of his face seemed to redden. Our eyes met, and I wondered which of us was the worse off. Kaz had been head over heels in love when I first met him. And Daphne Seaton had loved him too, but that all ended in an explosion that killed her and maimed him in body and soul. Daphne was never coming back, and that certainty haunted Kaz.
I was haunted by uncertainty. Was Diana, Daphne’s sister, alive? Diana Seaton worked for the SOE, and had been reported taken by the Gestapo in Rome, where she was operating undercover as a nun. Was she dead? I couldn’t believe it. But I couldn’t do anything about it either, and it was tearing me up inside. Not that I would ever say it to Kaz, but I was jealous of him. He knew, straight out. I wondered, wept, and trembled again.
“Let’s go,” I said. I threw cash down on the table, probably enough for a dozen dinners. “Show me the Appian Way.”
Kaz led the way, passing a bombed-out building, around a corner and up too damn many stone steps. At the top, a single Roman column stood, next to a pedestal where its twin had once been.
“It is more correct to say this is where the Via Appia ends,” Kaz said. “There is no beginning here.”
The wind whipped around us as I gazed out over the harbor, the moon reflected in the low, lapping waves. Warships of all sizes floated in the calm waters, their immense guns immobile. Why weren’t they helping us get to Rome? Why did they sit, useless, in the Mediterranean night?
“How much longer are you here?” I asked.
Kaz-Lieutenant (and Baron) Piotr Augustus Kazimierz, of the Polish Army in Exile-had been detailed to liaison duties with the Polish II Corps, currently making its way to the Italian front from Egypt by way of Taranto, on the heel of Italy. Kaz and I both worked for General Eisenhower, and we often found ourselves loaned out when the General had no pressing matters at hand, investigating murders and other crimes that might impede the war effort.
“I have orders to return to London at the end of the week. Getting the Polish Corps supplied and coordinated with Eighth Army is nearly complete,” Kaz said. “I am sorry I haven’t been around to help you. Too much paperwork and meetings. All terribly boring.”
“Nothing you could have done,” I said. I’d spent every day, every hour, trying to get information about Diana- from the SOE, MI6, even Allied Command at Caserta-but had come up empty all around.
“What about you, Billy? Have you heard from Colonel Harding?” Harding was our immediate boss in General Eisenhower’s headquarters.
“Yes, I have,” I said, pulling a thick wad of documents from my jacket pocket. “Orders to return to London two days after we found out about Diana. Orders to proceed to the airfield at Brindisi for priority transportation to London. Inquiries demanding to know my location. And today, orders for me to return immediately or face court- martial for desertion.”
“Billy, you have to leave. You can’t ignore orders from Supreme Headquarters.”
“Oh yeah?” I held the papers up over my head and let them go. The wind lifted them and carried them out over the harbor, where they fell like tears into the sea.
CHAPTER TWO
They found me the next morning. I’d hoped that I might have a day or two of grace, but Brindisi was full of Brits and not many Yanks, so I knew my chances were slim. There were no pretty girls to distract them this time, and I was in a part of town that wasn’t known for officers’ quarters.
I’d left the billet Kaz and I had been assigned a couple of days ago and gotten a cheap hotel room on the Via Cittadella, between a bordello and a bombed-out haberdashery. I’d met some of the officers from SOE when I was on official business, just before we got the news about Diana, and I simply kept showing up, carrying orders I had no intention of obeying, and asking everyone from the clerks on up if they had any further news of Diana. The orders had come from Colonel Harding in London, but no one at SOE in Brindisi knew what they were about, or that I was absent without leave. They were the left hand that didn’t know what the right was doing.
But the snowdrops knew. They were waiting by my jeep, outside the hotel entrance. It was one of the few US Army vehicles in this part of town. One of the only vehicles, period. It probably was a dumb move to park it next to a whorehouse, but I had paid the concierge to keep his eyes peeled and to chase the scugnizzi away when they got too close. I could see some of them now, eyeing the military police from behind piles of rubble. Street kids, orphans most of them, a common sight in any Italian city that had been bombed or shelled. They were grimy, always hungry, and clothed in rags that had once been uniforms, impossible to tell from which side. One of the MPs glanced in their direction and they vanished into the rubble as if invisible.
“You got me dead to rights, boys,” I said, flashing my friendliest grin. “What’d I do?”
“You Lieutenant Boyle?” the sergeant asked, his white gloves, helmet, and leggings sparkling in the morning sun.
“Call me Billy, Sarge, everyone does.”
“Let’s go for a ride, Lieutenant. Someone wants to see you.” He hitched his thumb in the direction of the passenger’s seat. No pat down, no handcuffs. A good sign.
“What about my jeep?” I asked.
“Be right behind us,” he said, and snapped his fingers. One of the MPs took my jeep, and the sergeant climbed in behind me. He was a big guy, square-jawed with a deep, growling voice. He needed a shave, which probably meant he’d been up all night looking for me, or throwing drunks into the stockade. Whichever it was, it hadn’t put him in a good mood.
“Where we going?” I asked, as I buttoned the collar of my trench coat and held onto my garrison cap.
“You should be going to the stockade, like all the other deserters, but you seem to have friends in high places.”
“Hey, I didn’t desert, Sarge. I’m only a little late heading back to London.”
“Everybody’s got an excuse, Lieutenant. I’ve heard ’em all.”
“Don’t bet on it. You going to tell me where we’re headed?”
“Nope.”
“Aren’t you going to take my weapon? Put the cuffs on? Shackle me or something?”
“Only if you’re planning on shooting all of us, and I don’t think you have what it takes. No need to cuff you either; me and my billy club can take care of a dozen wiseass lieutenants any day of the week. I do have a dirty rag back here though, and I will gag you with it if you don’t shut up.”
I got the message. I sat back and enjoyed the view as we circled the harbor, heading north. It was the same route I’d taken to the SOE station, past the rusting hulk of a bombed-out freighter in the harbor, the barbed-wire fence surrounding the ammo bunkers, and the open pit where army dump trucks deposited mounds of Uncle Sam’s garbage every day. Dozens of women and scugnizzi sorted through it, the luckiest of them wearing discarded combat boots-German jackboots, GI combat boots, British ammo boots-some of them reaching up to the knees of the smaller kids. They looked up warily as we passed, ready to scatter, but went back to their scavenging when the MPs paid them no mind.
“Those kids will steal anything,” the sergeant said. I took this as an invitation to converse.
“Most are orphans,” I said. “If either of their parents are alive, they were probably taken by the Germans as forced labor. It’s a hard life for a kid, all alone, home destroyed, no one to look after them. Hard to blame them for snitching K rations when they can.”
“Bunch of them tried to steal a truckload of liquor,” he said. “The kid driving had blocks of wood strapped to his feet so he could reach the pedals. They’re thieves, plain and simple.”
“What did you do with him? Break his legs?”
“Shut up before I get that rag out, Lieutenant. We’re almost there.” He tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed to the access road for the airfield. He showed his orders to the Royal Air Force guard at the gate and was waved through. We drove past Halifax four-engine bombers, painted flat black, with the RAF roundel on the fuselage and not much else in the way of markings. Same with the Lysanders, the rugged single-engine craft used for quick landings behind enemy lines. These were the aircraft of 148 Squadron, assigned to the SOE for the work of delivering arms, agents, and saboteurs behind the lines. It was all night work, which was why the aircraft were on
