The Foreign Correspondent

The wine shop on the via Caffaro was very popular-customers at the table and the bar, the rest filling in every available space, a few out in the street. But in time, a watchful Weisz saw his chance, took a vacated table, ordered a bottle of Chianti and two glasses, and settled in with his magazine. He’d read it twice, and was on his third time through, when Matteo appeared, saying, “You’re the one who called?” In his forties, he was a tall, bony man with fair hair, and ears that stuck out.

Weisz said he was, Matteo nodded, took a look around the room, and sat down. As Weisz poured a Chianti, he said, “I’m called Carlo, I’ve been the editor of Liberazione since Bottini was murdered.”

Matteo watched him.

“And I write under the name Palestrina.”

“You’re Palestrina?”

“I am.”

“I like what you write.” Matteo lit a cigarette and shook out the match. “Some of the others…”

“Salute.”

“Salute.”

“What you’re doing for the paper,” Weisz said. “We appreciate that. The committee wanted me to thank you for it.”

Matteo shrugged, but he didn’t mind the gratitude. “Have to do something,” he said. Then: “What goes on, with you? I mean, if you are who you say you are, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m here secretly, and I’m not here long. But I had to talk to you, in person, and some other people as well.”

Matteo was dubious, and showed it.

“We’re changing. We want to print more copies. Now that Mussolini’s in bed with his Nazi pals…”

“That didn’t happen yesterday, you know. There’s a place we eat lunch, near the Secolo, just up the street from here. A few months ago, these three Germans show up, all of a sudden. In SS uniform, the skull and all that. Brazen bastards, it’s like they own the place.”

“That could be the future, Matteo.”

“I suppose it could. The local cazzi are bad enough, but this…”

Weisz, following Matteo’s eyes, saw two men in black, standing nearby, who had fascist pins on their lapels, and were laughing with each other. There was something subtly aggressive in the way they occupied space, in the way they moved, and in their voices. This was pretty much a workingman’s bar, but they didn’t care, they’d drink anywhere they liked.

“You think it’s possible?” Weisz said. “A bigger print run?”

“Bigger. How many?”

“Maybe twenty thousand.”

“Porca miseria!” Pigs of misery, meaning too many copies. “Not at Il Secolo. I have a friend upstairs, who doesn’t keep such good track of the newsprint, but, a number like that…”

“What if we took care of the newsprint?”

Matteo shook his head. “Too much time, too much ink-can’t do it.”

“What about friends? Other pressmen?”

“Of course I know a few guys. From the union. From what used to be, the union.” Mussolini had destroyed the unions, and Weisz could see that Matteo hated him for it. Printers were considered, by themselves and most of the world, to be the aristocrats of the trades, and they didn’t like being pushed around. “But, I don’t know, twenty thousand.”

“Could it be done at other printing plants?”

“Maybe in Rome, or Milan, but not here. I have a pal at the Giornale di Genova- that’s the Fascist party daily-and he could manage another two thousand, and, believe me, he would, too. But that’s about what we could do in Genoa.”

“We’ll have to find another way,” Weisz said.

“There’s always a way.” Matteo stopped talking as one of the men with lapel pins brushed past them to get refills at the bar. “Always a way to do anything. Look at the reds, down at the docks and in the shipyards. The questura, the local police, don’t mess with them-somebody would get his head broken. They have their paper everywhere, hand out leaflets, put up posters. And everybody knows who they are. Of course, once the secret police show up, the OVRA, it’s finished. But, a month later, they’ve got it going again.”

“Could we run our own shop?”

Matteo was impressed. “You mean presses, paper, everything?”

Why not?

“Not out in the open.”

“No.”

“You’d have to be pretty smart about it. You couldn’t just have trucks pull up to the door.”

“Maybe one truck, at night, now and then. The paper comes out every two weeks or so, a truck pulls up, takes two thousand copies, drives them down to Rome. Then, two nights later, to Milan, or Venice, or anywhere. We print at night, you could do some of it, your friends, guys from the union, could do the rest.”

“That’s how they did it in ‘35. But then, they’re all in prison now, or sent off to the camps on the islands.”

“Think it over,” Weisz said. “How to do it, how not to get caught. And I’ll call you in a day or two. Can we meet here, again?”

Matteo said they could.

24 June, 10:15 P.M.

You had to meet with Grassone during his office hours-at night. And the dark streets off the piazza Caricamento made the Tenth Arrondissement look like convent school. Passing the jackals in these doorways, Weisz wished, really wished, he had a gun in his pocket. From the piazza, he’d been able to see the ships in the harbor, including the Hydraios, lit by floodlights as her cargo was loaded, and due to sail for Marseilles in four nights, with Weisz aboard. That is, if he made it as far as Grassone’s office. And, then, made it back out.

Grassone’s office was a room, ten by ten. Spedzionare Genovese-Genoa Transport-on the door, naughty calendar on the wall, barred window that looked out on an air shaft, two telephones on a desk, and Grassone in a rolling office chair. Grassone was a nickname, it meant “fat boy,” and he easily lived up to that-when he barred the door and returned to his desk, Weisz was reminded of the old line, walked like two pigs fucking under a blanket. Younger than Weisz expected, he had the face of a malign cherub, with bright, clever eyes staring out at a world that had never liked him. On closer inspection, he was broad as well as fat, broad across the shoulders, and thick in the upper arms. A fighter, Weisz thought. And if anybody had doubts about that, they would soon enough notice, beneath his double chin, a white band of scar tissue, from one side of the neck to the other. Apparently, somebody had cut his throat, but, equally apparent, here he was. In the words of Mr. Brown, “our black market chap in Genoa.”

“So, what will it be?” he said, pink hands folded on the desk.

“Can you get paper? Newsprint, in big rolls?”

This amused him. “I can get, oh, you’d be surprised.” Then: “Newsprint? Sure, why not.” Is that all?

“We’ll want a steady supply.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. As long as you pay. You’re starting a newspaper?”

“We can pay. What would it cost?”

“That I couldn’t tell you, but by tomorrow night, I’ll know.” He leaned back in his chair, which didn’t like it and squeaked. “Ever try this?” He reached into a drawer and rolled a black ball across the desk. “Opium. Fresh from China.”

Weisz turned the sticky little ball over in his fingers, then handed it back, though he’d always been curious.