Authors: Alex Preston
They spend Christmas at L’Ombrellino. The Professor comes up in the Bianchi with Bruno, the back loaded down with bottles of wine and food. Maria Luigia’s cousins have given them three chickens, there are carrots and potatoes from the garden. Alessandro has been brewing grappa in the caves at Monte Morello. He and Elio arrive on the Moto Guzzi with a rucksack full of alcohol. Maria Luigia turns up on a bicycle, her plump cheeks flushed from the cold, an enormous salami hanging around her neck, the chickens dangling from the handlebars. Gino Bartali
and his wife also cycle up, while Antonio and Tosca, in evening dress, come late, as the chickens are being carved. Antonio’s hair has been carefully cut. He is cleanly shaven and smells of rose water.
‘I wouldn’t let him up here until he looked half-decent,’ Tosca says. She is wearing a long red dress and a red carnation in her hair.
Esmond sits next to Alessandro at lunch, immaculate in his oyster-white suit. After they have eaten, they sip
orzo
coffee, leaning back in their chairs, and Esmond drapes a fraternal arm around his friend’s shoulder. ‘That was smashing,’ he says.
‘I’ve eaten too much.’ Alessandro opens the button at his waist. ‘I wish Pretini were here. It’s the only thing that spoils it, you know?’
‘I’ve been thinking about him, too. What’s the chance he gives us away? Tells Carità the location of the camp, I mean.’
‘Pretini? Never. He may look like a playboy, but he’s a tough fucker.’
‘It’s pretty strange, this foppish hairdresser now a rebel leader. Only in Italy, I guess.’
Alessandro offers Esmond a cigarette. He takes it and bends his head to the flame of his friend’s lighter. Alessandro lets out a stream of smoke with a sigh. ‘Guys like Pretini, they’re exceptional. It’s obvious why I’m fighting.’ He holds his hand up to his face, smiling. ‘If they don’t go after me because I’m half-Jewish, they’ll go after me because I’m half-black. I’m like a Christmas present to those fuckers, tick all the boxes.’ He laughs. ‘But Pretini, it’s all about idealism, honour. He says the Fascists, the Nazis, they offend his sense of decency. And he’s willing to die for that. I think that’s remarkable.’
After lunch, they sit in front of the fire in the drawing room. The Professor raises a glass to Pretini. They have heard from
Morandi, the doctor, who has been brought in to treat him at the Villa Triste, the apartment block in the via Bolognese whose upper floors are now the administrative headquarters of the SD. The Germans have been complaining about the screams coming from the basement rooms, so rumour has it. Pretini has refused to give Carità any information. His bright teeth have been ripped out, he has been thrown down a flight of stone stairs, fourteen bones broken in all, but still he will not speak. The Professor has taken Pretini’s wife and daughter – whose existence was kept from all but a handful of friends, bad for business with the assorted Marchesas and Contessas – up to the Marchese Serlupi’s villa.
‘This may be the last time we are all together,’ the Professor says, peering around the room through thick spectacles. ‘The Allies are on the move again. Things will only get closer to the edge from now on. Elio and Alessandro have what you might call a functioning bomb factory in Monte Morello. In January, we will begin a full-scale campaign of terrorism. The Germans will wish they had never set foot in Florence.’
There is a moan of approval, the clinking of glasses. Antonio, who has taken off his tie and untucked his shirt, kisses Tosca.
‘Maria Luigia is taking charge of CoRa, our radio network. Ferruccio Parri has sent us a high-powered portable transmitter from Milan which we will use to co-ordinate the various cells gathering in the hills. The set here at L’Ombrellino isn’t strong enough to reach the mountain passes. Its presence also poses a threat to Esmond and Ada. With the new machinery we will be able to transmit detailed information to the British SOE. They’ve already sent ammunition and supplies. You will all––’ – his voice catches a little here – ‘be remembered in years to come for your bravery, for your dedication to the people of Florence, the cause of freedom.’
The partisans stand, applauding, and their applause grows louder until it hurts the ears. The noise grows and grows until it gives over to the sound of screaming, the sound of gunfire, the sound of the bombs that explode throughout January. It is the sound of the briefcase bomb left by Alessandro in the lobby of the Fascist Federation on the via dei Servi and the childlike shrieks of the Blackshirt guard whose legs are ripped off by the blast. It is the sound of the bomb that Bruno places in the brothel on the via delle Terme, patting the madam on the bottom and whispering a warning as he leaves. Two SS
Sturmbannführers
are killed in their underwear, waiting for their girls to arrive. It is the sound of bullets tearing through the greatcoats and shirts and underclothes of the two guards on the Ponte della Vittoria, bullets which come from guns fired out of Antonio’s window. He can never go back to the flat, and he and Tosca join the partisans in the caves at Monte Morello. It is the sound of bombs destroying railway lines, Esmond and Ada’s particular speciality: charges placed at strategic positions on the Florence to Rome line, on the tracks at Campo di Marte, just outside Santa Maria Novella station.
One wintry afternoon, they are strapping sticks of dynamite to the Florence–Bologna line, a line which Mussolini calls the masterpiece of his railway network (although even here, contrary to boasts, the trains don’t always run on time). Ada snaps at Esmond as he fumbles with a fuse. She takes the IMCO lighter from his fingers and lights it. They retreat to the cover of rail-side brush and wait. A rush and a suck of air as the bomb detonates, sending a train carrying six hundred Mauser semi-automatic rifles, sixteen hundred rounds of ammunition, eighty Model 24
Stielhandgranate
, twenty-four barrels of Bavarian beer, two refrigerated containers of wurst and schnitzel, a dozen rats and a terrified driver careening into the Arno.
They don’t know it until later, but at the very moment that the train sank beneath the river’s roiled waters, Carità was pressing the cold muzzle of his revolver into the warm nape of Alessandro’s neck. Alessandro, a priest who was watching from the steps of the church tells the Professor that evening, dropped to his knees with a dreamy look on his dark face, his oyster-white suit immaculate and angel-like as he keeled over into the dust.
The next day, around eight, Esmond wakes. Tatters is standing up at the end of their bed, ears pricked. Esmond remembers Alessandro, the news of whose death had been given to them by Maria Luigia over the radio the night before, and he feels grief settle over him. Tatters begins to growl and Esmond kicks out at the dog, then regrets it. Tatters steps off the bed, sulking, and patters downstairs. Esmond hears the sound of the front door opening. He reaches over and nudges Ada just as Tatters begins to bark.
‘There’s someone downstairs,’ he says. Ada’s eyes open and she sits up as Esmond leans out over the bannisters. The sound of boots on the wooden floor, voices. Tatters barking.
‘
Stai
zitto!
’ someone yells. The front door is opened, a whimper and then a single gunshot. No more barking. Esmond runs back into the room to pick up his pistol, ready to go down and confront the men, but Ada places her hand on his shoulder.
‘Not now.’ The boots clump up the stairs to the first floor. Ada quickly pulls the covers up over the bed. She then unplugs the W/T and puts it in the cupboard. Esmond takes his gun and the book of poetry from his bedside. They jam themselves in beside the Italian soldier’s uniform, relic of their first mission, still
hanging there with Esmond’s suits, Ada’s dresses. They make themselves as comfortable as they can and wait. They can hear men moving through the rooms of the floor below them, looking in the bedroom where first Alessandro, then Signora Rossi slept. There is a tightening of the air as someone enters the room and then, through a crack between the cupboard doors, Esmond sees a squat figure in shorts, a flash of white hair.
‘They haven’t been gone long,’ Carità says.
‘We’ll have the place thoroughly cleaned before the
Reichsmarschall
gets here,’ another voice says. Esmond sees Alberti, whom he recognises from the shootings in the Cascine. ‘He’s very particular. Ah, what do we have here?’ Esmond can see Alberti standing in front of the triptych. ‘These are rather good. Our rebel friends have taste.’
‘Hmm,’ Carità has taken Anna’s collage off the wall and is scrutinising it. Esmond can feel Ada’s breath on his cheek. He thinks of Tatters with a stab of sadness. ‘I know the little bastard holing up here. He’s a pathetic little faggot, nothing to worry about.’
Alberti is still standing in front of the triptych. ‘I will make a gift of these paintings to the
Reichsmarschall
when he arrives,’ he says. ‘To welcome him to Florence.’
‘Fine,’ Carità replies. ‘I’ll have my men bring them down to San Marco today. I’ll take this one for myself now, though,’ he says, tucking the collage beneath his arm.
They stomp back down the stairs. Esmond listens for the sound of the door slamming and then looks out of the window as a motorcycle and sidecar pulls through the front gate. ‘Shit,’ says Ada behind him. Esmond runs down and out to where Tatters is lying, a red patch spreading slowly across his wiry white fur. Esmond kneels down beside the dog’s body, which is still warm, and cradles it in his lap. He begins to cry. For the dog, certainly,
but for Alessandro, too. For Oreste Ristori. For his baby. He’s still crying when Ada comes down and takes his head against her and speaks soothingly. He feels the flatness of her stomach, the bony undulations of the ribs above them and lets out another sob.
‘We need to get out of here,’ she says. ‘I radioed down to Maria Luigia at CoRa. Bruno’s coming to take us to Monte Morello. We should go up and pack.’
‘I need to do this, first,’ he says.
Esmond takes the dog’s body down into the garden and lays it beneath the umbrella sculpture, from which the dead fingers of last summer’s vines hang down. He brings up stones from the terrace by the swimming pool and soon he has constructed a small cairn over the body. He walks back up to the house, his eyes now dry, his mouth set in a firm, bloodless line.
He fills his morocco bag with clothes, runs down to the drawing room to grab an armful of books, then back up to the bedroom, where he places the books with his revolver and a bundle of letters in the top of the bag. He and Ada stand staring at the triptych together.
‘I suppose it’s goodbye,’ she says.
He looks at the painting of Christ, the two smaller panels either side. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ he says.
‘But the centrepiece is too big to––?’
‘He can stay,’ he says. ‘Cast his judgement on the Germans. Maybe one of them will catch a glimpse of something that keeps him from the worst.’
When Bruno pulls up half an hour later, they are standing on the gravel driveway with two small bags beside them. In Ada’s arms, she holds the painting of Mary Magdalene. John the Baptist leans back against Esmond.
‘You realise how conspicuous they’ll make us?’ Bruno says from the window of the car.
‘We’re conspicuous already,’ Ada says. She and Esmond sit in the back seat while the paintings jolt and bounce in the front beside Bruno, as they make their way over mule tracks and through vineyards to the hills.
After forty minutes of driving, they begin to climb steeply. Pine trees clamber up the hillside, then gorse bushes and heather. The road takes them under the lip of rocky bluffs, winding along ridges looking down on deep valleys. Finally, after driving through a pine forest so thick it’s like night has been called back, they pull into a clearing, where Elio is standing, waiting for them. The university bus is parked to one side, branches teepeed over it. Nets covered in camouflage material hang over the mouths of three caves inside which Esmond can see figures, the glow of cigarettes.
‘You heard about Alessandro?’ Elio asks as they get out of the car. Esmond nods grimly. ‘What are those?’ Elio points to the paintings which, despite the journey, look sublime as ever. Ada embraces him and soon Antonio and Tosca are out with other assorted deserters and partisans, some of whom Esmond dimly recognises from those first meetings at the Palazzo Vecchio. He reads Alessandro’s death in each face.
They are led into the wide mouth of a cave, where sleeping bags are arranged, each within a neatly marked-out area, most with boots and guns and small personal items beside them. They go deeper inside and Elio gestures to a small alcove formed by a group of glittering stalactites that drip down from the roof.
‘We thought you might like this spot. It’s darker, of course, but there’s a little more privacy. Your bed-rolls and sleeping bags are there, candles. I hope it’s all to your liking. I know it’s not L’Ombrellino, but we try.’
‘It’s fine,’ Ada says, putting down her bag on the rock floor of
the cave. They bring the paintings inside, leaning them against a wall which still finds some daylight from the mouth. The two figures seem lost without their Lord. Esmond takes Ada in his arms and they look at the saints.
‘They’re alone now.’
‘They have each other.’
‘I loved being with you,’ Esmond says. ‘Up there at the villa.’
‘I loved it too.’ She pauses. ‘But this feels real. We can get things done here. After Alessandro, we need to.’ He can feel the hardness of the Beretta, which Bruno had given her the night they’d killed Gobbi and which she’s kept in her pocket ever since, digging into his thigh. That night, Esmond is woken by the skinny howling of mountain wolves. He reaches out for Ada’s hand in the damp darkness, squeezing it tightly.
They go after Carità in the middle of March. The spring of ’44 is a warm one and the partisans in the hills are buoyed by the mild weather, by the news coming out of Monte Cassino, where the third battle has just ended and the Allies at last scent victory. In the north, there is a wave of crippling strikes in the factories, further rumours of a deterioration in Mussolini’s mental state after, under pressure from Pavolini, he is forced to execute his son-in-law Ciano.
Elio and Bruno have drawn it all up in great detail. There have been rehearsals in the clearing in front of the cave. There are fallback plans taking in any number of contingencies, a broad range of less and less likely outcomes. Each of them is given a card with typed instructions as to where they must be, what they must do as the assassination unfolds.
It is eleven in the morning. Esmond, his blond hair under a beret, is sitting at the Caffè Gilli beside a round-topped laurel bush. He sips at his second
orzo
espresso of the morning and tries to remember not the taste but the buzz, the lift he used to feel when drinking real coffee. He can see Tosca’s blonde head in the shadows of the triumphal arch. She is standing back from the road, her bag at her feet, looking young and carefree and entirely uninterested in the workers hurrying past, the German soldiers who glance at her, the Blackshirts who wolf-whistle. In the other direction, down towards the via Calimala, Antonio leans back against a wall with a copy of the
Corriere della Sera
held up to his face.
There are businessmen at the tables around Esmond, mostly Italian, their conversations carried out in low, confidential voices. He sips, looking at his watch and then along to the Paszkowski next door, where German soldiers eat pastries with their coffee, the golden flakes lifted skywards by the breeze that drifts up from the Arno. An SS
Hauptsturmführer
leafs through a copy of
Der Schwarze Korps,
licking his finger to turn the page. Waiters come and go, nodding their heads and muttering a half-insolent
Danke
when one of the Germans settles his bill.
Ada comes to sit at Esmond’s table, her hair tucked up under a cloche hat. ‘Hello,’ she smiles thinly at him, her voice cool and businesslike. She puts her purse on the table and from it draws out a make-up compact, dabbing a thin layer of powder under her eyes. ‘He’s coming,’ she says, without looking up.
Esmond waits until Tosca catches his eye and then nods. She, a small, blonde figure, walks up from underneath the arch swinging her bag, large and black. Esmond watches her take a seat at the Paszkowski and attach the bag to the hook beneath the table. She smiles at the waiter when he comes to take her order. Now Antonio lowers his newspaper and begins to move up towards
the cafés on the north side of the piazza. He reaches Tosca just as Carità’s ambulance pulls into the square.
The tall figure of Piero Koch, in a long coat of black leather, is the first to step from the ambulance, then two guards, one of whom Esmond recognises from the shootings in the Cascine. The guards carry MAB 38s on straps around their shoulders. Finally, Carità and his mistress, the giggling, underdressed Milly. They sit down in their usual place at the front of the Paszkowski, two tables away from where Antonio and Tosca are locked in conversation, their heads leaning in towards one another. Koch and the guards stand at the entrance of the bar, scanning the piazza warily. The waiter brings two glasses of brandy to the table and Esmond can hear Carità’s high, yelping laugh.
He takes a sip of his coffee and glances at his watch again. Just on time, the Bianchi pulls up the via Calimala. Bruno is at the wheel, his elbow resting on the open window, the matchstick dancing in his mouth the only sign of his nerves. The car is moving very slowly, comes to a stop in front of the Savoy, and waits. Somewhere, a bell tolls the quarter-hour. In the stillness after, Esmond hears a dull clunk and Ada draws in a breath, almost a sob. He looks across to the Paszkowski and sees Tosca, hand to her mouth, staring down at the floor where Antonio is desperately scrabbling on his hands and knees. Esmond feels his lungs empty, his eyes fixed on Tosca’s horrified face.
‘
Eine bombe!
’ The SS officer is on his feet, pointing at Antonio, who gives up on whatever he’s looking for and rises, pulling a revolver from his waistband. The two guards bring their guns to their shoulders, but there are too many Germans and they can’t get a clear shot at him. Now Carità is up, hands raised, an unctuous grin on his face. Tosca goes to stand beside her lover, pressing herself against him as, with his jaw set, he points his revolver straight at Carità. Stillness.
‘A Mexican standoff? I don’t like your odds.’ Carità’s voice rises into a cackle. ‘Time is also not on your side.’ He gestures towards the German soldiers who are standing at the south side of the square and now, alerted by the SS officer’s shout, heading up towards the Paszkowski. ‘I’d surrender now if I were you. Less chance of your girlfriend getting killed.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Antonio says, his Sicilian accent punching out.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Tosca repeats.
There is a longer silence. Esmond watches Koch’s hunched, angular frame shuffling slowly round to stand behind Antonio, a long hand reaching into the pocket of his coat. He thinks about shouting out, tries to stir himself into action, but feels jammed. A chair scrapes beside him as Ada gets to her feet. He looks up at her, helplessly, as she draws the Beretta from her pocket. Koch has pulled out his own gun and is aiming at Antonio’s head as Ada fires, twice, at the hunched back, and the gangly frame rears up, gives a little shudder, and then bends over on itself, two scorched holes in the black leather. There are shouts from the guards, Milly lets out a cry, one of the waiters begins a prayer. Koch collapses forward onto a table and draws plates and glasses clattering to the floor beside him.
Ada shoots again, this time over the heads of the Germans standing motionless on the terrace of the Paszkowski. She takes off her cloche hat and shakes her hair down over her shoulders. The soldiers run, perhaps thirty of them, their boots crackling on the stones of the square. Antonio is firing at Carità, who is crouching with Milly behind an upturned table, but the bullets ping off the metal. Ada looks down at Esmond.
‘Come on!’ he says, rising. ‘We can get to the car if we go now.’
She shakes her head, eyes wide and bright, her wet lips open. ‘I love you,’ she says, and turns. Firing at the guards, at Carità,
Ada crosses at a crouching run to where Antonio and Tosca are standing. Then the three of them back slowly away from the terrace and onto the via Brunelleschi. Antonio is empty; soon Ada too. Just before they move out of sight, Esmond sees Ada looking over towards him, a grin, her pale face softening. He rises, moves to follow, everything in him rushing towards her, love minting courage in his heart. Again, a little shake of her head. Then she turns, takes Tosca by the hand, and they run.
The terraces of the two cafés erupt. The SS officer is shouting into the café’s telephone, which has been brought to his table. The businessmen around Esmond rise, dusting their clothes. Everyone is talking, a few relieved chuckles. The soldiers have arrived and Carità is yelling at them, gesturing up the road. Milly is standing over Koch’s body, her hand pressed to her mouth. Esmond pulls the beret down on his head, aware of the approaching soldiers. As the patrons of the two cafés begin to scuttle away in nervous clusters, he hurries to the Bianchi, his heart an animal flutter in his chest. Opening the passenger door, he slips into the seat.
‘Quickly, after them,’ he says.
Bruno is mouthing
Cazzo, cazzo, cazzo,
slamming his hand down on the steering wheel.
‘She shot Koch. Is he––?’
‘I think so.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Let’s go after them.’ Esmond says.
Bruno looks over at Esmond and shakes his head. ‘Too risky. They’ll have more chance on foot. They’re together, they know what they’re doing.’
‘But––’
Bruno holds up a hand. ‘We have a rendezvous at the Corsini Gardens at one. We need to stick to the plan.’
Esmond sees the soldiers in the café glance over towards the car. Bruno starts the engine and they speed up the via Roma and through the city. They’re half an hour early when they arrive at the gates of the Palazzo Corsini. The Marchesa seats them in the lemon house, overlooking the gardens where birds sing spring and fountains babble. Esmond taps his foot, looks at his watch every few seconds, gets up and paces from one end of the glass house to the other, the image of Koch’s death-shudder in every direction. Bruno sits very still, breathing slowly. Finally they see a figure making its way towards them through the parterre.
‘What happened?’ Bruno says.
‘I don’t know.’ It’s Antonio. ‘They were right behind me and then––’
‘I mean with the bomb,
stronzo
! What happened with the fucking bomb?’
‘I dropped the fuse. I was trying to attach it under the table, but it was more fiddly than the one we practised on. I dropped the fuse and then, when I was looking for it, the bomb fell out of the bag. I’m sorry.’
‘And the girls?’
‘Like I said, they were behind me––’
They wait at the Palazzo until two o’clock. The Marchesa has a dinner party that evening, drinks in the garden beforehand. White-jacketed waiters are laying out trestle tables on the lawns. She escorts them to the gates, the battered Bianchi outside, wringing her hands in sympathy. They travel back up to Monte Morello in silence.
They are sitting in the cave that evening, Esmond staring at the paintings, Bruno upright at the radio desk, Antonio slumped on his bed, arm crooked over his face and sighing. Finally there is the sound of Maria Luigia’s voice over the wireless.
‘I have news,’ she says. ‘They were taken by the Germans.
Carità couldn’t get to them first. They’ve been taken to Santa Verdiana, to the women’s prison. It could be worse. I know the prison governor, she’s a good woman, she’ll try to make sure they aren’t hurt. And Koch is dead, by the way. They took him to Santa Maria Nuova, but they couldn’t save him.’ Esmond remembers the jolt of his body just before he collapsed, the scorched holes in the leather. When Bruno has finished speaking to Maria Luigia, he makes another call on the wireless. Esmond hears a British accent.
‘Please come down as soon as possible,’ Bruno says. ‘We need help.’
An hour later, a man pulls into the clearing in front of the cave on his motorbike. Esmond recognises the British agent they’d met with on the beach at Forte di Marmi. The man nods in Esmond’s direction.
‘Wotcha,’ he says, grinning. ‘Wondered if I’d see you about.’