She saw Angelo Peruzzi in his clerical clothes as he was reaching into the leather briefcase. She threw herself at him, grabbing his hand inside the briefcase.
He swore and tried to push her away. She pressed her body against him, trapping the briefcase between them.
He pushed again with his free hand but she clung to him. He thrust his hand under her chin: “Get away from me or I’ll break your neck.”
She could feel his strength overcoming her; all she needed was a few moments more.
“Get away …”
Her head was bending backwards. Another fraction of an inch and the bones of her neck would snap. She gave way and fell to the ground, just as the door closed behind the bulky figure in the ill-fitting grey suit.
Angelo’s lips were trembling. With shaking hands he slipped home the tongue of the strap over the spring-clip on the case.
“You bitch,” he said.
The inquiry into the Dietrich episode was held in a cellar in the Borgo — a grenade’s throw from The Vatican, as Angelo Peruzzi had once put it.
But this evening Angelo Peruzzi was not in joking mood. He was trying desperately to maintain his prestige which is difficult when you have been all but overpowered by a woman.
Angelo’s prestige had been based on his willingness, and proven ability, to kill. And it owed its strength to the smallness of the group at a time when the partisani were an inchoate force of splinter groups which would only become a unified resistance movement when the Germans occupied Rome, and the British and Americans invaded the Italian mainland.
Angelo also drew his strength from Maria which had not been fully realised by the other members of the group. Until now.
The cellar was lit by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The three men — the two who had stalked Dietrich, and Angelo Peruzzi — sat on packing cases sharing a bottle of grappa while Maria sat on the table swinging her long legs as her agitation increased.
Angelo’s only possible ally was the younger man with the frost-bitten brain, but he was no match for Maria’s passionate eloquence or the menacing presence of the Sicilian.
Angelo was saying: “I still think I should have killed him.”
Carlo, the younger man, said: “What kind of partisani are we if we fail to kill a big fish like Dietrich when he’s handed to us on a plate?” By now he was asking questions instead of making statements. He looked at the Sicilian who shrugged. “If you had seen men like that in Russia …” Carlo always produced Russia and they forgave him a lot because of what he had been through.
The Sicilian drank from the bottle of grappa and handed it to Angelo Peruzzi. “And what about the things the Russians did to the Germans? What about the story of the gold?”
“What gold?” Angelo asked, happy for any diversion.
“It seems the SS were searching for gold in some village. They threatened to arrest the entire population — and by arrest they meant murder — if the gold wasn’t produced. They left four men in charge. Next day they returned and in one of the buildings they found a box marked GOLD.” The Sicilian paused for effect. “When they opened it they found it contained the heads of the four men they had left behind.”
“Sometimes,” Carlo said, “I wonder whose side you’re on.”
The Sicilian gave a gold-toothed smile. “Mine,” he said.
“You should be in Sicily fighting the Germans.”
The Sicilian closed his smile, took a knife from his belt and tested its blade with his thumb. “My place is here in Rome. Here I have contacts. Family contacts,” he emphasised. “Sicily will fall within a month. And when the Germans march into Rome there will be much work to do,” throwing the knife at a photograph of Mussolini on the wall.
Maria lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke into the aureole of light around the naked bulb. “If Angelo had killed Dietrich we wouldn’t be in any position to fight the Germans.”
Angelo started to speak but she held up her hand.
“If Angelo had thrown that grenade the Germans would be here now. They would be in The Vatican. We would have been finished before we started. They would have slaughtered hundreds of innocent men, women and children. Our movement would have been obliterated.”
“Our movement?” The Sicilian retrieved the knife from the Duce’s face, already slitted with many wounds. “What exactly are your priorities?” His parents had sent him to Rome to be educated and he spoke Italian like a Roman.
She swung her heart-breaking legs a little quicker. “Very well, it’s obvious that I am concerned with the Jews. But that doesn’t mean we cannot work together.”
“That is true,” the Sicilian agreed. He held up the bottle to determine how much grappa Angelo Peruzzi had swallowed. “And I tell you now that I agree that it was a mistake to try and kill Dietrich.”
It was then that Maria realised the strength of the Sicilian. To be strong you had to admit your mistakes; beside the Sicilian, Carlo and Angelo were actors, cowboys.
The Sicilian said to Angelo: “But don’t despair, my friend. You did what you thought was right,” and Maria realised that the Sicilian was taking over. I would never have said such a thing to Angelo.
And to the three of them the Sicilian said: “We must stop fighting among ourselves. We must make decisions and keep to them.” Your decisions, Maria thought. “And if anyone doesn’t …” He spoke with his hands. “In Sicily we have always had a way of dealing with such people.” He threw the knife which this time embedded itself in Mussolini’s throat.
The two younger men remained sulkily silent.
“You see,” the Sicilian said to Maria, “I thought it was you who had ordered the killing of Dietrich.”
And now, she thought, he has all of us.
“You think I’m such a fool?”
He shook his head, smiling. “But you are a woman. A woman is ruled by her heart.”
Anger flared. She stubbed out the cigarette in a saucer. “I am not a Sicilian woman.”
“You are a beautiful woman.”
The anger expanded, although she was pleased by the blatant flattery.
“You’re out of date. Times have changed. This isn’t just a man’s war. Perhaps,” she said more calmly, “things have changed forever. Maybe the war has given us that.”
“Maybe,” the Sicilian said, emptying the last of the grappa down his throat.
“So what do we do now?” Carlo asked.
The Sicilian said: “We have to get guns. We have to meet the other partisani. We have to get organised. But first,” he said to Maria, “there is something you must do — find out why Dietrich is here.”
“Perhaps he’s looking for Mussolini,” Maria said tentatively.
“Possibly. But I doubt it. Otto Skorzeny’s been put in charge of that. And Hitler wouldn’t risk a clash of personalities like that — Skorzeny and Dietrich. Christ, what a couple!” the Sicilian exclaimed, admiration in his tone. “But in any case, they’re all wasting their time in Rome. Mussolini was taken to Gaeta and then to the Pontine Islands.”
“It’s not just Mussolini they’re after,” said Angelo. “They want to get Badoglio, his ministers, the King, every one of the shit-heads,” said Angelo, whose hatred embraced all authority-
“Even