"Stipulated. It still isn't a crime, is it?"

"No. But it may be something that criminals are doing. If they will take money from foreign powers-I do not assume, entirely, that it is France-to print leaflets, they might well take it to do other things."

Mike chewed his lip. "What does Dan think?" Dan Frost had gone from being head of Grantville's tiny police department to being a consultant to a good many town constabularies throughout the United States. Social advances were not just limited to the making of tools, they covered developments in technique as well, as Dan was proving. Like a lot of small-town cops, he had had little time away from the job for formal training and had substituted a slew of subscriptions to professional journals. He was putting the articles to good use, now, reselling copies of them around the USE and, everyone hoped, raising the usually pitiful level of European law enforcement in this day and age. That library of technique had also proved helpful to Nasi, when he had detection problems that conventional seventeenth-century counterespionage was ill equipped to handle.

"Dan agrees that the behavior is suspicious, and merits investigation. If only to rule out the possibility of sabotage or some other, actively criminal, subversion."

Mike nodded, slowly "Fine. Francisco, trust Dan's instincts on this one. I mean no disrespect, but your instincts in these things come from a culture that-no, that's not right, and I'm sorry. You know what you grew up with, and what the United States is all about, and how it's different."

Nasi grinned broadly. It was rare that Mike dropped into such lazy habits of thought, and the effect was amusing, not offensive. Still, that was no reason not to have a little fun.

"True," he said, deadpan. "The sultan would have set his torturers to work, found out who was responsible, and devised some suitably humorous way to put him to death. Run through his own press, most likely, before an appreciative audience of pashas and beys."

Mike gave him an old-fashioned look.

"No, Mike, seriously, I take no offense. I do try to take account of how my upbringing and training and the standards of this brave new world may differ. It was for this reason I consulted with Dan, you know. A good spymaster checks his assumptions."

"Sorry, Francisco. I'm teaching granny to suck eggs again."

Nasi dismissed the apology with a wave. "In truth, the operational details need not detain us. The substance of the report I sought to make this morning was the report from Venice and that this pamphleteer is back at work, both of which you needed to know."

Mike raised his coffee cup. "Cheers, then," he said, and took a gulp. "Damn fine coffee your cousin is getting for us."

Nasi sniffed. "Which you Americans then proceed to ruin. I was served a cup yesterday that I could actually see the bottom of." He sniffed again. "I shall not repeat my opinion of the barbaric pollutants used."

"Be off," Mike said, waving his coffee cup toward the door, "and take your coffee snobbery with you. Some of us like to have a cup of coffee and not take three days to get the use of our taste buds back.

"Anyway," Mike went on in a more sober tone, "I need time to compose myself for my first meeting. Wilhelm's coming in to tell me what he's viewing with alarm this week."

"Exasperating?" Nasi asked, knowing what the answer was. As Wilhelm Wettin-formerly Duke Wilhelm von Saxe-Weimar-grew into his role as the leader of the newly founded Crown Loyalist opposition party, he was giving Mike more and more trouble.

Mike sighed. "Very. The man's got more sense than to be anything other than totally straight with me, all the time, even in private, and it's getting wearing. I was thinking at first that he'd have no experience of this kind of politics, but if he's learning on the job he hides it well."

"And what is he viewing with alarm this week?"

"I don't know yet," Mike said. "He's got the media part down pat, I have to say. I get a long list of grievances, condemnations, views-with-alarm, occasionally-very occasionally!-some point of commendation. And it all appears in the same day's papers. I could do with a press office that good, really I could."

"Do you want to know in advance-" Nasi began.

Mike stopped him. "No, Francisco. In fact: hell, no. Did you read about Watergate?"

"Yes, Mike," Nasi said, recalling his own reaction: that Richard Nixon would have fit right in at the Sublime Porte. "No, what I meant was to suggest that you ask the Crown Loyalists to set the agenda for the meetings. The day before, perhaps, so that you can be ready with the facts at hand to answer questions?"

Mike smiled. "Nice try. That works in Congress, for Prime Minister's Questions, but Wilhelm's too good an operator to give me any advance warning for one of these little chats. Wide-ranging discussion, he'll say. Loyal opposition, not the foreign delegation at a summit, he'll say. And more like it, and he'll look like he means it all. No, he suckered me into having these briefing sessions for the leaders of the opposition parties, and now he's got them he's not going to let me take the teeth out of them for him. So, no agenda." Mike sighed.

"Well, I might hazard a guess as to what is on the agenda you do not have for this morning might be."

"Venice, what else?" Mike said, with more than the merest hint of a groan in his voice. "As it has been these six weeks past. Viewing with alarm the possibility of any extension of the mission in the direction of Rome. Drawing to my attention that our enemies are all among the Catholic powers, our friends among the Protestant ones. Except for England and Denmark, of course, but Wilhelm claims that doesn't count since Charles Stuart is a notorious papist sympathizer and Christian IV an equally notorious drunkard."

Mike sighed again. "I am resolutely not using the phrase 'religious bigot' either here or in public. So far, he hasn't used the words 'Catholic Menace,' either. So I guess we're even-or, at least, still being reasonably civil."

"He needs at least a goodly chunk of the Catholic vote if he hopes to win a nationwide election," Nasi pointed out. Then, shook his head. "But I leave that to you."

"Along with Wilhelm," Mike said, gloomily.

Chapter 22.

It was good for Michel Ducos that he was quiet and impassive. The comte d'Avaux could feel a rage boiling in the quiet depths of the man's heart, a rage that would take no more than a word, a gesture, an expression out of place to make good on its threat that he would abandon the pretense of calm reason that he was maintaining. There was something not sane at the core of Ducos' soul, the comte had long known. Of course, the same could be said of any heretic, he supposed; but of Ducos, more than most. He reminded d'Avaux of one of the watchdogs the comte owned on his estate back in France.

It was a dangerous beast, improperly handled. On the other hand, also the best watchdog on the estate-and d'Avaux knew himself for a superb handler, of either dogs or men.

Ducos had delivered the news-sheet without comment beyond a grave, "Seigneur le Comte should read this."

So he had, and having gotten no more than a third of the way down the page he had put the piece of refuse down. Bad enough that this Buckley had outwitted a staff of professional spymasters to penetrate to their more secret counsels, although such was more or less to be expected. There was this much to take comfort in: the encyphered dispatches that only d'Avaux, Ducos and their cypher clerk had seen appeared not to have been relayed to the wretched American.

But to publish! That was the larger half of d'Avaux's upset. There were customs in such matters, hallowed by time so as to be all but law. By his actions, Buckley had put the American delegation in flagrant mockery of that law. D'Avaux wondered, with unwonted grim humor, whether this meant that the Swede's creatures wanted matters in Venice played out a l'outrance? They had certainly spared no pains to provoke such. For what purported to be a communique of news the thing had the brutal tone of an incendiary pamphlet.

The Americans had almost certainly acquired that habit in the Germanies. Or, rather, added it like a gloss onto the boorish customs they had brought with them. The Germanies sprouted presses like mushrooms, waxing in the fecal darkness of their Protestant benightedness. The product of those presses was no more wholesome than what they grew in.

But that brought the metaphor of mushrooms to an abrupt halt, since d'Avaux was partial to the delicacies. So, he forced himself back to the matter at hand.

To write, in what purported to be news, in the tone of a demagogue exhorting the mob, was-exactly what he might have done, or at least ordered done, had he thought of it first. The realization drained the unaccustomed rage away, unexpressed now save as mild annoyance.

"Ducos, how did he come by this?"

A brief smile was Ducos' first answer. Then: "Monsieur Buckley fancies himself as a spy. An amateur, only."

D'Avaux cocked an eyebrow.

Ducos nodded. "He fancies himself quite the master of espionage, seigneur. He speaks with servants."

D'Avaux felt his own face twitch into a smile. It was, of course, impossible to keep many secrets from one's servants. Ducos was as good an example as any, and better than most, but below Ducos' exalted level as factotum, the footmen and valets could not help but overhear a great deal. The astute spymaster would cultivate such sorts and their gossip, and it was seldom needful to disburse more than nominal bribes to procure an essential appreciation of one's opponent's counsels and habits of thought. The trick was to sort the wheat from the chaff in the information thus gathered, the genuine intelligence from the idle talk of the lower orders. It did not do to be vexed by this, of course, since those same lower orders were constitutionally incapable of genuine, higher loyalty.

All that mattered was that the most central secrets be kept. And, when he thought further on the matter, d'Avaux realized that not only had Buckley not penetrated any of those, he had no hope of doing so. He pursed his lips, and set to thinking hard; a calm consideration was called for.

He tapped his finger on the offending newspaper where it lay on his desk. Once, twice, thrice. "He has, of course, insulted us."

"Yes, seigneur."

"Ascribed to us base motives. Suggested that all we have said to the doge of our mission is a sham. That we seek to continue the war on neutral ground."

"Yes, seigneur." Ducos impassively awaited instructions.

"Is there a statement yet from the Americans?"

"Not as yet, seigneur."