It had been four days before she'd been brought in for burial, and that sodden, rain-lashed graveside attended by not a single genuine mourner had been the place where Mazzare had suddenly decided to stand up under the weight of his vocation. To finally heed what God had been telling him for over a year since the Ring of Fire.

He sighed. "No, Simon, it's not that. It's just that poor Joe's been murdered and I don't know what more we can do."

"Find out who did it," Jones said, simply, as they came to the graveyard gate.

Mazzare said nothing. He hoped Jones's irrepressible sense of humor wasn't taking a turn for the morbid.

"I'm being serious, Larry," Jones said. "Even if we can't take it to a trial and the hanging someone richly deserves, we need to know who's out to get us."

"Everyone." Mazzare gave a single bark of laughter. "We're not paranoid, Simon, everyone really is out to get us."

Jones chuckled. "We could at least try to identify which of them is prepared to murder us in our beds."

"True."

"Of course, this isn't a cliche yet," Jones added.

"What?" Mazzare looked askance. Jones was being even more oblique than usual.

"Oh, you know. Father Whazzisname investigates." Jones held out his hands in the shape of a frame, to see how Mazzare would look on screen, or possibly in something by Chesterton.

"Knock it off, Simon." Mazzare waved to call for a boat back to the embassy. They were busy a few moments getting in and negotiating with the gondolier.

"Seriously, Larry," Jones continued as the boat pulled away, "we need to look into this."

"Finding the time will be a trick. And how do we do it anyway? I can just see me going to Count d'Avaux and asking him where he was on the night in question."

Jones looked at him sharply. "Why'd you think it's the French?"

Mazzare gave back his best Poirot impersonation. "I zuzpect evreewahn, and I zuzpect nowhan." Then he shrugged. "No, the count was just the first example to spring to mind. Although if I had to draw up a short list of suspects, most of the names on it are French ones."

"Figures. Anyway, since you seem to be in the right frame of mind, who are our suspects?"

Mazzare counted on his fingers. "First, all the countries we're at war with. France, Spain, England, in that order."

"You think Sanchez was lying?"

"No, it's that he almost certainly doesn't know everything. There are really two Spains, these days. He's with the one we might be able to do business with some day."

"Flanders," Jones said.

"Quite. Except it's a lot bigger than Flanders, nowadays. Bedmar's definitely on that side, I think, if he's on any side bar his own. We can probably rule him out."

"England too, on that basis."

"True," Mazzare said. "Fielding's as smooth and two-faced a limey as ever I met."

"Prejudice, Larry?" Jones clucked his tongue slyly.

"No, I lived there, remember. I'm not suggesting he's smooth and two-faced because he's a limey-and they found that term funny, by the way. No, as I was saying, he's as smooth and two-faced as they come, but if he's a schemer then he's a schemer who's doing nicely, I hear, out of us being in Venice. And even if he wasn't, Hider would be sitting on him, and Hider right here has a lot more clout than Charles Stuart at the other end of Europe. So, you're right, not the English. The Danes? We've had hardly a peep out of them here, and I doubt they care what happens all the way over this side of Europe. No, they've got more parochial concerns."

"The Austrians?" Jones suggested. "Come to that, Wallenstein? Yeah, sure, he's supposed to be an ally now, but with that man . . ."

"Doubt either. Wallenstein's hardly on the radar. What are we doing in Venice to annoy him that even comes close to matching his need to rely on us where he lives? Undercutting his interest in the copper market? Sure, he sent off a nasty letter or two, but that's piddly stuff. As for the Austrians, the Empire's pretty much resigned to us cocking a snook at them."

"Really?" Jones raised his eyebrows.

"I'm sure of it. All the bloviating they've been doing has been pretty much for form's sake. They've had to put up with the Venetians for so long they don't seem to care any more, and we're not likely to do them any harm here that we're not doing bigger and better closer to home. Besides, the Spanish Habsburgs regard this as their theater, not for their cousins to dabble in."

"Stipulated. For the moment. That leaves us with France and Spain proper, then, and-who else?"

"Everyone Buckley annoyed," Mazzare said, with a sigh.

"That's me on the list of suspects, then," Jones said. "You too, actually."

"Right. But the first people he annoyed were the French and the last were, at a guess, the Turks."

"Turks?"

"That was going to be his next piece, as far as Benjamin could tell, and I found some notes to that effect in his room. He'd been making himself a nuisance around Bey Koprulu's staff. I understand he'd been told his presence wasn't wanted and would be, ah, reduced if it was detected again."

Jones nodded. "Should have remembered the reports. I do recall reading that a couple of days ago."

They rode the rest of the way in silence, watching the sights and sounds of Venice slide by. It was, Mazzare thought, living proof that there was such a thing as too beautiful. The palazzi were carefully constructed to be light and airy in their facades, of properly balanced proportion and perfectly tasteful adornment. Even the lack of maintenance was part of the charm. Still and all, he couldn't help feeling that a little more austerity would improve the place no end, or at least let some of the poorer neighborhoods front onto the canal.

As they turned onto the narrow canal that led to the embassy, a maneuver that always put Mazzare in mind of sailing into a cave-mouth, they saw an unfamiliar boat tied up in front, slightly ornate despite Venice's ferocious sumptuary laws that insisted on the same kind of gondola for everyone.

"Visitor, then," Jones said as they disembarked and paid the gondolier. He nodded at the new boat. "Someone important, from the looks."

"Wonder who?" Mazzare mused.

Mazarini met them inside the door, chatting with Sharon Nichols. He must have been practically standing sentry. "Your Excellency," he said, in very solemn tone of voice, "I have a letter for you here. It's from the Holy Father."

Mazzare took the proffered note. It was a very fancy looking thing. He could only stare at the missive, for some moments, while his mind raced over the possible contents. He had a sense that the blood had drained from his face.

What was most likely, he thought, was that the pope had decided to firmly and decisively reject Mazzare's views on the Church's proper theological and historical perspective and future course. If so, Larry Mazzare would finally find himself in that place he had most wanted to avoid since the Ring of Fire. The place where Martin Luther had once stood-almost half a millennium back, in the world Mazzare had come from, but not much more than a century in this one.

Or was it, perhaps, the place where Thomas a Becket had once stood, when he made his decision?

But there was no point in delaying. Very pale, but composed, Mazzare broken the seal and opened the letter.

It took him some time to read it. The Latin was even more flowery than usual. Mostly, though, it took him some time because the contents were the last thing he had expected. In fact, they didn't even qualify as "last." He had never once imagined he might receive such a letter-neither in his dreams nor his nightmares. He had to read it three times over before he finally absorbed it.

"I am summoned to Rome," he said harshly. "I must appear before the Inquisition."