Frank had his doubts. In fact, he was pretty damn sure he now knew what must have been going through the minds of some of John Brown’s more level-headed associates when Brown explained his plans for Harper’s Ferry.
He’s nuts!
But . . .
Apparently, Frank’s mimicry of the male-in-his-prime had served its purpose. Giovanna left off simply beaming and, in her own enthusiasm, gave him a hug. True, it was a brief hug. No matter. The feel of that nubile warm body against his was enough to paralyze Frank in the critical moment.
Critical . . . because his younger brothers—idiots!—opened the door to madness still further, before Frank could stop them.
“Why do we need the propaganda at all, then?” Gerry asked, running fingers through his hair. “Seems to me we’d be better off keeping quiet until we make our move.”
Ron chimed in, after glancing at Giovanna. True, Ron seemed to have reconciled himself to letting Frank have a clear shot. But he was still a teenage boy in the presence of an exceedingly attractive teenage girl. Which is to say, a functional imbecile.
“Yeah, that’s what I think too.” Ron swelled his chest. “Besides, I’m more of an action sort of guy anyway.”
Marcoli leaned over, his intense face more intense than ever. His dark eyes now seemed like coal. Glowing coal. “Because without the propaganda, Galileo’s freedom is only the liberty of one old man, messers! The people have clutched his cause to their bosom, to be sure. But the subtleties of the matter must still be explained to them or they will not grasp the full significance of his liberation.”
Frank finally saw an opening. Propaganda. Yeah. Propaganda takes time. Time to stall . . . and stall . . .
“Good idea!” he said brightly. “I’ll start working on something right off. I was thinking a pamphlet—no, maybe a booklet! For that matter—this really is an important and complicated issue—maybe a full-length—”
Alas. Antonio’s cousin Massimo smiled and shook his head. “No need, young messer! I have already written it!”
From somewhere on the floor he brought up a satchel, seedy-looking and frayed at the corners. From it he pulled a thick sheaf of paper, closely covered in scrawled writing, cup-rings and other, less identifiable stains. “Everything is explained here, for the people.”
“I help to write it,” Marius chimed in proudly.
I just bet you did, thought Frank. He’d seen enough of Marius already to realize that the Marcoli family’s handyman was, in the venerable old American saying, not playing with a full deck. Frank had an awful feeling that the tract Massimo and Marius had written would be of a piece with the rest of the plan.
He had a moment’s wild amusement. Maybe he could send a copy of that screed back to Joachim von Thierbach on an experimental basis. Joachim was the CoC’s top propagandist in Germany and a genuine whiz at it. See if a man can really die laughing.
“Maybe you could reduce it to just the essentials,” said Ron. “A single, uh, I don’t know the Italian. What the Germans call a Flugblätt. Means ‘flyer’ in English.”
Massimo and Marius frowned mightily.
“Most people don’t have time to read a whole long argument, you see,” said Ron. “You’re trying to reach the workers and the tradespeople. They spend all day making a living and when they finish they haven’t the energy to go through a whole lot. What they might do is read a sheet that convinces them of the main argument.”
Massimo and Marius still looked doubtful. So did Antonio. “But we must educate the people fully!” he protested. “They must understand.”
“Oh, sure, sure,” said Ron, hastily. “But full understanding has to come a step at a time. Maybe we can break down your book there into ideas a page at a time, introduce the ideas one at a time, let people work up to it. They’ll read a page every few days where they won’t sit down with a whole book, right?”
Again, Frank saw an opening. From the look of that thick, closely scrawled manuscript, translating it into comprehensible terms on short leaflets—if it could be done at all; he had his doubts; so much the better—would surely take weeks and weeks. Maybe months.