Juliet was rolling her eyes over Benito’s report. “Yes, of course, Dino is spending an extra minute basking in the glow of the Great Man. So get Piero to help you, instead.”
“ Si, Signora, we shall have the room clear in thirty seconds. No more.”
“You have them trained pretty well,” North observed when the youngster had left.
“No training required, Lord North.” Why she, alone of the Wrecking Crew, insisted on retaining the use of his title was beyond him. But he wasn’t going to attempt dissuading her. He had learned that Juliet Sutherland was not merely determined, she was a force majeure. In this case, her resolve was quiet, rather than loud and brash, but no less tenacious. She was probably going to call Thomas “Lord North” until the day he-or she-died.
“What do you mean, ‘no training required’?” North sipped at his well-watered wine.
“Well, I’m exaggerating a bit. But just a bit. The only boys who will do the work we require are poor. And the only ones who can do the work are not so poor that they’re too weak to watch, run, report. Which means I’ve been recruiting scamps who’ve already spent a few years watching houses and following people, working as lookouts for petty thieves, smugglers, pimps: you name it.”
“Sounds a savory crew.”
“Sounds a desperate crew,” replied Juliet with a touch of heat. “I’m familiar enough with their circumstances, m’lord. Grew up none too different, truth be told.”
“Sorry,” offered North.
“Ah, nothing to be sorry for, m’lord. I suppose these aren’t the kind of skills you ever had much cause to become familiar with, what with you taking your lessons by the hearth in the ancestral manse.”
“ Touche,” North offered with a smile. “Although that doesn’t quite describe the circumstances of my youth. We had a great deal more title than money, and I was not the oldest son. Nor the favorite.”
“Probably why you don’t take on airs, then. Knew there was a reason I liked you. Not all quality is quality, if you take my meaning. But you are, right enough.”
North hardly knew what to say. “Thank you,” was what came out. It sounded ridiculous.
“Well, if you must thank me for something, you can express your appreciation for my expertise as a recruitrix of unsavory crews. Not things you learn in a book, of course, but on the street. You have to be able to tell the ones who are hungry from those who are desperate. Desperate waifs are no good to us; unfortunately, they’ll serve or sell anyone for a farthing because they don’t believe that anything good will last.
“You also have to be able to tell the ones who are just hard enough from the ones who don’t have enough hardness in ’em-they’ll freeze or bolt-and also from the ones who are too hard-they’ll sell you out or blackmail you, if they get the chance.”
“I wasn’t aware there were such nuances in the recruiting of children.”
“Well, why would you be? None of your own, and no interest in ’em.”
“Well, you don’t have any of your own. Although, given your interest, I’m rather surprised you don’t.”
“What? Me? Children? Christ on the gibbet, don’t even say the words!”
“But why not?”
“Why not? Why not? I should trade away all this”-she ran her hands down her formidable flanks-“for a bump and a babby? I’ve got a husband to keep, Lord North, which means a figure to keep as well.”
North tried not to goggle, or laugh, or sputter in bafflement. She seemed serious. “I hadn’t thought about that,” he managed to get out.
“I suppose not. But as I was saying, part of the trick of recruiting these lovable scuts is knowing the age at which they are no longer so lovable, and more scoundrel than scut.”
“And what age is that?”
“Varies by the child. Boys stay innocent longer, but get mean faster. It’s a tricky business, because the oldest are the most valuable, overall, but also the rarest. But we’re fortunate having access to the lefferti; they all have younger brothers who want nothing so much as to join those scurrilous ranks, themselves. And so, we let slip the implication that our piccoli lefferti will help us strike a blow against the Spanish bastards who killed one, more, or all of their family. And yes, it’s that bad, in some cases. So, before I’m done talking to the little fellows, they’re as loyal as puppies and can’t do enough to help us.” She sighed contentedly. “I’ve done my finest work here in Rome. ’S a pity it has to end, tomorrow or the next day.”
“What determines which day we start the final party?”
“When Frank and Giovanna’s guards give us the kind of incident that will allow us to stir up the local mobs.”
“And how can we even predict when such a thing might occur?”
“Predict? Lord North, I see you do not understand what it means to be a professional in my line of work. We are not waiting for a chance event. We are simply waiting for the right moment to make it happen. In a time and a place of our choosing.”
“Which is,” added the unmistakable voice of Harry Lefferts, “the key to our tactical successes: to always strike at a time and a place of our choosing. Which we are now ready to do.” Leading the way down the stairs, he was followed by the rest of the Wrecking Crew, the Wild Geese, and North’s four Hibernians. It was quite the parade, North conceded.
Harry took a seat next to Thomas, pulled out a chair obviously intended for John O’Neill, and let the rest file in and find places as they could.
“Okay,” said Harry, grinning from ear to ear, as the earl of Tyrone took his seat. “We’re done with preparation, and we’re done revising and refining the plan. So here it is.”
He unfolded a map of the target. Some of it boasted precise floor plans, some more was rather vague, and a whole lot of it was blank. “This is the insula Mattei: the palace complex belonging to the Mattei family. It is comprised of three separate parts. The good news is that this big sucker”-Harry ran his hand around the periphery of the immense quadrangle that dominated the center and eastern side of the map-“is not where Frank and Giovanna are being held. We don’t have the manpower to go room to room in the main palazzo, the Palazzo Giove Mattei. Even with complete surprise and all our firepower running nonstop, we’d still get nickel-and-dimed to death.”
Owen Roe O’Neill was frowning. “So the entirety of the insula has been taken over by the Spanish to house two hostages?”
Harry shrugged. “We don’t really know. Our intelligence on high-society isn’t too good. It could be that the Mattei family is on the outs with Borja, that some of their neighbors used the invasion as a pretext to settle some old scores and run them off, or they could be clustered up in the main Palazzo, giving the Spanish the run of the yard and keeping their heads down. Because so far, we haven’t seen anyone who answers to the descriptions of the Mattei clan in the whole place.”
“That’s kind of odd,” commented Sherrilyn.
“Given how smart the guy we’re playing against seems to be, maybe it’s not so much odd as it is inspired. He’s not letting anyone out to tell stories about what’s going on inside. No servants go shopping; no new ones come in. Food is delivered. The only domestics they let out are the water-bearers, who get what they need at the dolphin-fountain here”-Harry pointed to a small piazza just below the northwest corner of the map-“while under close guard.”
“So we haven’t had any inside reports at all?” Donald Ohde rubbed his chin and did not look happy.