| Information will fall all over itself doing what you want. Isn’t playing politics fun?” “Well, that’s one word for it,” Khalid said. “It’s fun if you do it well, and you sound like you’re going to do it well.” But Dawud hadn’t finished: “The bad news is, the Aquinists will know that Juvarra’s in charge and what he’s going to do before Major General Procacci finds out. Or don’t you think they’re tapping the lines between here and Rome?” Khalid sighed. “I would be, if I were in their shoes. But I’d rather do something than do nothing. We’ve had too much of that here already. The fanatics won’t know exactly what we’re up to, not from listening to me talk with Rome.” “No, not from that. But they’ll have, ah, friends on Procacci’s staff—and probably on Juvarra’s staff, too.” Dawud was full of truths Khalid would rather not have heard. In spite of that, Khalid made the calls he needed to make. Sure enough, the higher-ups at the Ministry of Information were eager to let one of theirs give an Army general a black eye if he could. But they didn’t have the authority to supplant Procacci. They had to get Lorenzo’s approval first. Major Badoglio was the man who called back. “It’s authorized,” he said. “I’m sure the Army will love you till the end of time. Someone else here in Rome is ringing up Juvarra. That way, the general won’t be able to prove you had |
size of it. The stench of gore filled the air, so thick it made Khalid’s stomach want to turn over. With it came the sharper reek of smokeless powder and a vile latrine stink. People fouled themselves when they were very frightened—and when their bowels let go in death. The Dauphin of France was down. The Prince of Wales knelt beside him, bandaging his wounded arm with cloth cut from a velvet robe. The prince’s ceremonial sword lay on the ground next to him. By the way things looked, he’d used it to cut the robe. That took presence of mind. It also took a sword with a blade that had been sharpened even though it wasn’t intended to leave the scabbard. Someone on the prince’s staff paid attention to detail. One Irish prince was binding up his own leg. Another lay ominously still, the blood pooling under his head even redder than his hair. However hard the assassins had tried, they hadn’t slain Lorenzo III. The new Grand Duke shouted orders in Italian too fast and colloquial for Khalid to follow. Pope Marcellus stared in horror from under the glassed-in bubble atop his armored vehicle. The thick glass bore plenty of fresh scars, but it had stopped everything that came his way. Domenico Pacelli stared, too: up at the sun out of sightless, unblinking eyes. Khalid looked at him, then looked away. He’d taken so many bullets, he looked almost as much like a piece of chopped meat |
