Olivares picked at his camarones al ajillo distractedly. “You seem to have done quite well for yourself in your new position, Senor 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, Senor 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, Senor 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.”
Olivares’ face became carefully expressionless. “And how would that have been beneficial to us?”
“First,” Dolor explained, “I suspect that the up-timers would not have resorted to a strategy of forceful extraction so quickly, if ever. Had we repatriated the wife, they would have logically clung to the hope that the same could be achieved for the husband, with enough negotiation. And there was only one thing they had possession of that we would have been interested in negotiating for.”
Olivare’s eyebrows climbed. “The up-timers would never have turned Urban over to us in exchange for the husband.”
“Of course not, Your Grace. However, once our requests were rebuffed, we could have sent an envoy to either Gustav Adolf or his adversaries within the government of the USE. They could have-legitimately, in this scenario-protested that, in the case of the wife, His Majesty Philip had made humanitarian accommodations desired by the USE. However, the up-timers had then autonomously rejected the reasonable reciprocal requests of Spain. Which was, simply, that the legitimate guardian of the fractured Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Borja, be given the fugitive anti-pope. Or that the up-timers simply mind their own business and cease aiding and sheltering him.”