"And you're certain they headed for Padua first?"

"Aye, Your Excellency."

"Such was the news Messer Cavriani got for us from the watermen, Father." said Heinzerling, "The Marcolis were poor at keeping secrets, it seems."

"Except from us, apparently," Mazzare snapped. "Sorry, Gus, it wasn't your fault. Will they have met Tom at Padua? Maybe he got them to turn back, and you've chased down here for nothing."

"Schade, no," said Heinzerling. "Herr Doktor Stone returned from Padua without meeting his sons. He is very worried, mein' ich."

"As well he might be, Gus. Not that I'm telling you anything on that score. Lord knows I did some dumb things as a teenager, but this has to beat all." Mazzare heaved another deep sigh, pondered for a moment and then seemed to reach a decision. "Let's assume they're definitely on the way to Rome. Captain Lennox, continue your attempts to find and stop the boys on the road, but please try and make sure you're in Rome before they can possibly arrive. Don't let trying to catch them keep you out on the road while they're up to mischief in Rome. I'll be staying at the palazzo Barberini, apparently; get word to me there. I'll let you know where Galileo's being held and when and where the trial's to be, and you can mount a discreet watch. Stop them quietly but firmly, please. Gus, Captain Lennox, I don't know much about the Marcolis, but Tom's boys are three good kids at heart with all their lives in front of them. Try and keep them out of trouble, eh?"

Lennox and Heinzerling murmured their assent.

"And another thing," Mazzare went on, "make yourselves scarce in town until say noon tomorrow. We're traveling with Monsignor Mazarini, and I'd prefer not to have him know anything he might feel duty-bound to report."

As Gus and Captain Lennox rode away, Jones said "Larry, I'm not sure this is the best way to handle this."

"Why not, Simon?" Mazzare wasn't sure himself, but it was the first improvisation that had occurred to him. Trying to explain about American traditions of teenage independence, about youthful high spirits and the sheer improbability of them doing any harm would cut no ice at a trial for what was, by anyone's standards, a plot to commit a major felony.

"Well, if we explain and all . . . oh." Jones dried up as his thought processes caught up. "Yeah, I see what you mean. 'Cardinal, we need extra guards. The three sons of a friend of ours-one of our delegation, in fact-are plotting to spring the star attraction at this summer's biggest show-trial out of the pokey.' " He snorted. "Go down real well."

Mazzare nodded. "Thinking aloud, here, Simon, we're dealing with a propaganda event. If things really are starting to crack open on this, if it's really like we hope it is, then we can't let anything throw grit in the gears. Although I'd throw it all up in a heartbeat if I could keep those boys from doing something that they'll regret for the rest of their lives."

Mazzare realized, as he said it, that needn't be a very long time at all. While he wasn't familiar with any of the local penal codes, he was pretty certain what the penalty would be for trying to organize a prison-break. This was an era where people could get executed for petty theft.

"Come on, Larry," said Jones, after a long silence. "I think I'm done sightseeing."

Chapter 44.

"Well, Rome's better found than Venice was, I suppose." Jones was looking around the apartment that they had been given in the Palazzo Barberini for their stay. "Not as roomy, but it's clean, at least."

"You know, Simon, for a married man you can be a real old woman at times." Mazzare chuckled.

Jones blew a loud raspberry and sat down while a small platoon of servants scurried to sort out their baggage.

Mazzare looked around, feeling uncomfortable sitting down where someone else was working. The Barberinis' general program of beautification of their surroundings had its upside, and staying in their palazzo was part of it. Many years before by his own time-the three-and-three-quarter-century-wide fault line notwithstanding-a much younger Father Lawrence Mazzare had come to Rome for the first time and checked off the tourist sights methodically.

The Palazzo Barberini, by then a museum, was one of the ones he'd gone back to. The place was wall to wall with art and treasures and just plain beautiful things. It was a little sparser now than his own memory of it, but then the place had had over three hundred years to fill up by the time he'd last seen it.

"Simon?"

"Yes, Larry?" Jones had lain back in his chair and draped a handkerchief over his face. The trip down from Venice had been wearing, for all it had been taken in the most comfortably sprung coach they had been able to find. Jones, slightly the older of the two, had a far less ascetic disposition than Mazzare and gave vent to his discomforts and took the load off whenever he could.

"Point of grammar. If I remember having been in this very room, but won't have been here for another three hundred and-let me think-fifty-one years, is that deja vu all over again?"

"It is this business about Sharon Nichols and the man Sanchez that concerns me perhaps the most, Michael." Nasi leaned back in his chair across from the prime minister's desk and somewhat cattercorner to it. "Mostly, perhaps, because we can do nothing anyway about this Galileo affair, except hope that the Stone boys refrain from sheer madness or that Lennox catches them before they don't. Whereas . . ." The sentence drifted to a halt as if it had simply run out of gas.

Mike Stearns laced his fingers together and leaned forward on the desk. "Explain."

Unusually, the Sephardic banker needed time to organize his thoughts. He'd spoken somewhat impulsively, which was quite unlike him. Since Rebecca was trapped in Amsterdam and Ed Piazza had had to relinquish his duties as secretary of state in order to administer Thuringia as the new governor appointed by Gustav Adolf, Francisco had come to assume many of Rebecca and Ed Piazza's roles for Mike as well as being the head of the USE's intelligence service. There were some ways in which he was very diffident about the business. Rebecca's tasks as national security adviser he felt confident to handle, but he could hardly serve Mike as the same sort of personal confidante. And this was . . .

Perhaps a touchy matter. On this, unlike most subjects, Americans could be quite unpredictable.

"Well, to begin with, Michael, as a spy myself-'spook,' to use that phrase you so enjoy-I am naturally given to suspicion. I am uncomfortable with the fact that a known agent of the Spanish empire with whom we are at war has now been residing for some days in our embassy in Venice." That was the easy part. He cleared his throat. "Yes, I understand the seriousness of his medical condition-Tom Stone explained in reply to one of my queries; at far greater length, I might add, than he normally explains anything; which itself disturbs me a bit because he too seems to have become something of a partisan of this peculiar Spanish fellow-"

"You're prattling, Francisco," Mike said mildly. "Not like you at all. And he's not really 'Spanish' anyway, he's Catalan." There seemed to be a trace of humor there. "Weren't you the one who gave me a briefing not two months ago on the significance of the distinction?"

Francisco smiled, acknowledging the hit. "Well, yes. Still . . ."

"Oh, just spit it out, will you? I won't bite, I promise." The prime minister unlaced his fingers and leaned back in his own chair. "What you're really wondering is why-let's be precise, here-the bed he's been recuperating in belongs to Sharon Nichols."

Nasi must have looked a little startled. Mike smiled thinly. "I do occasionally read the entire reports, not simply your summaries. I made it a point to do so, in this case. If for no other reason, because James Nichols is one of my closest friends."

For some obscure reason, Francisco felt compelled to play devil's advocate for a moment. "You will have noted then that there is no evidence-unless she sneaks about at night, which doesn't seem to match her profile-"

Mike scowled, as he usually did when Nasi lapsed into jargon.

"Well, you know what I mean."

" 'Course I do!" Mike snorted. "So why don't you just come out and say it? Sharon Nichols and 'sneak around at night' is pure bullshit. Bull-shit. A nice, clear term that beats all that psychobabble six ways from Sunday." Mike levered himself back upright. "We're talking about a woman here who told her father straight to his face that she was going to spend the night with Hans Richter. Then did it. In his house. The way he tells the story, even instructed him to have breakfast ready the next morning-although I'm sure James made that last bit up himself. I could tell. He doesn't hardly ever brag about anything except his daughter."

Mike was back to leaning on the desk, using laced fingers to support the weight. "So she's not screwing Sanchez. To use another excellent nonbabble term. Even if that were possible, anyway-which, if I interpreted Stoner's technical details correctly, it probably isn't. Not recuperating from that wound, not this quickly. Not even if this Sanchez guy was a man in his twenties."

Nasi relaxed. He'd never be as comfortable as so many-though certainly not all-Americans were, in the casual way they discussed sex. His own culture was very far from prudish, but had a more circumspect way of dealing with the matter. Still, it was at least obvious that he had not inadvertently stumbled into what Americans liked to call a "mine field."

"I am still concerned, Michael." He forced himself to be honest. "Mainly, I will admit, simply because I am puzzled. Being puzzled tends to make me very suspicious."

Mike smiled crookedly. "There are times I think you are the only fully functional paranoid I know. 'Francisco Nasi' and 'puzzled' is a contradiction in terms; so, on the rare occasions it happens, you immediately suspect the universe of having foul designs."

Nasi chuckled. "Something like that."

Mike rose from his chair and moved to a nearby window. "I think what we're seeing here is just deja vu all over again," he mused. "Do you know much about grief, Francisco? Personally, I mean."

Nasi was having a hard time following Mike's thoughts, but knew from experience that they were headed somewhere. Eventually, even somewhere coherent. "Ah . . . no. Not really. My parents are both still alive and healthy, as are my brothers and sisters. At last report, anyway. A cousin, three years ago, who died in childbirth. But I cannot say I was personally close to her."

When Stearns spoke again, his tone was a bit harsh. "I have quite a bit of experience with it. More than I wish I did, although I think it's probably been good for me in the long run. Emphasis on 'long.' "

"Yes. Your father."

"I wasn't thinking about him at the moment, actually." Mike turned his head toward Nasi. Not looking at him, just showing a three-quarter profile. "Did you ever wonder why I went to Los Angeles? And then left?"

That had all happened long before Nasi had met Mike Stearns. Long before the Ring of Fire, in fact. "Ah. No."