The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel

by Griffin, W. E. B. ; Butterworth IV, William E.

  John Craig now saw that it was the edge of a larger piece that had been cut in the floor.

  A hidden door!

  As the large section of flooring came up, John Craig saw Canidy nod.

  He looked up at John Craig and said, “My son, let this be a lesson to you. To paraphrase Matthew, ‘Live a life as pure and righteous as mine, and blessed be your luck all your days.’ Or maybe it was Mark or Luke who said that.”

  “What did you find?” John Craig said.

  He looked around the makeshift door. He saw that there were dead spaces between the long joists that supported the floor of the second level and the ceiling of the first floor.

  And then he saw that there was a suitcase in one dead space.

  Canidy said, “If my clean living is any indication, this is the backup W/T that Tubes and I brought.”

  Canidy looked at John Craig and could tell that he mentally was putting the pieces together.

  “So,” John Craig then said, “this guy’s wife wears a silk scarf. That brings the SS here, where they find the parachute and maybe the money and whatever else we air-dropped before Mercury Station was compromised. And a parachute for a supply drop means that there had to be a radio to arrange for the airdrop.”

  Canidy exhaled audibly, then nodded.

  “That’s my guess. It fits. And because this poor bastard Mariano had no idea where the radio was, it got him killed.” He paused, then added, “Not that the SS bastards weren’t going to kill him if he knew and told anyway.”

  “And then they trashed this place.”

  “Let’s say they completed the job with a crazed enthusiasm. The place wasn’t exactly a model home the first time I came here.”

  Canidy reached down inside the floor. When he pulled out the suitcase, he saw what had been put beneath it.

  “Ah, I was hoping to see this again.”

  “What?”

  Canidy pulled out a Sten 9mm submachine gun and slid it across the floor in John Craig’s direction.

  “That one’s yours.”

  He reached back in and pulled out another machine gun, this one with a longer barrel. It looked substantially better built than the stamped-metal Sten.

  “My Johnny gun,” he announced. “Officially a Johnson Model 1941 Light Machine Gun. This has real meaning to me.”

  “Why? And what’s it doing in there?”

  “It’s what I used to blow up the villa where they had the yellow fever experiment. I got it from a guinea mobster. When I left here to get on the sub, I gave it to Tubes. Figured he’d need it more than I did.”

  “You got it from the Mafia?”

  “You haven’t heard that story? When I met Frank Nola in New York City? That’s how the hell you and I ultimately wound up right here, right now.”

  John Craig shook his head.

  Canidy looked at the suitcase.

  “First things first,” Canidy said, and pointed at the window. “That is where Tubes first set up our W/T, running the antenna out there. Time for you to earn your keep and remind me why the hell I brought you in the first place. Starting with trying to make contact with Tubes and Algiers. You ready?”

  John Craig shrugged.

  “I’ll give it my best. I think as long as it doesn’t involve my damn foot, I should be fine.”

  “Okay, then I’ll try to cobble together some kind of table for you to work at.”

  John Craig looked askance at the dead man.

  Canidy caught that, and added, “Right. And do something with him. . . .”

  VII

  [ONE]

  Hotel Michelangelo

  Palermo, Sicily

  1915 30 May 1943

  SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler watched a rugged-looking man of maybe forty approaching the cocktail table where he and SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Müller sat with the two hookers. The man was about five-nine and muscular, with a warm face, a somewhat pronounced nose, and a full head of brown hair. He was casually but nicely dressed, and Kappler noted that he did not walk as much as he sauntered.

  The man stopped before the table.

  “Giovano said you asked for me, Hans,” he announced in passable German as he met Kappler’s eyes and nodded once.

  Müller put his arm around Kappler and said, “So I did. I wanted you to meet a very important person, Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler, who I told you was coming.”

  The man offered his hand, and in German said, “Jimmy Palasota. It is a genuine honor to have you here.”

  “The pleasure is mine,” Kappler said, shaking the hand firmly.

  “Jimmy runs our little hotel,” Müller announced.

  There he goes with “our” again, Kappler thought.

  Maybe it is simply one of those boastful “our favorite place”–type expressions.

  “When Hans here told me that you would be our guest tonight,” Palasota went on in German, looking between Müller and Kappler, “we made sure the top suite was available.”

  Kappler saw that Palasota appeared very relaxed and comfortable with himself—He’s not at all intimidated by Müller—and that his intelligent eyes missed nothing.

  What does he mean by making sure the suite was “available”? Kappler wondered. They threw out the guest who was using it?

  “It’s quite fine,” he said.

  “Good. I hope you enjoy it,” Palasota went on. “Everything is of course taken care of, but if there is anything else that I can do for you, please say.”

  Kappler could not quite put his finger on it, but he thought he detected not so much a Sicilian accent as maybe an American one.

  How could that be?

  “That is most kind of you,” Kappler said. Then, testing, he added, “So you have spent time in our happy home of Deutschland, Signore Palasota?”

  Palasota, hands on his hips, shook his head.

  “Not once. Never been near it.” He glanced at Müller, then said: “I’m told constantly that it’s a lovely place.”

  “That it is!” Müller put in.

  “Then you’re a native Sicilian?” Kappler pursued.

  Palasota nodded, bending a bit at the waist as he did so. “Born right here in Palermo,” he said.

  “I see,” Kappler said. “But you must forgive me. Something does not quite fit. Perhaps it is my poor hearing—I had a long drive from Messina in a very noisy little Fiat this afternoon—but I do not detect a Sicilian accent.”

  Palasota shrugged.

  Kappler went on: “Again, forgive me, I mean no insult whatever—and most would indeed take this as an insult—but I think I hear what could be the accent of an American?”

  Jimmy Palasota grinned broadly.

  “Close. A former American.”

  “Former?” Kappler repeated. “How is that?”

  “I was an American citizen. I spent many years in New York City before being asked to leave. They took away my citizenship.”

  “Really?” Kappler said.

  He thought: Just like Hitler did to Fritz Thyssen.

  “Really,” Palasota said.

  “Educate me, if you would, please. What does it take for one to be ‘asked to leave’ and then have one’s citizenship revoked?”

  “Well, I wasn’t asked to leave right away. I spent a few years behind bars. And after I got out, and they said I hadn’t learned my lesson, they deported me back here.”

  “And then they took away your citizenship.”

  “And then they took away my citizenship.”

  “May I ask why you served time in the prison?”

  Palasota looked at Sturmbannführer Müller for a moment, then back at Kappler as he mentally chose his words.

  “Running businesses that were frowned upon,” he said as he glanced at the hookers. “Girls, for one.”

  The two young women looked at each other, sensed that they were the subject of conversation, and giggled.

  So he ran whorehouses in New York? Kappler thought.

  And now he r
uns one here?

  “And such an enterprise as that gets one deported from the United States of America?” Kappler said.

  Jimmy Palasota chuckled. “No. Not that alone. I guess I shot one guy.”

  “Only one?” Kappler said.

  “One guy too many.”

  Müller, sipping at his wine, put in: “Shot or killed?”

  Palasota raised his eyebrows.

  “Okay,” he said, “killed.”

  “How many did you kill?” Kappler said.

  Palasota’s eyes wandered around the room. He crossed his arms and shrugged.

  Müller, his tone suddenly icy, said: “He asked how many. Tell the obersturmbannführer how many you killed!”

  Palasota met Müller’s eyes for a long moment, then he looked at Kappler.

  “Let’s just say more than one, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”

  Kappler nodded as he thought, Very interesting. The body language suggests this Palasota does as he pleases. And he is completely uncowed by Müller and his temper.

  Müller, his tone now lighter, raised his glass in toast toward Palasota.

  “Very well, then! Salute!”

  Okay, so now I understand what’s probably the real appeal for Müller.

  He believes that they are kindred souls.

  Müller, the murderous bastard, has the reputation of being quick to the kill.

  He glanced at the bar.

  Which would explain the look those men made—they probably are university professors.

  * * *

  Oskar Kappler had had no choice but to oversee Hans Müller when the SS had transferred the germ warfare experiment to Palermo from the Dachau concentration camp.

  The program used live humans as hosts, injecting Sicilian prisoners with extract from mosquito mucous glands to develop strains of yellow fever. When the sickened hosts eventually died of malaria, new hosts—often members of the Mafia brought in from the penal colonies off Sicily—were injected.

  It had been no secret to the SS that everyone approached at the University of Palermo to contribute to the experiment had been shocked and disgusted that the Nazis had come in and inflicted such a horrible program upon Sicilians in their own country—and, pouring salt in the wound, had done so in a villa named for Archimedes, who was widely considered the greatest of all Sicilians.

  And so Müller had gone directly to Dr. Carlo Modica, the brilliant seventy-year-old mathematician who had served as the head of the university for a decade. He explained to the gentle Modica that, if one in such a prestigious position participated as the figurehead of the experiment, it would send a positive message to others at the school and elsewhere.

  Modica of course balked, but Müller coerced him. Then Modica, while injecting prisoners with the extract, managed to infect himself—and died.

  Müller planned to replace him with two of Modica’s colleagues—Dr. Giuseppe Napoli, also in his seventies, and Professor Arturo Rossi, a metallurgist who was fifty-five. He wound up shooting Napoli—and did so in front of Rossi. Rossi disappeared—the SS still hunted him—and shortly thereafter the villa exploded.

  Müller blamed Mafia sabotage for the explosion. Kappler didn’t care what the cause. Privately, he was very glad it was gone. He believed—and felt sick to his stomach for having had any connection with it—that what had occurred at the villa was equal to the atrocities he heard were being committed at the Auschwitz concentration camps. Word was that Josef Mengele was conducting dispassionate experiments, treating humans, many of them mere children, as if they were laboratory rats. Worse than rats, in fact, because he was dissecting KL prisoners while they were alive—and without use of anesthesia. It was so barbaric and disturbing that in order to get German soldiers to serve at the KL required bribing them with bonuses of cigarettes and salamis and schnapps.

  * * *

  Kappler saw that Palasota had more or less ignored the praise from Müller.

  “Again, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Palasota said, “it is an honor to meet you and have you here. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “We’re about to have dinner,” Müller interrupted. “You must join us.”

  “Thank you, but I can’t,” Palasota said, then looked at the young women and then at Kappler, and said, “I hope you all enjoy yourself.”

  As Kappler watched Palasota saunter across the lounge then disappear through the doorway behind the long wooden bar—greeting the two professors drinking there as he passed—Kappler wondered even more about the man.

  He must have something on Müller. Something good . . .

  “Well, then,” Müller said, “shall we buy our ladies dinner?”

  “Is that a good idea?” Kappler said.

  “What harm is it if the ladies join us for dinner? Is life not better when in the company of lovely women?”

  Damn it, Kappler thought. The reality is that I cannot talk business with him in his condition. And we sure as hell will not discuss anything important in front of these hookers.

  As the Romans themselves slurred here so long ago—“In vino veritas.” Maybe a drunken Müller will run off at the mouth and reveal something the bastard otherwise wouldn’t.

  And I’d sure like to know what the hell is going on here.

  Kappler nodded, then said, “Yes, what harm indeed? And then I am going to retire immediately afterward. We have a big day tomorrow.”

  Müller grinned broadly. “Yes, of course.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Kappler was walking alone up the stairs, holding the railing for balance while waving down at Müller. He stood in the lobby with Maria and Lucia on either side of him.

  “It is your choice, my friend,” Müller called after him, barely able to speak. “But not one I would take.”

  Kappler ignored him, then made the turn for the next flight of steps, and thought, Except for Lucia playing footsie and rubbing the balls of her feet in my crotch, that was a rather uneventful meal.

  I got damn-near nothing out of Müller. He just got drunker.

  All I know is that he said he’s squeezing Palasota, just as the Mafia has forever squeezed others for its money.

  What was it the bastard said? “Ah, the irony. We take our percentage in cash and sometimes in trade.” Then he goosed Maria, who squealed, to Müller’s delight.

  What he’s doing at “our hotel” is no different than what he’s been doing at the docks, taking cash and “accepting as a personal courtesy” the occasional skim of what passes through the dock warehouses—from fresh food to cases of wine. Which was how the bastard came across those Tabun rounds in the warehouse. . . .

  And that was it. Then I drank far more than I should, trying to drown him out while trying not to dwell again on Father’s letter.

  As Kappler reached the third flight of stairs, taking each step with care, he thought that he saw someone coming down the third-floor hall, walking toward him.

  “Herr Kappler,” he heard Palasota’s now familiar voice call out.

  Damn it. I do not want to speak with anyone else tonight.

  Especially not with me drunk.

  “Herr Palasota,” he said. “Good night. I am retiring.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes,” Kappler said with a chuckle. “Alone. I do appreciate the thought, however.”

  And I appreciate that you could be trying to get me in a compromising situation. Something to use for leverage later.

  Nice try, but I made my no-whores decision a long time ago.

  “Please, call me Jimmy.”

  “Very well,” Kappler said, holding out his hand. “And I am Oskar. Good night, Jimmy.”

  Palasota took the hand, and gripped it tightly.

  “Look, Oskar. I am not judging, but if I may say so, you looked rather tense when we met earlier. I am sure that an important person such as yourself has many difficult things weighing on your mind. A little companionship is good for the soul. And it takes your mind off those things. These are
very nice women. You will be pleased, trust me.”

  Kappler chuckled. “Again, thank you. I do appreciate your concern. I simply need some sleep. Good night.”

  * * *

  There was moonlight coming in the bedroom window of Kappler’s suite, and when he went to close the blinds, he glanced out. The city was dark. There was little to see, even in the soft moonlight. Just as he started closing the blinds, he noticed in the harbor that the new T-dock was empty.

  So, the S-boots are out on patrol.

  Tomorrow, when they are back, I should visit with their captains. Anything for an excuse not to suffer more time in Müller’s company.

  * * *

  Five minutes after Kappler had crawled into bed, he heard a faint series of taps on his door.

  If I ignore it, it will go away.

  He rolled over.

  The series of light taps became more persistent, then the tapping became continuous.

  “Damn it!” he muttered, then threw back the sheet.

  He went to the door in his boxer shorts and pulled it open enough to see who stood in the hall.

  “Lucia,” he said softly.

  She held a bottle of cognac and two small glasses.

  And she had changed into a sheer nightgown. Even in the dim lighting, he could make out the naked curves.

  She is stunning! But . . .

  “Grazie, no,” he said, holding his hand up, palm out.

  She smiled, then before he knew it, she turned and smoothly slipped in through the gap.

  Damn it!

  He sighed.

  Okay, one drink, then I send her on her way.

  * * *

  After Lucia drank almost half of her glass of cognac, she went and sat on the edge of the bed. And smiled seductively.

  I am too drunk and too tired to throw you out, Lucia.

  And perhaps my new friend Jimmy Palasota is having my room watched to see if you stay.

  But that’s okay because nothing more than you staying is to happen.

  Oskar then walked over and, using his hand, made a chopping motion down the center of the bedsheet. He pointed to the side of the imaginary line where Lucia was, then pointed to her. And then he pointed to his side of the imaginary line, and pointed to himself.