The next thing I knew, I was changing clothes with a Wehrmacht captain who was about my size. There was a lot of nervous laughter and kidding among Remke and his band of four men. Five, counting me. It was the kind of banter you’d hear in any unit before an operation, especially if one of the guys were down to his skivvies and switching clothes with a phony priest. It was a barrel of laughs.
“You are familiar with the Walther?” Remke asked me as I pulled on the leather belt and holster. The boots were a tight fit and the sleeves a bit long, but other than that I looked like any well-dressed Kraut.
“The Walther P38?” I said. “Sure. You point the barrel at the bad guy, right?”
“Do not forget to pull the trigger,” the newly frocked priest said. Even Remke laughed.
“All right,” Remke said, once we were ready. “Dieter will drive, and Carl will stay in the car with him, in case anyone wonders why a priest is driving a German staff car. Hans, you stand guard at the door and cover our exit. Lieutenant Boyle and I will go in with Bernard. Boyle is with us to identify Severino Rossi. We go in very serious, very angry, but not at Koch and his men. They are our colleagues, and it is the incompetent fools at Regina Coeli who deserve our wrath. Understood?”
Heads nodded. It was a good approach. Smart.
“Lieutenant Boyle,” Remke said. “Koch is set up in a small hotel, Pensione Jaccarino, not far from the Excelsior Hotel. Remember, we are there for one man. You will likely see others in great need. You must ignore them.”
“Okay, but call me Billy, Colonel. Everyone does.”
“Well then, so I must, Billy. The hotel is small, narrow corridors and many rooms. Do not become separated from us, and obviously, do not speak. The men of Banda Koch are the worst of the worst. The Gestapo calls them a Special Police team, but all that means is that they are the cruelest of the Fascist Police, the Gestapo, and the SS combined.”
“So if there’s trouble?”
“Shoot to kill, Billy,” Dieter said. “The world will be a better place.”
We crammed into the staff car, Remke explaining that his men would walk back to the Excelsior if we got Severino out. Meaning he probably wouldn’t be in shape to sit up straight. We drove up the Via Veneto again, this time turning right after the Excelsior and coming to a stop on the Via Romagna, outside a modest three-story hotel. The rain had stopped, but the air was colder and slick patches of ice coated the pavement. Bernard, Remke, and I went up the steps and the colonel tried the door. Locked. He pounded on it, shouting in Italian. Hans walked up and down the sidewalk, checking the alleyway, giving the all-clear signal.
Finally the door opened. A stocky guy, short but solid, stood in the doorway. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, his suspenders hanging off his waist. Sweat beaded his brow. He looked Remke over and fired a volley of Italian at him. Remke held up his hands, shaking his head, probably telling the guy he had it all wrong, it was the idioti down at the prison who were responsible for this mix-up.
It was enough to get us inside. The stocky guy beckoned us into a room that had probably once been a parlor for guests. Newspapers littered the floor, an empty schnapps bottle lay on its side. In the next room, down a dingy hallway, a phonograph was playing loudly, an opera of some sort. He cupped his hands to yell over the music, obviously calling for his superior, or at least another German to deal with this officer.
“ Un momento,” he said. So far so good. Heavy footsteps sounded as the scratch of a needle across vinyl signaled the end of the music. But the soaring operatic voice seemed to go on, terribly out of tune and without accompaniment. It was a scream. A piercing shriek at the edge of madness, a rising cry that stopped only for desperate breath before starting up again, climbing the scales of disbelieving pain.
“Basta!” the stocky guy yelled, gesturing at someone in the room, telling him to stop. A tall, thin man with sunken, dark eyes and a two-day growth of beard sauntered out of the room, a pair of bloody pliers in one hand. He wore a leather apron, stained with both fresh and dried blood. The screams lessened to cries and whimpers, the opera in intermission.
“Siamo qui per il prigioniero che si chiama Severino Rossi,” Remke said. “Koch e qui?”
The two Italians shook their heads. No, Koch wasn’t there. They argued a bit with each other, and then the short guy seemed to win. He pointed upstairs, and beckoned us to follow. We passed the room where the tall guy had returned to his work. In it, a figure was tied to a chair, his face unrecognizable. Four fingers on his left hand were ruined, the pliers having done their work. You save the thumb for last. If it was Rossi, I wouldn’t have had a chance at recognizing him. The opera of pain began again, louder and more insistent. I could feel my heart pounding as I fought to control myself and act as if this were just another day on the job.
Upstairs, a room had been converted into an office. A man sat at a desk. He was dressed in civilian clothes, nicely tailored at that. White shirt with silver cuff links, blue silk tie, charcoal-gray wool suit. Large photographs covered one side of the desk, mostly mug shots, some of crowds on the street. He was working his way through a stack of files, a fountain pen poised above a notepad. There were no traces of blood to be seen, but ink had leaked from his pen, a trail of blue spots seeping into the blotter.
“Was wollen Sie?” he asked, without looking up. His dark hair was slicked back and the odor of a perfumed pomade wafted toward us. I glanced at the photographs and saw Kaz, his face upside down but clear as day. And my own mug in the background.
“Was ist ihr Name?” Remke demanded sharply.
“Hauptsturmfuhrer Becher. Und Sie?”
“Oberst Remke von dem Abwehr.” Remke’s tone made it clear that as a colonel, he outranked the plainclothes SS man Becher.
“Der Gefangene Severino Rossi,” Remke said. “Schnell.”
They started to argue, so I feigned boredom and eased out of the room, hands clasped behind my back and boot heels clicking against the floor, like an arrogant Aryan. I glanced into the rooms leading off the main hallway. In one, a woman lay on a bare mattress, her hands manacled to the iron frame. She had one black eye and a look of hopelessness in both. The next room didn’t even have a bed, only a crumpled blanket with a monk curled up on it, his hands clasped in prayer. Maybe he’d been picked up in Koch’s recent raid on Vatican properties. Neither met my eyes, which was fine with me.
In the third room, two men were slumped in opposite corners, like fighters between rounds. Their faces were bloodied and both had their eyes swollen shut from a fresh beating. The walls were sprayed with blood and a bucket half filled with water was by the door. I wondered whose job it was to clean the place up.
From the corridor I heard raised voices, but they didn’t have that edge of danger to them. They were aggrieved, but not violent. It sounded like a dustup over paperwork down at the precinct.
I stepped into the room, and nudged one of the men with my boot. He didn’t move. I squatted down to get a closer look, but I couldn’t make anything of his face. His hair was wrong, though. Short and dark brown, not black and curly. I stood, and as I did he fell to the side, his head hitting the floor with a disquieting sound. He was dead.
I grabbed the pail and doused the other guy with water. He moved, grimacing as he did. Although his hair was matted with dried blood, I could tell that it matched Rossi’s. The face I wasn’t so sure of, but he was thin and gaunt, as Rossi had looked in the picture. Footsteps and mutterings were headed my way, so I stepped back as Remke and the other German entered the room. The civilian, or cop, or whoever he was, consulted a clipboard. He was unconcerned with the dead body, so I figured he’d gotten what he wanted from him.