Billy wondered if he’d ever hear again. It felt like at least one of his eardrums had burst. Paralyzed, for sure. He’d never actually heard what a .45 sounded like fired in a closed room—thick walls, too—and wearing no ear protectors. It didn’t help at all that he’d been positioned alongside the firearm instead of behind the shooter.
The one Frenchman still left standing seemed even more dazed than Billy was. Slowly, the man spread his arms wide and stared down at his body. He seemed a little amazed to see no blood.
Billy was downright astonished. How could she possibly have missed—at that range?
Sharon lurched to her feet and tried to do with the pistol itself what she’d failed to do with its ammunition. Hollering something that was probably obscene as all hell—Billy couldn’t make out a word of it—she hurled the pistol at the Frenchman.
Alas. She was no more accurate than before. Ducos’ agent didn’t even have to duck. He just watched the pistol sail by at least two feet from his head.
When he brought his head back, though, there was a smile on his face. A damn cold one. Sharon was disarmed and while Sanchez was struggling to get back on his feet the old man was obviously having a hard time of it now. Leaving aside the wound to the body, his left leg was just about literally soaked in blood.
On the other hand, Billy had finally gotten his apple.
“Hey, shithead,” he said. The Frenchman looked his way. Billy beaned him.
A little high. Out of the strike zone. The apple had struck the man on the slope of his forehead instead of right between the eyes. Most of the impact had been deflected with the apple.
Still, that had been one hell of a fastball. Somewhere between ninety-five and a hundred miles an hour, at a guess. The apple itself was now just a fruit stain across the far wall. Ducos’ agent was reeling, barely able to stand. And he’d dropped his sword.
Billy started to reach down for another apple but changed his mind. “I never liked that damn designated-hitter rule anyway,” he muttered.
He stalked over and picked up the leg of the table Sanchez had shattered. Then, proceeded to start beating the Frenchman into a pulp.
* * *
Sharon stopped him, unfortunately, before he could really get into a good rhythm.
“Hey, don’t kill him! We want him to talk.” He could just barely make out the words through the ringing in his ears.
Billy took a deep breath. She was probably right.
“Okay. But. Still. This is why pitchers never bat too well, y’know. Nobody lets us get enough practice.”
Chapter 38
After Mike Stearns had finished reading the latest report from Venice, he raised his eyes—his head still lowered—and looked at Francisco Nasi.
“Did you expect this? Any idea at all?”
Nasi chuckled. “Would you believe me if I claimed that I did?”
Mike smiled and slid the file onto the desk. “I’d call you five ways a liar. I sure as hell didn’t. Never in my wildest dreams. Larry Mazzare summoned by the pope to Rome to defend Galileo. Lord in Heaven, you want to talk about an opening.”
He rose from his chair and went over to the window he favored at moments like this. Francisco suspected that looking out the window helped Mike take his mind off his wife, his sister, and his friends who were trapped in cities far away, and about whom the prime minister could do very little, just then. But what Mike found to look at out there, in the still-ugly raw newness that was the city of Magdeburg being reborn, Francisco had never been able to determine. Most likely the Elbe rather than the city itself. Nasi knew that Mike Stearns found looking at moving water something of an emotional comfort and an aid to concentration. That might be part of the reason he had insisted on having the new building which housed the USE’s executive branch built along the riverbank.
A small part, though, if any. The main reason was that the building fronted along Hans Richter Square and was named—also at Mike’s insistence—the Richterhof. If there was any trick of propaganda and public relations that Mike Stearns would shy away from, Nasi had never encountered it. Magdeburg was the political capital of the new United States of Europe as well as—so far, at least—its major industrial center. Over time, the two aspects of the city would most likely reinforce each other. There was no way to tell, as yet, and wouldn’t be for many years. But Nasi thought that Mike’s estimate that Magdeburg would eventually come to provide the same center of gravity for Germany that London and Paris provided for England and France was probably correct.