LITMIR.BIZ

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the one person he would have liked to spent Christmas with, but she had gone with her family to a villa they owned in the north of Italy to spend the Christmas season skiing. Grossmann had to call in several favors to get the necessary passes and arrange the rail transport, but Bernardi had earned it all. She was Germany’s premier agent in Italy.

      She was an amazingly dangerous woman. Grossmann knew that she lied fluently and manipulated men like puppets. She was beautiful, hypnotic, and a dedicated fascist, and in the words of his predecessor at the Rome station, she had “a heart as cold as a witch’s caress.” He knew all of these things and more. She unnerved him, yet he still desired her. He knew that if she were to seduce him—it would never be the other way around—she would own a majority of his soul, which would never be returned. Intellectually, he knew that to become Bernardi’s lover was akin to signing a Faustian pact with the devil, but like Faust, he dallied with the notion that losing his soul might be worth it. He certainly would never really control events in this world again. He had sighed on that Christmas morning and wondered if she had been there with him, at that moment, whether he would have signed the pact. He probably would have, he reflected.

      This Monday, however, was a different day. It was time to leave the self-pity, the loneliness, and the unrequited desire behind and focus on work. But what was he to do, and what was the High Command’s plan for their German-American intelligence officer?

      He had been told his last mission was a success even if he personally did not see it as such. Grossmann had penetrated the Fifth Army headquarters on so many occasions that he knew the Italian workers in the canteen by name, and Bernardi’s work had been nothing short of spectacular. She was singularly successful in convincing Allied officers to demonstrate their worth to her by discussing units, locations, and destinations over a bottle of wine or in bed, and she had provided time-sensitive information on Allied operations that had been used to great effect in delaying the Anglo-American advance up the peninsula. Her greatest coup was the discovery of a stockpile of American mustard gas aboard a liberty ship in the Italian port of Bari. Weeks later, the Allies were still cleaning up the mess from the Luftwaffe bombing of the John Harvey.

      All good things come to an end, however. Grossmann’s ring was broken up, although he didn’t know exactly how. When Gerschoffer had been taken prisoner and reportedly executed by Captain Berger, Grossmann suspected that his cover was blown. He certainly wasn’t inclined to wait around and find out. Grossmann hurriedly collected Antoniette Bernardi from Caserta, and they made their escape, via Naples and Mondragone, to the sea. In a contract Camorra boat, one with a rich history of smuggling cigarettes, people, and narcotics, Grossmann and Bernardi successfully made a nighttime transit to Gaeta in German-occupied Italy.

      Grossmann had been told to take some time off before reporting to work again. He would have liked to return to Germany to see his father in Darmstadt, but ironically, he wasn’t sure he would be able to arrange the necessary transportation for himself. So he stayed in Rome and thought.

      He had spent one evening with the wife of an Italian officer—an unfortunate soldier captured in Russia—but she was becoming resentful of the German occupation and carped incessantly about the hardships she had to endure. When he had left her flat the next morning he had tossed some lire on her entryway table in respect of happier memories, and he knew he wouldn’t see her again.

      As for other carnal pursuits, it seemed that the remaining Italian ladies of his acquaintance had recently found either God or patriotism—their motivation made no difference to Grossmann as they were no longer sleeping with German officers. The lack of other available women had driven his thoughts back to Bernardi, and from there he alternately found himself wishing for her return or a transfer back to Paris. Perhaps that would be the best of all possible worlds: nightclubs and French women and fine wines and no Antoniette.

      In his meeting with his Abwehr superiors this morning, he thought he might press the argument that he should return to Paris. The Allied landings in France were only a matter of time, and his services would be needed there. Too many Americans would be flooding into France and the Low Countries for him to be personally identified in that theater. It would be safer there.

      Grossmann had been waiting twenty minutes past the appointed time of the meeting before the colonel arrived. The delay made him both anxious and irritable. Taking the counsel of his fears, he began to worry that he was in trouble—that despite the initial praise, he would be blamed for Gerschoffer’s death and the subsequent collapse of his network. Christ, he thought, they’re going to send me to the Russian front.

      That was the preeminent thought on his mind as the door finally opened and in strode the disagreeable colonel. Grossmann leapt to his feet, offered a crisp salute, and was waved to his seat by his superior as the colonel hanged his overcoat and hat on a rack in the corner of the room.

      “Major Grossmann.” The Abwehr colonel studied Grossmann for a moment before continuing. “You seemed to have survived your ordeal. I recall you were upset with the prospect that you might not.”

      Grossmann decided there was no sufficient answer, so he said nothing.

      After an uncomfortable moment of silence where the colonel merely stared at Grossmann, the colonel said, “Captain Gerschoffer did not. Survive, that is. Explain why you lived and he did not.” The colonel pulled out a pack of American cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit one using an American Zippo lighter with a painted image of Betty Boop. He did not offer a cigarette to Grossmann.

      “Well, sir. We were operating in different areas. As you know, I was in the American encampment at Caserta, and Captain Gerschoffer was providing support to my mission as well as serving as a conduit to corps headquarters in Cassino. At the time of Gerschoffer’s death, we were respectively in the midst of two opposing armies and separated by forty kilometers . . . I guess I don’t understand the nature of your question.” Grossmann understood exactly the nature of the question. The colonel wished to make him uncomfortable and defensive.

      “Yes, I see that. Just answer the questions, Major. How did Captain Gerschoffer die?”

      “As I noted in my report, sir. It appears that he came into contact with an American intelligence officer of the 36th Division named Berger in San Pietro. My source said that Berger kidnapped Gerschoffer from San Pietro, tortured him, interrogated him, and then executed him before escaping back to American lines.”

      “It was this same Berger, was it not, who captured your team in Pisciotta?”

      “I think so, sir, but I don’t know for sure.”

      “And Captain Gerschoffer had taken the responsibility of ordering that team to Pisciotta?”

      “Yes, sir. To arrest the Irish priest.”

      “Yes, now I remember. Back to Gerschoffer’s death. Where is your source now . . . the Roman whore?” The colonel lit another cigarette from the butt of his first.

      “She’s in the Lake Como region of Italy. In Sondrio.”

      “Yes. On the Swiss border, correct?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “And you arranged her travel?”

      “Yes, sir. For her and her parents. I got the passes through the provost’s office. They were authorized.”

      “Quite.” Abruptly the colonel asked, “Did you know that your whore and your Neanderthal captain were lovers?” The colonel smiled a nasty smile and waited for Grossmann’s answer, but he didn’t have to. The look of genuine shock on Grossmann’s face was sufficient.

      “No, sir. I wasn’t aware of that. I had warned—”

      “Have you taken her as a lover?”

      “No, sir.” Grossmann stared at the colonel and asked, “What are you getting at?”

      “We knew you hadn’t. Just a few more questions, Major. Where was Captain Gerschoffer from?”

      “His family moved quite a bit, sir. I understand they’re in the East now—in Posen.

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