Death bbwwim-7

by James R Benn

  “Yeah, you and me could clean up, Abe.” I knew Abe wasn’t serious, at least not too serious. But it was his line of work, and I understood that he couldn’t help but case out the joint, even if the joint was the Vatican. “But how would we ever get it out of here?”

  “Cut in a Kraut or two, and we’re all set. Gotta be a coupla those bastards who’d take a bribe, know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said. Abe had triggered something buried deep within my mind, but not so deep that it didn’t wake up to the notion of a German as a way out of here. I was already busy juggling what I knew about Brackett, Corrigan, Zlatko, and Bruzzone, so I hadn’t had time to think it through, but it had taken root anyway.

  “Abe, we all set for the morning?” I asked as we entered the German College.

  “Yeah. I get you at O’Flaherty’s room at 0830. If you ain’t there, I go with Rino the barber. We meet at the safe house in Trastevere.”

  I told him to get some chow and a good night’s sleep. There weren’t a lot of alternatives, but for a guy who had a way with locks and a new civilian suit, there might be temptations.

  Kaz had left a note in our room saying he was over at Santa Marta, and to meet him for dinner there. Not surprising, since that’s where Nini hung her hat. I strolled over, enjoying the fresh, cool air. The rain had passed and everything felt clean and new. Be nice if only it cleansed people, too. But perhaps there would never be enough rain to wash away the sins of this war.

  “Where’s Nini?” I asked when I found Kaz in the refectory, sitting alone.

  “Helping to prepare dinner,” he said. “We had time for tea. It was quite civilized. I do wish I weren’t wearing this priestly clothing though. It inhibits me.”

  “Maybe we’ll get you a new suit like Abe’s. How did it go with Cipriano?”

  “The inspector will canvass all clerics above the rank of bishop to see if anyone is missing a rochet. I assume that does not include Pope Pius himself. There is a store that sells clerical clothing, near the printing office, and he will check to see if anyone recalls one being sold recently. He thought there was a fair chance of finding out if one had been stolen, since they are expensive, with all that lace handwork.”

  “All that will tell us is more about the lousy Vatican locks.”

  “Well then, I hope you found something more useful in Bruzzone’s room,” Kaz said, a bit offended.

  “I did. Bruzzone.”

  “Alive?” Kaz asked. A reasonable question.

  “Yes, and looking like he’d spent the night somewhere else. He walked in on us, but I sold him on the story that we were worried about where he’d gone.”

  “Which was where?”

  “He wouldn’t say. He was nervous until we got to that question, then he grew a backbone. Sound familiar?”

  Kaz took a moment to think it through. “Brackett,” he said. “At the radio tower. When you asked him about Rudder.”

  “Right. And I asked Bruzzone point-blank if he was Rudder. He stonewalled me. As did Zlatko when I put it to him, although he’d stonewall me for the hell of it.”

  “Are all three involved with Rudder?” Kaz said, furrowing his brow. “No, wait. O’Flaherty said Corrigan was Rudder. What’s going on here?”

  “Correction. O’Flaherty said that Corrigan was Rudder. Big difference.”

  “I don’t understand,” Kaz said.

  Now Kaz is the smartest guy I know, when it comes to stuff they teach in college. But sometimes the simplest things elude him. Like this. “If everyone is Rudder, then no one is.”

  Kaz went silent, and I could see the wheels turning. He put all that brainpower into high gear, and it took him about thirty seconds. “You mean, no one is the real Rudder,” he said. “The Germans have captured or killed him, whoever he was, and are feeding us false reports.”

  “You got it,” I said, imagining how it might have gone. “The OSS team sets up in Rome, where the Germans nab them and their radio. They turn them, or replace them after they wring out all their secrets. Then they recruit agents and begin harvesting information. That way, they know what’s going on behind the Vatican walls, and control what gets communicated back to headquarters. So we get the real dope on Soletto, for instance. That was in the OSS report we read.”

  “So Brackett and Bruzzone think they are helping out the OSS, and their contact tells them under no circumstances to reveal their role to us.”

  “Yes,” I said, suddenly taking in the implication. “Which means the false Rudder knew about us.”

  “Both Brackett and Bruzzone knew we were coming, so it is not surprising,” Kaz said. “But what about Zlatko? He hardly seems the type to spy for the Allies.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he stumbled onto it somehow and was threatening Brackett.”

  “Or,” Kaz said, “he was a plant. To watch the other two. Or three, I should say, counting Corrigan.”

  “Could be,” I said. “It would be a good story. He tells them he’s really pro-Allies, but has to hide the fact in Croatia because it would be too dangerous. He could say he’s feeding the OSS dope about the Ustashi. It would sell.”

  “Billy,” Kaz said, “perhaps it is too dangerous to enter the Regina Coeli tomorrow. You might not leave.”

  “I can’t stay away, Kaz. I don’t think I could live with myself if I did.”

  “You may not live if you do.”

  “It’s a helluva spot to be in, isn’t it?” I took in a deep breath, as if a little extra oxygen might help things make sense. “I could stay safe tomorrow and regret it for the rest of my life. Or take the risk and live with the consequences.”

  “Perhaps you need some spiritual guidance,” Kaz said. “There is no shortage of that here.”

  Kaz was right, but the problem was the guidance went in twenty different directions. Seeing the Vatican up close wasn’t what I’d thought it would be. Instead of a spiritual sanctuary, it seemed more like city hall at election time. Politics and deception, all in the name of the greater good. Monsignor O’Flaherty was a brave and decent guy, but I wondered why there weren’t more like him, and no Bishop Zlatkos at all.

  Nini came to sit with us, but I made my excuses and left them to themselves. Or to be alone myself, I guess. I wandered through the gardens, trying to think through everything that might happen tomorrow. That drove me crazy, so I gave it up pretty quickly. I found myself in Saint Peter’s Square, and decided to go into the basilica, uncertain if there’d be another chance.

  As before, I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. I felt small and insignificant under the grand, high ceilings, and immediately wished I hadn’t entered. I needed to be bucked up, not humbled. I turned to leave, not finding what I wanted in the holiest of holies. To my left, I saw a sculpture. I recognized it from pictures I’d seen in Life magazine. The Pieta. Its title meant pity in Italian.

  I was drawn to it, even as I tried to make for the door. The white marble gleamed even in the faint interior light. The dead body of Jesus draped across his mother Mary’s lap, her hand raised as if questioning, Why?

  There were no answers here, only sadness and sorrow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Rind Messina was right on time, Abe looked good in his new suit, and the gendarmes had not taken me away during the night. I figured we were off to a good start.

  “Carry this, me boy,” O’Flaherty said as he placed a Bible in my hands. “You’ll look more the part. And don’t worry about looking a wee bit nervous. No man in his right mind would whistle while he works in that hellhole.”

  “Yes,” Rino said. “I am there so often it is easy. But even for the guards, their first time is hard. Strange, yes?”

  “Yes, strange,” said Monsignor O’Flaherty, leading Rino out the door before he could tell us more about how the place gives even the guards the willies.

  “You sure about this?” Abe asked.

  “Sure enough,” I said, trying for a jaunty tone. “We’ll be fine.”
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br />   “Good luck, Billy,” Kaz said, shaking my hand. We’d agreed that there was no reason for Kaz to come along, and some danger if he did. Koch had his photograph, and there was no sense in risking his neck on the streets of Rome. “If all goes well, we will dine here with Diana tonight.”

  “That sounds grand,” I said, trying for a confidence that didn’t come as easily as I’d wished. Kaz clasped his other hand over mine, and then let go, turning away to stand at the window.

  “Now, Billy,” O’Flaherty said as we stood outside in the small piazza by the German College. “You should prepare yourself. Sister Justina has been held for quite a while. She may have been interrogated. Harshly. There’s simply no way to know what her condition is.”

  “I know,” I said. It was all I could say. I knew about Gestapo kitchens. I knew about degradation.

  “That’s not what I mean, son,” he said in a whisper. “She may not be able to move under her own power. You will have to judge if it’s safe for all of you to go out if you have to carry her. It may attract too much attention.”

  “Judge?” I said. “I can’t judge anything. All I can do is try my damnedest to get her out. I’ll send Rino and Abe out ahead of me if I have to. If there’s any risk.”

  “Life is a risk, Billy. God be with you. I will pray to Saint Michael the Archangel for you.”

  “Send one up to Saint Jude as well, Monsignor.” Saint Michael, the patron saint of police officers, was the defender of heaven, having chased Satan and the fallen angels into Hell. He was a righteous holy warrior, but I felt closer to Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Michael had strength, but Jude had faith, and there was so much strength deployed against me that faith was all I could count on.

  “I will pray to them both,” O’Flaherty said. “I’ll not walk you to the border line. It will be better if you’re not seen with me. Farewell, Billy.”

  With that, he was gone. Abe, Rino, and I walked out of the piazza, crossing the white line, not giving the German guards a second look. I clutched the Bible to my chest as we took a hard right onto the Via delle Mura Aurelie, putting distance between us and the cordon of guards. Abe carried Rino’s leather satchel, holding the tools of the barber’s trade.

  “It is longer this way,” Rino whispered, glancing around at the few people out on the street. “But fewer Tedeschi. Now, no more talk. You pray.”

  Fewer Germans and a prayer or two sounded like a fine idea. Abe walked with his gaze riveted to the sidewalk, as he’d been instructed. We meandered through side streets, the mustard-colored walls leaning toward each other above our heads. Laundry hung damp and motionless from windows, the occasional sound of a baby crying or a child laughing breaking the silence. It was as if the city was holding its breath-for me, for Diana, for all the hidden souls. For liberation. I prayed, but not coherently. It was a begging, the big all in, the wager of my soul if only this worked and Diana came out safely.

  A narrow passageway led us out onto the Via della Lungara, the main road alongside the Tiber. I was jolted out of my dreams by the sight of the river and the city arrayed on the other side. Low buildings along the river, their orange-tiled roofs lit by the rising sun, and the rest of Rome beyond them.

  Rino touched my arm. To our right was a blood-red flag, the black swastika hidden in its folds. One block away stood the Carcere Giudiziaro Regina Coeli, the Queen of Heaven herself. I tried to take a deep breath, but my heart was pounding too fast for my lungs to catch up. My legs shook and it was all I could do to move ahead. An icy stab of fear choked back all my prayers and bargains with God, leaving only terror and shame at the intense desire to turn and run radiating out from my gut, cleansing my body and mind of all thoughts but that of self-preservation. But before I knew it, I was following Rino as he approached the two stone-faced guards at the door, my Bible clutched in sweaty palms and Abe in lockstep.

  One guard was German, the other Italian, in the black-and-gray uniform of the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, Mussolini’s Fascist security police. Rino nodded as we passed, the sentries bored and apathetic. No one got out, and no one wanted in. They had a lonely job. We turned a corner and followed a narrow passage between two wings of the prison. Broken crates and squashed produce told me we were at the entrance where Rino’s pal was on guard duty. It smelled like the back alley of a restaurant. Grease, piss, and rotting vegetables.

  Inside was different. We walked down a wide, tiled hallway, our heels sending echoes eerily off the stone walls. At the end of the corridor, a guard stood at a lectern, a notebook open in front of him. Opposite stood another GNR soldier, Beretta submachine gun slung over his shoulder and pointed in our general direction.

  “Il padre ed il mio apprendista sono con me,” Rino said to the guard with the book, ignoring the one with the submachine gun. I held the Bible to my chest and gave a little bow to the guy with the gun, figuring it was a standard priestly move. He surprised me with a brief nod, his eyes darting to the passageway beyond. I glanced in that direction, but there was no one there. Maybe he was waiting for coffee, or nervous about his sergeant showing up.

  I listened to Rino and the other guard speaking in quick bursts of Italian. He signed the book, they laughed, and Rino left a package of cigarettes to show they were all friends. The guard waved us through, into a large square room lit by high windows, the morning sun creating a mosaic pattern on the floor. It was spacious and bright, not like any prison I’d ever seen.

  Rino leaned in close and whispered, “We have twenty minutes only. Marcello’s shift changes early.” Abe’s eyes widened for a split second, then reverted to the bored indifference of an apprentice barber toting his master’s gear. That was the advantage to working with an experienced thief. I could count on him to keep a poker face and not draw attention. Me, I wasn’t so sure of.

  Certain that the pounding of my heart could be heard by the sentries out on the street, I followed Rino as he waved casually to the guards and policemen in the hallway. I willed him to hurry, but he kept to a slow, rolling gait as I pressed the Bible close to my chest. Finally, we entered a circular room with four corridors leading off like spokes on a wheel. The windows were three stories tall, topped with graceful arches. The room was painted bright white and the four directions of the compass were set in the floor, a colorful mosaic that cruelly showed the inmates every direction they had no chance of taking.

  Rino took the hallway to the right, which led into a wing of cells, three tiers tall. Circular stairs at each end gave access to catwalks, where guards patrolled, looking down as we entered. Each catwalk extended to the far wall where they curved around out of sight, connecting to more cells. Moans echoed from the far end, as a sharp, loud cry of pain came from the cell opposite us. I jumped at the sound, but Rino hauled himself up the stairs, as if it were just another day at work.

  There was a ruckus on the second tier, raised voices in Italian and German. Three men in black leather overcoats were yelling at a jailer, who was fumbling with his keys at the door of a cell. He finally got it open and two of them hauled out a prisoner. Barely able to stand, his clothes filthy and in tatters, his face a palette of bruises, he was propped up against the railing as the next door was opened, and another prisoner was pulled out. This guy had no marks, and his appearance told me he’d been in the cell for a couple of days, tops. Unshaven, grimy, and disheveled, but standing on his own.

  The third man turned to face the second prisoner and spoke to him in Italian. It was a gentle voice, soothing and calm. But I knew it masked something else. The speaker was Pietro Koch. He wore the same wisp of a smile I’d seen on his face at Saint Peter’s as he nodded to his two leather-coated accomplices. They tipped the bloodied prisoner over the railing, and watched him fall to the hard floor below.

  It wasn’t that far to fall, but he fell flat, the sharp sound of cracking bone followed by silence. Deep-red blood seeped out from under the body. His legs gave a final thrash, and then the body was inert, the inescapabl
e pose of death-all gravity and finality as the physical body became nothing more than a leaking bag of bones and blood.

  Koch gave an appreciative laugh, and patted his prisoner on the shoulder, as if complimenting him on watching the spectacle. Handcuffs were produced and Koch’s henchmen led the prisoner toward us as the jailer protested. One of them replied in German, the other in Italian. I didn’t understand the words, but the meaning was clear. Go to hell.

  They brushed past us, the prisoner wearing a stunned, vacant look on his face. Koch came last, stopping smack in front of me, his languid eyes looking deep into mine, as if they could see my thoughts, hook into my brain, and pull the truth out into the open.

  “Prega per lui,” he said, then patted my shoulder as he had the prisoner’s. He chuckled, a gentle, amused laughter, as he waited for me to respond. Behind him, Rino lifted his hands, palms together in prayer. Pray for him, he was telling me.

  “Si,” I said in a whisper as I kissed the Bible and took the stairs, praying indeed, but for Koch not to say another word, to not hear the sound of steel on leather, a pistol being drawn, a shouted command to halt. All I wanted to hear was the sound of my own shoes on the metal stairs.

  “Ma non per me!” Koch shouted out, and laughter followed from the other two thugs. That I understood. But not for me. No worries there. We went up, they went down, as the guards on the ground floor directed two prisoners to drag the body away.

  The third tier had a guard posted at the top, seated at a small desk off the landing. This must be the unbribable Fascist that Rino had told us about. Along the catwalk, a woman guard stood gazing at the scene below. Prisoners were bringing in mops and pails to clean up, and it looked like this was the high point of her day. Rino signed a sheet on the guard’s desk. He’d explained that since this tier was the women’s section, there was this last checkpoint, mainly to keep idle guards away from the female prisoners. Rino and the guard laughed over something, and another package of cigarettes appeared. The jailer thanked Rino and opened the pack, leaned his chair back against the wall, and lit up. This put him out of sight of the catwalk, maybe so he wouldn’t have to share his smokes. Whatever the reason, it gave us a break.