The Scarlet Thread (4 page)

“It was a beautiful wedding,” she insisted. “Don't be silly. He just wasn't very friendly, that's all. I suppose it was because I'm not a Catholic.”

He guided her down the street. The jeep was parked near the tiny piazza. He turned and lifted her up and placed her in it.

“Your bridal car,” he said.

She laughed and held his hand. “No white ribbons and confetti, but it's the happiest day of my life.”

“Wait till we get home to New York,” he promised, as they drove. “We'll have such a party. You shall have everything to make up for this—a reception, a dance, all your family from England. We know how to celebrate a marriage. I'll buy you a diamond, a proper ring. My father will give you pearls for a necklace. And we'll get presents from all our friends. Very good presents. Enough to set up a whole house. Our people know how important it is to be generous—”

“Steven,” she interrupted, “it all sounds lovely, but I don't really care. I'm married to you, and that's what matters.”

“We'll have a honeymoon,” he went on. “I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Florida, the West Indies … My uncle has a house in Palm Beach. We'll have one too.”

“If you go on like this, I'll start thinking you're rich,” she said.

He looked at her and smiled. “We're not poor,” he answered. They were speeding along the road now toward Palermo. They passed a convoy of U.S. Army trucks. The GIs whistled at her, and she turned in her seat to wave to them.

“I wonder if making love will feel any different now that we're married,” Angela said.

“It'll be better,” he promised.

They had a few hours alone before she had to go back to the hospital. “I'll make it better for you than ever,” he said. “Stop waving at those
ragazzi
, my darling. You belong to me now.”

“That's a nice thing to call your own GIs,” she protested. “It means ruffians, doesn't it?”

“From now on,” he answered, “it means all other men.”

“He's given her a watch,” Christine announced. “Solid gold. She showed me. Walt, she pretty well hinted they'd gone through some kind of marriage service. She's been sick most mornings. I've managed to cover for her, but Sister Hunt's got her beady eye on her. I just don't know how long she's going to get away with it.”

Walt McKie reached across the café table and patted her hand. He had grown fond of Christine. They dated regularly, and she didn't go out with anyone else. He had even begun to forget about his children, and his wife was out of mind except when he got letters from home, usually filled with complaints about the hardships of managing the house and the children on her own.

“Quit worrying about her,” he advised. “This guy Falconi seems genuine. It sounds like he's just as crazy about her as she is about him. They'll work something out.”

Christine shook her head. “You haven't met him. I went with them into Palermo for a drink. I said something about the baby. He looked at me, and I tell you, it was scary.

“‘You offered to help,' he said. ‘Angelina told me. Do yourself a favor. Keep out of our business.' She didn't hear it and I didn't say anything, but it gave me the creeps, the way he said it. There's something funny about him; she always said he wasn't a typical Yank, and she's too right. Walt, could you find out about him?”

He said in surprise, “Find out what?”

“Whether he's married,” Christine suggested. “That'd be in his records. If he is—if she knew he'd been lying to her—she might do the sensible thing and get rid of it. He
is
odd; I mean it.”

McKie grinned at her. “Maybe he's just not your type,” he said.

“You can say that again,” she retorted. “I don't like Eye Ties anyway.” She smiled at him. “I like my men fair and chunky, with nice blue eyes. Remind you of anyone?”

“Could be,” he answered. He was really very fond of her, he thought, not at all alarmed. She'd love Cincinnati. He ordered them another drink and let his imagination run free. The pert young thing he'd married fifteen years before was a very dim memory now. The dissatisfied, self-pitying woman she'd become was a reality he could do without.

“Will you see what you can dig up?” Christine asked him.

“Okay, if it'll make you happier. I've a friend at HQ who'd have access to personnel records. But don't expect anything soon. We're going to be very busy in the next few days.”

“Oh, God,” Christine exclaimed. “You mean it's coming?”

“Any minute,” he replied. “Everyone's on standby, waiting for the weather report.”

“Thank God you won't be going,” she said.

“You're not to say anything,” he enjoined. “Not to your friend Angela, or anyone. It's going to be a hell of a fight. It was tough enough here, but they'll defend the mainland every inch of the way. You'll be busy up at the hospital, I guess. That'll take your mind off things.”

“I suppose so.” She sipped her wine. She didn't want to think about the invasion or the casualties that would come pouring back. The war was bloody awful, and getting what enjoyment you could while you could was the only way to keep going. “You will ask about Falconi, won't you? As soon as you can. He'll be shipped off too. Funny, Angela didn't say he was on standby.”

“Maybe he didn't tell her. He'll be going. His division is scheduled to make up the second support force. Now let's forget it, shall we, Chris?”

“Let's,” she agreed. “I'm hungry. How about eating?”

“Here or back at my hotel?”

“Here first, and back at the hotel for coffee,” Christine suggested. “You know how much I like American coffee. Especially your brand.” She squeezed his knee under the table.

The 10th Corps sailed for Anzio on September 9. Walter McKie was right when he had said the fighting would be hard and bloody. The base hospital was crammed with the wounded. There was no free time for anyone in the aftermath of the landings. Angela worked until she fell exhausted into bed. But she was happy. Her fear that Steven would join his regiment in the assault was unfounded. By some miracle he had stayed behind in Sicily. He was needed by the military administration as liaison officer with the civilian authorities in the southern part of the island. They snatched brief meetings on the hospital grounds on odd days. He was anxious about her. She looked thin and pale and would burst into tears when too many of the wounded died.

“Why don't you give it up?” he asked her. “Apply for a discharge. They'll send you home when they know you're pregnant. You could injure yourself, working like this. You could lose the baby.”

They were walking hand in hand under the trees on the hospital grounds. He stopped and took her in his arms.

“I could get you sent back to the States,” he said. “I have friends who could fix it. My family will take care of you.”

“If I went anywhere, I'd go home to England, wait for you there,” she said.

He didn't seem to hear. “No, not England.” He shook his head. “There are air raids. You wouldn't be safe. In America, you'd have the best doctors, everything you needed. I'd know you and the baby were safe—”

“I'm not going to argue about it, darling,” she said, “because it's impossible! Nobody could arrange that.”

“I could try,” he insisted. “
Cara
, listen. I'll have to go to Italy eventually. They'll want me over there.”

“You said you wouldn't,” she protested.

“Not to Salerno,” he said. “To Naples, when it's cleared of the Krauts. Same sort of job I've been doing here. I want you out of Sicily before I go. Will you do it? For me, for the baby?”

“I can't,” she answered. “I can't leave while this is going on. I can't just walk out on the wounded and think of myself. I'll stay on at the hospital till I can't go on any longer. Don't ask me to do anything else.”

“Let me see what I can do anyway,” he insisted. “I won't commit you to going. Let me see if it would be possible.”

“So long as this hospital is taking casualties, I'm staying, Steven. Nothing will happen to me or the baby. Now I have to get back. Try to understand. I have a duty too. It's here.”

He walked back with her. She turned and waved as she hurried through the entrance. He didn't understand. He loved her too much to care about principles. Someone else would come in her place. She should think of herself and their child first and do what he wanted. There would be a way to get her a passage through to the States. There would be a way to make her change her mind. He had been taught that there was always a way.

By September 18 the city of Naples and the surrounding countryside were under Allied control. Italy had surrendered ten days earlier. The American invasion forces sailed across to make the assault on Salerno. By mid-September, the Eighth Army under Montgomery was racing eastward to divert German troops from the beleaguered American forces, pinned down after a long and bitter battle.

Steven Falconi arrived at military headquarters in Palermo with four other men in U.S. uniform. He was the only commissioned officer. They were shown into the office of a colonel who wore U.S. Intelligence insignia. He got up from his desk and shook hands with them one by one.

“I'm Colonel Harding, gentlemen. You all know each other, I expect?”

Falconi answered. “Our families are acquainted.”

“Sit down, won't you?” The colonel was courteous, even friendly. He offered cigarettes and produced a bottle of whiskey. They watched him and each other with the dark wariness common to such men. “I guess we have achieved what we set out to do in Sicily,” he said. “With your family backgrounds, you, Captain Falconi, Sergeant Brassano and Corporal Capelli, have provided a very necessary liaison with the civilian authorities here in Sicily. But southern Italy is going to be a much more important and difficult area for us to control. Sergeant Rumoranzo and Private Luciano have Neapolitan connections, and there are a number of U.S. Army personnel with Calabrian relatives and influence already over there. You will each be assigned certain sections of the civilian administration to whom to explain our point of view. We want you to get their cooperation. And just as important, to find out who might be unreliable, who could be working for the Fascists.”

“We understand,” Falconi said. “I think we can bring the people concerned into line.”

The others nodded. Rumoranzo spoke, in the ugly twang of New York's Lower East Side. “We said we'd deliver. Don't worry about it, Colonel. These guys know us, and they'll go along with us, which means they'll go along with you.” He glanced at Falconi, and his expression showed a brief glower of dislike. Fuckin' officer, college and all that shit. He felt like spitting the saliva gathered in his mouth. The Colonel was not one of them, but he had a tough reputation.

Harding stood up. Falconi and the others followed.

“Gentlemen, the U.S. Government will be very grateful for the help you're giving us. Now if you go along to Major Thompson's office, he'll fill you in on the details. Goodbye and good luck.”

Again he shook hands with each in turn and ushered them out. Closing the door, he poured himself a large Scotch. Rumoranzo had been released from San Quentin prison, his sentence for extortion and violent assault commuted in return for his special service to the U.S. Army in the Italian campaign. The silent Luciano was a murderer, reprieved from a life sentence for the same reason. Capelli was a known mobster and killer, without convictions but with a fraud case pending. Brassano was buying out a close relative, and Falconi had bargained his education and intelligence against a tax demand that would have kept the Falconis in litigation with the Internal Revenue Service for the next ten years, at a cost of a million dollars or more.

They were the scum of the earth, in the colonel's opinion, but they were needed if the Allies were going to govern Sicily and Italy and rout out any underground Fascist resistance. He swallowed his drink and consoled himself with the belief that they would all end up where they belonged when the war was won and they returned home. This was only a respite for those convicted or suspected of heinous crimes. He was on the telephone when Major Thompson came in. “Sit down, Jim,” he said, and went on talking.

Finally, he hung up. “Goddamned transport; there's no military aircraft available. We'll have to send them over on a supply ship. Any problems?”

“No problems,” Thompson said.

“Help yourself.” Harding pointed to the bottle of Scotch.

They were friends who had worked together in civilian life and joined up together. Both were FBI veterans.

“What a bunch of shit,” Thompson remarked. “You know the one that really sticks in my craw?”

“Falconi?” the colonel suggested.

“Yeah, Falconi. The college education, the nice manners. He even speaks good Italian. That's the kind of mobster we
don't
want back home. Capelli and the rest of 'em know what they are. But Falconi stayed on and put in a request.”

“What kind of request?” the colonel asked sharply.

“Not the usual. He didn't want concessions for some sonofabitch relative over here or any of that crap. He wanted passage back to the States for some dame he's knocked up.”

“You're kidding! She's Sicilian?”

“No. She's English, and she's a nurse at the hospital in Palermo.”

“For Christ's sake—what did you say?”

“I said it couldn't be done. He didn't like that. He wouldn't take no. He just said he was doing a lot of work for us and he felt we should do him this favor. You know the score, Bill. It sounded just like they talk back home. You owe me. That kind of crap.”

“So?” The colonel leaned forward. An English nurse. A Sicilian girl he could have understood, but not this. They never married outside their own people. He wanted to send her home to America. To his family, no doubt. The colonel scowled. It was an outrageous request, and the sheer nerve of it made him boil. Give them an inch and they took the whole rope.