The Villa Triste (28 page)

I stole it out of a suitcase about a month ago, from a fat black-marketeer with appendicitis. He wasn’t even dead – in fact, the operation was a great success, and he was fine – but I didn’t care. He had his good little Fascisti badge displayed prominently on his lapel. I told myself he’d find another bottle where this one came from.

For all that, the brandy was cheap and quite nasty. I climbed down and we sat side by side on the bed, handing the bottle back and forth, drinking it as if it was cough medicine.

‘Issa,’ I said finally, ‘why are you talking like this?’

She was so close I could feel her shoulder against mine. Smell the liquor on her breath when she spoke.

‘You can’t tell anyone.’

I shook my head. Then I remembered when we were children, and held my hand up.

‘I swear.’

Issa smiled. She held her hand up, and pressed her thumb against mine.

‘Remember?’ I asked. ‘We’d pilfer Emmelina’s sewing box, steal her needles, prick our skin? Blood bond?’

Issa nodded. ‘Blood bond,’ she said. Then she told me.

Thanks to us, or rather to JULIET, there was an air drop on the night of Valentine’s Day. The first to Tuscany. They had not trusted us before, or hadn’t thought us important enough. But with the spring coming, and with the advent of JULIET, all of that has changed.

The drop was in the early hours of the morning, probably about the same time as Issa’s hands were dancing to morphine dreams. It was somewhere near Greve, and it very nearly went wrong. There were nineteen parachutes in all. They saw them come down, but the snow was so deep that the canisters fell and sank. In the dark it was impossible to see them. They thought they had lost everything. But GAP had gathered a lot of people, several groups, and they fanned out. Dug them out of the snow. Every single one. Thirty-six canisters in all. Fifty-one Sten guns, ammunition, grenades, incendiary bombs and explosives. All of it for the liberation, which, despite the stalemate at Cassino and Anzio, everyone believes will come in the spring. The Germans cannot hold out forever. When the Allies finally break through and Rome falls, Kesselring will fall back. They believe he will retreat as far as the mountains, to the fortifications they call the Gothic Line that Issa has been watching them build. They also believe that as the Germans go, they will try to destroy the city. That’s the lesson of Naples. But, Issa insisted, it will not happen here, because we will be ready. We will drive them out before they can cause utter destruction. This is what the weapons in the air drop were for.

‘By some miracle,’ Issa said, ‘they got it back into the city. All of it. Over three days, they brought it to an apartment in a safe house, somewhere near the Pitti. From there it was to be divided up and moved again.’

‘Was?’

I looked at her. The lamp in my tiny room does not give much light, and with the high walls and strange shadows and her newly short hair, she looked both familiar and strange, like a relative I had forgotten. Only her voice and her eyes were the same.

‘It was all going to be moved last night,’ she said. ‘But yesterday, in the afternoon, Carita came.’

I felt my mouth go dry. I understood now why she had told me what she told me.

‘But—’ I murmured. I could barely say it.

She shook her head.

‘We didn’t have anything to do with this, our group,’ she said. ‘But Carita must have known. It wasn’t luck.’ She looked at me. ‘If they had come today, they would have found nothing.’

‘And they got it all?’

She nodded.

‘Everything. And more. There were other things. A printing press. Supplies.’ She stood up, wincing at her arm. ‘Too many people,’ she said. ‘Too many people knew.’

‘Do they have any idea who it was? Who—?’

She shook her head.

‘How would we know? We all knew this could happen. But we didn’t believe it. Someone slipped. Someone made a mistake. Or – ’ she ran her hand through her hair, not saying what we were both thinking – ‘or someone betrayed us. Someone did this, not by mistake. But because they chose to slip through the shadows to Carita.’

‘There are all sorts of rumours,’ Issa said. ‘Of arrests. But no one knows. If GAP finds out who it was – well.’ She shrugged. ‘They’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. But it doesn’t change it. About the weapons. We’ve lost it all.’ She looked at me. ‘The Americans are furious. They won’t trust us again. They might as well drop guns straight to the Germans.’

‘How bad is it?’

I had no idea about grenades or ammunition or explosives. I’d never even held a gun. Until that moment, I had never thought much about where things like the pistol Il Corvo carried had come from.

‘They won’t drop more,’ Issa said. ‘We can raid and steal,’ she shrugged. ‘But we can’t make up for this. So, when it comes, the glorious day, we’ll be left to fight with one hand tied behind our back.’

She looked at me as she said this, and for the first time I saw something I had never seen before in her face. It was just a moment, as fast as a dab of wind on the water. But it was so naked – so hard and bright in her eyes, that I felt as if the floor had shifted. She was afraid.

Chapter Sixteen

‘Did you believe her?’

‘Signora Grandolo? Of course.’

Enzo Saenz said nothing, but his expression suggested he found this mildly surprising. As if, having heard his account of being ambushed by Eleanor Sachs, he thought Pallioti might never again believe a single word uttered by a female.

Pallioti glanced up. They were standing on either side of the table on which Roberto Roblino’s life, or what they understood of it so far, had been laid out. He picked up one of the photographs of the old man and put it down again. The idea of Signora Grandolo lying was ridiculous.

‘Of course,’ he added rather waspishly, ‘if you care to waste the time, you can have one of your people confirm it. I shouldn’t think it would be too difficult.’

Enzo shrugged, suggesting he’d do just that.

‘Well,’ he said, picking up a copy of Roberto Roblino’s autopsy report and thumbing through it, ‘if the salt fits—’

Pallioti assumed that was supposed to be funny, but had no idea why.

Glancing at him, Enzo elaborated.

‘Most of these neo-Nazi, neo-Fascist – whatever you want to call them – groups don’t think the liberation should be celebrated. They see it as a betrayal. Of the true Italy.’

‘So anyone who fought for it, for the liberation, is a traitor?’

Enzo smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, dropping the report back on the table. ‘At least, that’s how I’d read it. Traitors get executed and have their mouths stuffed with salt because, if Signora Grandolo was right – and I’m sure she is,’ he added diplomatically, ‘salt was the price of betrayal. It makes sense, in a warped kind of way. Which,’ he added, ‘is how most of their thought processes make sense. At least in my book. We are, after all, talking about people whose idea of a great holiday is a sightseeing trip to Dachau.’

Pallioti sighed. There were days when the sheer evil in the world still amazed him.

‘And what about the others?’ he asked.

Enzo’s unusually buoyant mood was due to the fact that, since Tuesday morning, his team had unearthed seven other members of the partisans who had received both medals at the sixtieth ceremonies, and letters virtually identical to the one sent to Roberto Roblino.

‘Well, they’re all alive and kicking.’

‘That’s a plus.’

‘Especially for them.’ Enzo glanced up. ‘I’ve contacted the local boys, and suggested in the strongest possible terms that they keep as close an eye as they can on any ex-partisans in their area and take any threats seriously, and then some. We’ve put that advice out across the country. And, for that matter, circulated it through Europe.’

‘Any disagreements?’

Enzo shook his head. ‘None. For once it’s something we can all agree on. No one’s happy about thugs threatening old heroes. As for the others, the letter recipients – at least the ones we know about – one had his house broken into, about six months ago. But none of the others have experienced any kind of attack. At least,’ he added, ‘that they’ll admit to.’

‘That doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.’

‘True,’ Enzo agreed. He was sifting through a pile of folders. ‘Point of pride. Refusal to be intimidated. Not giving in to thugs. Not making a fuss. Old people are like that to start with, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all doubled for ex-freedom fighters. We’re checking it out. Asking them to think again, and going through reports from the local police. After all, they’re not your average octogenarians.’

Perhaps not, Pallioti thought. Although he suspected Signora Grandolo might disagree. What had she called them? Astonishingly ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

He turned towards the copies of the letters that had been put up on a third whiteboard flanked by those dedicated to the two old men. The wording was similar, some of the phrases – most notably the assertions concerning the Halls of Valhalla – were repeated. All had been written in red ink. So far, all of them also featured the same smudged cross. And all of them were dated 28 April, LXXXIII, the Fascist year 83, otherwise known as 2005. In other words, not only the anniversary of Mussolini’s death, but also three days after the liberation celebration, which, as Signora Grandolo had pointed out, had been watched live on TV by most of Italy.

The general consensus was that the targets could have been picked out that way – simply names the letter writer had been quick enough to note down while he watched TV and was able to follow up on. Or, more likely, the broadcast had provided the inspiration and local press had provided the details.

Three of the newly uncovered letter recipients, like Roberto Roblino, currently lived in the south. Another was from Rome. Two were from Milan, and the last from near Ravenna. Three of the seven had thrown their letters out immediately. The lady in Ravenna had turned hers in to her local police after correcting the spelling – having spent the end of the war blowing up bridges, she had become an infant school teacher. Three others had kept them.

The corrected version had been lost by the police station in question, but the remaining letters had already been collected and sent for analysis. No one really doubted that they would be a match. In addition to possible fingerprints, Enzo was counting on getting DNA off the stamps. Even murderous bigoted halfwits often wore gloves. Very few, on the other hand, thought not to lick. The forensics on the bullet that killed Roberto Roblino had also come back. Much to no one’s surprise, it had been fired from the same gun that killed Giovanni Trantemento.

Pallioti accepted that these developments probably rendered his efforts of the morning superfluous, if not completely irrelevant. The fact was, he’d wasted his time chasing his tail. He suspected he’d also embarrassed himself in the process. Signora Grandolo had been charming, but she’d made him feel like a bit of an idiot.

Still, setting his ruffled feathers aside, it was good news. Finally they were making some real progress. The investigation had shifted almost exclusively towards the now-promising, and disturbingly large, array of neo-Nazi and neo-Fascist groups that seemed to mutate across the country, and indeed across Europe. In fact, Europol was being most helpful. Already the French had confirmed cases of harassment involving some of their surviving Resistance members. Now, all Enzo needed was the identity of the letter writer and to find something to link him to Giovanni Trantemento. A letter would be useful. Or at least a threat.

In the meantime, the Mayor was delighted. Even the investigating magistrate was happy. Going after neo-Nazis was a little like shooting fish in a barrel – rewarding for everyone, with the notable exception of the fish.

‘By the way,’ Enzo said suddenly, ‘about your Doctor Sachs?’

Pallioti, who had been studying the letters on the whiteboard, looked over his shoulder.

‘I hate to tell you this,’ Enzo said, ‘but I think you may be being a bit hard on her.’

Pallioti raised his eyebrows.

‘Not just about the salt.’ Enzo picked up another sheet of paper, glanced at it and put it down again. ‘About Roblino and Giovanni Trantemento knowing each other, too.’

‘Oh?’

Enzo nodded. ‘A couple of hours ago,’ he said, ‘D’Aletto tracked down the stuff Roberto Roblino’d already given to the local museum. A suitcase full of it. Odds and ends, newspaper clippings, mostly. Apparently, they’d never even bothered to open it. I guess they get piles of crap like this all the time. It all goes down into a store room somewhere until, someday, maybe, if nothing else is going on, they get a summer intern or a student volunteer to go through it.’

Pallioti nodded. Provincial museums were like the nation’s storm drains. Full of Pandora’s boxes no one ever got around to opening.

‘They did have the decency to be sheepish,’ Enzo added. ‘Admitted they took the medal for display, but they never even looked at the rest. Anyway, the citation is here. Or rather a fax of it.’

‘The citation?’

Enzo nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said, rifling through a pile of papers. ‘For the medal. And the nominating letter. Which was written by –
voilà
!’ He pulled out two stapled pages.

‘Giovanni Trantemento.’ Pallioti did not even have to look.

‘Correct. I’m afraid your Doctor Sachs was right on the money.’

Accepting the flimsy sheets of fax paper, Pallioti felt a jolt of sadness. This letter had almost certainly represented the high point of the old man’s life. He had spent the last year refining his ‘archive’, and sent his most precious papers to a local museum that had never even bothered to look at them.

The letter itself was two pages on Giovanni Trantemento’s letterhead. It appeared to have been written with a fountain pen. The copy was not bad, but the old man’s hand had not been steady.

I, Giovanni Battiste Trantemento, do vouchsafe that I witnessed the following and that this account is true:

In February of 1944, I took part in an assassination attempt carried out by my GAP unit in Firenze. The proposed target was the German consul, Gerhard Wolf, and two high-ranking officers of the SD, the Sicher-heitsdienst, Nazi intelligence police, who were visiting the city and would be attending a concert at the Teatro del Pergola. I was not told their names. I worked with three fellow GAP members from my own unit – a man known to me as Massimo, a second man known to me as Beppe, and a woman known to me as Lilia. I was known to them as Il Corvo.

In order to minimize civilian casualties, it was decided that the attempt would be made by means of a firearm rather than a grenade. Beppe and I would pose as coal merchants coming along Via Pergola while the man I knew as Massimo and the woman I knew as Lilia would pose as con-certgoers attending the performance. They would arrive late, in order to get close to the consul and officers, who traditionally arrived after the general public was seated. The woman, Lilia, would carry an evening bag in which a firearm suitable for close-range targets would be concealed. Beppe and I would overturn our coal wagon in front of the car in order to make an escape by the consul and officers more difficult, and in order to create confusion, thus allowing Lilia and Massimo to escape after the shooting.

It had been very cold. On 14 February, the day in question, there was ice on the road and pavement, making it very slippery. Beppe and I entered Via Pergola from Via degli Alfani as planned just before four o’clock in the afternoon. A few minutes later, the consul’s car approached from the opposite direction and stopped in front of the theatre. We saw the woman, Lilia, and the man, Massimo, approaching from the direction of Via M Bufalini. As we pulled the cart close, the consul and two German officers emerged from the car.

The cart was heavy and not easy to handle on the ice. As we began to pull it across the road, I heard three shots and shouting. As planned, Beppe and I tipped the cart, abandoning it in front of the car and spilling the coal into the road. At that time I saw the woman, Lilia, running towards me. A shot was fired. She was hit, and fell. I helped her up and told her to run. Lilia ran towards Via Alfani, as planned. The German consul and one officer were unharmed. The second officer appeared to have been shot. Soldiers ran out of the theatre. I saw Massimo struggling with them.

It had previously been decided that after the shooting all of us should run in different directions. Since Lilia would have been seen firing the weapon, it was paramount that we do everything we could to facilitate her escape. We had previously agreed that, if arrested, Massimo would claim that he did not know Lilia, and had only met her walking to the theatre. Beppe and I would claim that we were merely delivering coal when our cart overturned on the ice.

In the event, although Lilia did escape, all three of us were arrested.

Massimo, Beppe, and myself were taken immediately to the Intelligence Headquarters, known as Villa Triste, at 67 Via Bolognese.

That night, we were interrogated separately. I saw Beppe and Massimo the next morning as I was taken out of my cell. I saw that they had been badly beaten, but they were able to communicate to me that they had stuck to their story. We were all interrogated again the next day. Then we were put in a cell together. The next day, we were told that we would be spared execution, and instead sent to a labour camp. We took this to mean that our stories had been believed.

By this time, I could not see because of the very bright lights that had been shone into my eyes during my interrogation and because of the beating.

Sometime after dark the next night, we were taken out of the Villa Triste and put into a truck. We guessed that we were being driven to the train depot. There was one guard in the back with us and one guard in the front with the driver. We had been driving for perhaps twenty minutes when the truck accelerated suddenly, then skidded on the ice and slammed into a wall.

At that moment, although he was severely injured from the beating he had received the night before, Beppe helped me to escape. The driver was stunned and the guard in the front was injured. Beppe got the tailgate open and helped me out of the truck. Normally we would have split up, all running in different directions. But I could not see. At considerable risk to himself, Beppe helped me to run down the street and into a park where we hid for several hours. Later that night, Beppe helped me through the city to a safe house. Without him, I would not have survived.

For verification, an account of this incident can be found in the records of the Villa Triste, and also in the later record that appeared in the Firenze CLN newspaper,
Patria
.

I hereby certify that the man whom I knew then only as the member of my GAP unit Beppe, is Signor Roberto Roblino and is currently known to me under that name.

Pallioti took his glasses off. For a moment he stood staring at nothing. He felt as if the past and the present had suddenly collided, mixed like the currents of two great rivers that sucked flotsam and jetsam under and bore it along – polishing it, hiding it, until it was ready to let it go, swirling it back to the surface six decades later.