The Religion by Tim Willocks Page B

tax and the bastinado-"
    "Which, as always, you will."
    "-and if I'm not taken and chained to the oar of a galley by El Louck Ali-"
    "Who is on his way to join the Sultan's armada, along with Torghoud Rais, Ali Fartax, and every other corsair in the Mediterranean."
    "And from where will Suleiman's Mamelukes sail to Malta? Alexandria!" countered Tannhauser, with satisfaction.
    Sabato waved the letter toward the dockyards beyond the doors. "Look at the Genoese. They cower in the bay like cockle pickers-but for a man like you the sea has never been safer."
    Tannhauser, always a fool for any challenge to his prowess, paused in his fondling. Dana flexed her buttocks to signal disappointment and he continued, but more pensively than before. If he could avoid the Moslem fleets converging on Malta-which with timing and luck was likely-the rest of the sea, for these few weeks, would indeed be uncommonly quiet. With the uncanny timing he'd come to expect of women, Dana ran her fingers through his hair.
    "I have no love of the sea," Tannhauser said. "It's a stony field I've plowed for far too long and I have many essential duties to occupy me here."
    Sabato glanced at Dana's breasts and she pouted obscenely in riposte.
    "Mattias, my friend," said Sabato, "eighty-five quintals of Javanese pepper lie waiting for us in Egypt." He fluttered the letter below his nostrils as if it were perfumed with myrrh. "And in a warehouse exclusively favorable to our suit."
    Tannhauser caught a glimpse of the Hebrew script. "Moshe Mosseri?"
    Sabato nodded. "Eighty-five quintals-and in a month it will be gone forever." He leaned forward. "Every city in Europe screams for pepper. The French won't even eat soup without it. Imagine Zeno, D'Este, and Gritti trying to outbid each other. Have you any idea how much they'll pay?"
    Tannhauser scowled.
    "You'll be in Alexandria in three weeks-make up the lading with mace, beeswax, silks-and in eight we'll be counting our gold in San Marco's square." Sabato had a wife and two sons in Venice, for whom he pined, but Tannhauser knew him, and sentiment alone wasn't reason enough to go home. "Would you like to hear my estimate? A conservative estimate?"
    "If I must."
    "Fifteen thousand florins. More likely, twenty."
    The sum was so enormous that Tannhauser was moved to withdraw his hand from Dana's skirt and massage his jaw. Stubble rasped on his fingers, and Dana clucked with outrage, but the sum remained just as fabulous as before.
    Almost as an afterthought, Sabato added: "For the outbound leg I've secured a load of sugarcane."
    Sabato sprang these enterprises at such an advanced stage of planning that Tannhauser was left with little option but to carry them through. The success of the Oracle had been conspicuous enough that they were able to open up new lines of credit, and quarry their old ones, more or less as they pleased. Tannhauser probed, without conviction, for another impediment.
    "A sailing master? A ship? A well-found ship, mind, not one of the worm-raddled sieves you've sent me out in before."
    "Dimitrianos. The
Centaur
."
    The thought of the evil stench, the weeks of boredom and blistering sun, and the Greek's interminable puling over his losses at cards and backgammon provoked an unwelcome squall through Tannhauser's digestive organs. Out of consideration for Dana, he suppressed the urge to break wind. "Put too many irons in the fire and some will cool," he said. "Besides, I've no love of the Greek, either."
    As expected, this demurrer was ignored. "The Greek is waiting and his pockets are empty. We can load within three days. The best time toembark"-Sabato shrugged and smiled as he passed the burden to Tannhauser-"depends as always upon your information."
    Tannhauser had one foot in each of two hostile worlds. To the Venetians, the Spanish rulers of Sicily, and the Knights of Malta, he was a condottieri captain of infantry, late of Alva's Italian campaign and the slaughter of the French at Saint Quentin,