A Mortal Terror bbwim-6

by James R Benn

  I got tired of worrying and watched the scenery instead. On the left, a drainage ditch was filled with sluggish water, and beyond that a ruined farmhouse sat crumbling into the earth as weeds and vines worked their way through the masonry. On my side, an open field sloped gently away, down to a long green patch where water flowed, a real stream, not a ditch, maybe with frogs in the warm weather. Maybe fish. What did they fish for in Italian streams? I didn’t know, but the memory of springtime at the grassy edge of a stream came back to me, and I wanted to run through that field, feel the sun on my neck, scoop up fresh cool water and splash my face.

  A line of pine trees ran up to the road, forming a neat border to the side of the field. In the field itself withered brown plants and faded grasses hung on, and occasional rock outcroppings provided a shape and contour that gave the land its own definition. This was a place that people knew well, perhaps by name, a natural field where sheep could graze, kids could play, and lovers could go for a walk. I spotted a flat limestone rock that would be great for a picnic, and a tall one that would be perfect for shade in the summer.

  I wanted it to be summer. I wanted to be in the field, exploring it with the intensity of a child, the barely remembered sense of discovery and awe that a new place, a new object, a new sensation could bring. I closed my eyes and saw Danny and me running through a field much like this one, racing for the stream, splashing in the water and laughing without quite knowing why, or caring. It seemed, in that moment, that the field encompassed everything good, life at its best. Nature, youth, innocence. This field, and all the ones in my memory, held life.

  I opened my eyes. Above, a bird glided high across the sky, circling the field. A hawk. No, it was a falcon, a peregrine falcon. As he turned, the sun lit his blue-gray wings, a dead giveaway. A hunter on any continent. A flutter caught my eye, far beneath the soaring falcon, and I knew if I saw it, he saw it even more clearly. He tucked in his wings and dropped in a fast, steep dive, heading straight for a blackbird lazily making for the trees, about ten feet off the ground. The falcon hit the blackbird, hard, claws outstretched and wings wide, braking before the momentum brought them both to ground. A flash of dark feathers, and it was all over. The falcon carried his limp prey to the flat rock, set it down, and began to rip the bird apart. The falcon paused and gazed in my direction. Maybe he was worried we were a threat. Maybe he was telling me to get a grip, or reminding me that the field was death as well as life.

  As the column moved through the intersection, I did not look back.

  The road was ours the rest of the way, two hours straight to the Naples docks. The column snaked through the narrow streets leading to the waterfront. On each corner, Italians sold bottles of wine, fruit, and anything else GIs would fork over cash or cigarettes for.

  “Major,” I said, leaning forward as the driver weaved the jeep between crates of supplies and lines of American and British soldiers. “Can you tell us now where we’re headed?”

  “Not until we board ship. It’s all top secret, not to be revealed until we are sequestered from the civilian population. We can’t take a chance on Fascist spies getting word to the Germans.”

  “Okay,” I said. Next to me, Kaz shrugged. We could wait. The traffic stalled, and we bought some oranges from a skinny young girl doling them out from a burlap sack. Following her was a short, pudgy guy with a thick black mustache, selling postcards. He held a stack in his grimy hands, fanning them out for all to see.

  “Naples harbor, Anzio. Good-a luck, boys. Nice-a women in Anzio. Post-a cards, Anzio, Nettuno here.” He kept up his singsong pitch. Army security, you gotta love it.

  “Anzio. That’s about a hundred miles north of the German lines, Major,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag already. We ship out in the morning, hit the beach the following day. Anzio and Nettuno are two seafront villages about a mile apart. The idea is to get behind the Germans and cut off their supplies from Rome. Something along those lines.”

  “Something?” Kaz said.

  “We’ll talk when we’re on board,” Kearns said. He seemed to be in a bad mood. Maybe it was finding out our target was common knowledge, or the vagueness of the battle plan, or the fear that a colonel and a general would get their necks snapped. None of these things made me happy either.

  As we entered the harbor, MPs waved trucks to their unloading areas, and after a quick check of Major Kearns’s orders, we were directed to the main wharf where Liberty ships and landing craft of all types were lined up, taking on men and the machinery of war.

  “Here’s our ship,” Major Kearns said. “The USS Biscayne, command vessel for the invasion. You’ll be traveling with the brass. General Lucas is on board.”

  “And a number of colonels and other generals, no doubt,” Kaz said.

  “Yep, so keep your eyes peeled and don’t get in the way.”

  We followed him up the gangplank and a swabbie showed us where to stash our gear. Kaz and I had a cabin about the size of a janitor’s closet with two double bunks. Plenty of room, as long as the four guys didn’t all get out of their bunks at once.

  Up on deck, we gazed out over the five-inch guns on the bow and watched the parade of troops boarding vessels all along the waterfront. LSTs had beached themselves beyond the wharf, their bow doors dropped onto flat rocks where GIs used to sunbathe and fishermen had dried their nets. Now, Sherman tanks backed in, their engines growling as they slowly made their way onboard. Shouts and curses drifted up from the ships as the traffic jammed up on the docks.

  “What do you know about Anzio?” I asked Kaz.

  “In ancient times it was called Antium. Both Nero and Caligula were born there. Actually, that is where Nero was when Rome burned and he famously played his lyre. He had a summer palace in Antium, and Rome is only forty miles away; the sky must have glowed with the flames. I hope we shall get to see the palace ruins.”

  “I bet there will be plenty of ruins. Just not all two thousand years old. What about Caligula? Wasn’t he the crazy one?”

  “A bloodthirsty killer, a megalomaniac, yes. But Nero was no prize either. He had his own mother killed for plotting against him.”

  “Both sons of Anzio,” I said.

  “Ironic that we are pursuing a killer, perhaps a madman, to that very place.”

  “Is he a madman? It seems he has a plan, of sorts. The playing cards, plus the murder of Inzerillo, pushing Cole to suicide. These aren’t sudden or random. They’re deliberate, linked in some way we can’t yet understand.”

  “Billy, we don’t know for certain that Inzerillo’s killer is the same man.”

  “It’s a good bet. His joint was frequented by the Third Platoon, Landry was mixed up with some girl there, and we have conflicting stories about damage done. Somebody’s hiding something, and I think that has something to do with Inzerillo being silenced. What I don’t see anywhere is a motive. For any of this.”

  “Caligula was a madman, but he managed to run an empire. Being insane doesn’t mean one is out of control. It is another way of seeing the world.”

  “So our guy has his own set of rules?”

  “Yes, rules that make sense to him. Perhaps he views us as out of step with reality.”

  “Being in the army, it would be hard to keep to your own rules, your personal sense of reality.”

  “It is difficult, maintaining individuality in such a large organization that demands obedience and discipline.”

  “Yeah, it’s hard enough for guys like us,” I said. I felt I had the thread of an idea, but didn’t know how to put it into words. “But our Caligula, he’d have a real hard time of it, wouldn’t he?”

  “Are you getting at his motive?”

  “Maybe. I’ve been trying to think of the usual motives. Greed, passion, revenge. But what if it’s beyond that? Something we can’t imagine, but that he desperately needs to cover up?”

  “That would mean the victims all knew something. Something that got
them killed.”

  “A lieutenant, a captain, a major, a pimp, and a sergeant. What did they have in common, and what did they know?”

  “Perhaps we should be asking which colonel and which general have something in common with them,” Kaz said.

  “We’re not going to get a senior officer to admit knowing a pimp. And Captain Galante wasn’t really part of Landry’s Third Platoon crowd.”

  “But Landry and Galante were connected. They knew each other from before Galante was transferred to the hospital at Caserta. Sergeant Cole was transferred to Caserta courtesy of Captain Galante.”

  “I can see some connection there,” I said. “But I don’t see how it all hangs together, and where it’s going. I keep thinking we have to go back to the beginning, that there’s something we got wrong from the start.”

  “Like what?” Kaz asked.

  “Wish I knew, buddy, wish I knew.” We stood in silence, feet up on the rail, watching the activity on the wharf. It was a nice day, maybe mid-fifties, a hazy sky and calm waters. A good day for watching a parade. A bad day for solving mysteries.

  “Look,” said Kaz, as he pointed to a column of blue uniforms advancing along the wharf. Carabinieri. About a hundred, maybe more, marching in good order, packs on their backs and rifles slung over their shoulders. They halted before the Liberty ship next to us and began to file aboard, their boots clanging against the metal gangplank. Lieutenant Luca Amatori brought up the rear, giving his boss, Captain Trevisi, a snappy salute before he followed his men up. It was hard to make out at that distance, but I got the impression Trevisi was as glad to stay on shore as Luca was to leave him there. At the top of the gangplank, Trevisi saluted again, and leaned on the deck, just as we were doing, watching the massive preparations.

  “I didn’t have a chance to ask you about Luca and the concentration camp,” I said. “What did you find out?”

  “I spoke to a friend on the staff of British Army Intelligence, a fellow Pole. He had a file on Lieutenant Amatori. Our friend Luca was posted to the island of Rab, in the Adriatic, off the coast of Yugoslavia. The Fourteenth Carabinieri Battalion was charged with guarding a concentration camp there, mainly for Yugoslav civilians suspected of partisan activities. Mostly Slovenes and Croatians, often entire families if they were thought to have helped the partisans.”

  “He did say something about partisan activities,” I said, reluctant to change my opinion about the likable Luca.

  “Yes, but the Italian and German anti-partisan sweeps were particularly brutal, and more than a thousand died of starvation in the camp itself. It held more than fifteen thousand prisoners, many housed only in tents, even in winter. Men, women, and children, including about three thousand Jews.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “The story is not quite clear. There are references to complaints made to Rome by the commander of the Fourteenth Carabinieri Battalion, protesting the treatment of Yugoslavs. The Jews, all Yugoslavian, were treated much better than the partisan prisoners. Apparently the Jews, having not been part of the partisan movement, were viewed as being in protective custody.”

  “But in a concentration camp.”

  “Yes, the Fascist government did put them in the camps, in Italy as well as Yugoslavia. Some were worse than others, depending on the whim or politics of the commander. When Mussolini fell, the new government ordered the Jews released, but gave them the option of staying in the camps, in case they feared being rounded up by the Germans.”

  “That’s a hell of a choice.”

  “Indeed. A few hundred joined the partisans to fight, others fled to partisan-held territory. But about two hundred were too old or sick to be moved. The Germans took over the camp and transported them to another camp in Poland. Auschwitz, I think it was.”

  “Auschwitz? Diana mentioned Auschwitz, and another camp in Poland, Belzec.”

  “The Germans seem to prefer Poland as their killing ground,” Kaz said. “Belzec was the first camp set up, but Auschwitz has grown into a huge operation. I wrote a paper detailing what is known about it while I was in London with the Polish government-in-exile. Three main camps, over twenty-five satellite camps. Inmates are put to work on war industries, and often worked to death.”

  “It may be worse than that,” I said. The warm sea breeze on my face felt odd, as if nothing of beauty or any pleasant sensation should intrude upon these words. I told Kaz everything Diana had told me, and watched his face harden with disbelief, horror, anger, and all the emotions I had gone through. It couldn’t be true, that was the first response of any sane person.

  “Oh my God,” Kaz said. “Witold Pilecki.”

  “Who?”

  “Captain Witold Pilecki, of the Polish Army. In 1940, he volunteered as part of a Polish resistance operation to be imprisoned in Auschwitz.”

  “That’s one brave guy, or a fool.”

  “Many people thought the latter, especially after his reports were smuggled out. The underground delivered them to London. He talked about the mass killings, and requested arms and assistance to free the prisoners. His request was never granted. He was thought to be exaggerating, either deliberately or as a result of conditions in the camp. His report stated that two million people had been killed there, during a three-year period. He simply was written off since no one believed the numbers he was reporting.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He escaped, last April. I think he must be with the Home Army, the Polish underground.”

  “Three years in hell, and no one believes him.”

  “Does anyone believe Diana?”

  “I do. But I don’t think Kim Philby did. Or he didn’t want to. Or couldn’t.”

  I watched Luca Amatori on the deck of the Liberty ship next to us. He was enjoying the sun and the breeze, maybe feeling he was part of some grand plan, helping to liberate another piece of his homeland. Did he ever think about the two hundred sick and elderly Jews he left behind on Rab? Did they ever disturb his sleep? What else did he do, hunting partisans in the mountains of Yugoslavia, that might haunt him at night?

  There was so much evil in this war. Maybe Luca was a good man, maybe not. Maybe he had been a good man once, before the shooting started. Before the hard choices. That’s how evil made its way in this world. Not with a devil’s face, as the nuns taught us. It slithered between the cracks, caught decent people off guard, dragged them along until they were in too far. Then it made them into something they never thought they could ever be.

  Had our killer, our Caligula, once been innocent? Had evil snuck up on him, or was it an old friend? Death was everywhere. Soldiers and civilians, the grim and the meek, they were all drawn into this killing machine that sucked in souls from the front lines, the air, the water, from quiet homes far from the fighting. Why should some fool be allowed to feed the machine more than it demanded? That trumped evil in my book.

  A column of GIs passed below us, and I saw Danny’s face, glasses on his freckled nose under a helmet that looked way too large. I started to cry out, but it wasn’t him. The kid didn’t have his walk, and the set of his shoulders wasn’t right. Somebody else’s kid brother.

  I covered my face with my hands and prayed. Prayed for Danny, for his innocence, even harder than I had prayed for his life. It seemed so precious.

  When I looked up, Kaz was gone. Probably in search of better company. There was a flurry of salutes on the deck below, and I figured it had to be senior brass coming aboard. It was Major General John Lucas, commander of VI Corps and this whole damned invasion. He pulled himself up the steel stairs-ladders, I think the Navy insisted on calling them-huffing a bit as he made it to the upper deck. He turned and addressed the crowd on the lower deck, mostly correspondents and headquarters types. I saw Phil Einsmann waving and I waved back, but he was trying to ask the general a question, not flag down a drinking buddy. He got the general’s attention and shouted above all the others.

  “General Lucas, any comment on
where we’re headed?”

  “It’s top secret,” Lucas said, and then waited a beat. “But no one told the street vendors, I hear, so I’ll tell you what you already know. It’s Anzio.”

  That got a laugh among the reporters, and a halfhearted cheer from the officers. General Lucas looked amused, like a banker at a Rotary Club luncheon who just told a joke. He had a stout banker’s body and gray hair. He didn’t look like much, but I’d heard he’d been a cavalry officer on Pershing’s Punitive Expedition into Mexico, and then wounded in the Great War. There had to be some fire left in the man, but he was keeping it tamped down, as far as I could see.

  “Are you headed for Rome once you’re ashore?”

  “Are you going to attack the Germans from the north?”

  “What strength do you have?”

  These and a dozen other questions were shouted out while Lucas signaled for quiet.

  “Now that you’re all on board and under armed guard,” he said, to another round of polite laughter, “I can answer your questions. My orders are to secure a beachhead in the Anzio area and advance upon the Alban Hills. We expect the enemy to put up a stiff resistance and respond rapidly with reinforcements. Therefore, the primary mission of VI Corps is to seize and secure the beachhead. I have the British First Division, the U.S. Third Division, and other attached troops, including Rangers, paratroops, and British Commandos. We’re going to give the Germans a surprise, I’ll tell you that.”

  “What about after the beachhead?” Einsmann shouted. “Are you going to take the high ground?”

  “The Alban Hills are nearly thirty miles from the beachhead. We’re not going to rush into anything. We can’t afford to stick our neck out and make a mad dash for the Alban Hills, or Rome, or anywhere else. Seize, secure, defend, and build up. That’s what I aim to do. Thank you, gentlemen.”