1635: The Papal Stakes

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Thomas was not sure that he had heard correctly. “I beg your pardon: you are coming with us?”

Miro nodded. “That is correct.”

North stilled a very annoyed internal voice. Just when it looks we’re reassembling a team of seasoned professionals, the pencil-pusher decides to become a field agent. How bloody typical. “Estuban,” he said in his very best, and carefully groomed, tone, “are you sure this is wise?”

Miro smiled. “No, I am not.”

Well, that’s a relief. Partially. “Then why, may I ask, have you decided to become part of a field operation?”

“First, to solve the problem that Sherrilyn indirectly raised: I am the only extra pilot for the balloon, albeit not a very good one. But second, and far more important, if we lose Frank and Giovanna’s trail, you are going to need the advice of someone who knows every city, and almost every coastal mile, of the Mediterranean.”

Tom considered the profound merits of that argument.

Merits that Sherrilyn did not immediately see, evidently. “Why do you say we might lose their trail? Do you think the Spanish might move them?”

“Absolutely. I expect them to.”

“Good grief, why?”

“Because I would.”

“No offense, Estuban, but that’s kind of crazy. That’s-”

“That’s called breaking contact,” Harry pointed out quietly. “It’s SOP for good intelligence work. Particularly in a situation like this one. The Spanish know we’re working against the clock. So if they can force us to waste time just finding Frank and Gia all over again, it’s unlikely we’d have enough time left to be able to mount a second operation. And if we did, it’s likely to be a rush-job, and therefore, prone to disaster. No, the guy working for Borja now has either read our playbook, or has been schooled in the down-time equivalents.”

“So even though they kicked our asses-?”

“-their best strategy is to move Frank and Giovanna. Quickly.” Harry shrugged. “I suspect they’ve already shipped the two of them out of Rome; best to move them right after they beat us. They know our local networks are so shattered or shuttered that they probably won’t detect the activity, for now.”

Owen frowned. “Then how do we find their trail at all? No one will have any word of where they’ve gone, or even when they left.”

Thomas scratched his left ear. “That might not necessarily be true, Owen. Do you remember the first boat we transferred to when we were fleeing Rome?”

“You mean the scialuppa that we rendezvoused with farther down the Tiber?”

“Yes, that one. Well, when we left them for the barca-longa that brought us back here, we-that is to say Harry and I-put them on retainer.”

Owen smiled. “Did you now?”

North smiled back. “Yes. Harry and I wound up getting their whole, sad story as we were heading down toward Anzio. Seems they are fishermen out of Piombino, near the Tuscan border, and can’t make a fair quatrine. The Spanish sutlers wait on the docks and impound their catch the moment the mooring lines are fast. So they’re making more money by having us pay them to sit still, than having the Spanish only pay a quatrine for a scudo worth of fish.”

“And do you think they’ll be reliable?” Sherrilyn sounded dubious.

“As much as family can make them; their master is the brother-in-law of the senior remaining lefferto.”

“And who would that be?” Owen asked.

Harry’s voice was dark. “Piero. You know him. Wounded at the attack and, if he’s smart, far away from Rome. He was pretty sure that Borja’s people would be looking for him. Real hard. And I agreed.”

Miro leaned his chin into his hand. “Why him?”

“Because Piero was one of the two main sources from which the lefferti were getting inside information on what was going on in Borja’s villa. And I’ll bet anything that Borja’s new spymaster identified those informers, and then used them to feed us the disinformation that corroborated my belief that the Spanish were undermanned at the insula Mattei. And once the attack was over, and the Spanish had those informers in their torture chambers, the remaining lefferti were as good as dead if they didn’t run like hell.”

Miro nodded. “Unquestionably. Now, about this Piero. He has agents watching the traffic along the Tiber?”

“Yes. Relatives, in fact. And he can pass news to the master of the scialuppa that took us up the Tiber, who could at least follow them for a day or two and get a basic idea of their course. So if anyone is removed from the insula Mattei, we’ll know about it, and have some sense of which way they were sent.”

“Which is another reason why we need to leave immediately,” added Owen. “If there is no more intelligence than that on their movement, we will lose their trail pretty quickly. The Mediterranean is a big place, after all.”

Miro smiled; Thomas was tempted to characterize the expression as “sneaky.” “Yes, it’s big, Colonel, but the number of places where the Spanish might keep two such prisoners for an extended amount of time is actually fairly limited. I agree that we must leave at once, but if the scialuppa can trail them for even one day, I think I’ll be able to narrow down their probable destinations to a fairly small list.”

“So you don’t think they’re going to stick them on some desert island somewhere with a platoon of guards?” Sherrilyn sounded disappointed.

“Absolutely not. First, the Mediterranean is thick with pirates. The Spanish cannot risk keeping the prisoners in anything other than a stronghold. And with a pregnant woman, they must have access to midwives or Hebrew physicians.” Miro’s smile went from “sneaky” to positively “wicked.” “And that alone narrows the list quite a bit.”

Sherrilyn nodded, her bangs bobbing. “Okay, Don Estuban, then what’s our plan?”

Miro shrugged. “To depart quickly and remain flexible.”

Sherrilyn blinked when it was clear that Miro was done speaking. “And that’s it? That’s the plan?”

North shrugged. “Don Estuban is right: we don’t have enough specifics to even begin to know what we might need to do, let alone where or when. Our only option is to gather up any sufficiently portable resources that might conceivably give us an edge and get moving as quickly as possible. I suspect we can get a lot of what we’d want from the airplane facility in Mestre: extra communications gear, tools, wire, maybe even a spare engine for the balloon, if that’s where they are kept.” He turned to Miro. “Is there any reason we can’t leave tomorrow?”

“One,” Miro answered. “I had the Monster’s gas tanks tapped for the remaining gasoline in them. The amount of energy gasoline produces in the balloon’s engines, versus other fuels, makes it too valuable to leave behind. It would give us one ‘high performance’ flight with the dirigible. And we might need one, before we are done.”

North heard something more than general prudence behind Miro’s last comment. “You foresee something in particular, Estuban?”

Miro shrugged. “Once the rescue is over, we may need to move Giovanna Stone very quickly. If it takes a long time to find the two of them, or if the escape is a narrowly managed affair with the Spanish in hot pursuit, she might not have much time left in her pregnancy.” Miro frowned. “Add to that the possibilities of bad seas, a shipwreck, or running from the Spanish on land if we are compelled to abandon ship and take our chances ashore. A pregnant woman either can’t or shouldn’t be asked to do any of those things. So, once we have her in our possession, we may need to put Giovanna and Frank in the balloon and send them home-or at least to a safe, well-staffed birthing place.”

Owen was nodding. “Sensible. Will the gasoline be on hand in time for us to leave in thirty-six hours?”

“It should be,” answered Miro. “We are loading it on the barca-longa, which will carry most of the team. The overflow personnel will be traveling in the same gajeta that brought you back from Rome the first time.”

“Once we rendezvous with the Italian fishing boat, you’re going to have to assign an admiral, too,” commented Sherrilyn. “But none of us have much experience with high-seas mayhem.”

Thomas had never seen Miro’s eyes go so flat or serious. “I do.”

Sherrilyn cocked her head. “Don Estuban, I know you have a lot of experience on the seas, but shouldn’t we have someone with-?”

“Miss Maddox. You apparently think that being a merchant in the Mediterranean is an enterprise that does not involve combat. I must tell you that you are mistaken. Quite mistaken.” Thomas believed him.

Evidently Sherrilyn did too; she shut up.

North stood. “Very well, then. With your permission, Estuban, I am going to brief our troops. And please do not take it amiss that I resume calling you ‘Don Estuban’ in front of them; we’ll want that measure of public formality, I think.”

“I quite agree. Gentlemen, Miss Maddox, I thank you for your willingness to move again so quickly. A good night’s sleep is in order for us all. I doubt we’ll have many of them from here on out. Captain Lefferts, one last moment of your time, if you please.”

Sherrilyn was strolling-well, limping-along the length of the monastery’s arcade when she heard Harry calling after her. She turned, saw him approaching, waited — and wondered: why had Miro kept him after the meeting was over? And why was he coming to talk to her now? Suddenly, she was more afraid of the possibility of his talking than she was of his long silences.

Which he had a lot of, these days. The formerly talkative bon vivant Harry Lefferts had undergone a startling transition since the debacle in Rome. Whereas in the wake of such a reversal, self-indulgent men might have become snappish or sulky, Harry had simply become very silent. On the journey home, he spoke when necessary and otherwise kept his thoughts and his company to himself, distancing himself from all others equally, even his long-time friends on the Wrecking Crew.

So, as he drew up to Sherrilyn, she was uncertain about what he might say. Which was, it turned out, wholly unexpected. “How’s your knee, Sherrilyn?”

“My knee? You mean-? Hey, hold on. I’m just fine; a little tired, that’s all. Old sports injuries do that, you know.”

Harry nodded. “I know. I also saw how you were running by the time we were retreating from the Palazzi Mattei. I don’t want any one of us taking unwise risks-any of us. Well, those of us who are left.”

Sherrilyn swallowed her arch but threadbare denials about her very real knee problems; she intuited that Harry’s self-recriminations were not merely conversational, but prefatory to some urgent message. “Okay; what’s going down, Harry?”

“Me. I’m going down on the chain of command.”

“What?” Sherrilyn felt her face grow hot. “What is that bastard Miro doi-?”

“Sherrilyn.”

Her name-which Harry uttered with a kind of flat-toned finality-stopped her. “What?”

“Sherrilyn, it wasn’t just Miro’s idea. It’s mine, too.”

Sherrilyn searched his face, looked for a hint of prevarication, for any sign that this was a cosmetic lie intended to save Estuban Miro from her wrath. But she saw no such sign. “Harry,” she said-and then didn’t know what else to say.

He picked up the conversation. “Look, first off: how much of the Wrecking Crew is left? You, me, George, Donald, Matija, and Paul. And we can’t take George anywhere with us right now. So we’re down to barely half of our strength. And most of us are nursing some kind of injury.” He looked at her knee but kept on his topic. “So, let’s be honest: we may have big-decisive-contributions we can make to this next rescue attempt, but we don’t have the power as a unit to remain the primary players.”

“The hell we don’t,” Sherrilyn snarled in a denial that she knew was simply the triumph of loyalty over common sense.

Harry looked at her and smiled-a small, patient smile that she had never seen on his face before-and shook his head. “Sherrilyn, think it through. Command should pass to the guy who’s going to be bringing the decisive hammer to the party.”

“North.”

“Yeah, and he’s good. Let’s be honest, Sherrilyn: he’s commanded real units-military units-all his adult life. And Rome, and whatever comes next, is likely to be primarily a military operation. The Crew-hell, it’s always been hard to fit us into a team-player mold, when you get right down to it. We’ve always worked on our own: in fast, hit hard, out fast. Rome wasn’t like that-not as much as I wanted it to be, and that’s part of what got us torn up. North wouldn’t have made my mistakes.”

“Yeah? Well, he wouldn’t have made a bold plan, either. Hell, if we had to wait for Nervous Nelly North, we’d probably still be sitting in Rome, eating pasta, wondering what to do.”

Harry smiled. “Sherrilyn, you know that’s bunk. North just thinks more like a military commander than a commando. Frankly, if he had been in charge, I’m pretty sure he’d have given me complete autonomy with the Crew. He understands how to blend really good soldiers like his with high-power commando operatives like us. I thought I knew how to, also-but I didn’t. Not well enough.”

Sherrilyn rose up. “Okay, so maybe you’ve got something left to learn. Big deal: you’ll learn it. Starting now.”

Harry nodded. “Yeah, but this time, I’m not going to risk any more lives by learning on the job. Besides, Sherrilyn, let’s be honest; the Crew is never going to be the same again. And not just because of the casualties we took, but because someone found a way to mess with our act, to trip us up and knock us down.”

Sherrilyn shook her head sharply. “You don’t do self-pity very well, Harry.”

“This isn’t self-pity, Sherrilyn. I’m dead serious. Look: as long as we were tear-assing around Europe, blind-siding the locals and dancing off before they could get their paws on us, we were golden. The Wrecking Crew was like a rock band; we did what we wanted, spent everything we earned, lived like kings, had groupies, roadies, you name it.”

He looked sideways at the stars peeking over the roofs of the monastery. “But, also like a rock band, our glory ride had to come to an end. There’s always a point where you hit the wall, your moment is over: you’ve reached your limit and now you’re on the downslide. Problem was, we didn’t get to learn that gradually, the way most bands do; we didn’t see a string of gigs going more and more sour as the opposition got smarter and smarter. We caught it in our faces, all at once. The situation-and the guy-in Rome was deadly serious shit; I wasn’t ready for it.”

“Okay,” Sherrilyn answered with a sharp nod. “So you weren’t ready for it. Neither was North. Hell, none of us were. And how could we be? So maybe you’re right: maybe you need to watch and learn a bit before you sit in the big chair on that big an operation again. But so what? They say that if you don’t fail, you don’t learn. So here’s your learning opportunity. And one of the things you’d better damned well learn from this, Harry Lefferts, is that, sometimes, you’re going to be beaten-and it isn’t the end of the world. It means you’ve met an enemy who taught you a hard lesson-and your job is to learn that lesson and step up the game so that you are schooling him, next time.”

Harry smiled at her. “You give one hell of a pep talk, teach. Break ’em down and build ’em up-all in one minute. Pretty impressive.”

Sherrilyn shrugged. “Had plenty of experience at it.”

“Yeah, you did. And you always provided a good example-both in victory and defeat.”

Sherrilyn narrowed her eyes. “I heard that emphasis on ‘defeat,’ Harry. Don’t try to get slick with me. You got some bad news for me, you just come out and say it.”

Harry shrugged. “Okay, Sherrilyn. Here’s the deal: you’re not coming back out with us. You’re going up-country to make sure they have some up-time expertise helping out with the papal security detail.”

Sherrilyn felt her jaw drop. “You’re benching me? Now?”

“Sherrilyn, I’ll ask again: how’s your knee? Or do I have to ask you to run a set of high hurdles and then we can both see how much you’re limping? Listen, we’ve all got some hard facts to deal with today. This one is yours: you are as kick-ass capable as you ever were, Sherrilyn, but your knee is giving out. Having you scramble around on tile roofs, climbing ropes, bouncing around on a pitching ship’s deck: it’s not safe. Not to you, and not to the people depending on you.”

Sherrilyn was all ready to tell Harry how wrong he was-but realized that she didn’t actually have a rebuttal: she had no way to refute the incontrovertible evidence of her own swollen knee and gimping gait. She limped out from under the last groined vault of the arcade, stared up into the night sky, and sighed. “Yeah, okay-you’re right, Harry. But it still sucks-sucks that this could be the end of the Wrecking Crew.”

Harry joined her, looking up at the low clouds that had started scudding overhead. “Yeah, that part sucks all right. But we had a great run while it lasted.”

Sherrilyn looked over at his fine profile and resolved not to get maudlin. “Yeah,” she said. “The best. The very best.”