1635 The Papal Stakes (7 page)

Franchetti nodded vigorously. “
Si.
At first I think, ‘maybe a sudden weather change between here and Chiavenna.’ After all, it
is
the Alps. But then comes the message from Padua. The ambassadora, she had clear reception of the same signal but heard the same thing: the transmission ended sharply, and did not resume. No interference, no increase in static. They went off the air.”

Sherrilyn Maddox, Harry’s former gym teacher, looked at her ex-student and gritted her teeth. “Shit.”

Harry nodded. “So they didn’t even give the pick-up signal.”

“No: this is what you and Ed call an ‘emergency extraction.’”

“Except there may not be anyone at the rendezvous point to extract.”

Miro nodded. “That is entirely possible. We do know that Captain Simpson’s group made contact with Cardinal Ginetti, but they could have been apprehended while doing so, or shortly thereafter.”

“And what’s the big deal with this cardinal, again?” asked Harry. “Why’s he worth the extra risk?”

“Cardinal Marzio Ginetti is prefect of the Pontifical Household, secretary of the Sacred Consulta, and papal legate to the Austrian Court. Which means that he’s a close confidante of the pope.”

“And therefore, on Borja’s hit list,” Sherrilyn supplied with a glance at Harry.

“Thanks for telling me what I already know. I mean, why rescue Ginetti specifically: there have got to be a dozen Italian cardinals in the same situation.”

Miro shook his head. “Not any more. As of last week, the suspected total of cardinals that are missing—and probably dead—rose to sixteen. Borja was evidently quite thorough.” He looked to the hooded figure, who nodded once.

Juliet Sutherland, the Crew’s other female member and a woman of many roles, breathed in sharply: “Bloody hell.” She wasn’t a Catholic—exactly. But she wasn’t anything else, either—exactly. Or so it seemed. Miro couldn’t figure her out any more than he could the rest of the Crew—and he had given up trying to do so. Accepting the group’s dynamics and identities was a lot easier than trying to understand them.

“Yes: Borja has eliminated the great majority of Urban’s most reliable and trusted allies in the Consistory. That’s why Ambassador Nichols added Ginetti to our extraction list, and had him rendezvous with Tom Simpson’s group in Chiavenna. If the cardinal had actually reached Italy, it is unlikely he would have survived a week. Possibly not even a single day. So, at the pope’s behest, a confidential courier intercepted Ginetti during his journey westward along the Valtelline and redirected him to the rendezvous in Chiavenna.”

“Which now sounds completely fubarred.” Harry finished. “Ten to one the courier wasn’t so confidential after all and they put a tail on the padre.”

Miro nodded. “That’s the most likely scenario. And if Simpson’s group survived being discovered, they will be making best speed for the default extraction site, just a few miles west of the Maloja Pass.”

Harry grabbed a taut catenary cable and hopped into the dirigible’s gondola. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s ride!” He held out a hand for his ponderous backpack.

Miro shook his head. “Light pack only.”

“What? Wait a minute, you said—”

“Harry. We thought retrieving Tom Simpson’s group would be a leisurely pick up. Franchetti, me, two of your Crew as security, and the rest of you to stay here. But now we—well
, you
—could have a real fight on your hands. That means the whole Crew is going to have to deploy for the rescue. It also means that there won’t be enough room for us on the return. And any of us who wait for a day or more in the Val Bregaglia probably won’t evade the Spanish long enough to be around for a second pick up. So whoever doesn’t get extracted by the blimp will need to immediately press on to reach Ambassador Nichols and her staff in Padua.”

“So we’re going to Italy on foot.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Harry shrugged. “Well, that means forty-pound packs, max. Combat load only. And it means leaving a lot of our support equipment back here.”

“Yes. But it will follow us down. Eventually.”

Harry looked up. “Eventually may not be good enough, given the fuse burning on this mission. Frank Stone’s wife Giovanna is now—what? Five months pregnant, almost? I can work a lot of miracles, but jail-breaking a mondo-pregnant lady ain’t one of them. So we don’t have a lot of time to wait around. So gear that gets to us ‘eventually’ is gear we’re never going to see again.
A capeesh?
”

“Yes, I understand,” said Miro, who very nearly did not; the deformed Sicilian dialect that Harry had heard in American gangster movies was barely recognizable as Italian. “But whether or not the gear gets back to us in time, the dirigible must take Ginetti to a safe haven immediately. That means the balloon’s next flight after Chur must be to Grantville. So we won’t have access to the dirigible—or the equipment—for at least two weeks. Possibly more.”

“Well, that’s just great.” Harry hopped out of the gondola, seized his backpack, started pulling out nonessential items and making a semi-neat pile. “So we go in all teeth and no tail.”

“As usual,” commented George Sutherland, Juliet’s immense husband. “Do we at least know whether the security unit already in the valley has secured the extraction site yet?”

Miro shrugged. “So far, we haven’t been able to raise Colonel North. Nor has the ambassador’s radioman. Of course, they may be on the move and unable to send or receive.”

“So we don’t know where anyone else is?” Harry spat. “That’s great; just great. This operation hasn’t started, and already we’re scattered and screwed.”

“As usual,” added George once again.

“Colonel?”

Thomas North squinted, trying to get a better look at the roofs of Soglio about three miles ahead to the west, and farther down the slope of the Val Bregaglia. “What is it, Hastings?”

“Sir, some of the men are asking to stop and fill their water skins.”

“They’ve drained them? Already? They filled up only a few miles back in Vicosoprano.”

“Yes, sir, but it’s a hard march.”

“My, my. Then perhaps all of them should have, as children, simply accepted the life of leisure and independent wealth that was no doubt their birthright. Ah, but the siren song of the mercenary life was evidently too strong for them to resist.” North did not smile while he made this response. “Besides,” he added grudgingly, “if they put any more water in their bellies this quickly, we’ll lose some of them to cramping. And while I would be delighted to indulge their masochistic impulses, I suspect that we will all be needed at the extraction site. And as quickly as possible.”

From the corner of his eyes, North saw Lieutenant Hastings shift from one foot to the other. “Sir, it’s not as if we actually heard the extraction code given. We just got a few garbled signals. That’s all.”

“Yes, Hastings—that’s all. But that’s why I possess the lofty role and rank of colonel and you are but a lowly lieutenant. Who has been evidently been promoted above the threshold of his ability, I might add.”

“Your confidence in me is always inspiring, sir.”

“Ah, and now irony, too? I’ll make an officer of you yet, Hastings. Tell me, Lieutenant: what information can we be certain of, despite the ‘garbled signals’ of which our radio operator could make no sense?”

“I beg your pardon?”

North folded the spyglass, handed it to his batman, faced Hastings. “Lieutenant, for the last three weeks, we have been winding our way through Grisons and the Graubünden, not quite showing the USE flag in the region, but making no secret of the fact that they are our exclusive employers. And in all that time, how much radio traffic have we received? Or heard?”

“Three messages to us, sir. Maybe four or five others. Mostly from Ambassador Nichols’ dislocated embassy in Padua.”

“Yes. At least, we
think
that was the source, since those messages were almost as badly garbled as this last bunch. So given the general scarcity of radio traffic, what do you make of today’s flurry of activity?”

“That something important is happening, sir.”

North sighed. “Hastings, your hypothesis is almost as inspired as the conjecture that maybe—just maybe—night follows day. Well, you’re not to be blamed, of course: you are only a lieutenant, after all. Whereas I am a colonel—a near-divinity. And here is what I divine from the clicks, hissings, and scratchings that have afflicted our radio-set today. First the group we are to extract is on the air with something that sounded like a routine update; it had that tempo. But rather concluding with back and forth housekeeping to fix a time, frequency, and cipher for their next sitrep, the comchatter ended quickly. With, I think, a time being set.”

“For rendezvous?”

North felt the weight of command heavy upon his shoulders. “No, Hastings. There would have been a triple confirmation of extraction. The pattern and rhythm of the exchange was all wrong for that.” Hastings blinked, said nothing. North pressed on. “Logically, they were establishing a near-future call-back time. Probably because the group in Chiavenna was about to make contact with its newest member, a rather important ‘friar.’ Then a long wait. Then a brief exchange—and then nothing. There were repeated, unanswered comm-checks from Padua—or so it seemed. Then more coded comm traffic—between Padua and the airborne extraction team at Chur, I’m guessing. Lots of it. So, Hastings, what do you make of it all?”

“That there’s trouble with the group in Chiavenna? That something went wrong when they went to the scheduled meet with this friar? And that they are moving to the rendezvous and unable to communicate anything further?”

“Bravo! There’s hope for you yet, Lieutenant.” North frowned sadly. “Well, actually, there isn’t any hope for you, but I can’t stand to see you sulk, so I lied. Now, have the squad leaders employ the necessary invective and make the suitable threats so that we can pick up our pace. And I’ll let the men stop to piss, but not to drink any more. They’d give away our approach with all that water sloshing in their guts.”

CHAPTER SIX

The north-leaning shadows of the Bregaglia Mountains were starting to crawl across the Mera River; the sun was moving swiftly down toward the alpine peaks in the west, Chiavenna already lost in the gloom at their feet. Tom paused and let Rita move abreast of him. She glanced up—way up—at him, quizzically. “Honey,” he whispered to her, “you set the pace. I’m going to the rear. To push ’em along and keep us together.”

Rita turned as she strode ahead with a longer gait, inspecting their column. “Yeah, we’re starting to straggle out a bit.”

You, wife, have a talent for understatement,
thought Tom as he peripherally saw Melissa and Cardinal Ginetti lagging yet again. Worse yet, the two of them slowed the group down even more by eliciting excesses of solicitousness. James Nichols was capable of a better pace, and, as an ex-Marine, he certainly knew how crucial it was that they maintain one. But the primal call of protecting one’s mate trumped training and logic, and Melissa, given her feisty personality, was neither the easiest nor most receptive person when it came to assistance.

The cardinal was simply not cut out for even this modest hike. They were two miles east of Chiavenna, well within the mouth of the Val Bregaglia and passing the thundering cataract of the Acquafraggia, which was perched over them to the north. The upward slope of the narrow valley was modest, here: not more than a five percent gradient. But the road meandered around copses and over meadows, rather than sticking close to the straight, rocky banks of the Mera, which had already narrowed considerably.

Tom had considered leaving the road at the small village of Piuro, but ultimately decided against it. The group needed speed more than stealth, and the open pastures reached all the way from the the river to the steep slopes on the north side of the valley. Although the pastures presented rolling contours to the aesthetically inclined gaze, they looked like an extra aerobic workout to Simpson’s utterly practical eye.

Even the winding country lane became more taxing when the river road joined with it shortly beyond Piuro, where the three locals they encountered all stared in surprise at James (and the rest of the group too, for that matter). Now, only ten minutes into the countryside, Melissa and Ginetti were already fighting to keep up—and failing. Tom, his long strides cut in half as he assessed the situation, had now fallen back to the rear of the group.

Melissa looked up, annoyed, a sweaty gray-brown bang hanging down across her severely straight Boston-Brahmin nose. “Yes, Tom, I know: I’m going to get everyone killed.”

“Now, Melissa—”

“Don’t ‘now, Melissa’ me, Tom. It’s true. James gave up denying it about half a mile ago. Now, he just tries to change the topic.”

Ginetti panted out his own opinion “I mean no offense in contradicting you, signora, but it is clear that I am the cause of our troubles, not you. I walk even more slowly. Let us be frank: if I had not met you in Chiavenna, you would have been allowed to pass over the Alps unmolested. As it is, I fear we are lost.” Shivering, for he was clearly not a particularly brave man, Ginetti presented his solution in a rush: “If I am to fall into the hands of Borja anyway, at least you might escape. I might be able to draw them off by taking a different course—”

Melissa stopped and stared down at the cardinal. “With respect, Your Eminence, that’s ridiculous.” Ginetti stopped and stared back; quite possibly, he had not been addressed in such a firmly remonstrative tone since his boyhood. “First, they will not stop following us just because they capture you.
I
wouldn’t stop, if I were them. After all, we are murderers in the eyes of Chiavenna’s authorities. And if the confidential agent following you—the one Tom decked in the
crotto
—has played his cards right, he’ll be following along, too. After all, if his masters only wanted
your
head, Cardinal Ginetti, they could have collected it long before you reached Chiavenna.”

“You overlook that I had four guards. The agent in the
crotto
may not have been courageous enough to—”