“Are you looking for this Livia?” the girl asked as she unwrapped the gum. She put some in her mouth and chewed it vigorously, pausing every few seconds to swallow. She was, he realized, completely ravenous.
“Yes, I am.”
“She’s lucky,” she said sadly.
“Only if I find her.”
He walked back along the Tiber, lost in thought. Everywhere he looked, the celebrations were continuing. A party of GIs were dancing with a group of Roman girls. In the Piazza Navona, the people were making a bonfire of German flags, documents, abandoned uniforms, even the beds the Germans had slept on. German proclamations were being ripped from the walls of buildings and added to the fire. A pretty girl ran up to James, kissed him on the cheek, and then ran away, laughing at her own daring.
It was a city in celebration, but he had not found her.
When he got back to the barracks where his unit was billeted Roberts told him someone had been looking for him. “Big bloke. An officer. Said he was A-force.”
“Captain Jeffries?”
“I don’t know, but he’d about a dozen Jerry watches down his left arm.”
“Yes, that’ll be Jumbo,” James said fondly.
He found his way to the hotel in which A-force had set up a temporary headquarters. “Ah, James, there you are,” Jumbo said, as if the breakout from Anzio had been little more than a hike. “Say hello to my good pal Buster.”
Buster was another Jumbo, though with a broken nose. “Buster’s responsible for the partisans in sector four,” Jumbo explained. “That’s this bit.” He pointed at a map on the wall. “Tell him what you heard, Buster.”
“I’ve been asking all the partisan commanders for an update on their strength,” Buster said. “One of them sent a message to say his motley crew was gathering more recruits all the time. He made a lighthearted reference to the fact that they even had a group of Neapolitan prostitutes with them, waiting to cross the German line.”
“Could one of them be Livia?”
“Of course it’s her,” Jumbo said confidently. “How many other Neapolitan prostitutes can there be? Well, quite a few, I suppose,” he added, answering his own question. “But not up here. Not trying to cross the lines.”
“If she is with Dino,” Buster said, “she’s done rather well. He’s a good man.”
“Is there any way we can get her out of there?” James asked.
Buster shook his head. “None whatsoever, I’m afraid. The whole sector’s stiff with Jerries.”
“On the other hand,” Jumbo said cheerfully, “we can probably get you in. Ever used a parachute?”
That night, the BBC’s daily transmission of messages to the partisans contained some intriguing new material. Having told Mario his sister’s cow needed milking and Piero that his wife thanked him for the hat, the clipped tones of the BBC presenter said, “And finally a message for Livia, who is staying with Giuseppe. Please remain where you are. The tuna is on its way.”
High in the mountains, Dino’s radio operator wrote down the message and frowned. It did not correspond to any code he had ever been given, but he would pass it on anyway. Perhaps it was something to do with the big guns they had been waiting for.
About fifteen miles from the forest where Dino and his partisans were hidden, the Germans were also listening to the BBC broadcast. They had cracked this code long ago, but “tuna” was a new one on them. They, too, suspected it might be some fearsome new weapon about to be delivered to the partisans. The message was taken to the German commander, who ordered that patrols in the area should be stepped up immediately.
44
THE FUSELAGE of the B-17 was crammed and very noisy. It was crammed because of the huge piles of crates containing guns, ammunition and food strapped down in the bomb bay. There were no seats: James and Jumbo were wedged between a couple of crates, holding on to the webbing which lined the rear of the plane. James was clutching a knapsack and a small suitcase. One of the smaller bomb doors had been left open, and occasionally they could make out rivers and lakes as the Italian countryside passed underneath them, illuminated by a sliver of moon.
“We’ll be going in at two angels,” Jumbo shouted over the din. “It’ll be fine.”
James nodded with what he hoped looked like confidence. He had never done a parachute drop before, and from what Jumbo had told him he gathered it was best done from as high as possible. Two angels—two thousand feet—was hardly time to open the main parachute, let alone sort out the reserve if something went wrong. But as the plane banked and turned north toward the mountains, he felt his heart racing with an excitement that was due to more than just nerves. He hoped desperately that Livia had got his message, and that she had not already moved on.
Officially Jumbo was the one being dropped to liaise with the partisans, and James was merely there to assist with the unloading. According to the report the pilot would file later, James would overbalance and fall out of the plane whilst pushing out a crate. It was, Jumbo assured him, a fairly standard way of moving people around without going to the bother of getting official permission.
After twenty minutes James felt the plane start to descend. Jumbo got to his feet. “Time to get this lot unloaded,” he yelled.
They cut the webbing and pushed the crates toward the bomb doors. As they swung open, a small bonfire on the ground flickered into life, tiny as a firefly. “There’s the signal,” Jumbo shouted. “Heave.” They pushed the first crate out. It wobbled in the slipstream, then sprouted a khaki-colored jellyfish of silk, slowing its descent. James only hoped that his own jump would be as straightforward. But there was no time now to think about that. Together they pushed the boxes out one by one, until Jumbo gave the signal to stop. The plane banked, and came around again. “Heave,” Jumbo yelled, and they resumed their work. Eventually the crates were all gone.
“How are you feeling?” Jumbo shouted.
“Fucking terrified,” James yelled back. Jumbo evidently thought he had said something quite different, because he gave him an encouraging nod and a thumbs-up.
Clutching his suitcase to his chest, he stepped to the open door. Below him, the hillside seemed very distant. He was struck by how very wrong it was, hurling oneself into the sky like this. Then Jumbo gave him a firm shove, and he was tumbling head over heels through the void. There was a moment’s panic, then he righted and felt the blissful tug as his parachute filled with air.
Below him, crates floated slowly through the sky. He looked up. Jumbo was twenty feet above him, to his right. Beneath him, he could see dark figures already carrying crates out of the drop zone. And then he saw a familiar skinny figure, running toward the place where he was going to land, and his heart soared way above the clouds. “I love you,” he called down to her. “I love you.” It sounded rather wonderful in Italian, so he shouted it again. “Livia, I love you.”
Gently the ground came up to meet the two angels, one of whom was later heard by the partisans to be laughing even as he hit the ground and rolled. And then she was in his arms, the silk of the chute billowing around him as he held her, saying over and over, “Livia, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I let you go, but I’ll never let you go again.”
They sat on a tree trunk, a little away from the camp. “I brought you some things,” he said. He opened the suitcase. “From the black market in Rome. Bread from a bakery on Piazza Trilussa. And—look.” Carefully he took out his prize. “A whole mozzarella. It must have come into Rome from some farmer in the countryside. How extraordinary is that?”