Tom looked at her appraisingly, impressed by her courage in telling him all this. “I’ll think of something to help you, Elena,” he promised. “I won’t just set you adrift in France. Now try to get some rest. It’s late, and we need to find shelter for the night. We’ll talk then. I give you my word.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Four hours later he drove into a wooded area and parked the battered old truck between some trees that screened it from the road. He'd spent nearly all of that time thinking about Elena’s situation instead of focusing on where they should spend the night before crossing into France.
Poor thing, he thought to himself. What an awful story! She was too young to be left on her own. Too vulnerable to count on her own resources to see her through the next few months. How old could she conceivably be? Eighteen at most? Maybe only seventeen?
He mulled over several possible scenarios in his mind. But most of them entailed either danger or continuing loneliness for Elena. There was really only one reasonable option—not that anyone, besides himself, would regard it as reasonable—but it would involve both him and his family back in Connecticut, and he couldn’t even be sure she would agree to it.
He could offer to take her with him to London, where he would be debriefed at Allied Command Headquarters before returning home until his next assignment. She could join him when he was airlifted back to England, instead of remaining in France, and he could try to arrange for her be given asylum in the United States.
But perhaps that was too ambitious a plan. Even with his father’s political connections, it might take too long for her to be given security clearance and a visa, and he couldn't remain in London indefinitely to look after her. After all, she was a citizen of a Fascist republic and would therefore be suspect. The State Department wasn’t very lenient these days. He knew from documents he’d been shown at Headquarters that even visa applications from Jewish refugees who needed sanctuary more desperately than Elena did were being summarily rejected.
Another thought suddenly flashed through his mind, however. It was quite brilliant, actually. He could offer to marry her in some sort of civil ceremony in London. Then she would be granted automatic American citizenship. She would have a place to go to. It would give her child legitimacy. The marriage could be annulled at a later date if and when she wished. And his family was certainly wealthy enough to provide for her and the baby for the foreseeable future, especially if he were to pass the baby off as his own.
Yes, his parents could either be told that she was a war widow, because of the pregnancy, or perhaps he and Elena could just pretend that the baby was premature when the time came. That it was really his.
It didn’t occur to him to ask himself how this would impact on his personal life and chances for a real marriage someday. There was no one he wanted to marry at the moment anyway, no one he could even imagine asking to be his wife. So it really didn’t matter. It was the right thing to do—in fact, the only thing to do.
If he were totally honest with himself, he had to admit that he was half in love with her already, though clearly, she was still in mourning for her dead lover. So brave, yet so vulnerable, so heartbreakingly beautiful—perhaps things might work out for both of them eventually. But if not, he would know that he had done everything possible to help her start a new life, free of fear and stigma. He would never hurt her or take advantage of her emotional distress. There would be no strings attached. None whatsoever. He would never even touch her, he resolved, unless he knew for certain that she wanted him to.
He couldn’t blame her for what had happened, for sleeping with the young man she'd loved, under the most heart-rending and frightening of circumstances—when, he thought angrily, a priest affiliated with the highest echelons of power in the Vatican could try to blackmail a beautiful young girl into yielding to his lust; when life itself was so uncertain, fraught with danger wherever one turned; when no one could know how the war would end and who would survive it.
Whatever moral principles he might have had before the war with respect to premarital sex, he had seen too much suffering, too much premature death, to feel that it was wrong for anyone—male or female—to seize the opportunity for a few moments of bliss in the midst of all this madness, to try to salvage something that was life-affirming from the ashes of destruction.
And though he himself was sexually experienced, as were most young men his age, especially those stationed overseas during this awful war, he fully recognized that until recently he, like so many others, had been guilty of a double standard. Men could sow their wild oats with impunity. It was understood, accepted, in fact, that they had so-called needs that could not be ignored. But young women were expected to be chaste, to wait until marriage to experience physical love. Not that that had prevented some of the young women working at Allied Headquarters in London from letting him know that they were available and willing. But these were wartime flings, one-night stands that were repeated casually, when time and opportunity availed. There was nothing meaningful in these encounters, nothing long term, nothing that bespoke a commitment or union of souls.
War, he had learned in the past months, was not a time for pretences, for the artificial barriers that kept people from reaching out to each other in this most basic, most elemental, of ways. War reduced life to a simple will to survive, to affirm one’s right to exist here on earth. And hope, ever elusive, nearly always beyond our grasp—hope that there was a better future or indeed any future at all—that too needed to survive, to be nurtured, to endure.
He would not and did not judge her. Or if he did, it was with compassion and admiration for her courage. He would marry her, if she agreed, and he would let her decide, in the fullness of time, just what could be recuperated from the tragedy of her past.
Elena yawned and opened her eyes, forgetting for a moment where she was and with whom. He gave her a moment to collect herself and then said slowly, “I have a plan, Elena, or rather a solution. I think it will work. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
The following morning, a battered old truck with Italian license plates crossed the French border with little difficulty. The passengers’ papers were in order, and they were waved through the checkpoint by the indifferent guards. The tired-looking young couple disembarked near a small village not far from Nice, abandoning the truck in a deep ditch, after puncturing one of its tires and deliberately smashing a headlight.
From there they made their way on foot to the center of town and sat down at an outdoor café, where they ordered tea with five sugars apiece. The waiter scrutinized them knowingly and returned with their order, surreptitiously placing a folded piece of paper under one of the saucers. As the young woman reached for her cup, her narrow antique wedding band, studded with a few diamond chips, glittered in the sunlight on her right hand. She glanced at her companion, who whispered to her almost inaudibly, “Elena. It belongs on your left hand. You'd better change it before someone notices.”
She put her cup down slowly and hid her hands in her lap, under the table. She would have to learn to play her part more carefully, she realized. Her safety and that of the baby would depend on it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The train wound its way through twisting, serpentine mountain passes, moving northward from the border town of Chiasso, the last stop in Italy, along small shimmering lakes of crystal blue dotting the landscape in the distance, and on into southern Switzerland.
Seated in a luxurious first class compartment, Mauro Rostoni looked out of the window with satisfaction. It was not yet noon, and if all went well, he would complete his tour of the “Maternal Fertility Clinic” in Engenweill in time to have dinner in Lugano, perhaps at one of the lakeside cafés, and then catch an express train to Zurich later that evening. He had scheduled meetings for early the next morning with several Swiss bankers, followed by appointments with two art dealers along the Bahnhofstrasse who were known for their discretion and from whom he hoped to acquire
a few choice pieces for the personal collection of the Pope and for another project, a private collection that Rostoni himself was amassing and which the Pope knew nothing about.
He hoped that he would not have to travel to Geneva as well, but that might prove to be unavoidable, depending on what transpired in Zurich. He expected full cooperation from the Swiss, but as he knew, they had invited some of their German associates to the strategy planning session, and Rostoni’s dealings with the Germans he’d encountered in Rome had taught him that they were used to immediate gratification of their demands, no matter how inconvenient for those who were expected to gratify them. This, however, was a circumstance that could no longer be justified in Rostoni’s estimation, given recent rumors about the probability of an eventual and not too distant Allied victory. In the past, he had hidden his impatience with their overbearing arrogance. But from now on, he was determined, they would have to adjust to a changed situation.
In fact, the Germans needed the Swiss—and the Holy See—far more than the Church or Swiss needed them at this point in time. For the Swiss and the Vatican, all of the banking arrangements that Rostoni was involved in were a matter of business as usual. Nothing more than an opportunity for extra income and readily obtained profit. For the Nazis, however, there was much more at stake. The money and gold hidden by Swiss banks, with the active help and intervention of the Vatican, would not only help restore the German economy after the war, whenever it might happen to end, but without it, the covert networks established to enable Nazi fugitives to escape Allied retribution, in the event of a defeat, would be ineffectual. There would be no money to finance these Ratlines, as they had been nicknamed, nor would the infrastructure for the forgery of appropriate documents and interim hiding places exist.
The Swiss took care only of the financial aspects involved; the escape routes themselves were handled exclusively by the Vatican and its willing network of collaborators. Rostoni prided himself on the well-organized arrangements that the Holy See and its associates had made. Yes, he congratulated himself, the Vatican could be as efficient, perhaps even more efficient, than Odessa and Die Spinne, the two best funded of the Nazi-organized Ratlines.
Business beckoned him, and the stakes were high indeed. Combining this aspect of his trip to Switzerland with his more personal interest in the Engenweill clinic was a fortuitous situation. Rostoni felt that he was overworked at times, perhaps not appreciated enough by others who were also close to the Holy Father, and a brief respite from his official duties in Rome was welcome. It was a pity that there would be no time for a cruise along the lake or a hike in the grassy foothills, now resplendent with springtime flowers. But even a brief stop in the city of Lugano, before heading for Zurich, would be refreshing.
His alibi had been carefully prepared, though it wasn’t a word he liked to think of in relation to himself. After all, he’d committed no real crime, no offense that those colleagues who disliked him could or would ever discover. If he were careful enough, all would go well. The Vatican Bank would be flush with even more money than anyone could imagine, his German associates would be taken care of, and that unpleasant little business of Father Barrio’s indiscretion would be forgotten. The Germans would no longer be in a position to blackmail the Holy See into relinquishing any of its more unusual holdings, and they would be dependent on Rostoni’s good graces if they wished to survive the war. Moreover, Rostoni had long-range plans of his own for the unique pieces of artwork that the Germans had lodged deep within the most secret vaults of Switzerland’s banking establishments. It was all very satisfactory, he thought. More satisfactory than he had thought possible a few short months ago.
Before leaving the Apostolic Palace, Rostoni had announced that he had been called away unexpectedly to visit a sick relative who languished in a sanitarium somewhere in the Dolomite Mountains, carefully specifying no place in particular. His relative, he had said, with a sad sigh of acceptance and a slow, painful lifting of his shoulders, was not long for this world, and his presence was requested at what would undoubtedly be his cousin’s deathbed, to administer the last rites. Alas, he regretted that he might have to leave Rome for several days—it would all depend on his cousin’s situation—but sometimes family obligations could not be ignored.
Some of his colleagues in the Apostolic Palace were surprised at Rostoni’s sense of family solidarity. Mother Pasqualina, for one, had commented sarcastically that Rostoni would probably demand to be included in his dying cousin’s will as a precondition for performing the rites of absolution. But most of those who were privy to his travel plans took it to be a hopeful sign that the young man was somewhat less cold-hearted than he appeared to be.
At the train station in Engenweill, not far from Lugano, he was met by Dr. Gotthard himself, an honor he had not expected. Naturally Rostoni was easily recognizable in his cassock. He had debated with himself, before leaving Rome, about the possible advantages of traveling in secular garb, but since he was presenting himself as an emissary of the Vatican, the risk of discovery was a necessary and acceptable one.
The two introduced themselves, exchanged pleasantries about Rostoni’s trip, and then settled comfortably into the back seat of a black chauffeur-driven Daimler for the ten-minute ride into the mountains above Engenweill and Lake Lugano.
Arriving at the clinic, Gotthard dismissed the chauffeur and ushered Rostoni into a spacious suite of rooms that bore the nameplates of Gotthard and his junior associate, Dr. Martin Bumann, who had recently relocated to Engenweill from Saas Grund.
“Please, be seated. Some coffee or tea perhaps?” Gotthard asked. He signaled to his secretary, who was hovering nearby.
“Grazie, or should I say, danke,” Rostoni replied, “but I had an early luncheon on the train. Perhaps later. Right now I'd like to get down to the subject of our mutual interests and have you tell me about your immediate and long-term financial needs.”
“Certainly. And then perhaps a tour of our facilities? I assure you, you will find it most fascinating. And of course it will give you an opportunity to see just how your money will be invested.”
He motioned to his secretary. “Ermengilde, that will be all for now. Danke.” There was a long pause as Rostoni and Gotthard waited for her to leave the room.
“As I told you when we spoke over the phone last week,” Rostoni began, “the Pope is interested in promoting any kind of technology that will improve the overall health, and perhaps extend the lifetime, of all human beings. He regards any involvement of the Holy See in such an enterprise as his personal, sacred mission.
“I've been deputized both by him and the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, which you know as the Vatican Bank, to invest some discretionary funds in your scientific research. Of course, all of this is highly confidential. The Holy Father would not like it to be known that that we're investing in anything that could be regarded by fanatics within the Church—or worse, construed by the enemies of Christendom—to constitute tampering with the divine powers of our Creator.”
Gotthard nodded sagely, indicating that he fully understood the gravity of this undertaking and its possible repercussions.
“The issue of secrecy is so crucial here, I might add, that even if the Pope were to be confronted on this topic at a future date, he would have no recourse but to deny all knowledge of it. As would I. I hope that's understood.”
“Certainly,” Gotthard replied. “You have my word of honor as a Christian gentleman. And if I may be so bold as to add, we at the Clinic are gratified that you've transferred your confidence from one of our fellow countrymen—whose name I shall not even dignify by mentioning it at this time,” he added with a trace of disgust, “to our own modest enterprise.
“I think we understand each other perfectly. And now, perhaps it's time for you to meet Dr. Bumann and see our laboratory facilities, yes?”
Gotthard donned a white laboratory jacket and offered one to Rostoni, who declined. He enjoyed the respect and sense of pow
er his cassock gave him and was not about to compromise it.
At the far end of an adjacent corridor they took an elevator into a sub-basement, several levels below ground. Passing through a series of locked doors, they entered yet another corridor leading to four laboratories of varying size, all with large glass windows that faced the hallway.
“The first room is where it all begins,” Gotthard explained. “Of course, as you know from the name of our clinic,” he continued, “we specialize in fertility treatments for women who can't conceive without the help of science. Some of these women are ‘habitual aborters,’ to use the medical term. Others have never been able to conceive at all.
“The techniques we use are possibly fifty years ahead of their time. Perhaps light years ahead. Those details will not interest you. Or even if they do,” he added, “that is not the aspect of our scientific research in which you will be involved financially, as I'll explain shortly.
“We provide round-the-clock nursing care to those patients whom we do take on and our patients remain in the facility for the duration of their pregnancies and several weeks after their confinement. We have thirty beds, each housed in a private suite, almost like a miniature health spa or tiny luxury hotel, that can accommodate visiting spouses and the like.
“I don’t mind telling you, by the way, that we have had members of several royal families as our clients. That, of course, is highly classified information, since our assistance in the continuity of blue-blood lines is not something any royal household would wish to be known outside these walls.”
Rostoni nodded approvingly.
“Of course, this kind of care and medical supervision comes at a price, and our fees, naturally, are on a scale that few can afford,” Gotthard remarked.
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