by Robert Ryan
What was I going to do? I took the second cup back to my table and sat listening to Dino sing ‘Volare’. You know what you are going to do, Kirby? Yes, I did. I was going to go to the Lakes. I was going to find the plane I betrayed twenty years ago.
Eight
Lake Maggiore, September 1964
THE LIGHTNING SPREAD ACROSS the sky in a complex pattern, illuminating the mountains. A few seconds later, a basso-profundo rumble of thunder was followed by the first hammering of rain on the canopy above my head. It was twenty minutes after twilight, the air thick and warm, but the weather was streaming in fast from across the Swiss border, just like it had that one night twenty years ago. Even as I watched them, the string of lights on the far side of Lake Maggiore began to blur, quickly swallowed by the rolling mist coming down from the hills. The incisor-shaped lumps of granite that formed the backdrop to Lake Maggiore were gone now, refusing to be backlit even by the lightning. The world was closing in.
I was sitting on the verandah of the Hotel Cannero, only yards from the water, sipping a grappa, enjoying the burn in my stomach, feeling remarkably mellow. I had parked my old MV Agusta at the side of the hotel, and the next day I would take myself up to Domodossola, twenty-four hours before the commemoration started, to see if I wanted to get involved with any kind of celebrations, or if I should just move straight on to looking for the Liberator. In my room were maps of the region and a couple of books on aviation archaeology. They all agreed on one thing: you need a lot of luck to find a downed plane so long after the event.
It had been a busy summer. I’d decided to let Furio’s betrayal—or opportunism—lie for the time being. At least I knew where I stood now. With Furio, it was going to be business before pleasure every time. He wasn’t the same kind of pilot as me. But then, that was probably a good thing.
In between a few business trips, skydiving and flight-seeing, I had managed to hire a Wild aerial-surveying camera in Zurich. At some point in its history, my Twin Beech had been fitted with one of the US Fairchild photo-recon cameras. It took a few changes to the ring housing, but the Wild was in position now, and it could be operated either by an observer in the nose, or through remote cable by the pilot.
Of course, what I really needed was the big stereoscopic cameras that the RAF used, but they were out of the question, as was getting the loan of a V-Bomber to house one. So, after conversations with Wild and the British Aviation Archaeology Council, I had spent most of my advance on the next best thing: decent film. The only lab capable of processing the Kodak Aerochrome False Colour IR was in Milan, and it was very pricey. I hoped that Lindy Carr had a big vault back in Sydney.
The plan was that when I gave Furio the call that we were on, he would hop the Twin up to the little airfield at Invorio. That strip had been home to a Nachtjagdstaffel squadron back in 1944, German night-hunters, flying Junkers 88s bristling with radar masts and equipped with both forward- and upward-firing cannon. Now it was used by a flying club and a few private planes, but it was perfect for me—as many take-offs and landings as I needed without having to compete with BEA and Alitalia for slots, as I would at Malpensa.
The thunder was overhead, the hotel’s windows chattered in their frames and the lights went out. I heard Maria, the owner’s daughter, yell instructions and the waiters began to distribute candles. Another boom and I caught the scrape of a chair to my left, just out of vision. I waited until the heavens provided another episode of unnatural daylight and turned to see her, skin bleached to ivory in the electrical glare.
‘Hello, Jack.’
I bit my lower lip. ‘Hello, Francesca.’
The glass bowl with its candle was placed between us, and I studied her uplit features in its softer glow. Her face was fuller than I remembered, but there were still those beautiful cheekbones and tantalising lips. When she grinned, there was just the hint of a gap between her two front teeth. Scientists could probably spend millions trying to find out why that eighth of an inch is sexy, but they’d come up with the same answer I always did: because it is, stupid.
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘Ragno,’ she explained.
I had rung the spider boy at the Moto Guzzi factory, told him I was coming up and asked him to recommend a hotel. He had booked me into the Cannero and, it seemed, broadcast that the old BLO was back in town.
‘Are you staying here too?’ I asked.
She shook her head and, in the candlelight, I caught just a few traces of silver in the black of her hair as it moved across her face. She wore a navy-blue dress with a square-cut neck and a simple brooch that sparkled in the flame. ‘We have a villa down at Stresa.’
We. Ragno had told me she was married, but it was still a little twist of a knife. What did you expect, Kirby? That she’d wait for you all these years? It wasn’t like there’d been anything there in the first place, was it?
The hotel power spluttered back on and we blinked in its sudden harshness. I could feel her looking at me, and I was suddenly aware that I hadn’t shaved. I scratched my cheek and listened to the rasp. ‘You look well,’ she said. Before I could object, she added: ‘A little thin, perhaps.’
‘And you look just right.’
She flashed that gap-toothed smile and my heart missed more than one beat. ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked.
I shook my head.
‘The food here is good,’ Francesca said, signalling for the menus. ‘But there is no mule.’
I laughed at the memory. ‘I was getting quite a taste for that, you know.’
‘I’m going up to the house tomorrow.’
‘San Marco?’ That was the name of the hamlet where the safe house was situated; they had taken me there after I’d been pulled from among the dead in the lake.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Just for old times’ sake. One last look, perhaps. Like to come?’
I hesitated. ‘If you want,’ I said noncommittally.
‘Tell me what you have been up to.’
I shrugged, ready to trot out my thumbnail CV, when she touched my hand.
‘All of it, Jack. It’s been a long time.’
A wind was getting up, an inverno, blowing down from Locarno in the Swiss half of the lake, but rather than move inside we decided to stay put.
While I explained about my father and his ailing company, and taking out my frustrations on Steve Riley’s face, Francesca ordered bresaola, followed by perch from the lake, and a bottle of erbaluce white wine. When the antipasti came, I told her about Lindy Carr.
‘You think it is the bomber we were waiting for?’
‘Lang told me it is. I think it’s his idea of making me suffer after all this time. It’s working, too.’ I gave a smile that I hoped didn’t show too much regret.
Francesca re-filled my glass. ‘Twenty years ago. It’s hard to imagine all that time has gone. A whole generation.’
I took a heavy slug of my drink. ‘So …’ I shook off the creeping sense of self-pity and asked, ‘What about you? Married, I hear. Kids?’
She smiled. ‘Yes to married, no to kids.’
‘And you live in Stresa?’
‘Milan. The villa is a weekend home.’
‘You must be doing all right.’
‘We are.’
OK, Kirby, play the game, be polite. ‘Do I know him? Is he coming to the anniversary ceremony?’
‘No, and no. Not his sort of thing.’
‘What’s his name?’ Like I gave a damn.
‘Riccardo,’ she said slowly. ‘Riccardo Conti.’
I squinted at her. The only Conti I had heard of was the one who reputedly organised the reprisals back in 1944. ‘Same name as that bastard who did the anti-partisan sweeps.’
She nodded and gave a grim smile, her voice only just rising above the whistle of the wind. ‘Same bastard, in fact.’
Part Two
Nine
Salò, Lake Garda, Italy, 1944
THE WH
ORES ARRIVED ON time, at five o’clock, just as the government offices closed for the day. The scruffy convoy of private cars and taxis swept into Salò’s Piazza Zanelli and disgorged their occupants. They emerged in a haze of blue cigarette smoke and cheap perfume, many of them already drunk and giggling. Major Riccardo Conti, formerly of the Alpine Rifles, now anti-partisan director of the new Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, found himself shaking his head. Some of the girls were barely in their teens, their faces plastered with rouge and lipstick, their blouses stuffed with padding to try to emulate their older companions. It was shameful.
Across the square, Adolph, the owner of the Bar Colombara, grinned and waved the new arrivals in. Convention dictated this was the town’s premier pick-up point, a convention that arose because Adolph never charged the women for drinks while they waited. Soon the men, German and Italian army officers, members of the Brigate Nere, the Black Brigades militia, the SS and the bored sons of diplomats and industrialists who had somehow avoided conscription, would come to select their evening entertainment.
Along the coast at Gargano, in the Villa Feltrinelli, il Duce as some still called him—although it was increasingly difficult to see exactly what Mussolini was leader of—would be welcoming Claretta Petacci to the Sala dello Zodiaco, for a session of lovemaking under the stars, albeit only the ones painted on the ceiling. That was, if he had managed to get rid of Rachele, his wife, who was threatening to claw her usurper’s eyes out.
New arrivals in a couple of Lancia Aprilia saloons powered past the Hotel Eden and into the square, spraying dust into the Casa del Fascio, the party coffee-house and meeting-place, and took the road towards the osservatorio. It no longer did any observing—its antique telescopes had been hidden in caves in the mountains that formed the town’s backdrop. As they passed, he saw these cars were packed with handsome young boys, which meant they were due at the Villa Pasolini, current home of a German major and his Swiss lover, on a cul-de-sac off the via del Seminario. Its candlelit terrace at dusk was the accepted meeting-point for those with such tastes.
Conti lit one of the filthy Nazionale cigarettes, grimaced at the taste, and strolled down the hill, across the linked squares that led to the harbour and the lakeside promenade with its once-proud hotels, now mostly billets for officers and hangers-on. He kept a weather eye out for stragglers from the whore convoy, who would rather mow down an Italian officer than be late for the flesh parade at the bar. At the taxi-boat mooring he turned right and thirty metres on slipped into the garden of the Cozzi restaurant, where he selected a seat with a good view of the lake and mountains.
He placed his cap on the table, ordered a carafe of chiaretto rose, which arrived with a few slices of goose salami, courtesy of the kitchen. At least there were few food shortages up north, not compared to the privations of those down south who had been ‘liberated’.
He raised his glass to a young lieutenant he recognised, sitting almost lost in the bougainvillea with one of the Milanese girls. At another table, talking in low voices, were two officers from X-Mas, pronounced Decima-Mas, the marine assault unit headed by Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, which had remained fiercely pro-fascist. The reason they weren’t whoring was probably that their commander would have had them publicly castrated. Borghese ran a notoriously tight ship, except when it came to the small matter of his own many adulteries.
There was a hand on Conti’s shoulder. He looked up and struggled to get to his feet when he saw the uniform. The palm pressed him down. ‘Relax, Major. We’re all off-duty now.’ The man threw his cap next to Conti’s and ordered a spumante. ‘Major Conti, am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Knopp.’ He was roughly the same rank as Conti, but the SS flashes made the newcomer the senior man. He was in his early thirties, although his hair was mostly grey and his eyes looked tired. There were substantial bags under them, and the skin at the top of his cheeks was thin and bloodshot. Still, ignore those and he was a handsome specimen, not like some of the slugs who picked up women at Adolph’s.
‘How do you do, Sturmbannführer?’ Conti asked.
There was a crackle of gunshots, but nobody took much notice. The little lakeside town transformed into something from the American Wild West as evening descended. Nothing surprised those who had been here with Mussolini for the past nine months. Orgies, drugs, gunfights, murder, sometimes all rolled into a single explosion of passion and death. It was one of the reasons why Conti kept away from the bars. There was a drunken anarchy about it that he didn’t like one bit. The wrong word, letting a glance linger too long, and some madman might pull a Beretta or a Luger and end you there and then.
Knopp sipped his drink. ‘You are in charge of anti-partisan operations hereabouts, I hear?’
‘Mostly,’ said Conti. ‘But the Black Brigades and other militia are also active in the process.’
Knopp shook his head. The Brigate Nere were gaining a reputation for senseless, excessive violence that sometimes even made the Germans recoil. ‘Rogues and sadists. I hear you have had much success against the Garibaldi.’
‘The Communists? Some, yes.’
Conti knew Knopp would get around to telling him what he was after eventually, so he sipped his rosé and waited.
The German pursed his lips and said quietly, ‘I need some help with a partisan sweep. A large one.’
‘Has there been more sabotage?’
‘No. This is a preventative action.’
Conti signalled for another drink, and asked for a plate of antipasti for them to share. ‘You realise I take my orders from Colonel Stoppani of the Esercito Nazionale Repubblicana?’ This was the new fascist army set up when Mussolini created his ‘Republic’ based around Salò in October 1943, almost a year previously. ‘Not the Wehrmacht or the SS.’
Knopp laughed. ‘And you know better than that.’ To prove his point, the SS man took a piece of paper from his tunic and laid it on the table. Conti pulled it towards him. He could see it was full of eagles and stamps and impressive signatures. ‘From Berlin?’
‘Munich,’ said Knopp. ‘SS Supreme Command main office. It outranks your Colonel Stoppani by some considerable margin.’
‘I suppose it does.’ Conti knew that there were SS Supreme Command men attached to the Villa Feltrinelli—laughingly called liaison officers—to keep an eye on Mussolini, and that Hitler had even supplied il Duce with a doctor to help with his near-legendary constipation. He assumed his new friend was part of that group.
‘I am sure you are aware that units of the 29th SS-Waffen-Grenadiers are regrouping near here,’ Knopp explained. This Italienische Number 1, an SS unit of Italians, had fought at Anzio under German control and had then been released to Italian command. Now the Germans wanted them back. ‘They are to reinforce the Gothic Line for this winter. They, and some of their armour, will be moving to the railhead at Chiasso in a few weeks’ time. I want to make sure that they do not suffer the same fate as Das Reich.’
Conti raised an enquiring eyebrow. He knew that Das Reich was the name of the 2nd SS Panzer Division, but that was all.
‘Das Reich tried to reinforce the Normandy beachhead after the Allied landing. They were harried every inch of the way by French partisans. Instead of a few days, it took them more than two weeks to make the trip. Of course, we made the French pay, but that isn’t the point. I don’t want a repeat of that. Particularly as there is an extra dimension to this journey.’
A firework arced over the lake and exploded, the colours bleached and wasted against the blue sky. Conti popped a piece of prosciutto into his mouth. Knopp was smiling at him, his mouth the shape of a lemon slice. It wasn’t a comfortable experience.
‘Sturmbannführer,’ Conti said slowly. ‘Do you want to start from the beginning?’
It was dark by the time Conti and Knopp finished their meal and two bottles of wine. Knopp had done most of the drinking, Conti settling on a modest single glass with each course. As they le
ft, he shook hands with the German, who wobbled off down around the bay to the south, where he had requisitioned a lakeside cottage. Conti lit a cigarette under one of Salò’s distinctive horn-shaped streetlights and looked back up at the town, wondering who the hell was supposed to be enforcing the blackout. Light flared from dozens of windows, and a couple of the bars, enough to home in any Allied bomber worth its salt. Then there were the fireworks. They were asking for the town to be flattened.
He began to walk in the opposite direction to the German, thinking about what the man had said. The Germans were about to present il Duce with a very large bill indeed for what they had done—the rescue, the transport to Munich, the setting up and running of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, the RSI, Mussolini’s fiefdom, which more and more resembled the last days of Sodom.
The payment would be taken to the railhead along with the Italian SS, but while the troops headed for Tuscany, the valuables would be put on one of the German trains that ran through Switzerland. The country might be technically neutral but, in exchange for much-needed raw materials such as steel and coal, it was willing to allow German freight to move across its tracks, as long as it was sealed at the borders. What they didn’t see, the Swiss didn’t care about.
It was just another business arrangement in an increasingly crazy war. Italians at each other’s throats, the Americans and British bombing and shelling the hell out of the country, the Germans impervious to what happened to the land, or its treasures, as long as the Americans and British were delayed. The newly formed Royal Army, loyal to the King, was fighting for the Allies, while dozens of units under various names had thrown in their lot with the Nazis. It was civil war.
Many thousands of Italian soldiers languished in German labour camps, treated appallingly; an equal number had been executed to stop them changing sides. Up in the mountains the Garibaldis, the Communist partisans, fought almost as much with the Green Flames, the non-Communists, as they did with the Germans. Brigate Nere hunted their fellow countrymen through the north now, executing any partisan found with weapons, by order of Mussolini. His insistence that there be no reprisals against non-partisan civilians was ignored by the fascist militia and Germans.
