A Dark Song of Blood Read Free Page B

aimlessly enough, but sufficient to divert the pilots from the attack. In the suddenly remade silence, Westphal calmly and distinctly blasphemed to himself.
    Bora felt much the same, but chose to note the time on his pad. If either man was shaken, he did not show it. As the car started again, “Forget Frascati,” Westphal said. “Let’s go directly to Aprilia. I want to talk to some of the commanders. Who’s responsible there?”
    â€œColonel Holz.”
    Colonel Holz, after uselessly appealing to Westphal, protested that his exhausted men had to remain on constant alert.
    â€œI don’t think you have much choice,” Bora said.
    â€œThat’s all because the field marshal has an invasion mania,” Holz protested. “We’ve been watching the goddamn shore for three months, and the enemy hasn’t even crept up to the Garigliano River yet, twenty-five miles in all! What good are tired troops going to be?” And, because Bora was unsympathetic, he added, “Look, Major, I see you’ve been to Russia – you know how weary holding the line is.”
    â€œIt’s worse losing it.”
    â€œGoddamn it, you’re not listening to me! I’m going directly to Kesselring after this!”
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œThey’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?”
    â€œI’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.”
    â€œWould they land so far from the bulk of their forces?”
    â€œWith 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