lieutenant. Who has been evidently been promoted above the threshold of his ability, I might add.”
“Your confidence in me is always inspiring, sir.”
“Ah, and now irony, too? I’ll make an officer of you yet, Hastings. Tell me, Lieutenant: what information can we be certain of, despite the ‘garbled signals’ of which our radio operator could make no sense?”
“I beg your pardon?”
North folded the spyglass, handed it to his batman, faced Hastings. “Lieutenant, for the last three weeks, we have been winding our way through Grisons and the Graubunden, not quite showing the USE flag in the region, but making no secret of the fact that they are our exclusive employers. And in all that time, how much radio traffic have we received? Or heard?”
“Three messages to us, sir. Maybe four or five others. Mostly from Ambassador Nichols’ dislocated embassy in Padua.”
“Yes. At least, we think that was the source, since those messages were almost as badly garbled as this last bunch. So given the general scarcity of radio traffic, what do you make of today’s flurry of activity?”
“That something important is happening, sir.”
North sighed. “Hastings, your hypothesis is almost as inspired as the conjecture that maybe-just maybe-night follows day. Well, you’re not to be blamed, of course: you are only a lieutenant, after all. Whereas I am a colonel-a near-divinity. And here is what I divine from the clicks, hissings, and scratchings that have afflicted our radio-set today. First the group we are to extract is on the air with something that sounded like a routine update; it had that tempo. But rather concluding with back and forth housekeeping to fix a time, frequency, and cipher for their next sitrep, the comchatter ended quickly. With, I think, a time being set.”
“For rendezvous?”
North felt the weight of command heavy upon his shoulders. “No, Hastings. There would have been a triple confirmation of extraction. The pattern and rhythm of the exchange was all wrong for that.” Hastings blinked, said nothing. North pressed on. “Logically, they were establishing a near-future call-back time. Probably because the group in Chiavenna was about to make contact with its newest member, a rather important ‘friar.’ Then a long wait. Then a brief exchange-and then nothing. There were repeated, unanswered comm-checks from Padua-or so it seemed. Then more coded comm traffic-between Padua and the airborne extraction team at Chur, I’m guessing. Lots of it. So, Hastings, what do you make of it all?”
“That there’s trouble with the group in Chiavenna? That something went wrong when they went to the scheduled meet with this friar? And that they are moving to the rendezvous and unable to communicate anything further?”
“Bravo! There’s hope for you yet, Lieutenant.” North frowned sadly. “Well, actually, there isn’t any hope for you, but I can’t stand to see you sulk, so I lied. Now, have the squad leaders employ the necessary invective and make the suitable threats so that we can pick up our pace. And I’ll let the men stop to piss, but not to drink any more. They’d give away our approach with all that water sloshing in their guts.”
CHAPTER SIX
The north-leaning shadows of the Bregaglia Mountains were starting to crawl across the Mera River; the sun was moving swiftly down toward the alpine peaks in the west, Chiavenna already lost in the gloom at their feet. Tom paused and let Rita move abreast of him. She glanced up-way up-at him, quizzically. “Honey,” he whispered to her, “you set the pace. I’m going to the rear. To push ’em along and keep us together.”
Rita turned as she strode ahead with a longer gait, inspecting their column. “Yeah, we’re starting to straggle out a bit.”
You, wife, have a talent for understatement, thought Tom as he peripherally saw Melissa and Cardinal Ginetti lagging yet again. Worse yet, the two of them slowed the group down even more by eliciting excesses of solicitousness. James Nichols was capable of a better pace, and, as an ex-Marine, he certainly knew how crucial it was that they maintain one. But the primal call of protecting one’s mate trumped training and logic, and Melissa, given her feisty personality, was neither the easiest nor most receptive person when it came to assistance.
The cardinal was simply not cut out for even this modest hike. They were two miles east of Chiavenna, well within the mouth of the Val Bregaglia and passing the thundering cataract of the Acquafraggia, which was perched over them to the north. The upward slope of the narrow valley was modest, here: not more than a five percent gradient. But the road meandered around copses and over meadows, rather than sticking close to the straight, rocky banks of the Mera, which had already narrowed considerably.
Tom had considered leaving the road at the small village of Piuro, but ultimately decided against it. The group needed speed more than stealth, and the open pastures reached all the way from the the river to the steep slopes on the north side of the valley. Although the pastures presented rolling contours to the aesthetically inclined gaze, they looked like an extra aerobic workout to Simpson’s utterly practical eye.
Even the winding country lane became more taxing when the river road joined with it shortly beyond Piuro, where the three locals they encountered all stared in surprise at James (and the rest of the group too, for that matter). Now, only ten minutes into the countryside, Melissa and Ginetti were already fighting to keep up-and failing. Tom, his long strides cut in half as he assessed the situation, had now fallen back to the rear of the group.
Melissa looked up, annoyed, a sweaty gray-brown bang hanging down across her severely straight Boston- Brahmin nose. “Yes, Tom, I know: I’m going to get everyone killed.”
“Now, Melissa-”
“Don’t ‘now, Melissa’ me, Tom. It’s true. James gave up denying it about half a mile ago. Now, he just tries to change the topic.”
Ginetti panted out his own opinion “I mean no offense in contradicting you, signora, but it is clear that I am the cause of our troubles, not you. I walk even more slowly. Let us be frank: if I had not met you in Chiavenna, you would have been allowed to pass over the Alps unmolested. As it is, I fear we are lost.” Shivering, for he was clearly not a particularly brave man, Ginetti presented his solution in a rush: “If I am to fall into the hands of Borja anyway, at least you might escape. I might be able to draw them off by taking a different course-”
Melissa stopped and stared down at the cardinal. “With respect, Your Eminence, that’s ridiculous.” Ginetti stopped and stared back; quite possibly, he had not been addressed in such a firmly remonstrative tone since his boyhood. “First, they will not stop following us just because they capture you. I wouldn’t stop, if I were them. After all, we are murderers in the eyes of Chiavenna’s authorities. And if the confidential agent following you-the one Tom decked in the crotto — has played his cards right, he’ll be following along, too. After all, if his masters only wanted your head, Cardinal Ginetti, they could have collected it long before you reached Chiavenna.”
“You overlook that I had four guards. The agent in the crotto may not have been courageous enough to-”
“Counting the agent they sent into the crotto to keep any eye on you, there were five men following you. So they had you outnumbered. Had they wanted, they could have eliminated one or more of your guards during a night ambush and finished the job on a subsequent day. No, Cardinal, they want us, too. Dead or alive, perhaps, but I suspect they’d prefer alive. We’d be much more useful-and informative-that way.” She raised her head, breathed deeply, and accelerated her flagging stride again. “No, we are all in this together. And that means you and I have to step lively, Your Eminence, because escape is our only acceptable option.”
James nodded. “And so far, luck is with us.”
Tom couldn’t figure that one out. “Seems today the only luck we’ve had has been bad.”
“Look, Tom: if the local garrison back in Chiavenna were seasoned pros, they’d have caught up with us by now. Sure, our trail ended at the Mera, but they must know we didn’t head west; to do that, we’d have had to double back past the crotto itself. And what for? To go straight up a big-ass mountain, through pine forests and toward god knows what? That’s not a bad plan; it’s no plan at all.
“And I doubt it took them more than ten minutes to figure out that we hadn’t crossed to the other side of the Mera; we’d have been seen going over the bridges. Besides, that’s the more densely populated side of town: lots of well-trafficked piazzas. Where we don’t exactly blend in. Particularly me. And certainly not when we’re running for our lives.
