The Rules in Rome (16 page)

“No, I never make fun of the dead. And I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to lose someone you wanted to marry.”

Gracie shook her head, surprised that he would compare Allotment Annie to Michael. “I thought you were relieved when Vaughn-Harris took Annie off your hands.”

Ley leaned back in his seat. “No, I wasn’t talking about Annie. I’ve been engaged twice. And the first time, I was really in love. Annie was a foolish attempt to fill the void left when Julie died.”

“I’m sorry,” Gracie said, looking at Ley in a new light. “What happened to her?”

“A car accident three weeks after I proposed.” Ley fell silent, his leg tapping rapidly again.

“Julie—I suppose she was American?”

“Yes.”

“How did you meet?” She wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it, but she wanted to know.

One side of his mouth pulled into a smile. “It’s a long story.”

Gracie gestured to the paper on the table. “It was a short report.”

Ley was quiet for a few moments, looking beyond her. “When I was twenty-three, the Gestapo took my father away, and he asked me to take care of the family. I did the best I could, but when we found out he was dead, my mother and I decided to leave Germany. If we had stayed, Lukas would have had to join the Hitler Youth, and I would have been conscripted. It took all our savings, but we made it to America. And there we were, free, but almost out of money in the middle of a depression. My mom was a housewife; she didn’t really have marketable skills, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t find steady work. My siblings were too young for outside employment but old enough that they didn’t need me at home. So I joined the army. I sent my money home and learned a little more English, and none of us starved to death.”

Ley glanced at his leg, seemed to notice its movement, and forced it to be still. “I got out three years later, and one of my sisters, Hannah, decided I’d spent too much time being responsible for the rest of them, so she encouraged me to do something I wanted. I bought a secondhand motorcycle and started restoring it, but she didn’t think that was enough of an indulgence, so she set me up with one of her friends.” Ley shook his head. “I didn’t even want to go. Hannah’s seven years younger than me, so I thought I was too old for her friend, but with Julie, it didn’t seem to matter. When I dropped her off that night, I knew I had to see her again the next day. And the day after. It went on like that for weeks, months. I finally proposed to her about a year later, and then she died, and I just wished I’d asked her sooner.”

Ley’s face was calm as he spoke, with the exception of his eyes. Gracie could see the pain inside the melancholy blue, and she wished she could somehow erase it. She wouldn’t have guessed Ley had a tragic love story in his past. Both of them seemed to be surrounded by death.

Several days later Gracie had
a meeting with Angelo by the Pyramid of Cestius. She’d suggested that site when he’d left her apartment, before Otavia’s death, and knew she’d chosen it because of Otavia’s influence. It was a bit of a walk, but the weather was pleasant, and Ley was taking her out to supper that evening, so she didn’t have to wait in line at the black market or at the legal one. But when Gracie arrived at the rendezvous, all she could think about was Otavia. What story would she have told about the
pyramid? On a day like this, with such perfect weather, would conversation
have revolved around her love of Rome? Or around her absent husband?

Gracie was fighting her grief and pretending to admire the pyramid’s steep marble slopes when a shadow fell in front of her.

“
Buongiorno
, Concetta.” Angelo’s lips curved upward as she met his gaze. From behind his back, he brought out a bouquet of bright yellow mimosa and handed them to her.

Gracie smiled, surprised. “Thank you.” The flowers were like a bit of sunshine in the middle of a storm.

“You’re welcome.” He motioned toward the Porta San Paolo and led her in that direction.

“How’s your ankle?” she asked. It had been two weeks since their last meeting.

“Better.” She studied him for a few steps and detected no limp. “Are you all right?” he asked. “You seem sad.”

Gracie had tried so hard to keep her expression calm, but her emotions still felt close to the surface, as if they might betray her with the slightest
trigger. “One of my other contacts was killed recently.”

His hand gripped hers and didn’t let go. “I’m sorry.” They walked in silence for almost a block. “Were you there?”

“No, but I saw her body . . .” Gracie didn’t know if she could tell Angelo anything else. She’d already broken one basic security rule: keep all your contacts and their missions separate. Over and over, the same question
came to her mind.
Did Otavia die because I took her to San Lorenzo?

Angelo squeezed her hand. “We’ll take revenge on those who killed her.
The Gappisti have a few plans. Meet me next Monday afternoon at the Quattro Fontane, and I’ll show you. A quarter before two.”

Gracie nodded. Then she wondered where his report was. “Do you have any papers for me today?”

“Yes. But first, I owe you an apology about our last meeting. That’s why I brought flowers.”

“You don’t need to apologize, but the flowers are beautiful. Thank you.”

“I do need to apologize,” he insisted. “I didn’t mean to put you in danger, and I certainly didn’t mean to kick you out of your flat.”

“I was glad to help.” Gracie lowered her voice. “I’m sorry I ran off so suddenly. I forgot all about my other meeting until it was almost too late.”

They strolled along in silence for a few paces, holding hands. “Does that mean you find me distracting?”

She glanced over his smooth face, dark eyes, and pleasant mouth, and felt herself blushing. Angelo was on the skinny side, but he was handsome. “I’m sure any colleague with an injury would be distracting,” she managed to get out.

Angelo’s lips twisted into a smile like he was about to laugh. “Well, I apologize for being a distraction and for kicking you out of your apartment. Thank you for helping me.” He bent toward her and kissed her cheek. “My report’s inside the flowers,” he whispered. Then he straightened, focused on something behind her, and swore.

“What?” she asked.

“I’ve seen that man before. I was hoping it was just a coincidence, but this is the third time in the last two days.”

Gracie was tempted to look behind her but knew that would make it obvious to whoever was tailing Angelo that he’d been noticed. “Do you know anything about him?”

“Italian. Not in uniform, but he looks like he knows how to handle himself. I’d guess OVRA or something like that.”

Gracie could barely keep track of all the hostile entities that filled Rome. There were the Germans: the SS and the Gestapo, the army, and special task
forces intent on anti-partisan warfare and Jewish roundups. The Italians had
their counterparts in nearly every area. OVRA was Italian secret police.

“Keep walking,” Angelo said, taking her arm. “Pretend nothing’s different.”

Gracie doubted she could completely hide her fear, but the Italian policeman was behind her, so he couldn’t see her face. “What are we going to do?”

“I’m thinking.” As they walked by an alley, Angelo dropped several objects into the shadows.

“What was that?”

Angelo showed her one of the objects before throwing it into the alley after the others. It was made of two twisted pieces of metal, with points at each end. “Any way you throw this, it will land with one point facing up. A dozen of these, and you can paralyze a German convoy. Take out the first vehicle and watch the others run into the back of it. Ambush the column while it’s stalled. But the Germans know that, so they’re particularly harsh if they catch you with these nails.”

“Should I get rid of the report?”

“No. Most girls don’t throw away perfectly good flowers.” He led her into an apartment building’s front lobby, and they ducked around a corner
into one of two hallways stretching out from the center of the building.

Gracie went to her knees and peered through the leaves of a potted plant. A man hurried through the door and scanned the lobby. When a second man entered, the first man sent him to the left.

“There are two of them,” Gracie whispered. “They’re splitting up.”

Angelo motioned her farther along the corridor and backed into a recessed doorway. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, rolled it up, and tied a knot in the middle. “Keep walking. Distract him, but make him come past this point.”

Gracie didn’t want to be a decoy, but the building was quiet and their tail was close, so even if someone let them into an apartment, the OVRA agent, or whoever he was, would hear them. She looked at the strip of fabric in Angelo’s hands and shuddered as she stepped along the hallway. She knew the agent would turn the corner and see her within seconds.

“Signorina?”

Gracie tried to stay calm as she turned to face the round Italian man. “Yes?”

“Where’s your friend?” he asked.

“What friend?”

He took his pistol out, gestured to the bouquet of flowers, then pointed his weapon at her heart.

Gracie forced herself to breathe, focusing on the man’s face instead of his firearm. She let the flowers fall to the floor and raised her hands to about shoulder height in surrender. She took a slow step back, hoping the agent would come closer. In her periphery, she could see Angelo hidden from the man’s view, but the agent stopped a few feet shy of the recessed entry. She took another step back, hoping she could keep a balance between obeying
the agent so he wouldn’t shoot her and luring him in. She swallowed hard. “He went on ahead.”

“Show me.”

Gracie nodded and slowly let her hands fall to her side as the man came
toward her. He passed Angelo, and an instant later, Angelo sprang, wrapping the knotted handkerchief around the man’s throat and jerking him back into the alcove. The man was unprepared for the attack and dropped his weapon, both hands going to the garrote around his neck.

“Get his gun!” Angelo hissed.

Gracie ran for it and heard the crack of a pistol as her fingers gripped the Beretta. She looked up to see the second agent a few doors down. She dove into the annex as he shot at her again. She fired back, and he ducked into an
entryway, out of sight. Gracie waited for another clear shot, but the second agent stayed hidden.

“Shoot this one!” Angelo nodded toward the man he was strangling.

As the man’s face twisted in purple agony, Gracie rammed the side of his head with the pistol. He stopped moving.

Angelo frowned and narrowed his eyes, took the pistol from her, and fired a round into the unconscious man’s skull. Gracie bit back a scream as the dead man slumped to the floor. The second assailant reappeared, and Angelo turned his aim toward him. With Angelo’s second shot, Gracie heard the other man cry out in pain.

Across the hall, a middle-aged woman opened her door a crack. As Angelo shot again, she quickly slammed it shut. Gracie was tempted to run across the hall and hide in the apartment, but she didn’t know if the woman was sympathetic or just curious. And although staring at the dead agent was
unnerving, Gracie was scared to cross the hallway again. The second agent’s gun had left two bullet holes in her skirt.

Angelo kept his attention on their still-living opponent. “See if you can find
more ammo. We’ll kick a door in and escape through a window before reinforcements arrive.”

Gracie dug through the dead man’s pockets and found an extra magazine.
“What about your report?”

Angelo slid the new clip into the pistol and glanced at the bouquet lying in the hallway. “We’ll head across the hall, one door back.”

She nodded. The dead OVRA man’s eyes stared up at her.

“Ready . . . Now.” Angelo let loose a series of shots, and the two of them ran, hunched over, toward the apartment they’d agreed on. Gracie scooped up the bouquet and pulled the piece of paper from the center of the stems as
Angelo kicked the door. The door held. Angelo swore and fired a few bullets into the lock.

They rushed into the flat amid gunshots from the other agent and screams from the apartment’s trio of residents.

“Get down,” Angelo shouted, waving his gun around.

He and Gracie ran toward the window in the back of the apartment. As Gracie opened the window, Angelo fired a final shot.

“Got him,” he said.

They climbed into the alley behind the apartment complex and ran until they reached the main road. Angelo slipped the Beretta into his pocket, and Gracie looked around. Everything seemed normal. No one was staring at them, nor did she see any police or military agents.

They walked in silence for several blocks, Gracie trying to calm her breathing and control the shaking in her arms.

“Next time I tell you to shoot someone, do it,” Angelo said. “You think I want him waking up and finding me again? Who knows how long he’s been tailing me—he could know everything about me. He had to die.” Angelo shook his head in frustration. “I wish the other one was dead too, but I just hit his shoulder before he ducked back into the hallway.”

Gracie nodded but couldn’t picture herself pulling the trigger. She’d come to Rome to operate a radio, not assassinate OVRA agents.

Angelo’s voice softened. “And I’m sorry I was followed. Next week, at Quattro Fontane, I’ll make sure I’m clean before I come. You do the same. And you can consider your friend partially avenged.”

Angelo turned left, and Gracie turned right. She still had an hour before she needed to set out for Ley’s hotel, but she didn’t want to go to her apartment. She kept doubling back, circling blocks, and stopping to hide, wanting to make sure no one followed her.

Taking the long route to Ley’s hotel also helped her process what she’d seen in the apartment hallway. She pictured the dead man’s eyes and remembered Angelo’s parting words. It was one violent death in exchange for another. But Gracie had seen the soldier who had probably killed Otavia, and he was German. Even if it had been the same person, Gracie didn’t think Otavia would approve.