1636_The Vatican Sanction

by Eric Flint

  It was exhausting work to lower himself even a foot. And there were another five to go. A stovepipe climb, he thought angrily, I’m too damned old for this.

  But, he philosophized as he inched down the second foot, I’d better hurry up if I want to get any older…

  * * *

  Crouching behind the bed he had pushed closer to the now-breached door, Laurin considered reloading the two spent chambers in his revolver, but decided against it. The bastards could come through the door any second. If he was reloading when they did, he might as well have put his own pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.

  But it was equally suicidal to lean out and fire, even though he could hear them muttering and moving less than twelve feet away, just beyond the door and in the room across the hall. What to do? Well, when in doubt—“What now, Rombaldo?”

  Laurin waited for an answer. None came. “Rombaldo?” Shit! Had that shifty Bolognese actually—?

  “Gone, I wager,” Radulfus muttered from his position in the alcove just beyond the door. He finished reloading and closed the action quietly. He nodded at Laurin, then jerked his head toward the back: toward the narrow window through which Rombaldo must have fled. “You go out, too. I cover you. And follow.”

  Laurin gauged his chances. They were good, if he could survive a fast leap across the open area between himself and the rear framing wall of the alcove. Unfortunately, that leap exposed him to the two Hibernians sheltering behind their makeshift cover in the opposite room. But once behind that framing wall, he had enough cover to run all the way to the back of the flat and slip into the private room where Dolor and Rombaldo had slept—and where the narrow window was presumably already open and waiting for him. How Radulfus planned to follow him was difficult to foresee, but he didn’t waste any time thinking about that. It was every man for himself now, and if the big Swiss didn’t realize it, well, he should not have embarked upon the career of a professional killer.

  Because abandoning your peers at judicious moments was just another, inevitable, part of the job.

  Before Laurin could even finish that thought, before he could remember how terrified he was of exposing himself to the murderously powerful rifles of the Hibernians, he leapt.

  * * *

  Hastings, who had finally had the time to get out his corner mirror and check beyond the entry to the flat, started when a body flashed across his field of vision: a man with a pistol, diving from the right side of the room to the left, behind the rear wall of the alcove.

  Haaf and Bruggeman both fired quickly, but not quickly enough: they heard the man roll to his feet and then begin running, sticking close to the back wall of the flat which they could not see.

  But in the next moment, a spatter of distant rifle fire announced that the sniper had seen the movement through the open rear window. Rounds started cutting into the floorboards, blasting plumes of plaster through the walls. The running man, desperate to evade this sudden fusillade, evidently swerved away from that outer wall, because he emerged back into view, forgetting or misgauging where he would become visible to Haaf and Bruggeman.

  The two Hibernians were already leaning over their rifles as the man reappeared in their field of vision, dancing and ducking away from the sniper’s bullets. They fired simultaneously and began working their lever actions and blasting rounds at the man. He turned, raising his pistol as he was hit, faltered, and then was hit twice again. He fell his length upon the splintered floorboards, a long moan escaping from him as he did.

  In the very next moment, a figure—dim through the smoke—leaned around the near corner of the alcove and discharged a shotgun straight at the Hibernians. Haaf, who was not as experienced but was both more cautious and more attentive to training, had not risen up to get a better look at the damage they had done to the man with the pistol. Bruggeman—larger, good-natured, and somewhat inattentive—had put his head up. Three single-aught balls punched bloody holes in the upper right side of his head; he slumped away from the overturned table, nerveless, blood welling up from the gaping wound that was located where his eye had been.

  Hastings resisted his first impulse: to charge around the corner and kill Bruggeman’s killer. Instead, he shouted: “Target confirmed. Start the music.”

  * * *

  Ruy Sanchez turned to the trooper who’d been left standing in the matching alcove of the first floor room as if he was a truant boy. “Mr. Luton, fire upward. All the rounds in your rifle. And then step back. Quickly.”

  “But—”

  “Do it.”

  Luton shrugged even as he shouldered the rifle, aimed straight up, and levered five rounds through the ceiling above him.

  * * *

  As bullets started jetting up geysers of splinters and dust around the assassin in the second floor alcove, Hastings pointed to the two Burgundians at the top of the stairs and made the combined hand signal for “wait” and “follow me.”

  Cursing, the gunman in the alcove—miraculously missed by all five bullets—fired his own weapon through the much-vented floor boards beneath him.

  * * *

  Ruy Sanchez was biting his lip as Luton paused a moment before beginning to step back out of the alcove—at the very moment a blast and downward spray of balls tore through the ceiling and pounded the floor where he had stood a fraction of a second before. As it was, splinters from the already savaged ceiling shot wider, several lodging in his buff coat, one cutting a long bloody gash along his left cheek.

  Luton stumbled back into Sanchez, who steadied him.

  Ruy sighed. “Next time, when you are warned to step back quickly, do so.”

  * * *

  Hastings moved as soon as he heard the shotgun firing. Racing around the door, he went low for the near corner of the alcove. Rolf, a step behind him, went high.

  They had thought to catch the assassin with an empty weapon. But the man—as tall as Hastings and as heavily built as Rolf—had already reloaded one chamber of his sawed-off shotgun, and was snapping it closed as they leaned around the corner.

  Only three feet away.

  The shotgun came up. Hastings yelled “Halt!” Realizing that there was no time for that, he began squeezing the trigger of the Glock 17 at the same moment that Rolf’s percussion cap revolver went off just a foot above his head.

  The big assassin was hit a fraction of a second before he could bring the shotgun around, staggered as three nine-millimeter and two .44 caliber bullets hit him in the torso. The wrist holding the shotgun weakened, so that, at the moment it should have cleared the edge of the alcove, it was still lagging, wobbly—

  It discharged.

  The two Hibernians kept firing in a frenzy of self-preservation.

  Splinters flew out from where the corner of the alcove had been. And in that very moment:

  —Hastings felt a heavy, dull blow to the side of his head and a sharp pain in his lower thigh;

  —Rolf barked out an urgent “Scheisse!”

  —and the man slumped over, his shirt riddled and bloody.

  As the assassin slid down the wall, leaving a trail of multiple blood smears, Hastings half-fell, half-pushed away from the site of the point-blank gun-battle. Rolf was clutching his left bicep; blood, but not a lot, was leaking out between his fingers. Before Hastings’ rump hit the ground, the two Burgundians charged into the room, swords drawn, eyes wide and desperate and murderous. Dazed and partially deafened from all the discharges in such rapid sequence and in such close quarters, Hastings waved them on, put a hand to the side of his helmet, and felt a huge dent that had not been there before. Then, as he glanced down at the long splinter of ancient wood that was sticking out of his thigh, he heard a fierce, wild cry, deeper in the room. And as he looked up, he knew what it meant: the Burgundians had come across the man that Haaf and Bruggeman had taken down—and he was still alive.

  Hastings, his voice muffled in his own years, yelled, “NOOO!!!”

  But too late: the Burgundians’ swords ca
me down, almost in unison, and finished the job that the Hibernians’ Winchesters had started.

  * * *

  From behind, Rombaldo heard a ferocious flurry of gunfire—shotguns and rifles—a pause, and then more of the same.

  He forced himself to keep his pace casual, just as he had rehearsed with Dolor. He even yawned. Not that there was anyone here to see him; he’d chosen the most circuitous, shaded, and narrow alley that led away from the flat. And in the general direction of St. Peter’s and the palace. Because—again, as Dolor had taught him—most people who either try to hide, or try to find those who do, are amateurs. And part of what an amateur does is to project what they would do in a given situation and then assume their quarry is following a similar plan of action.

  It was not really a flaw, Dolor had explained: just an unavoidable limitation. Amateurs not only lacked the skill and methods of professionals, they lacked the correct habits of thought. Which included realizing that the course of action chosen by an expert adversary might bear no resemblance to what anyone else, even another expert, might choose. Contrary to a commonly held assumption, experts had less in common than amateurs; after all, they not only drew from a much more diverse array of tools and skills, but blended them in unique ways.

  Another, longer spasm of gunfire: a good sign. If the attackers still hadn’t secured the second story flat, then they had not yet commenced a broader search. Indeed, it would take them a while to sort out the aftermath of the shootout, giving Rombaldo all the time he needed to—

  “Rombaldo.”

  He started at the sound of his name, uttered very near by, turned toward the narrower alley he had just passed, thought to draw his gun—

  —and realized, with a rush of relief, that he knew that voice. “Dolor!” he whispered so emphatically that it was almost as loud as had he said it in a normal speaking tone. “Thank Christ and all His whores! They found—”

  Dolor had emerged from the shadows of the alley. “I know. I saw. Are they close behind you? Where are the others?”

  “Are they ‘behind me’?” Rombaldo repeated dismissively. “I got out the side window. They’re still fighting back there. As for the others…”—Rombaldo shrugged, looked away—“They are dead. Or as good as. Now, where do we go? The cellar?”

  Dolor shook his head. “Too close. We will need to flee further than that. But before we do”—Dolor moved closer, looked up and down the alley, and dropped his voice one confidential octave—“I need you to carry this.”

  Rombaldo, following his employer’s lead by checking up and down the alley too, experienced a sharp stab of pleasure as he realized that Dolor was entrusting him with something more important than ever before—and in that same moment, realized that the pleasure and the stabbing pain were not one and the same.

  He looked at Dolor and then down. Suddenly light-headed, he saw his employer’s poignard go in and out of his chest two more times. He looked back up—he’d started sliding down, one hand on Dolor to keep himself from falling—and realized that those calm eyes, those treacherous hazel eyes, were likely to be the last thing that he would ever—

  * * *

  Dolor stepped back as Rombaldo, or rather his corpse, fell over on the small, uneven cobbles like a broken doll, his legs folded under him at an awkward angle that only corpses can achieve. He checked himself quickly: no blood. Wounds to the heart do not spurt like arterial ones, but one could never be too careful.

  Dolor switched his poignard out of his left hand, wiped it on Rombaldo’s trousers, sheathed it, and faded back into the narrow alley from which he had emerged. Rombaldo’s perception had been accurate in one regard: there would not be any pursuit yet. Indeed, they might not realize immediately that anyone had fled through the side window, given the tight fit and contorted position one had to adopt to use it, to say nothing of the fairly high level of athleticism required. And even once it was identified as an escape venue, they would be hard pressed to organize even a shorthanded search, distracted as they would no doubt be by the medical needs of their own wounded.

  As Dolor emerged into a wider alley that backed on one of the major inns across from the Carmelite convent, he was further reassured by Rombaldo’s grim assessment of the odds that any of the others had survived. They would certainly not surrender because they all knew what awaited them: torture and eventual execution, and if not for their murderous intents in Besançon, then for the dozens of murders they were known to have committed elsewhere.

  And if they had not all been slain outright or mortally wounded? Well, there was nothing Pedro Dolor could do to rectify the situation. There was only hiding and, hopefully, surviving the first twenty-four hours. After that, the search would continue but begin losing both the attention and fervor necessary for it to be successful.

  So the only loose end had been Rombaldo, whose elimination had been regrettable but necessary. If the security forces, but particularly Nichols and Sanchez, knew that even one assassin escaped, they would mount and maintain an intense search. It was also entirely possible that Rombaldo’s face had been seen by either the sniper or the observer whom the Hibernians had prudently placed in St. Peter’s belltower weeks ago. Armed with that kind of information, the ensuing manhunt would have been relentless and probably have led them to Pedro Dolor himself.

  Dolor emerged from the alley that ran behind the inn, ambled casually into the small street that communicated with Besançon’s main boulevard. Being caught now, at this middle stage of his grand scheme, was unacceptable. It would mean the end of Wilbur Craigson’s lifelong ambition and objective: to rise up, to be proximal to the persons of the highest rank in the Escorial, those who had both the authority over—and responsibility for—the actions of the Spanish Empire and its many agents. And in order to preserve that objective, Rombaldo had had to perish.

  Dolor waited for the traffic in the street to relent a bit. Apparently, the commotion and gunfire several hundred yards away had drawn all sorts of curiosity seekers. As he started across the street and headed for the door that led to the basement from which he had emerged less than half an hour ago, he thought of Rombaldo with one final tinge of regret. It had been an unfortunate necessity, and the deed had been decidedly inelegant. But the alternative would have been disastrous.

  Both for Wilbur Craigson and the entirety of Europe.

  Chapter 32

  Not finding Ruy on the ground floor where she was told he’d be, Sharon panicked. She pounded up the stairs, pushing past one of the Burgundians so forcefully that he almost fell. Of course, Sharon was a big woman and a lot of the Burgundians were, well, to her way of thinking, a little on the runty side.

  She arrived on the landing and saw two Hibernians in a small room beyond an overturned table. And peeking around the bloody corner of that table, she could see a pair of unfamiliar boots, toes up. But no Ruy. She turned to the doorway on the right—

  —and she stopped. Not just moving, but breathing.

  Carnage. The blood started just beyond the entry, and intermittent pools and spatters of it extended as far as she could see, to the rear wall of the room. And there, standing in the middle of it all, was Ruy Sanchez. Who looked up, smiled, then evidently saw something in her face which made him rush over. “Sharon, my love, you look—unwell.”

  Sharon shook her head. It was all she could do. She hadn’t known she’d have this reaction. She knew that if shooting started, that there would be blood and bodies. But what she hadn’t expected is that she would suddenly relive that terrible night last July when the assassins hunting Urban had attacked them by surprise at Molino. And suddenly, she was not just here in Besançon; she was there, too. It was the moment when she’d first emerged from the radio room, where Ruy had forced her to remain with Odo. It was the moment she came to the head of the stairs, the first time she’d seen the bodies strewn all across the greatroom, and then all through the house—right before she started operating on them. Dozens of them. Without benefit of anesthesia b
eyond whiskey, grappa, and then when that ran out, cheap wine which they were more likely to vomit up from the agony.

  She closed her eyes. She wasn’t there. She was…

  Here. She opened her eyes, stared at Ruy. “Right,” she assured him. “Just having a…moment. I’m—I’m better, now. Are there any surgical cases?”

  “Only one that’s serious. A Burgundian soldier was hit by one of their shotguns out the back window. He has one ball in the leg, one in the shoulder. Then there are a few minor wounds: Rolf was hit by a shotgun ball in the left arm, but it didn’t do more than break the skin; he plucked it out with his own fingers. Which was foolish, since that set him bleeding more heavily. Lieutenant Hastings was stunned by a ball that hit his helmet after going through both sides of the alcove’s coaming, and he has some splinters in his thigh. More splinters gashed Luton’s cheek.”

  Sharon nodded. “Just give me a minute. To get someone to start boiling some water—”

  Ruy’s hand was on her arm. “Sharon. My love. Breathe deeply. Again. There. Now, consider. This is what you have been training Dr. Connal to do: using up-time surgical methods. None of these wounds are life-threatening. In most armies, no one would even treat the splinters or a ball that did not lodge itself beyond the reach of simple fingers. So: allow Connal to practice the art in which you have mentored him.”

  Sharon nodded, both because Ruy was right and because she was relieved that she didn’t need to rush right into surgery. “What kind of pop-guns were the bad guys using, that they couldn’t even get a bullet through Rolf’s buff coat?”