He tried to reason with the younger man whose brain had been touched by the Russian winter. “If you tried to shoot him now there would be no escape. And in any case you might miss. What is the range of a Walther P. 38? The same as a Colt .45, forty-five metres, no more. And even as you pulled the gun he” — pointing at the driver of the Mercedes — “would kill you.”
And, thought the Sicilian, under torture you would blow everything.
The hand of the younger man strayed inside his jacket. “You didn’t see what he and his sort did in Russia. You didn’t see them beat men to death with the buckles of their belts.”
“The SS?” Unsolicited, a note of admiration crept into the Sicilian’s voice. “Ruthless, perhaps,” shrugging, “but certainly the best troops in the world. Possibly the best the world has ever known.”
The younger man stared at him. “You admire them?”
“I’m merely saying they’re good soldiers.’
The younger man tightened his grip on the butt of the Walther. “Are you sure you are fighting on the right side?”
“Oh yes,” said the Sicilian, “I’m sure of that. You see I’m a Sicilian,” as if that explained everything. “But it doesn’t prevent me from admiring an enemy. Even before I kill him,” he added.
They were across the Tiber now, turning left in the direction of the Piazza Navona. The Sicilian sensed that their private crisis was over: if the trigger-happy novice at his side had made a move he would have done it on the bridge.
The young man sulked. “You know something?”
“What?” braking when the Mercedes slowed down as Dietrich stopped to take off his jacket and drape it over one arm.
“I think you were scared back there.”
“Of course I was.”
“I could have killed him.”
“Of course you could,” the Sicilian said, taking one hand from the wheel and feeling the bald patch as though he wanted to doff it.
“I’ll tell the others about this,” said the young man and the Sicilian thought: “Not if I cut out your tongue, you won’t.”
Now Dietrich was crossing the road, gesturing to the driver of the Mercedes to stop.
“Now what?” said the younger man.
“Wait and see,” the Sicilian said.
As they passed the stationary Mercedes they saw Dietrich sit down at a white-painted table outside a trattoria. Immediately a waiter with a black bow-tie and a white apron was at his side.
“You see,” the young man said, “he’s going to stuff himself with pasta.”
I hope he doesn’t expect meat sauce,” the Sicilian said. “Times are hard.”
“What are we going to do?”
“What can we do but wait?”
The Sicilian parked the Fiat beside the flaking trunk of a plane tree. “I suggest,” he said to the younger man, “that you take a stroll. Two men waiting in a car are always suspicious. Believe me, I know.”
* * *
Dietrich didn’t order pasta. He didn’t seem to have the same stomach for food these days. He ordered a bottle of Peroni beer, put his feet on the chair opposite and tried to relax. But it was difficult. There was too much on his mind, not the least of which was his audience with the Pope.
Dietrich had determined not to be overawed. After all he had but one God — Hitler. And Hitler had responded to his worship to the extent of admonishing Heinrich Himmler Reichsführer of the SS: “Dietrich is master in his own house which, I would remind you, is mine.”
Dietrich had anticipated a measure of servility from the Pope. After all, The Holy See was in peril: the German 3rd Panzergrenadier Division lurked threateningly outside Rome and Hitler was reported to have stated: “I’ll go right into The Vatican. Do you think The Vatican embarrasses me?”
Certainly not. Nor would Pius XII embarrass Sepp Dietrich.
And yet when he entered the audience chamber and saw the Pope in his white and gold robe seated on a throne on a small platform, he had immediately felt intimidated. It was all stage management, he told himself. All the old tricks of assertion — the enforced wait outside the chamber, the dominant positioning of the throne, the lighting.
But it was more. Dietrich found himself not only in the presence of the Pontiff but of a consummate diplomat who, speaking fluent German — he had been Papal Nuncio in Germany for many years — committed himself with gentle authority to absolutely nothing.
But, Dietrich comforted himself as the cool beer coursed down his throat, I did make my point. Perhaps I didn’t extract a promise but my request was not denied.
He ordered another beer from the waiter who was probably a deserter or a conscientious objector. God, how he loathed Italians.
This time he gulped the beer. Attacked it in the way he satisfied all his appetites. But, when all the beer was gone, he finally acknowledged the root of his unease which he had been concealing from himself ever since he had left The Vatican: for the first time in his life he had admitted the possibility of ultimate defeat; for the first time in his life he had admitted the fallibility of the Führer. And to the leader of the Catholic Church!
Sepp Dietrich flung some money onto the table, swung his legs off the chair and strode across the road to the Mercedes.
To the driver he snapped: “Now take me to this other crow.”
* * *
The grey Fiat beat the Mercedes by thirty-eight seconds to the Vicolo della Pace where, at No. 20, visitors were admitted to S. Maria dell’ Anima.
The young man who had rejoined the Sicilian dashed into a doorway and spoke urgently to a partisan named Angelo Peruzzi, who was waiting with the German stick-grenade hidden in a worn leather brief-case.
Peruzzi nodded, gesturing impatiently to the young man to get out of the way, and slipped the leather tongue of the briefcase. He slid one hand into the briefcase and grasped the hollow wooden handle of the grenade. An observer might have assumed that he was fingering a Bible because he was dressed as that most inconspicuous of Roman inhabitants — a priest.
He walked swiftly up the cobbled side-street, arriving outside No. 20 just twenty seconds before the black Mercedes arrived.
And then the course of Italian history, of world history, might have been changed if it had not been for a beautiful Jewish girl named Maria Reubeni.
Maria Reubeni had awoken that morning in her apartment in the old Jewish quarter of Rome near the Bridge of the Four Heads at 5.30.
These days she always awoke early,
