1635 The Papal Stakes (91 page)

Urban shook his head. “I doubt you understand what I mean…because I’m not sure you would thank me.”

Connal was the first to understood the implication. “Your Holiness, are we to understand that your comment on our being ‘your men’ was not merely a personal observation?”

Urban smiled. “You are correct. My comment was official. I will not command this, but I will ask it, for my welfare and that of this troubled Church. Will you be known as the Pope’s Own?”

“You wish us to become papal troops?” Although Owen tried to keep the tone of his inquiry deeply respectful, even in his own ears, he sounded as though he was choking on a chicken bone.

Urban shook his head. “No, no: not that. But until I may have a Swiss Guard again—if I ever do—I would take great comfort in being able to rely upon your kind and vigorous defense of my person and the Church Militant. And I have already communicated my wishes to your employer, who has replied that my choice honors him greatly, and that my trust is well and wisely placed.”

“King Fernando said that?”

“He did—along with Archduchess Isabella. They have even extended an invitation to visit there, which I might very well do. I might even convene the council in their lands.”

Owen spread his hands. “Your Holiness, how can you? The Low Countries is not a purely Catholic realm anymore.”

“Owen,” commented Sean quietly, “tell me: which realms are, at this moment, purely Catholic realms?”

The answers that first jumped into Owen’s mind—all of Spain’s possessions and Bavaria—died before they emerged from his mouth. “I see,” he observed, with a pull at his newly trimmed beard.

“And besides,” added Urban, “the Low Countries are one of the few realms that have tendered such an offer to my troublesome self.”

“Has France?”

Urban’s smile was sly. “Of course. And they offered Avignon as my papal seat—which, if I agreed to it, would be like declaring Borja the true pontiff and myself the anti-pope. No. I have many friends among the French cardinals, but Richelieu holds their reins. So I continue to consider one other offer.”

“Which is—?” Connal wondered with a winning and far-too-innocent smile.

“Which is best shared at a later time. Besides, I do not yet have your answer, Owen Roe O’Neill: may I indeed consider myself protected by those Wild Geese that you feel suitable for such duty?”

Owen Rowe O’Neill stood very straight. “Where the pope goes, we go. We are his men.”

Urban smiled. “Nothing could please me more. Now I will ask one more thing of you: seek out Thomas North and Lieutenant Hastings. The USE has graciously offered to lend me their contracted services.”

“A
sassenach
protecting a pope?” O’Neill smiled. “What is this world coming to?”

“It is coming to an urgent crossroads perched upon the edge of a yawning abyss, Colonel O’Neill. Over which I intend to build many such bridges before we all fall into it and are consumed. Now, please be so good as to tell the co-owner of the Hibernian Mercenary Battalion that their USE employers have decided to extend their current ‘special contract’ in a most uncommonly lucrative fashion.”

Still smiling, Owen nodded his respects, and went in search of the damned
sassenach
.

Sherrilyn leaned back and tried stretching her knee out straight; it did not cooperate.
Damn it, what I’d give for a whirlpool right about now—

“Quatrine for your thoughts?”

She turned and smiled in the direction of Harry Lefferts’ voice. “They’d cost you a whole lot more than that, buddy.”

He sat down on the bench beside her, but she could tell he wouldn’t stay long: his body was bent forward over his knees, hands clenched between them. Obversely, when he meant to settle in, he slouched back like a cougar at repose. Feeling an awkward silence growing, she asked, “How’s Matija doing?”

“Fine. Donald’s in the sick ward with him right now.” Harry looked out beyond the hills. “At least the two of them made it.”

“Harry, listen,” said Sherrilyn. “We’re the Wrecking Crew; danger is our job description. Paul and George died doing their jobs as well as any of us ever have. And Rome is old news. What you and Miro pulled off in Mallorca—that was an extraordinary piece of work, and yes, everyone knows that most details of the close assault on Bellver came from you. You might be determined to play down your role in it, but Miro isn’t; if anything, he’s trumpeting your contributions while under-representing his own.”

Harry looked off to the side. “Yeah, well—I’m not going to get all worked up about it. The last time I basked in the spotlight I got a little bit blinded. And that got some good people killed. Some really good friends, too. I don’t need—or want—any credit for Mallorca. That was for the folks we left behind in Rome.”

Sherrilyn put a hand on shoulder. “Harry, listen to someone you trust—yourself. What you said in Venice was dead right: we had a good run, and had it as long as we could. When we first arrived down-time—when Mike Stearns recruited us—we were flying by the seat of our pants, and making up plans only seconds before carrying them out. And a good part of our success was because we were an unknown quantity; because the down-timers didn’t know all they things we could do, but more importantly, they also had no idea about all the things we
couldn’t
do.

“That was sure to change, Harry—and that’s what happened in Italy. The job changed, not us, not you. We had our run, and we had no way of foreseeing just how fast and hard that run was going to be over.” She rubbed her wrapped knee. “And I had no idea I was becoming an old lady.”

Harry grinned. “Well, Sherrilyn, you should know—better than anyone else—that I have a thing for older women.”

“Idiot,” Sherrilyn said with a smile.

“Ya gotta hand it to me, at least I’m consistent.”

“That you are, Harry,” she said as he stood.

“Well, I’m off.” He said brusquely—and then, his tone suddenly became serious, almost somber. “Every morning, when I wake up, I start the day by telling myself that the sacrifices we made were all worth while. We got Frank and Giovanna back, you kept the pope from getting killed, and we beat the other guys at their own sneaky games.”

“Yup,” agreed Sherrilyn, who rummaged around in her pocket and extended its contents up toward Harry: sunglasses. The weren’t exactly like his trademark pair, the ones he’d broken in two and tossed in the Tiber, but they were close down-time copies that had come with an embassy worker out of Rome.

Harry looked at them and shook his head. “No, Sherrilyn, I’m through with them. I think I’ve gotten to that stage of my life where there’s only one good reason to wear sunglasses.”

“To shade your eyes against the sun?”

Harry nodded. “Pretty dull—but when the image gets in the way of the job, it’s time to dump the image.”

Sherrilyn hoisted herself up, wavered a bit, but finally stood firm. She snapped a clean, respectful salute. “It’s been an honor serving with you, Captain; you are a hell of a soldier.”

He returned the salute. “I’m going to live up to that, Sherrilyn. And—truth be told—the honor was all mine.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

The sun in Barcelona was punishing, and Pedro Dolor had seated himself at the table with his back to it. This also gave his host—the count-duke of Olivares—the seat with the superior view of the harbor. If it also happened to make the older man squint a bit and work a bit harder at maintaining a serene and superior composure—well, Olivares was an old hand at just these kinds of clandestine meetings, so Dolor thought it unlikely that he would be so easily rattled. However, Pedro was happy for any advantage he might acquire, no matter how small.

Olivares picked at his
camarones al ajillo
distractedly. “You seem to have done quite well for yourself in your new position, Señor Dolor.” He nodded at the plain but fine clothes that Pedro wore, seemed to scan fingers and neck for any sign of jewelry. “Although you seem reluctant to make any display of it.”

“Professional considerations, Your Grace. In my line of work, unobtrusiveness, not ornamentation, is key.”

“But surely you can veer from this Spartan regimen when you are in private?”

Dolor shrugged. “If the lack of ornamentation remains an unexceptioned habit, then one cannot, in a moment of distraction, forget it. It is one’s reality, one’s sole reflex. Which is precisely what, in my case, it must be.”

Olivares nodded slowly. He seemed to consider the shrimp he held aloft on a silver fork, but Dolor knew that in fact, the count-duke was considering him. Measuring the increased confidence, the seemingly sudden increase in what Olivares and his aristocratic ilk would call “courtly breeding,” congratulating himself on having had the foresight to promote this lowly lackey from bloody-handed work to the subtler requirements of the mission he had just completed. Which had, paradoxically, included the two most profitable failures of his career.

The paradox of the deeper successes implicit in those two superficial failures was evidently not lost on Olivares. “Despite recent outcomes, it seems that you are an indispensable man, Señor Dolor.”

“My Grace honors me with a compliment where I failed in both tasks?”

“Tsk. Nonsense—although your repeatedly expressed willingness to assume responsibility serves you well. What I—and others—note is that, as long as you were personally in charge of situations, they went quite well. In Rome, you did not merely defeat, but may well have shattered, the most famous group of military daredevils—so-called ‘commandos’—on the Continent. In Venice, you crippled the USE’s aircraft and designed a meticulous search strategy that ultimately located Urban. And given the restrictions under which you labored in Mallorca, and since you were not present when the USE’s second task force of rescuers arrived, your responsibility for that outcome is, at most, marginal. As I understand it from independent sources, the viceroy had summoned you to the Almudaina to extort new threads of gossip from my letter to you, and to hold his nervous hand since he is no longer a favorite in Madrid.”

“The Count-Duke is remarkably well-informed—and over-kind in choosing to see my merits above my failures.”

“And
you
are over-modest, Dolor. Which I have always liked about you; it suggested your quality from the start. It is good—very good indeed—to have watched you grow into the full promise of your skills.”

“Which I owe to your example and tutelage, Your Grace,” Dolor lied.

Olivares may have actually believed that compliment, or taken it as another sign that Dolor was ready for advancement into direct court matters: flattery—as long as it was not excessive or untimely—was a prerequisite skill if one was to be successful in that rarified environment.

“You have come a long way, Pedro—and will go much further, if I am any judge of men. So tell me: what do you think happened in Mallorca?”

Dolor considered. “I think it illustrated for us why shattering the Wrecking Crew in Rome was not an unalloyed benefit.”

Olivares held the shrimp frozen before his lips. “What do you mean?”

“Consider, Your Grace. By only breaking, rather than destroying, the USE’s premier special operations tool in Rome, we actually pushed it to evolve into an even better tool, one that now boasts an even broader set of capabilities. Much of what occurred in Mallorca bears the mark of Harry Lefferts, but just as much suggests that he is now working with others who brought their own, unique strengths to the operation. And it seems obvious that this new whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.”

The poised shrimp went slowly into Olivares’ mouth. “There is much depth in you, indeed,” the count-duke mused. “And before you left Palma to make this report to me, did you see to it that the responsible parties there were appropriately punished?”

Dolor knew that Olivares was asking about measures taken against the
xueta.
They were not directly implicated: the explosions and subsequent fire had destroyed almost everything but the stonework of the Castell de Bellver. The scant remains mostly defied identification. The deaths of Dakis, Asher, and Castro y Papas could only be inferred from the fire-scoured tools and weapons that had been recovered from the lazarette-crematorium. The governor’s charred bones had been found amidst the scorched fixtures of his own armoire. Whether he had hidden there, or had been locked inside by attackers would never be known. And of the attackers themselves, there were almost no remaining signs. So if the
xueta
had been involved, there was no remaining evidence to suggest, let alone prove, it—no matter how very likely it now seemed.

But Dolor harbored no hatred of Jews—did they not bleed like everyone else?—and was unwilling to punish people for suspected crimes; he was happy to leave that brand of sadistic idiocy to the Inquisition. He decided to redirect the conversation into a more provocative—and, if carefully handled, productive—direction. “Your Grace, when you ask about ‘responsible parties,’ I take it your are referring to Cardinal Borja’s political mismanagement of holding the Stones as hostages? Unfortunately, I lack sufficient authority to punish him—to borrow your own terminology.”

Olivares blinked. “Be wary, Señor Dolor,” he said in a severe tone. But Pedro saw in Olivares’ eyes that the indirect remonstration was also insincere: Olivares’ disdain for Borja, and delight at Dolor’s question, was quite obvious. “I was referring to the parties responsible for what happened in Palma,” Olivares clarified with a ghost of a smile.

But this was where Dolor felt the moment had come to play his well-established role of the ever-solemn professional. “With all respect, Count-Duke Olivares, I do in fact consider Cardinal Borja to be the architect of the disaster in Palma.”

“How? He was not present.”

“He did not have to be. The situation there was the direct result of his policy in regards to Frank and Giovanna Stone. How might everything have been different if the cardinal had been willing to conceive of them as useful assets, rather than scratching posts? One is tempted to think that it could have resulted in sustained dialog with the up-time powers—which, however noxious, would have been useful. Particularly had extended negotiations resulted in the repatriation of the pregnant woman.”