Sand Against the Wind
By Riccardo Maffey
Smashwords Edition
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Copyright Riccardo Maffey
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Cover by Joleene Naylor
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Prologue
Wednesday, April 10, 1940
The dinner dance at the Rome Golf Club was good fun but Carlo could not help thinking that yesterday the Wehrmacht had invaded Denmark and Norway. No doubt British troops would soon land in Norway, where also, no doubt, they would be defeated.
Trying to put this thought out of his mind, he sat at the table next to Mirta, his cousin Leo della Rovere's wife, and glanced around. Leo was dancing with a charming Hungarian lady in a blue gown topped off with an emerald choker. Christina, Carlo's lover, was chatting with Eugen Dollmann, Himmler's representative in Italy. For the occasion he was wearing full evening dress, rather than the black uniform of an SS senior officer. Christina's husband, a Swedish diplomat, was with the Italian ambassador to the Holy See.
A sommelier was serving a champagne punch. Mirta shook her head, with a smile. Carlo turned to her.
"I, too, don't care much for curaçao. Curaçao is the second ingredient of this punch. The third is cognac."
Her smile widened. "Don't you have anything more interesting to say to me?"
He blew her a kiss.
"How's Bobo?" he asked after a moment.
"He's OK. Doesn't speak, but eats spaghetti. Loves it, like his father."
"Incidentally, Leo was saying he isn't going to be in the Nations Cup team."
"Are you surprised? It'll be a bloody two-nation cup this year, didn't you know? Just Italy and Germany. Our team will be drawn from the bloody Blackshirt mounted units. We can only hope the public will show their displeasure." She paused." By the way, are you still in love with Christina?"
"That's quite a blunt question. Why do you want to know? To find out if I'm free."
"Idiot."
He blew her another kiss, wondering if she wore a bra. It occurred to him that this was what he wanted to ask the night they first met four years ago. Well, now was the moment to raise the point. "You've got a beautiful neck and a seductive décolleté."
"And timeless, classic breasts like the Venus de Milo," she put in, straight-faced.
Their host, the foreign secretary Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, laughed out loudly from the other side of the table. "Thank you Mirta. At last a reassuring line."
"Don't you get your share of reassuring lines from the Duce every morning?" said Mirta, joining in the laughter.
"Reassuring lines from the Duce?" roared out Galeazzo, as though he wanted to be heard by everybody. "The Duce's lines don't dispel your fears; they only confirm your suspicions. Like his genius, they cannot be expressed in words. They are... unspeakable."
All those around burst out laughing. Even Galeazzo's latest conquest, a girl from Java, wearing a fuchsia dress that left her back uncovered down to the sacrum. Even the minister of information, the most faithful to Mussolini among the Ciano's clan.
Galeazzo moved over to Carlo and Mirta. "Let's dance American tonight," he invited her. "Shall we do this slow Boston waltz together?"
When they got back to the table, the orchestra's pianist began to ape Jimmy Yancey of Chicago. Carlo was reminded that Christina liked the great Jimmy and his wife, Mama, the singer, and checked whether Christina and Eugen Dollmann were still together. She seemed to have disappeared. Every time he thought of her, it was of her lying naked in bed, enveloped in the smoke of a Camel.
A remark in Mirta's well-modulated tones interrupted his reflections. "A good job they found such a pianist. Otherwise we'd be listening to bloody Lili Marlene."
Carlo stood up, taking her by the hand. "Which explains why, after waltzing with Galeazzo, you have to make do with a boogie-woogie. Would you care to find out if I still know how to do it?'
They danced in silence. The next rhythm was much slower. They did it cheek to cheek. She placed her left hand on the nape of his neck. The first time they danced together came back to him; the old desire flared up again. Then the orchestra stopped for a brief interval.
He said, "Would you fancy a cocktail? May I suggest a new one, grappa and crème de menthe. It's very good."
As they headed for the bar, she told him that the week before she had played his dead father's last composition. "It was a piano concerto, the overture to a new play based on the life of Giovanni Acuto, but somehow on a par with Liszt's symphonic poems."
Carlo cast his mind back to Giovanni Acuto's portrait by Paolo Uccello, in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence. Giovanni Acuto, that was what the Italians called John Hawkwood. Sir John, an Englishman, more Italian in spirit than most Italians, who was knighted by Edward III during the Hundred Years' War and then became a captain of fortune in the pay of the Florentines.
As the barman was stirring the cocktails, Carlo looked Mirta in the eyes. "Do you remember our argument in the gig before both of us got married?"
She smiled
He carried on, "Do you remember what you said when you were already a half-Communist revolutionary and I was still a half-Fascist reactionary like the Duke of Windsor?"
"Oh come on, I've never been Communist, or half-Communist for that matter."
"Oh yeah! I can tell that." He pointed at the diamond necklace that she sported with her low-necked violet gown.
"Idiot!"
"Giovanni Acuto used to affirm that the Italians should fight for life, not for death. You were right. Since the Abyssinian Campaign Italian politics have been a statement of death."
Her face grew grave. "It's turning bad for us; I know without you telling me. This is what Galeazzo meant with his crack about Mussolini, isn't it?"
"Yeah. It's war for us, Mirta. The success of the German action in northern Europe clinched it for Mussolini. He made it clear to Galeazzo this morning."
"And the people? Save for a few extremists, nobody is for war, still less on the side of the Nazis."
Carlo gave a heavy sigh. "Want to know what he told Galeazzo? The Italians are bitches. They will go with the strongest."
"If Hitler the pervert and his Nazis are the strongest, it's Mussolini the bitch who goes with them!"
Carlo paused. "I'm helping Galeazzo. We'll keep the British informed about any new German aggressions. Next time they're going to violate the neutrality of Belgium."
"Oh dear! Be careful. There's the firing squad for leaking information in Fascist Italy."
"Who cares? I promise that if we go to war on the Nazi side, I'll work for a separate peace initiative with London at the risk of being shot in the back."
"Oh dear!"
"Well, it was you who once said that my stance too was a statement of death."
Mirta raised her pianist's agile hand to stop him speaking, and kissed him on the lips. A kiss a little longer than it should be.
Chapter One
Tuesday, September 7, 1943
Carlo Rufus Williams could distinguish the Italian flag with the cross of Savoy flying over the seashore but nothing else. At three in the morning it looked as though the Bay of Gaeta and the Tyrrhenian Sea had decided to conceal themselves from prying eyes.
It occurred to him that he'd been slapping his open hands against the outside of his breeches for quite a while. Was it impatience? Or was he mocking the army by assuming an attitude of attention like a marionette?
Well, he'd been upset when they called him up a few months ago. Thanks to Galeazzo, he'd spent the war years in his office at the Ministry of Information. Three years that were likely to change the history of the world but saw him as an idle spectator. And yet, because of his anti-war stance, the Nazis asked the Italian Government to remove him, an Anglo-Italian whom they'd never trusted, from his post as soon as Galeazzo got the sack as foreign secretary early this year. And here he was, in uniform, on active service seconded to the Comando Supremo.
What happened to him caused Carlo to reflect on the fortunes of his friend Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolini had been overthrown forty-four days ago after a motion by the Fascist Grand Council. Galeazzo too signed it, risking more than any other member of the Council because he was the dictator's son-in-law. But the new prime minister refused him a passport all the same. And since there were also rumours of a plan to have him murdered, his wife, Edda, turned to the Germans for help. The outcome was that they tricked her into believing that they would fly her, Galeazzo and their children to Spain, only to make him a prisoner in Munich.
Carlo faced round. Now, in the background, there appeared the outlines of the headland with the walls that surrounded the ancient town of Gaeta. For a couple of minutes he mused on the legend of the Trojan hero Aeneas, son of Aphrodite, who, according to the poet Virgil, named the bay after his wet nurse, Caieta. Then the scream of a Stukas diverted his attention from mythology. It was a good thing. He must concentrate on his job.
His leg muscles were all knotted up. How long had he been standing here, by this tiny tenth-century church lying on the seafront, perhaps the only one built on the shoreline in the Mezzogiorno? Well, the moment to go was here, at last. The Ibis, a corvette of the Italian Royal Navy, had just docked.
He left the place and walked to the harbour. An ambulance of the Italian Royal Army was parking just off the pier. Good, very good! He'd told the driver not to come before, so as not to arouse suspicion.
As he approached the ambulance, he looked across the pier at the Ibis, and saw two flyers in wet flying suits disembark and then, escorted by a squad of Italian seamen armed with sub-machine guns, make their way towards him. There was nobody around, apart from the crew of an anti-aircraft battery and a few guards of the militarized port authority.
When they all reached the ambulance two carabinieri jumped off it. Carlo shouted to the squad commander, a petty officer, "Hand the prisoners over to the carabinieri."
No, contrary to the official version, they weren't prisoners of war, they weren't flyers, they hadn't been rescued somewhere around the Bay of Gaeta, they weren't being taken to a med centre and then to the nearest barracks for questioning. They were two American senior officers coming from Sicily, which was already in Anglo-American hands; they'd left Palermo by a British patrol boat, and boarded the Ibis off a small offshore island; they were on a secret mission to the Comando Supremo.
Yeah, after three years of Italian defeats, the war against the Anglo-Americans was coming to an end. Unbeknown to the Nazis, the Italians had surrendered to General Eisenhower, commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces in the Mediterranean, by signing a secret armistice last Friday. But it was not going to be peace for the Italians. The Nazis certainly wouldn't give them a sympathetic smile upon learning about their volte-face.
The warlords of the Comando Supremo kept repeating that Eisenhower would announce the event to the world next week. Carlo had been to Sicily, as an interpreter for the signing of the armistice. He knew better. He knew that the Italian warlords were inveterate liars.
Eisenhower would broadcast the news over Radio Algiers tomorrow evening, and tomorrow, also, two main operations would take off. One was Avalanche, the seaborne landings of the US Fifth Army at Salerno, in southern Italy, which would be carried out at dawn the following morning. The other was Giant II, the parachute and air landings near Rome of the US 82nd Airborne Division.
The Italians were supposed to play an active role in both of them. In Rome, it was for the Italian units, upon the announcement of the armistice, to hold out against the Germans: the American paratroops, to whom the Italians would provide logistic support, were needed to help them fight through to the German withdrawal.
Once inside the ambulance, Carlo observed the two Americans. He'd already met the younger one in Sicily. He was the deputy commander of the 82nd Division, forty-two-year-old Brigadier General Maxwell Taylor; the older one must be Colonel William Gardiner, of the US Troop Carrier Command, a hardy man about six foot two tall, a former governor of Maine. Their task in Rome was to liaise between American paratroops and Italian units.
Presently, Carlo said, in English, "Everything seems to be going according to plan. We should be in Rome in little more than two hours."
"Shall we meet Marshal Badoglio this morning?" asked Taylor.
"Don't mention anybody's name." Carlo spoke deliberately in an impersonal, monotonous way: Badoglio was the new prime minister. "The crew don't understand any foreign languages. But we'd better pretend even here that you are prisoners of war, so no more talk, please."
No, Taylor and Gardiner weren't likely to meet the prime minister. Carlo could only hope that an over-promoted twit he knew very well, Lieutenant General Carboni, the commander of the Italian Motorized Corps, would at least welcome them on their arrival: for the Comando Supremo had entrusted the defence of Rome and the cooperation with the Americans to the three divisions of his corps.
~*~
Carlo's housekeeper was serving him a late brunch consisting of scrambled eggs, tomato salad, rye bread, Parma ham with figs, white grapes, and acqua acetosa, a mineral water found in a spring next to the polo fields. This morning General Carboni, the two Americans' official host, was nowhere to be seen. So Carlo had left them resting at the Palazzo Caprara, the guest-rooms of the Comando Supremo in Via Firenze, and gone to his flat in Viale Parioli for a cold shower, a shave, and a three-hour sleep.
The general's disappearance reminded Carlo of a message that one of the King's aides-de-camp, had left for him early this morning for a meeting at half two at the bar of the Grand Hotel. Was it in connection with coming events? Maybe the King himself was worried about the whole thing. After all, Carboni was to be doubly involved with Taylor and Gardiner. For he was not only commander of the Motorized Corps but also head of the SIM, Italy's Military Intelligence Service, and so should organize the defence of Rome on the one hand and guarantee its preparation in full secrecy on the other.
Carlo decided to set aside his doubts and, sipping a double espresso and smoking a Macedonia, dialled his lover's number. It was her husband, Oscar Branting, the Swedish chargé d'affaires to the Vatican, who answered the telephone.
Carlo said, "I didn't imagine you were at home; I'm so sorry to interfere with your schedule. I just wondered if Christina is back from Sweden."
"No, she is not." Branting cut in.
"Oh, I thought she was. I just wanted to say hello to her."
"She hasn't come back," repeated Branting, tersely.
To hell with it. Carlo realized he shouldn't have made the call. For one thing, the man was growing suspicious of everything and everyone; secondly, if Christina had got to Rome yesterday night, she would have already rung him. For a moment, Carlo considered his relationship with her, a married woman. He'd had an unlucky experience with Anna, his dead wife. And now... now, what would his future be like?
After drinking another espresso, he rushed out without saying a word to the housekeeper. He didn't like her; neither could he bear his flat. It was fifty days since Anna's death, killed in the first air raid on Rome. Anna had kept the flat when they separated four years ago; he had now taken it back. But the flat, with its modern furniture, plus the housekeeper raked up all the past, tormenting him with unhappy memories.
~*~
The foyer of the Grand Hotel appeared to him more crowded with people than ever. Crossing it as he passed by the reception, Carlo noticed German and Japanese officers, some foreign bimbos, a couple of well-known homosexuals, a group of civilians among whom he recognized a member of the underground Communist Party, and further on in the lounge, his friend heading towards him. Well, six-foot-tall Lieutenant Colonel Count Ciro Caetani, of the 1 Sardinia Grenadier Regiment, was the most handsome man among the King's aides in spite of his false left arm, a legacy of the unfortunate Greek Campaign.
The bar too was crowded, although at this time many people were still at lunch in the restaurant. Carlo and Ciro sat down on a sofa at one end of the room. They ordered two cocktails made with two-thirds Fernet Branca, one-third Italian brandy, and a dash of Angostura Bitters.
"I'll come straight to the point," Ciro said. "I know that tomorrow Eisenhower will announce the armistice."
Carlo nodded.
Ciro went on, "And d'you know that tomorrow we are going to disclaim it?"
"What are you saying? Who do you mean by we?"
"Not me, not you. I mean our top brass, Carboni first of all. They will persuade Badoglio and then the King into disclaiming the armistice. The idea of the American airdrop being carried out with their help scares the shit out of them."
"Jesus. And what will they do? Leave the American paratroops to themselves?"
Ciro said nothing.
For a few seconds Carlo held his breath, then muttered, "Rome will be blown to bits by the Anglo-Americans."
"The top brass fear the Germans more than the Anglo-Americans. They are physically afraid of the Germans."
"The King too?"
"No, not physically. He fears a street-to-street fight in Rome, with the possibility of civilians getting involved and, in the end, turning against the monarchy. Mind you, our top brass will tell him that the Anglo-Americans have cheated, that the armistice was to be announced no sooner than Sunday the twelfth, and that instead the Anglo-Americans are going to announce it tomorrow, four days earlier."
"Jesus." exclaimed Carlo once more.
He knew they said that, but it was crap. The Anglo-Americans had reserved the right to decide when the armistice should be announced. It was he himself, the interpreter, who translated to the Italian negotiator that the announcement would be broadcast from Algiers at half six in the evening on an unspecified date coded X-day. Even so, the Anglo-Americans were playing fair. It was unspoken in Sicily during the negotiations, but he could bring the meaning out. The armistice would be announced several hours before the airdrop. The airdrop would take place the day after the arrival of the two American officers, and the Salerno landings at dawn of the following morning, as had also been confirmed by Carboni's secret intelligence. Yes, the Italian warlords had all the elements with which to work out that tomorrow was X-day.
Carlo realized that Ciro was studying him. "Why have you chosen to tell me all this?"
Ciro ordered another two cocktails, then said, "Our chief of combined staffs left for Turin yesterday. By train. A sleeper."
"You haven't answered my question."
"Tomorrow our army chief of staff will tell the German High Command in Italy that we will never surrender, and tomorrow the King will tell Hitler's chargé d'affaires the same thing."
"Once again, why are you talking to me?"
Ciro reached for a cigarette. Carlo lit it.
"Speak up, Ciro, why don't you say why you wanted to talk to me?"
"There's something you could do."
"You must be joking."
"Has Carboni spoken to the two Americans you picked up at Gaeta this morning?"
"I don't think so."
"You know Carboni's lover. It's true, is it not?"
"And if it was, what has this to do with the situation?"
"She's an actress."
Yes, thought Carlo, the actress who posed in the nude in Luchino Visconti's Obsession. "Go on."
"Carlo, I can tell you that tonight she will attend a dinner offered by her producer in a restaurant. I don't know either the name or the address of the restaurant, but I know that Carboni will be there."
"So?"
Ciro leaned his hand on the table, bent towards Carlo, and whispered, "I want you to catch him. I want him to meet the two Americans, and I want the two Americans to tell him that they must have an interview with Badoglio."
~*~
They didn't want to be seen together outside the Grand Hotel,. Carlo, therefore, stayed at the bar a little longer, meditating on his conversation with Ciro. Yeah, no doubt the Italian warlords were petrified at the thought of Hitler's reaction to their passage to the other side. No doubt, also, they'd made no preparations for the battle, lest a wrong move should provoke the Germans, who already suspected the Italian defection and were reinforcing their units in the Rome area.
But where could he find General Carboni? Carlo murmured to himself as he headed towards the revolving door of the hotel. They needed Carboni by tonight. It was imperative for Carboni to speak to the two Americans. But more than this, it was imperative that the prime minister stuck to the armistice. There were roughly twenty-four hours to get ready for the fight against the Nazis.
When Carlo stepped outside he saw a sergeant standing at the salute who, at the same time, addressed him in familiar terms.
"How should I call my old mate the Inglese? Sir, or by his name, even though he is dressed like a cavalry major?"
Carlo grinned. It was an old mate. They used to play soccer for the same team as youngsters, and later were to shoot together at Monterotondo, in the Roman countryside. Carlo spent a couple of months there every year in a house, an ancient building, that his parents had bought.
"Please yourself, but don't make me appear to be a spy by calling me the Inglese in the street," he said. "Incidentally, what are you doing in that uniform, Bruno? A good shot like you should at least be a company commander."
"You know that, but the Italian Royal Army does not. Apparently, not even me shooting with you at Monterotondo made me a gentleman. They said that with his lower-secondary school certificate Bruno could only become a non-com, even if Bruno was a friend of a patrician bloke like you."
"Still you must be grateful to them. They posted you by the Grand Hotel. Not bad at all."
"Yes, posted, that's the word. Shall I tell you what I'm doing here? Waiting, waiting I haven't the faintest idea how long for until Captain di Sant'Elia comes out of the Grand."
"Sassone di Sant'Elia?" He was Carboni's aide: Carlo felt relieved. "Could you please call him for me? I'd like a quick word with him."
"No way. I told you as a friend, Carlo. I'd never tell any other officer. He warned me it's secret. He's also in mufti."
"Oh, don't give me that. Come on; tell me who he's with at least. Is he with Lily Broussard, the ballerina?"
"Nobody so sexy, nobody with such divine tits, Carlo. I'm only saying this, but please don't talk about it. The captain is with a few civilians. All males. Anyway, one of them, I think, is somehow related to the fancy name you mentioned. So your guess is wrong, but not too far out."
"How do you know one of the people with Captain di Sant'Elia is related to Lily Broussard?"
"Not by spying on her, that's for sure. She'd never go out with your friend Bruno. It's only that last Saturday I was with him and the ballerina, and they met that bloke, and she introduced him as her cousin."
~*~
Carlo went to the Palazzo Caprara, got in a service Lancia Augusta, and told the driver to take him to Corso Trieste, a middle-class area off Via Nomentana. Once there, he had the driver pull in beside the Giulio Cesare high school, got out, and walked four hundred yards or so to number twenty-five. It was a large block of flats with residents who were quite prosperous; he'd rather they didn't see a service car with the flag of the Comando Supremo parked round the corner. He hurried directly to the door of Lily Broussard's first floor flat. An Albanian manservant ushered him into her vast sitting room.
While waiting, Carlo noted an English mid-nineteenth-century cottage harmonium carved in mahogany, and looked around at the rich colours of the decor. Foliaged curtains, floral tapestry, and friezes decorated with floral patterns covered much of the wall. There were two Edwardian silver candle brackets on either side of a late Victorian wall mirror with a wood frame painted white. On a side table was an Art Nouveau pewter candlestick, on another a portable early nineteenth-century gramophone, on the floor a chessboard carved by a Bulgarian sculptor who was gaining a hold upon the critics.
Carlo thought of the people in the block. Would they survive this upheaval? They were a representative sample of those who had done well in the cut-throat world of Fascism: the poets, literati and film directors, the architects of public works and agricultural engineers of reclamation projects, the bulk of the almost three thousand university professors who took the oath of allegiance to Fascism.
How many of them would still be in the saddle under a post-war parliamentary regime? Would the screenwriter next door, the bard of the Fascist "conquests"? Also the gentleman in the penthouse of this building, a former dental surgeon to the Pope, the King and Mussolini as well? And the well-dressed fool upstairs, one of Mussolini's Musketeers in the thirties? After all, he, too, had done many things. He volunteered for the war in 1940, was wounded in Russia in 1942, and the following year, on Sunday, July the twenty-fifth, a few hours after the King had Mussolini arrested, applauded Marshal Badoglio, the dictator's successor.
Needless to say, the well-dressed fool, who became a musketeer since he could only count on his height of six foot two to satisfy the entrance requirements for a job, would end up among the misfits. But the others were nobody's fools. For example, the professor of physiology on the second floor was a damn brilliant scientist, although he'd used his pen to justify the racial laws from a biological point of view. After the war, either he would not resist the next bandwagon, or the new ideologues would talk him into accepting newer values.
As for him, so for the others. Including Carlo himself? He'd been in on the act, too, during the Fascist years, which, however, would not prevent him from following the gang of the misfits along with the well-dressed fool. All right, he could tell where he might go. But what about Lily Broussard, an outstanding ballerina, a snob and a self-styled marquise, renowned for the court of actresses who surrounded her?
Well, she didn't have to switch to another party. She was a radical at heart. As an artiste, she moved in the circles of the pink musicians, painters and sculptors, intellectuals, revolutionaries, and anti-Fascist democrats, although as a woman, a love-hungry twenty-six-year-old woman, she was prone to a weakness for handsome sportsmen, provided they were not of the thick neck, brawny shoulders variety. And if her sportsman was Sassone di Sant'Elia, her mentor was her cousin, the Marxist Tony Lollis, who was often seen in the company of a well-known male prostitute. And if Sassone was a sabreur with flair and energy, Tony Lollis was a revolutionary who controlled a battle-untrained Communist underground cell.
Lily Broussard's raunchy voice interrupted Carlo's reverie. "How thoughtful of you to look me up today, my dear. I was so sad, lonely and sad."
"I knew Sassone was busy. Shall I stand a chance this time?" Carlo kissed both her hands.
She chuckled with delight and sank onto a sofa, tucking her left leg under the other and digging her fingers into her dark hair.
"Maybe some other occasion, but not now. Didn't I tell you my rule? Only one at a time. But sit down. What would you like? Russian tea, coffee, Scotch, cognac, or a tomato juice?"
"Nothing, cara. Have to run."
Her new style caught his eye. Usually, she had too much make-up on. Not today. Today she appeared barefaced, and wore her dark hair in a chignon. Perhaps she had just toned her make-up down, to make it look both natural and deliberate. Carlo examined her grey-pearl blouse and simple Prussian-blue skirt down to her ecru silk stockings, and glimpsed the inside of her thigh.
He sat on an ottoman. "I'm running short of time and badly need some information from you."
Her face darkened; she moved a little. He sensed she was aware. He gazed at her in a conciliatory fashion.
"Lily, I know that Sassone is at the Grand Hotel with your cousin, Tony Lollis, and other Communists. I won't report him if you don't help me. I am not a carabiniere. Whatever you do, you have nothing to fear from me."
Carlo waited to let her take in his words and after a moment added, "If, on the other hand, you let me know why Sassone is there, I can promise you that I won't speak to anybody who could either harm or tell him. But believe me, it's important for me to know."
Her face relaxed; her great blue eyes were clearing now. "Will you be fighting the Germans?"
"You know more than you should, don't you."
"But will you be fighting the Germans?" she repeated.
Would he? He hadn't been willing to fight against Britain, his country of birth. Fair enough, he didn't go to war in 1940. On a question of principle..."If you want my answer, it's personally, yes."
She threw back her head. "After my question you, too, must know more than you should about Sassone's meeting with Tony. He's anxious for there to be plenty of civilians as well for the fight."
General Carboni had sent him to make arrangements for arming them; this was the implication, or so Carlo understood. Why arm the Communists, though? Carboni was capable of having planned it as a sort of insurance. If Carboni had to fight the Germans, the Communists might help him; if he hadn't, he might have them all arrested.
Carlo said, "Tell Tony Lollis not to attack the Germans before we've started fighting. By 'we' I mean the army units. It's by no means sure the army will be fighting. The civilians are going to be slaughtered if they are isolated."
A pair of male ballet shoes hung on the wall. It came to him in a flash that her husband, a ballerino, drowned in a boat accident when Lily was twenty-one years old. Carlo hugged her, and planted a kiss on her forehead.
He gazed at her for a while. "Could you do me another favour?" he said, eventually.
She gave him a sultry look. "Shoot."
"It's about General Carboni's lover, the actress. Her producer is entertaining a few people tonight at a restaurant. The general is among them. Am I right?"
She nodded.
He continued, "And you... are you and Sassone going too?"
"No. Sassone will have supper here with me tonight. I must get up very early tomorrow morning. I'm starring in a two-day ballet session for a film production."
"But you know the place they're going to, don't you?"
"Why do you need to know?"
"I doubt we shall be able to fight the Germans if I don't find the general by tonight."
~*~
Carlo was all hot and sweaty, and regretted having found General Carboni. The general had ordered him to eavesdrop on the two American officers' conversation, but tonight, the Rome westerly breeze was taking time off: it was ten o'clock and the air was still sticky. Everywhere. Even inside the Palazzo Caprara.
They had just had dinner. Soon, the general would take them to Badoglio in his villa; he was on the telephone at his desk telling Badoglio's aide that the Americans were adamant. They wanted to see the marshal.
The Americans were alone and for a while had talked sotto voce, but now the sound of their voices became more vibrant. Carlo could pick up each word quite easily.
"Marshal of Italy Pietro Badoglio, the conqueror of Ethiopia, responsible for all kinds of atrocities. He must be quite old now, mustn't he?" It was Colonel Gardiner who was speaking.
General Maxwell Taylor replied, "Early seventies I should think. Looks like a peasant."
"Incidentally, would you say Carboni told us the truth?"
"No. I'm sure he did not. I have an uneasy feeling about him. Carboni and the Italian top generals... they've made no plans. Carboni says they are unable to fight, but let's make it plain: they don't want to."
They fell silent. One of them lit a cigarette. Carlo could smell the fragrance of American tobacco. Was it Taylor, the deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division? He must be pacing up and down the room.
Carlo thought of the young general's job. It was for him to check that the airdrop could be executed, on the assumption that what the Italian negotiator for the armistice said in Sicily a few days ago was true. Now, Taylor seemed to realize that the Italian generals didn't contemplate the idea of turning on the Germans as soon as the armistice was announced, and that they were also pretty nippy at dodging what they did not want to get involved with; they did not even want to speak to him. The chief of the combined staffs and the army chief of staff were unavailable, and Carboni, the key man in operation Giant II, had shown up only a few minutes ago to bullshit them.
General Carboni had also lied. He would only stress, again and again, that the Motorized Corps lacked fuel, trucks and ammunition, that the Germans were busy reinforcing their arsenal and divisions in central Italy, particularly around Rome, and that the airfields were in German hands. But it was the Italians who were in control of all airfields. The American paratroops might safely land wherever they chose. And the divisions of Carboni's Motorized Corps were far from inefficient.
Carlo heard Maxwell Taylor getting back to what he was saying a bit earlier.
"I'm positive that they won't fight. They're double-crossing us."
Carlo heard Carboni's footsteps. The Americans, too, he guessed, heard something, since they stopped talking. He didn't move until Carboni reached him. Then he knocked at the door, and opened it.
The general smiled at the two American officers. "His Excellency Marshal Badoglio will be pleased to see you, gentlemen," he said in French. "We shall motor to his residence. Will you please follow me. This way."
~*~
They left Badoglio's villa; the luxurious villa that was given him, together with the title of Duke of Addis Ababa, for the invasion of Abyssinia. Carlo opened the car door. Taylor and Gardiner got in. General Carboni took the wheel. The seventh was about to slip into the eighth.
Carlo said, "We'll be back at the Palazzo Caprara in ten minutes."
There were few army patrols in the streets and they were Italian, not German. They hadn't stopped them on their way to the villa and wouldn't now: the car was an army vehicle with the three-golden-star flag of a lieutenant general.
The silence was broken only once by Gardiner. "It's quiet over here, isn't it. Rome doesn't seem to be occupied by the Germans as the marshal said."
Carlo didn't translate; it would be to no avail.
The car halted inside the courtyard of the palazzo. They got out, hurrying up the stairs to the second floor. Carboni's chief of staff was waiting for them.
Carboni handed him two handwritten sheets of squared paper.
"These two messages must be coded and transmitted to the Allied Headquarters, Algiers. Highest priority. Marshal Badoglio explains to General Eisenhower why we cannot announce the armistice now since, as is written here, 'this could provoke the occupation of Rome and the violent assumption of power by the Germans.' The Marshal also explains why operation Giant II must be cancelled. We cannot guarantee the airfields."
The general hesitated, then said, "The second message is from General Taylor. He will return to the Allied Headquarters and present our views. He asks for permission to go back together with Colonel Gardiner. Make the necessary arrangements for them to leave tomorrow with an air force aircraft."
Carboni turned to Taylor and Gardiner, smiling broadly. "Well gentlemen, have a good rest; you need it. I'll see you tomorrow morning. By then we should already have General Eisenhower's reply decoded."
Carlo descended the stairs to the courtyard, where he pushed his Guzzi 500 motorbike off its stand and rode away. He was on the point of having a word with Taylor and Gardiner, but his mind was soon made up. It was no use speaking to them. What could he tell them? That Carboni wouldn't have been with them tonight, and they would not have spoken to Badoglio, if he hadn't caught Carboni at that bountiful table?
Under discussion with Taylor and Gardiner were the American airdrop, the cooperation with the Anglo-Americans, the defence of Rome, and the possibility of the Anglo-American forces quickly making contact from Salerno with the US 82nd Division and the Italian units in Rome. Carboni had no time for that. He had time instead for his mistress, and for the dinner offered in her honour by a producer dressed in a bottle-green suit.
And Marshal Badoglio? The marshal was only capable of repeating Carboni's lies. The same tales about the lack of matériel. Jesus, Badoglio had pinned his hopes on the chance that the seaborne landings, operation Avalanche, would be north of Rome. Learning that they would land at Salerno, he must have concluded that the Germans would not withdraw after the announcement of the armistice. So he reckoned that an American airdrop would make a battle for Rome inevitable. Which was precisely what both he and the King did not want.
And now... what was going to happen now, if Eisenhower ignored Badoglio's request for a postponement and the armistice was announced tomorrow night? Would Carboni and Badoglio suggest the King should disown the armistice? The Anglo-Americans would destroy Rome. The remainder of Rome would be just the Tiber, for the few still in good shape to want a swim in its waters.
Chapter Two
Wednesday, September 8, 1943
At last the air was crisp, and yet Leo was pouring with sweat. It was rage, not fear, Carlo said to himself. Knowing his cousin, he'd expected him not to take kindly to Badoglio and Carboni's cowardice.
"Mop your face," he said, handing him a white linen embroidered handkerchief.
"It's far too late now, Carlo."
"Not if I am admitted to the crown council."
"OK, let's assume that you succeed in talking that frigging council round and they go along with the armistice. The Nazis won't withdraw, we won't be ordered to attack, and the battle for Rome will be lost before it starts. The Nazis, they'll think out the best way of roasting us. Something like the Popes did to brigands and rebels. The frigging Nazis will club us all to death in Piazza del Popolo."
Carlo checked the time: seven in the morning. They stopped pacing up and down a narrow street adjacent to Leo's office, the Army Monitoring Service, next to the War Office and the Palazzo Caprara. Two cats were eating the food that an early riser had left for them. One was a tabby, the other, to Carlo's surprise, an exotic blue, a rare breed brought to Europe by the crusaders in the Middle Ages. Wasn't it unusual for it to end up strayed?
A big dog appeared. For some reason, it was more interested in the tabby than in the blue exotic. The two cats fled in opposite directions.
Carlo fidgeted, then gazed at Leo's uniform. Close-fitting tunic, perfectly cut breeches, and highly polished, handmade black cavalry boots with silver spurs. Didn't they look even more alike now that Carlo too was in the Italian Royal Army?
Well, everybody said they did. After all, Leo's father and Carlo's mother were brother and sister, and they were both half-Italians, although he, Carlo Rufus Williams, was born in London, the son of a cockney, and Leo della Rovere in Rome, the son of a prince and an American cutie, the daughter of a millionaire.
After a while, Carlo muttered, "They'll do it to me, but they won't do it to you."
"Do what?" asked Leo, who seemed to have relapsed into a pensive mood.
"The clubbing to death. They'd never do it to you."
"Why? Explain to me."
Because he had an Iron Cross, thought Carlo, because there had been a Pope in his family, Julius II, the Pope of the triumvirate. Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael.
"Because of that," he said, pointing at the German decoration on Leo's tunic.
"What's wrong with you today? Can't you talk reality? The Nazis don't give a shit."
Carlo grinned. "How can you say that of our Nazi friends? The true Aryans. Don't you know that Aryan means noble and noble means having lofty ideals? No less than the German commander in Italy loves Italy and her treasures."
"Look, Carlo... Speaking of this or that cross, has it ever crossed your mind that dear Field Marshal Kesselring loves Italy but hates the Italians and Hitler hates both? He will have Rome set on fire, like Nero."
"How tragically simple! Hitler going down in history as the emulator of Nero. So in the end he too may die crying, 'What an artist will be gone with me!' Wasn't he a painter?"
"It's serious, Carlo. Don't you understand? This is our show. Morally more than anything else."
Carlo lit a cigarette, pulling on it. He too couldn't help thinking about this mess. To him, to Leo, today used only to be the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. Now, they were discovering that it would also remind them of the way fear plays tricks with history.
Leo carried on, "It's omega, Carlo. I don't enjoy the moment, but let's live it with dignity. In plain words, let's die defending our dignity. Not everybody is a coward in Italy."
"That's why I want you to lend me a hand. We've got to do our bit for the armistice."
"I've already told you I'll come along with you. It won't make any difference but I will... But you-you can't know everything first hand, can you?"
"I got wise to them playing their tricks. A few words here and there. Also from Lily Broussard."
Leo gaped at him, open-mouthed.
Carlo said, "The ballerina. You must know about that, surely? That is, about her affair with Sassone di Sant'Elia."
"No, I didn't know. But... no, repeat it, very clearly and very slowly."
"Repeat what?"
"What's happened. The whole story. Not Lily Broussard's love affairs."
~*~
Carlo lit a cigarette and started dressing. The Turkish bath at the health centre of the firemen's barracks had done him good, but the air raid reminded him of Anna. The same American long-range bombers, the flying fortresses. Like that bloody Monday, like that bloody Friday. On Monday, July the nineteenth, died Anna; on Friday, August the thirteenth, died his old German tutor, a priest.
He was saying Mass in the ancient Church of Santa Maria dell'Orto. The church was destroyed; he lay buried under the debris. Anna, Carlo's wife, was killed while walking out of St Laurence's: a bomb fell on the basilica, destroying the façade. What was she doing at the Basilica of St Laurence Outside the Walls? To its right was the Campo Verano, the municipal cemetery. Had she gone there?
Carlo remembered seeing her maimed body at the Umberto I Hospital, and hoping she wouldn't live. Not like that; not blind and with both legs amputated.
"I confessed." She had been stupefied with morphine and her voice was very weak. "I'm sorry, Carlo. Forgive me."
"What for pupa?" He called her pupa, as when they were on their honeymoon. "It was my fault if we weren't always at one."
It was his fault, and he had been even unable to mourn her. True, they'd both cheated on each other; on that score they were even. He did not love her, she did not love him; at least not enough for a life together. At first they were attracted to each other, sexually; that was all. But when they married he knew better than she did that his philosophy of life would cause them to drift apart, and this made him the guilty partner.
His philosophy of life, he could only define it negatively. It didn't coincide with the philosophy of capital. He didn't give a damn for the aviation industry of Anna's family. She was proud of it. She was proud of her father and his showy life style. Like him, she was happy with the most obvious symbols of prestige, and wanted Carlo to be likewise. To Carlo, however, her father was a vulgarian, a profiteer who had emerged from the Great War as one of the biggest Italian industrialists. No wonder the old man could take over other interests and see all the regulations he asked for lobbied through.
But was there one, only one positive aspect to his own philosophy? Carlo had no answer to this. As a young man, unlike so many people abroad as well as in Italy, he hadn't succumbed to Mussolini's charisma. At the time he simply sensed, wrongly, that the Italians were united, and gave Mussolini credit for that. He believed in the unity of the Italians.
Yet, when he took Italian citizenship, he did a lot of things that had nothing to do with the unity of the Italians. He applied for a place in the army training course for reserve officers, got a commission in the cavalry, fought in Cyrenaica in 1931 against the Senussis of Omar Mukhtar.
For an experience? To prove himself? No, for some other nebulous reason, although it was an experience, and so shocking a one, that he would never forget it. He saw Italian acts of brutality: summary executions ordered by the Italian commander. But he also saw many Italian soldiers and Eritrean askaris castrated or disembowelled by the Senussis.
Carlo also recalled why that minor colonial campaign became so important to him. The Arabs were kicking up a fuss about Italian cruelty. English and French correspondents based in Egypt reported their accusations verbatim, ignoring Senussi barbarities. The Fleet Street and Paris press both condemned and derided the Italians. So, thinking that the Italians were discriminated against, he started writing for newspapers and magazines about the Italians in Africa as soon as Omar Mukhtar was captured and executed and he demobilized.
What philosophy of life was this? It was that of a shallow young man incensed to find out that the Italians were being given a bad press. That of a fool who welcomed Galeazzo Ciano's offer to head the radio division at the Ministry of Information. A fool who believed this to be his opportunity to help redress the balance, to help make Italy known in many languages for what he reckoned she was. And so, after many years, the moment had come for him to show if he was capable of action.
Carlo rung up the Comando Supremo. The Anglo-Americans had bombed Frascati, ten miles away from Rome. He understood. Badoglio's request for a postponement of the armistice was rejected. Otherwise there would have been no air raid today. The raid had been agreed upon in Sicily during the negotiations for the armistice. It was fixed for the morning of X-day, to strike at the German Command and break down its machinery on the day of the armistice.
But the German Command wasn't in the town. It was at the Villa Aldobrandini, between Frascati and Grottaferrata. So the Anglo-Americans had missed the target. The whole of Frascati was flattened: the German High Command South was still intact. Among the casualties were children and women; Field Marshal Albert Konrad Kesselring and his staff and machinery couldn't be better.
But Carlo had a plan. Earlier, at half six, he'd learned from a memo sent to the Comando Supremo that the King would summon a crown council to discuss the armistice at the Quirinale, the royal palace, this evening. The leading authorities were going to be there as well as Carboni. Ciro would be in waiting as assistant to the first aide-de-camp general. If Ciro could have Carlo allowed in, saying that, since the Italian negotiator was still in Sicily, he was the only one who had had a hand in the conclusion of the armistice, he would have a go at persuading the King not to disown it.
Needless to say, because of his junior rank, Carlo needed a pretext to take the floor. That was why he'd told Leo about Badoglio and Carboni, to get him to do an extra duty shift and intercept all radio messages to the Comando Supremo in the late afternoon and early evening. If Eisenhower announced the armistice as expected, Leo, who was quite well known in court circles, would rush to Ciro. Ciro, for urgent matters, had access to the crown council. So he would call Carlo out of the salon to give him the news. Once back, Carlo would address the council and let them know that the Anglo-Americans meant business.
Well, it was good to have spoken to Leo. He was quite willing to help in spite of his doubts about the success of the plan. And so was Ciro...
"You can count on me, all right. But think of this... I'll get you in and you will do the job. And then?"
"The armistice won't be disowned," Carlo replied.
"All right, and after that they won't lift a finger. Kesselring will assume the initiative. It will be hell for us, and for the Anglo-Americans at Salerno."
"Christ!" exclaimed Carlo. "You didn't talk like that yesterday. You seemed obsessed by the thought that the armistice might be disowned."
Ciro took Carlo to the Quirinale gardens. Several cuirassiers of the King's Guards were passing by. When they were gone, he sighed deeply.
"Yesterday I hoped that Maxwell Taylor's determination might have an impact on Badoglio. Today we've learned that it hasn't. It's true, is it not?"
It was. But at least Ciro was ready to make every possible attempt to prevent the whole thing from turning into the usual Italian ruse. The outcome was unpredictable. Still, they had to try.
It was one o'clock. Since Monday Carlo had slept only three hours yesterday morning and even less last night. He jumped on his Guzzi and left the barracks. He had told his housekeeper he would be home for a quick lunch. Well, at least there was still time for a kip.
~*~
"Oh boy!" Carlo held, caressed, kissed her. He couldn't believe it was Christina. But here she was, in his arms, in his flat. She had got to Rome by car the night before.
"Please have your meal," she said, stroking his chin, beaming at him.
"Why, aren't you having a bite with me?"
"Had a late breakfast at home. I'll keep you company."
He glanced at the table for two that the housekeeper had laid in his study, and decided on just some oysters, a bunch of grapes, and iced white wine.
"You see, I wasn't hungry," he said after he finished eating. "I only hunger for you."
She came easily into his arms and he kissed her, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth. They broke apart and he watched her as she took off the jacket of the amaranth suit she wore. Her breasts, covered by a white top, inflamed him.
"I want to see you naked."
"That's up to you," she said.
In the bedroom he undressed her, fondling her breasts, thighs, back, and bottom. After that, it took him ten minutes to pull off his boots with his old walnut bootjack. When she saw him in breeches and socks, they both laughed out loud. Then she helped him to get undressed. He felt as though he was drowsy with sun; maybe, he thought fleetingly, the Turkish bath hadn't done him any good.
He lay down in bed, with her body covering him. "Amore," he murmured.
"Amore, my love," she repeated.
'You... you make love to me."
He had an orgasm as soon as she started. As he realized that she hadn't finished, a stabbing pain struck across the back of his neck. It was unbearable; nevertheless, he had the impression that it wouldn't last. It did not, but he could make no sense of what she was saying. He couldn't keep his eyes open, yet he saw or believed he saw her patting his cheek.
Time seemed to be moving slowly. One moment he was sure that he wasn't sleeping, the next that he was dreaming. At a certain point he convinced himself that he was awake; he wanted to sleep again in order to resume his interrupted dream.
The dream, if it was a dream, was a kaleidoscope of changing, unrelated scenes. Carlo at the wedding of his cousin Leo with Mirta. Mirta at Carlo and Anna's wedding. Anna in Via Margutta, the street of the artists, with her lover, an architect wearing beige chamois shoes. Christina and Mirta at the Rome Golf Club's swimming pool, both in two-piece swimsuits. Christina telling him that he was unable to achieve an erection. Carlo giving Christina oral sex. Oscar Branting, dressed up as a bishop, sniggering and whispering. Carlo making love to Mirta in a dirty room in a small country hotel. Leo calling him a rogue. Leo telling him that death was like birth: their common heritage.
Then he was with Badoglio and Carboni, surrounded by Germans. The Germans were laughing at him. One of them, an SS, drank a beer, and shouted a few words. Two Germans gave him two injections. His arm ached. He was certain that they were going to amputate it. Then they shaved his moustache off. Then Christina gave him a glass of iced white wine. Then all sensations left him.
Christina had already got dressed when Carlo woke up at four. "Wasn't I right?" she said, after kissing him on the eyelids. "You are stressed out, but you are still alive."
"Did I say I was going to die?"
"That sums it up."
"Christ! Amore, I must attend a crown council at the Quirinale. Listen to me. I'll tell you what it's about while I get ready."
When he was through with all the facts, she said, "You've already put your health at risk, but I don't want to argue. I'll put a simple question to you. If I asked you to call off this crazy, deadly game, would you for your sake and mine?"
"Oh Jesus! Leo and Ciro too said it's crazy but they are taking their share in the plan. Want to know why? There is no alternative."
"Why are you such a fool! Put your imagination to work."
"Are you spoiling for a fight?"
She raised her voice. "For goodness' sake, if those bastards reject the armistice, if Eisenhower announces it all the same, they will have to justify themselves to the Germans. Who do you think they will throw to the lions? That fool of a Williams, a minor figure, a reserve major, half-English and half-Italian, a 'traitor' who made the case for peace from the beginning of this dirty war until today."
"Well, I am now making the case for the armistice and they wanted it," replied Carlo.
"You only see the logical side of this dirty business. It's childish to believe that human behaviour is dictated by rational thoughts. Especially the behaviour of such chickens as the Italian leaders."
"Oh shut up!"
"You shut up!"
"Let's leave it there."
She carried on, "They will say they knew nothing. That dwarf, your King, that colonial criminal, your prime minister, that little fop of a Carboni, and all the gang of villains that govern your sunny country. They will put the blame on you and the negotiator. Since the negotiator is in Sicily, it is you, the fool, they will hand to the Germans."
"Bullshit!"
"You are a fool, and you've also begun looking like a fool. Answer my question. Are you calling this game off or not?"
Wasn't she right after all? Shouldn't he turn to something else? He was still too young to keep harking back to his memories. The outbreak of the war; everything that went wrong with it; his humble work for Galeazzo, for their useless peace initiatives. All too often, he'd tried to put all those memories behind him. But he couldn't help it. He was obsessed with them, with his outlook, with his promises. And now that they were at a turning point...
"I can't." he shouted.
"Bastard."
She picked up her bag and stormed away. He tailed after her, as she strode through the corridor. He noticed that the damn bag was white like her shoes. As she stepped outside, he held the door open.
"Don't be cross with me," he said loudly.
"Bastard."
"Oh Jesus! I have to take the risk."
~*~