He'd tried out an English phrase on them. "I think you mean, 'until we've raised our profile a little,' " said Sharon. She'd heard some of that about the Rialto. Occasional boulders of English in the stream of Veneziano Italian. She'd decided it was because there were a lot of English merchants in town, handling this end of the Levant trade, and that she was probably missing other imported words from other languages that she didn't recognize. On the other hand, that phrase was straight out of the twentieth century. Had the tendency of visiting Nasis and Abrabanels to pick up MBA-babble started to spread to other communities than the Jewish one? Sharon hoped not.

"Ah, I thank you," said Cavriani. "When we are visibly making deals in this town, there will almost certainly be a brief fashion to be seen trading with your good selves. Brief, but if we work quickly we will be able to do much in that short time to establish ourselves. And if, in that time, such business as you take to Casa Falier is expressly reserved for factors other than Messer Petro Falier, the prestige he will lose . . ." Cavriani's face was the very picture of schadenfreude. "And, of course, just to rub it in, his fellow factors will ask him for advice on the deals they are doing for you, so we will even get the benefit of his experience."

"Will he not simply lead them astray?" Magda asked.

Cavriani's grin turned wry. "Petro? I think not. The man's a notorious pedant. And besides, what price his good name as a trader, for everyone acknowledges that he knows his business, if he publicly gets it wrong?"

"Ah, I see," said Magda, nodding in satisfaction.

Sharon almost giggled. Magda, concurring in a plot to visit humiliation on the pompous, abrasive Messer Petro Falier, looked like she was going native in Venice real fast. "Thanks for that pointer, Messer Cavriani. Now, to our own business, we've spent the time since we arrived going about and getting a feel for the place, and we've revised our ideas about the kind of deals we want to put together. You see, we've got some money that might well amount to down payments on everything on our list, but hearing the traders talk we thought we might be a little more ambitious and perhaps use it as seed money. Also, we've been cultivating the people to whom Signora Stone's husband has been talking, some of the businessmen he's been advising on chemical industry-"

"Ah, the good doctor! Yes, he has been making a stir. For a long time before he came, as well. New dyes, new medicine, some of it coming through Venice, and getting richer by the day, so we hear."

Magda preened. "Also, he has spoken with many artisans and master dyers and apothecaries here in Venice, and we have begun to make deals for the new processes they will be trying."

"We think a lot of them will be ordering things from our list as well," added Sharon.

"Ah. Then perhaps we will want to organize a collegamento and send a ship to some of the places-" began Luzzatto. But Cavriani cut him off in a sing-song voice:

"Oh, you who follow in little boats . . ."

Luzzatto gave him a half-glare. Cavriani waved him down. "Please, please, no offense! I am here to consult, maestro, so let me consult."

Luzzatto held up a hand. "Fine. But-please-keep the crazy schemes to a minimum."

Cavriani harumphed. "He's going to tell you what they call me," he said to Sharon.

" 'Crazy Giuseppe.' "

Cavriani harumphed again, and louder. "Yes, yes. But you'll notice they don't call me 'bankrupt Giuseppe.' Or even 'poor Giuseppe.' "

"Granted," Luzzatto admitted. "But I hear the Christian God has a special providence for the incurably mad."

"Luck is where you go looking for her. And if I choose to go looking for her in places where no one else is looking, who is the crazy one, eh?"

Luzzatto rolled his eyes. "Was I mad myself, to invite him?" To Sharon and Madga: "Ladies, I will allow that Messer Cavriani is very good. But I will advise you to leave him to risk only his own money on the more insane ventures. Yes, he does well, but he's not always so lucky, and it's only the big wins he brings home that keep him ahead."

"Risk, that's the thing." Cavriani turned visibly more serious. "But if the ladies wish to be safe and secure, I can do those kinds of deals as well. To tell the truth, they're the deals we make the money on, to risk on the crazy ventures. And I do come out ahead more often than I come out behind, or I wouldn't still be in business. I wouldn't be the first Cavriani to get put behind a desk somewhere and left in charge of ordering the wherewithal for more capable Cavrianis."

Sharon found herself smiling at the byplay. "Gentlemen, assume that we are prepared to run perhaps a few risks. What do you propose?"

"Ah, now that's proper talk!" Cavriani actually rubbed his hands. Sharon was beginning to realize that beneath the unprepossessing exterior lurked the soul of a ham actor. "First, do I understand that you have the radio between here in Venice and the Baltic?"

Sharon and Magda looked at each other. That was supposed to be a secret. It was Sharon's turn to roll her eyes. Magda just looked pained.

Cavriani went on: "Please, please! It's all in confidence here. I assure you that the Cavrianis have ways of knowing things that are beyond the grasp of the miserable Spanish and French heretics. Not to mention the pitiful Venetians, who are long past their prime." He gave Luzzatto the kind of raised-eyebrow look that Sharon had only seen before in the movies. Bad movies. "The Jews are another story; they will naturally know also. They are an especially clever people. Why else would they have attached themselves to you so readily? So there's no danger there of idle words slipping."

Now he sighed, histrionically. "A pity they are all condemned to everlasting torment, of course. It grieves me to think of my good friend Benjamin Luzzatto, his flesh torn for eternity by hot pincers in the hands of demons- But!" Again, that histrionic sigh, coupled with outstretched hands. "What can you do? These are a stubborn folk as well as a clever one, and insist on denying the Savior."

Throughout, Luzzatto had simply smiled serenely. Sharon had the feeling this was an old game between the two of them. She also had the feeling that Cavriani wasn't lying at all when he referred to Benjamin as "his good friend." For reasons she couldn't begin to explain, she was starting to like Cavriani. Whether that was because of the ham acting or despite it, she wasn't sure.

For the moment, though, she decided there was no point in trying to deny the existence of the radio. She'd tell Father Mazzare about it afterward, of course. But whatever damage was done-if any-was already done.

Sharon nodded. "Yes, we have a radio here. We can reach as far as Grantville, most evenings. Sometimes as far as Magdeburg. Through relays, as far as Luebeck and Wismar with no more than a day's delay."

"And Hamburg?" Cavriani asked. He was all business now. "Hamburg is, ah, very important."

Sharon thought about it. They got only condensed news reports, down here, of the progress of the war. But with spring coming, nobody had any doubt at all that the League of Ostend was going to try to finally capture Luebeck and Amsterdam. Nor that, if they failed, Gustav Adolf's counterattack would roll over a good chunk of northwestern Germany, in the middle of which-right smack in the middle-sat the still-neutral city of Hamburg.

She shrugged. "Impossible to say, at the moment. But even using couriers, I'd think no more than a few days' delay. Why? What are you thinking of, messer Cavriani?" She had a feeling she knew what was coming.

"Well, if we had advance news of cargoes, ahead of anyone else . . ." Cavriani grinned, looking more sharklike by the second. "You might find that you could make some very good trades in futures."

"And get yourself hanged!" Luzzatto snapped. "Some of those cargoes will be underwritten with state bonds. Insider trading"-again, an English term-"is illegal where state bonds are concerned. And the penalty is death."

"But the ladies have diplomatic immunity-" Cavriani began.

"You don't!" Luzzatto said forcefully. "More to the point, I don't-and I won't even be able to get away from it the way you might, with enough money. A Jew on the run in Italy is as good as a dead man."

"Who'll know?" Cavriani said, brightly. "Besides, we can just make discreet enquiries and make sure we don't play a trade on anything with state bonds riding on it."

Luzzatto seemed to relax. Apparently, Cavriani's willingness to avoid anything that involved state bonds-whatever those were, exactly-was enough to mollify the agent. Sharon had been in Venice long enough to understand how the city worked, that way. Crossing the Council of Ten was a desperate business. Whereas simply crossing commercial rivals, while it had its own dangers, was more or less taken for granted.

Sharon was impressed with Cavriani already. As far as she could tell, no one so far had thought of that as a way of making money out of radio. No need to tell Cavriani that, through relays, they had radio all the way to the embassy in London-overlooking the main commercial port, at that-and in Amsterdam as well.

"Would this enhance our working capital?" Madga asked. "Maybe we could use this to generate quick cash flow?" From the tone of her voice, Magda was starting to get into the excitement of the scheme. She smelled money in the air. And for all that Magda was happily married to a hippie, she'd been brought up the daughter of a hardnosed German merchant.

"Oh, certainly," said Cavriani, leaning forward. "Now, Signora Stone, here's what we do to begin with."

Sharon demoted herself to note taker for what followed. It seemed Magda had found a kindred spirit in Cavriani. About halfway through, just as the German hausfrau and the Venetian wheeler-dealer were concocting a scheme that would, if Sharon followed it right, involve them selling futures to themselves in a cargo they'd never actually need or want and which would never come within five hundred miles of Venice, she stole a look at Luzzatto who had become almost invisible in his own office.

His shrug and upturned eyes spoke volumes. But so did the sly smile on his face.

Sharon wondered about that. Mostly, though, she wondered at herself. Unlike Magda, Sharon had been brought up in the household of a doctor. To be sure, her father had always provided well for his family. But he could have provided even better if he'd been willing to forego his ghetto practice for more lucrative work. He hadn't, because money had never been the principal motive in the life of James Nichols.

Nor was it in the life of his daughter. So why, now, did she too feel that growing, almost feral, excitement?

The answer came to her on the very heels of the question. She rose quietly from her chair and moved as far off as she could in the tiny room, staring blankly at a wall. At first, just to fight down the spike of sheer pain. There were times, even after all these months, when she wondered if the hole ripped in her soul by Hans' death would ever heal.

Maybe not. But, if it did . . .

Quiet fury came to flush aside the anguish. If it did, Sharon knew, it would be a fine clean anger that managed the trick. Only if she struck her own blows at the world that had led her beloved to fly his plane into an enemy warship, would she find surcease from sorrow and acceptance of his passing. She understood that now.

She smiled at the wall. She would do it in her own way, of course. Hans had been flamboyantly heroic, which Sharon would never be. Had no desire to be, really. Still, there were many ways to strike a blow at that cold, callous aristocracy that ruled all of Europe and most of the world beyond.

One of them was money. A predatorial, ruthless willingness to use every advantage to cut the bastards where they lived.

Oh, yes, money was where they lived-their pretensions about "blood" notwithstanding. A bankrupt nobleman was just another beggar, after all. Sharon thought the aristocracy of Europe and their factors and financiers-as many of them as she could manage, anyway-would look splendid lined up alongside the roadway. All of them with signs around their neck.