The Italian Party

by Christina Lynch

  Except she was now realizing that she didn’t know him at all.

  The only item she had removed from the cabinet was a pocket-sized magazine called Physique Pictorial that contained pictures of mostly naked men. Scottie was confused, then shocked, then curious, then shocked again. She thought of the grotto.

  She wanted to reverse time, unlearn everything she had learned along the way. She wanted to think her father was an honest man and not a thief. That stolen money had not paid for her ponies and her tuition at the best schools. She wanted to think America was a great and good country that saved people in need and where all men were created equal and justice was served. She wanted to believe all people were basically good and would do good if given the chance, and she wanted to believe in God. Hell, she wanted to believe in Santa Claus. It was such a nice story.

  Ecco licked the tears off her cheeks. She couldn’t sit there any longer—people were starting to stare.

  Mechanically, she walked Ecco back toward the apartment. She would read a magazine. Rearrange the furniture. She would make lunch for Michael. She would perhaps bake a pie. An apple pie.

  2.

  He was pale when he came through the door at lunchtime. She was trembling. They played a brittle, false scene with each other. Ecco was whining because of the weird tension in the room. She finally grabbed him by the collar and tossed him into the bedroom and shut the door.

  She sat back down at the table. Her hair and makeup were perfect. His suit was crisp and his tie straight. They smiled at each other.

  “Sad about the Andrea Doria sinking.”

  “And to think that was the ship we were on.”

  “We’re awfully lucky to be alive.”

  But somewhere between the artichoke soup and the veal cutlet, tears began to drop into his plate.

  She saw it all dissolving, everything, his tears washing away the colors of her life, the buildings, the clothing, the people, until she stood on a bare patch of dirt, naked and alone, her marriage going down with the Andrea Doria. Her anger rose in her throat, anger that she didn’t know she had inside her, anger that seemed to light her on fire, make her levitate, flaming, like the burning wrapper of an amaretto cookie.

  “What happened to Robertino?”

  Ecco began barking in the other room.

  He gave a short sob and covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know.”

  “You put him in danger. You asked him to steal from Rosini.”

  He nodded, still not looking at her. Ecco’s barking had become high-pitched, and he was scratching at the bedroom door.

  “Did you kill him?”

  Bark bark bark.

  “No!” He remembered the orders. “They wanted me to,” he said quietly.

  “Who wanted you to?”

  “It wasn’t—they didn’t say ‘kill Robertino.’ But if the mission were compromised, if an asset betrays our side…”

  Now Ecco was howling, frantic.

  “An asset? Our side? What the fuck is ‘our side’?”

  His face twisted in a self-hating smile. “The good guys.”

  She wanted to slap him. “You’re a liar! You lied to me about everything!”

  What could he say to that? “You’re right. Robertino’s disappearance is probably my fault. I—I’ve wanted to tell you everything, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I was so afraid. I’m afraid because—” He took a breath and the words caught in his throat.

  “You’re a homosexual. You have sex with men.” Her voice was cold, hard.

  He nodded. The dog’s barking was now deafening.

  Michael stood and walked over and opened the bedroom door. Ecco came racing out, but Scottie was already on the move, out the door. The dog ran after her, still barking, desperate to defend her, loyal to the tip of his comma-shaped tail.

  3.

  An hour later, she turned the Ford into Carlo’s driveway. The castle looked still, and dark. She hadn’t noticed the bullet holes the first time. She wondered if German officers had been quartered here. Many had taken the nicer villas in the area, she knew.

  Maybe he won’t be home, she thought.

  But she could see him. He was working a horse in the round pen. The horse was moving beautifully, arching its neck, using its back, its stride springy and compressed. It was poetry.

  He waved to her and smiled. When the horse had slowed to a walk and finally a halt, he went over and patted it. The horse was pleased with him and with itself.

  Carlo led the horse over to where she was standing.

  “Ciao,” he said.

  She burst into tears. Carlo did not say anything. He put his hand through the bars of the round pen and laid it gently on her back, the way you would put it on the neck of a fussy horse. To transmit the calm from you to it.

  Finally she stopped crying. Carlo led the horse out of the round pen and into the stable. She watched as he slowly untacked the horse, rubbed it down, gave it some grain and then turned it out into the field.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s happened?”

  She stared at the ground. “Not yet,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Are you all right?”

  She gave a half smile. “I need a place to stay. To think. But not here,” she added quickly. She knew what would happen if she did, and it was not the way she wanted things to be, not the way she wanted to make that decision.

  “Why don’t you use the house on the mountain?” He had mentioned the place—a cottage on Monte Amiata.

  “Isn’t Franca there? You said she uses it.”

  “She stops in there when she’s collecting herbs, but she doesn’t stay. It’s pretty bare-bones. Can you start a wood fire?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll give you some supplies.”

  She stayed outside, and he returned with a loaf of bread, half a wheel of pecorino and a bottle of wine, all in a net sack. “There’s a little store in Santa Fiora. You can restock there. The signora who runs it will be fierce at first, but if you compliment her poodle she’ll melt and give you big hunks of her homemade porchetta. The poodle’s name is Lila.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He stared at her for a moment, then nodded. She headed for the car. “Amiata,” he called out, “is full of ancient magic. And ticks. Check your socks.”

  Scottie looked up at the enormous mountain, mysterious and forbidding, and then she got in the car.

  4.

  When Michael went to the warehouse, there was a man with a briefcase waiting for him. Signor Brigante was trying to steal the man away, making absurd offers for tractors.

  “I give you two for price of one,” he said. “Three! Three!” he wailed as Michael approached. “American tractors are shit.”

  Michael nodded to the man and unlocked his office. They shut the door on Signor Brigante, and could hear his beautiful loafers stamping away down the concrete.

  “I’m here to give you a polygraph,” said the man.

  “Why?”

  “Routine. This door lock?”

  “But … I’ve never had one. It’s been a complicated day.” He thought about the Benzedrine he had taken. Would that make him a better liar?

  “I calibrate for that. Don’t worry. Everyone in the Rome office got theirs earlier. Florence is tomorrow. Just routine. Goodness, it’s a long road to get here.”

  “They were building a highway,” said Michael. “But now they’re not.” He sat down opposite the man and watched him set up the machine. They called this “fluttering.” He didn’t believe for one second this was routine. This was Duncan. He couldn’t know about Sebastian—unless he had someone watching Michael all the time. He might. More likely, their last conversation had set off alarm bells for Duncan, so he had turned to a machine for the truth.

  The man put a band around Michael’s arm, and another around his chest. A scroll of white paper was loaded in.

  “Name?”

/>   Michael’s heart was racing. He stuttered out his name.

  The needle jumped and clicked and lurched and the inexorable roll of white paper tick-tick-ticked out of it. It did, in fact, flutter.

  The man ran through a basic list of questions. Michael knew what was coming next.

  “Have you ever had illicit contact with a foreign agent?”

  “No.” Michael watched the needle jump and the paper spew.

  “Have you been recruited by a foreign power?”

  That’s what the man had been sent to ask. It’s what they always asked. It was all that mattered to them. They would ask you to lie, betray and murder for them, while demanding absolute, verifiable loyalty. The defection of Burgess and Maclean had upended everything, thrown spy handlers on both sides of the Atlantic into a paranoid panic. The two had fooled everyone, seeming to be perfect upper-crust loyal Englishmen spying for jolly old England, queen and country, while actually maintaining a crazy, unfathomable loyalty to a nation they had never visited, to an ideal they had held on to since university. Angleton was a very close friend of Kim Philby, the suspected “third man” dismissed by MI6 but unprosecuted for lack of proof. The accusations against Philby had shaken Angleton to his core, sent him on a mad mole hunt.

  Michael tried to keep his voice steady, his heart constant. He thought about his mother, crying for Marco, the men at the door delivering a gold star for their window. “No.”

  “So what’s the best place to get a gelato around here? I can’t get enough of that limone, but I like stracciatella, too.”

  After the man left, Michael sat for a long time just staring at the wall.

  Then his random thoughts coalesced into a plan. Minaccia Rossa would strike, and strike hard. And all of them could go to hell together.

  SEVENTEEN

  LA TORRE, THE TOWER

  “BETTER THAN FORCE, POWER”

  The mountain loomed before her, black against the starry night sky. The car began to climb up toward Arcidosso. There was no moon, and in this little-electrified area of Italy, the Milky Way was like a white tulle wedding arch. She dropped the car into a lower gear and slowed for some deer that had Ecco on high alert. She steered around a giant toad whose eyes glowed in the headlights. There was utter blackness all around her, and she was was glad of Ecco’s company.

  She drove through the ancient medieval centers of Castel del Piano and Arcidosso, then, after a sharp, nearly vertical right-hand turn, saw a battered handmade sign for Santa Fiora. It wasn’t 1956 here; it was a place out of time, like in a fairy tale.

  She gasped and slammed on the brakes as a pair of eyes shone in her headlights. As she came to a stop, the silvery tan figure revealed itself.

  A wolf. She couldn’t believe her eyes.

  Ecco gave a ridiculous growl as the wolf disappeared into the darkness. The roads got rougher as she drove on. She realized, the farther she got from him, that she was more worried about what would happen to Michael than what would happen to her. He was a homosexual. What a lonely life that must be, she thought. To have to keep a secret like that. She wanted to ask him, talk to him about what that had meant for him, what it had cost him.

  The Ford bumped along the dirt road. Slowly, a house appeared in the darkness ahead. She found a flashlight in the glove box and got out. Ecco hopped out beside her and raced off into the darkness, barking. The crickets were so loud it sounded like they were inside her head. When she closed the car door, the darkness was profound.

  She shone the flashlight around. She could smell woodsmoke in the distance. She saw three or four small outbuildings. It was a neat and tidy cottage, from what she could see in the darkness.

  She caught a familiar scent—horse. It must be just Franca’s donkey she was smelling, she thought. But this would be a long way to bring the little guy.

  Holding the string bag of supplies in one hand, Scottie shoved the flashlight under her arm as she struggled to open the heavy front door, warped by centuries of rain and snow. She leaned into it, and finally it gave. At that moment there was a rushing sound, and everything went black.

  * * *

  Scottie woke up in complete darkness. It was a strange sensation, to open her eyes, then close them again, and have there be no difference. She had a terrible headache and was lying flat on a bed. She listened. She could hear a slow drip of water. The smell was dank and cool, as if she were underground.

  “Hello,” she called out. It hurt to speak. She touched a knot on her head and winced.

  She heard footsteps. A woman’s voice demanded, crying, “Why have you come here? What do you want?”

  “Franca?” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Franca, is that you?”

  “I don’t know you,” said the woman. “Please go away.”

  Scottie could hear other movements around her. Her eyes began to adjust to the dark. She began to make out shapes—dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, demijohns of wine and olive oil.

  “Franca? It’s Scottie Messina.” She tried to sit up, her head aching. “I came to your house near Siena. With Carlo.” She paused, feeling guilty, then went on. “I’m sorry I didn’t knock.”

  “I didn’t mean to hit you. I was frightened.”

  Scottie wondered if that was true. Franca had every reason to want to hurt her. “Carlo said you wouldn’t be here. He said it was all right for me to stay. I’m so sorry to have bothered you.” She sat up, feeling sick to her stomach.

  Franca put a mug of tea in her hands. “It will ease the pain,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Just drink it and get out. I’ll show you the way.” Scottie heard a lamp being lit. Franca stood before her in one of Carlo’s old monogrammed shirts and an incongruous pink flowered skirt. Black rubber boots, very clean. “Please leave.”

  “Yes. I will.” Scottie tried to stand, but sat back on the bed. She looked up and realized she could just barely make out another figure in the darkness, across the room on a cot. “Who’s there?” she called.

  “No one,” said Franca. “Get out of here.”

  Scottie realized she recognized the person on the cot. “Robertino? Is that you?”

  “No,” said Franca, in anguish. “You took my husband. You can’t have my boy.”

  “Yes,” said Robertino quietly. “I’m here.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. But I broke my leg.”

  “She’ll go to the police,” said Franca, frantic. “You’ll go to jail, for the horse.”

  “No. It’s okay,” said Scottie. “You won’t go to jail. Franca, you know that. He won’t go to jail.”

  Franca, weeping, lit another lantern. Across the room, Scottie saw Robertino clearly now, lying on his back, a cast on his leg. He was in a sort of makeshift traction.

  “I stole the horse,” he said. “I was coming here to ask her to hide the horse for me. But I fell off. I couldn’t move. The pain was terrible. She found me, hid me from the police, took care of me, healed me. I told her not to tell anyone.”

  “I saved him,” said Franca. She stared at Robertino for a long moment. “He looks so much like Raimondo.” A sob caught in her throat.

  It was wrong of Franca not to tell anyone that Robertino was here, was safe, but at the same time Scottie felt so terrible for her, to have lost a child. “I’m sorry. I know you and Carlo loved him very much.” She paused. She only knew what Carlo had told her. Scottie felt she owed Franca more than that. She needed to know her side. “Were you there when it happened?”

  Franca paced back and forth, agitated. Then she began to speak.

  “It was my son’s birthday. He was fourteen. Food was so scarce, and I just wanted to make him a nice lunch. That was all. I was lucky to find some flour. I picked the weevils out of it. Rolled it out on the kitchen table. Tortelli.” Something in Franca’s eyes shifted, as if she were transported back to that day. “They cook quickly. I have a little bit of butter I bought on the black market. A
tiny hunk of cheese for my darling son. My husband is late. He’s always late. Probably with his whore. Did he tell you that?” She turned on Scottie, fury in her eyes.

  “No.”

  “A nurse. A German nurse. He was … with her. That’s why he was late. I put the pasta on the table. I turn my back, to get the bread. Then I hear the planes. The Americans.

  “There is no time to move. The bombs begin to rain down. The house shakes. I scream. I’m still holding the bread. I reach for my son, but he isn’t there. The house disappears around me. There is a pause, a silence, I am deaf, then the sound comes back and I can hear screaming everywhere. Then I hear the sound of the planes again. I can’t move. My leg is caught. I free it, but there are more bombs, more than the first time. It will never stop. Over and over and over, boom, boom, boom, dust and screaming and fire.” Finally she was silent.

  “I’m so sorry,” Scottie said at last. “You have every right to hate America. To hate me.”

  Franca sat down on a chair. She picked up a jar of tomatoes, and Scottie wondered if she would hurl it at her, but then she set it down again. “I’ve been angry for twelve years,” she said. “I’m tired.” She looked at Robertino. “Then he arrived. His mother was dead, and he was hurt, like Raimondo. But he was alive. I could pretend I had my boy back.” She began to cry. “I don’t want him to leave.”

  “I know. But I need to get him to the hospital. He needs to go home. And Carlo is waiting for you.”

  “Carlo doesn’t want me anymore. I’m broken.”

  “You’re not broken,” said Scottie. “He still loves you.” She knew this was true.

  A deeper quiet fell over the room. Franca put her hands over her face, her grief making her shake.

  “I miss him so much,” Franca cried, but she sounded different now. “I miss Raimondo.”

  “I know,” said Robertino, pulling himself to his feet. He leaned over Franca, put his arms around her. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for taking care of me. But I have to go now.”

  She nodded. Using Scottie as a crutch, Robertino hobbled out, leaving a silent Franca sitting alone.