Franco dragged him away from the window before the reinforcements jumped out of the rear. Someone knocked at the door, softly, but following the mafia man’s lead, Ivanov did not reach for his weapon. The door opened a crack and an old woman put her head around. When she saw them, she offered up a heavy cloth bag before retreating back out into the hallway.
“We change now,” Franco ordered, stripping off his once-gray municipal worker’s uniform.
Ivanov followed his example, not bothering to undo any buttons, just ripping the soiled overalls open and stepping out of them. Franco tossed him a cold, wet hand towel, which he used to wipe off the worst of the filth. They had no time to clean themselves properly, but that probably wouldn’t matter. With the power supply so unpredictable, and basic necessities like soap often hard to come by, the streets of Occupied Rome were not the freshest-smelling thoroughfares down which he had ever wandered.
They climbed into their new clothes as quickly as they could-although they weren’t exactly “new,” thought Ivanov, as he pulled on a pair of pants roughly patched together from stiff, paint-dappled canvas. One leg was shorter than the other. A threadbare shirt lacked buttons and sported apparently indelible sweat stains under the arms. The sleeves were so tight he feared to rip them if he flexed his hands. A once-black jacket, gone dark gray with age, started to tear at the seams as he tried to get it over his massive shoulders.
“This will not do,” he said, deciding the moment had come to take control of the operation. Furedi and his comrades had agreed to get him in and out, but they had also agreed to put him together with Sobeskaia. That wasn’t going to happen now, and he had to question whether their exit plan was also shot.
Franco, who looked much more at home in his worn-out vagrant’s apparel, took umbrage. “It is all these people have, Russian. The Communists strangle them. Food, clothing, medicine for the old people and the children, they have none of it …”
“And I am grateful for the help. But this will not work. I will stand out in these clothes. Draw attention. We need another option.”
“I told you, my people do not-”
Ivanov cut him off. “Your people have done enough,” he said, adding, “I would not ask more of them”-lest the Roman take offense at his ingratitude. “But dressed like this, we’re not going back down underground, are we?”
“Not far. Just a few streets away. Then we walk through the night markets. Communist markets-but they allow the farmers to sell produce there once a week. Very crowded, it will be good cover. And farm people,” he said, backhanding the Russian in the chest, “they do not dress for church at the market.”
Ivanov heard the tailgate of a truck drop down outside, and the shouts of NCOs ordering their men into the street. Risking a brief glimpse through the lace curtain, he was able to confirm that the troops were NKVD, not Red Army. He saw Skarov consult with a senior lieutenant, who mostly nodded and took orders from the civilian in the black leather coat. The officer soon had his men detailed into four-man squads to search the buildings up and down the street.
He and Franco had five, maybe ten minutes before one of the squads stumbled across their lair.
“Okay, now we must leave,” said Ivanov. “We go your way at first, but then we go mine.”
They did not spend long underground this time, and they moved with much greater haste and almost no concern for stealth. The ground beneath them rumbled. Bursts of gunfire, shouts and sometimes screams, even the occasional crump of a grenade reached them as if from a great distance, amplified and distorted by the weird acoustics of the buried city. It sounded like construction work.
“Marius,” explained Franco, as though the sounds of battle needed explaining.
The special forces veteran wondered how much of this clash would be reaching the ears of anyone listening on the other side of the Wall. Aside from the rumbling vibrations beneath the streets, perhaps none of it-or even if it did, no one would take notice. That appeared to be the Roman way.
Rome was a frontier city now. A great metropolis fated by a broken history to sit on the boundary between two empires. Like Berlin in his youth, like Budapest and Constantinople before them, like Tokyo now, Rome was a shadow factory. And the shadows had teeth and claws.
He and his guide avoided the fighting, hurrying through tunnels, some of which were simple root cellars and basements, avoiding the deeper passages where it seemed a great battle was now being fought. A battle that few would know about, beyond those who survived it.
“Up, up now,” said Franco as he pushed through an iron-cage door and into the barrel room of a bar or tavern. The smell of wine gone sour was very strong even though the subterranean space was mostly empty.
“Where are we now?” Ivanov asked. He had decided the time was almost upon them when he would have to reassert control of this minor disaster.
“An old taverna,” the other man said, pointing at the rough wooden beams just over their heads. “Closed by the Communists, but we still meet here sometimes.”
“Of course.” Ivanov was beginning to understand just how vast was the city hidden beneath the view of its occupiers. It wasn’t just a matter of subterranean caves and tunnels. There was another Rome, a free Rome, hidden just beneath the surface of things in every street and alleyway above them.
“Explain to me, describe for me, exactly where we are going, and what I will find on the surface,” the OSS operative said, standing his ground and halting Franco’s progress toward the wooden staircase at the far end of the cellar.
The Italian frowned, impatient to keep moving, but he did as he was asked. “It is as I tell you, Russian. We are under the night markets for this district. These are the approved markets where farmers are allowed to sell what is left after the Communists have taken everything else.”
Ivanov gestured for him to hurry on with his explanation. He was well aware of how the city government in the Soviet-controlled sector ran the marketplaces. Again, learning from the lessons of future history, the Kremlin had allowed its subjects some freedom. Not a lot, but enough to avoid the completely empty shelves that had done so much to undermine the rule of the Communists in Ivanov’s own time.
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I need you to describe the tactical environment. How many stallholders, roughly? How crowded is the market? How many patrols? Are they on foot or is there a checkpoint, or a police station nearby? How many entrances and exits are there-where do they lead to?”
His guide understood now and nodded his head.
“What for do you need to know this, Russian?” Franco asked. “You have a plan, yes? I will need to know.”
“I have an idea for a plan, but first I need to know what we are walking into.”
The mafioso took a moment to think it through before kneeling to draw a rough map of the small piazza above them. As he described the layout of the markets, and the usual ebb and flow of customers, all watched over by regular street patrols of the People’s Polizia, Ivanov’s idea for a plan began to take shape.
8
South Rome (Allied sector)
Nothing ever happens at a reasonable hour in this country, thought Harry. What sort of cocktail party kicks off at ten in the evening, for God’s sake? Along with his empty stomach, it was a gripe that occupied the prince’s mind as he fitted the fighting knife into the sheath strapped inside his left forearm. By 2200 hours, went Harry’s reasoning, a civilized cocktail hour was over, and anyone with half a brain and a decent buzz on had already partnered up with some willing trollop and was back home, pants down, on the tool.