Globusz^® Publishing 

Carlo Rufus Williams could distinguish the Italian flag with the cross of Savoy flying over the seashore, but nothing else. At 3 o'clock in the morning it looked as though the Bay of Gaeta and the Tyrrhenian Sea had decided to conceal themselves from prying eyes.

It occurred to him that he'd been slapping his open hands against the outside of his breeches for quite a while. Was it impatience? Or was he mocking the army by assuming an attitude of attention like a marionette?

Well, he'd been upset when they called him up a few months ago. Thanks to Galeazzo Ciano, he'd spent the war years in his office at the Ministry of Information. Three years that were likely to change the history of the world but saw him as an idle spectator. And yet, because of his anti-war stance, the Nazis asked the Italian Government to remove him, an Anglo-Italian whom they'd never trusted, from his post as soon as Galeazzo got the sack as foreign secretary early this year. And here he was, in uniform, on active service seconded to the Comando Supremo, the Italian high command.

What happened to him caused Carlo to reflect on the fortunes of his friend Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolini had been overthrown forty-four days ago after a motion by the Fascist Grand Council. Galeazzo too signed it, risking more than any other member of the Council because he was the dictator's son-in-law. But the new prime minister refused him a passport all the same. And since there were also rumours of a plan to have him murdered, his wife Edda turned to the Germans for help. The outcome was that they tricked her into believing that they would fly her, Galeazzo and their children to Spain—only to make him a prisoner in Munich.

Carlo faced round. Now, in the background, there appeared the outlines of the headland with the walls that surrounded the ancient town of Gaeta. For a couple of minutes he mused on the legend of the Trojan hero Aeneas, son of Aphrodite, who, according to the poet Virgil, named the bay after his wet nurse, Caieta. Then the scream of a Stukas diverted his attention from mythology. It was a good thing. He must concentrate on his job.

His leg muscles were all knotted up. How long had he been standing here, by this tiny tenth-century church lying on the seafront, perhaps the only one built on the shoreline in the Mezzogiorno, the South of Italy? Well, the moment to go was here, at last. The Ibis, a corvette of the Italian Royal Navy, had just docked.

He left the place and walked to the harbour. An ambulance of the Italian Royal Army was parking just off the pier. Good, very good! Carlo himself had told the driver not to come before, so as not to arouse suspicion.

As he approached the ambulance, he looked across the pier at the Ibis, and saw two flyers in wet flying suits disembark and then, escorted by a squad of Italian seamen armed with sub-machine guns, make their way towards him. There was nobody around, apart from the crew of an anti-aircraft battery and a few guards of the militarized port authority.

When they all reached the ambulance two carabinieri jumped off it. Carlo shouted to the squad commander, a petty officer, “Hand the prisoners over to the carabinieri.”

No, contrary to the official version, they weren't prisoners of war, they weren't flyers, they hadn't been rescued somewhere around the Bay of Gaeta, they weren't being taken to a med centre and then to the nearest barracks for questioning. They were two American senior officers coming from Sicily, which was already in Anglo-American hands; they'd left Palermo by a British patrol boat, and boarded the Ibis off a small offshore island; they were on a secret mission to the Comando Supremo.

Yeah, after three years of Italian defeats, the war against the Anglo-Americans was coming to an end. Unbeknown to the Nazis, the Italians had surrendered to General Eisenhower, commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces in the Mediterranean, by signing a secret armistice last Friday. But it was not going to be peace for the Italians. The Nazis certainly wouldn't give them a sympathetic smile upon learning about their volte-face.

The warlords of the Comando Supremo kept repeating that Eisenhower would announce the event to the world next week. Carlo had been to Sicily, as an interpreter for the signing of the armistice. He knew better. He knew that the Italian warlords were inveterate liars.

Eisenhower would broadcast the news over Radio Algiers tomorrow evening, and tomorrow, also, two main operations would take off. One was Avalanche, the seaborne landings of the US Fifth Army at Salerno, in southern Italy, which would be carried out at dawn the following morning. The other was Giant II, the parachute and air landings near Rome of the US 82nd Airborne Division.

The Italians were supposed to play an active role in both of them. Actually, in Rome, it was for the Italian units, upon the announcement of the armistice, to hold out against the Germans—the American paratroops, to whom the Italians would provide logistic support, were needed to help them fight through to the German withdrawal.

Once inside the ambulance, Carlo observed the two Americans. He'd already met the younger one in Sicily. He was the deputy commander of the 82nd Division, forty-two-year-old Brigadier General Maxwell Taylor; the older one must be Colonel William Gardiner, of the US Troop Carrier Command, a hardy man about six foot two tall, a former governor of Maine. Their task in Rome was to liaise between American paratroops and Italian units.

Presently, Carlo said, in English, “Everything seems to be going according to plan. We should be in Rome in little more than two hours.”

“Shall we meet Marshal Badoglio this morning?” asked Taylor.

“Don't mention anybody's name.” Carlo spoke deliberately in an impersonal, monotonous way—Badoglio was the new prime minister. “The crew don't understand any foreign languages. But we'd better pretend even here that you are prisoners of war, so no more talk, please.”

No, Taylor and Gardiner weren't likely to meet the prime minister. Carlo could only hope that an over-promoted twit he knew very well would at least welcome them on their arrival—Lieutenant General Carboni, the commander of the Italian Motorized Corps. For the Comando Supremo had entrusted the defence of Rome and the cooperation with the Americans to the three divisions of his corps.

* * *

It was 12 o'clock. Carlo's housekeeper was serving him a late brunch consisting of scrambled eggs, tomato salad, rye bread, Parma ham with figs, white grapes, and acqua acetosa, a mineral water found in a spring next to the polo fields. This morning General Carboni, the two Americans’ official host, was nowhere to be seen. So Carlo had left them resting at the Palazzo Caprara—the guest-rooms of the Comando Supremo in Via Firenze, Rome—and gone to his flat in Viale Parioli, in the new fashionable area built in the thirties, for a cold shower, a shave, and a three-hour sleep.

The general's disappearance reminded Carlo of a message that a friend, one of the King's aides-de-camp, had left for him early this morning—for a meeting at 2.30 p.m. at the bar of the Grand Hotel. Was it in connection with coming events? Maybe the King himself was worried about the whole thing. After all, Carboni, having two heads like Janus, was to be doubly involved with Taylor and Gardiner. For he was not only commander of the Motorized Corps but also head of the SIM, Italy's Military Intelligence Service, and so should organize the defence of Rome on the one hand and guarantee its preparation in full secrecy on the other.

Anyway, Carlo decided to set aside his doubts and, sipping a double espresso and smoking a Macedonia cigarette, dialled his lover's number.

It was her husband, Oscar Branting, the Swedish chargé d'affaires to the Vatican, who answered the telephone.

Carlo said, “I didn't imagine you were at home; I'm so sorry to interfere with your schedule. I just wondered if Christina is back from Sweden.”

“No, she is not.” Branting cut in.

“Oh, I thought she was... I just wanted to say hello to her.”

“She hasn't come back,” repeated Branting, tersely.

To hell with it! Carlo realized he shouldn't have made the call. For one thing, the man was growing suspicious of everything and everyone; secondly, if Christina had got to Rome yesterday night, she would have already rung him.

For a moment, Carlo considered his relationship with her, a married woman. He'd had an unlucky experience with Anna, his dead wife. And now... now, what would his future be like?

After drinking another espresso, he rushed out without saying a word to the housekeeper. He didn't like her; neither could he bear his flat. It was fifty days since Anna's death, killed on July 19, in the first air raid on Rome. Anna had kept the flat when they separated four years ago; he had now taken it back. But the flat, with its modern furniture, plus the housekeeper raked up all the past, tormenting him with unhappy memories.

Three-quarters of an hour later, the foyer of the Grand Hotel appeared to him more crowded with people than ever. Crossing it as he passed by the reception, Carlo noticed German and Japanese officers, some foreign bimbos, a couple of well-known homosexuals, a group of civilians among whom he recognized a member of the underground Communist Party, and further on in the lounge, his friend heading towards him. Well, Carlo thought to himself, six-foot-tall Lieutenant Colonel Count Ciro Caetani, of the 1 Sardinia Grenadier Regiment, was the most handsome man among the King's aides in spite of his false left arm, a legacy of the unfortunate Greek Campaign.

The bar too was crowded, although at this time many people were still at lunch in the restaurant. Carlo and Ciro sat down on a three-seater sofa at one end of the room. They ordered two Fernets, a cocktail made with two-thirds Fernet Branca, one-third Italian brandy, and a dash of Angostura Bitters.

“I'll come straight to the point,” Ciro said. “I know that tomorrow Eisenhower will announce the armistice.”

Carlo nodded.

Ciro went on, “And d'you know that tomorrow we are going to disclaim it.”

“What are you saying? Who do you mean by ‘we’?”

“Not me, not you,” replied Ciro. “I mean our top brass, Carboni first of all—they will persuade Badoglio and then the King into disclaiming the armistice. The idea of the American airdrop being carried out with their help scares the shit out of them.”

“Jesus! And what will they do? Leave the American paratroops to themselves?”

Ciro said nothing.

For a few seconds Carlo held his breath, then muttered, “Rome will be blown to bits by the Anglo-Americans.”

“The top brass fear the Germans more than the Anglo-Americans. They are physically afraid of the Germans.”

“The King too?”

“No, not physically. He fears a street-to-street fight in Rome, with the possibility of civilians getting involved and, in the end, turning against the monarchy. Mind you, our top brass will tell him that the Anglo-Americans have cheated—that the armistice was to be announced no sooner than Sunday the 12th, and that instead the Anglo-Americans are going to announce it tomorrow, four days earlier.”

“Jesus!” exclaimed Carlo once more.

He knew they said that, but it was crap. The Anglo-Americans had reserved the right to decide when the armistice should be announced. It was he himself, the interpreter, who translated to the Italian negotiator that the announcement would be broadcast from Algiers at 6.30 p.m. on an unspecified date coded X-day. Even so, the Anglo-Americans were playing fair. It was unspoken in Sicily during the negotiations, but he could bring the meaning out. The armistice would be announced several hours before the airdrop. The airdrop would take place the day after the arrival of the two American officers, and the Salerno landings at dawn of the following morning—as had also been confirmed by Carboni's secret intelligence. Yes, the Italian warlords had all the elements with which to work out that tomorrow was X-day.

Carlo realized that Ciro was studying him. “Why have you chosen to tell me all this?”

Ciro ordered another two Fernets, then said, “Our chief of combined staffs left for Turin yesterday. By train. A sleeper.”

“You haven't answered my question.”

“Tomorrow our army chief of staff will tell the German High Command in Italy that we will never surrender, and tomorrow the King will tell Hitler's chargé d'affaires the same thing.”

“Once again, why are you talking to me?”

Ciro reached for a cigarette. Carlo lit it.

“Speak up, Ciro, why don't you say why you wanted to talk to me?”

“There's something you could do.”

“You must be joking.”

“Has Carboni spoken to the two Americans you picked up at Gaeta this morning?”

“I don't think so.”

“You know Carboni's lover. It's true, is it not?”

“And if it was, what has this to do with the situation?”

“She's an actress.”

Yes, Carlo thought, the actress who posed in the nude in Luchino Visconti's Obsession. “Go on.”

“Carlo, I can tell you that tonight she will attend a dinner offered by her producer in a restaurant. I don't know either the name or the address of the restaurant, but I know that Carboni will be there.”

“So?”

Ciro leaned his hand on the table, bent towards Carlo, and whispered, “I want you to catch him. I want him to meet the two Americans, and I want the two Americans to tell him that they must have an interview with Badoglio.”

* * *

They didn't want to be seen together outside the Grand Hotel, a place about two to three hundred yards away from the War Office and Palazzo Caprara. Carlo, therefore, stayed at the bar a little longer, meditating on his conversation with Ciro.

Yeah, no doubt the Italian warlords were petrified at the thought of Hitler's reaction to their passage to the other side. No doubt, also, they'd made no preparations for the battle—lest a wrong move should provoke the Germans, who already suspected the Italian defection and were reinforcing their units in the Rome area.

But where could he find General Carboni? Carlo murmured to himself as, a quarter of an hour later, he headed towards the revolving door of the hotel. They needed Carboni by tonight. It was imperative for Carboni to speak to the two Americans. But more than this, it was imperative that the prime minister stuck to the armistice. There were roughly twenty-four hours to get ready for the fight against the Nazis.

When Carlo stepped outside he saw a sergeant standing at the salute who, at the same time, addressed him in familiar terms.

“How should I call my old mate the Inglese? Sir, or by his name, even though he is dressed like a cavalry major?”

Carlo grinned. It was an old mate. They used to play soccer for the same team as youngsters, and later were to shoot together at Monterotondo, in the Roman countryside. Carlo spent a couple of months there every year in a house, an ancient building, that his parents had bought.

“Please yourself, but don't make me appear to be a spy by calling me the Inglese in the street,” he said. “Incidentally, what are you doing in that uniform, Bruno? A good shot like you should at least be a company commander.”

“You know that, but the Italian Royal Army doesn't. Apparently, not even me shooting with you at Monterotondo made me a gentleman. They said that with his lower-secondary school certificate Bruno could only become a non-com, even if Bruno was a friend of a patrician bloke like you.”

“Still you must be grateful to them. They posted you by the Grand Hotel. Not bad at all.”

“Yes, posted, that's the word. Shall I tell you what I'm doing here? Waiting, waiting I haven't the faintest idea how long for until Captain di Sant'Elia comes out of the Grand.”

“Sassone di Sant'Elia?” He was Carboni's aide—Carlo felt relieved. “Could you please call him for me? I'd like a quick word with him.”

“No way. I told you as a friend, Carlo. I'd never tell any other officer. He warned me it's secret. He's also in mufti.”

“Oh, don't give me that. Come on; tell me who he's with at least. Is he with Lily Broussard, the ballerina?”

“Nobody so sexy, nobody with such divine breasts, Carlo. I'm only saying this, but please don't talk about it—the captain is with a few civilians. All males. Anyway, one of them, I think, is somehow related to the fancy name you mentioned. So your guess is wrong, but not too far out.”

“How do you know one of the people with Captain di Sant'Elia is related to Lily Broussard?”

“Not by spying on her, that's for sure. She'd never go out with your friend Bruno. It's only that last Saturday I was with him and the ballerina, and they met that bloke, and she introduced him as her cousin.”

* * *

Carlo went to the Palazzo Caprara, got in a service Lancia Augusta, and told the driver to take him to Corso Trieste, a middle-class area off Via Nomentana.

Once there, he had the driver pull in beside the Giulio Cesare, a high school, got out, and walked four hundred yards or so to number 25. It was a large block of flats with residents who were quite prosperous; he'd rather they didn't see a service car with the flag of the Comando Supremo parked round the corner. He hurried directly to the door of Lily Broussard's first floor flat. An Albanian manservant ushered him into her vast sitting room.

While waiting, Carlo noted an English 1850 cottage harmonium carved in mahogany, and looked around at the rich colours of the decor. Foliaged curtains, floral tapestry, and friezes decorated with floral patterns covered much of the wall. There were two Edwardian silver candle brackets on either side of a late Victorian wall mirror with a wood frame painted white. On a side table was an Art Nouveau pewter candlestick, on another a portable early nineteenth-century gramophone, on the floor a chessboard carved by a Bulgarian sculptor who was gaining a hold upon the critics.

Carlo thought of the people in the block. Would they survive this upheaval? They were a representative sample of those who had done well in the cut-throat world of Fascism—the poets, literati and film directors, the architects of public works and agricultural engineers of reclamation projects, the bulk of the 2986 university professors who took the oath of allegiance to Fascism.

How many of them would still be in the saddle under a post-war parliamentary regime? Would the screenwriter next door, the bard of the Fascist “conquests”? Also the gentleman in the penthouse of this building, a former dental surgeon to the Pope, the King and Mussolini as well? And the well-dressed fool upstairs, one of Mussolini's Musketeers in the thirties? After all, he, too, had done many things. He volunteered for the war in 1940, was wounded in Russia in 1942, and the following year—on Sunday, July 25, a few hours after the King had Mussolini arrested—applauded Marshal Badoglio, the dictator's successor.

Needless to say, the well-dressed fool, who became a musketeer since he could only count on his height of six foot two to satisfy the entrance requirements for a job, would end up among the misfits. But the others were nobody's fools. For example, the professor of physiology on the second floor was a damn brilliant scientist, although he'd used his pen to justify the racial laws from a biological point of view. After the war, either he would not resist the next bandwagon, or the new ideologues would talk him into accepting newer values.

As for him, so for the others. Including Carlo himself? Yeah, he'd been in on the act during the Fascist years, which, however, would not prevent him from following the gang of the misfits along with the well-dressed fool. All right, he could tell where he might go. But what about Lily Broussard, an outstanding ballerina, a snob and a self-styled marquise, renowned for the court of actresses who surrounded her?

Well, she didn't have to switch to another party. She was a radical at heart. As an artiste, she moved in the circles of the pink musicians, painters and sculptors, intellectuals, revolutionaries, and anti-Fascist democrats, although as a woman, a love-hungry twenty-six-year-old woman, she was prone to a weakness for handsome sportsmen, provided they were not of the thick neck, brawny shoulders variety. And if her sportsman was Sassone di Sant'Elia, her mentor was her cousin, the Marxist Tony Lollis, who was often seen in the company of a well-known male prostitute. And if Sassone was a sabreur with flair and energy, Tony Lollis was a revolutionary who controlled a battle-untrained Communist underground cell.

Lily Broussard's raunchy voice interrupted Carlo's reverie. “How thoughtful of you to look me up today, my dear. I was so sad, lonely and sad.”

“I knew Sassone was busy. Shall I stand a chance this time?” Carlo kissed both her hands.

She chuckled with delight and sank onto a sofa, tucking her left leg under the other and digging her fingers into her dark hair.

“Maybe some other occasion, but not now. Didn't I tell you my rule? Only one at a time. But sit down. What would you like? Russian tea, coffee, Scotch, cognac, or a tomato juice?”

“Nothing, cara. Have to run.”

Her new style caught his eye. Usually, she had too much make-up on. Not today. Today she appeared barefaced, and wore her dark hair in a chignon. Perhaps she had just toned her make-up down, to make it look both natural and deliberate. Carlo examined her grey-pearl blouse and simple Prussian-blue skirt down to her ecru silk stockings, and glimpsed the inside of her thigh.

He sat on an ottoman. “I'm running short of time and badly need some information from you.”

Her face darkened; she moved a little. He sensed she was aware. He gazed at her in a conciliatory fashion.

“Lily, I know that Sassone is at the Grand Hotel with your cousin, Tony Lollis, and other Communists. I won't report him if you don't help me. I am not a carabiniere. Whatever you do, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Carlo waited to let her take in his words and after a moment added, “If, on the other hand, you let me know why Sassone is there, I can promise you that I won't speak to anybody who could either harm or tell him. But believe me, it's important for me to know.”

Her face relaxed; her great blue eyes were clearing now. “Will you be fighting the Germans?”

“You know more than you should, don't you.”

“But will you be fighting the Germans?” she repeated.

Would he? He hadn't been willing to fight against Britain, his country of birth. Fair enough, he didn't go to war in 1940. On a question of principle... “If you want my answer, it's personally, yes.”

She threw back her head. “After my question you, too, must know more than you should about Sassone's meeting with Tony. He's anxious for there to be plenty of civilians as well for the fight.”

General Carboni had sent him to make arrangements for arming them; this was the implication, or so Carlo understood. Why arm the Communists, though, he wondered?. Carboni was capable of having planned it as a sort of insurance. If Carboni had to fight the Germans, the Communists might help him; if he hadn't, he might have them all arrested.

Carlo said, “Tell Tony Lollis not to attack the Germans before we've started fighting. By ‘we’ I mean the army units. It's by no means sure the army will be fighting. The civilians are going to be slaughtered if they are isolated.”

A pair of male ballet shoes hung on the wall. It came to him in a flash that her husband, a ballerino, drowned in a boat accident when Lily was twenty-one years old. Carlo hugged her, and planted a kiss on her forehead.

He gazed at her for a while. “Could you do me another favour?” he said, eventually.

She gave him a sultry look. “Shoot.”

“It's about General Carboni's lover, the actress. Her producer is entertaining a few people tonight at a restaurant. The general is among them. Am I right?”

She nodded.

He continued, “And you... are you and Sassone going too?”

“No. Sassone will have supper here with me tonight. I must get up very early tomorrow morning. I'm starring in a two-day ballet session for a film production.”

“But you know the place they're going to, don't you?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“I doubt we shall be able to fight the Germans if I don't find the general by tonight.”

* * *

Carlo regretted having found General Carboni. The general had ordered him to hide behind a door; in this place all rooms led to each other, and from where he was he was supposed to eavesdrop on the two American officers' conversation. But he was all hot and sweaty. Tonight, the ponentino, the Roman westerly breeze, was taking time off. It was 10 o'clock, and the air was still sticky. Everywhere. Even inside the Palazzo Caprara.

They had just had dinner. Soon, the general would take them to Badoglio in his villa; he was on the telephone at his desk telling Badoglio's aide that the Americans were adamant. They wanted to see the marshal.

The Americans were alone and for a while talked sotto voce, but now the sound of their voices became more vibrant. Carlo could pick up each word quite easily.

“Marshal of Italy Pietro Badoglio, the conqueror of Ethiopia, responsible for all kinds of atrocities. He must be quite old now, mustn't he?” It was Colonel Gardiner who was speaking.

General Maxwell Taylor replied, “Early seventies I should think. Looks like a peasant.”

“Incidentally, would you say Carboni told us the truth?”

“No. I'm sure he did not. I have an uneasy feeling about him. Carboni and the Italian top generals—they've made no plans. Carboni says they are unable to fight, but let's make it plain—they don't want to.”

They fell silent. One of them lit a cigarette. Carlo could smell the fragrance of American tobacco. Was it Taylor, the deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division? He must be pacing up and down the room.

Carlo thought of the young general's job. It was for him to check that the airdrop could be executed, on the assumption that what the Italian negotiator for the armistice said in Sicily, a few days ago, was true. Now, Taylor seemed to realize that the Italian generals didn't contemplate the idea of turning on the Germans as soon as the armistice was announced, and that they were also pretty nippy at dodging what they did not want to get involved with; they did not even want to speak to him. The chief of the combined staffs and the army chief of staff were unavailable, and Carboni, the key man in operation Giant II, had shown up only a few minutes ago to bullshit them.

General Carboni had also lied. He would only stress, again and again, that the Motorized Corps lacked fuel, trucks and ammunition, that the Germans were busy reinforcing their arsenal and divisions in central Italy, particularly around Rome, and that the airfields were in German hands. But it was the Italians who were in control of all airfields. The American paratroops might safely land wherever they chose. And the divisions of Carboni's Motorized Corps were far from inefficient.

Carlo heard Maxwell Taylor getting back to what he was saying a bit earlier.

“I'm positive that they won't fight. They're double-crossing us.”

Carlo heard Carboni's footsteps. The Americans, too, he guessed, heard something, since they stopped talking. He didn't move until Carboni reached him. Then he knocked at the door, and opened it.

The general smiled at the two American officers. “His Excellency Marshal Badoglio will be pleased to see you, gentlemen,” he said in French. “We shall motor to his residence. Will you please follow me. This way.”

* * *

They left Badoglio's villa; the luxurious villa that was given him, together with the title of Duke of Addis Ababa, for the invasion of Abyssinia.

Carlo opened the car door. Taylor and Gardiner got in. General Carboni took the wheel. The 7th was about to slip into the 8th.

Carlo said, “We'll be back at the Palazzo Caprara in ten minutes.”

There were few army patrols in the streets and they were Italian, not German. They hadn't stopped them on their way to the villa and wouldn't now—the car was an army vehicle with the three-golden-star flag of a lieutenant general.

The silence was broken only once by Gardiner. “It's quiet over here, isn't it. Rome doesn't seem to be occupied by the Germans as the marshal said.”

Carlo didn't translate; it would be to no avail.

The car halted inside the courtyard of the palazzo. They got out, hurrying up the stairs to the second floor. Carboni's chief of staff was waiting for them.

Carboni handed him two handwritten sheets of squared paper.

“These two messages must be coded and transmitted to the Allied Headquarters, Algiers. Highest priority. Marshal Badoglio explains to General Eisenhower why we cannot announce the armistice now since, as is written here, ‘this could provoke the occupation of Rome and the violent assumption of power by the Germans.’ The Marshal also explains why operation Giant II must be cancelled. We cannot guarantee the airfields.”

The general hesitated, then said, “The second message is from General Taylor. He will return to the Allied Headquarters and present our views. He asks for permission to go back together with Colonel Gardiner. Make the necessary arrangements for them to leave tomorrow with an air force aircraft.”

Carboni turned to Taylor and Gardiner, smiling broadly.

“Well gentlemen, have a good rest; you need it. I'll see you tomorrow morning. By then we should already have General Eisenhower's reply decoded.”

All but Carlo clicked their heels. He was a cavalryman. Italian cavalry officers would not click their heels; they would bring them together gently.

Carlo descended the stairs to the courtyard, where he pushed his Guzzi 500 motorbike off its stand and rode away. He was on the point of having a word with Taylor and Gardiner, but his mind was soon made up. It was no use speaking to them. What could he tell them? That Carboni wouldn't have been with them tonight, and they would not have spoken to Badoglio, if he hadn't caught Carboni at that bountiful table?

Under discussion with Taylor and Gardiner were the American airdrop, the cooperation with the Anglo-Americans, the defence of Rome, and the possibility of the Anglo-American forces quickly making contact from Salerno with the US 82nd Division and the Italian units in Rome. Carboni had no time for that. He had time instead for his mistress, and for the dinner offered in her honour by a producer dressed in a bottle-green suit.

And Marshal Badoglio? The marshal was only capable of repeating Carboni's lies. The same tales about the lack of matériel. Jesus! Badoglio had pinned his hopes on the chance that the seaborne landings, operation Avalanche, would be north of Rome. Learning that they would land at Salerno, he must have concluded that the Germans would not withdraw after the announcement of the armistice. So he reckoned that an American airdrop would make a battle for Rome inevitable. Which was precisely what both he and the King did not want.

And now... what was going to happen now, Carlo wondered, if Eisenhower ignored Badoglio's request for a postponement and the armistice was announced tomorrow night? Would Carboni and Badoglio suggest the King should disown the armistice? Well, the Anglo-Americans would destroy Rome. The remainder of Rome would be just the Tiber, for the few still in good shape to want a swim in its waters.