by Eric Flint
The second meeting was more secretive still. Olivares even went to the extreme of leaving his palace in disguise to make the encounter in a taverna.
"You can reach someone in Borja's forces?" he asked. "It will need to be an officer."
The man he sometimes used as an informal agent gave him a nod. "I can reach several. More than you might think. I can assure you, Count-Duke, that you are not the only one who thinks our beloved former cardinal is a rogue."
He cocked his head, slightly. "You wish…"
Olivares shook his head. "No assassination. The king was most explicit on the matter."
He hadn't been at all, actually. But there was no reason to bring that up.
"My concern is not with Borja, at the moment. My concern is with the American prisoner. And his Venetian wife."
The agent nodded. "So I've heard. You want them…"
Olivares scowled. "Is it the wine, Pedro?"
He lifted his own glass, which was still mostly full. In truth, the wine was wretched. This taverna was not one that Olivares would have ever frequented on his own behalf.
"That keeps your mind fixed to murder, like a mouse to bait?"
The agent chuckled. "I point out to you-"
"Yes, yes," Olivares said impatiently, "I know what I normally ask of you. But this situation is quite different. We will most likely be at war again with the USE, and much sooner than I had either planned or anticipated. I should think the rest follows."
The agent studied him, for a moment, slowly twirling his glass around. He'd drunk very little of the wine himself.
Then, he smiled, more thinly still. "Yes, I understand. The prisoner is simply a boy. His wife, younger still-and now pregnant, by the accounts. Emotions would run high if they were to meet a sordid end in Borja's dungeon."
"High, indeed."
The agent was almost grinning, now. The expression was quite insufferable, in a way. But Olivares made no reproof. He didn't like the man, not in the least. But he had all the skills of the cursed Quevedo, with none of Quevedo's flamboyance and carelessness.
For this subject, that was all that mattered. The next few years were going to be stressful enough, for the count-duke of Olivares. He didn't need to add to that burden the constant memory of Wallenstein being struck down at a distance of half a mile-because Borja couldn't resist further exercises in madness.
"Yes, exactly. He's just a boy; and she, just a pregnant girl of a wife. Let's make sure they keep that modest status, shall we? The world has martyrs enough."
Magdeburg
Mike Stearns gave the man slouched in a chair in his office the Official Stern Look. "You understand-given the circumstances-that this is entirely unofficial?"
"Goes without saying," came the reply. Mike hadn't expect the Look to do much good.
"Fine. I hate to do this, but…" He shrugged. "I figure you're the best one for the job we've got. Going by the record."
"Hey, Mike, it's no sweat. Really."
Harry Lefferts rose from the chair and donned his wrap-around sunglasses. The ones he loved, that made him look like an extra from a bad thriller. Especially combined with the boots and the Lee Van Cleef cutaway jacket. The less said about the hat the better.
In a chair over in the corner, Francisco Nasi looked to be choking on something.
"One jailbreak, coming up," said Harry. "My specialty."
As he headed for the door, he said: "It'll be the talk of Europe."
On his way out, he added: "Again."
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