“Including yours. Fines. Requisition. Prison. Those are the penalties.”
Sundberg’s mouth opened to speak, but no sound came out.
“I am expressly authorized to inform you, and the Foreign Policy Council of Sweden, that the U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control is taking steps to freeze certain Swedish accounts in American banks, and in Swedish banks doing business in the United States, pending the outcome of procedures.”
“Procedures?”
“Nominating procedures for the special Swedish envoy, a Mr. Raoul Wallenberg.” Warburg stood up, and so did Mates. “I suggest you start composing your cable, Mr. Ambassador. Dispatch it. Each day, Sir, between ten and fourteen thousand souls perish.”
Sundberg’s expression of helpless surprise slowly gave way to a look of open hostility, which prompted Warburg to add, uncharacteristically, “If they have souls. What do you think?”
“Jesus, Warburg, what was that?” Mates asked outside, as they took the stairs down from the Swedish palazzo. The sun was already high in the sky, a canopy of glare.
“A little one-on-one, Peter.” On the sidewalk, Warburg stopped and faced the other man, who, remaining elevated by a pair of steps, looked him in the eye. “Dribbling. Head feint. Lay-up. Did you play basketball?” Mates did not answer. Warburg said, “Sundberg and his ilk backed the losers. We have to give them a way to join the winners—and that way is Jews.”
“But these rumors about Jews,” Mates said. “I’m old enough to remember the Great War propaganda, the Hun roasting babies on spits, all that.”
“I’m not talking about propaganda,” Warburg said. “Nor about rumors. Maybe you didn’t hear me, Colonel.” Warburg could not stifle his feelings. “Between ten and fourteen thousand every day.”
“Yes, ‘transport.’ But to what? Concentration camps are bad, but they’re all over German-occupied Europe, in Italy, too. You believe that ovens-and-gas-chambers stuff?”
“You don’t?”
“Why don’t I hear about it on Voice of America then? Why not on the BBC? Or Murrow from London?”
“You tell me, Colonel. Answer your own question. Why don’t you hear about it?” Warburg faced away from Mates, to contain himself. On the broad Via XX Settembre, traffic was breasting around a stalled trolley, a tangled clot of vehicles—autos, horse wagons, and pushcarts. Pealing church bells sounded from near and far. A loudspeaker truck was passing slowly by, its amplified voice enthusiastically wailing words Warburg did not understand, although he made out “Grazie” and “Il Papa.” At the nearby curb sat the jeep, the driver lounging with a cigarette.
Mates grasped Warburg’s shoulder from behind. “Look, I’m trying to understand. I don’t get it. So Sweden goes to bat for you in Budapest.”
“Not for me.”
“But in Budapest? You get Jews in Swedish custody? Then what?”
“Find a way to get them here to Rome,” Warburg said. “Then to Naples. Get them on empty troopships heading back to the U.S.”
“You’re serious.”
“We have people working on a route through Romania, down to Istanbul. We have refugee camps being built in Algeria. We have people working on this in Portugal. But the priority—my priority—is getting refugees to the States. Roosevelt has authorized it. He sent the WRB here to get Jews to America, the one place we know for sure where they will be safe.” Warburg stared at Mates, openly assessing him. Then he said quietly, “I could use your help, Peter.”
“Impossible. You’re dreaming. No way to get troopships.”
“Not for Jews, you mean.”
“No. That’s not what I mean.”
“So, you think I should just pray for the Red Army to hurry up, moving west?”
“If you think the Reds would be better,” Mates said. Then, as an afterthought, “Pray? Do you pray?”
“No.” Warburg turned and led the way to the curb, where the jeep waited. The driver, a stocky, acne-faced NCO, snapped his cigarette butt away. Warburg opened the door and started to climb into the back seat, but Mates stopped him. “Wait a minute, David.” Instead, Mates mounted the jeep first, taking the rear seat, gesturing at the one in front, the commander’s seat. “The jeep is yours. And say hello to Sergeant Rossini, your new driver and translator.”
The formidable walls ringing Vatican City left no doubt as to the enclave’s status as a separate principality, its ruler’s status as a man apart. To Kevin Deane, inveterate Bronx Irishman, the sweetest fact about the world’s smallest sovereign state had always been its size: at barely more than a hundred acres, eight Vatican Cities would fit nicely inside New York’s Central Park.
Frederick Law Olmsted’s New York greensward was, in fact, a fitting comparison, since two-thirds of the papal territory in the heart of Rome was given over to gardens, this central one of which, beginning in an hour and for the rest of the afternoon, would be reserved exclusively for the Holy Father.
Deane, now a properly cassocked prelate himself, hurried through the lavish green lawns, shaped hedges, and flower beds. He’d have preferred a more leisurely stroll, especially in the heat, but he feared being late. A distracting knot of anxiety tightened in his chest. It was less than an hour past high noon, and the light was piercing—no such light in New York City. This was Old World light, he thought, aware of his bareheadedness, and why shouldn’t Roman priests wear the broad-brimmed clerical hat that made them look as if they were balancing the ringed planet Saturn on their heads?
Perfumes of nectar and pollen filled the air, trumping the cologne he’d slapped on his cheeks moments before in his cramped apartment in the wing behind him. Because of Spellman, Deane had been offered a large suite of rooms atop the Palace of the Congregations, on Via della Conciliazione, the boulevard sloping from St. Peter’s Square down to the Tiber, just outside the Vatican’s perimeter. But, also because of Spellman, Deane had known to display his humility, requesting more modest quarters adjacent to his office—quarters inside the Holy See. Where you stand in the hierarchy depends on where you sit on the toilet. Thus Deane’s three small rooms were in the so-called Apostolic Palace itself, a mammoth complex of linked buildings, the grandest of which held the papal apartments and fronted on St. Peter’s Square. Toward that building’s garden entrance Deane strode now, the place where the Pope and his chief aides—and their chief aides—lived and worked.
This was the rear façade of the palazzo, yet it was decorated with fluted pilasters, an elaborate cornice, and a crowning balustrade. A Swiss Guard stood rigidly at attention at the doorway, pike in hand. Costumed in golden silk, the Cortés-helmeted soldier looked like a Christmas ornament. He stiffened slightly in a salute that Deane knew to ignore. Every guardsman was already briefed on the new American monsignor, his appearance and his position.
Once through the doors, Deane’s vision blurred momentarily in the shadows of the cool interior. He picked up his pace, soutane spiraling at his ankles, to hurry along an apparently endless broad corridor. Deane was entering the inner sanctum, heading for Cardinal Luigi Maglione’s rooms—luncheon at the table of the secretary of state of His Holiness the Pope.
A butler somehow knew of Deane’s approach and opened the carved oak door ahead of him. Deane entered an apartment that would have set the hearts of Park Avenue decorators aflutter, only here the marble-topped tables, gilded frames, and Murano glass chandeliers had been in place for centuries, a show of the real that was not for sale. Immediately to his left was the entrance to a darkened personal chapel, from which cool air and the aroma of incense drifted. On the right stood an intricately inlaid walnut table holding half a dozen birettas in red-trimmed black and various crimson hues. Hanging from pegs on a multibranched hatrack were three broad-brimmed cappelli romani—the Saturn hats. There was also a silk top hat and a pair of gray suede gloves. The butler had his hand out, and Deane realized at once that his own bareheadedness was a faux pas. He winked.
Deane strode into the palatial main room of the cardina
l’s apartment as if he belonged there. This was the legendary weekly luncheon hosted by Maglione, with diplomats resident in Vatican City the featured guests. Deane knew this gathering to be the engine of the Holy See’s reputation as a purring machine of espionage, and he arrived with all antennae upright. Light streamed in from high Venetian windows through which the dome of St. Peter’s could be seen, looming like a tethered dirigible. He wheeled right, toward a dozen men, all but one in cassocks. They were standing in groups of three and four, holding apéritif glasses and cigarettes. Mostly their robes were black with red accents, like Deane’s, but three wore purple-band cinctures, and of those, two wore matching purple skullcaps—bishops, therefore. Not a screaming scarlet cassock in sight—good: Cardinal Maglione was not present yet, which meant Deane was on time.
A burst of laughter came from one of the groups, centered on a short, portly man, one of those wearing the purple sash: Domenico Tardini, the director of the Pontifical Relief Commission—Deane’s boss in Rome. Tardini was an apostolic protonotary supernumerary, a position reserved for key papal aides. Given the tenor of their last encounter, the day before, Deane was surprised when Tardini waved him over.
Tardini was standing with the short man in striped pants, waistcoat, and cutaway. Deane realized from his coal-black hair and facial features that he was Japanese. What’s this?
But then it hit him. With the liberation, the Allied diplomats who’d taken refuge from the Germans in Vatican City would have just switched places with Japs and—Deane looked around—Krauts? As Deane approached Monsignor Tardini, the Japanese man turned away to join a separate conversation. A tray-bearing waiter appeared at Deane’s elbow, remaining immobile while Deane bowed before Tardini to kiss his ring. “Most Reverend, Sir.”
Monsignor Tardini was still grinning from whatever had prompted the laughter Deane had heard, and he continued to smile as each of the other men greeted the American, fluent Italian all around. Only then did Deane turn to the waiter to take the single tulip glass. He sipped it and recognized the bitter Cinzano, a drink he had always avoided in Rome.
“We were speaking just now of your compatriot,” Tardini said in Italian, the grin growing bigger again.
“Oh, Monsignor?” Deane replied, skating over the frozen undercurrent. “And who would that be?”
“The much reported soldier, one Sergeant O’Hara, who yesterday stood on his Sherman tank at the Colosseum, gestured at the ancient ruin, and said”—Tardini paused long enough to indicate that, even in Italian, one could invoke a stage-Irish brogue—“‘Glory be to God, the Germans bombed that, too?’”
Once more, guffaws all around, including the Japanese man, though he remained half turned away, clearly avoiding Deane.
“Very interesting, Monsignor.” Deane raised the glass to his lips but did not sip. “And who reported this?”
Another prelate said, “The BBC, naturally. Who else?”
Deane shook his head. “Lord Haw-Haw on Radio Berlin, I’d have thought.” He was the soul of buon umore. At the mention of Berlin, the Japanese dignitary turned toward Deane, who immediately met his eyes. “Or Tokyo Rose, perhaps.” Deane’s grin said, Just joking. He nodded at the diplomat, who once more turned quickly away.
Now Deane allowed himself a hefty swallow of the drink he held. Foul taste, just as he recalled, but the familiar jolt of alcohol was welcome. He turned his smile on Tardini. “And if the GI’s name was O’Hara, Most Reverend Monsignor, we can be sure he had the nuns in school, and therefore knows full well what the Colosseum is.”
Monsignor Tardini stared at Deane for a long moment. With the insult upended, an unwelcome air of unease had blown in. Tardini sought to dispel it by putting a casual hand on Deane’s forearm and introducing him as the new vice director of the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza. The clerics would have needed no further explanation, since all were aware of Spellman, his generous sponsorship of the Pontifical Relief Commission—and his blatant ambition to be named papal secretary of state. Deane knew that his own status here depended on his being Spellman’s man. Normally, the thought of Spellman as Maglione’s successor would have provoked laughter among the Italian prelates, but Maglione was sickly, and at war’s end power politics would shift. The Church might need an American at the Pope’s elbow, and His Holiness was unpredictable. It cost the Vatican insiders nothing to curry favor with the wily Spellman, and therefore with his man here. Hence the implication of affection in Tardini’s introduction. Deane knew better than to take it personally, especially after yesterday.
Before the limp-handed introductions were complete, a flurry of arrival noises drifted in from the apartment entrance, and, like leaves to the rising sun, the gathering turned. Cardinal Maglione, a scarecrow figure made even more stick-like by his bright red, shoulder-caped vestments, swooped into the room at the head of a small parade of other men. Deane had laid eyes on the great prelate only across the distance of the nave of St. Peter’s, and he wondered why Maglione seemed so familiar. Then he realized he was looking at El Greco’s Saint Jerome, if shorn of the beard.
Despite Maglione’s grotto-eyed gauntness, he seemed vital and happy, with his hands alternately upraised, as if greeting pilgrims, and then tugging at his watered-silk cincture, which seemed not quite to fit. Indeed, the air of recent weight loss clung to him. Yet his broad smile was surprisingly engaging. When he met Deane’s gaze, he stopped for an instant, a kind of recognition, then moved on. Behind Maglione were two more bishops, three dark-suited laymen, and, bringing up the rear, a lean cleric in an unadorned black soutane, another El Greco figure, but this of a young man.
Protocol brought Maglione to Tardini, who deftly kissed the ring, the single baciamano that this gathering would require. The cardinal ignored Deane and the others, instead turning back to announce his party. He gestured the laymen forward, but was suddenly speaking in a language that momentarily threw Deane. Only upon hearing the name “von Weizsäcker” did he realize it was German.
From then on, Deane’s major project was to stifle the cold resentment he felt. The initial current of interest he’d sensed coming from Maglione was perhaps a breed of embarrassment, stirred by recognition of his being American, for the prelate had arrived with Ernst von Weizsäcker, the German ambassador to the Holy See, and his deputy, Albrecht von Kessel, both dressed alike in dark business suits. Von Weizsäcker had a full head of white hair, dramatically combed straight back. He carried himself with an exaggeratedly upright posture and took in his surroundings with one eye half closed, as if missing its monocle. Maglione’s flamboyant introduction of the pair was greeted with a chipper round of applause.
Deane knew of both Germans, especially von Weizsäcker, the patrician Prussian who had served as Hitler’s secretary of state. Berlin had posted him to the Holy See just as the German vise closed on Rome in September. In briefings at Spellman’s office, Deane had heard that von Weizsäcker had then lodged Germany’s formal protest against Catholic sheltering of “criminal elements,” by which, of course, he meant Jews. It was a protest he’d have made to Maglione, yet here was Maglione kissing his heinie—and covering it. Now that the Allies held Rome, the Kraut diplomat was himself a criminal element, taking refuge under the skirts of Holy Mother the Church.
Deane stood to the side, near one of the grand windows, sipping his Cinzano as if he liked it. He watched as the gathering reordered itself around the Germans. In addition to the diplomats, and two or three of Maglione’s Curia flunkies, the arrivals included a bespectacled, cape-wearing German bishop. That would be Ludwig Graz, Deane realized, the rector of the German national church in Rome. Positioned a step behind Graz, ready to take an order, was the dark-complected El Greco figure, the young priest in black.
The strings of conversation had easily reknotted into German, reminding Deane of the Vatican’s astounding multilingualism. He chided himself for not seeing this coming. Von Weizsäcker and von Kessel, to avoid arrest by the Americans, would have taken over Vatica
n apartments just vacated by American and British diplomats. Deane had to remind himself: the Vatican was neutral in this war. His Church was neutral.
The day before, when Deane’s wires had unexpectedly crossed with Tardini’s, the short-circuit was sparked not by the diplomats, but by the place where they were housed. Like the Allies before them, the Axis envoys would now be lodged in Santa Marta, the hospice compound on the opposite side of St. Peter’s Square from the Apostolic Palace, beside the Gate of Bells. Santa Marta was one of the first places in Vatican City that Deane had asked to be shown.
The group of buildings, surrounding a courtyard containing a statue of the Madonna and Child, was constructed in the late nineteenth century to house victims of a cholera outbreak, and then served as a hostel for pilgrims. Deane’s guide was one of the sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, the nuns who’ve been running the place for the half century of its existence. The sister wore the cobalt-blue habit of her order, but what really made her distinctive were the starched white wings of her headgear. From the neck up, she looked like a swan about to take flight.
She had assumed that the American wanted to be shown the VIP quarters, the apartments on the top floors of the five-story building where the diplomats lived—the “guests of the Holy Father”—or perhaps the rooms on the lower floors that housed union leaders, cousins of Victor Emmanuel, or former associates of Mussolini’s who had defected after Il Duce’s overthrow. A mélange of political misfits had been resident in the place throughout the war. But no, Deane had asked her to show him the cellars.
Santa Marta had provided a home not only for the well-connected, but also for a multitude of anonymous sanctuary seekers, with the dank cellars reserved for the last to come when the Germans took over Rome. In crypts that once served as the cholera morgue were hidden the most desperate of the refugees, the ones the Germans had most wanted. And, assuming they were still there, the ones Deane wanted to see for himself.
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