Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel

by Mark Sullivan

  “I’m hungry,” Pino whispered.

  She opened her door, pushed him inside, and whispered back, “I’ll find you something to eat, but you must stay here, and be quiet.”

  She was back soon with leftovers from a ham hock and a fried noodle dish that was the general’s favorite. He ate it all by the light of a single candle Anna had burning. She sat on the bed, drank wine, and watched him eat.

  “That makes my tummy happy,” he said when he’d finished.

  “Good,” Anna said. “I’m a student of happiness, you know. It’s all I really want—happiness, every day for the rest of my life. Sometimes happiness comes to us. But usually you have to seek it out. I read that somewhere.”

  “And that’s all you want? Happiness?”

  “What could be better?”

  “How do you find happiness?”

  Anna paused, then said, “You start by looking right around you for the blessings you have. When you find them, be grateful.”

  “Father Re says the same thing,” Pino said. “He says to give thanks for every day, no matter how flawed. And to have faith in God and a better tomorrow.”

  Anna smiled. “The first part’s right. I don’t know about the second.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been disappointed too many times when it comes to better tomorrows,” she said, and then kissed him. He took her in his arms and kissed her back.

  Then they heard arguing through the walls—Leyers and Dolly.

  “What are they fighting about?” Pino whispered.

  “What they always fight about. His wife back in Berlin. And now, Pino, you have to go.”

  “Really?”

  “Go on now,” she said. Then she kissed him and smiled.

  On September 1, 1944, the British Eighth Army punctured the weaker sections of the Gothic Line on the crab-claw ridges north of Arezzo, and then turned east toward the Adriatic Coast. The fighting turned vicious, some of the most intense of the war in Italy after Monte Cassino and Anzio. The Allies rained more than a million mortar and cannon rounds on all the fortifications that separated them from the coastal city of Rimini.

  Nine brutal days later, the US Fifth Army drove the Nazis off the highlands at the Giogo Pass, and the British intensified their assault of the east end of the Gothic Line. The Allies rolled north in a pincer fashion, trying to surround the retreating German Tenth Army before it could re-form.

  Pino and Leyers went to high ground near Torraccia, where they watched the town of Coriano and the heavy German defenses around it come under bombardment. More than seven hundred heavy shells were dropped on the town before ground forces attacked it. After two days of gruesome, hand-to-hand combat, Coriano fell.

  In all, some fourteen thousand Allied soldiers and sixteen thousand Germans died in the area in a two-week span. Despite the heavy casualties, German Panzer and infantry divisions were able to retreat and re-form along a new battle line to the north and northwest. The rest of Leyers’s Gothic Line held. Even with the information Pino was providing, the Allied advance in Italy again slowed to a crawl due to loss of men and supplies to France and the western front.

  Later in the month, machine workers in Milan went on strike. Some sabotaged their equipment as they left their factories. Tank production halted.

  General Leyers spent days getting a tank assembly line restarted, only to hear in early October that Fiat’s Mirafiore factory was about to go on strike. They went straight to Mirafiore, an outlying district of Turin. Pino served as interpreter between the general and Fiat management in a room above the assembly line, which was running, but slowly. The tension in the room was thick.

  “I need more lorries,” General Leyers said. “More armored cars, and more parts for machines in the field.”

  Calabrese, the plant manager, was a fat, sweaty man in a business suit. But he was not afraid to stand up to Leyers.

  “My people are not slaves, General,” Calabrese said. “They work for a living—they should be paid for a living.”

  “They’ll be paid,” Leyers said. “You have my word.”

  Calabrese smiled slowly, unconvincingly. “If it were only that simple.”

  “Did I not help you with factory seventeen?” the general asked. “I had orders to take every piece of machinery there and ship it back to Germany.”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it? Factory seventeen was destroyed in an Allied attack.”

  Leyers shook his head at Calabrese. “You know how this works. We scratch each other’s backs, we survive.”

  “If you say so, General,” Calabrese said.

  Leyers took a step closer to the Fiat manager, looked to Pino, and said, “Remind him that I have the power to force every man on that assembly line to enlist in the Organization Todt or risk deportation to Germany.”

  Calabrese hardened and said, “Slavery, you mean?”

  Pino hesitated, but translated.

  “If necessary,” Leyers said. “It is your choice whether to leave this plant in your hands or in mine.”

  “I need some assurance beyond yours that we’ll be paid.”

  “Do you understand my title? My job? I decide the number of tanks to be built. I decide the number of panties to be sewn. I—”

  “You work for Albert Speer,” the Fiat manager said. “You have his authority. Get him on the phone. Speer. If your boss can give me assurances, then we’ll see.”

  “Speer? You think that weak ass is my boss?” the general said, looking insulted before asking to use the Fiat manager’s telephone. He was on it for several minutes, having several agitated arguments in German, before he bobbed his head, and said, “Jawohl, mein Führer.”

  Pino’s attention shot to the general, as did the attention of every man in the room as Leyers continued to speak into the phone in German. About three minutes into the conversation, he yanked the earpiece away from his head.

  The voice of Adolf Hitler in full rant came into the room.

  Leyers looked at Pino, smiled coldly, and said, “Tell Signor Calabrese that the führer would like to give him his personal assurances of payment.”

  Calabrese looked like he’d rather have grabbed an electrical wire than the phone, but he took it and held the earpiece a few centimeters from his head. Hitler kept on in full oratorical rage, sounding like he was being ripped apart from the insides, probably foaming at the mouth as it was happening. Sweat poured off the Fiat manager’s brow. His hands began to shake, and with them went his resolve.

  He shoved the phone back at Leyers and said to Pino, “Tell him to tell Herr Hitler that we accept his assurances.”

  “A wise choice,” Leyers said, and then returned to the phone, saying in a soothing voice, “Ja, mein Führer. Ja. Ja. Ja.”

  A few moments later he hung up the phone.

  Calabrese collapsed in his chair, his suit drenched with sweat. As he set the phone down, General Leyers looked at the manager and said, “Do you understand who I am now?”

  The Fiat manager would not look at Leyers or reply. He barely managed a weak, submissive bob of his head.

  “Very well, then,” the general said. “I expect production reports twice weekly.”

  Leyers handed the valise to Pino, and they left.

  It was nearly dark out, but still a nice warm temperature.

  “Dolly’s,” the general said, climbing into the Daimler. “And no talking. I need to think.”

  “Oui, mon général,” Pino said. “Do you want the top up or down?”

  “Leave it down,” he said. “I like the fresh air.”

  Pino retrieved the burlap headlamp shields and mounted them before firing up the Daimler and heading east toward Milan with two slits of light to show him the way. But within the hour, the moon rose huge and full in the eastern sky, throwing a mellow glow down on the landscape and making it easier for Pino to follow the route.

  “That’s a blue moon,” Leyers said. “The first of two full moons in one month. Or is it the se
cond one? I can never remember.”

  It was the first time the general had spoken since leaving Turin.

  “The moon looks yellow to me, mon général,” Pino said.

  “The term doesn’t refer to the color, Vorarbeiter. Normally in a single season, in this case, autumn, there are three months and three full moons. But this year, tonight, right now, there’s a fourth moon in the three-month cycle, two in one month. Astronomers call it a ‘blue moon’ because it is such a rare occurrence.”

  “Oui, mon général,” Pino said, driving a long, straight section of road and looking at the moon rising over the horizon like some omen.

  When they came to a section of the road that was flanked on both sides by tall, well-spaced trees and fields beyond them, Pino was no longer thinking about the moon. He was thinking about Adolf Hitler. Had that actually been the führer on the phone? He’d sure sounded crazy enough to be Hitler. And that question Leyers had asked of the Fiat manager: Do you know who I am now?

  Pino stole a glance at the silhouette of Leyers riding in the backseat and answered in his mind: I don’t know who you are, but I sure know who you work for now.

  He’d no sooner had that thought than behind them, to the west, he thought he caught the buzz of some larger engine. He looked in the rearview and side-view mirrors, but saw no slit lights that would indicate an oncoming vehicle. The sound grew louder.

  Pino glanced again, seeing General Leyers twisting around, and then something beyond him, something big back there above the trees. The moonlight caught the wings then and the snout of the fighter, its engine a building roar and coming right at them.

  Pino slammed on the Daimler’s six brakes. They skidded. The fighter swooped over them like the shadow of a night bird before the pilot could trigger his machine guns and chew up the road out in front of the skidding staff car.

  The shooting stopped. The fighter gained altitude and banked to Pino’s left, and then was gone behind the treetops.

  “Hold on, mon général!” Pino cried, and threw the vehicle in reverse. He backed up, swung the wheel right, shifted to low range and then first gear, punched off the headlights, and gunned it.

  The Daimler went down through the ditch, up the other side, and between a gap in the trees into what looked like a recently plowed field. Pino pulled forward close to the base of a cluster of trees and stopped, clicked the ignition off.

  “How did you—?” Leyers began, sounding terrified. “What are you—?”

  “Listen,” Pino whispered. “He’s coming back.”

  The fighter bore down over the road the same way it had the first time, coming from the west, as if it meant to catch up with the staff car and destroy it from behind. Through the tree branches, Pino couldn’t make it out for several seconds, but then the big silver bird blew by them and up the highway, silhouetted against the rarest of moons.

  Pino saw white circles with black centers on the fuselage and said, “He’s British.”

  “It’s a Spitfire, then,” Leyers said. “With .303 Browning machine guns.”

  Pino started the Daimler, waited, listening, peering. The fighter was making a tighter turn now, coming back above the near tree line six hundred meters ahead of them.

  “He knows we’re here somewhere,” Pino said, and then realized the moon was probably glinting off the hood and windshield of the staff car.

  He threw the Daimler in gear, tried to bury the left front quarter panel in the thorn thicket growing up around the hedgerow, and stopped when the plane was two hundred meters out. Pino ducked his head, felt the fighter go over them, and took off.

  The Daimler chewed up ground, gathering speed, mowing down clods and ruts the entire length of the plowed field. Pino kept looking back, wondering if the plane would make a third pass. Near the far corner of the field, he pulled into another gap in the trees, with the nose of the staff car facing down the bank into the road ditch.

  He turned off the engine a second time and listened. The plane was a distant, fading buzz. General Leyers started laughing, and then clapped Pino on the shoulder.

  “You’re a natural at the cat-and-mouse game!” he said. “I would not have thought to do any of that, even without being shot at.”

  “Merci, mon général!” Pino said, grinning as he started the Daimler and headed east again.

  Soon, however, he was conflicted. Part of him was appalled that he had basked once more in the general’s praise. Then again, he had been smart and crafty, hadn’t he? He’d certainly outwitted the British pilot, and he rather enjoyed that.

  Twenty minutes later, they crested the hill with the full moon rising before them. Diving out of the night sky, the Spitfire crossed the face of the moon and flew right at them. Pino locked up the brakes. For a second time, the Daimler went into a six-wheel-drive screeching skid.

  “Run, mon général!”

  Before the staff car had stopped, Pino leaped out the door, took one long off-balance stride, and dove for the ditch even as the Spitfire’s machine guns opened up and sent bullets skipping down the macadam.

  Pino landed in the ditch, felt the wind blow out of him as bullets struck steel and broke glass. Chunks of debris peppered his back, and he curled up, protecting his head and struggling for air.

  The shooting stopped then, and the Spitfire flew on to the west.

  Chapter Twenty

  When the plane was a distant hum, and he could breath, Pino whispered in the darkness, “Mon général?”

  There was no reply. “Mon général?”

  No answer. Was he dead? Pino thought he’d be happy to think that, but instead he saw the downside. No more Leyers, no more spying. No more information for the—

  He heard movement and then a groan.

  “Mon général?”

  “Yes,” Leyers said weakly. “Here.” He was behind Pino, struggling to sit up. “I must have blacked out. Last thing I remember was diving into the ditch and . . . what happened?”

  Pino told the general as he helped him up the bank. The Daimler was backfiring, hesitating, and shuddering, but somehow still running. Pino shut it off, and the engine mercifully died. He got the flashlight and tool kit from the trunk. He flicked the light on and passed its beam over the vehicle with General Leyers gaping along with him. Bullets had ripped the Daimler from front to back, penetrating the hood, which was throwing steam. The machine gun had also blown out the windshield, perforated the front and back seats, and punched more holes through the trunk. The front-right tire was flat. So was the opposite side’s outer-rear tire.

  “Can you hold this, mon général?” Pino asked, holding out the torch.

  Leyers looked at it blankly a moment, and then took it.

  Raising the hood, Pino saw that the engine block had been hit five times, but the light .303 rounds had not had enough energy left after piercing the hood to do any real damage. A spark plug cable was severed. Another looked ready to go. And there was a hole high in the radiator. But otherwise the power plant, as Alberto Ascari liked to describe it, looked serviceable.

  Pino used a knife to strip and twist together the two pieces of the severed spark plug cable and used first-aid tape to bind it and the weaker cable. He got out the tire kit, found patches and rubber glue that he used to seal both sides of the radiator hole. Then he removed the flat front-left tire, and moved the outer right tire forward to replace it. He took off the flat outer back-left tire and dumped it. When he started the Daimler, it still ran rough, but it was no longer bucking and coughing like an old smoker.

  “I think it will get us back to Milan, mon général, but beyond that, who knows?”

  “Beyond Milan doesn’t matter,” Leyers said, sounding clearer-headed as he climbed into the backseat. “The Daimler is too visible a target. We will change cars.”

  “Oui, mon général,” Pino said, and tried to put the staff car in gear.

  It bucked and died. He tried again, gave it more petrol, and got it rolling. But running on four wheels instea
d of six, the Daimler was no longer balanced, and they went shambling and shivering down the road. Second gear was gone. He had to rev the engine as high as he dared to get to third gear, but once they reached a decent speed, the vibrations calmed a bit.

  When they were eight kilometers on, General Leyers asked for his flashlight, fumbled around in his valise, and came up with a bottle. He opened the top, took a gulp, and handed it over the seat. “Here,” he said. “Scotch whiskey. You deserve it. You saved my life.”

  Pino hadn’t looked at it that way, and said, “I did what anyone would have done.”

  “No,” Leyers said in a scoff. “Most men would have frozen and driven on into the machine guns, and died. But you—you were not afraid. You kept your wits about you. You are what I used to call ‘a young man of action.’”

  “I like to think so, mon général,” Pino said, basking once more in Leyers’s praise as he took the bottle and had a swig. The liquid spread hot through his belly.

  Leyers took the bottle back. “That’s enough for you until Milan.”

  The general chuckled. Over the vibrations in the Daimler, Pino heard Leyers take several more belts of the scotch straight off the bottle.

  Leyers laughed sadly. “In some ways, Vorarbeiter Lella, you remind me of someone. Two people, actually.”

  “Oui, mon général?” Pino said. “Who are they?”

  The Nazi was quiet, took a sip, and then said, “My son and my nephew.”

  Pino hadn’t expected that.

  “I did not know you had a son, mon général,” Pino replied, and glanced in the mirror, seeing nothing but the suggestion of the man in the shadows of the backseat.

  “Hans-Jürgen. He’s almost seventeen. Smart. Resourceful, like you.”

  Pino didn’t know exactly how to react, so he said, “And your nephew?”

  There was a moment of silence before Leyers sighed and then said, “Wilhelm. Willy, we called him. My sister’s son. He served under Field Marshal Rommel. Died at El Alamein.” He paused. “For some reason, his mother blames me for the loss of her only child.”