CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Thomas North walked to the rail and stared at the collection of age-blackened huts that was this century’s pitiful incarnation of Anzio. He pitched his voice so the other person in the barca-longa ’s stern could hear him above the wind and spray. “You ready, Harry?”
“For what?” The up-timer sounded distracted, as if being roused from immersion in a book.
“For making contact with Aurelio, captain of the Piombinese scialuppa we left here.”
“Yeah, sure. I’m ready. We just need to find Piero first. Then we’ll be set.”
North stared at Harry. “Not a lot of fun, this return.”
Harry pushed away from the rail. “Nope, not a bit. But there’s no time or use for a pity party, Thomas. The way I figure it, I could get down on myself-but if I did, then I’d be wasting time and energy I should be dedicating to our mission. To making all the sacrifices in Rome worthwhile, in the end.”
North nodded. “Well said, Harry. It’s good to have you here.”
Harry shrugged, offering a lopsided smile that was a close cousin to a grimace. “Good to be here, boss. Now let’s find Piero so we can start rescuing Frank and Gia.”
Piero, with a patch on his right eye and his leg stiff out in front of him, was doing a fair job of imitating a piracy-cashiered sailor, loitering about the waterfront. The tavern in which he resided was small, owned by a distant relative, and located at the midpoint of an eastward-meandering coastal cart-track that joined Anzio on the west to the much larger commercial port of Nettuno on the east. “It was difficult to find me, I take it,” Piero said, putting down the goblet of wine that he frequently handled, but rarely sipped from.
“Difficult enough,” Miro commented. “You have hidden yourself quite well.”
“May have even overdone it,” North commented gruffly.
“Your complaints are music to my ears, testimony to my ability to evade Borja’s hounds.”
Harry looked up. “It’s good to see you’re alive, Piero. Now, about Frank and Giovanna-?”
Piero nodded. “They departed Rome seven days ago; their ship sailed from Ostia a day later.”
Harry looked at Miro. “Damn. They weren’t wasting any time.”
“No, apparently not. And these rumors we’ve been hearing about the Ghetto-?”
Piero winced and took a genuine swallow of the wine as Sean Connal started removing the wrappings on his leg; unlike the patch on his eye, these wrappings concealed a genuine injury. “The rumors are true. At least one hundred and fifty killed, as retribution for our attack on the insula Mattei.”
Harry jumped up-his chair falling over, drinks spilling-and he stalked out of the inn, head low.
Piero looked around the group. “Surely he does not blame himself for-?”
“Let’s stick to the information, Piero,” suggested North. “Every minute we’re here increases the risk to you.”
“ Si, this I know. So: Borja’s new lieutenant was apparently watching our informers for weeks before the attack. Meaning that, now, we have no network left in Rome. And we lefferti — well, there are no more lefferti. Now we are just desperate men, trying to go about our business and remain unnoticed. But we did get one last, useful message out from our informant inside Borja’s villa-who was, by the way, a distant relative of mine.”
Miro concluded that the relations among Italian families were even more extensive and intricate than among the marranos, or crypto-Jews, of Spain. “Yes?”
“Although Borja’s secretaries relentlessly screened each others’ communiques to prevent any mention of Frank and Giovanna’s ultimate destination, there was one detail they overlooked: the routing of the dispatch pouch that was sent with their ship. My relative-Luigi Ferrigno-managed to slip a copy of the routing order out of the villa just before he was caught.” Piero took another long swallow of wine, looked down at his now-exposed leg, which was healing nicely.
“Piero,” Miro prompted, “the dispatches in the pouch: where were they addressed?”
“To the viceroy of Mallorca and the commander of a fort called San Carlos.”
Judging from North’s quick sideways glance, he had apparently expected Miro to be surprised-but was himself surprised when Estuban received the news calmly.
“Did you suspect this?” North asked.
Miro shrugged. “It was a distinct possibility. Mallorca is as far as you can get from Italy if you’re traveling toward Spain, and is not easily accessible from the coast of any other nation.”
“But why not put Frank and Gia in Spain itself?” North wondered.
Miro shook his head. “No. Borja would not do that. And Philip would not want it. As it stands now, Frank and Giovanna are the products of Borja’s actions. If they arrive at the Spanish mainland, Philip becomes directly involved and responsible for them. I suspect he wants to maintain as much distance from Borja as possible, wants to retain the option of denouncing his own cardinal as a rogue who exceeded his mandate and whose excesses must be corrected.
“In turn, Borja knows that Philip’s patience is wearing thin. Our informers told us, up until they were discovered, that Borja had received scant acknowledgement from Madrid and all of it had been notably terse. So on the one hand, Borja will not want to put Philip in an awkward position where he must either decide, once and for all, to either support Borja or renounce him. On the other hand, whatever uses Borja has for his prisoners would be lost to him if they were to fall under a greater power’s control. Mallorca, as a nominally Catalan possession, has a far more circuitous connection to Madrid, and furthermore, has a number of facilities that are not under the direct control of crown authorities.”
“And do you have an idea where the two of them might be imprisoned?” North asked narrowly.
“Only a suspicion, a ‘hunch,’ as the up-timers say. Now, Piero, did the note indicate if there were any other messages in the dispatch pouch? Other destinations?”
“No, Don Estuban; all the mail was for Palma de Mallorca.”
Miro nodded. “So they will make directly for the Balearics. Meaning the ships are fully provisioned for the journey and do not need to put in at other ports along the way. This way, they will leave no word of their passing in other cities, nor will they ever be found lying at anchor near a populous area in which attackers such as ourselves might gather covertly.”
North leaned back, arms folded. “So what do we do? Chasing them seems to be out of the question.”
Miro nodded again. “We would never catch them. And we could not best them in a fight with our sad little vessels. Nor, even if we won, could we guarantee the safety of the prisoners.”
North raised an eyebrow. “By process of elimination, then, it seems like we are bound for Mallorca.”
Miro smiled. “At least you will have an expert guide, once we arrive there.”
North nodded. “Yes, but to what end? Once we get there, what do we do?”
“Well, it seems like the basic plan of rescuing Frank and Giovanna from their prison cell is still the objective.”
“Yes, but how? We’ll have fewer men available for operations than our full muster, you realize. Boats in a combat environment need anchor watches; that will drain some of our manpower. If, before our actual attack, we must land our gear and operate from a forward ground base, we’ll need to leave pickets there: more manpower lost. And we are starting with under twenty-five combat effectives, all packed so tightly into two boats that it would take half a day to unload the gear we’d need for a serious fight. And that long again just to get all the various components of the airship out and ready for assembly and inflation. If we wind up using the balloon at all, that is.”
Piero shrugged. “It sounds like you need another boat.”
Miro shrugged. “Yes, but another boat would mean needing another crew. And the larger our operation gets, the more unwieldy it becomes.”
“Still,” said North, “Piero makes a good point: we need more operational redundancy, more hulls in which to store our gear and spread out our personnel. We’ll be more responsive and flexible that way.”