He barked into the intercom and waited for the blonde’s adroit fingers to make the connection he wanted.
“Ja?”
He spoke his name and heard the responder’s breath intake.
He spoke another name.
“Jawohl! I shall fetch him, Herr Obergruppenführer. It will only take a moment.”
“Very well.”
The line was surprisingly clear of static. A minute or less passed, and then a deep voice spoke in his ear.
“I am he.”
VonStumpfahren spoke his name again and the other sighed. “I know who you are. This is an interruption, so please let us get to the point of your call.”
The general smiled crookedly. He’d ordered executions for less, but this was a special person indeed. The problem was, the bastard knew it.
“Herr Doktor, my apologies for the interruption. May I assume your accommodations are satisfactory? The change from Treblinka has been a positive one?”
“You may not assume, sir.” The doctor lowered his voice and hissed into the mouthpiece. “The facilities are hopelessly difficult. There are three camps, and I require a permanent laboratory with access to a wooded area. Treblinka was perfect! Here I am burdened with a backward system, backward facilities, dunce-headed help, and an impossible schedule. You may definitely not assume I am happy.”
The general held the telephone away from his ear. “I will attempt to better your situation from my end of things. Perhaps Chelmno, while closer to us here at home, is still too far?”
Chelmno was in occupied Poland, not far from Lodz. Closer than the Treblinka camp, which no longer existed, but still a long distance from Berlin.
“Distance has nothing to do with it. I need better facilities. Your instructions are to complete my experiments in the most expedient way possible. Yet that idiot Mengele has always had more support than I. You wish to expedite my work? Return my laboratory facilities at the university.”
“Herr Doktor,” the general said with forced patience, “you know that the, er, nature of your work requires a buffer zone. I have much power, but at this point in our struggle I cannot command the funds to build a new facility that fulfills all your requirements. I am only too aware of your needs, but you must be aware of the sacrifices we make daily. If your work should show the results we need sooner rather than later, perhaps we could find a way. But I fear the interruptions have made your chance of success remote.”
“Your fear is correct,” the scientist said, sighing. “I apologize for my outburst, General. The stress, the long hours—”
“I understand, let us move on. What are your newest results?”
The scientist laid out the pertinent facts. Some of them made vonStumpfahren smile, some made him frown. But all in all, there was much for him to be satisfied with. The time was getting short, and he thanked the harried scientist.
“You are welcome, Herr General. I am certain we are on the verge of a breakthrough. The genetic work is much more ambitious than our friend Mengele’s interests, as you know, and the subjects are less, er, desirable. And yet we are having some success.”
The general sat back in a rare moment of relaxation, crossing his boots under the massive desk.
At last, the words I want to hear!
“You are taking precautions with the data?”
“Yes, your advice has been most helpful.”
Indeed, every month the scientist’s junior assistant was taken to the rear of Chelmno manor and forced into the gassing van along with the rest of the human cattle. His body ended up in one of the massive holes in the forest camp four kilometers away. By then a new assistant was being trained by the doctor’s associates. This procedure assured a small sphere of knowledge.
“And your notes?” the general asked.
“Safe, always safe. In good hands. And the same with the film.”
“Very well, I am satisfied.”
“I knew you would be, Herr General.” There was a ring of pride in the scientist’s voice. A burst of static erased his next words.
“Verdammte Bastarde!”
An air raid, likely, somewhere between the bunker and the far eastern frontier.
VonStumpfahren slammed his hand on the desk. The connection had been broken. The wire had been cut, again. He sighed.
Doktor Schlosser was a difficult man to manage. He was proud and arrogant, a prissy type whose personality rankled the general. But his promise to deliver one of the general’s greatest wishes had convinced vonStumpfahren that he was worth the resources.
He replaced the receiver slowly, envisioning a new beginning for the Fatherland.
This he should have taken to the Führer in person. Instead, he poured a hefty draught of French Cognac and silently toasted his efforts. There was some treasure one had to hoard.
Franco Lupo
Genova, Italy, 1944
The airplane tire was too large and partially melted on one side so it wasn’t perfectly round, but still it rolled well enough down the path’s slight decline. Franco was helping it along with a length of wood swiped from the ruins of a farmer’s house, its frame blown apart by an Allied bomb that had missed the rail crossing nearby.
His friend Pietro had shown him how to do it, using the scorched rod to maneuver the ungainly tire without getting gooey black rubber all over himself. You had to keep the wood rod in motion, alternately touching each edge with its tip, to exert control of its direction, and occasionally using it to brake by jabbing it into the inner circle’s edge.
In this way, the two boys walked two huge tires down the path, which was screened from the nearby road by a thicket of pines and interspersed cypresses. The tires were taller than the boys, having come off an American B-17 bomber downed by German anti-aircraft fire the previous week.
The airplane was not much more than a scorched skeleton now, its exposed metal ribs making it resemble a chicken that had been picked over by hungry guests.
Franco’s stomach grumbled at the image, which came unbidden into his mind’s eye followed rapidly by others: a slab of pork pancetta, its edges sizzled just right, and a series of savory side dishes, followed by a beautifully browned and sugar-sprinkled pandolce with some of his mother’s fresh, hand-whisked cream.
Unfortunately he knew these were just fantasies, and the thought of what really awaited him, a family dinner that consisted of a skimpy vegetable soup made of wilted lettuce and dandelion leaves, parsnips, and a boiled potato or two accompanying a tough old chicken that had been boiled to tolerable tenderness, wasn’t enough to ease the hollow feeling inside. His stomach growled again, a double blast.
“So is this plan of yours gonna work?” he asked Pietro, his best friend, who was concentrating so hard at steering his tire that his tongue lolled grotesquely between his clenched teeth.
“Well?” he prodded.
“Huh?” Pietro retrieved his tongue and snuck a quick look at his friend. “What?”
“This plan gonna work?”
“How would I know?” Pietro snapped. “But it’s a plan. It’s better than waiting until we age like a fine wine or cheese. Can you think of a better way to let the partisans know they can recruit us?”
He went back to concentrating on the tire. The trick was to control its speed, otherwise he would lose it to the slope. He wielded his wooden rod a little like the boys imagined one of those Indian elephant wranglers used to handle their large beasts.
“I hope it works, because I wanna help end this stupid war. If we help the partisans we’ll be closer to kicking out the damn Germans!”
“Shhh,” Pietro cautioned in a hiss. “You wanna end up in a prison camp? Or worse?”
“We’re gonna be risking our lives anyway, no?” Franco pointed out. “What’s the difference?”
“We gotta at least get our plan off the ground, is what.”
“Okay, okay.” Franco seemed to have learned how to handle his tire with ease. He just wished his empty stomach would stop rumbl
ing. But with the wartime rationing and all the “unofficial” shortages—those the government didn’t admit to—there was little extra food in the Lupo household pantry for a growing boy. Franco was lucky to get one egg twice a week, and that was if his father went without. Butter and lard were impossible and potatoes often a luxury.
Franco tried hard to put the thought of food far from his mind.
The path curved slightly to their right, and they maneuvered their tires carefully, using rods and hands to keep them captive in the increasing decline.
Suddenly Pietro’s tire hit a partially buried rock in the path’s center and bounced off the ground just enough for Pietro to lose control as it started to tilt toward him. Though extraordinarily wide, the tire was also quite tall, so its weight immediately caused it to wobble as Pietro tried to shove it back. When it finally toppled sideways it caught Pietro’s leg, and he emitted a yelp.
Only Franco’s quick thinking saved the other boy’s leg from probably snapping under the rubber’s weight. Deftly, Franco used his almost unnatural control of the other tire to collapse it sideways, where it landed just below Pietro’s tilting tire. Franco’s tire wedged itself underneath Pietro’s, and both bounced and rolled like huge, spinning coins.
“Help me. My leg!”
With Franco pulling rapidly, Pietro was able to jerk his leg free before the huge, curved length of rubber could roll over him and pinch him against the rocky ground.
The boys fell back painfully and watched the tires wobble against themselves slower and slower until finally they stopped with one laying flat and the other resting on it at a sharp angle. They gasped, barely able to snatch air into their lungs.
But at least Pietro’s leg wasn’t a mass of ripped skin, torn cartilage and protruding bone.
When they started laughing, the two ridiculous tires became even more amusing. They howled until they hiccupped, all attempts at silent running temporarily forgotten.
“What about the plan?” Pietro said when he finally caught his breath. “The Resistance?”
“Shut up and help me,” Franco said, giggling.
Together, they were able to drag the upper tire back on its edge, and then stood it back up, exploiting the angle at which it rested on the other. That tire lay completely flat, and its weight was almost too much, but they put their backs into it, their hands pulling on the inner rim until the tire began to right itself. With two pairs of hands now, and their feet keeping it from sliding, lifting Franco’s tire became much easier.
They were a fair distance up in the hills, so apparently no one had heard the commotion. No vehicles had rumbled down the nearby road. Soon they were following another bend in the path. The tangled undergrowth dropped away, and they now stood at the top of a steep hill. The path continued on down to their left, but their destination was the bluff still hidden behind a stand of stubby evergreens with overgrown lower branches.
Somewhat refreshed, Franco and Pietro walked their tires toward the trees and leaned them against thick trunks facing the bluff’s edge.
Now Franco felt the fear start to overtake his enthusiasm. The plan had been a good one, if they lived to tell anyone about it. It had all seemed so logical and adventurous. It was an extension of the games and pranks they’d played for years. When the Germans went from being welcome allies to occupiers almost overnight, the boys had felt a stab of nationalism. The rumors and recent underground news of armed resistance had grown rapidly, and now it was an open secret that German supremacy on Italian soil was being challenged every day by common people, many of them ex-soldiers who had taken up arms against the despised invader.
Now, poised with their hands resting on the warm rubber of their unlikely weapons, both boys felt the shiver of last-second fear.
“Ready?” Pietro whispered.
Franco nodded. Sweat trickled down his back. The brilliant, blue sky above and the sun’s warmth had heated him up, but the sweat now reminded him of the thin stream of rusty water you could summon with furious pumping of the well handle on his grandmother’s farm. It was always ice cold, that water.
He nodded, this time with conviction. “It’s our only way of getting recruited,” he reminded his friend. “We have to go through with it.”
Pietro nodded. He wasn’t letting go of his tire just yet, either. “You gonna run?”
Franco felt his hands shaking, his knees week. Could he run?
“Yeah,” he said. “We better.”
He grasped his tire with both hands and manhandled it off its resting place, aiming for the break in the undergrowth they’d made by cutting it down secretly in the previous few days. Beside him, Pietro did the same.
He craned his neck, but couldn’t see the target. But he knew where it was. Their reconnaissance had been thorough. Huffing in a loud whisper, Franco gave the tire a hard shove with both arms and a foot, and watched it leap forward off the rise and careen through the thicket and then roll down the hill, gaining speed as it bounced on and off the rocky ground.
Pietro released his tire a few seconds later.
The boys craned their necks, side by side, in order to see.
The two gigantic tires jounced down the steep hillside, gathering speed until they seemed to blur.
Pietro and Franco crept closer to the lip overlooking the bluff. The tires had disappeared out of sight. Crouched to keep their heads below the ragged line of scrub, the boys watched with a mixture of joy and horror as the huge, rolling wheels reached the road below. The road ran parallel to the bottom of the hillside and curved slightly on its way to a freshly painted guardhouse. A sentry stood near the lift gate that blocked the road. His sudden shout brought three more soldiers out of the guardhouse to gawk at the black, bouncing tires that bore down on them.
Before they could do more than shout and point, the tires bounced across the road. One tilted too far to the side and landed flat with a loud cracking sound. Its final bounces were sideways, and then it settled on its side like a gigantic coin.
The soldiers shouted again as the other tire bounced straight and true through the barbed-wire fence and onto the ground beside the road. One soldier pointed up at the boys.
“Dio mio!” Franco blurted. They’d been spotted!
The soldier raised his rifle…
But then the remaining tire struck one of the slight indentations in the pocked dirt strip, and a mighty explosion threw up clods of dry soil and stones.
It felt like a slap on their ears.
The soldier was thrown off his feet, rifle flung away from his body, and then there was another explosion as a second pressure mine detonated when the riddled remains of the tire landed on its plunger.
The boys stared at the smoke and fire and then the sound of gunshots reached them, The other soldiers had spotted them and were now on the road, their rifles aimed in the boys’ direction. They were bolt-action Mausers and took a moment to chamber a new round between firing, but still the three Germans poured a withering fire above the boys’ heads. The oak and cypress trunks behind them were taking the brunt of the volley. Bark and leaf debris flew like shrapnel all around them. Their ears ringing and now frightened for their lives, they dropped to the ground and felt air move just inches away when the big rifle rounds whizzed past and demolished the trees and undergrowth that hid them.
“Presto! Scappiamo! We gotta get outta here!” Franco shouted over the gunfire. His ears were still ringing from the mine explosions—he thought he was whispering.
Pietro was stunned frozen. His eyes were wide with fear, his muscles paralyzed. He hadn’t expected the sentries would be so eager to bag their hidden attackers.
Nor that they could shoot so well.
Franco risked a peek over the bluff’s lip. A command car bristling with guns was speeding toward the guardhouse from behind the fence. It reminded him of a speedy black scorpion. It slowed down and two of the gate sentries piled in, and then it sped up and out of the gate onto the road.
Heading up.
To where the boys were hiding.
Heading up that road fast.
“Andiamo, presto!” Franco shouted in Pietro’s ear. Let’s go, right now! He grasped the other boy’s arm and yanked him back from the top of the hill. Pietro’s eyes were wide, staring into somewhere Franco couldn’t imagine. The remaining sentry was still concentrating his rifle fire on the spot where the boys had been standing only moments before. Splinters of bark from the trees rained down on them like tiny knives, drawing blood when they hit skin.
Pietro was waking up, starting to run and following Franco through the slashing brush.
“Come on!” Franco shouted.
From below, they heard the grinding of gears as the command car sped up the sloping road toward them.
It was plain to see what had happened. The boys had hoped to detonate a few mines the Germans had laid along both sides of the approach to this particular field command post. But they hadn’t counted on the Germans believing they were under attack. Pietro had convinced his friend they’d just shake their fists and swear at them in their comical language like they all did when faced with the ubiquitous boyish thievery that went on all over occupied Italy.
Pietro and Franco had hoped to use their demonstration as a way to deal their way into a local partisan unit commanded by one of his cousins. They knew the rumors about the Resistance as well as anyone, and maybe better. Once the story of their exploit got around, they believed, of two boys disrupting the enemy minefield, all the partisan units would begin to use their tactics—using discarded tires.
But now they were running for their lives, grand plans forgotten.
They heard the command car approach the switchback just below the crest of the hill. The driver crashed through the gears and made the engine scream. Excited German voices were punctuated by stuttering rifle fire from down below.
“Corri!” Franco urged his friend. Run! They were stumbling through the thickening underbrush. “Avoid the road!” he gasped out. “The path, too!”
They heard the car rounding the curve a ways below, imagining it scuttling along the road like a giant beetle. It threatened to cut them off if they didn’t reach—and cross—their section of road first.
Wolf's Edge (The Nick Lupo Series Book 4) Page 8
