The Rules in Rome (28 page)

Gracie’s hands were still wrapped
in napkins, stained now with blood
and dirt. “Just some glass. I had to crawl through a broken window.”

Ley untied one of the napkins, but she flinched when he started pulling
the cloth away from the scabs. He stood, wincing as he walked, and turned on the light over the table. “Come over here. We’ll soak them off.”

He grabbed a bowl and filled it with water, then set it on the table. Gracie sat down and put her hands in the bowl. The water stung at first, but the coolness was refreshing.

“How brave are you feeling this morning?” Ley held up the bottle of liquor. It didn’t look like anyone had touched it since she gave some to the doctor. “This or soap. They’ll both hurt, but I think this is more likely to kill off anything septic.”

Gracie peeled away the napkins. “I can’t get an infection. I need my hands to send in reports.” Ley dumped the water out of the bowl and replaced it with alcohol. She gritted her teeth and put her palms into the shallow layer
of smelly liquid. It bit sharply into her skin, but she made herself count to ten before she took her hands out.

Ley sat across from her and looked at her palms. “You’ve still got some glass in there. I’ll get my tweezers.”

“Let me get them. It hurts you to walk, doesn’t it?”

“Not any more than it hurts you to use your hands.”

He was up before she could protest. She didn’t want to be a burden, but it was nice to have someone take care of her for a few minutes, especially after what she’d been through that night. Ley came back with the tweezers and studied each scratch. He took shards of glass from three of them. Her hands were sore, and the slivers were painful, but his touch was comforting. She liked watching him work, watching him concentrate, and she hoped his gentle care was a sign of affection that went beyond friendship.

He put new bandages on the cuts that still oozed blood, then released her hands. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” he whispered. “Everything seems a little worse when you’re tired.”

Gracie smiled, not sure if Ley meant people in general or Gracie in particular. He was right about her though. She needed sleep.

“You can take the bed. I need to be up soon anyway.”

“Aren’t you still on sick leave?” Gracie asked.

“I’m going back today.”

Gracie remembered the way he’d walked across the room, like he was in pain. “But you’re still recovering. Don’t you think you should take a little more time?”

Ley looked at his hands. “I’m not doing much to win the war while I’m sitting around here.”

“But you aren’t healthy yet. What if you make it worse or let something slip because you aren’t at your best?”

He rubbed the scar tissue on his right hand with his left fingers. “I didn’t
come to Italy to sit around in a hotel room all day.”

She stared at his hands, remembering how he’d gotten those scars and what might be motivating Ley to get back to work before he could walk across the room without wincing. “How long are you going to beat
yourself up over something that happened when you were nine? Winning the war won’t bring Hans back.”

“I couldn’t save Hans, but I can still help Lukas.”

“But what about you? Are you ever going to do what’s best for you?”

“I promised my father I’d take care of my family. I can’t break that trust.”

Gracie studied his face, but she couldn’t detect any emotion except the firmness of purpose she was so used to seeing there. “You have taken care of your family. You got them out of Germany, and you made sure they had food to eat and a house to live in. You’ve spent years putting their needs
ahead of your own. Your father can’t have meant for you to give up your own life when he asked you to look after everyone else.”

Ley looked away. Eventually, he got to his feet and went over to his couch. “You’ve had a long night, Gracie. You should go to bed now.”

When she saw the way his face was pinched with pain, she decided right then wasn’t the best time to continue their conversation. She didn’t feel sick anymore, not physically, but she hurt for Ley. It didn’t seem fair that he always thought of others first. If his father was anything like him, he couldn’t
have meant to extract a promise that would keep his son in perpetual obligation. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He met her eyes for an instant and then looked away again. “You haven’t done or said anything you need to apologize for.”

Despite his words, she could tell she’d hurt him, somehow, without intending to. As she crawled into his bed, she tried to think of what she could say to help. But she was exhausted and quickly drifted to sleep, surrounded by the smell of Ley’s soap.

* * *

Bastien stretched out on the couch, but he couldn’t sleep. A little before six in the morning, he checked on Gracie, opening the door softly so he wouldn’t disturb her. She didn’t stir. She still looked the same, but he knew she had lost something that night, part of her innocence. He grieved for her loss and was grateful he hadn’t been the one to hand her the pistol.
Please help her, Lord. And help me help my brother.

He returned to the couch and thought back to that night in 1936 and the knock on the door that had changed his life and set him on the road to lost innocence. Two Gestapo agents had burst into his family’s apartment and arrested Bastien’s father, claiming he’d written editorials critical of Hitler’s government and published them in Swiss newspapers. The claims had proven true, and his father’s pseudonym hadn’t been enough to protect him.

The next year had been a melancholy limbo. When Bastien’s brother Lukas wasn’t at school or sleeping, he would sit in their apartment’s entryway and stare into space, as if waiting for his father to walk through the door and come back to the family. Bastien’s two sisters had always filled the house
with laughter and music, but the Ley household had turned quiet, except sometimes when Bastien couldn’t sleep and he’d hear his mother crying.

Bastien and his mother had spent countless hours waiting in lines to see government officials, asking about the fate of Friedrich Ley. No one would give them details. Twelve months passed before one of Friedrich’s business partners learned that he had been sent to Sachsenhausen, where he’d died of typhus. Constantly at the front of Bastien’s mind were the final words his father had spoken to him the night he was arrested. “Take care of the family, Bastien.”

A knock on the door startled Bastien out of his memory. He looked at the clock. Heinie had offered to drive with him today in case Bastien’s strength started to wane. It was time for Bastien to get on with his mission. He had a promise to keep.

* * *

Gracie transmitted Angelo’s report in the morning, along with answers to all the questions Caserta had sent in their previous message to confirm she wasn’t compromised. She spent the rest of the day trying to forget what she’d done to the Italian police officer and trying not to worry about Ley. He’d been gone when she woke, and she wondered how he was managing his first day back at work and how she could help him when he seemed so intent on sacrificing everything he wanted for the chance to help his family.

She let herself into his hotel room late that afternoon and found him sitting on his couch. His face looked pale and unhealthy, and she wondered if she’d interrupted a nap.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Just tired.”

Gracie sat next to him. He pulled a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “My first report since that night with Ostheim.”

Gracie read through the details. “You’ve had a busy day.”

When he didn’t respond, she put the report down and looked at him. His head was resting on the back of the couch, and in the minute she’d taken to study his report, he’d fallen asleep.

She liked the way his face relaxed when he slept. Her eyes focused on his lips. They looked ordinary, maybe even on the small side, but there was nothing ordinary about the way she felt when he kissed her.

She went into his bedroom and retrieved a blanket. She wished she could help him the way he always managed to help her. How many OSS agents would have known to bring up the story of Nephi after she shot the Italian police officer? He had said he knew a few Mormon families, and she assumed he had heard the story from them and hoped his religious beliefs weren’t as far from hers as she feared they were. As she spread the blanket across his sleeping form, she couldn’t resist kissing his forehead. It
woke him, and she felt her face grow warm because she’d been caught.

“Did you encode it already?” he asked with a yawn.

“No, not yet.”

He lay down on the couch and was asleep again before she picked out her first transposition key.

Zimmerman looked up from his
reports to see Möller standing in front of his desk. “What is it, Möller?”

“Do you have a minute, sir? Untersturmführer Richter in signals found something I think you’ll be interested in.”

It sounded more promising than reading through reports on the black market, so Zimmerman followed Möller upstairs to Richter’s desk.

“You found something?” he asked.

Richter nodded. “Yes.” He pulled out a chart. “This spring we started tracking a wireless operator. For four weeks straight, he’d go on the air every
day, usually for about ten minutes, normally between ten and noon.”

“You’re sure it was one wireless operator and not several?” Zimmerman asked.

“Yes. You can recognize operators if you listen to them often enough. The length of time they wait between keystrokes, the way certain letters are tapped out. This one’s very precise. Quick, but he has a steady hand. Easy to pick out the letters.”

“You’ve read the messages?”

“No.” Richter frowned. “No one’s broken the code.”

“Hmm. So you know he’s talking, but you don’t know what he’s saying. Do you know where he is?”

Richter pulled out a map of Rome, and Zimmerman studied the myriad
of circles and annotations. “I started listening for him the beginning of March, tracked the areas he was transmitting from.”

“Spread all over central Rome.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, he likes to move around. Makes it harder to catch him. Then toward the end of March, he went off the air.”

“Did we arrest any wireless operators then?” Zimmerman asked. That was about the time he’d caught a few Gappisti members, but he didn’t think any of them could use a radio.

“Not that we know of. I heard him again a few times through April and the first part of May. Then this week. Back on the air every day.”

“Can you catch him?”

Richter shrugged. “I’ve been trying since March. If I can get more manpower, and if I can get him to stay on the air long enough, I might be able to triangulate his position. It doesn’t even have to be an exact triangulation. Most wireless sets can be disguised, but they’re too big to hide completely. If we get close enough and search everyone with a package, a suitcase, or an overcoat, we might get lucky.”

“I could help with the manpower,” Zimmerman said. “But how will you keep him on the air long enough to track him?”

“Oh, I know a few tricks.” Richter pointed to the map again. “Neighborhoods he’s used before. He’s got a long list, but he’s starting to repeat himself.”

Zimmerman took his time looking over Richter’s map and chart. “I’ll get you the men. Enough to monitor all the locations at the right time. You catch me a wireless operator.”
And then I’ll make him tell me everyone he’s working with.

***

Gracie pulled the hair off her neck, sweating in the late May heat as she prepared to transmit from a stuffy attic. She pushed open the only window and felt a faint breeze. In this weather, she liked to send her reports in early, so she’d lined up for food as soon as curfew lifted. She’d waited three
hours, but the bread had been gone when she reached the front of the line.

Her stomach rumbled as she strung the flimsy antenna around the room and checked all the connections on her radio. When everything was properly set, she sent her initial transmission and waited. Headquarters finally replied and said they had a message for her. She wasn’t surprised—ever since Ley’s injury, they’d been asking questions only she knew the answers to, trying to confirm she wasn’t captured. As she waited for their transmission, the headphones suddenly filled with a high-pitched
mechanical screech. She flinched and pulled the headphones away from her ears.
That was loud.

Hesitantly, she put the headphones on again. She could make out the message from headquarters, but partway through, the screech returned.
Is someone trying to block my frequency?
She took the headphones off and listened, then crept to the small window and peered out, but nothing looked or sounded unusual on the street below.

She was tempted to leave, but Ley’s report was about fortifications the Allied Armies could reach as early as this week, and it needed to be sent today. Yet if the Germans bombarded headquarters with noise on the frequency she was using, Caserta might not hear what she was sending.
I’ve got to try. That’s why I’m in Rome
.

She tapped out her message, praying headquarters would be able to understand it. She also requested their earlier message be repeated because she’d received only part of it before the interference. When she finished, she switched from transmit back to receive, and seconds later she heard a response. There was no static, and it was easier to make out than usual, each tap loud and clear, completely opposite what had happened earlier when someone had tried to block their frequency. She scrambled for a pencil and paper and wrote what she heard:
nvhhz tvlun zbmrm vgvvm rmwvx rksvi zyovi vkvzg zglmx v

Gracie stared at the message. Double transposition wasn’t secure if there weren’t at least one hundred characters. The response from headquarters was
too short, and there weren’t enough vowels.
Some type of substitution code?

Gracie played with it for a while. It didn’t take long to figure out that
V
was really
E.
Whoever sent the message was using the most elementary of substitution codes, where the alphabet was folded in half and
Z
replaced
A
and
Y
replaced
B. Lazy coder. A German cryptographer would figure it out as quickly as I did.
But when she deciphered the message, her contempt was quickly replaced by shame.

Message of May nineteen indecipherable. Repeat at once.

Gracie had never had an indecipherable and took pride in the fact that her messages were always perfectly encoded and never jumbled beyond comprehension. May nineteenth was three days ago. She’d had no report from Angelo, just from Ley, so she’d been the one who encoded it. When she remembered what Friday’s message contained, horror replaced her embarrassment.
German response to the fall of Cassino.

She’d burned the report as soon as she’d sent it, but she did her best to remember the important points. She would have to find Ley and check that she wasn’t missing anything vital, but with a three-day delay, she knew she had to get as much information in as soon as possible. She did her best to reconstruct the report, then encoded it and double-checked her work as the transposition keys burned.

Gracie flipped the switch to transmit and repeated the requested information. Then she gathered up the antenna and started putting her radio away.
I’ve been in this attic way too long.
As she unplugged the receiver from the transmitter, she heard a disturbance on the street below. She rushed to the window and saw six or seven German soldiers running into the building.

A few coherent thoughts flew through her panicked brain.
If they’re here for me, I need to leave now. If they’re not here for me, I can come back for the radio later.
She grabbed her handkerchief and papers and unplugged the quartz radio crystal—the set couldn’t operate on the right frequency without it—and hesitated for a moment before slipping the items into her pocket and fleeing.

She’d gone down two of the five flights of steps when she saw the soldiers again. They were spreading out, monitoring all the hallways. One of them motioned for her to stop and spoke to her in German. When she didn’t respond, he called another soldier over.
Breathe normally
, she told herself.
They may be looking for me, but they don’t have a physical description;
they’re just looking for someone with a radio, and my radio is still in the attic.

“Do you live here?” the second soldier asked in accented Italian.

If he checked her papers, he’d see she didn’t, so she answered honestly. “No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I came to visit a friend. I was hoping she’d lend me some food.”

He smiled. “Any luck?”

“No, she wasn’t home.”

“Try Trastevere or Testaccio. I think they were handing out rice there today.”

“Thank you.” Gracie continued down the stairs, half expecting the soldiers to call her back, but they didn’t.

Outside, another pair of soldiers stopped everyone who passed and checked their bags. They stopped her too, and she repeated her story and prayed they wouldn’t find her crystal or her transposition keys. They seemed more interested in the middle-aged man with a briefcase behind her, so they let her go without a pat down.

Even though she’d escaped, Gracie felt sick.
They tracked me.
She was free, but she didn’t have her radio, and without it, she was of no use to anyone. She stopped at a café with a view of the building she’d just left and stayed until she saw several of the soldiers exit with her equipment.

Knowing it was pointless to stay, Gracie returned to her old flat. It was closer, and Ley had checked it for her a few days before because a neighbor at her new apartment often met her in the hall and asked awkward questions. As she walked, her legs were shaky with fear and failure, and when she arrived, she sank onto her bed.

What am I going to do without my radio?
She couldn’t help Ley or the Allies if she couldn’t transmit, but if she hadn’t left the attic when she had, the Germans would have caught not only the radio but the crystal, the keys, and her
.
And she couldn’t have taken the radio with her—they would have found it in their search.

The more she thought about it, the more depressed she became. Her radio was gone, and Ley’s was broken. He still had it for spare parts, but it couldn’t transmit on its own. Exhausted and hungry, she buried her face in the pillow and heard a crinkle. She pushed the pillow aside and found Ley’s latest report. He had a staff meeting until after curfew, so she wouldn’t see him tonight. She’d made a spare key for him so he could drop off his report even if she was gone. Seeing his work, she cried. He was
risking his life to gather information, and she’d gone and lost her radio.

When she managed to get her emotions under control, she read his report, wondering how vital it was. At the top of the page, he’d written a warning:
Some associates trying to silence you. Be careful using your tools. Vary time of day and do not revisit past locations.

Unfortunately, his warning had come a few hours too late.

* * *

Zimmerman paced in front of Richter’s desk. “So you caught me a wireless set but no operator?”

Richter kept his eyes on his desk. “I didn’t expect him to leave it behind. We searched everyone in the area—no one was carrying anything suspicious. We probably searched him.”

“Are you sure you had the right location?”

“Well, yes. We got the wireless set, didn’t we?”

Zimmerman stopped pacing. “Can you use the set? Pretend to be its operator? Send in false information?”

Richter frowned. “Whoever receives the reports will recognize his transmission style. I don’t know that any of my men can duplicate it. And we don’t have the proper code.” Richter held up a piece of the wireless set. “Plus, he took the crystal—we can’t get the set to the right frequency without it.”

Zimmerman swore. All that work for a captured wireless set they couldn’t use.
At least the flow of information to the Allies will slow.
But what Zimmerman really wanted was the operator and everyone feeding him his information.

“If by chance he finds another way to get on the air, we can try again and arrest everyone in the vicinity. I wonder if he’d fall for the same trick again . . .”

“What?” Zimmerman asked.

“That’s how I got so close. With his first transmission, we figured out the neighborhood. I sent him a request to repeat a previous message. I encoded
it but left it simple enough for him to figure out. It kept him on the air long enough for us to track him down.”

“You think the same thing would work again?”

Richter shrugged. “Depends on who we’re after. It’s unlikely he has a spare wireless set anyway.”

Zimmerman walked slowly down the stairs and back to his own desk. He shook his head in frustration and started looking through a list of leads for possible Jewish refugees.

* * *

Bastien was exhausted after his marathon meetings, but he was also worried about Gracie. During breakfast he’d overheard an SS untersturmführer discussing plans to track a prolific wireless operator, and although there might be other prolific wireless operators in Rome, he’d thought instantly of Gracie. She had been in Rome thirteen weeks already, and the average radio operator lasted only six. He’d left warnings at both her apartments and stopped by the Via Tasso on his way home. She hadn’t been arrested, so he assumed she was fine, but he wanted to double-check. And he hadn’t seen her since yesterday. He missed her.