by Mick Hare
“Good work, Friedrich. Keep at it. We need to be away from here as soon as we can.”
Friedrich smiled. Praise from Robert always meant so much to him. Lily could see that he was pleased and she touched his shoulder affectionately as she walked by his chair to make tea. She felt the sharp bone of his shoulder protruding through his skin and his coat, but made no comment.
Sixty-eight
Schirach was in poor spirits. He had missed his chance to snatch the doctor and his wife. He was working on a safer plan to do just that. But also, on his way to work he had been forced to pick his way through the rubble that littered the streets following the Allied bombing of Rome last night. For the first time he was allowing his mind to consider the idea that the fatherland might lose the war. It was not good for his blood pressure.
A knock came at the door to his office and an underling stepped in.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
The soldier snatched his hat from his head and barked out a Heil Hitler salute.
“Pardon mein Haupsturmfuhrer. The woman you asked me to investigate. The one you saw associating with the doctor.”
Schirach’s eyebrows raised and his expression lifted slightly.
“Well?”
“I have discovered several things of interest.”
The man stared at Schirach as if seeking permission to continue. Schirach impatiently waved a carry-on gesture at him and the man continued.
“She lives with a Roman family in the Testaccio area. She has lived with them since October 17 1943.”
“But that’s…” ejaculated Schirach.
“Exactly, mein Hauptsturmfuhrer,” interrupted Keppler, for that was the informant’s name. “The round-up of the Jews.”
“Is she…?” began Schirach, but again Keppler interrupted him.
“Indeed she is. Jewish! A Berlin Jew to be precise. Migrated to Rome following the suicide of her husband in about ’36 I am informed.”
“Excellent. Anything else?”
“Yes. She has two children, a boy and a girl. They attend a Catholic school in the Testaccio district.”
“How did they escape the round-up?”
“They were aided by their current landlords; a childless couple, both doctors. Both Catholics and natives of Rome. Signor and Signora Marino.”
“You have done well, Keppler,” said Schirach as he came around his desk and put on his coat and hat. “Come with me. We will round up these Jews and their disloyal hosts.”
Pausing at his telephone to order a small commando unit to meet him at the Piazza Berberini, he left his office and took to the stairs, enthusiastically pursued by Keppler.
Grete, covered in dust and sweating from exertion, stood with a spade full of glass in her hands and tipped it into a large bin that stood in the middle of the store. She wanted the Allies to win the war, and quickly, but she dreaded the air raids and the sights they left the morning after. There had been an initial reluctance amongst the Allies to bomb Rome. But after Mussolini had been deposed and then re-instated by Germany as a puppet in the north, that reluctance had been overcome. The growing significance of the Italian Partisans leading the resistance against what was now a puppet state of Germany, acted as an encouragement to the Allies to raise the odds. Since the Americans first bombed Rome on July 19 earlier in the year, Grete had never become used to the horror they delivered. Last night’s raid had caused only collateral damage to the pasta shop where she worked, but it still meant a whole day clearing out debris. In the adjacent avenue a family of twelve had all been killed. Her boss and proprietor of the shop, a short, round bellied, red-nosed Roman called Silvio Corato came in. He put his arm around Grete and took the spade from her.
“You must take a break,” he said. “We cannot open today. So we have no need to rush. You go take a lunch break now and then we will finish up this afternoon.”
Grete wiped her face with her forearm, only smudging it further.
“If you say so Signor Corato.”
“I do say so. Now go and get something to eat and we will carry on in an hour or so.”
Grete went into the back of the premises where there was little damage. Signor Corato walked to the door of his shop and tossed the spade full of debris onto a pile that had accumulated in the gutter. Before turning back into the shop he looked across the street and nodded towards a man in a grey trilby and a black overcoat. Grete washed her hands and face at the small basin in the rest room. The cold water stung her face but she was pleased with the refreshment. She put her coat over her shoulders, for her exertions had left her too hot to wear it yet, and picked up her handbag.
She picked her way over debris as she walked down the street to the corner. As she turned into Via Di San Basilio a gust of wind caught her coat, lifted it from her shoulders and tossed it to the ground. She turned to pick it up but found herself beaten to it by a smiling male. He was tall and good-looking and he wore a grey trilby and black overcoat. Grete knew immediately that he was a German and her heart stopped. The man said politely, “Permit me Signora.!”
But as he spoke Grete’s mind was thrown into total confusion. At first trucks came to a screeching halt. Storm troopers jumped down and ran to surround her. Then she thought she heard Lisa and David calling to her. She looked at the man with fear and apprehension and she then swung her gaze in a panic, sure now that she could hear her children.
Suddenly the man spoke in German, “You are not hearing things, Jew bitch.”
A shaft of steel shot through her heart. She had not been subject to such abuse since leaving Berlin. She felt all her hopes beginning to implode.
“Your Jew children are over there.”
Grete followed the man’s stare and saw the faces of Lisa and David pressed to the inside of the window of a military vehicle. Every dream she had dared to dream was exhaled with the desperate, “No!” which she screamed as the wall of storm troopers parted and she ran between the muzzles of their rifles, across the avenue towards the faces that called to her from behind the glass.
As she looked from the vehicle out onto the streets of Rome for the last time she did not cry, nor did she respond to the anxious questions coming at her from Lisa and David. She felt a numbness. She was irrationally worried about Signor and Signora Marino. They had been so kind and helpful. It had not been easy for them. When Grete and the children had first arrived in Rome to stay with Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Isaac, she had been forced to adopt a more Jewish way of life than she had been used to. Both she and Raul had converted to Christianity during their early years together in Berlin. Now, in order to fit in in the ghetto, the children had gone to the Jewish school and they had celebrated the Sabbath by attending the temple every week. That meant there were people who could identify them as Jews when the round-up came. The Marinos had risked their lives to take them in. She and the children had reverted to a Christian lifestyle, albeit Catholic in deference to the Marinos. They had been their saviours and she hoped and prayed that her misfortune would not spread so far as to encompass them.
She did not see Signor Corato standing in the doorway of the café watching as she and her children were driven away.
Sixty-nine
The holding station was a disused brewery at the western edge of Rome. Grete and the children were housed with twenty-four other captives, including Emilio Marino and his wife, Maria, in an old railway truck. They were kept locked inside and fed with bread and water twice a day. The competition for food was furious and most times Grete failed to secure any for her children before the men grabbed it for themselves or their families. Emilio Marino sometimes secured some for them but Grete was aware of an understandable feeling of resentment coming from Maria because of the position they now found themselves in.
In the day time they sweated in the heat and at night they shivered in the cold. It was the hardest and worst time for Grete. Her love for Sean had been re-ignited, but now she could only despise him for bringing her children to
this. She had been surviving without him. Now her children would die.
When Robert had turned the corner on his approach to the café he was overtaken by a posse of military vehicles. He had frozen in fear, expecting them to screech to a halt beside him and for storm troopers to leap out and seize him. But he had been mistaken. The vehicles had screamed past him and skidded to halt someway beyond the café.
Robert had stepped into the shadows and watched events unfold. He didn’t have long to wait. Storm troopers had disembarked from the back of the trucks and surrounded a couple standing on the pavement. The man wore a grey trilby and a black overcoat. The woman had been Grete. Screaming inside with frustration, self-directed anger and guilt, he had turned and sprinted back to the apartment.
Seventy
“What about these?” asked Friedrich. He was holding up the German uniforms that Robert had acquired on the night the two soldiers had killed the Italian Bolshevik.
“Of course,” said Robert. “It’s an idea. It might work. What do you think Lily?”
Lily seemed reluctant to respond. They had been discussing a plan to rescue Grete and the children from the holding station. This had necessitated an explanation from Robert about Grete and the children, who they were and how he knew them. Lily’s intuition had told her that there was something more than he had told them and, of course, she was right.
“They might be useful in getting us in,” she said eventually. “But why are we taking such a dreadful risk? I thought we were here to kill O’Shea. How many more missions are you going to dream up for us? And one other thing Robert. If you want our help I don’t think you should treat us with the contempt you have been showing us.”
“What on earth do you mean?” asked Robert.
“You just bumped into this Grete. That’s what you told us. Please, Robert, don’t take us for fools. Not if you want us to risk our lives for you.”
Caught out in embarrassment, Robert looked to Friedrich. Friedrich looked away. Obviously he felt the same as Lily, although he would never have said anything. In that moment of embarrassment Robert reached a decision he had been pondering for some time.
“You are right. I have not been totally truthful. But I am not going to go over the past now. I will tell you the future, though. That’s if everything works out. When we have Grete and the children we are going to send them on their way to Palestine and then we are going to get out of this corrupt continent and sail to Argentina.” He paused to look at them. They made no response. “All right! We are agreed? The ‘two birds with one stone plan'?”
Lily and Friedrich both nodded.
“Let’s do it!”
Dressed in the uniforms, Robert and Friedrich walked ahead of Lily in the direction of the Vatican. Lily and Robert waited in the shadows opposite the walls of the Holy City and watched Friedrich stride confidently in through the administrative workers’ entrance. As soon as he had entered, Robert disappeared into a side street in search of a car.
Inside the corridors of the Papal buildings, Friedrich showed the letter Lily had forged for him, to the Swiss Guards who challenged him. The letter explained that Friedrich was investigating information they had received that a Papal secretary, Monsignor O’Shea was being pursued by Allied agents and that his life was in danger. The letter worked and he was allowed to pass through to the secretary’s office.
O’Shea looked up from his desk when Friedrich entered, “How may I help you?” he asked.
Friedrich handed O’Shea the letter without speaking. When O’Shea had finished reading it he looked up and said, “This is true, but I must ask you again, how can you help me?”
Friedrich spoke, “My superiors are concerned for your safety. They are convinced that you are in imminent danger. I have been ordered to escort you to Gestapo SS headquarters where a detailed plan of protection has been worked out. We would like you to consider it. We hope you will accept our protection.”
O’Shea’s natural suspicion was countered by his surprise and gratitude that the German authorities were showing such concern for him. After a moment’s hesitation he said, “Thank you. If you will wait outside I will join you in a moment.”
Friedrich nodded, clicked his heels and went into the corridor. As he stood there he was trying not to convince himself that he should make a run for it. For all he knew, O’Shea was alerting the guards and they were already on their way to seize him. But, he told himself, that was the risk he had agreed to. So he waited. After a very long five minutes, the office door opened and O’Shea came out.
“Very well,” said O’Shea. “Let’s go.”
Robert sat in the driver’s seat, his collar turned up and his cap pulled down to his eyes. Lily sat in the rear, her scarf draped loosely over her head covering half of her face. Friedrich led O’Shea to the car which stood in the shadow of the Vatican’s walls. He opened the rear door for O’Shea and ushered him inside. As O’Shea settled into his seat beside Lily he felt the hard, cold muzzle of a pistol pushing against his kidneys. Friedrich slammed the rear door, jumped in beside Robert, who put his foot to the floor, and away they sped.
At first O’Shea had screamed in horror when he realised who his captors were. But Lily had silenced him by pushing the muzzle of the pistol into his mouth. When he had calmed down she explained to him what he was going to do.
The brewery building was partially destroyed thanks to allied bombing, and the site was now surrounded by derelict wasteland where worker’s housing had once stood. It was late afternoon when they pulled up at the gates in the barbed wire fencing that had been erected to enclose the holding station. Rail tracks ran into the old brewery yard, along which trucks had once collected barrels of Italy’s finest beer. At the end of the track, in the brewery yard, stood the truck containing Grete, the children, the Marinos and the other prisoners. The inmates were not a precious cargo and so security was no more than adequate. An elderly German Wermacht captain was in charge of half-a-dozen Carabinieri. The whole deportation programme had been run down following the main round-up of Jews. Besides, every German able-bodied man was on the front line defending northern Italy against the allied advance, and every able bodied Italian soldier in this sector, had been incarcerated or massacred by his erstwhile ally.
Robert brought the car to a halt at the gates and the Wermacht captain stepped forward, accompanied by two Carabinieri. Friedrich got out and opened the rear door for O’Shea.
Under Friedrich’s watchful eye and aware of the gun pointed at his back from the car, O’Shea introduced himself and offered his Vatican credentials to the captain. The captain bowed formally and welcomed O’Shea and his companion to the compound. He turned and shouted orders to the gatehouse and another of the Carabinieri ran to swing the gates open. O’Shea and Friedrich climbed back into the car and Robert drove through the gates and pulled up inside the old brewery yard. As the captain and one of his Carabinieri walked up to the car, all four occupants got out and waited.
“Come, follow me inside, Monsignor O’Shea,” called the captain and he passed them and entered the giant oak doors that led into the last remaining wing of the brewery that was still habitable and where he now had his office. A Carabinieri stood guarding the office door.
The four visitors followed the captain into his office, where he sat behind his desk and invited O’Shea to occupy the only other chair in the room. Suddenly rising he moved around the desk and approached Lily, who was standing beside Robert by the doorway.