Fuck it. Grow up. We’ve got a job to do.
“Are we ready?” Canidy said evenly.
“Sure,” Fuller whispered, with some ice in his tone.
“Ready,” Nola whispered.
On the submarine, Canidy had debated with himself how they should go into town—armed to the teeth, or try to get there as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.
They were not at a loss for weapons.
Canidy had his Colt Model 1911 .45 ACP semiautomatic pistol, the Johnson .30-06 light machine gun, and the baby Fairbairn. Fuller carried a.45, too, and a Sten 9mm submachine gun. And Nola was armed with his own personal Walther P38 9mm semiautomatic pistol; he had declined the offer of an automatic weapon since he’d had no experience handling one.
In the end, Canidy had decided that each man should have his pistol close at hand. But the bigger guns could be held as backup, left in the duffels.
His reasoning, after all, was that there would be no firepower needed if they were to find a city full of dead citizens. Or if instead they were to encounter, say, a city overrun with German and Italian troops, they sure as hell were not going to engage in a firefight—not and get out alive.
We’re supposed to get in, get the intel, and get the hell out.
And that’s exactly what I plan to do.
“Lead the way, Frank,” Canidy whispered. “Or tell me the direction and I’ll take point.”
“I can do it,” Nola said and started walking.
After a dozen yards or so, Canidy felt that they were walking up a light grade. A few more yards beyond that, the grade became steeper. Then the path leveled off, and Canidy could see out over the water, the light from the stars reflecting on the surface. There was no visible horizon, and it appeared that the sky and sea had become one.
They began walking southwestward along a dirt path that paralleled the main, two-lane road. On either side of the uneven rocky trail grew hardy, dense shrubs, about chest-high to the men. The growth provided them with some cover. If necessary, they could duck down for total concealment.
There were absolutely no lights to be seen anywhere. Canidy could not determine if that was a good sign or a bad one. Where they walked was not at all populated—they had yet to pass any structure, residence or otherwise—but still he thought that there might be some man-made light somewhere in the distance.
Of course, the absence of such man-made light could mean the absence of man himself.
Off to their right, near the main road, Canidy noticed a low wall constructed of a white stone that showed up well in the dark. It followed alongside the lane, off into the distance as far as his eye could see. And it continued to do so, even after they had walked along for some five or so minutes.
“What’s with the wall?” Canidy whispered to Nola.
“What do you mean?”
“The stone wall over by the road. What does it go to?”
“Oh. That is Cimitero dei Rotoli.”
“That’s what?” Fuller said.
“A monumental cemetery,” Nola explained. “Is the size of what would be many, many city blocks, long and wide, and on up the mountainside.”
That’s massive! Canidy thought.
Wonder how busy it’s been lately?
He was about to suggest that they make a detour and pass through it, looking for any evidence of mass graves. But then he decided that that wasn’t necessary. He really wanted to get an eyeball on the harbor.
It should tell me everything I need to know.
Twenty minutes later, they reached the outskirts of a hamlet. The main road cut through its score of low, brightly painted buildings constructed of masonry.
“Palermo?” Fuller said.
Canidy realized that that was the first thing that Tubes had said since he had chastised him.
Then Canidy thought, Not Palermo. Too small.
“This is Arenella,” Nola announced softly. “We are more than halfway there. Only about another kilometer.”
“You okay with your gear, Tubes?” Canidy asked Fuller. “Need to trade, or take a break?”
“I’m fine,” Fuller replied. “Thanks.”
So he’s not pissed anymore, Canidy thought. Good.
“And Adolf and Eva are still kicking,” Fuller added. “I know you’d want to know.”
“Thanks,” Canidy said.
With Nola still in the lead and Fuller bringing up the rear, they passed Arenella, staying on the path between its outer edge and the seashore.
Canidy kept looking for lights. And kept finding nothing but black night.
But it is—what?—maybe three, four in the morning.
Normal people are asleep at this hour.
Suddenly, Nola made a noisy grunt—and stumbled forward.
Find a nice rock there, Frank?
Canidy whispered, “You okay?”
Then, just ahead of Canidy’s feet, there came the painful moaning of a strange man’s voice.
Canidy stopped in his tracks. He brought out his pistol as he crouched down beside some shrubs off the trail. He let his duffel slip to the ground.
Seconds later, Canidy heard Fuller coming up the path fast, and, with his left arm, Canidy motioned for Fuller to get behind him.
“Get your penlight,” Canidy whispered to Fuller.
More moaning came from the man on the path.
“You okay, Frank?” Canidy called.
Far up the path, a tiny beam of light appeared. It was aimed at the ground; then it illuminated what looked like the box that held the mice.
Faintly, but clearly, Canidy heard Nola’s worried tone: “Dammit!”
He must have hauled ass after he fell.
Whatever it is, it scared the shit out of Frank…or still is.
Then it occurred to him that Nola could get in the line of fire.
“Stay put!” Canidy called back. “And stay down!”
Canidy felt a solid tap on his shoulder.
“Here,” Fuller said, holding out the penlight.
“Shine it on him,” Canidy said, “or whatever it is on the trail.”
A moment later, a thin beam of yellow light appeared. It illuminated a tiny spot of shrubs across the path, then found the dirt path and meandered up it. The beam passed countless sun-bleached stones, then one large, dark rock —Christ, that one alone could have tripped me, Canidy thought—then finally found one of the man’s legs, then the other. His pants were filthy.
Canidy thought, Finally, we find someone…and he’s damn near dead.
The yellow beam danced its way up the leg, reached the buttocks, then continued up to the untucked shirttail. From what they had seen so far, the body was short and stout.
“Hit the face,” Canidy whispered.
The yellow beam immediately went farther up—too far—first into the shrubs, then backtracked till it found the head.
The man’s face was turned away from Canidy and Fuller, looking toward where Nola was laying low. The man appeared to be older, maybe in his fifties, with wavy white hair.
I can’t see any signs of skin lesions, Canidy thought, no real evidence of gas poisoning.
Maybe he was farther away during the explosion, and what poison reached him is just now showing its signs.
“Check his hands,” Canidy said.
It took Fuller a moment to locate them individually. The man was splayed out, his arms awkwardly pointed in opposite directions, and Fuller had had to start with each shoulder and work the beam out from there, following each arm until he reached the hand.
No lesions on the skin of his hands, either, Canidy thought.
He said, “No weapons. Put the beam back on his head and hold it there.”
Fuller did.
Canidy then stood up from his crouch and, with his pistol aimed squarely between the man’s shoulder blades, carefully moved toward him. The man made no move whatsoever.
When Canidy reached him, he used the toe of his right shoe to nudge the man’s hip.
The man groaned but otherwise didn’t move.
Canidy stepped to the other side, trying to get a look at the man’s face.
“C’mere,” Canidy called impatiently to Fuller.
Fuller came running with the penlight.
“Hit his face with that beam.”
When Fuller did, Canidy said, disgustedly, “Oh, for christsake!”
“Is he dying?” Nola said, approaching slowly.
Canidy looked at Nola and said, “What happened up there?”
“The mice,” Nola said, disappointment in his tone, “they got out of the box when it fell. The lid opened. I am sorry.”
You mean when you fell and you dropped the box? Canidy thought.
So we’re down to two mice? No backups?
Oh, hell.
Nothing to do about it now.
Canidy rolled the man over onto his back. When he did, Fuller moved the light, and it first found a wine bottle that had been between the man’s chest and the path.
Then he shined the beam from the man’s face down to his soiled shirt, then to his sodden pants. His fly was open, his penis barely out.
“The sonofabitch is stone-fucking-drunk,” Canidy announced. “And it would appear that he passed out in the process of pissing his pants.”
There was a moment’s silence before Fuller spoke up:
“At least it’s not gas poisoning….”
They came to the edge of Palermo. As they skirted a piazza, then reached an intersection that Canidy thought that he recalled, an obese cat suddenly bolted out of an alley.
It saw the three men and raced straight for them.
Fuller instinctively reached up to his shoulder strap and, with his big hands covering the pouch tied there, protected the mice from attack.
Then, just as suddenly, the cat made a ninety-degree turn and disappeared down another alley near the piazza.
As Fuller exchanged glances with Nola, Tubes looking somewhat embarrassed, a wiry dog came flying out of the first alley. It was apparent that he was looking around for the cat. When he found the cat was gone, he shook his body from nose to tail, clearly pleased with himself and his little game.
The dog looked at the men, wagged his tail twice, then turned back for the alley.
More signs of normal life, Canidy thought. Thank God.
Nola began leading the way again, making turns with the conviction of a citizen of Palermo that he was.
It’s interesting how attached they’ve become to the mice, Canidy found himself thinking.
Or maybe it’s not the mice.
Maybe it’s what the mice represent—a sure way to save their asses in a situation where, right now, nothing is for sure.
Because even now—especially now—the answers still are wildly unknown.
From the time they had left the drunk to sleep off his bender in the path near Arenella, Canidy had been running scenarios based on that encounter.
But what can you really make of one drunk?
No telling where that guy had been when the gas went up.
Or maybe it didn’t, and the sonofabitch was just plain stinking drunk.
Who knows?
We should, very shortly.
After another block, Canidy realized that they were headed back uphill.
“Where the hell are we going, Frank?” Canidy said.
“My cousin’s,” Nola said, “is ten blocks this way—”
“No,” Canidy said.
Nola and Fuller stopped and looked with some frustration at Canidy. Clearly, everyone was tired—and more than a little apprehensive.
Canidy glanced at his watch. It was just shy of five o’clock. They would have to hurry to beat the sunrise.
He quickly looked around. When he glanced up, he saw a street sign bolted to the side of the building. It read VIA MONTABLO.
And he recognized that from when he’d first come to Palermo. He remember it intersected with Quinta Casa street. Which led to the port.
“This way first,” he said, nodding downhill. “I have to see the harbor. It’s only a few blocks. Then we go to your cousin’s.”
As they went, Canidy thought he heard the sounds of movement coming from one of the buildings they passed, then from another.
I must be imagining things.
Willing there to be someone moving, getting up.
But, he realized, it was the right time. It wouldn’t be unusual for some people—one, two, a few—to be getting up.
Even Sicily has to have its own early risers.
At the next corner, where the sign on the building read VIA QUINTA CASA, they turned left.
Then across the street, in a window, Canidy saw something move.
It was a curtain being drawn back. Then, beyond that, a candle was being lit.
“Look!” he said, pointing.
Nola and Fuller followed to where he was pointing.
Human life, Canidy thought.
Maybe it is okay here after all.
Or at least not a horrific human disaster….
He picked up the pace. They now were about two blocks from the fishermen’s pier where the cargo ship had been moored.
And then they were within one block.
And then…they suddenly encountered a stench.
“What the hell is that?” Fuller said.
Not fish decay, Canidy thought. It’s a far more corrupted odor.
He looked back at Nola and Fuller.
Fuller had the collar of his T-shirt pulled up over his nose, using it as a makeshift air filter.
Nola had buried his nose in the crook of his arm, breathing through the fabric of his shirtsleeve.
They finished walking the last of the final block and turned the corner.
Nola literally gasped at the sight.
Shit! Canidy thought, and instinctively stepped into the shadow of a doorway, out of sight.
Nola and Fuller followed him, their eyes fixed on the heavy wooden beams that formed a fifteen-foot-tall framework over the foot of the pier.
There, from the uppermost beam, the bodies of two fishermen hung from wire nooses, their silhouettes backlit by the ruby horizon of the sun that was just about to rise. Dried blood caked their faces and upper torsos.
Canidy tore his eyes from the horror and scanned the port area.
He noticed that the T-shaped pier where the cargo ship with the Tabun had been tied up no longer was a T. It was a stub, only a third its original length. And then he saw that the pebble beach was stacked with the burned hulls of the smaller fishing boats.
“That explains why there was no fishing-boat traffic near shore,” Canidy said softly. “No one is going in or out of this place.”
Nola still stared at the sunbaked bodies.
“They look,” he said, his voice beginning to quiver again, “as if they have been there for some time.”
“About a week—” Canidy began.
He stopped when he heard behind him the wrenching sound of Jim Fuller violently throwing up on the sidewalk.
[THREE]
OSS Whitbey House Station Kent, England 1550 3 April 1943
“What exactly do you mean you’re not sure you like this next part, Ewen?” Commander Ian Fleming said. “And that there’s little we can do?”
Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu raised his eyebrows.
“It’s not exactly a terrible thing,” he explained. “Certainly, not what I feared it could be.” He paused, gathered his thoughts, then went on: “It would appear that everyone likes to be a spy. No one more so than those so high that they could not possibly be one; they are stuck at their desks, making the big decisions.”
“Who are we talking about?” Major David Niven said.
“As we were in the process of getting approvals for this mission,” Montagu explained, “the Vice Chief became keenly interested in how this ruse would play out—”
“So Archie Nye wanted to play?” Niven said.
Montagu nodded. �
�Very much so. Without any inquiries on my part, he offered up some scenarios. Then he approached Lord Mountbatten—”
“Oh, for christsake!” Niven interrupted. “Dickie got involved, too? Have they not enough to do?”
“Dickie?” Charity repeated.
“Mountbatten’s nickname,” Niven explained. “He got it, story goes, due to some nonsense concerning Czar Nicholas of Russia.” He looked at Montagu. “Anyway, what exactly did Archie and Dickie have to offer?”
Montagu pulled two sheets of typewritten paper from his briefcase and handed them to Niven.
Niven quickly read the first page, making an occasional grunt as he went down the sheet. When he had finished, he slid it across the table to Fleming and began reading the second page.
Fleming picked up the first letter and began reading:
* * *
In Reply, Quote S.R. 1924/43
COMBINED OPERATIONS HEADQUARTERS
1A RICHMOND TERRACE
WHITEHALL S.W.I
21st April, 1943
Dear Admiral of the Fleet,
I promised V.C.I.G.S. that the Major would arrange with you for the onward transmission of a letter he had with him for General Alexander. It is very urgent and very “hot” and, as there are some remarks in it that could not be seen by others in the War Office, it could not go by signal. I feel sure that you will see that it goes on safely and without delay.
I think you will find the Major the man you want. He is quiet and shy at first, but he really knows his stuff. He was more accurate than some of us about the probable run of events at Dieppe, and he had been well in on the experiments which took place up in Scotland.
Let me have him back, please, as soon as the assault is over. He might bring some sardines with him—they are on “points” here!
Yours Sincerely,
Louis Mountbatten
Admiral of the Fleet Sir A.B. Cunningham, G.C.B.,
D.S.O.
Commander in Chief Mediterranean
Allied Force H.Q.,
Algiers
* * *
The Double Agents (AUDIOBOOK) (CD) Page 25
