by Mick Hare
Robert’s desperation stepped in at that moment and he stooped to a level he had not considered himself capable of.
“Perhaps I could do a deal with you,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe I could exchange information with you. Your wife can be traced.”
The spark of hope that ignited in the man’s eyes burned a shaft of guilt into Robert, but he could not go back now.
“Tell me what you know and I’ll see what I can do.”
The man, whose name was Antonio Bruccialo, remembered when Grete and the children had arrived. He was familiar with Grete’s relatives, who had been neighbours of his for many years.
“Can you tell me what happened to them?” Robert asked, making a decided effort to keep the impatience out of his voice.
“Well,” said Antonio Bruccialo, “No I don’t think I can.”
“Why not?”
“Because I never saw her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I saw her aunt and her husband and I saw my wife that day.”
“Which day do you mean?”
“The day they were all taken away. I saw her aunt and uncle. I saw my wife.”
Here the man began to weep and he paused to wipe his eyes, “I watched them as they were herded onto the train. I saw many, many of my friends and neighbours. I watched them all being crammed into the cattle cars. But what I am saying is I didn’t see Grete and her children that day. I didn’t see them getting onto the train.”
“So, maybe they escaped the round-up. Is that what you are saying?”
“Maybe I am,” nodded the man. “Maybe I am.”
After almost an hour of frantic questioning, the man finally gave Robert a name and an address where he might get more information about Grete and the children. As he was turning to leave, Robert fingered the brim of his hat and asked, “Why have you told me this? Maybe I will find them and send them where the others have gone.”
The man looked Robert up and down: hesitated. Then he said, “My money says you’re no German. The Germans are never as desperate as you. You my friend are a desperate man. For Grete and her children I am glad. But for me it is not so good. You should not have awoken my hopes. Not even for the few moments I was foolish enough to believe you. You, my friend, I will always despise. You forced me to make a choice I should not have to make. I chose to betray an innocent family in order to perhaps help my wife. The fact that you are a fake does not help me. If you had been a German agent you might have found news of my wife. The fact that you are not is good for Grete. But can it be good for Grete to have a friend such as you? I don’t know.”
Excitement and anticipation caused Robert to spend a sleepless night. He did not make love to Lily but he allowed her to make love to him. He tried desperately not to think of Grete as Lily spent her passion upon him.
“Is anything the matter?” she asked as they lay side by side in the dark.
“We need to plan our escape from Rome. There are rumours that the Vatican is assisting the passage of Nazis out of Europe to South America. We need to make our arrangements to join them. Tomorrow, you and I will track O’Shea, but Friedrich must find out how we can join the Nazi escape route.”
“Is it a good idea for us to travel to South America with a shipload of Nazis?” asked Lily.
“In this instance I think they will be more concerned to hide their true identities than we will be.”
“I have heard of a priest with the sobriquet ‘Father Rat’. He is apparently the chief organiser of the route to Argentina.”
“Argentina,” mused Robert. “How do you fancy a new life in Argentina?”
Lily rolled towards him, wrapped her arm over his chest and her leg over his waist.
“If I am with you, I don’t care where we go.”
Guiltily Robert kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “Go to sleep.”
Since arriving in Rome he had begun to feel more and more inadequate. The sense of achievement on completing his mission had evaporated as each day had passed and no announcement of the Pope’s demise had been made. If the Church did not announce the death of Pope Pius, then his mission had been futile. Unless, of course, papal policy changed in his absence and the encyclical was published. Also, his activities in Rome were so badly organised that his sense of discipline and order were falling apart. He no longer thought of himself as an Allied undercover agent. His mission for them had been completed and he had voluntarily cut himself adrift.
His actions were now self-motivated and independent. The need to eradicate O’Shea was irresistible, but his pursuit of Grete was a secret mission of his own that he had tacked on to their journey to Rome. By not sharing this mission with Lily and Friedrich he felt he had betrayed them. But he could not bring himself to tell them. For Lily it would be a slap in the face. Although he knew they would never love each other as he had Grete, and, as he now realised, Martha too in a different way, he had no desire to hurt her. They shared the same damaged persona. They knew the hollowness of each other. They could tolerate each other’s emptiness and deep melancholy. They still shared the same bed and their physical love was brutal and selfish and they accepted it equally. But… Yes there was a ‘but’. He had an addictive need to find Grete again to see if the fire of real love could be re-ignited within him.
The only semblance of organisation he had brought to the team was a simple division of labour. Friedrich’s role was to investigate and plan their escape from Rome. Robert and Lily would find O’Shea.
Lily and Robert would walk out each Sunday, like a conventional, married couple and hear mass in St Peter’s Square. After mass on their second Sunday in Rome it was announced that the Pope himself, newly returned from his diplomatic efforts to bring about peace, would say mass the following Sunday.
Sixty-two
The address was a café bar at the southern end of the ghetto. It showed evidence of once having been a smart and probably prosperous establishment. The exterior wall surrounding the window was lined with shining ceramic tiles in green, red and white, and the interior was wood panelling and red leather booths. However, the whole interior was now shabby and neglected - in need of a good spring clean. One or two tears in the red upholstery had not been repaired and some splintered panels were hanging away from the walls. Robert walked in and ordered a coffee.
“We have ersatz!”
“That will do fine.”
The man steamed the combination of coffee, dust and nuts and presented the thick, black concoction to Robert.
“Anything to eat?” he asked.
“A bowl of pasta, nothing more.”
Robert ate and drank at the bar. Three other tables were occupied; one with an elderly couple; one with two women and one with a young man – should have been a student but was probably a soldier on leave.
When the proprietor, a man with a wide moustache and receding hair, ceased serving at a table and sat opposite Robert polishing cutlery, Robert leaned forward and said, “Antonio Bruccialo recommended your café to me.”
“How is Antonio?”
“He seems in good enough health but he remains morose since he lost his wife.”
“Ah! Poor Antonio! His wife was a diamond. She was the most beautiful woman of her generation. Sweet Rachel! Such a loss! But tell me my friend – what is Antonio to you?”
“Antonio has agreed to help me.”
“But why would he? You are German are you not? Antonio despises all Germans, with good reason. You might have been our allies but you always worried the shit out of us. Now you are our masters.”
Robert leaned closer and keeping his voice as low as he could, said, “I am not German. I am Irish. Antonio guessed that and agreed to help me. You can trust me.”
“I can trust nobody!”
“Well perhaps you are correct there, but…”
As he spoke Robert pulled his wallet out of his pocket. He pulled several lire notes out one after t
he other.
“…there is a price for everything.”
The man took a handful of notes and said, “What do you want?”
“I want you to take a message to Grete Hidberg.”
The man’s eyebrows rose.
“What makes you think I know this person?”
“Antonio seems to think you do. Tell her Sean is here. Don’t forget. Sean is here. Tell her I want to meet her. I will be here in your café tomorrow at noon. If she doesn’t want to come I will go away and leave her alone. But tell her Sean is desperate to see her.”
“How will she know it is truly this Sean you claim to be?”
“Tell her I am the man who taught David to use a Hurley stick.”
Sixty-three
When the door to the café swung open Robert did not immediately recognise the woman who slipped in. It was not just the headscarf that hid most of her face. It was the cultivated invisibility: the deliberate insignificance; an air of non-existence that worked to make her almost not there at all. When she sat down opposite him she did not look at him. She made no attempt to appear acknowledged. It was as if she had been there all the time like the chairs and tables.
The moment most longed for is always the most disappointing. Robert would have disputed that word –‘disappointing’. Unexpected, surprising, wrong even. This scene had been played out a million times in his head and this was like none of them. However, this was real. Maybe Grete’s complexion was drier and more creased – but it was real. Maybe her eyes were duller than he had remembered – but they were real. And if her hair had been shorn and needed washing, at least it was real.
“Grete?”
It was all Robert could manage. When he spoke her name she looked nervously around her. A couple near the window studied the odd couple.
“Can we walk?” she asked, and without waiting for a reply stood and left the café. Robert spilled some coins on the table and hurried after her.
They walked for a long time in silence. At one point Robert attempted to take her hand but she pulled away and hurried her steps. In time they arrived at the river and Grete found a bench and sat down. The wind gusted in the trees and whipped her headscarf about her face.
“Why have you come?” she asked in some irritation.
“Grete? I had to. You know I did.”
“I know no such thing.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember what we meant to each other.”
She looked into his eyes for the first time before answering.
“What did we mean to each other, Sean?”
The longing in her voice was manifest. For a moment she was lost for words. There was too much that needed to be said; too much lost time to make up. It was not possible to encapsulate all of it in the next few sentences. Her expression melted slightly, as if recalling something akin to Robert’s memory of that time. But then her expression fell and she said, “Whatever we were then, we are not that now.”
“But then why did you come to meet me? You need not have. You could have stayed away. That must mean something.”
“But I did have to come. You have been trawling the district asking questions about me. You were making my life intolerable. Eyes were beginning to pick me out. I am a fugitive. I have to be invisible. You were making me the most talked about woman in this part of Rome.”
She then looked into his face, but there was no anger in her eyes. He saw uncertainty there and fear and excitement. He also saw love. He reached out and took her hands. She held onto them tightly.
“I cannot put my children’s lives at risk. It concerns me that I am here at all. I worry that you mean too much to me, Sean. What kind of mother am I to risk my children in order to satisfy my need to see you?”
Robert was stricken with guilt. After a moment or two he said, “Forgive me. I wanted to help you. I still can.”
It was then that she leaned in towards him and they kissed. It was a moment he had longed for so many times that he was not sure this was not just another of his fantasies. His hands and arms were hungry for her. He embraced her passionately and she responded. He felt glad that they were in Italy and not puritanical Germany.
When she whispered, “I love you.” It was an arrow of fire to his heart.
The words, “I love you,” fell from him as an unconscious reflex. He had said them before he knew he was going to. As they drew apart the sudden dreadful realisation of what he must do descended upon him.
“Let’s walk,” he said
Walking along hand in hand Robert imagined himself married to Grete. One, ten, twenty years. It was a nice moment.
“Give me your address,” he said.
As she wrote it onto the piece of paper he had given her he gave her his instructions.
“Carry on as normal. Do nothing. You have escaped their attentions for this long. There’s no reason to think that they are on to you now. Is there a telephone number I can get you on?”
She took the piece of paper again and wrote a number on it.
“It is the shared phone for the apartment block. I take the children to school at eight in the morning. I go straight to work in the laundry. I am there at ten minutes to nine. I stay there until eleven and then I walk to the Past shop where I work throughout the afternoon. I get home after the children. They arrive home by three in the afternoon and I get in at six.”
Robert kissed her again.
“Wait until you hear from me. I will telephone if I have to. But I might just turn up. Pack your things ready to leave. Necessities only, I’m afraid. But don’t worry. There will be a new life waiting and we will have little use for the old things. If it is not me, whoever comes will use the phrase ‘Hurley sticks’. That way you will know you can trust them.”
That was it. Suddenly they knew that this encounter was over and both were afraid. Robert pulled her into his arms and they kissed for one last time.
“Be brave,” he said.
“Ciao,” she retorted and they both smiled. She moved quickly away along the embankment.
Robert walked away thinking of Conny. He also thought of Martha. His duplicity with her had led to one tragedy. Here he was right at the commencement of another duplicitous deception. From the moment the words, ‘I love you,’ had escaped from his lips he had known that he and Grete could never be together. He did love her, and that was the problem. Maybe if he didn’t he could deceive her into entering his dark world. Like he had deceived Martha! Like he was deceiving Lily in a similar if not identical way! Because he loved Grete he knew he had to get as far away from her as possible – for her own sake.
Grete crossed the Tiber swiftly, taking the bridge to the southern district where she had her apartment. Neither Robert nor Grete looked back. If they had they might have noticed Hauptsturmfuhrer Schirach move slowly away from his position against the parapet above the Tiber. As his eyes followed Grete, another man moved to stand by his side.
“Follow her. Find out about her. Then report back to me.”
Sixty-four
Father O’Shea, closed the door on his apartment inside Vatican City and headed across the avenue to the Pope’s offices. The sound of Croatian voices carried along the colonnade towards him. An increasing number of apartments and safe houses within the walls of the Vatican had been allocated to Croatian Fascists who had fled after the collapse of the Ustashe regime in their homeland under the increasingly successful onslaught from Tito and his Yugoslav battalions.