A Dark Song of Blood Read Free Page B

it, you’re not listening to me! I’m going directly to Kesselring after this!”
    “You do that, Colonel.”
    Holz had begun to turn away from Bora but changed his mind, and faced him again with a sharp half-turn on hisheels. “If Westphal ever leaves you behind, I’ll have your ass for this.”
    Bora nearly lost his temper at the words. “As the colonel wishes.”
    Much the same scene was repeated at Anzio and up the coast from it.
    “They’re going to have their way,” Westphal grumbled as they rushed a lunch somewhere along the road back. “I won’t, but the field marshal will listen, I know.” He had a map laid open on the battered hood of the car, and munched on a sandwich as he looked at it.
    Bora looked down, partly to conceal anger for the response they had met, partly because crippling pain had awakened in his left arm and he did not want Westphal to notice it. He said, watching him pencil circles over the map, “If need be, the Reclamation Land can be flooded.”
    Westphal nodded, swallowing the last of his sandwich. “It’s the interior that will make a difference at this point.” Their glances met above the map. “How well do you know it?”
    “I’ve been to Sora, Anagni – Tivoli I know well.” Bora spoke as Westphal pointed out the places. “Impregnable citadels for three thousand years. The monastery above Cassino, too – I wouldn’t want to have to take it.” Moving back on the map, the general’s forefinger drew a circle on the flat area immediately around Rome, and Bora shook his head. “The rest is mush.”
    Westphal assented gloomily. He was pressing with his knuckle on the resort town of Lido, directly in line with Rome. “God forbid anything from happening there – Il Duce ’s Imperial Way would deliver them into our lap in an hour’s time.”
    “Would they land so far from the bulk of their forces?”
    “With Americans, one doesn’t know what they would do.” The general folded the map and handed it to Bora. “Let’s go. I want to be at Soratte before any of the commanders get in touch with the field marshal.”
    *
    The new address, Guidi had to admit, was more convenient than the decentralized Via Merulana. Now from his doorstep on the elbow-shaped Via Paganini – if the public cars failed – he could manage the walk to his office on Via Del Boccaccio. The owners, Maiuli by name, were from Naples – a retired professor of Latin and his wife, a “remarkable hunchback”, as he described her. Given the southern penchant for superstition, Guidi suspected a less than disinterested affection on the part of the professor, who was an inveterate lotto player. He listened to the old couple, lost in the array of knick-knacks and plaster saints that crowded the parlor, inform him of the house rules.
    “The bathroom is at the end of the hallway, and the maid comes to clean in the morning.”
    “Dinner is at eight on the dot.”
    “Overnight visitors are discouraged. This is a well-regulated house and we pride ourselves in keeping only selected guests.”
    “... And no more than two at a time.”
    “Who else is staying here?” Guidi asked.
    “An art student by the name of Lippi.” Professor Maiuli hastened to say, “You’ll have a chance to become acquainted before long.”
    “Will either of you or that gentleman mind if I smoke?”
    Donna Carmela made a face. “We’d rather you didn’t, but I suppose that a cigarette after dinner will not kill anyone.”
    Once in his room, Guidi sat on the bed, staring at the lurid lithograph of St Gennaro’s execution hanging above it. It was a beheading in full colors, especially unwelcome as he’d just viewed the photos of Fräulein Reiner after the fall. Guidi planned to ask Bora about her again, since she was apparently well known among the officers. For now, he avoided making conjectures, waiting for clues to roll out of a well-rehearsed nowhere, as they often did. After making sure his door was locked, he reached for