Mazzare grinned disarmingly. "Fine, you've got me on that one. But there's a world of difference between smoothing the ruffled feathers of a lot of bishops who think they're about to be forced to turn Lutheran and knowing what Borja's playing at."
"So you think it is Borja, then?" Nasi asked. "I don't have any hard information on that myself. I have, shall we say, limits on how much information I can gather on the internal workings of the Catholic Church. Or any Christian institution, to be completely candid." It was a blind spot in Nasi's otherwise—false modesty aside—excellent espionage organization. Commercial and political rumor he could have for the asking; the correspondents he had already had before working for the USE had been collecting that kind of information for years for their own business. Mailing it to a new address represented no great change. Developing contacts within the religious institutions was going to take time and effort that Nasi simply had not been able to expend, thus far. Nasi was hoping for something to come of his contact with Mazzare on that account; an exchange of intelligence with someone who was developing his own contacts within the Catholic church from a position of near-supreme advantage would be invaluable, given how much stock Europeans had in their competing theologies.
Mazzare nodded. "I do think it's Borja. And you may be assured that my sources are of the best. What I get, I get a few weeks behind the times, but all the thinking as of the last report was that Borja was up to no good, and almost certainly behind the attempts to foment civil disorder. I guess you've had reports on that business already?"
Stearns said, "Yeah, we have. Sharon saw one incident right up close, as it happens. Ended up having to help the wounded."
Mazzare frowned. "She wasn't hurt? Everyone at the embassy is fine? Any word on Frank and Giovanna?"
"All unharmed as at my last report, Your Eminence," Nasi said hastily. "That was last night, from Ms. Nichols."
"Oh, good." Mazzare's relief was palpable. "All too many of the people I have to deal with either don't know that their little games get people killed, or simply don't care. You will, of course, remind Sharon from me, and ask her to tell Frank from me as well, to be careful? From what I gather Borja's trying to revive an old family tradition."
"He wants to be pope?" Stearns asked.
"What cardinal doesn't?" Mazzare shot back, smiling. "Seriously, though, I was talking more about the way the Italian branch of his family carried on back in the day. You might remember that they were a byword for lying, scheming, treacherous manipulators as late as the twentieth century."
"Figures," Stearns said. "So you don't think he's trying to make himself pope?"
"Doubt it," Mazzare said.
"You have intelligence on that as well?" Nasi asked, intrigued.
"Not really. It's just that Borja can do the math as well as His Holiness can. There are only so many cardinals who can get to Rome for a vote in consistory, even now that Borja's called in every Spanish cardinal he can scrape up from every backwoods cathedral in Spain. Of those, neither the Spanish nor the Barberini party—of whom I'm pretty much one, by the way, since I really don't like any of the alternatives, and I like what Urban's doing—can really force an issue by themselves."
"The college of cardinals is tied, then?" Mike asked.
Mazzare rocked a hand back and forth. "On the raw numbers, yes. Normally, though, most of the other cardinals are out of town and His Holiness can get his way, with only a minimum of horse-trading. He only really has to persuade the cardinals that're in town—"
Stearns held up a hand. "Isn't the pope the supreme authority? I thought it was his way or the highway, and that was what infallibility actually meant? Did I misunderstand?"
Mazzare chuckled. "Well, that's closer than most misconceptions about what infallibility means. But the doctrine's purely for matters of faith and teaching, not the government of the church, and even then it only applies if the pope says it applies to something he's said. And when it comes to running the church, the pope's word is law, except for where it isn't, if you take my meaning. The cardinals are the governing body of the church. They were originally the principal priests of Rome's parish churches, you see, and selected their bishop from among their number. Whoever was bishop of Rome was also the pope as a sort of side benefit. Anyway, the pope rules but by law some things require the consent of the cardinals. It's a system that seems to work in spite of the rules, if anyone's asking me. Sorry, I seem to be lecturing."