The Rules in Rome (25 page)

As she walked through Rome, carrying her radio in her suitcase, she felt as if a huge weight had lifted off her shoulders. The city was solemn, the civilians hungrier than normal because the Germans had reduced rations again as punishment for the attack on the Via Rasella, but Ley’s body was beating the infection, and the doctor had come by the day before and seemed to think the bullet wound would heal.

The war still raged, and the Allies still hadn’t been able to get past the Gustav Line or off the Anzio beachhead, but Ley’s condition was something she could hold on to, something positive. If she was honest with herself, Ley’s health was the battle she cared about the most.

First, Gracie went to her old flat. She packed extra clothes around the radio and retrieved the spare handgun she’d brought from Switzerland. Then she returned to an abandoned apartment she’d used once before to contact headquarters. She needed to find new locations for her transmissions, but that would have to wait until Ley was healthier.

She wrote her first report since training, explaining what had happened and stressing that Centurion’s cover was still intact. Then she encoded it. It took longer than usual to receive a response, and when she’d transmitted her report and Angelo’s, there was a lengthy message from Caserta.
Probably asking me all sorts of questions to make sure I’m still free.
When she finally signed off, she felt like she’d been on the air for far too long. She cut her transposition keys from her handkerchief, burned the used pairs along with her transmitted reports, and slipped the rest of her keys into her pocket with the encoded message from headquarters.

Gracie took the radio to her new flat. The one-room suite was nicer than her previous place, with a private bathroom and a tiny kitchen. She smiled.
I’ll be able to cook my own meals again. But not today.

She hung her clothes in the bedroom’s small wardrobe and placed the suitcase in the bottom. She was tired, but she vetoed the idea of a nap. Heinie couldn’t sit with Ley forever. And if Ley woke, she didn’t want to miss it, so she headed back to Ley’s suite.

A few blocks from the hotel, she heard someone call to her. “Signorina, a moment please.”

Gracie looked behind her to see two men, one of them with a pistol drawn and pointed at her.

“Is that her?” the man
with the Beretta asked.

“Yes,” the other one said. “The guard at the hotel pointed her out to me. Hard to miss that birthmark.”

Gracie mentally cursed her blemish. She glanced around, but she’d taken a shortcut through a side street, and no one was nearby other than the two men. She considered running, but the men were fewer than ten feet away. The one with a pistol didn’t look like he’d miss.

“Inside, please.” The man waved his weapon toward a door. When she
hesitated, he continued. “If you cooperate, no harm will come to you.”

The unarmed man took her elbow and pushed her inside the abandoned shop. She reached into her jacket pocket as the door closed, but her escort was one step ahead of her. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand out, then felt the pocket and confiscated her pistol. “Grazie, signorina.”

“See if she’s hiding anything else, Dino.” As Dino looked through her other pockets, the man with the Beretta lowered his weapon but only a fraction. “I’m looking for information on Hauptmann Dietrich.”

Gracie was already scared, but the man’s question put her solidly in the terrified category. She did her best to breathe normally. “Who?”

“Hauptmann Adalard Dietrich. According to the guard Dino bribed, you’re his girlfriend.”

“You trust a German guard?”

He raised one eyebrow. “No, but I trust the guilty look on your face. There’s no need for concern. We have better things to do than punish Italian
women who decide a relationship with a Wehrmacht officer is preferable to starvation. I understand Dietrich was shot recently. Is he still alive?”

Gracie tried to figure out what the man was planning. Was he going to finish Ley off? “That’s none of your business.”

The man smiled slightly. “I assume if you’re trying to protect him, there’s still something left of him to protect. Is he going to recover?”

Gracie didn’t answer. He raised his pistol, threatening her, but she bit her lip and kept silent. Ley wasn’t in a position to defend himself, and she wasn’t going to give away any information that might put him in danger.

After several long seconds, he lowered his weapon again. “Your loyalty says something good about you or something good about him. Listen, if he’s in the hospital, see if you can’t steal his identification tags. They have the wrong blood type on them.”

“How do you know that?” Gracie whispered, shocked.

“Are you surprised that it’s not a match or surprised that I know?”

Dino handed the man the items he’d taken from Gracie: her handkerchief, keys to her apartments and Ley’s hotel room, and the coded message from headquarters.

The taller man looked at her transposition keys and the message, then met her eyes. “You’re the radio operator.”

Gracie didn’t speak, unwilling to confirm his suspicion and afraid he wouldn’t believe a denial.

He handed her the paper, keys, and handkerchief. “Return her pistol,
Dino.”

“But—”

“Now.”

Dino handed her pistol back to her, and Gracie slipped it into her pocket, confused and worried by how much this Italian seemed to know.

“I didn’t stop you to hurt you. I just have a message I want delivered. Tell Capitano Ley that Marcello made it south and our other two friends no longer need his help. They made their way to Ardeatina.”

Gracie gasped.
How does he know Captain Ley’s real name?
She got the impression he wouldn’t tell her even if she asked. “The two other friends, they died in the caves?”

The man nodded, then jerked his head toward the door. Dino left, and the taller man quickly followed, leaving Gracie alone, flabbergasted.

It took several minutes for her nerves to calm down enough that she felt confident leaving the shop. She walked more slowly than usual and looked around more frequently, wondering if anyone was following her. Instinct told her that despite the heavy-handed method, anyone in Rome who knew Ley’s real name was her ally, but she still felt unsettled, especially as she passed the guards in the hotel lobby.
How much did it take for one of them to tell Dino all about me?

She was glad Heinie hadn’t yet left when she arrived because it gave her time to collect her thoughts. Ley’s face was still too pale to look healthy, but
he smiled when he saw her, and that told her the worst was behind them.

“How are you?” she asked, kissing Ley on the forehead. That was yet another reason she was glad Heinie was around—it gave her an excuse to act like a concerned girlfriend.

“Brain’s not so foggy today.” Ley’s voice was weak and rough.

“How are you, Heinie?”

“I’m all right. You?”

“Fine,” she lied. The mysterious gunman had known far too much about both her and Ley.

“Here.” Heinie stood and gestured to the chair he’d been sitting in. “Take my seat. I was about to leave anyway.”

“Don’t let me chase you out, Heinie. I can get one of the dining chairs.”

“No, I really was planning to leave. I’m sick of arguing with him. Says he’s not thirsty, but the doctor wants him to drink plenty of liquids. It’s your turn to try to cajole him into following the doctor’s orders.” Heinie winked at them as he grabbed his hat and turned to go.

“How are you really feeling?” Gracie asked when she heard Heinie go out into the hallway. She placed a hand on Ley’s forehead to make sure it still felt normal and ran her fingers through his hair before remembering she was supposed to act professionally now that they were alone.

Ley closed his eyes. “I feel exhausted and dirty. If I lie perfectly still, the hole in my side is a dull ache, but if I move, it turns into something significantly worse.”

“Should I let you sleep?”

“In a while. Have you had contact with headquarters since I was shot?”

“This morning. That’s why I left,” she said.

“Any news?”

“Yes, but it’s still encrypted. And someone here in Rome asked me to give you a message. He said Marcello made it south, but the other two friends died in the Ardeatina caves.”

Ley’s eyes snapped open. “Who told you that?”

“He didn’t tell me his name. He was taller than me by a few inches, medium build, dark hair. Italian. Expressive eyebrows. He was with someone called Dino. And he knew your real name and that you have a different blood type than Adalard’s.”

Ley frowned. “Giovanni. That means his brother and Roberto were executed in the caves.”

“His brother?” Maybe that explained why he’d been so brusque. “How does he know your real name? And your real blood type?”

“He was there the night I became Adalard. So were Marcello and Roberto.” Ley was quiet for a while, and gradually his eyes closed, and Gracie thought he’d gone back to sleep. “How did Giovanni know he could talk to you?”

“His friend bribed one of the hotel guards for information about your girlfriend. He recognized my birthmark. Cursed thing.”

Ley opened his eyes and smiled lazily as he raised his hand to her face. His fingers caressed her hairline, and his thumb moved on, then off her birthmark. “I think I’d miss your birthmark if you didn’t have it.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

His smile deepened. “No, I like it.”

She couldn’t figure out why he or anyone else would like her birthmark. She suddenly wanted to kiss him, really kiss him, but that would probably
involve enough movement to aggravate his injury, and she wasn’t supposed to be in love with him.

“Surely I’m not the first person to admire it.”

“My dad called it an angel kiss, but that’s different. He started calling it that before I knew it was there, so it doesn’t really count.”

“He’d be proud of what you’ve done here. Too bad you’ll never be able to tell him. I’m sure it will all be classified.”

Gracie felt a catch in her throat, and she shook her head.

“You don’t think he’d be proud of you?”

“My father had a stroke. Two days before I found out Michael’s submarine was missing. He doesn’t recognize me anymore.”

Ley put his hand over hers. “I’m sorry.”

Gracie tried to blink away her tears, remembering the horrible wait in the hospital and then sitting by her father’s bed and having him look past her, seeing her but not knowing her. He hadn’t known her sisters or her nephews either and had barely responded to his wife.

Ley continued, his voice soft. “So you lost the two most important people in your life all within a few days?”

Gracie nodded. “Someone asked if I was interested in special government work a couple weeks later. I couldn’t stand staying in Salt Lake with my dad
there but gone and my wedding dress hanging in the closet. I told myself I wasn’t a coward because I was going to do something important, but really, I was running away.”

“A coward wouldn’t run away to fight a war.”

Gracie stared at Ley’s blanket, thinking of how she’d tried to stay busy in Salt Lake so she wouldn’t notice the loneliness, so she could focus on something other than grief. Aggressive cooking and cleaning hadn’t worked, but her OSS training had given her something to occupy her intellect and had provided her with new challenges. Winning the war had become a new, absorbing goal, as had her desire to prove she was capable of the demanding task she’d jumped into. “I might have done the right thing, but I did it for the wrong reason.”

“Few people have perfect motives.” Ley’s vibrant blue eyes stared up at her. “But doing the right thing, even for the wrong reason, is a good start.”

“How do you do that?” Gracie asked.

Ley’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “Do what?”

“Make everything seem better. You did it last Friday with Heinie, and you’re doing it now with me.”

“What day is it?”

“Tuesday.”

He frowned. “The last few days have all run together.” He felt his chin. “I need to shave.”

Gracie fingered his six-day stubble. “I shaved my dad’s face for him after
his stroke. I can give you a shave, if you’d like.” She moved her fingers up to his hair. “And wash your hair.”

“In bed?”

Gracie shrugged. “There are plenty of extra towels in the bathroom.”

He nodded his permission, and she went to gather his shaving supplies. She thought of the last time she’d shaved her dad. The eyes that had always smiled at her had been unfocused and vacant. The voice that had always been encouraging had been unfamiliar and broken. Gracie took a minute to compose herself before returning to Ley. It was time to replace her old memories with new ones.

“You know, it’s not everyone I trust with a razor on my neck,” he said as she sat next to him on the bed.

She ran her hand along his face and then coated it with shaving cream.
“If you don’t talk while I shave, I’m less likely to nick you.”

“Sorry.”

Gracie waited for him to relax his grin before she began, gently running the razor through the stubble and foam. His eyes flickered from her hands to her face. “Nervous?” she asked.

He waited until she cleaned the razor to answer. “No. I’ve seen you transmit. You have steady fingers. I’m just admiring the view.”

She laughed, then focused on his skin, trying not to meet his eyes because every time she did, she had to suppress laughter at the mirth she saw there. When she finished she wiped his face and neck with a clean towel and cupped his smooth cheek in her hand.

Ley felt the result with his fingers. “A beauty, a talented radio operator, and a good barber? I’m lucky to have you.”

Gracie felt herself blushing. Her mother might never have called her a beauty, but she knew Ley meant what he said. “You’re just trying to butter me up so I use warm water when I wash your hair.”

“Is it working?”

She wiped at a spot of shaving cream she’d missed next to his ear. “The water will be the perfect temperature.” She stood to take his things back to the bathroom and get more towels.

“Concetta?”

She turned back to him.

“I’m not trying to flatter you. I just thought if your father can’t be your champion anymore, maybe I should step in. Someone needs to tell you how wonderful you are.”

His face was serious, sincere, his guard still down from his illness. He meant what he said, and she didn’t think she could have a better champion.