Marguerite said, “So, Budapest. You spoke to the monsignor of Budapest?”
“I am here in Rome because this is as close as I can be to Hungary. Thousands of Jews are being taken each day. Each day. Budapest is the last place we can stop it.”
“How?”
“Swedes. Neutrality. My group is sponsoring a Swedish diplomat in Budapest. Tomorrow, perhaps the next day, I will know if Stockholm has agreed. Then the Swedish official will provide Jews with the Schutz-Pass. He will offer Jews a Swedish refuge. Hungarian officials will be paid to believe it, a fiction, a lie.”
“You have money for bribes, as we do. Dona nobis doni.”
“I saw what Lionni showed you, the banknotes were tinted red. That means reichsmarks, no? In denominations of one thousand? Where does Lionni get such currency?”
Marguerite said only, “To Germans at the checkpoints, lire would be worthless.”
“So is it the Haganah? Who else could get such reichsmarks? Is what the monsignor said true? Is Lionni a Zionist?”
“Who would not be a Zionist? What Jew would not want Palestine?”
“America is a better place for Jews. I will be taking Jews to America. It’s why I came.”
“You said Budapest is why you came.”
“From Budapest to America. Through Rome. I am hoping you can help me. After Fossoli.”
Marguerite faced him, smiling suddenly. “So you think we will return?”
“Of course I do. Otherwise I wouldn’t let you go.”
She laughed at the outrageous presumption of his statement, and then so did he. “What I mean to say . . .” Warburg blushed.
But she teased him. “Do you claim this authority over me because you are American? Or because you are a man?” For a moment there was nothing uncertain in her.
“Perhaps because you were a girl without a father,” he answered. “Your father—that is where we began our conversation.” He paused again, then looked directly at her. “Your father’s death.”
“After that, I wanted to become a religious woman. A nun. It was impossible. I became a convent student instead. Père Antoine, in the beginning, was like my second father. Eventually I realized he was like my God. Then, what I understood was—I have no God. That was what the death of my parents did to me. I do not believe in God. I still say my prayer, but only for magic. Not for faith. My prayer is called Remember, but I have forgotten. Memorare. Do you understand?”
“I think so. I have no God either.”
“But for a Jew, that perhaps is easier.”
“Why?”
“Jews . . . the death of one’s parents is nothing compared to what Jews suffer . . . not just now, but always. If God abandons Jews, then Jews have a right . . . What Jews suffer is unjust.”
“I do not suffer,” Warburg said.
“Not true,” she replied. “You suffer with Jews. I see it in your face. If you do not believe in God, you believe in . . . Jews.”
Warburg forced a laugh. “I think we Jews call that idolatry.”
She shook her head. “If there were a God, he would be Jewish. Today, in Italy, in Croatia, Poland, Europe, God is a Jew, that’s all. That is what I believe. It is not idolatry. Instead of actually praying, I believe in helping where I can.”
“Red Cross.”
She nodded decisively. “A cross without a god.”
“And in helping, you have been . . . bruised.”
She drew the kerchief back around her throat. “It was not in helping that I was hurt.”
“What do you mean?”
She knotted the kerchief, too tightly. With no awareness of doing so, she closed her eyes.
And for an instant she was in Trieste once more, in its farthest, foulest alley. The red-bearded monster had choked the air from her lungs, and she was about to lose consciousness. But instead, as if channeling the writhing of her death throes, she began to fight again, clawing at his face with her nails. Carlo would not be stopped. He banged her head against the pavement. Once more, she felt close to losing consciousness, even as the clearest thought she’d ever had took over her mind: He is murdering me!
It was true. But his furious passion was then her great advantage. Her hand, on instincts of its own, went to the holster at his hip. She found the pistol handle, grasped it, her finger sliding into the trigger notch as if she had handled such a thing before. She had the snout of the Luger against his shoulder, then his cheek, then his lust-distorted eye. Just before passing out from lack of oxygen, she closed her finger.
“A man,” she said now. “A man I thought a friend . . . attacked me.”
Warburg knew to wait.
“And I killed him.”
There. At last she had said it to someone. And of course it had to be to a stranger, a man she would not see again. She threw her right leg over the lip of the jeep door, but before she could step out, Warburg took her arm. She stopped and drilled him with a look. How could he possibly have heard her absolute declaration as an opening, when it was termination, pure and simple?
But all he said, repeating himself, was “Good luck.”
Five
A Jew’s Fantasy
WARBURG AND MATES were seated at a sidewalk table in late-afternoon sunshine, but clouds had darkened the western sky and a breeze had kicked up. A summer thunderstorm was coming. The café was on the edge of the plaza in front of the Pantheon, with its massive dome. Each man had his demitasse and cigarette. If the rain came, Warburg thought, they could retreat into the great building’s becolumned portico.
The large open square before them was a mechanized scrum of olive-colored traffic, knotted around a multitiered fountain. Rome’s cascading water displays were resolutely festive, but to the newly arrived drivers of trucks, half-tracks, and jeeps, they seemed little more than roadblocks. The Yanks leaned on their horns—insistent, blaring, useless. Horses stood in their harnesses with mulish indifference.
Threading among the vehicles were the Eternal City’s newest survivors, and Warburg tracked them: a trio of giggling clerics tugging at their skirts, a cook in checkered pants and wooden clogs, a hammer-toting blacksmith in a leather apron, a pair of blatantly entitled drinkers. And the pigeons were back, signaling with a synchronized swoop that the danger of being snared, roasted, and eaten had passed. The city was dizzy with life that only days before, upon Warburg’s arrival, had been nowhere in evidence.
“Peter, thank you.” Warburg spoke loudly because of the traffic, but that same noise guaranteed that no one would overhear them. He waited for Mates to meet his gaze, but the colonel was eyeing a pair of young Italian women who, with linked arms, were walking past in step, a knowing stride. Finally Mates looked over, and Warburg said, “I appreciate it.”
“I’m glad it went well,” Mates replied. “One pass, Colonel Killian said. Apparently the bridge was timbers, not steel. The pilot reported that it crumbled back to both banks, like dominoes falling away from a center. Now let’s hope your gang gets to that camp in time to do some good. Jesus”—Mates squinted, shielding his eyes—“I hope it doesn’t rain.”
Once again Warburg wondered, What’s with this guy? He himself had been unable to get Marguerite out of his mind, her lame partner, Fossoli. That the camp’s prisoners had just been given a reprieve by some unnamed flyboy seemed the first specific triumph of his time in Rome. All else till now had been plans, groundwork, preparation. Finally the needle of fate had been nudged, perhaps a degree or two, away from death. Yet here was Mates, caring only about the weather.
Or was that counterfeit? The colonel’s exquisite detachment seemed studied. Warburg decided to match it. “How goes Civil Affairs?”
Mates smiled. “Very well, my good T-man. Very well indeed. We have a mostly constituted City Council now, and they are primed to give us a suitable mayor—Andrea Doria Pamphili.”
“A woman?”
Mates laughed. “Don’t be deceived by these Wop appellations. The man’s given name is Filippo, but fo
rget that. He’s from an old patrician family. ‘Andrea Doria’ has the ring of Thomas Jefferson here.” Mates threw his hand toward the Pantheon. “Speaking of whom, did you know that’s the model for Monticello? You’ve been carrying that building in your pocket on the tail side of a nickel. Think of it: from Rome to Charlottesville. This city takes the cake.”
“And its new mayor?”
“The Pamphilis are descended from Virgil and Alexander VI, the Borgia Pope who sponsored Michelangelo. Our man is anti-Fascist to the core, started out the war in one of Mussolini’s concentration camps. The main thing, though—he’s no Red, and the unions won’t control him. He gives a good speech, but what he really cares about is getting the family princedom restored. He claims vast Doria estates between here and Genoa.”
“And vindicating the claim depends now on—?”
“Right. On the Allied powers. Me. We expect him to cooperate.” Mates grinned. “As I say, CAD affairs have been going very well indeed.”
“And tomorrow you get your star. You’re on the promotion list for brigadier general.”
“My, my, David, you impress me. How do you know that?”
Warburg offered his hand, and Mates took it. “Congratulations, General.” Warburg grinned as they shook, flaunting his inside knowledge. “Less than one percent of commissioned officers make it to BG.”
“Jesus, you Treasury men are accountants, aren’t you?”
In fact, Warburg had heard about Mates’s promotion from Sergeant Rossini, having already learned that in the Army, NCOs are the real source of inside dope.
At that moment a clap of thunder sounded, and the pace of pedestrian movement quickened in the piazza while engines gunned. Mates studied the sky, but Warburg finished his thought. “Point is, I’m delighted for you.”
“And for yourself?” Mates laughed. “Since you think you have me eating from the palm of your hand.”
“Isn’t that what you want me to think? And in return, I’m to keep you posted on Communist agitation among the refugees. It’s a box step we have going here.”
“Since you bring it up—”
“Communist agitation and Zionist plotting. Those are your two interests, no?”
“Why would I care about Zionists?”
“For your British friends.”
Mates did not answer.
“Or do they amount to the same thing?” Warburg said. “Reds and Hebes.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the tin ashtray.
“You’re a fool, David, to pretend the Brits aren’t right to worry over Palestine. It’s the sharp end of the wedge. If they lose Jerusalem, they lose the empire. But you’re also a fool if you picture any other destination for the Jews you’re helping than Palestine. There’s the rub, for the Brits at least. Your fantasy about sending them stateside on empty troopships is just that—fantasy.”
“Oh? Do you know what else is happening tomorrow, besides your promotion to brigadier general?” Warburg paused, but at that moment the darkened skies opened, thunder cracked again, and rain poured down. People in the piazza began to run. Mates and Warburg scurried away from the table and into the shelter of the nearby Pantheon portico. A crush of others followed, forcing the two Americans into the rotunda proper, the expansive open space under the largest freestanding dome in the world. In its center was a circular opening to the sky, and the downpour had found it. A beaded column of water was falling right into the heart of the shadowy cavern, splashing the stone floor in the center. Mates and Warburg took up dry positions near the wall, below one of numerous vacant niches. The classical statues in the place were long gone, although here and there stood Baroque figures of the Virgin Mary and her defeated husband.
“Damn,” Mates said, as he used his golden silk handkerchief to brush water from his jacket shoulders. “Good move, though. In here. Fantastic in the rain with that.” Mates indicated the hole in the ceiling. “I used to pick up girls in this place on rainy days when I was a teenager.”
“Teenager?”
“My old man ran the Roman office for a New York bank. Girls think it’s mystical, rain indoors. Never failed.” Mates himself seemed entranced, watching the water. “Tears from the very eye of God—the oculus. That’s the line I used.” His voice fell into a slightly self-mocking rhythm of recitation. “They built this temple as part of the divinity cult for Caesar Augustus, the emperor who took on the baby Jesus—both of them divine, imagine! Gods were cheap in those days.” Mates laughed. “I’m not much for gods myself.”
The Americans were in deep shadow now, and the damp air between them, as Warburg sensed it, was suddenly more clandestine than before.
“But David,” Mates said, “you were interrupted. ‘Be sure of it.’” With a flourish of his handkerchief, Mates grandly swept the space. “‘Give me the ocular proof.’”
“Othello to Iago,” Warburg said, laughing despite himself. “The ‘ocular proof’ was Desdemona’s handkerchief. No wonder the girls swooned for you.”
“But you were speaking of tomorrow. Of your Jews.”
No banter now. Warburg said, “President Roosevelt is holding a press conference at the White House. He will announce the opening of the Emergency Refugee Shelter at a decommissioned Army post named Fort Ontario, in Oswego, New York. It will be the first ‘free port’ in the United States, a center where displaced persons will be admitted without visas as guests of the United States. Their immigration status to be determined at a later date.”
“And you know this because . . . ?”
“I’m the one who found Fort Ontario, Peter, months ago. I wrote the statement the President will read. And now with my small garret crew I am compiling the names of the first of these guests—refugees from liberated Italy, at present housed in a dozen camps within an hour’s drive of Rome. The current count approaches two thousand souls.”
“And you are selecting from among them?”
Warburg heard the implication in the loaded verb: First the Nazis select them, now you do. “Priority to family groups,” Warburg said. “No one suffering from communicable diseases. People with useful professions and skills, because in Oswego they will be mainly self-sufficient. So yes. Selection. Bound for upstate New York as soon as a returning troopship is assigned and a convoy is set.”
“So—as soon as your ship comes in.”
“And with luck, and a little more help from you, a long line of other ‘guests’ will follow.” Warburg smiled—a genuine display of hope.
“But what about the Reds?” Mates asked. “I need to know who among these people decline the invitation to go to New York. The ones who prefer to stay in Italy, doing mischief.” Mates faced the center of the rotunda, where the streaming rain was letting up, the downpour now a steady drizzle. He put his silk square back into its pocket. “You’re compiling names. I need to know who the camp leaders are. They’re the ones I’m interested in.” Mates seemed to be looking around to see if they were being approached.
“You? Or the Brits?”
“I could care less about Zionists. If your refugee camps hold Jews, they hold Partisans, too. It’s the Communists I’m tracking. Wops. Agitators. I can’t have labor strikes here like they had in Naples.” Mates turned back to Warburg.
“My information,” Warburg said, “is that the Nazis pretty successfully weeded the Partisans out. There are labor leaders and anti-Fascists in the camps. And plain deserters. That doesn’t make them Reds. The Nazis killed the Reds.”
“Or drove them underground. I have to smoke them out. You need to tell me who refuses your invite to New York.”
Warburg shook his head. “For an intelligence chief, Peter, you’re pretty dumb. Most Italians who fled the fighting or the bombing have homes to return to. Why would they go to New York? My people are Jews who fled to Italy from elsewhere: Poland, Ukraine. Or, if they are Italians, they’re Jews who were driven out by their neighbors. My people have nowhere to go. You have no idea, Peter, how desperate the refugees are. OSS has no idea
.”
“Let’s leave OSS out of this. Reds equal strikes, strikes equal civil unrest. Civil Affairs, get it? It’s CAD that has the interest.”
“I don’t care what initials you use.”
“Good. Because I want CAD interrogators teamed with your staff in the processing. I want the camp leaders identified and interviewed separately by my people. You soothe, we sort. My people will have the final say on who goes where.”
“The hell with that. These poor souls are entrusted to me, not the Army. Not you. You saw Clark’s orders. The final say stays with me.”
“But the interviews?”
Warburg was shaking his head, but at last he saw that he could be more than supplicant. “I’ll give you interviews in camps on one condition, speaking of ocular proof.”
“What?”
“Doesn’t OSS have a man in Bern?”
“Why are you asking me if you already know?”
“I need him to get to the Swedish embassy there. You heard what I laid out for Ambassador Sundberg here. I need your man to second the motion with the Swedes in Switzerland. Stockholm has yet to approve the nomination of Wallenberg as special envoy. They’re stalling. I need turns of the screw. U.S. Treasury has prepared charges against Sweden for neutrality violations, criminal charges. Your man in Bern gives them the way to get the charges dropped, makes clear what happens if they don’t cooperate. Jews. Tell your guy to say ‘Jews.’ Put it together with the word ‘Budapest.’ Tell him ‘Jews in Budapest’ is Swedish for ‘Open sesame!’”
Mates again turned away, taking in the crowd. The rain was no more than a trickle. He began, with studied casualness, “Beg your pardon, David, but isn’t Stockholm the State Department’s—”
“Peter, it’s Budapest I care about.” Warburg drew closer, grasping Mates’s arm. “Budapest, you hear me? I want Wallenberg appointed by Monday. That’s four days from now. Four days equals twenty thousand Jews in cattle cars.”
“You’re hurting my arm, David.”
When Warburg released Mates, the officer raised his arm to look at his watch. “Jesus, I’m late.” He squinted up at the oculus. “And the rain has stopped.”
Warburg in Rome Page 14
