Eric Flint - 1635 - The Cannon Law

"Well," said Stearns, leaning back from the report-a report that, by rights, should have been still smoking, so fast had it come from the Secret Service Cipher Office via Don Francisco's own team of analysts-"Seems to me there's one thing about this source that's missing."

"And?" Francisco saw no reason to uncrook the eyebrow.

"Needs a codename. Something with a hint of mystery about it, something that sounds like it belongs in a Len Deighton thriller."

"Let us by all means call him Harry Palmer, then," Francisco said, pleased that he hadn't missed a beat.

"Truce," Stearns said, holding up his hands. "This time, you were ready for me. Still, a name would be good."

"I prefer not, Michael, truly I do. While a codename is a useful administrative convenience within my office, I prefer the reports that come outside that office not to have any identifier on them beyond what is in the product itself."

Stearns gave a low whistle. "Every time I think I've reached the limits of your paranoia, Francisco, you still manage to surprise me. Still, your department. What do we know about this source?"

"Well, he has sent us one message so far, sent anonymously to our embassy at Rome. A plain packet, according to the description, handwritten in Latin. The contents are all about church politics, and he seems to have gotten us the outcome of a curia session a day or two ahead of our regular channel, and a lot faster since that channel sends his dispatches by courier rather than straight to the embassy."

"Well, that's helpful, I suppose."

Francisco pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. "I can't help thinking, Mike, that whoever it is knows about how radio works."

"Hmmm. I wouldn't worry about that too much, Francisco. I think it's past time we started assuming that was a blown secret. We've used it too much in ways that give the game away. Tell the truth, I wish I'd sat on Sharon Nichols and her schemes in Venice, except they were doing us so much short-term good that I didn't think about the long-term security risk. And I should imagine that the Vatican and Don Fernando's people have leaked like crazy."

Francisco gave a loud and theatrical sigh, and said nothing.

Stearns snorted. "Can it, Francisco. All we really needed was a head start, and the giant stone towers bought us one. Even now that they've figured out radio is portable, they've still got to reverse-engineer it. You've seen the reports, only a handful of spark stations on the air yet, and most of those not very good. Don't forget the other part. We can hear their radios, but they can't hear ours. We've still got an edge, just not a secret edge. Anyway, back to this guy in Rome. When I get to the bit of your report headed "Analysis," what am I going to find?"

"We think it should be treated cautiously." Francisco decided he should accompany that with a grin.

Sure enough, Stearns rewarded him with The Look. "Our taxpayers fund your salary for what, exactly?"

Francisco chuckled. "Oh, all right. There are a lot of reasons to treat this with suspicion, frankly. A source that simply walks in off the street and assists us without asking for reward? Baffling, at best, since treason is never undertaken lightly."

"Treason?" It was Stearns' turn to raise his eyebrows.

"Treason," Nasi affirmed. "Our best guess is that the author of this packet, and by all means let us call him Senor Palmer, is Spanish. And since the Spaniards are the strongest national grouping in Rome if one treats the Italians as a lot of disparate subgroups, that makes the giving of insights into their thinking and perceptions to us treason. Information to the enemy. Also, he seems to be hinting that he is both inside Borja's confidences and working for Osuna. Since as far as we know Osuna is barely a hair's breadth short of open rebellion, it seems that our man is at least twice a traitor and since he has not asked us for money, I have to wonder why it is he is doing this."

"You think that a traitor's motives have to be clear and comprehensible, and preferably base and dishonest, before you'll trust them?" Stearns' smile was growing wryer by the second.

Nasi nodded, acknowledging the hit. "Actually, that is a good, if cynical, way to put it. Certainly not the words of a simple Roman centurion, I would say." He paused, to let Stearns mime taking a hit. Their trading of barbs between the paranoid spymaster and the cynical bare-knuckle politician had long settled down as their running joke. "I would not say it was always required, though. It is just that this is either the clumsiest piece of disinformation I have received in my office in months or we are dealing with a man of genuine principle. And those, as we both know, are deadly dangerous creatures."

"True. You can always trust a dishonest man, where you can never tell what an honest man will do."

"Virtue is messy stuff, Mike," Francisco said. "If Senor Palmer can bring himself to treason for the greater good, what else will he stoop to?"

"I see your point. So you don't trust him when he says that Borja means to do something bad in Rome?"

"Actually, that's an area where I do trust him. As much as I'd trust him if he had said the sun would rise in the east tomorrow. It's obvious, Mike. What concerns me is his hinting that Borja means to depose Urban VIII by some means."

"Is that even possible?"

"It might be. Popes have been deposed and have even abdicated. I took the liberty of having one of my people who happens to be Catholic consult Cardinal Mazzare yesterday. The cardinal is well up on his church history, and he says that there have been something like thirty antipopes, the last of them only two hundred years ago, and while in the history-that-was there never was another, there's no reason why there should not be. I understand the laws on papal elections were tightened some years ago so as to make disputed elections all but impossible, though, so we need not concern ourselves overmuch with the possibility of an antipope."

"Without killing Urban VIII, surely that's the best Borja can manage? I don't know much about the Catholic church, but I do know that popes reign until they die." Stearns was riffling the pages of the report as he spoke. "Do we really think that Borja means to have Urban assassinated?"

"Truly, I do not have enough information yet," Francisco said. "And it is not limited to assassination, I fear. Cardinal Mazzare was able to cite at least one papal abdication. Urban could be forced off his throne by some means."

"Impeachment?" Stearns began stroking his chin. "I know that was a live issue when we left the twentieth century-"

"Impeaching the pope?" Nasi frowned. "Cardinal Mazzare did not mention-"

Stearns waved his hands. "Sorry, no. The Clinton business, I meant."

"Ah, I do recall that, yes." Nasi had studied that part of the twentieth-century United States's political history with almost as much interest as he had Nixon. There were some remarkable parallels with events in his own homeland, with the exception that there impeachment resulted in the offending pasha or vizier feeding fishes in the Sea of Marmara. "How does it bear on the situation in Rome?" he asked.

"Well, it doesn't, really, except that it's sort of the first thing I thought of when you said the word 'impeachment.' " He snorted. "I guess there's sort of a parallel, though. If Borja's as peeved at the pope as this suggests, and God knows the man has been peeved at the pope before, and vice versa, he might be looking for something, anything, to get Urban out of office."

"You think he might be looking for a-what was her name-Monica Lewinsky?" Nasi found it an amusing thought, but the days of popes openly maintaining mistresses were long over. He couldn't be sure but that the last one hadn't actually been Alexander VI, who had been Cardinal Borja's ancestor, or a great-grand-whatever uncle.