The Vatican Shadows

By Richard Freeborn

Power comes from knowledge. Knowledge from information.

Vatican retains and extends power with information. Vatican is constantly ravenous for more. Vatican sends people like Pinion for information, whatever the cost.

From a frozen Swiss winter to summer in Tuscany. Pinion stays one step ahead of the Inquisition, teasing information from the recalcitrant and reluctant for his masters in St. Peter's.

Follow the danger in these five original stories: 

• The Merisi Manuscript
• The Triesen Talks
• The Laghi Plans
• Passage to London
• The Roman Rescue

In Pinion's world, indecision is fatal. Ally or enemy. Which are you?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Freeborn
• Release date: Apr 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781393299936

Book preview

The Vatican Shadows by Richard Freeborn

THE VATICAN SHADOWS

RICHARD FREEBORN

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Merisi Manuscript

The Triesen Talks

The Laghi Plans

Passage to London

The Roman Rescue

Author’s Note

About the Author

Also by Richard Freeborn

For Quiller

INTRODUCTION

Back in the late-1970’s, when I was reading a lot of spy novels, I realized I was up to date. By that, I mean I’d read everything from Len Deighton, Robert Ludlum, and John Gardner, and just finished Smiley’s People, the third of the trilogy John le Carré began with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

I was still reading mystery, thriller, and science fiction, but I was searching for a new writer, so there was a focus on my visit to W. H. Smith’s. This was long before Amazon, and in a time when W. H. Smith’s could legitimately claim to be a bookstore. As an aside, I wandered into a W. H. Smith’s during my last trip to England, and beyond, retailer, it’s hard to define what they do.

Anyway, at that time, the selection options were substantial and extensive. Somewhere between Gardner and Le Carre, I came across a novel titled The Berlin Memorandum by Adam Hall. I pulled it off the shelf and opened it on page one. Sometime later, the assistant suggested if I was going to read the book, I should buy it.

The central character in The Berlin Memorandum is a British secret agent, with the name Quiller. Quiller is a shadow executive. He works for a British spy agency called the Bureau, and appears in nineteen novels.

I’d never heard of Adam Hall, but a little research revealed it to be a pen name for Elleston Trevor, perhaps best known for Flight of the Phoenix, although he wrote well over a hundred novels short stories under his own name and several pen names.

Over the years, I’ve read and re-read those novels many times, and always come away with two thoughts. I want to be Quiller, and I wish I could write like that.

Being Quiller was a non-starter, if only because I have a minimal ability for language, and Quiller is fluent in many European and Asian languages.

Writing like Elleston Trevor? That’s a tall order, and hopefully, my many attempts are lost in the mists of time.

Until I had this idea of an agent for the Vatican in the early 1600s and wrote a story called The Laghi Contract. I didn’t know why I chose that time period until immediately after; I wrote The Merisi Manuscript, about the last days of the painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, which opens the collection.

Some things I wrote in Merisi pushed me to re-examine the Laghi story. I rewrote it as The Laghi Plans and followed it with The Triesen Talks.

The Triesen Talks stalled about two-thirds of the way through because it kept twisting and turning. At one point I had about four story threads running at the same time, and it took some serious surgery to bring it under control, and back on track.

I wrote the final two stories. Passage to London and The Roman Ransom, in the opposite order, they appear here. That wasn’t how I intended it, but as I came to the end of The Roman Ransom, that seemed a more fitting way to wrap up the collection.

And the magic?

Definitely not anything Quiller had to contend with, although the way Adam Hall extricated him from some situations still has a touch of sorcery every time I read them.

THE MERISI MANUSCRIPT

Mist came in with the evening. It drifted gently off the sea and covered the buildings with a damp, salty layer. The cobblestones along the street were slick and treacherous for unwary, or unsteady feet. The brilliance of the mage lights on the buildings faded to a hazy golden glow that puddled light in regular cones and turned the rest of the street into gray shadow.

Ahead of me, the man walked with small precise paces, like he was trying to avoid stepping on the gaps in the cobbles. In the dim light I could see his squat, bulky shape as the cloak flared like a giant wing when his foot skidded.

I’d followed him from the inn on the Via Aurelia. He’d left the coach from Rome while they changed horses. While I wasn’t expecting this man specifically, I knew it would be someone.

His owl shaped face had peered around in the gathering gloom before he tossed a copper coin to a stable boy with instructions for his bags. Then he’d started along the street toward the center of Orbetello, keeping to the right side of the street.

I remembered that about him now. He was left-handed, and he’d want to keep his sword arm free.

I stayed in the shadows on the opposite side, moving slowly, because my body still ached from long hours on the back of a horse. There was the stink of urine in the gutter, blended with the sour smell of rot and decay coming in with the fog, and it clawed at my throat, almost making me gag.

Checked again.

Still just the two of us on the street.

He passed a tavern, startled at the burst of noise and splash of light as two men stumbled out, arms around each other, and arguing loudly about the best places to harvest calcinelli, the local clams. The two men stood there for a while, large amorphous shapes in the half-light, before they laughed again. The fog deadened the noise as they hugged farewells, one coming past me, his breath a cloud of ale. The other stumbled into an alley beside the tavern.

By now, the man was a vague gray shape against the darker night. I moved quickly, closing the distance between us, and watched as he crossed to my side of the street and entered another tavern.

After several minutes, no-one had come along the street or entered the tavern. I don’t have magic, but the Cardinals trained me enough that I can tell when it’s being used. There was no aura I could sense, and I was reasonably certain no-one else followed him.

The iron ring of the door handle was cold and slick with damp under my hand. It took a second to realize the door opened outward instead of the other, more usual, way. The tavern floor was a step down from the street.

I felt the welcome warmth of the inside wash over me as I fumbled the door closed, narrowing my eyes a little at the explosion of light from the dozen mage lanterns secured to the black painted beams holding up the low, whitewashed ceiling.

There were maybe a dozen tables scattered around the room, with booths on the opposite wall and a fireplace. The scent of burning pine in the grate mingled with the rich, enticing aromas of roasting boar and chicken floating from the archway leading to the kitchen. My stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since early this morning.

Maybe half the tables had customers dressed in the rough practical clothes you’d expect in a town making its livelihood from the sea. There was a broad spectrum of ages, from a toddler being cuddled by his mother, to men and women who looked to have seen sixty or seventy summers. They kept to their own groups, but couldn’t avoid the occasional