Will act haughty and superior for food.

The image made her laugh aloud. Smiling, she returned to her seat and took up her notepad and pen.

"So let's get rich," she murmured. "Stinking, filthy rich."

When they returned to the embassy, the doorman handed Sharon a note. It was written on fine paper and sealed with wax. The only thing written on the outside was her name, in handwriting she recognized immediately.

"Another one, signora," the doorman said with a small, half-apologetic smile. This has gotten to be something of a joke between them.

"What's this, now?" Sharon snorted. "The twelfth? Thirteenth? I'll say this for the man. Whatever else he is, he's a stubborn bastard."

Madga came up to look at the note over her shoulder. "Feelthy Sanchez again! What is wrong with that man? By now, even an old lecher should understand the situation."

Sharon shook her head. She'd never opened and read any of them after the first two. Not that what Sanchez had written had been anything other than respectful. Simply polite requests to allow him the privilege of accompanying her to some public event or other. Perhaps the opera? Whatever the signora desired.

She started to hand the note back to the doorman to be disposed of as all the others. But, then, a new thought brought on by the day's work came to her and she drew it back. On impulse, she broke the seal and read the note.

As she expected, it was another request to accompany her to a public event. She was a bit surprised, though, to see that Sanchez had added a few self-deprecating lines allowing as how he could only hope she might deign to read what he'd written. It was rather droll, actually.

So. Witty Sanchez as well as Feelthy Sanchez. Hmm . . .

"You can't seriously be considering to agree!" Magda hissed.

Sharon tapped the note against her chin. "Well . . . maybe. You know, Magda, it occurs to me that we should have paid more attention to Ed Piazza's briefings. One thing I do remember, though, is that he stressed that any contacts we could make with the Spanish Netherlands would be exceedingly valuable. And if what I've picked up here and there is accurate, there seem to be some doubts-fuzziness, anyway-as to exactly who holds Sanchez and his paymaster Bedmar's leash. The king of Spain-or his younger brother the cardinal-infante?"

She reopened the note and studied it. "Be interesting to find out, don't you think?"

Magda still looked dubious. Very dubious.

Sharon couldn't help grinning. She and Madga had gotten to be pretty close friends, all these months they'd spent together as the only two women on the mission since leaving the U.S. late the previous autumn. But, now and then, she was reminded of their very different life experience. Madga had no experience with the freewheeling American custom of dating.

Sharon did. Quite a bit. She'd be the first to agree she was hardly what you'd call a beauty queen. But her features were attractive enough and she had the kind of full-bodied figure that plenty of men were drawn to.

Um. Drooled over, some of them.

She patted Madga reassuringly on the shoulder. "Relax, girl. I've got no intention of sleeping with the old goat. But how hard can it be fending him off, at his age? Especially if he's got a sense of humor? Someday I'll tell you about a basketball player I went out with once. Him, I had to threaten with a kitchen knife."

Again, she felt that spike of anguish. Briefer this time, fortunately, and not so painful. She hadn't had to fend off Hans Richter, for all that he'd made his interest in her crystal clear. In that, as in everything, he'd been transparent and . . . sweet, was the only word.

She pinched her eyes, for a moment. When she took the fingers away, her vision was a bit blurry.

"Still," said Madga. "I think you should get advice from someone. Perhaps . . ."

She glanced up the staircase which led to the ambassador's suite. Then, simultaneously, she and Sharon burst into laughter.

"Oh, right!" choked Sharon. "I can see it already. 'Father Mazzare, please guide me through the proper maneuvers involved in keeping an old Spanish lecher out of my pants while I try to finagle information out of him.' Yup. I bet he'd be a fountain of wisdom on the subject."

Madga shook her head, still chuckling. "Still. You should ask someone."

The answer, also, came to them simultaneously.

"Cavriani!"

"The very man!"

Chapter 25.

"It's like negotiating with a committee, Larry," said Jones as they mounted the stairs to the reception room of the embassy, which they used as their main center of operations.

"In a sense, we are," Mazzare said. Then, thinking about it: "No, we are negotiating with a committee of the Council of Venice. The Grand Council is Doge Erizzo's compromise between all the factions he has to please."

They reached the top of the stairs, where one of the maids was waiting to take their coats. Mazzare was never quite able to keep them straight, except for Frank Stone's would-be enamorata Giovanna-impossible to forget her, and not simply because she was the prettiest!-although he thought this one was Maria.

"That's what I meant, Larry," said Jones. "Thank you, Maria."

Mazzare handed over his own coat, thanking the maid as he did so. Then he turned to Jones. "I know. It's frustrating, thoroughly frustrating, having to listen to twenty senators say more or less the same thing in seventeen or so subtly different ways."

"Well, except for-" Jones said, reaching for the doorknob.

"Yes, Simon," Mazzare said as Jones opened the door, "and I think we can lay that before the principal offender, ah-right now."

"Buckley!" Jones called out, seeing the young journalist across the room sharing a bottle of wine with the civil engineer Ernst Mauer. "You idiot!"

"What?" Buckley looked around in surprise.

Jones strode across the room, playing the agreed-upon role of Bad Preacher to the hilt. Mazzare ambled after him, taking his time so that the Good Preacher could go in after the preparatory barrage. He stopped halfway to collect a glass of wine from-he guessed-Raffaela.

Jones was in full pulpit fire-and-brimstone form and giving it his Methodist best. Buckley was, to his credit, not flinching, but getting a word in edgewise was proving beyond him. Mazzare decided to let him roast a few minutes longer as Jones enumerated his various defects of character, intelligence and consideration for his fellow-man.

The rest of the room was gawking. Ernst was edging discreetly out of the splash-zone and Sharon, who seemed to be dressed up to go somewhere for the evening, had gone from open mouthed amazement to badly concealed amusement.

He decided it was time, and sauntered over. "Joe," he said, "Why?"

"Reverend," he said, "I have a right-"

Mazzare held up a hand. "I know. Back in the USE, freedom of the press is written into the Constitution. Here, there are-differences. You can have all the rights you want, but-"

"The silly bastard-" Jones began.

Mazzare stopped Jones with a look, as much to control his laughter at the sight of Buckley flinching when Jones swore as anything else. It still shocked people when it came from a pastor.

"Reverend Jones is annoyed, Joe, because we both just got chewed on, politely, by the doge of Venice for permitting one of our servants to slander another ambassador."

"Servant?" Buckley grew a little flushed. "I'm not-" Then, he dried up, apparently having started after all this time to think about how things looked.