Winds of War (145 page)

“I’ve not slept well.”

The priest’s glance was mild and kind. “I understand. As you requested, I’ve made inquiries about your taking refuge in the Vatican. It’s not impossible, but the concordat pathetically limits our freedom of action. I would offer you one word of caution. Such exceptional expedients can have negative results. One calls attention to oneself. One becomes a special case.” He drove carefully down the almost deserted boulevard and turned into a street where people were crowding toward the Piazza Venezia, with placards swaying above their heads.

“The trouble is,” said Jastrow, “I already am one.”

The priest pursed his lips and tilted his head in a most Italian way. “True. Well, your cloudy nationality might be an advantage. If you are actually stateless, then clearly you are not an enemy alien.” Spanelli glanced around at Natalie with dropping eyes. “This is not true of your niece, naturally. One assumes your embassy will somehow provide for her –”

“Father, pardon me. Whoever gives me refuge must take her in too.”

The priest pursed his lips again and was silent. The crowd thickened as they neared the piazza: quiet sad-looking people in shabby winter clothes. The blackshirts carrying the placards were trying to hold up their chins and glare like Il Duce.

“These signs are viler than usual,” Jastrow said. Beside the car, a fat red-faced blackshirt marched with a crude cartoon of Mrs. Roosevelt sitting on a chamber pot, squawking obscenities about her husband. Ahead of the car, on another sign, a bag of money with a Roosevelt grin walked on crutches, smoking a cigarette in an uptilted holder.

“When the pot boils, the scum comes to the surface,” said the priest.

He slipped the car through narrow side streets, parked in a rubbish-filled archway, and guided them down an alley into the Piazza Venezia. The thronged square was surprisingly still. People stood around saying nothing, or chatting in low tones. The sky was gray, the wind strong and cold. Flag-bearing schoolchildren were huddled in front of the balcony in a docile mass, not laughing or playing pranks, just holding their flapping flags up and fidgeting.

The priest brought Jastrow and Natalie into a roped-off section near the balcony, where photographers clustered with reporters, including a few Americans, as well as the grinning happy Japanese correspondents Natalie had met at the party. Somebody produced a folding chair for her. She sat holding the sleeping baby tightly in her lap, now and then shuddering, though she wore a heavy sweater under her coat. The raw wind seemed to cut through to her skin.

They waited a long time before Mussolini suddenly stepped out on the balcony and raised a hand in salute. A crowd roar cascaded and re-echoed in the square: “
Duce! Duce! Duce!”
It was a strange effect, since all the people were looking up silently, with blank or hostile faces, at the tubby figure in the gold-eagled, tasselled black hat, and the black and gold jacket, a get-up more like an opera costume than a uniform. Under the balcony, a few blackshirts were diligently manufacturing the cheers, huddled around microphones. A tall man in the uniform of the German Foreign Service appeared next, with a Japanese in a cutaway coat and high hat. They flanked the dictator, who was even smaller than the Oriental; and Mussolini looked as though he were between guards come to arrest him. The blackshirts quit their noise and turned their oval, sallow faces up at the balcony; a pack of waiters and barbers, Natalie thought, in sloppy pseudomilitary masquerade.

The brief speech was belligerent, the tone as belligerent, the gestures were very familiar and very belligerent but it all came out ridiculous. The sound did not fit the gestures. Mussolini flailed his fist when he dropped his voice, and shouted fiercely some innocuous prepositions and conjunctions, and at the most inappropriate points he grinned. The old puffy dictator, already defeated in Greece and shorn of much of his North African empire, seemed to be having a highly irrelevant good time, as he declared war on the United States of America. While the blackshirts at random moments cheered and shouted “
Doo-chay!”
the crowd began to leave. Mussolini bellowed his last sentences at thousands of departing backs - an incredible sight in this dictatorship - an old ham actor scorned by the audience: “
Italians, once more arise and, be worthy of this historic hour. We shall
WIN!” And again he smiled.

To blackshirt cheers, the three figures on the balcony withdrew; Mussolini came out twice to bow, but the mob was dispersing as though a cloudburst had started.

The little knot of Americans stayed together, talking excitedly in low tense tones. Though the thing was no surprise, it felt strange now that it had happened; they stood on the soil of an enemy country. The debate among the correspondents, who kept glancing at policemen hovering nearby, was whether to go to their offices to clear out their desks, or head straight for the embassy. Several decided for the office first, arguing that once in the embassy they might be holed up for a long time, perhaps even until the diplomatic train left.

This put Aaron Jastrow in mind of his manuscript. He asked Father Spanelli to take them to the hotel before going on to the embassy. The priest was agreeable, and Natalie did not argue. She was in a shocked state. The baby was beginning to cry, and she thought of picking up some diapers and supplies for him. They returned to the car and drove to the Excelsior, but the priest suddenly braked, a block from the hotel; and he pointed through the windshield at two police cars pulled into the entrance driveway. Turning large, moist, worried brown eyes at Aaron Jastrow, he said, “Of course the manuscript is precious, Professore. Still, all things considered, had you not better go to your embassy first? If the worst comes to the worst, I can get your manuscript for you.”

“The embassy, the embassy,” Natalie said. “He’s right. The embassy.”

Jastrow nodded sadly.

But again, a couple of blocks from the embassy, Spanelli halted the car. A cordon of police and soldiers stood in front of the building. Across the street a small crowd of spectators stood waiting for some melodramatic occurrence. At the moment, from this distance, all looked quiet.

“Let us walk,” said the priest. “You should pass through that line with no trouble, but let us see.”

Natalie was sitting in back of the car. Jastrow turned to her and put a comforting hand over hers. His face was settling into a stony, weary, defiant expression. “Come, my dear. There’s not much choice now.”

They walked up the side of the street where the spectators were standing. On the edge of the crowd they encountered the
Times
man who had taken Natalie to the Japanese party. He was frightened and bitter; he urged them not to try to crash the cordon. The United Press correspondent had just attempted it, not five minutes earlier; he had been stopped at the gate, and after some argument a police car had appeared and had carried him off.

“But how can that be? That is not civilized, that is senseless,” exclaimed Father Spanelli. “We have many correspondents in the United States. It is idiotic behavior. It will be corrected.”

“When?” said the
Times
man. “And what will happen to Phil meantime? I’ve heard disagreeable things about your secret service.”

Holding her baby close, fighting off a feeling of sinking in black waters, a feeling like the worst of bad dreams, Natalie said, “What now, Aaron?”

“We must try to go through. What else is there?” He turned to the priest. “Or - Enrico, can we go to the Vatican now? Is there any point to that?”

The priest spread his hands. “No, no, not now. Don’t think of it. Nothing is arranged. It might be the worst of things to do. Given some time, something may be worked out. Surely not now.”

“Jesus Christ, there you are,” said a coarse American voice. “We’re all in big trouble, kids, and you’d better come with me.”

Natalie looked around into the worried, handsome, very Jewish face of Herbert Rose.

For a long while after that, the overpowering actuality was the smell of fish in the truck that was taking them to Naples, so strong that Natalie breathed in little gasps. The two drivers were Neapolitans whose business was bringing fresh fish to Rome. Rabinovitz had hired the truck to transport a replacement part for the ship’s old generator; a burnt-out armature had delayed the sailing.

Gray-faced with migraine, the stocky Palestinian now crouched swaying on the floor of the truck beside the burlap-wrapped armature, eyes closed, knees hugged in his arms. He had spent two days and nights hunting for the armature in Naples and Salerno, and then had tracked down a used one in Rome. He had brought Herbert Rose along to help him bargain for it. When Rose had first brought Jastrow and Natalie to the truck, parked on a side street near the embassy, the Palestinian had talked volubly, though he had since lapsed into this stupor; and the story he had then told had convinced Natalie to climb into the truck with her baby. After a few last agonized words with Father Spanelli about the manuscript, Aaron had followed her.

This was the Palestinian’s story. He had gone to the Excelsior at Herb Rose’s urging, to offer Jastrow and Natalie a last chance to join them. There in Aaron Jastrow’s suite he had found two Germans waiting. Well-dressed, well-spoken men, they had invited him inside and closed the door. When asked about Dr. Jastrow they had begun questioning him in a tough manner, without identifying themselves. Rabinovitz had backed out as soon as he could, and to his relief they had simply let him go.

During the first hour or so of the bouncing rattling ride in this dark, malodorous truck, Jastrow vainly talked over all the possible benign explanations for the presence of Germans in his hotel suite. It was almost a monologue, for Natalie was still dumb with alarm, Rabinovitz appeared sunk in pain, and Herbert Rose was bored. Obviously the men were Gestapo agents, Rose said, come to pick up the “blue chip,” and there was nothing more to discuss. But Dr. Jastrow was having second thoughts about this precipitate decision to go with Rabinovitz, and he was having them aloud. Finally, diffidently, he mentioned the diplomatic train as a possibility that still existed. This roused Natalie to say, “You can go back to Rome, Aaron, and try to get on that train. I won’t. Good luck.” Then Jastrow gave up, curled himself in a corner in his thick cape, and went to sleep.

The fish truck was not halted on the way to Naples. A familiar sight on the highway, it was a perfect cover for these enemy fugitives. When it reached the port city, night had fallen. As it slowly made its way through blacked-out streets toward the waterfront, policemen repeatedly challenged the drivers, but a word or two brought laughter and permission to go on. Natalie heard all this through a fog of tension and fatigue. The sense of everyday reality had quite left her. She was riding the whirlwind.

The truck stopped. A sharp rapping scared her, and one of the drivers said in hoarse Neapolitan accents, “Wake up, friends. We’re here.”

They descended from the truck to a wharf, where the sea breeze was an intensely sweet relief. In the cloudy night, the vessel alongside the wharf was a shadowy shape, where shadowy people walked back and forth. It appeared no larger to Natalie than a New York harbor sightseeing boat.

Dr. Jastrow said to Rabinovitz, “When will you sail? Immediately?”

With a grunt, Rabinovitz said, “No such luck. We must install this unit and test it. That’ll take time. Come aboard, and we’ll find a comfortable place for you.” He gestured at the narrow railed gangway.

“What’s the name of this boat?” Natalie asked.

“Oh, it has had many names. It’s old. Now it’s called the
Redeemer.
It’s Turkish registry, and once you’re aboard you will be secure. The harbor master and the Turkish consul here have an excellent understanding.”

Holding her baby close, Natalie said to Aaron Jastrow, “I’m beginning to feel like a Jew.”

He smiled sourly. “Oh? And I’ve never stopped feeling like one. I thought I’d gotten away from it. Obviously I haven’t. Come along, this is the way now.” Aaron set foot on the gangway first. She followed him, clutching her baby son in both arms, and Rabinovitz plodded up behind them. As Natalie set foot on the deck, the Palestinian touched her arm. In the gloom she could see him wearily smile. “Well, relax now, Mrs. Henry. You’re in Turkey. That’s a start.”

Chapter 64

Janice was awakened by the sound of a shower starting full force. Her luminous bed clock read five minutes past five. She showered too, put on a housecoat, and combed her hair. In the living room Victor Henry sat buttoned up in white and gold, reading Navy correspondence by lamplight. His close-shaved face was ashen, which she more or less expected, after his dispatching a quart of brandy and passing sixteen hours in a stupor. Pencilling a note on a letter, he cleared his throat and said placidly, “Good morning, Jan. Did I disturb you? Sorry.”

“Morning, Dad. No, Vic often gets me up around now. Is it too early for some bacon and eggs?”

“Matter of fact, that sounds pretty good. Warren get back last night?”

“Yes. He’s in there.” Janice wanted to tell him about the loss of the
Devilfish,
but he scared her, sitting there livid and cool in his starched uniform. He would find out, she thought, soon enough. She made coffee, fed the baby, and started breakfast. As usual, the smell of frying bacon brought Warren out, humming and brushing his hair, dressed in a khaki uniform. He grinned at his father, and Janice realized that he was putting on an act and would not disclose the
Devilfish
news. “Hi, Dad. How’re you doing?”

“Not badly - all things considered.” Brushing a fist against his forehead, Pug smiled ruefully. “I seem to have slept around the clock.”

“Yes. Well, travel will do that to a fellow.”

“Exactly. Funny effect travel has. Did I empty the bottle?”

Warren laughed. “Bone dry.”

“I only remember drinking the first half.”

“Dad, it was just what the doctor ordered. How about a hair of the dog?”