After Midnight

by Robert Ryan

  Opportunity after opportunity to drive out the Nazis with a few bold strokes had been squandered by Allies and Italians alike after the surrender of Italy, and what was left was the worst of all worlds. How would the country rise from this? How could there ever be real peace again?

  Conti looked up and saw the faintest streak in the sky, and thought he caught an engine noise, a low whine bouncing between the peaks that ringed the lake. No, it must be a shooting star, he reckoned. He wished on it, hoping it would bring him, and Italy, luck. Because from now on, he had finally realised, it was every man for himself.

  Conti knocked on the door of the boathouse and waited. Offshore, somewhere to the south, he could hear the engine of the X-Mas patrol who scoured the waterfront each night, just in case the enemy parachuted in an aircraft-carrier right under their noses. He supposed it helped il Duce sleep tighter, but if trouble came, he doubted it would be from the lake.

  ‘Rizalli? It’s me.’ He hammered again, stopping when he heard the echo of his knocks thrown back at him from the water. There were few houses at this northern end of the town, none within 400 metres, but he reminded himself to take it easy.

  Two bolts snicked back inside, and a rifle muzzle appeared in the crack of the door. All was dark within. ‘Say it,’ said the voice.

  ‘Rizalli—’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘I am the perfect counterbalance.’

  ‘Then let the punishment fit the crime,’ said the voice. The door opened.

  The boathouse smelt of rot. A half-submerged wooden lake cruiser lay in the dock, surrounded by an accumulation of detritus and garbage washed under the doors by the sluggish currents. Conti smiled at Rizalli in the weak light of the oil lamp and held up the bottle of wine he had brought with him.

  Rizalli was a New Zealander of Italian extraction, one of the Special Forces officers the British had sent to help the partisans. Such was his facility with the language, he had managed, with Conti’s help, to get himself right into Salò itself. Rizalli took the Bardolino and indicated that Conti go upstairs, and he followed.

  Rizalli spent a few minutes searching for a corkscrew in the mess. Once he had the bottle open, he slopped out two glasses, put the bottle on the warped table and sat on the crate that functioned as the only chair. This wasn’t where Rizalli lived, he only came for the so-called Red Stocking transmissions, so the place was short on comforts.

  ‘I thought I heard the plane,’ said Conti, taking a sip of the wine. ‘A Mosquito perhaps. About fifteen minutes ago. I could have been mistaken.’

  Rizalli nodded. ‘You weren’t. It came. I got the transmission.’

  ‘Did you get an answer?’

  More fireworks, this time garish against the night sky, the colours flashing in through the boathouse’s single yellow-paned window that faced onto the lake.

  ‘They said no.’

  ‘No?’

  Rizalli shook his head. ‘Too likely to provoke a reaction, they said.’

  Conti found himself spluttering with rage, even though he knew he was angry at the wrong man. ‘But the effect on morale, for the whole country! Idiots. Short-sighted idiots.’ It was as he thought: every man—and every country—for themselves.

  ‘Furthermore, if we go ahead, they will cut off all supplies. Disown us.’ Rizalli’s mouth turned down to show he was not pleased at this development either.

  ‘Bastards. Just because they control the purse-strings they think they can treat us like castrati.’ Conti grabbed his balls in frustration. After a minute of oaths, he took off his cap and brushed his hair back, trying to suppress his irritation. ‘What will you do now?’

  Rizalli sighed and knocked back his drink. He shuddered. It wasn’t the best Bardolino in town, that was for sure. ‘I am to inform all British Liaison Officers of the decision.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘It’s what I have to do. I will send couriers out in the morning.’

  The Italian ran through several possibilities in his mind. There was another way to get funds, thanks to Knopp. But he couldn’t have the BLOs against him, not all of them. Conti listened to the long string of firecrackers, waited until the sound swelled and drew his gun. Rizalli’s eyes widened in shock and he made a leap for the bottle, intent on smashing it into Conti’s face. He was dead before his hand reached it, the flat crack of the Beretta lost in the almost continuous explosions of gunpowder overhead.

  The next morning, Major Riccardo Conti drove along the lakeside of Maggiore, with the water on his right, towards the Swiss border. Beyond Cannobio, the number of road checks increased, and he had to show his papers half a dozen times before he reached the main crossing point, a ten-foot-high wooden structure, like a proscenium arch, encircled with barbed wire, with a thick, striped pole as a barrier through the centre. A few hundred metres further on there was a similar structure marking the beginning of Switzerland.

  How many people would like to take that walk across that no-man’s-land? How many had tried and been turned back? It wasn’t uncommon for escaped POWs or fleeing Jews to make it within sight of Switzerland only, like Moses, to be denied access to the Promised Land. He himself had received calls from helpful Swiss border guards telling him they had a ‘package’ of some value to be collected.

  Yet he also knew of Swiss citizens who risked the ire of their government by helping Allied soldiers and pilots cross the treacherous passes over the Alps to safety. Once inside, the Swiss had no option but to process them, but Conti was in no doubt they would rather everyone just got on with their war and left them well alone.

  There were a mixture of German and Italian guards on duty, but he stepped out of his car and went straight for the former, singling out the lieutenant sitting in the wooden hut to the left of the blockade. He could have arranged this meeting somewhere less obvious, but he was certain that doing it in plain sight was the best way to avoid suspicion.

  The lieutenant emerged to greet him, and Conti presented his papers, signed and stamped by Knopp.

  ‘Do you mind if I make a call?’ asked the young lieutenant.

  ‘Not at all,’ replied Conti, cursing the man under his breath. The German disappeared into the hut, while Conti stood and tapped his foot impatiently, aware of the dozen soldiers watching him. The lieutenant returned, smiling, and handed the papers back. ‘All is in order. You must fill in a crossing order, stating your business in Switzerland. And the car stays here, I am afraid.’

  Conti nodded and followed the German into the hut for fifteen minutes of rubber stamping and lies.

  The café was just inside Switzerland, 200 metres beyond the wire, an Alpine chalet-style establishment, manned by an Italian-Swiss couple who looked perplexed to see a Republican soldier on their premises, worried the war was crossing over to their side.

  ‘How can we help you, sir?’ the man had asked unctuously.

  ‘Coffee.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  Conti had told the Germans he was meeting an informer who had information about the smuggling routes the partisans were using over the mountains to re-supply, and about the help the Americans—through the Office of Strategic Services—were giving the rebels. It was rumoured the USA wanted to be as generous as possible to the Italians, regardless of their political persuasions. The British, arguing this was virtually their backyard, were more cautious.

  He was twenty minutes late. Conti had finished his first coffee by the time he arrived and was on to his second. He sat down without ceremony, smartly, flashily dressed, with gold rings; a saturnine face with thick black hair and a pencil-thin moustache, carefully sculpted like that of a Hollywood film star. He smelled of citrus fruits from his over-applied cologne. ‘Major.’

  ‘Signor Leone.’

  ‘Nino,’ he replied. ‘How often do I have to tell you? Call me Nino.’

  ‘Nino. Coffee?’

  ‘Please. Your mother sends her regards.’

  Cont
i nodded. He had moved his mother and young brother to Locarno at the beginning of 1940, before Italy had entered the war. Nino Leone had helped her meet the financial requirements for residence by judicious movement of funds and opportunist bribery. ‘Is everything all right there?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Monthly payments still coming through?’

  ‘Of course. I would let you know, if …’

  The coffee arrived and they waited until the owner had retreated behind the counter. The only other customers were two Swiss border guards playing chess, and they were out of earshot.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Nino. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s difficult.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so pessimistic, Major. Nothing is difficult. Every problem can be solved. Well, unless you want to save a trainload of Jews.’ He gave a little chortle. ‘Apart from that … fire away.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean, if I am to tell you my proposition, you have to say yes. To agree to help me.’

  ‘Before I hear it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nino took a sip of coffee. ‘As you say, that is difficult. What if I hear it and then decide not to be involved?’

  ‘Then, Nino, I will have to have you killed.’

  Nino started to laugh again but stifled it when he saw the look on Conti’s face. ‘Forgive me, but that isn’t much of an incentive. What you don’t know, doesn’t hurt.’

  ‘A million Swiss francs, nearly a quarter of a million US dollars.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Now you know how much you’ll be hurt if you don’t listen to me. That’s your share.’

  Conti watched the man’s face twitch greedily.

  ‘What do I have to do?’ he asked.

  Conti leaned back in his chair and ordered a brandy from the owner. While he waited he said softly, ‘You sure you want to hear this?’

  ‘For a million francs? I think so.’

  The Italian took the brandy and threw back a mouthful. ‘We’re going to fuck the Germans.’

  Nino smiled. He’d heard that promise before. It wasn’t proving easy. Still, he had no objection to it in principle. He was pretty untouchable on this side of the border, despite Conti’s threats. ‘You and whose army?’

  ‘Me and Gruppo Fausto. Although they don’t yet know it.’

  Ten

  Lake Maggiore, 1964

  ‘I SUPPOSE YOU THINK it is like one of those Hollywood movies. I Married a Fascist,’ said Francesca.

  I didn’t answer. It was the day after her revelation about Conti, and I hadn’t slept well since Francesca told me of her marriage to the former Repubblicano. At least, that was my excuse. I had a feeling it would have been a night of tossing and turning regardless. After all, I’d come face to face with one of the biggest regrets of my life.

  Francesca had arrived at nine that morning, dressed in black ski-pants and cream blouse, and she had no objection to riding up the mountain to the old safe house on the back of the MV. As we zig-zagged up over the gorges, past waterfalls and dense stands of moist ferns, it was good to feel her arms round me, no matter how misguided her matrimonial choices were. The roads were perfect for a powerful bike like the MV which gave the steeper gradients short shrift, and I could lean into the bends, confident there was little other traffic, and feel her grip tighten and her body press harder against me.

  I had parked on the edge of the cluster of grey houses that was San Marco, and now we were walking past the gora, a stone pergola that formed the communal washing area for the village, towards the house, a big, flat-fronted piece of granite built against the mountainside, with a garden to its left that looked down over the lake. It was in that garden I had found an old neglected 1920s Laverda and spent days stripping it down and cleaning it, while Ragno helped, and eventually got hooked on motorcycles. He was a good kid back then, fearless and eager to fight Germans. I was glad it worked out for him.

  As we walked over the crude cobbles, I waited for Francesca to tell me that her husband was really a first-rate chap, to give me all the Mussolini apologia I’d heard over the years—how he’d never wanted to persecute the Jews, how he’d issued orders against reprisals, how he’d tried to make peace with the Allies but Anthony Eden made sure that his overtures were scuppered. About how il Duce kept copies of Socrates and Plato to hand, his own notes scribbled in the margins, his love of family, fencing and football, his concern for the environment and education.

  I knew all that. I was prepared to accept that Benito Mussolini was not quite the ‘complete gangster’ and buffoon Eden always portrayed him as, and the rest of the world readily accepted. But then I wanted to remind her that after the partisans had taken the small town of Montefiore in 1944, and then been defeated, the fascist Black Brigades had laid the Garibaldi units, the Communists, in the road, and let the Germans drive their armoured cars over them. True, Mussolini and his Repubblicani weren’t actually in the vehicles, but their bloodstained paw-prints were all over that scene.

  Then there was il Monco, the Austrian SS Major Walter Reder, alias The Stump, so called because he was missing part of his left arm, who killed 500 civilians in Sant’Anna, near Lucca, for aiding the partisans. Fascist officials had stood by and watched the massacre of their countrymen, approving the action in the name of il Duce.

  Perhaps, I surmised, she would talk about the need to heal the divisions, to make Italy whole again by burying the past. ‘So why come to this commemoration, then?’ I would retort. It was bound to open old wounds. But Francesca said nothing else to me except: ‘We have to go around the side.’

  She let us into the kitchen through the buckled door. Inside, it smelled heavily of damp and mould, but as I stepped into the half-light, I could make out the main features, once so familiar. There was a large fireplace opposite, still stacked with logs, and to the right three fornelli, the large charcoal-burners built into the top of a brick oven. This was where Francesca would make her speciality dishes—mule stew and mondine—roasted chestnuts—and talk longingly of the tordelli or ballociori her mother would cook, and of the banquets they would have after the war. Her family had been contadini—farmers, but relatively rich ones, owning land on the Lombardy and Piedmonte borders.

  The crude wooden table was still there; in the spluttering light of poor-quality candles—the Allies had destroyed all the power plants—Rosario, Ennio, Pavel and Fausto would play briscola or bazzica, the air thick with the smoke from their tiny but pungent Toscanelli cigars.

  I had tried to join in, but it takes a while to get used to the Italian forty-card deck: not having an eight, nine or ten was, for someone brought up on gin rummy, disconcerting. It was even harder to stomach the cigars. The home-made grappa though, distilled from the vinaccia, the pulp left from pressing the grapes, and running at 70–80 per cent proof, was a revelation. The taste for it had never left me. Ask my liver.

  Fausto would only allow everyone to play cards with washers. He told tales about farmers who would gamble for days after the harvest until their little stack of gold Napoleons, their land—even their wives—had gone, and then they would hang themselves the next morning. He said these were stories he had heard, but there was an anger in his voice that suggested it was closer to home.

  ‘It smells the same,’ I said.

  ‘I think that’s why I don’t like to come here very often. Suddenly, I am starving again. Happens every time. I have to smoke a cigarette to kill the hunger pangs.’

  She threw back the shutters, letting light flood into the kitchen. I stroked the table-top. I could almost trace the pattern of our evenings from its patina of scratches, wine stains and cigar burns. I asked: ‘Who owns the place now?’

  ‘We do—Riccardo and I. We bought it after the war, but never used it. I suppose for a while I couldn’t bear to think of anyone else living here, but that passed. I would remember it every six months, and sometimes would come up just
to let daylight in. A German is interested in buying it as a holiday home now. For a good price.’ I must have made a disapproving noise because she turned to me and snapped: ‘What, you think that is sacrilege too?’

  ‘It’s just ironic,’ I said.

  ‘That I’m not only sleeping with the enemy, but trading with them? Does it make you want to shave my head or tar and feather me?’

  Steady on, I thought, where did that one come from? I’d been long gone before such spiteful reprisals against collaborators had kicked in. I had no answer, at least none that wouldn’t make matters worse, so I went to the black wooden door that led into the rest of the house from the kitchen and lifted the ancient latch. I stepped into the sunless chill of the circular hallway, the steel crescents on my heels ringing on the terrazzo floor, and felt myself fall through into the past.

  Eleven

  Lake Maggiore, Italy, 1944

  KIRBY AWOKE STICKY WITH sweat, a single sheet over his body. As he tried to throw the cover back, a lance of pain shot up his leg and he froze, holding his breath. What time was it? It was dark, but he could just make out heavy drapes pulled across the window, so that meant nothing. A sense of the scale of the room slowly came. It must be big, because the bed was huge; he could barely touch the edges of the mattress. He reached back above his head and felt a richly carved headboard and could make out ornate plasterwork on the high ceiling. There was a pervading odour of mustiness, of once-rich fabrics decaying.

  He raised himself up on one elbow and gingerly pulled off the sheet. The pain again, less sharp this time. There was something seriously wrong with his ankle. He must have snagged it, getting out of the Mosquito.