The Double Agent, page 21
They were the same dumb singing bastards he had seen that day on the range with Klaus and his men. Alexsi had thought at the time that they were just asking for it, and now he had been proven right. Especially today. It was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mussolini founding the Fascist movement. A perfect day to be marching the same route through Rome, bellowing their stupid marching songs. The partisans had very carefully planned a party for them down this tight little street. And, by all appearances, pulled it off beautifully.
The SS and Italian Fascist police and soldiers were herding all the civilians they had been able to lay their hands on down the other side of the street, lining them up in front of the gates of the Barberini Palace.
Alexsi made his way down that slaughterhouse of a street until he saw Kappler. Who was standing listening to the military commandant of Rome, Luftwaffe General Mälzer.
As he drew closer, Alexsi could hear Mälzer raving like a madman. “You see, Kappler?” he bellowed. “You see what they have done to my boys? Now I’m going to blow all these houses sky-high!”
My God, Alexsi thought to himself. The general hadn’t gone mad. He was drunk. Crazy drunk. He could barely stand up straight. But nonetheless deadly serious. Farther down, German Army pioneers were unloading crates of explosives from their trucks. He was actually going to do it. And of course the engineers, as good German soldiers, would follow their orders to the letter.
Alexsi only thought about how he would compose his wireless message to the British about this. Just the facts. Because if he told them that the military governor of Rome, deep in his cups, was tearing about like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, screaming “Off with their heads,” no one would ever believe him.
The general might have been deadly serious, but Kappler was deadly calm. He waited until Mälzer paused for breath, then said, “General, my men and I will proceed with the investigation into this outrage. I believe it would be best if you returned to your headquarters. You will need to keep the field marshal informed, and I’m sure they will need your guidance in the hours to come.”
“No, damn it!” the general shouted drunkenly. “My place is here! I want to watch this street go up in smoke, with all the rats who live here inside!”
Kappler was still calm, but now there was ice in his voice. “General, you must go. You will be needed at your headquarters. The entire situation in Rome must be monitored. There may be further attacks.”
Alexsi watched Kappler, without much effort, making Mälzer frightened. The general was sweating alcohol right out his pores. “All right, all right,” Mälzer said.
Without another word Kappler took the general’s arms and guided him toward his staff car. Halfway through the door, Mälzer stood up and waved his hand up and down the street. He shouted, “They are all to be shot!” Then he fell back into the vehicle.
Kappler made a quick motion to the driver, who was no doubt just as anxious to be gone, and the staff car roared off.
Kappler sighed and turned about. “Yes, Bauer, what is it?”
Alexsi said, reading from his message pad, “Colonel, Field Marshal Kesselring is visiting the front lines at Anzio today. He will be out of touch until later this evening.”
“Probably just as well for now,” Kappler said. “General Mälzer will be able to … calm himself, as he waits.”
Sober up, you mean, Alexsi thought. The general had dredged up memories of his father, who when drunk would certainly have blown something up if he’d been able. Instead, he usually beat someone up. Usually him.
Captain Priebke walked up, staring coldly at Alexsi.
Kappler said to him, “Fetch that engineer officer over here.”
Priebke returned in a moment with the lieutenant of pioneers, who saluted sharply.
Kappler said, “Pack up your men and equipment, and return to your base.”
“Colonel?” the lieutenant said, puzzled.
“You’re not blowing up Rome today,” said Kappler. “Go home.”
The lieutenant saluted and dashed off to his men.
Alexsi breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Priebke motioned for Kappler to follow him.
Kappler said, “Bauer, get me a count of the dead and wounded. Exactly, if you please.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Alexsi walked down the line of dead on the sidewalk, ticking off the numbers on his pad. The surviving Bozen were staring angrily at him. “I’m very sorry, Comrades,” he said. “I have orders to list your losses.”
“We knew something was going to happen,” said one. “It was the first time the streets were ever empty.”
“Italian bastards knew it was coming,” another spat.
Alexsi returned to Kappler. “Twenty-six dead, Colonel. Somewhere between a hundred and one hundred and ten wounded. The count is inexact because some of the unwounded may have taken the rest to hospital already.”
“Out of how many?” Kappler asked.
“One hundred and fifty-six,” Alexsi said.
“Then they are wiped out,” Kappler said flatly.
He and Priebke were standing over what seemed to be the only evidence. A red flag and a mortar bomb with what looked like a homemade impact fuse in the nose.
“The bomb is Italian,” said Kappler. “So no English commandos like everyone is bleating about. Definitely partisans. Bauer, what do you think?”
Alexsi knew Kappler was doing that just to get Priebke’s goat. “I am only a signaler, Colonel.”
“Yes, so you always begin,” said Kappler. “But based on your experiences with partisans in Russia. Bombs thrown from the roofs, and then gunfire shooting down, eh?”
Alexsi decided to tell the truth, if only to keep those two hundred Italian civilians lined up at the Barberini Palace from receiving the death penalty for not being shrewd enough to take to their heels after the first shot was fired. “I think if you look down that way, Colonel,” he said, pointing, “you will see there is a crater nine meters across in the street. And another blown out of the wall opposite it. I would say a very large bomb in a cart or something similar, then the mortar bombs from the roofs. After that firing from both ends of the street, to cover the retreat.”
Kappler thought it over. “Reasonable. Though the Bozen say they were fired upon from the rooftops. Why could the bomb not have been launched from up there?”
“As I said, Colonel, I am just a signaler.” A signaler who would not have been stupid enough to haul a bomb all the way up to a roof if he could set it off down on the street. But let the idiots think what they wanted.
“Yes, I know,” Kappler said dryly. “And the partisans? In your signals opinion?”
“Long gone, Colonel.”
“On that we agree.” Kappler turned to Priebke. “There will be a reprisal ordered, of course. But we will use the ones we already have locked up, under sentence of death. Not have all of Rome up in arms after wiping out an entire neighborhood.”
Priebke nodded. He aimed his head questioningly in the direction of the Italians at Barberini Palace, who had been goaded by the trigger-happy sentries into keeping their hands over their heads for hours.
“Turn them over to the Italian police for interrogation,” said Kappler.
“They’ll be released,” Priebke said.
“I’m counting on that,” said Kappler.
Priebke nodded and walked off in that direction.
Kappler said, “Bauer, I am going to the Corso d’Italia. I will use the communications there. Bring the wireless truck back to Via Tasso and stand by. I want copies of all incoming communications on my desk for when I return.”
Alexsi saluted. “Yes, Colonel.”
Corso d’Italia was General Mälzer’s headquarters. Kappler was going to keep a very close eye on that clown of a general, Alexsi thought. To keep him from doing anything stupid.
He looked down the street again. The partisans had done this to provoke an outrage from the Germans. To turn the city out against them and cause chaos that would require more troops to restore order. Troops that would have to be taken from the front, and therefore weaken it.
If Alexsi knew his Germans, they were going to do exactly what the partisans wanted.
35
1944
ROME, ITALY
The Via Tasso was a madhouse, and gave every sign of being one for the rest of the night. Kappler was back from General Mälzer’s headquarters, sequestered upstairs with his officers. Signals and telephone calls were flooding into the communications center like a tropical storm. Alexsi had to keep the previous shift of signalers on duty just to keep up with it. No sleep for anyone tonight.
It meant that there was no way he could sneak in a message letting the British know what happened. A training message at a time like this would have everyone doing more than wondering.
He was having a hard enough time keeping ahead of the incoming messages himself. After the news of the attack reached Kesselring’s headquarters, his chief of operations immediately passed it along to Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair headquarters in East Prussia. Hitler was told, and went absolutely mad with rage.
Alexsi flipped through the message carbons. Staff officer at Wolf’s Lair told Kesselring’s 1A that the Führer demanded a reprisal “to make the world tremble.” The next message was the Führer’s order to blow up an entire quarter of Rome, and shoot thirty to fifty Italians for every German police officer killed.
More messages. Kappler and General Mälzer, now sober, speaking to General Mackensen, Fourteenth Army commander. They all decide on a more reasonable number of ten Italians to be shot in retaliation for every German killed. Kesselring confirms: ten for each one. Those to be executed were persons already in custody and sentenced to death or life imprisonment.
Alexsi guessed that was what they were doing upstairs. Putting together the death lists and planning the logistics. Hitler had ordered that the reprisal take place within twenty-four hours of the attack, and that much murder was going to take time. The clock was ticking.
Wireless messages in hand, Alexsi wandered into the switchboard room and thumbed through the telephone log. Kappler to his SD superior, SS General Harster in Verona. Kappler to the justice of the German military tribunal in Rome. Kappler covering his ass, Alexsi thought. Making sure everyone was in on it, and on the record.
A clerk had been sent up with all the prisoner record cards.
By now thirty-two of the Bozen SS policemen had died, so that was three hundred and twenty Italians. Alexsi knew there were fewer than three hundred prisoners total, men and women, both here in the Via Tasso and in the wing at Regina Coeli prison the Germans had taken over for their use. And only a handful of those under death sentence.
Alexsi took his stack of messages down the hall, and ran into Kappler also going into his office.
Kappler said, “Anything new, Bauer?”
“No, Colonel. Nothing new to report. These are just all the messages to date. I will leave them with the adjutant.”
“Good, good.” Kappler was preoccupied, and said nothing more.
Alexsi followed him into the outer office, remaining there while Kappler went through his own door. It was a fog of cigarette smoke, and Alexsi saw all the officers crammed in there.
Kappler announced to them, “I have just been to the questore. I have a promise of fifty from the Italians. Along with the Jews scheduled for deportation, we have it.”
So they weren’t going to shoot the women, Alexsi thought. How chivalrous.
The door shut, and Alexsi dropped the stack of messages on the adjutant’s desk. Hanging around there any longer would be too suspicious.
* * *
It was late morning and Alexsi sat staring at the bare top of his desk. He had no desire to see three hundred and twenty people put up against a wall and shot. But he had no good practical ideas on how to prevent it. Especially since the only thing he wanted even less was to see himself put up against a wall and shot. What could he do? Setting fire to the building to delay things would only mean the SS running out to save themselves and standing there laughing while all the prisoners burned alive. Good job saving them, Alexsi Ivanovich. Such men were also not likely to be moved by him delivering a passionate speech on the morality of the summary execution of civilians.
Still no way to get a message to the British. Not that it would do any good, other than make them pleased to know what was going on. But it was a worry. They were just moral enough to think he ought to have done something, a view easy to take from the comfort of an office in London.
This would not be a problem if he were still working for the NKVD. They would insist that three hundred and twenty souls was a small price to pay to maintain a spy’s cover. The Abwehr would not care either way.
The other worry, more immediate, was being dragooned into being one of Kappler’s executioners. There weren’t that many Germans at the Via Tasso, and they had already tried to make him a torturer. Alexsi had no idea how they were going to kill three hundred and twenty people, but he wanted no part of it. Not only because he might end up back with the British, and it would be very difficult to explain away becoming an SS war criminal.
Rather than say no again, and being firmly ordered to this time, he ought to get out of the building before it happened.
That ignited an idea. Perhaps a way to kill two birds with one stone, without killing anyone.
Alexsi grabbed his Beretta and ammunition belt and stopped first at the armory for two egg grenades to go in his pockets. Just in case he had to break up a roadblock.
Then it was off to the mess. As he could have predicted, when he told the cook sergeant he wanted a twenty-kilo bag of flour there was a fight.
“Going into the black market along with everyone else?” the mess sergeant scoffed. “At least you’re not sneaking in here to steal it like the rest. Absolutely not.”
“Look, I’m taking the flour,” Alexsi said. “It’s for a mission authorized by Colonel Kappler personally. And when he’s less busy you can tell him all about it. Or, you can go upstairs and tell him now, and see what happens to you.”
That hit the mess sergeant like a shot between the eyes. Alexsi watched him think about going off to be a cook on the front lines, as a private. “You’ll sign for it,” he said finally.
“I’ll sign for it,” Alexsi said.
Heads turned as he made his way to the motor pool with the sack of flour over his shoulder. “I need a vehicle,” he said to the transport sergeant.
Who shook his head definitively. “Colonel Kappler’s orders. All trucks and staff cars on hold. Nothing leaves.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Alexsi blurted out. “It’s urgent. What can you give me? Besides a bicycle.”
“You can have a motorcycle.”
Alexsi just looked at the sack on his shoulder as if to say, Can you believe this? “Tell me you have one with a sidecar.”
“I have one with a sidecar,” the motors sergeant said. “You’ll have to sign for it.”
“I’ll sign for it,” Alexsi said.
* * *
Exactly what he wanted to be doing. Driving through a city full of emboldened partisans and surly Italians on a motorcycle. With a sidecar holding a large sack of flour.
Alexsi kept waiting for a wire to come up across one of those narrow Roman streets and take his head off. Otherwise, he pushed that motorcycle as fast as it could go. And like both a typical Roman and a typical German soldier, he ignored every traffic sign and regulation.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he went up that familiar drive on Monte Aventino. They had probably heard the motorcycle a block away, because the head servant was at the door before he pulled his helmet and goggles off.
As he came up the steps, the servant said, “The princess cannot see you.”
Alexsi took the final step up, reached out, and grabbed him at the junction of the neck and shoulder with his left hand. His right had the Beretta in it. The servant’s eyes went wide. Clearly the Italian upper crust did not manhandle their servants, and he was not accustomed to it.
Alexsi said, in Italian, “My friend, I have no wish to be angry with you. I must see the princess. Now. I do not care who she is with, and I do not care to see them. I will wait in the garden. Are we in accord?”
The servant nodded.
“Fetch her immediately.”
Alexsi went around the side of the palazzo to the back. In the daylight he could both see and hear the chicken coops. Obviously a recent addition, and incongruous with the elegant gardens. But with the Germans shipping Italy’s food back to Germany, and Rome starving, they were a more inviting target to thieves than the art treasures inside the house.
The sight of the chickens pecking through the garden for insects brought back a memory of the kolkhoz in Azerbaijan. Except farming under Communism meant that you raised the chickens, the government took the eggs, and then they gave you no eggs. So if you wanted any eggs for yourself you had to steal them. And if the government caught you, you went off to a prison camp to do free labor for the state. It was a fine system if you were a party boss, who ate the eggs. Not for anyone else, though.
The head servant ushered the princess onto the portico. She looked upset, and Alexsi knew this would require careful handling. He said over her head to the servant, “There is something in my motorcycle for the household. Please remove it.”
The servant nodded and tactfully disappeared, probably because he was feeling the princess’s anger also.
She walked up to him, her eyes flashing but otherwise under control, and said, “Peter, you cannot—”
Alexsi cut her off. “You have heard about Via Rasella?”
Absorbing his tone, she only nodded.
