

  “From which you draw what conclusion?” asked Owen with wonder in his voice.

  “Why, that Dr. Connal quickly discerned who in the Wrecking Crew could keep a secret and who couldn’t. So he concentrated his attention and efforts upon the Crew’s rank-and-file members, where he surely discovered the telltale signs of persons who suspected far more than they were willing to reveal. He no doubt communicated their identities to you three before you left him behind in Rome.

  “That way, on your sea voyage from Rome to Venice, you had ample opportunity to continue those discussions with these more susceptible members of the Wrecking Crew. It hardly mattered that their speculations were neither specific nor detailed-because they arose, in large part, from wondering about the orders they were receiving and the indirect clues they were sensing from their commanders. Of course, they still felt the need to deny any relevant knowledge-but every time they squirmed, that meant you were possibly hitting close to the mark you were seeking: inferential data on the status and whereabouts of Urban himself.”

  John and Owen exchanged very long looks. Wadding smiled slightly. “Don Estuban, you do indeed seem an astute observer of human nature, but were these projections the sole source of your deduction?”

  “Not at all, merely the hub of the wheel, so to speak. It also made sense that you would naturally begin to wonder about our ‘possession’ of the pope on your own. After all, if the pope’s whereabouts and fate were unknown, then why would the USE deploy its most renowned team of commandos merely to rescue an ambassador’s son? I mean no offense, Mr. Ambassador, but the fate of the pope has immense and even global implications. It is only logical that the USE would devote its best rescue team to the task of locating and retrieving him, if such action was necessary; the demise of Urban VIII would mean the ascendancy of Borja. That would be disastrous for our interests, as well as those of our allies.”

  Miro pointed at the O’Neills. “So after the two of you encountered the famous Harry Lefferts and his band in Rome, determined to rescue Frank Stone, you had to eventually conclude, ‘If the USE can spare the Wrecking Crew to retrieve young Stone and his wife, they must already know that the pope is either dead or safe.’ And safe would naturally mean ‘under USE protection,’ at this point.”

  Owen and John exchanged yet another long look. Wadding rubbed his rather pointy chin.

  “So,” Miro concluded, “remaining coy about the pope’s status would only be an insult to your intelligence. And that would undercut our ability to exchange information freely and plan for joint operations. For, as I understand it, Lord O’Neill, you have said it might be in the interests of your employers and your own countrymen to help us rescue young Mr. Stone and his wife.”

  “Could be,” John answered, with a sly smile at Harry, who answered with one of his own. And in that moment, Miro saw that making allies via realpolitik was only half of the earl’s motivation for offering assistance; he, too, had fallen victim to the Harry Lefferts Charisma Effect. Not like an abjectly adoring schoolboy worshiping a sports hero; more like a peer who had met a kindred-spirit that was also a freer spirit, one who lived a life of action and adventure unconstrained by the responsibilities of a prince. But that would only be part of John O’Neill’s motivation “Could be that lending a hand to you is also the only way for me to fulfill my main mission, as well.” John explained. “Now, I’ll confirm something that you’ve probably deduced: we are charged to bring the pope to the Low Countries, to Fernando and Isabella. And I’m betting you won’t go along with that, not right away. But good will starts somewhere, am I right? And besides, unless I make you happy, you’re not going to consent to have two of my men appointed as Urban’s personal bodyguards.”

  Miro blinked. “I assure you, Lord O’Neill, the pope has a sizable security contingent. And it will be expanding very soon again.”

  “I thought no less. But I am not talking about mere soldiers. I am talking about personal bodyguards. My men will go wherever he does, ready to fight and die to keep His Holiness safe at all times. That’s the kind of protection we were charged to provide. I would satisfy those orders-at least in part and in spirit-by providing two of my men for that service.”

  Miro looked at the earl of Tyrone, saw that this decision had come as much from his heart as his head. Miro instinctively understood that this was an important moment, a test of sorts. “Yes. Agreed,” he announced firmly.

  The earl’s broad, and frankly surprised, smile made him look almost boyish. “Well, perhaps we’re going to get along famously, after all.”

  “It would also be helpful,” mentioned Owen Roe, “to relay this news to the Low Countries. We had thought to send signals through the Venetian network, but if you were to be so helpful as to use your radio to-”

  “Colonel O’Neill, your arrival here”-Miro made sure his glance included Wadding-“was already communicated to Magdeburg and Grantville last night. I suspect it has been passed on to King Fernando. We will append the rest later today. Along with a formal request that Fernando grant you permission to aid us in retrieving the hostages.”

  “And you will include a report on the welfare of the pope?”

  “That,” answered Miro through a long exhale “is unfortunately not within my purview. However, not only will I urge that the king in the Low Countries is informed of Urban’s status, but I suspect that my superiors are already similarly minded.”

  Thomas North cleared his throat histrionically. Miro smiled at him. “Just jump in, Colonel North.”

  “Thank you, Don Estuban. Although I sympathize with the desire to inform select persons of the continued well-being of the pope, I feel duty-bound to point out that there is no way to be absolutely sure that, once transmitted, the message will remain-er, fully secure within its intended circle of distribution.”

  My, Thomas, what big intel-speak words you use. Probably either heard them in a movie, or read them in an up-time political thriller. But, on the other hand, North clearly had a head for genuine intelligence and counterintelligence operations. “I agree with you, Colonel North, but I think the damage done by such a leak will not significantly impact our other plans. Soon Borja will have fully excavated the rubble of the Castel Sant’Angelo. We know they will not find Urban’s body there, nor any traces of one. They may find, however, spent shotgun shells, but again, no sign of a shotgun or the person who might have wielded it. They will deduce that Urban was rescued by agents of the USE. So, even if Fernando’s court in Brussels leaks the intelligence, it will only tell Philip’s spymasters what they would very soon have learned for themselves.

  “Consequently, I think that sharing the information with our new allies’ liege as a sign of the growing trust between us and the Low Countries is far more important than a few extra days of secrecy. Just as I wanted to make it clear to our new Irish friends that we are willing to help them fulfill their bodyguard assignment, at least until the pope decides to leave Italy.”

  Wadding leaned forward, surprised. “Don Estuban, do I correctly infer that the pope’s continued presence in Italy is not merely because he is waiting for you to repair your plane?”