Paranoia. What a wonderful word. A wonderful thing, too. It made the life of a field agent so much simpler. Jacques-Pierre Dumais stretched out on his pallet, propped his feet up on his trunk, and started a mental diagram. It didn't look quite like a spider web. More like two webs, blown together by a strong wind, not meshing, but intersecting in certain areas.
Henri de Rohan, the duke, in the center of one. For whom Isaac de Ron in Frankfurt worked and for whom Jacques-Pierre worked himself. Not via de Ron, but directly. Two different threads. However, he had, in that trunk right under his feet, well hidden in a secret compartment, authorization letters that would permit him to call upon de Ron if he should need him.
Ducos, the madman, in the center of the other. Well, Ducos and Delerue both. Dumais counted down on his fingers. For whom Guillaume Locquifier worked. For whom in turn de Ron worked, or at least pretended to. For whom Laurent Mauger worked—at least he worked for "de Ron in his guise as Locquifier's man" but not for "de Ron in his guise as Rohan's agent." For whom Jacques-Pierre Dumais worked. Or pretended to.
Their own rampant and paranoid security had broken a link in the chain that would have enabled Ducos' men to make the critical connections. With any luck at all, Locquifier would never learn that Jacques-Pierre was Laurent Mauger's Grantville informant. So neither Locquifier in Frankfurt nor Ducos nor Delerue, wherever they might be by now, would have a chance to connect one Jacques-Pierre Dumais, a garbage collector, with the Jacques-Pierre Dumais who was otherwise known to them as one of Henri de Rohan's footmen.
One hoped, at least, that the link was well and completely broken. It would be unfortunate if Ducos found out. Potentially quite dangerous, also. Ducos and his fanatics were a murderous lot.
Ducos might find out, of course. It was not beyond the realm of the possibly that he would. Ah, well. C'est la vie!
PART TWO
September 1634
Under amazement of their hideous change
Chapter 6
Grantville
Ed Piazza looked at the packet of papers that Martin Wackernagel had just dropped directly into his hands.
Wes Jenkins was very conscientious. He hadn't sent them by SoTF government mail. Like Henry Dreeson, he thought of this project as a "politicking trip," Ed supposed.
And he wouldn't have wanted to put them in the mail. That was probably prudent. The mail was a great thing for inquiring after the health of your great-aunt Gladys, but the fact remained that under the postmastership of Johan van den Birghden, the USE postal system was not exactly impermeable to snooping. Any more than the imperial system under the Thurn und Taxis family was impermeable to snooping.
So Wes had paid a private courier, like almost everybody else who wanted to be as sure as possible that confidential or sensitive information got from here to there without an intermediate detour into the hands of someone else's spies.
"He paid you at the other end?"
Wackernagel nodded and smiled.
Ed thought that he'd never let that smile anywhere near his daughter. How the man had managed to remain a bachelor this long, in a world that didn't have effective contraceptives and did have shotgun weddings . . .
Ed might be as straight as a stick himself, but that didn't mean he couldn't recognize a guy with the masculine equivalent of come hither when he saw one.
The courier waved and walked out the door. Ed waved absentmindedly in return.
Now all they had to do was talk Henry into going on a tour of Buchenland and coax it into a solidly pro-Fourth of July Party stance before Mike called new elections. Which they should be able to do. The news had arrived a couple of days ago that Mary and Veronica had reached Basel and were safely in the USE embassy with Diane Jackson.
Plus, the word from Franconia was that the Ram Rebellion had pretty much wound to its end with the face-down of Freiherr von Bimbach by Anita Masaniello.
Which left the problem that some group of unknown recalcitrants had kidnaped more than half of the SoTF administrators in Fulda, including Wes Jenkins himself.
Which was where Henry would be going.
Wes must have sent the paperwork before they got him.
Ed got up and walked over to the window.
Nothing he could do about Wes and the others from here. Anyway, the folks over in Fulda had already managed to get Harlan Stull and Roy Copenhaver back. They'd radioed that in yesterday. Plus Fred Pence and Johnny Furbee. That had come in this morning, barely in time for him to get a news release out.
Ed would have to work on faith that they'd do as well with Orville and Mark. And Wes and Clara. And the abbot. He'd spent a lot of time these last few years doing that—working on the faith that the people he'd sent out to do an impossible job would accomplish it.