The Saboteurs
Page 1
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THE LAST HEROES
THE SECRET WARRIORS
THE SOLDIER SPIES
THE FIGHTING AGENTS
THE SABOTEURS
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ALSO BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN
HONOR BOUND
HONOR BOUND
BLOOD AND HONOR
SECRET HONOR
BROTHERHOOD OF WAR
BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS
BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS
BOOK III: THE MAJORS
BOOK IV: THE COLONELS
BOOK V: THE BERETS
BOOK VI: THE GENERALS
BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED
BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS
BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS
THE CORPS
BOOK I: SEMPER FI
BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS
BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK
BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND
BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE
BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT
BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES
BOOK VIII: IN DANGER’S PATH
BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE
BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!
BADGE OF HONOR
BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE
BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS
BOOK III: THE VICTIM
BOOK IV: THE WITNESS
BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN
BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS
BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS
BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE
MEN AT WAR
BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES
BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS
BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES
BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS
BOOK V: THE SABOTEURS
(with William E. Butterworth IV)
PRESIDENTIAL AGENT
BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT
BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE
BOOK III: THE HUNTERS
THE SABOTEURS
W.E.B. GRIFFIN
AND WILLIAM E. BUTTERWORTH IV
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
THE SABOTEURS
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the authors
Copyright © 2006 by William E. Butterworth IV.
copyright © 2007 by W. E. B. Griffin.
Cover design © 2006 by mjcdesign.com.
Cover photograph © Jack Delano/Corbis.
Cover typographic styling by Lawrence Ratzkin.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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ISBN: 9781101424995
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THE MEN AT WAR SERIES IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED IN HONOR OF:
Lieutenant Aaron Bank, Infantry, AUS, detailed OSS
(Later Colonel, Special Forces)
November 23, 1902–April 1, 2004
Lieutenant William E. Colby, Infantry, AUS, detailed OSS
(Later Ambassador and Director, CIA)
January 4, 1920–April 28, 1996
It is no use saying,
We are doing our best.”
You have got to succeed in doing
what is necessary.
—Winston S. Churchill, British Prime Minister
CONTENTS
I
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
II
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
[ FIVE ]
III
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
IV
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
V
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
[ FIVE ]
VI
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
VII
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
VIII
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
IX
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
X
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
[ FIVE ]
XI
[ ONE ]
[ TWO ]
[ THREE ]
[ FOUR ]
THE SABOTEURS
[ ONE ]
Villa del Archimedes
Partanna, Sicily
1215 25 February 1943
I do not want to die that way, Professor Arturo Rossi thought as he looked through the doorway at the far end of the tiled hallway. It’s utterly terrible…inhuman.
His light olive skin paler than usual, the tall, slight fifty-five-year-old felt himself swaying, faint from all he had seen.
The bruised, disfigured bodies of four men lay strapped to battered wooden gurneys inside the room. The ancient villa on the hillside overlooking the Mediterranean Sea had six such rooms off of the common hall, three on either side, each of cold coarse stone with the windows to the outside boarded over. More than thirty men also lay bound to gurneys in the other rooms, lit by harsh light—alive, but barely.
A warm hand gently gripped Rossi’s left upper arm, steadying him, and he turned to look at his soft-spoken old friend from the University of Palermo.
Dr. Giuseppe Napoli, his wild mane of white hair flowing, had brought Rossi here to witness with his own eyes the unspeakable acts that were being committed by the German Schutzstaffel—the SS.
Rossi had followed the elderly physician’s stooped walk down the hallway in shocked silence. He had glanced through the staggered doorways and noticed that the condition of the men worsened room to room, from mildly sedated with no obvious illness to grave with astonishing symptoms.
And then they had come to this last room, with its horrid stench of death.
It was the worst of all.
The torsos were mostly covered by dirty gray sweat-and blood-stained gowns, the arms and legs exposed, and the wrists and ankles secured to the gurneys by worn-leather straps. All the bodies bore some sort of rash. The legs on a couple also showed small open wounds—infected and festering—while the arms and legs of the others were spotted with blisters filled with dark fluid.
Rossi noticed that the smell of rotting flesh was made worse—if that was possible—by the unemptied tin buckets hanging beneath the gurneys. These held what had been the contents of the men’s bowels, which with all Teutonic efficiency had passed through a hole fashioned in the gurneys for unattended evacuation.
Rossi quickly turned away from the doorway. His throat contracted, and he felt his eyes moisten, then a tear slip down his right cheek.
It was clear that these men—all Sicilians, as his friend had warned him—suffered greatly in their final weeks and days. Yet the contorted faces of the dead suggested that not even death had brought them any real peace.
Rossi realized that what disturbed him—beyond the obvious outrage at such atrocities against his fellow man—was that foreigners could come in and inflict such terrible things upon Sicilians in their own country in a villa named for Archimedes, perhaps the greatest of all Sicilians.
And that they could do it with what appeared to be absolute impunity.
But how can anything be done about something no one knows—or admits—is happening?
The villa, built by the Normans nine centuries earlier, overlooked the sea a little more than ten kilometers up the coast from Palermo’s Quattro Canti quarter—the “four corners” city center—and the Norman-built Royal Palace, as well as the University of Palermo.
Far enough away so that any screams or gunshots or whatever would be lost to the blowing winds. And the secret remains safe….
“So now you know,” Napoli whispered.
Rossi looked at his friend, who held a cotton handkerchief over his nose and mouth. Rossi could see in his eyes genuine sadness and more than a little fear.
Rossi nodded softly and risked another glance around the cold, hard room.
“The Germans have brought yellow fever here,” the doctor continued. “They use these human hosts to keep the virus alive…and, I think, to serve as an example of what they are capable of doing. I fear that this is just the beginning. I hear the Germans are experimenting elsewhere with other unorthodox methods—worse ones that also could be brought here.”
Rossi had heard such stories, too, when he had visited the University of Rome. Quietly told, they described what was happening in the concentration camps run by the SS. Humans treated worse than laboratory rats. Bodies dissected without benefit of anesthesia. Legs and arms and torsos collected and stacked dispassionately, like so many cords of firewood.
The stories recounted conditions and acts so horrific, it was said, that German soldiers had to be bribed with bonuses of cigarettes and salamis and schnapps in order for them to agree to serve there.
And now, here in Sicily, this outrage of using humans—Sicilians—to keep alive a deadly virus strain.
“Where are they getting these poor people?” Rossi asked softly.
“Sturmbannführer Müller of the SD—”
“The Sicherheitsdienst?”
Napoli nodded.
Rossi knew the reputation of the SD, the SS’s intelligence branch. They were ruthless in the execution of their job: to take out any threat to the Nazis.
“—he has ordered them brought in from the island prisons.”
“That’s where they took town leaders who opposed Mussolini. Many were mafia.”
“And many of these here are mafia. Sturmbannführer Müller says the SD, with Il Duce’s blessing, wants to neutralize them. This way, they’re not a possible threat—and they’re no longer ‘useless eaters.’”
Rossi nodded slowly. That was another of the stories he had heard in Rome. As far as the Nazis were concerned, you either actively contributed to the war effort or you were a burden—a useless eater.
“So Müller says at least now they are useful,” Napoli said.
Rossi stared him in the eyes.
“For what? I do not understand why they bring this virus.”
Napoli checked behind them and down the
hallway before responding.
“They’re useful in the preparations for the Americans and British,” he said softly.
Rossi shook his head.
Napoli went on: “There is much talk that they could invade Sicily and then Italy on their way to Germany. As Hitler has not sent many German soldiers here—perhaps cannot send many, as rumors suggest he is stretched thin on other fronts—he needs other methods to defend against such an invasion. And so the few forces that he has sent—Müller, for example—have very short and very mean tempers….”
The two men glanced at the bodies on the gurneys.
Rossi softly finished the thought: “…And they are not at all unwilling to do the unspeakable.”
They stood there a long time before Rossi broke the silence.
“What about Carlo? He would never stand for this.”
A brilliant mathematician and a kind man, Dr. Carlo Modica was, like Napoli, in his seventies, and had served as the head of the University of Palermo for almost ten years. In his specialty as a metallurgist, Rossi had at times worked closely with him.
Napoli put his hands on Rossi’s shoulders.