A Dark Song of Blood Read Free

I?”
    “That’s what I am asking you, Major Bora.” Irritably, Guidi carefully lifted the collar of his coat against the northern wind. It was a good coat, an expensive new one, and he was proud and protective of it in these lean years. Bora looked elsewhere and was rapidly isolating himself. Nothing else would be gotten out of him today. “I think you’ve shown me enough for now,” Guidi advised. In silence they walked across the belvedere to the Garibaldi monument, where Bora instructed his driver to take Guidi back to work.
    10 JANUARY 1944
    The first thing Westphal asked on Monday was, “What the hell’s going on at Verona? Have the Fascists finished trying their own?”
    Bora nodded. “Ciano has been condemned to death.”
    “Good! I’ll give credit to Mussolini for dumping his son-in-law. He shouldn’t have left his fat post at the Vatican. Who else, besides Ciano?”
    Bora didn’t need to look at the list. “De Bono, Gottardi, Pareschi and Marinelli.”
    “Ha! Two of them are decrepit.”
    “They’re all to be shot as traitors tomorrow at nine.”
    “Serves them right. Now give me the bad news.”
    Bora reported on his meetings with Kesselring and Hohmann, adding that he had already requested an audience with Cardinal Borromeo to sample the moderate Vatican wing. “The worst news is that the Americans made it across the Peccia River. They’ve been at it since Thursday, and now they’ve done it. The French are still north of Cassino, but they may be there for weeks.”
    “So, is it still looking slow?”
    “It’s still looking slow.”
    Westphal went into his office, from where he called out to Bora after a while, “On Saturday there’s a party at Ott’s house. I want you to go if Dollmann is going. Have you met him already? Good. Sit by him. He loves to talk, for an SS.” Westphal came back in, with an ironical bent of his lips. “You know about him, of course.”
    “I heard rumors, General.” Bora did not say the kindest of them had been They say Dollmann fucks his chauffeur.
    “Rumors? By God, you were a good choice. Now we only need to find a way to use your other talent. That’s the one we brought you here for.”
    “Hopefully there’ll be no need.”
    “Don’t delude yourself. We haven’t seen the tip of what clandestine activities are yet to come. Ask Dollmann at the party. By the way, we go to Frascati tomorrow, and on the way back let’s swing by the shore. We won’t leave until 0700 hours, but be here at five as usual.”
    “I suggest we leave at six-thirty. American bombers become active by 0800 or so.”
    “We’ll do as you say. Any news about the Reiner mess?”
    “Only that they have a newcomer looking into it. The official word is still ‘accident’, but we know better.”
    “Wasn’t her door locked from within?”
    “Or from without. Her keys are missing.”
    In the afternoon Bora prepared two itineraries: one through Frascati to Anzio and along the shore to Lido and back to Rome, and another that rejoined the return route inland at Aprilia, skirting the Alban Hills to the south. Their departure, however, was delayed by reports of new fighting around Cervara.
    The sun was almost up when they left the southeastern city limits, and rolling along the horizon by the time they crossed the crowded suburb of Quadraro. Past them went the one-storied little stucco houses, ochre- and mustard-colored, beside postage-stamp courtyards enclosed by fences and paved with cement tiles. Frost-covered cacti sat in pots at the gates of more pretentious tenements, three and four stories in height, belted by unimaginative masonry balconies. Bora was reading from his notes to the general. “The birth rate in this place is huge – over twenty-three hundred a year.”
    Disparagingly, Westphal glanced away from the window. “Mark my words, one of these days we’ll come here and fish out all the men and haul them off. All communists and socialists, ungrateful riff-raff brought