“Anyway,” Buckley said, draining his glass, “I should get going. It’s a long way home for me these days.” He rose and left hurriedly.
* * *
Jones came back over, now with a drink in his hand. “He’s really a pretty nice guy, underneath that damn Woodward and Bernstein act,” he admitted. “Not that I’ll say it to his face.”
“Yes. Although lacking a little in forethought.”
“Who wasn’t, at his age?” There was rather more charity in Jones’ tone than Mazzare had been expecting. “Think I registered my displeasure strongly enough?”
Mazzare laughed outright. “I think he’s as chastened as we’ve any right to expect.”
“Whatever.” Jones handed over a slip of paper adorned with the seal of the Most Serene Republic. “While you were having your little heart to heart, this came.”
It was a note from the doge, inviting Mazzare to a reception at the Ducal Palace for the Turkish delegation which had arrived in the city recently.
Oh, wonderful. Just what we needed. The Ottomans added to the mix!
Mazzare decided he needed some expert and informed advice. He turned, to pick out Benjamin across the room, where the lawyer was going over some kind of paperwork with Magda and Sharon.
“Benjamin? Can you spare a moment? No, better, we’ll come over.”
As Mazzare and Jones went over to the table they were using, Mazzare asked, “Where’s Tom, by the way?”
“Gone to Padua for the week, lecturing,” Jones said. “It’s just up the river, about twenty miles. A day’s boat ride, or a little less, and a bit less back.”
The arrived at the table. The paperwork spread across it did indeed look excruciatingly commercial. “So while Tom’s away you’re handling the chemicals-buying business,” Mazzare said to Benjamin and the ladies.
“Sure are,” Sharon said. “The going got tough, so the tough went shopping.”
“We do well, I think,” Magda said, evidently satisfied with how it all seemed to be stacking up, although unlike Sharon she seemed to be settled in for the long haul with the mound of contracts and balance sheets. “Much now awaits my husband’s signature.”
“Oh, yes,” said Benjamin. “We have a number of advantages. Being in—ah, more rapid than usual contact has let us buy some excellent futures in the Baltic trade.”
Mazzare sighed. That was a euphemism for “radio contact,” of course. Yet another problem! Sharon had told him of the disturbing ease with which the Cavrianis had penetrated the security surrounding the USE’s use of radio, which Mazzare had passed along to Nasi in Magdeburg. They could only hope that the Cavrianis would keep it to themselves and that the League of Ostend hadn’t figured it out as well.
“Trade is still going on?” Jones asked. “Surely the war—?”
“Nope,” Sharon said. “Remember: we’re in the seventeenth century, not the twentieth. Wars are the business of princes, got nothing to do with merchants except being another factor in the equation. Trade carries on right through. Prices are way up, is all, and we get killer margins on anything we know got out of the Baltic safely. Killer margins. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“Oh,” said Jones. “But don’t we just buy stuff from the Baltic direct? Why are we getting it through Venice?”
“Oh, we are not,” Magda said. “But while we are here with the radio to get information, we can make good trades, which means more money to buy the things we need and which we must get through Venice.”
Something besides Ottoman politics began to nag at the back of Mazzare’s mind. Trading—?
“Hold on,” he said. “Isn’t that a bit unfair? Insider trading, or some such?”
Sharon flashed a rare smile; she was usually a solemn woman, these days. This smile, though, was purely predatory. “It’s not illegal here, Father.”
“Except for trades in state bonds,” Benjamin put in firmly.
“Sure, sure,” said Sharon, “but we didn’t buy any of those, and besides, in this town they respect you for sharp deals and stacking the deck.”
Mazzare decided he had enough other things to worry about. “Well, if Benjamin says it’s legal, and no one’s going to be sore at us over it, fine. Just don’t get anyone else annoyed at us, please. Mr. Buckley—”