At the memory of his sending the prayer shawl out onto the open water of Lake Champlain, Warburg felt a flare of shame. His grandfather, and perhaps others before, had covered their shoulders with that cloth, a sign of devotion. Warburg’s father had declined to wear the tallit himself, yet had made it a solemn gift to his only son, offering a link to their past and to their people. And he, David Warburg, had said no. In the end, his notion of respect was mistaken. Therefore, why shouldn’t he feel this remorse, having once cast that past and those people upon the waters, to drown?
“Hello, Warburg,” Mates said as he joined him at the rail, elbows on the metal, facing the dark chop of the Tiber. Just there, the current was set against itself by the stout base of Ponte Fabricio, the oldest bridge in Rome, and the backwash stirred up a crusty black froth. Warburg had proposed this place for their meeting because the woman told him to. He said, “Thanks for getting here, Peter.”
“What’s so urgent?” Mates looked up at the dusky sky as the first drops of a light rain fell. “Damn,” he muttered, then turned up the collar of his field jacket.
“I have some people I want you to meet,” Warburg said. With that, he turned and headed out into the congested embankment boulevard.
“Hell,” Mates called, “I have a meeting of my own. You’re making me late.”
But Warburg ignored Mates to thread through a snarl of traffic. Across the way, in front of a church, Lionni and Marguerite were waiting.
Warburg sensed the difference in Mates when he saw the woman, the forward slant of her beret that failed to hide her bruised cheek.
“This is Signor Lionni, Signorina d’Erasmo,” Warburg said. “This is Colonel Mates.”
Mates shook hands with Lionni, but Marguerite stood back. Mates looked at her. “D’Erasmo?” he asked.
“Sì.”
Mates seemed about to say something, but Lionni interrupted, and Marguerite translated: “We must leave the rain.”
Without a further word, Lionni led the way past a monumental half-column, vestige of Rome’s long-lost grandeur, into the thick of a crowded neighborhood whose ruins were more mundane.
Moments later they were in a small room on the second floor of a nondescript community building. Glass-enclosed shelves held rows of books. Framed etchings showed intricate landscapes. In anticipation, Lionni had already come up here to lay out his map on the round central table. Books at the corners held the paper in place. The window blinds were shut tight. A cone-shaped light fixture hung over the table, setting shadows in motion as they approached, but illuminating the map like an unfurled sacred scroll. Warburg saw that the letters on the cover of the book on the corner nearest him were Hebrew. He glanced again at the shelves—Hebrew. The etchings showed an ancient hilltop city, palm trees, camels, a fantasy Jerusalem.
Mates did not disguise his impatience as he pushed in front of Warburg and barked a command in an imperious Italian. Lionni immediately responded, with equal authority, and quickly the two engaged in a series of no-nonsense exchanges.
Lionni again punctuated his explanation with sharp stabs of his index finger, identifying locations on the map. Amid the torrent of words, Warburg recognized “Fossoli,” “Nazi,” and “Po,” but otherwise understood nothing.
Yet Mates’s reaction, soon enough conveyed by a slow wagging of his head, could not have been plainer: No.
Lionni stared at Mates, his harsh intensity fading into supplication. “Please, Sir,” he said in English. “Please.”
Instead of answering Lionni, Mates looked over at Warburg. “What in God’s name, Warburg? What?”
Warburg said, “Our bombers are dropping bridges all over northern Italy, Colonel. Why not that one?”
“How many reasons do you want?” Mates held up his five fingers. “The Fifth Army push is toward the Arno, not the Po, west not east—one. The Krauts are mauling our guys up there, so tactical air corps are doing close ground support, not interdicting transport—two. Twining’s B-29s are finally in range of gasoline farms in Austria and Bavaria—three. Even if you blow that particular bridge, the poor creatures in that camp get killed on the spot instead of being sent north—four.”
Warburg interrupted him. “The Waffen-SS have already left the camp. A minimal contingent of unseasoned guards, not heavyweights.”
Mates ignored him. “And what are we talking about here, three or four hundred people? That’s breakfast for Kesselring; every fucking day he’s killing ten times that in combat—number five. And six”—having closed his five fingers into a fist, he seemed ready to shake it at Warburg—“you and I are Civil Affairs, not Operations. Tell your friends we have nothing to do with targeting. Quit posturing, for Christ’s sake. Who are you trying to impress?”
“The OSS, Peter. Your outfit.”
Mates stepped back. “Says who?”
“Your Special Ops command at Brindisi—you’ve set targets from Trieste to Belgrade. You could set this target.”
Mates seared Warburg with his stare. But Warburg did not flinch. He said, “And now, using Civil Affairs as cover, you’re my OSS minder. Assigned by General Donovan himself.”
Mates laughed. “You have an outsized sense of your importance, my friend, if you think Donovan gives a shit about you. Or your—” He glanced at the unmoving Italians, and thought better of what he’d almost said. Instead, he lowered his voice. “Not ‘targets,’ David. ‘Drops.’ From Brindisi, I set drops. I had no authority over ordnance. Never set a target. Anyway, the Special Ops air force is defunct.”
“You can call in chits with Clark, Peter,” Warburg said. “There would be no antiaircraft guns in the Po Valley. An undefended stretch of river of no tactical significance. Not a formation of B-29s. A single P-51 would do fine. One unescorted sortie, one five-hundred-pound bomb. Less than an hour’s fuel. If you won’t make the case, help me to do it. Get me to the wing commander. We have to stop this transport. These are not just any four hundred people. Right now they are the most important four hundred men, women, and children in Europe.”
“Oh, really? Name two.”
Warburg shot back, “Giannino Salvucci. Leona Modena.”
Mates shrugged. “That makes my point. Drop the bridge, halt the transport—the Nazis just line them up in front of a ditch they were forced to dig themselves, and open fire.”
“Not if, simultaneously, the world’s attention is drawn to Fossoli, the plight of women and children, the Allies riding to the rescue.” Warburg touched Mates’s chest, adding, “General Clark would love it. A Movietone newsreel.”
“Bullshit. Women and children are in duress from the Balkans to the Baltic. Who’s going to make noise about these poor people?”
“The Pope.”
Mates laughed out loud. “The Pope? Jesus Christ, Warburg. Jesus Fucking Christ. Which is the point. If the Lord Christ himself was in Fossoli, the Pope would still not breathe a word of it. Haven’t you noticed? After the Nazis massacred those saps at Ardeatine, the Pope condemned not the Nazis but the Partisans, for bringing it on themselves! Yesterday, with two hundred thousand people on their knees in St. Peter’s Square, including lots of teary GIs, he blessed the Krauts for sparing Rome, without a word of thanks to us. Up there on his balcony, above it all. He speaks German at dinner. He loves Berlin. He’s pulling for the Führer.”
“No, Peter. He’s not.” Warburg thought of that priest on the airplane. Warburg himself had expressed skepticism about the Church, but then there was Padre Antonio. “Catholics are helping Jews. What are you doing?”
“My small part to beat the fucking Germans. End the war. That’s how we help the Jews.”
“Who’s the Fifth Bomber Wing commander? Just get me to him.”
Mates glanced over at the woman, who was as unmoving, and as attentive, as the Jew beside her. She met Mates’s eyes, held them with a bitter resolve. He looked back at Warburg and said, with a lowered voice, “It’s because of her, isn’t it? You’re doing this because of her.”
Mates studied her for a moment, then said, “You’re Red Cross?”
“Yes.”
“There was a man named d’Erasmo who was Red Cross director here.”
“My father,” Marguerite said.
“Your father . . .” Mates began, then stopped.
“They killed him,” she said.
“I know,” Mates said. “He was a brave man. A hero.”
“And you, Colonel?” Marguerite said.
Mates deflected her by pulling his cigarettes out of the pocket of his blouse.
He offered the pack around, and all took cigarettes. Warburg snapped his lighter and offered it in turn. By the time a canopy of smoke billowed at the metal light fixture, Mates had changed his mind. “Killian. I know him.”
“Good morning, Father.” Deane pushed away from his desk to stand up. The German priest strode into the office with the skirts of his cassock aswirl. “Benedicamus Domino,” Roberto Lehmann said. The two shook hands.
“Please,” Deane said, gesturing at the supplicant’s chair. Then he pulled his own chair halfway out from behind the desk. Both men sat.
“His Excellency sent me,” Lehmann said.
“Archbishop Graz.”
“Yes. You and I began a conversation. We should bring it to completion. The archbishop has met with the British ambassador. We have assurances of Mr. Churchill’s support. London is enthusiastic. His Excellency thought it expedient to keep you informed.”
“About what?”
“The Danube Federation.”
Deane glared at Lehmann, a deliberate refusal to respond. This was not a phrase he knew, but what it implied was clear, and explosive. Only a month earlier, back in New York, he had sat in Archbishop Spellman’s walnut-paneled office listening to General William Donovan, in full uniform, embrace what Spellman had just proposed. Not the Danube Federation, but what Spellman called the Habsburg restoration. For two years, Spellman had been awaiting the right bet on which to place this priceless chip—that the legendary head of the Office of Strategic Services was a Vatican-friendly Irish Catholic, ready to let Spellman deal. And deal he had.
The Vatican scheme was simplicity itself. After Germany’s defeat, and presented with a powerful local civic groundswell in the heart of Europe, what if the Anglo-American alliance promptly recognized the restoration of the dynasty under the long-deposed Archduke Otto of Austria? It would be a central European Catholic monarchy—as if World War I had never happened—and, more to the point, it would be a powerful bulwark against the Soviet Union.
In discussing the plan, Donovan and Spellman had finished each other’s sentences, as if Stalin were already thwarted, as if Donovan’s OSS operatives had already produced the civic groundswell demanding the return of the Catholic monarchy. When Spellman had asked if President Roosevelt would approve the project, Donovan had waved his hand, saying, “The President and I were law school classmates.” By then, Donovan had come to think that the Habsburg restoration was his idea.
And now Lehmann was about to propose it as if Archbishop Graz had conceived the plan. Danube Federation, Habsburg restoration: same thing. Whatever it was called, Deane knew the strategy had in fact originated with Cardinal Maglione, who commissioned Spellman to raise it with Washington. Maglione insisted to Spellman that he had imposed a pontifical oath of silence on his inner circle—secrecy was of the essence. Was Graz part of that circle? And did Lehmann know of Deane’s own connection, how General Donovan and Archbishop Spellman had turned to him at the end of their meeting? Had Lehmann been told that, under cover of refugee aid, Deane’s real purpose in Rome was to set up the Vatican-OSS ploy, ready to spring it as soon as Germany was defeated?
Lehmann said, “Archbishop Graz has seen to His Highness the Archduke Otto being named a knight of Malta, which will be announced by Cardinal Maglione this week. That is what I have come here to tell you.”
Deane was stunned to hear this. Consecrating the archduke would be an obvious tip-off. It was way too premature to go public with the Habsburg ploy: Stalin would snuff it out. A Vatican elevation of the archduke now would ruin everything. But Deane had to go at this aslant. He said, “And as a knight of Malta, the archduke will qualify for a Vatican passport. Is that the point? Since the Germans made him stateless.”
“Not the Germans.” Lehmann smiled thinly. “Among Germans, the crown prince is beloved. Among German Catholics. Also Germans of Austria, and of South Tyrol, and of Bohemia. German-speaking Catholics will be the source of union for the restored Habsburg Empire.”
“Father, may I ask you a direct question?”
“But of course.”
“Does Ambassador von Weizsäcker know of the initiatives Archbishop Graz is taking in this regard?”
“The ambassador knows the war will end.”
“Is he looking for a way to end it on German terms?”
“Not on Stalin’s terms—there’s the point. Von Weizsäcker can say only so much. He and trusted colleagues in Berlin need assurances. Archbishop Spellman and Archbishop Graz can become partners in obtaining them. That begins here, with you and me.”
“You want Archbishop Spellman to intercede with Washington.”
“Yes. Precisely. Calls for the unconditional surrender of Germany must change. There is no point in any German—I dare to say it—moving against Hitler unless there can be some assurance—”
“Of a deal.”
“A new alliance. Aimed at thwarting Stalin. In defense of the Danube Federation. The German high command, set free, would formally recognize Archduke Otto at once.”
“Von Weizsäcker is part of an anti-Hitler cabal? Why would he have been sent here by Hitler just as the Wehrmacht took the city? Wasn’t Weizsäcker the senior German in Rome when the Gestapo arrested Jews across the river in October? What was it, two thousand Jews, counting children?”
“Not that many. Von Weizsäcker disapproved of that. We all did.”
“What does German disapproval sound like? We missed hearing it in New York. And where are they by now, do you suppose? Rome’s Jews?”
“Labor camps. Italian labor camps.”
“Poland, Father. The Roman Jews were shipped in boxcars to Poland.”
“Monsignor, the ambassador has put himself in a delicate position. There are others in this delicate position with him. Surely you do not require the situation to be made explicit. That a figure of the ambassador’s seniority is in Rome now, here in the Vatican, means there is space for maneuver. Neutral space, Monsignor, made available by—and within—the Church. For this moment, His Holiness has been waiting. But nothing happens without some signal of interest from Washington. Spellman could obtain such a signal. We know of his good relations with President Roosevelt.” Lehmann stood. “Tell the archbishop of New York that Maglione’s days are numbered. The time is propitious, given General Clark’s arrival in Rome, for an American at the Holy Father’s side. Spellman could succeed Maglione. The Holy See with an American secretary of state.”
“You’re offering the post to Spellman?” Deane’s contemptuous smile was kind compared to what he felt.
Lehmann shrugged. “I am only saying—it could be arranged.”
“As long as the American helps with a separate peace. Did I get that right?”
“Monsignor . . .” Lehmann eyed Deane coldly. Then he said, “The Holy Father approves of this initiative. He and von Weizsäcker have spoken. The Holy Father cannot ask directly, but he would welcome Archbishop Spellman’s exertion of influence.”
“How long are you ordained, Father?”
Again Lehmann answered only with his stare. For a young priest he seemed to have an unusual capacity not to be intimidated. But something told Deane that was a pose. Deane, too, remained silent.
Finally Lehmann said, “Why do you ask?”
Deane had a regrettably
large capacity for being intimidated, but not by a slick popinjay like this. “Who appointed you to the office of . . . what do you call it? The arranger. Is it some element in Berlin? The German national church in Rome? The Holy See? Or perhaps the Holy Ghost?”
“No appointment. My inquiries are informal.”
Deane stood up, ending the meeting. Without fanfare, he opened the door for the German, who strode through it.
That should have been that, but in the cramped anteroom that served as the foyer for his and three adjoining curial offices, Deane glimpsed the gray flannel trousers of a seated man, one leg crossed over the other. A wingtip shoe in need of polish. Though the man’s face was obscured by a protruding file cabinet, Deane thought at once of the fellow in the airplane. Why? Something as simple as the crease in a trouser leg—sharp enough to focus a camera on. But Father Lehmann had also stopped before the visitor, which prompted Deane to follow him out into the anteroom.
Yes, Warburg. But with him was a slender woman in the blue beret of the Red Cross, its distinctive red patch. She and Warburg had come to their feet. Lehmann had taken the woman’s hand, and he was now leaning down to kiss it, like a courtier. A clerical Casanova, he put his lips to the lightly held fingers with such grace that the woman, even averting her gaze, seemed as natural with it as he. Coming back to full height, the German said, in mellifluous Italian, “With gratitude, Signorina, for your tremendous works of mercy.” He held on to her hand presumptuously until, at last, she said, “Grazie, Padre.” For an instant more, the German priest held her hand. Then he dropped it, and was gone.
Deane stepped toward them. “Mr. Warburg? My goodness, I didn’t expect to see you here. If you’d called, I’d have arranged to meet you in one of the Pope’s parlors, so you’d be impressed with my importance.” He knew his joviality was coming off as forced, but what the hell. “Instead, you find me out”—he gestured around the cramped space—“a back-office clerk.” Deane and Warburg shook hands, but turned toward Marguerite as they did so.
Warburg in Rome Page 12
