1636_The Vatican Sanction

by Eric Flint

  Ruy shook his head. “The projectile in question went through two walls at a corner, then encountered his buff coat. I conjecture that the bullet was so deformed and slowed by the time it hit his arm, that it hadn’t enough energy left to do more than it did. Still, he was—we all were—very lucky. Only two of our number are dead: one of the swordsmen and one of the Hibernians.”

  The fact that this did seem very fortunate to Sharon told her just how much her perspective had adapted to the realities of 1636 CE. In this day and age, most similar scenarios would have been bloodbaths: men charging up stairs, a tangle of corpses at the doorway, bullets pounding through walls, killing civilians. What Ruy and Hastings had done—combing through adjoining apartments to clear them, and then the carefully sequenced preparations—were just not how room entries were conducted in this era.

  “Okay,” Sharon said, determined to keep her mind from veering to comparisons that made her at once nauseated and suddenly, unexpectedly homesick. “That leaves me free to put on my forensic investigator hat. Who was in here?”

  Ruy took her to where she could see the three corpses. “A fourth is being recovered from St. Peter’s graveyard,” he murmured.

  Sharon looked at the corpses. The causes of death were obvious and without investigatory value, so she focused on other features. Such as—“None of these guys are scruffy. Even their fingernails are clean, except for the smaller guy who got shot at the window.” She scanned around until she discovered what she expected to find. “Look at those cakes of soap, those washbasins. Is that typical?”

  Ruy frowned. “Not at all. Not even among elite units in a regular army.”

  Sharon nodded. “And like the observer said, the place is clean and totally without decoration. No trash, no distractions: all business.”

  Ruy nodded. “Their leader insisted on order, and inspired enough respect—or fear—to get it. Not common among men such as these.”

  Sharon nodded. “I thought not. No more common than up-time pattern weapons.” She gestured toward them, then looked back at the corpses. “And not a left-hander among them, judging from where and how they’ve strapped on their daggers and small swords.”

  Ruy smiled. “You are very observant.”

  “Yeah? Well, I observe something else: no stiletto. Unless there’s something you haven’t shown me yet.”

  “Well, there is—but it is not a stiletto. There was no such weapon among them or their effects.”

  Sharon nodded, then started, glanced around. “Speaking of their effects…There’s at most one change of clothes here. No coats. Not much in the way of toiletries. Did you find any food?”

  Ruy shrugged. “A few loaves. A cheese. A knife.”

  “But they’ve been here for weeks, for as long as the Hibernians have had an outpost in the belltower.”

  Ruy brushed one mustache wing, then snapped his hand away self-consciously. “So, they were in the process of divesting themselves from this place. Which goes along with what we found regarding their weapons.”

  “Not enough of them?”

  “Not enough ammunition. Had the engagement gone on for another half minute, they would have run out of cartridges. Which are disturbing in and of themselves: both are consistent with types we use.”

  Sharon looked again, then sucked in breath as her upper teeth came down gently on her lower lip. “Well, those are the same pistols our Marines use, that’s for sure. But a sawed-off shotgun?”

  One of Ruy’s eyebrows lowered. “Not among your army, but several members of Harry Lefferts’ old Wrecking Crew evinced a preference for such weapons.”

  Sharon frowned, nodding. “They sure did. I wonder—?”

  Ruy matched her nod. “So do I. But before you ponder too much on that, come see the last item of interest.”

  He led her into a small, semiprivate room at the far end of the flat. He waved a hand in the direction of the “item of interest.” “Voila.”

  Sharon walked closer to the expected radio. It wasn’t an up-time model, nor one of the better knockoffs. But what was most interesting—and even disturbing—were the neatly stacked codebooks, and beside the operator’s chair, the carefully filed transcripts of messages received and transmitted. Dated. And signed. She looked back at Ruy. “Well, this should help find out who’s behind all this.” Then she looked at the orderly radio operator’s station, the spartan surroundings, the number of beds. “One or more of this group is missing.”

  Ruy stood aside…revealing a window, less than eighteen inches wide, the shutters back. “I am in complete agreement with your conjecture.”

  Sharon walked over to it and looked at the unpromising pathway to the ground. “Something here doesn’t add up,” she murmured.

  “What in particular? There are certainly many loose ends, including a man who almost certainly escaped. Perhaps with some of the records we’d find most useful.”

  Sharon nodded. “Yeah, but I mean something more general. This whole setup; it just feels wrong somehow, like we’re missing something big, not something small.” She frowned and shook her head. “It’s just a hunch. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  One of the runners had entered, whispered a short message into Ruy’s ears, and disappeared.

  “What was that?”

  “I believe one of our loose ends has just turned up.”

  “Oh? What kind of loose end?”

  “A body. Found not more than eighty yards from where we are standing, in an alley that would be most swiftly reached by exiting through this window. And with another of the USE Marine pistols in his belt.”

  Sharon nodded. “So, that must be the head honcho—or at least the guy who was told to run. How did he die?”

  “Would you be surprised if I told you he was stabbed straight in the heart? At least three times? And from very, very close range?”

  Sharon frowned. “Now that you mention it, that doesn’t surprise me at all. I guess I’d better go have a look before they ruin the crime scene.”

  * * *

  Larry Mazzare lingered longer over his meal in the chapter house because Ruy and Sharon did as well. When they rose to exit, so too did he. And, like them, he waved off his combination bodyguard and assistant.

  When he emerged into the cooling air of dusk, thick with the fragrance of the garden, he discovered that the couple had already begun their evening walk but more slowly than usual. Larry followed their path with a slightly quicker step; he saw Ruy half turn his head and smile.

  Thirty seconds later, Larry drew up behind them. They parted so that he could join their stroll, one on either side of him. “A busy day,” he said quietly.

  “Quite, Your Eminence,” Ruy replied with a slight smile.

  Sharon sighed. “Look, Larry: I get it. I know you have to get the latest news from us. So you don’t have to beat around the bush. Just ask.”

  Larry sighed. “So it’s true you found the body of another assassin who escaped?”

  “It seems so,” Ruy murmured.

  “And is that all of them, do you think?” When neither of them answered, Mazzare looked at Sharon. “As the heroine of the hour, many people are particularly interested in your opinion.”

  Sharon frowned. “Firstly, Larry, I’m no hero. The heroes are the ones who went into that building. I just had an idea for how we could find the bad guys. As for having eliminated all of the assassins: what would you have me say? We certainly got some of them. And yes, I’m pretty sure that the one who got out the side window is the guy we found in the alley. But it’s clear we’re missing at least one, well, ‘person of interest.’ Maybe he’s an assassin, maybe not. But either way, something doesn’t feel right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sharon put a hand to her head. “It’s hard to explain. I mean, the place was too orderly. And there are indications that not too long before, they’d been burning the transcripts of messages they had transmitted and received. And the code books and everything e
lse were set up the way Odo has them, so that the operator has everything needed within easy reach.” She shook her head. “I just can’t believe these are the guys who killed Baudet Lamy. Everything about that murder tells me the perpetrators there were undisciplined, even amateurish. So I’d expect their rooms to reflect that: that they’d be slobs, all living however they chose to individually. Kind of the way pirates are.”

  Ruy’s voice was gentle. “Which means, Larry, as I keep telling my extraordinary wife, that it may be that the murder of Lamy was, as we also considered, not connected to any assassination plot.”

  Sharon shook her head sharply. “No, that doesn’t wash either. Okay, so they might have had a reason to believe that moving Lamy’s body was the right move. But that whole attempt to make it look like he bled out in that alley? And that bottle of wine they put in his hand? And his unemptied purse?” She shook her head. “They’re amateurs. But what’s more, they are amateurs who weren’t out to steal his money, or even get away after they killed him. I mean, if it was just a couple of guys who decided to do in poor Lamy, then why move his body at all? Why wouldn’t they just have left him where they killed him, even if it was in their own flat? Why not just get out of town?

  “But not those guys. They moved him in the middle of the night. Either they’re too stupid to think of leaving Besançon, or they couldn’t: they had to—had to—stay. So here’s the question that keeps bothering me: why?” She shook her head again. “There’s something funky about that crime. Sure, it could be a coincidence: a murder that the killers decide they have to try to cover up, occuring exactly at the same time as an assassination of Urban is being prepared. But as the saying has it, coincidence is a rare and endangered species. And I’m not buying it.”

  Ruy put his hands behind his back and his head down. “It turns out that these murderous dogs had the radio that belonged to the fellow killed in the stables, Javier de Requesens y Ercilla. It also appears that much or all of the code books and correspondence records we found in the rooms were his also.”

  Larry started. “But that means—” The implications were too odd and came too fast for him to articulate his perceptions before Ruy began again.

  “Yes: the man who killed de Requesens also knew of and contacted the men who we killed today, passed on the equipment and information that they needed in order to continue preparing their attack on His Holiness. And the manner in which the one who went out the window was killed strongly suggests that the murderer was trusted by, or at least known to, the victim, as was the case in de Requesens’ death.”

  “What do you mean, the manner in which he was killed?”

  “At close range. And the blade’s cross section, angle, and height of entry are, collectively, a match for what I found on de Requesens’ body. An exact match.”

  “So—the left-handed killer?”

  “It’s only a guess, but the forensics suggest it.”

  Larry shook his head. “But it doesn’t make sense. If the group you eliminated today was being supported by de Requesens’ left-handed killer, then why wouldn’t he also save the life of the only one of them who escaped? Why, instead, does he kill him in an alley?”

  Sharon’s voice was as glum as her face. “That’s what I’ve been wondering. We’re missing something.”

  “We sure are,” agreed Larry. “And add this to the pile: how did this mystery killer know to kill the men he did, when he did? We’ve been spending almost all our effort wondering why he killed de Requesens, but this makes me think the more important question is how did he know to do so? Because today, once again, the killer was the right man in the right place at the right time—or did he just happen to be strolling along where he intercepted the guy fleeing in the alley? And even if he did, how did he know to kill a man he helped just a few days earlier?”

  Sharon’s breath caught suddenly. “He, the left-handed killer, must have a radio, too.”

  From over Larry’s other shoulder, Ruy exclaimed. “Yet another one?”

  “It’s the logical conclusion, Ruy. Heck, is there any other explanation? Even if he was always watching de Requesens, what could he have seen that would have led him to believe that killing him was necessary? And it’s the same mystery today: was the killer somewhere in the same neighborhood as the house we hit today, watching? Or, more likely, is he getting his orders—and information—from somewhere else, via his own radio?”

  Ruy nodded slowly. “Yes, and probably from whatever figure of command was on the other end of the radio communicating with de Requesens or today’s murderous dogs. But why would that figure of command have yet another agent, the left-handed killer, in town? De Requesens was clearly the handler; the group we eliminated today were clearly the assassins. Why a third party? What is his role?”

  Larry, who had read his share of high-stakes political thrillers, felt a chill go up his spine. “He’s a cleaner.”

  “A what?”

  Sharon had turned to look at Larry with wide eyes. “So whoever is behind the assassination attempt, Borja or Philip or someone else, has their own personal angel of death hovering near all the other parts of their operation, to make sure that if anything goes wrong, it gets cleaned up before they can be implicated.”

  Larry nodded. “This left-handed killer is here to facilitate their operations, but also to make sure there is no ‘blowback,’ to use the term Estuban Miro has adopted.”

  Ruy frowned, dubious. “So, do you mean to propose that this ‘cleaner’s’ decision to kill the last of the assassins in the alley indicates that we have accounted for all their assassins? That once they were compromised, the figure of command’s highest priority became the need to clip any loose ends, and so, protect the identities of those who set these blackguards in motion?”

  Sharon shook her head. “Not unless Lamy’s murder is a coincidence. Because if it isn’t, then there’s another set of killers we haven’t detected yet. Remember: one of them used a stiletto to kill him. But there wasn’t a trace of that kind of weapon in the flat or on any of the bodies.”

  Larry frowned. “You’re putting an awful lot of weight on whether a stiletto is present or absent, Sharon. They might have ditched, or even lost, it.”

  Sharon’s chin came out. “Yeah, well, there are other indicators as well. Like the difference in discipline. I’ll say it again: I just can’t see today’s group as also being the bunglers who killed and then planted Lamy’s body.”

  Larry nodded. “So, when I finish this walk, and I have to update His Holiness and Father Vitelleschi, as well as Bedmar and the large, very protective cardinals he brought with him, do I tell them there is another group of assassins or not?”

  Sharon shrugged. “Tell them we think there might be another group, but we can’t be sure.”

  Larry shook his head. “They’re not going to like that answer.”

  Ruy sounded a shade defensive. “Please convey our apologies to His Holiness and the Eminences, but it is the only one we may truthfully offer.”

  Larry waved a hand. “Oh, I understand that, but remember: there was an assassination attempt four days ago at St. John’s. Now you found and eliminated another group. If you can’t definitively say there is yet another group, I think they’re going to start presuming otherwise.”

  “That would be—very foolish of them.” Sharon sounded like her jaw had gotten stuck.

  “Don’t I know it. But, if my read of the personalities involved is accurate, they will start wondering if this is just a case of us up-timers, and our closest allies, starting at shadows. The one thing they all agree upon regarding us is that we’re almost comically risk averse. If a thing can go wrong, we presume it will go wrong. Try talking to them sometime about the up-time concept of personal life insurance. First they think it’s a joke. When they realize it’s not, they laugh. Sometimes, bordering on hysterics.”

  Ruy nodded. He had smiled at the same tendency in up-timers, but he wasn’t smiling now. “I understand your concern.
And I fear you may be correct. However, we may not drop our vigilance. Even if they instruct us to do so. After all, they have little detailed knowledge of our plans and protocols. So we should be able to continue on as we have done.”

  Sharon nodded. “Yes. But I doubt they’ll give us the same carte blanche when it comes to grabbing large numbers of the Burgundian soldiers or the city watch to mount searches or patrol suspect areas. In the meantime, we should try to come up with alternate scenarios that explain all the clues we have, answer all the mysteries we have yet to solve. That way, we might be a little more prepared for whichever situation turns out to be the correct one.”

  Ruy’s voice was very gentle. “I agree we should continue to seek explanations for all that we have observed. But in my experience, there are always more feasible scenarios, as you call them, than we ever have the time to formulate. I can envision a dozen different logical explanations for what we have found thus far. The problem is that none of them commend themselves above the others.”

  Sharon was silent. “Yeah, okay. Just so long as we don’t start getting lazy.”

  “Of that, my love, you may rest assured. Owen and I will keep our men alert, no matter what overconfident rumors they may hear in the street, or from the august company gathered in the palace.” His tone changed. “About which: how do things proceed amongst the colloquialists, Your Eminence?”

  “I wish you’d just call me Larry, Ruy.”

  “And I wish you would stop trying to compel me to do so, Your Eminence. It is how I was brought up. It would make me most uncomfortable to do otherwise.”

  Larry sighed and waved away the topic with a flap of his hand. “Okay, I give up.”

  Sharon leaned forward to look directly into Larry’s face. “Now: the colloquium.”

  Larry nodded. “Yes. The colloquium. Some minor drama every day. Two days ago, it was a false security risk when someone was heard bumping around in a closet. Four of the Wild Geese responded with guns drawn…and let out a cat. Today, the major domo, LaVey, was relieved over a bribery scandal of some sort. He claims he was set up, although he has a history of having sticky fingers. Meanwhile, every head of the serving staff that reported to him—kitchen, grounds, stables, you name it—is now running their own show without any inclination to coordinate with any of the other heads. So tea is late, rooms don’t get cleaned, and a good number of our participants are displaying their less spiritual side as they all but swoon over every substandard meal and undusted table.”