In Perfect Time (34 page)

Roger tugged his coat tighter and pulled his knees to his chest. The partisans had built the hideout in a narrow gorge, with a ramshackle roof of boards and branches, more for concealment than shelter.

Four partisans sat in a clump deeper inside the gorge, discussing sabotage plans in Italian and shooting Roger nasty glares for the increased German attention he’d drawn to the area.

As if he wanted it himself. Running from the Nazis meant he could be shot, wearing civilian clothes guaranteed instant execution as a spy, but hiding out with partisans meant he could add the extra delight of torture.

Roger scratched his beard. He’d left behind his shaving kit, Bible, and his other belongings when he helped the ladies escape. If they’d survived, all this would be worth it.
Please,
Lord.
Let
Kay
be
alive
and
safe.
All
of
them.

Enrico worked his way down the tunnel with a woman behind him, a nondescript-looking lady in her thirties with shoulder-length black hair. “Ruggero, this is Maria.”

“
Buongiorno
, Maria.”

“She’s a courier.” Enrico squatted beside Roger. “She knows where our friend is in Genoa.”

“Will you go?” Roger asked her. “Tell him I’m here?”

Maria frowned and spoke in Italian to Enrico. A spirited discussion followed with lots of head shaking and hand waving.

“Translate,” Roger said through gritted teeth.

Enrico sighed. “She doesn’t want to go for one man. She went once for the group, for the women, but doesn’t want to go now. Too dangerous. She says the work here is too important.”

Roger rested his head against the rock wall. The partisans had been busy. They expected a big Allied push in March or April and were wreaking as much havoc as they could behind German lines and planning uprisings in the major cities.

Enrico tapped Roger’s arm with the back of his hand. “I tell her you’re a pilot. You drop supplies to the partisans.”

“I won’t fly again. They’ll interrogate me and send me
home. Standard procedure when you spend time behind enemy lines.”

“She doesn’t have to know that.”

He fixed a firm gaze on the kid. “Yes, she does. Tell her.”

Enrico groaned and spoke to Maria, a lot more words than Roger told him to relate. As he spoke, Maria’s eyes engaged Roger for the first time, and she leaned forward.

“What are you saying to her?”

Enrico waved him off and kept talking. Roger couldn’t pick up more than a handful of words, but he could translate the hand motions. Enrico was telling how they’d created a diversion and helped the nurses escape, how Roger hid in an oven, how the Nazis shot the goat.

Maria tucked in her lips and blinked too much. “
Si.
I go.”

“You’ll go?” Roger clasped her hand.
“Grazie.
Grazie.”

Enrico gave Roger a smug smile. “She goes for the great war hero.”

Oh brother. If his parents heard that, they’d die of laughter. Yet Roger smiled. No matter. Getting a message to Anselmo was his only chance.

41

45th General Hospital, Mostra Fairgrounds, Bagnoli, Italy
February 2, 1945

Flashbulbs burned Kay’s eyes. She smiled, stiff and phony, as she’d been doing for the past two weeks. She and Georgie and Mellie sat on chairs between Louise’s and Vera’s hospital beds, and Alice sat up in bed beside Vera.

“Great. Swell. One more. And one more. Now with the two lovebirds.”

The reporters and photographers had a reason to renew their frenzy today—Tom MacGilliver had a week’s furlough to see his wife. If only the Army had sent them someplace romantic and private for the reunion, but no, the Public Relations fellows wanted a spectacle.

Tom led Mellie to the hospital aisle, and Kay took advantage of the break to rub the bright spots from her eyes.

Major Barkley, the PR officer, grasped Mellie’s shoulders and angled her to face Tom. “Just like that. Put your arm around her, Captain.”

“Captain.” Mellie smiled up at her husband. “I’m not used to that.”

“Neither am I.” He put his arm around her waist.

“Now kiss her,” Barkley said.

While bulbs flashed, Tom grinned and complied.

“I see my headline,” a reporter said. “MacGilliver the Lady Killiver.”

Kay winced. Poor Tom. No matter how good he was, he never seemed to be able to break free from the reputation of his father, a notorious executed murderer.

“All right, gentlemen.” Tom held up one hand. “That’s enough. The ladies are in the hospital for a reason. Some are sick, some recovering from surgery, and they all need rest.”

“I quite agree.” Lieutenant Lambert opened the door and swept her hand toward the opening.

Major Barkley, a dark-haired man in his forties, tugged down his jacket over his paunchy stomach, sniffed, and led the men out.

Lambert closed the door behind them and groaned. “So sorry. What good does it do to have a private ward for you ladies if the vultures have access?”

“We understand.” Mellie snuggled close to her husband.

Kay put her chair back where it belonged, while a ward nurse assisted Alice to her bed. Louise’s pneumonia was responding to penicillin, Alice had undergone surgery on her arm, Vera wore a cast on her broken ankle, and everyone had plumped up and regained color. Georgie had finally been able to write her beloved Hutch and was waiting to hear back from him.

Kay wanted to get out of the hospital, but the Army hemmed and hawed about the nurses’ fate. A recommendation for the chief nurse program did no good here in Italy. And she wanted to leave the peninsula more than anything. Every day she asked if anyone had heard about Roger, and every day the Army brass said they hadn’t.

Her friends told her to hold on to hope, but each day hope felt flimsier.

She marched to the door, to Lieutenant Lambert. “May I take a walk? Please? I’m desperate for fresh air.”

Lambert exchanged a glance with the ward nurse, then nodded.

A sigh flooded out of Kay, and she strode down the hallway. Another sigh of relief that none of her friends joined her.

Right outside the hospital building, Kay stopped to drink in the unsterilized, unmedicated air. Where to? Mussolini’s Mostra Fairgrounds outside Naples had been converted into a large American hospital complex, complete with a medical supply depot and a blood bank. Giant colorful murals trumpeted the joys of fascism, but were now defaced by GI graffiti.

“Kay?”

The masculine voice made her heart jump briefly, but it didn’t belong to Roger.

No, it belonged to Capt. Frank Maxwell. A grin covered his handsome face, and he held out one hand for a handshake.

She didn’t take it. “Good afternoon, Captain.”

“I’ll say. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”

Kay crossed her arms over her bathrobe. Why would he be happy to see her? And why wasn’t he dashing inside to see Vera? Two weeks had passed without a sign of him. Sure, the 802nd was based all the way up in Siena, but they flew to Naples almost daily.

“Is Vera . . . how is she?”

She was frantic with worry that her lover had forgotten her. “She’ll be thrilled to see you.” Venom leaked into her voice.

“I’m . . . I’m not going in. I just need to make sure she’s all right, deliver a letter.”

“A letter?”

He pulled an envelope from inside his service jacket, his cheeks twitching.

Kay narrowed her eyes at the man. “Let me guess. You’re going back to your wife.”

Maxwell’s gaze jerked up to her, then darted around, making him look like the rat he was. “Well . . .”

“You found someone else.” The venom tasted vile on her tongue.

He pressed his lips together and held out the letter. “Please, just give her the letter.”

“I’ll do no such thing.” Kay marched away. “Tell her yourself. Tell her cheaters cheat. That’s what they do. That’s what they always do.”

“Kay . . .” Defeat tinged his voice.

She marched around the corner under the gray overcast.

Why did a rat like Maxwell walk this earth in freedom when good men like Roger Cooper didn’t?

Northern Apennines
February 8, 1945

Roger paced the snowy mountaintop in dwindling light, drumming the air.

Captain Anselmo sat before his SSTR-N1 radio set. He tuned dials and flipped switches and adjusted cables between the battery, power supply, transmitter, and receiver. The parts were designed to be carried inconspicuously by one man, some parts under his coat and one concealed in a fake loaf of bread.

Roger glanced at his watch—1802. Anselmo was supposed to contact Naples at 1800. “Got a signal yet?”

“No,” he said in a crisp, annoyed tone. “Might have to move you to a new spot, try again tomorrow.”

“Or stash me in Genoa until the US Fifth Army marches in.”

“No. I run too many operations. I can’t take the risk of having you there. You stand out.”

Roger tapped a paradiddle on a tree. “Then let me help the partisans. I can’t sit around and do nothing.”

“No. You’re under strict orders from your commanders not to get involved.”

He huffed and whacked a branch, sending down a shower of snow. “So I’m supposed to sit around and wait for the Germans to find me and execute me, or for the Communists to get fed up and do it themselves, so they can throw the Nazis off their trail.”

“Hush. I’ve got it.” Anselmo pressed the headphone to his ear and wrote on a notepad.

Nervous energy propelled the drumsticks, slicing the air. It had taken two weeks for Maria to find Anselmo and for Anselmo to find Roger. The OSS man brought the great news that the rest of his party had escaped to Leghorn. Kay was safe.

This was Roger’s first opportunity to get a message to the outside world. He had to keep his drumsticks quiet so signals could be heard.

As Anselmo tapped on the transmitter, a tiny lightbulb flashed on and off. Then he wrote on his notepad, decoding the message. He frowned and rubbed the back of his neck. “Verify Cooper sing sing sing?”

“Huh?”

“That’s the final part of the message. They received the message that I found you, but they want to verify it’s you. That’s standard. Now we have to figure out the puzzle.”

“Sing, sing, sing? Like the song?”

“The song?”

“Yeah. Big Benny Goodman hit—‘Sing, Sing, Sing.’ ”

“Of course. That’s it. They want to prove you’re an American and know the song. The response they’re looking for—it’s ‘Benny Goodman.’ ” Anselmo slipped on his headphones and flipped the switch to transmit.

Something squirmed inside. “Wait. It’s too easy, too obvious. It was a huge hit. Even the Germans might know it.”

Wrinkles etched Anselmo’s brow. “You’re right. Why would they ask that?”

Roger paced to the tree and rapped out a drumroll. “They want to prove it’s me, right? Not just any American, but me.”

“Right.”

He wheeled around. “Krupa. The answer’s Krupa.”

“What?”

Roger marched back. “Veerman’s on the other end. He knows I’m a drummer. He wants the name of the drummer in ‘Sing, Sing, Sing,’ and it’s Krupa. Gene Krupa.”

“Yes.” Anselmo’s eyes lit up, and he scribbled on his pad.

Roger glanced over his shoulder to make sure he spelled the name right.

For the next few minutes, Anselmo tapped and scribbled and coded and decoded, and Roger couldn’t stop grinning.

They’d gotten through. Maybe they’d try to get him out of here, get him back to his crew, to Kay.

If he could send her a message right now, what would he tell her? That he missed her more than a hot meal, clean water, flush toilets, and a mattress? That he loved her more than any human being he’d ever known? That life felt incomplete without her?

A joyful sense of purpose filled his lungs. Perhaps he’d tell her he wanted to take a risk.

42

Northern Apennines
February 13, 1945

Once again, Roger crouched by the edge of a makeshift landing field right before sunrise. Once again, Captain Anselmo held the last signal panels, waiting until all was clear. Once again, Roger prayed the plane would land.

Enrico squatted beside him. “I’ll miss you, Ruggero.”

“You can come with me. There’s room.”

The boy shook his head. “My work is here.”

Roger handed him a scrap of paper. “My Army address and my parents’ address. Write me when this whole thing’s over.”

“I will.” Enrico stared at the paper, and his cheeks puckered.

Roger clapped him on the back before the kid could start crying.

Engine sounds arose to the east, beautiful American engine sounds. Anselmo held the orange cloth and didn’t move, and Roger scanned in all directions. Any minute now the crash of partisan feet through the underbrush could kill this dream.

But no one came, and the planes grew nearer. Anselmo ran out onto the field, laid down the cloth, then ran back to Roger. “I don’t need to tell you to make it fast.”