As he explained, he could see the interest taking hold, people drifting over to listen. He'd been right. Better still, Giovanna seemed as interested as anyone.

One of the Venetian guys-Frank could recall seeing him horsing trunks into the embassy-said, "We need a ball?"

"Sure, about so big." Frank held his hands out to indicate the size of a FIFA standard ball.

"And with just the feet and the head?" the porter asked.

"Yup. Handling it is a foul. What's your name, sorry?"

"Marius," the porter said, rising and holding out a hand. "Marius Pontigrazzi."

Pontigrazzi waved his wine glass in the direction of an intense-looking middle-aged man sitting at the center of the T in the big table. "I work for Giovanna's father, over there."

Frank's enthusiasm came to a screeching halt. Giovanna's father. Oh, Christ. Now that he really looked, he could see the family resemblance-just as he could see it in the two younger men sitting on either side of the man.

And her brothers. Oh, Christ.

The father's name was Antonio, he recalled. Antonio Marcoli. Frank couldn't remember the name of Giovanna's brothers, if she'd even told him at all.

Frantically, he tried to figure out where to go from here. Swapping insults with a drunken fellow American and then launching into a fervent speech for the introduction of soccer was probably not, he feared, the best introduction he could have made of himself. He felt like Romeo finally introduced to Juliet's father, and completely blowing it. Might as well pull out the dagger and take the poison now and be done with it.

Alas, Pontigrazzi wasn't going to give him a break, either. The porter was starting to shuffle around. "Just the feet?" he demanded. "Silly!"

"And your head, Marius," Gerry said. He'd gotten a cabbage from somewhere. "Watch," he said, and dropped the vegetable.

Frank winced-et tu, brother?-but Gerry caught it neatly on his foot and balanced it there. Fortunately, the one gulp of the grappa didn't seem to have affected Gerry's reflexes-as he went on to prove with a quick flurry of keep-up moves, flicking the cabbage into the air and knocking it up off his left, then his right knee. As it came down again he caught it on his foot, paused a second and chipped it up and over to Ron, who headed it in a shower of cabbage leaves to Frank.

Fortunately, Frank had the presence of mind to chest-trap the cabbage; then, leaned back as it fell to kick it back up. He fluffed that a bit, and had to hop to get his knee under it, but then he was able to get into the rhythm and drunken cheering broke out.

What the hell, he told himself. Giovanna's dad probably thinks I'm a jerk anyway, so I may as well prove I'm adept at it.

"Marius?" he called out, and saw Marius nod. Frank flicked it up, wincing a bit as he had to hit the thing a lot harder because it had almost no bounce. He was going to have a bruise in the morning. He got under it as it came back down and nodded it over to the Venetian.

Who chest-trapped it like a pro, and took it on the drop for a shot that would have gone clear to the back of the net, but-

It was a cabbage, after all. It exploded in a shower of healthful greens. The heart shot out at about Mach three and landed in the hearth to a shower of sparks and curses from the cooks.

Then, salvation!

Giovanna's father rose to his feet, bellowing praise, and proceeded to slap Marius on the back. Gerry and Ron went into full-on goal-celebration mode, heaving their doublets up over their faces and waving like loons.

Billy was throwing up now. Whether that was because he had actually laughed himself sick or because he'd just seen his plan to pollute Italy with baseball explode in a shower of cabbage leaves, Frank didn't know. The Italians were all cheering Marius, who was grinning like he'd scored the winner.

Which, in a sense, he had. Definitely, Frank thought, promising territory for three missionaries of the Beautiful Game.

Better yet, Giovanna was hauling her father over and making a proper introduction. Antonio Marcoli still looked far more intense than Frank would ever be comfortable with, but the man was smiling and extending his hand. Best of all, Giovanna's smile was wider than he'd ever seen it and the dimples were on Full Charm Display.

Mentally, Frank put away the vial of poison and the suicide dagger. All was well with the world!

Alas, he should have known.

No sooner did Antonio Marcoli take his hand than he drew Frank close. Then, whispered into his ear.

The whisper even sounded conspiratorial.

"Tomorrow. At night. Giovanna will bring you. Full meeting of the Committee. We must conspire to rescue Galileo."

Chapter 14.

Slipping away from the embassy the next day to get a boat to Murano was simplicity itself. Ron had suggested holding the meeting with Giovanna's father in the afternoon, so they could with all honesty tell Dad and Magda that they were going to see the sights and would be back by dark.

Giovanna insisted on not letting them row the boat for her. Watching the more-or-less effortless way in which she'd handled the little craft, Frank was inclined to agree it was a good idea that she had. Apart from some kayaking the one time their dad had sent them off to summer camp, none of the Stone boys could have handled the boat the way she did.

Besides, sitting in the stern and observing Giovanna in action was a sheer delight for Frank. The girl might be on the small side-by twentieth-century American standards, if not seventeenth-century Italian ones-but her lush figure was underlain by plenty of muscle. It was all Frank could do not to ogle her outright.

The journey to Murano didn't take much time, and half of that was negotiating the winding little canals and the heavy traffic that Venice always had on its waterways in the daytime. The taverna was on the same model as the one that was in the basement of the embassy: it was in the back of the lower story of a great house. But this one was a dedicated taverna, rather than part of a huge kitchen. It didn't seem to be a public establishment, though. From what Frank could tell, it was more in the way of a private club for the inhabitants of the building.

It was an odd sort of arrangement, to American eyes, even eyes that had grown accustomed to seventeenth-century central Germany. The big building fronting the canal was not a palace for an embassy but a considerably more dilapidated structure. Most of it seemed to be taken up by artisans' shops below and their associated living quarters on the upper floors. The population density was . . . Venetian.

Giovanna's father, Frank had learned, was a metalworker by trade. Which, in Venice, meant something more like a jeweler than a blacksmith. Apparently, he'd traveled to Thuringia not long after the Ring of Fire in order to improve his skills with up-time techniques, leaving his children in the care of his relatives since his own wife had died in the plague. Antonio had returned with a burning enthusiasm for up-time ideology as well as up-time metalworking techniques. In fact, from what Frank could tell, he seemed to be the perfect illustration of the old saw about the zeal of converts. More Catholic than the pope-or, in this case, more American than the Americans.

The back room was smoky and dark, since at this time of day no direct sunlight was coming through the narrow windows on one wall. Just right for a conspiracy except that it was very large. There was nobody in it other than the Marcolis, Marius, and one other man, standing next to a large table toward the back.

"You know the new guy?" Ron asked Frank quietly.

"No. I wonder if he's part of this or if he just wandered in?"

Giovanna leaned close, and it was all Frank could do not to writhe in pleasure at the feel of her breath on his ear. "It is Michel Ducos, of the Paris Committee. He is attached to the French embassy, but is one of us."

"The Paris Committee?" Frank hadn't been aware there even was a Committee of Correspondence in the French capital. Gretchen Richter must have been busy when she passed through the city as part of Becky Stearns' diplomatic mission!

He wondered how hard a time of it the Committee people were having in Paris. Richelieu's agents were rough, by all accounts. On the other hand, Ducos looked like a mean customer himself, so maybe they were getting on okay if he was any kind of measure of the rest of them. He was a tall, narrow man with a hatchet face-the kind of face that couldn't say ornery son of a bitch more plainly if you tattooed it on his forehead. He was on his feet talking to Marcoli senior, a tumbler of something unregarded on the table beside him.

"Si," said Giovanna. "Their special embassy came a few weeks before yours, and Michel came with them as one of their servants. He came straight to us, and has given us much information about the comte d'Avaux."

Frank heard the Michel and inwardly snarled. The guy's a fast worker, he thought, and then told himself to cool it. "Who's this Count Devo, then?"

"The French ambassador, and a very bad man."

"That figures. Works for Richelieu, does he?"

"Si. He is infamous for his troublemaking in the Germanies and in Italy, and now he comes to Venice again. Michel tells us he is here to make trouble for you Americans."

Ducos turned his head. "D'accord," he said. Frank realized that while in conversation with Messer Marcoli, Ducos had been keeping track of the conversation on the other side of the room. Ducos went on: "Seigneur le Comte is one of Richelieu's creatures. A man most dangerous to the advance of liberty, Monsieur Stone."