humor, given the nature of his indiscretions-would apply for the position of technical assistant. If successful, he would then follow a few simple instructions. He would, on completing his assignment for Rombaldo, receive the incriminating evidence on him back into his hands. No doubt he would burn those damning (and deliciously indiscreet) letters as soon as he received then. And would just as surely rush to reassure, and possibly reembrace, the nervous Venetian trophy-wife, who would once more be secure in the unassailable esteem-and legally-filed will-of her elderly spouse.
Rombaldo had been forced to purchase the tool man’s letters for the exorbitant sum of three hundred lire. However, it was a crucial resource and worth the great price, much like any other valuable commodity.
And so, thought Valentino, to business. He looked over at one of Rombaldo’s better local hires, a cheery fellow named Ignatio who enjoyed a good joke and the occasional torture of hijacked house pets. Valentino nodded approval of Ignatio’s matching uniform. Arguably, it looked even better on this new henchman, who had served briefly in the militia. Ignatio had not joined those ranks out of civic-mindedness, of course; it had been for the quite lucrative black market contacts he made there.
Valentino glanced at their papers, fakes which had been quite challenging for Cesare, Rombaldo’s forger, to duplicate. The up-timers had evidently employed a few rather clever tricks in the crafting of them, but Cesare had painstakingly overcome the difficulties. Valentino now passed the fruits of those labors to Ignatio. He stared at them. Valentino shrugged. “Our lives could depend on these papers. I thought you might like to check yours, at least.”
Ignatio shook his head. He smiled, but also blushed. “No need. I can’t read.”
“Oh,” answered Valentino, who pocketed the papers and suppressed his admiration for Ignatio’s honesty-all the more because he concealed his own illiteracy with shamed diligence. He led them out of their rented room, down the stairs, and toward the door that would put them upon the streets of Mestre.
And in plain sight of the up-timers’ aircraft repair compound.
Valentino arrived at the gate, hand upon sword, a firm, almost grim look plastered on his face. The face that stared back at him was fair, sunburnt, topped by auburn hair scorched into red-gold by the Italian sun. The uniform of a USE Marine from the embassy detachment was unmistakable. Two of his comrades cradled carbine versions of their army’s standard flintlock; the posture was not threatening, but their weapons could easily be swung into a ready position.
“Business?” asked the one at the gate.
“Extra guards for the compound,” Valentino answered in Italian. “Sent by the Arsenal.”
The freckled nose of the guard quirked a bit at the stream of clearly unfamiliar words. “ Arsenal? Garda? You help USE?”
Valentino nodded twice, severely. “S i. Garda. USE.”
The gate guard nodded. “Papers.”
Valentino presented them, saw the other two guards studying him. And he thought: Now I’ll find out if I got enough of the bloodstains out of this shirt. Pity that it took a knife in the neck to kill the real guard sent by the Arsenal: messy business.
But in a country full of stained clothing, whatever telltale marks there might have been on Valentino’s uniform excited no particular interest by the guards. The one with the brown-red hair opened the gate, returned their papers, pointed ahead and then made a leftward hooking gesture with his hand. “Take the third left. Dritto. Sinistra.”
With an abbreviated salute, Valentino entered the compound, Ignatio close behind him.
“So you understand your duty?” the Marine asked Valentino, speaking with a faint German accent.
“Yes. We walk the parmenter-”
“Perimeter.”
“ Si, yes, ‘perimeter.’ One of us inside, one of us outside. I walk in this direction, like the arms of a clock; my man goes against the clock’s direction. Yes?”
“Yes. So why don’t you start your firs-wait a minute; here comes the last of the fuel. Stand here for a moment. Guard the other barrels.” The Marine left to speak with a startlingly handsome man who was pulling a safety-railed handcart loaded with six casks that, even at this distance, gave off a distinct petroleum smell. It was equally obvious, from the descriptions Valentino had been given, that the glorified fuel stevedore was none other than the Tool Man.
The other Marine inside the building wandered over to Valentino and his partner. “So you’re from the Arsenal, eh?” he asked, a good-natured smile creeping on to his ruddy face. This one spoke with less of an accent; was either Scottish or Irish, Valentino guessed.
“ Si, Arsenal.”
“Drinking mate of mine serves the same masters, richt enuf. Would you know Roberto Giacomo? Fine husky lad about yea tall?”
“No capito; no understand.” Valentino lied. Just what he needed: some overly friendly pigeon who happened to know someone in the Arsenal.
“Well, I can try my Italian,” said Mr. Friendly in a fair approximation of the Venetian dialect. Wonderful. The buffoon was a linguist on top of it. This was just getting better and better. And Ignatio was becoming visibly anxious, which in his case meant an increasing likelihood that he was going to do something singularly violent and stupid.
“ Per favore,” called the first Marine from over by the fuel casks, “help us? Per favore?”
Valentino almost thanked the man for providing an excuse to get away from his chatty fellow guard. The Venetian thug stepped lively to the hand-cart and helped to keep it from tipping as the German-accented Marine and the Tool Man turned it. He then laid a thoroughly unnecessary steadying hand on the cart’s rail as they wheeled it over alongside the other three, similarly loaded trolleys; he was happy to be doing anything other than fending off friendly inquiries about Arsenal troopers from the Scotsman.
“That finishes it,” affirmed the senior German marine with a curt nod. Turning back to Valentino, he said, “Now then; vee shall measure the time of your watch from-”
Tool Man coughed lightly. “Sir.”
“Yes?”
“The fuel: you must sign to confirm receipt of it. And you, too,” he said, speaking over the shoulder of the German to the Scottish Marine, who approached readily enough.
The German Marine was looking at the proffered papers with a frown. “I have signed these papers before,” he declared. “When you brought the first handcart. Surely you remember? When you knocked on the door, vee-”
The Scotsman was now leaning over to stare at the papers himself, his back fully exposed. Valentino looked over at Ignatio and nodded.
The knife in Valentino’s forearm scabbard slid down quickly and smoothly into his palm. He hopped, light as a dancer, to a position directly behind the German. The trick to this maneuver, he had found over the years, was to do everything at once, rather than in sequence.
So he simultaneously grabbed a fistful of the Marine’s medium length hair with his left hand and pulled sharply backward, even as his right hand came up and drew the plain, quillonless blade sharply across the German’s arched neck.
Blood sprayed out over Tool Man, who gasped and stumbled back against the trolley, eyes bulging. The German tried to struggle, but at the end of the neck-slicing sweep, Valentino gave a quick, well-practiced flip of his wrist; the point of the knife dug in just before it cleared the ear, clipping the carotid artery. The blood spray, which had already started diminishing, briefly surged again before the German lost strength, swayed, and fell over in the rapidly widening red pool.
Which was when Valentino realized that Ignatio was having some unexpected trouble: the Scotsman had apparently spent some time wearing armor in the field, and had retained some of those old habits. A light gorget, unseen beneath his collar, had intercepted enough of Ignatio’s identical slash so that the resulting wound was serious, but not immediately debilitating. Now the big Scot had Ignatio’s knife-hand in one powerful, meaty paw, and was steadily moving his own right out of his assassin’s weaker grasp. Toward his pistol.
Valentino assessed, measured, leaped and struck out straight from his shoulder with his own blade.
It entered the Scotsman’s back at a right angle to, and left of, the spine, just under the scapula. It plunged in
