The Rules in Rome (31 page)

Gracie was nervous to see
Angelo again after she’s snubbed him at their last meeting, but when he didn’t show up at the Spanish Steps, her apprehension turned to worry. The atmosphere around the flower stalls was one of cautious celebration, but all Gracie could think about was what had happened to Otavia when she’d missed an appointment. Gracie was supposed to meet Ley that night—maybe he could find out if Angelo had been caught. In the meantime, she went back to her new apartment, the one Angelo hadn’t been to and couldn’t compromise if something had gone wrong.

There was no food to eat, and the bed looked dusty, so she stripped the sheets off the mattress and took them to the kitchen sink. If she washed them now, they might be dry by the time she got back from her meeting with Ley. Maybe a little spring cleaning would distract her from her empty stomach.

She was searching for soap when a loud rap shook her door. It was the type of knock that caused instant fear in habitations all across Europe. Gracie ripped the handkerchief with her transposition keys from her pocket and shoved it into her bra. Then the knock sounded again, and the door burst inward. Two SS men entered, one of them an officer with a small suitcase, the other an enlisted man with a rifle pointed at her.

“Concetta Gallo, I presume,” the officer said.

Gracie backed away, almost tripping over the sheet trailing from the sink.

The officer set the suitcase on the kitchen table and lifted the top. “I believe this belongs to you.”

Gracie forgot to breathe. Inside the suitcase was
her
radio.

“Möller, search her apartment,” the officer said.

Möller obeyed, starting with the kitchen cupboards, then moving on to the sideboard and couch, then the bedroom. She heard several crashes, as if he was knocking over furniture, and he returned with one of her batteries. She wasn’t surprised that he’d found it. She kept it out of obvious sight, but the apartment didn’t have many hiding places.

The officer examined the battery and set it next to her radio. “You came well prepared. Further evidence, I suppose, that you’re one of the best wireless operators I’ve ever listened to. I almost didn’t believe Zimmerman when he told me you were a woman. I’m delighted to meet you, signorina.”

Gracie wasn’t sure how to respond, so she kept silent.

“I’m Untersturmführer Franz Richter, and I’m here to offer you a deal.” He looked at her as if he expected her to answer. “Don’t you want to know what type of deal I’m offering?”

“I suppose so,” she whispered.

“Your life for your cooperation.” He waved his hand over the radio. “I
can’t duplicate your code or your keystroke, but if you transmit exactly what I tell you to the Allies, we won’t execute you.”

“I’m not willing to make a deal like that.”

Richter studied her for a few long moments. “And if we agreed to spare Angelo in exchange for your cooperation? Unfortunate man’s lost most of his fingernails and half his teeth at the Via Tasso. Work for me, and I’ll see his torture ended.”

Gracie squeezed her eyes shut, imagining Angelo’s pain. But she thought of his willingness to risk reprisals on innocent civilians in his fight against the Nazis and of the three hundred thirty-five men and boys who’d been shot in the Ardeatina caves. Angelo understood sacrifice for the ultimate goal. She couldn’t spare him if it meant giving the Allies false reports, information that
would lead to greater casualties. “I can’t work with you, not even for him.”

“And what about Hauptmann Dietrich? Has he been working with you? What would you do to spare him?”

She focused on his questions. Richter didn’t know who Ley was, not yet, and wasn’t sure if Dietrich was a willing participant or a tool. She’d do what she could to give Ley more time and hope he’d figure out she was arrested while he could still escape. “I seduced Dietrich because I thought he’d be a
useful source.” Then she added a partial truth. “He talks in his sleep.”

“Then I suppose his future career is of little interest to you.”

“No, Herr Richter. Dietrich’s future won’t be a useful bargaining chip. Nothing will. I’ll never work for the Nazis.”

Möller took a step toward her and struck her across the face with his rifle butt, knocking her to the floor. He brought his boot back like he was preparing for a kick, and she instinctively moved her arms in front of her face to block it.

“That’s not necessary, Möller. Tie her to the chair, but leave her hands free so she can operate the wireless set. Then go keep watch. If Dietrich shows up, it means he’s more involved than Signorina Gallo’s admitting, and we’ll want him for questioning.”

Möller’s strike had left Gracie’s head spinning. He pulled her roughly to her feet and pushed her toward the heavy dining chair. Then he tied her ankles to the chair legs and looped a rope around her waist, pulling both so tight she knew she’d have bruises.

When Möller left, Richter handed her a handkerchief. “Your cheek’s bleeding.”

She accepted the cloth and wiped her cheek. Her entire face still stung, and her ankles were already numb.

“Now, let’s see if we can come to some sort of arrangement,” Richter said. “Have you heard what happens to women in the Ravensbr
ü
ck concentration camp?”

* * *

“I’ll take the key to Signorina Gallo’s apartment now,” Zimmerman demanded of the landlord.

“But why, sir? I must give my tenants a reason when I allow their rooms to be searched.”

Zimmerman didn’t have time for this. He aimed his pistol at the old man’s head. “My actions are not your concern. The key. Now.”

The man’s hands trembled as he retrieved the key and gave it to Zimmerman. Remembering what the interrogator had learned from Angelo, Zimmerman walked to the fifth floor. He kept his pistol out in case Concetta was inside. If she was gone, he’d have to trust that Richter and Möller had followed her from the broken rendezvous with Angelo.

He unlocked the door and shoved it open. The door smashed into the wall, but the small apartment was empty. Zimmerman looked out the window, but there was no one in the fire escape. He didn’t mind so much that he hadn’t found her. He was disappointed in himself for meeting her twice and never guessing who she really was, but finding the wireless operator was Richter’s obsession. He could have her. Zimmerman was more interested in knowing if Dietrich would come for her.

He searched Concetta’s room. In the bottom drawer of an old dresser, he found a wireless set and a pistol hidden under worn clothing. Nothing else was of interest to him. He left the room and headed down the stairs. On his way from the third to the second floor, he heard someone coming from the other direction.

He continued slowly, hoping the rapid footsteps from below would drown out any noise he made. On the second floor, he stopped and hid in the hallway, his pistol aimed at the stairwell. When Hauptmann Dietrich bounded into sight, Zimmerman felt an overwhelming anger. For some reason, he’d hoped Dietrich was a stooge, that he’d been giving his information to the Allies unwittingly. His appearance proved he was an active member of Concetta’s network, and he’d fooled Zimmerman for far too long.

Zimmerman pulled the trigger.

The blast reverberated through the old apartment building, and Dietrich collapsed. Zimmerman didn’t want him dead, yet. He needed answers first, so to keep him from running away, he’d shot him in the lower left leg. When Dietrich reached for his Luger, Zimmerman stepped forward,
covering him with his weapon. “Don’t touch it. Hands on your head.”

Dietrich pushed himself into a sitting position and obeyed. He was breathing hard, but despite the blood soaking through his pants, his face was unreadable. Zimmerman couldn’t detect any fear, and it enraged him. He took Dietrich’s Luger and struck him under the chin with it, but even that didn’t seem to faze his prisoner.

“She’s not here,” Zimmerman said.

That got Dietrich’s attention. His eyes flew to Zimmerman’s face.

“You came to save her?”

Dietrich nodded, once.

“Hmm.” Zimmerman glanced at Dietrich’s wound, then back at his face. “When her name came up in an interrogation, I wasn’t sure at first. Was she your partner or your lover? It seems the answer is both.”

“Where is she?”

Zimmerman shrugged. “I sent some men to follow her from a meeting with another contact. She’s probably on her way to the Via Tasso by now.
And I don’t have to tell you what will happen there.”

Dietrich was quiet, looking beyond Zimmerman.

“I thought Heinie might warn you. That’s why I told him about the report. If you’d been quick to denounce her, I might have believed you—had you said it was all a mistake, that she’d somehow tricked and used you. But now I know better. And now I get to capture one of the biggest traitors in all of Rome. Win for me. Could be a win for Heinie too. Best-case scenario, he loses his commission and gets to marry his girlfriend. Worst-case scenario, he gets executed. I think the most likely outcome is he’ll be transferred to the eastern front, but maybe he can get married on his way to Russia. A small victory for him. But someone has to lose. You. And Concetta.”

Dietrich frowned but still didn’t speak.

“What I want to know is why. Why did you tell the Allies where all our defenses were? Why did you warn the Jews that I was planning to round them up in San Lorenzo?” Zimmerman pointed his pistol at Dietrich’s head. “I want answers. Now!”

Dietrich looked away. “Because I’m not one of you. I’m not a Nazi.”

Zimmerman felt a new wave of rage surge through him. He could take it from his wife, the weak stomach for war’s requirements. He had even tolerated it from Heinie that day in the Via Rasella. But he wouldn’t take any self-righteousness from a traitor. Wehrmacht officers were sworn to obey the Führer. Yet Dietrich had been playing a double game since arriving in Rome, maybe longer. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done,” Zimmerman said. “For the rest of your life—however short that may be—I want you to remember that in the end, I beat you. Even if you somehow escape the firing squad, I want you to forever regret the day you dared challenge Obersturmführer Kornelius Zimmerman, the Schutzstaffel, and the Third Reich.”

Zimmerman moved his aim from Dietrich’s forehead to his kneecap. A shot there would cripple him permanently. He squeezed the trigger, and Dietrich’s cry of pain echoed through the hallway.

Gracie sat at the kitchen
table and stared at her fingernails, wondering how much it would hurt when Ostheim’s replacement at the Via Tasso ripped them out. The handcuffs Richter had added to Möller’s ropes bit into her wrists as she balled her hands into fists so they wouldn’t shake so much. She’d heard most of what Richter had threatened her with during training or in Switzerland, but until today, it had never seemed inevitable.

In training, they’d been told that if arrested, they should hold out long enough to give their contacts sufficient time to discover something was wrong and change their location, their code name, and anything else they needed to adjust if the person in custody said too much. Angelo was already captured, and Ley would know something was wrong when she missed their next meeting.
Will he search the prisons again?
But he couldn’t do that. Ley’s only chance for survival was immediate flight.

Gracie wished she could warn him somehow. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep secret the fact that he was really an American spy, especially once she was tortured. To give Ley a chance, she would have to remain silent. Her head ached from Möller’s single strike. How would she handle a few dozen strikes? She was terrified of what lay ahead but prayed she could hold out long enough for Ley to escape.

In addition to protecting him, she needed to make sure the Germans didn’t use her to send misleading information to the Allies. In her head, she made up a false security check, so if she was forced to transmit, headquarters would know she was under duress. She heard a ripping sound from her bedroom, where Richter had gone in search of her codes. He’d already torn open the mattress. She guessed he was now checking her extra clothing.
I have to get rid of my transposition keys before he searches me.
If she could resist torture long enough for Ley to escape, and if she could somehow destroy her
keys, maybe her mission wouldn’t end in complete failure.

The matches she kept in a drawer by the kitchen sink would incinerate her handkerchief if she could get to them.
Her feet, still tied to the chair legs, didn’t touch the floor, so they couldn’t help her move, but her manacled hands were in front of her. She couldn’t pull them more than a few inches apart, but she could still reach her handkerchief and light a fire. Using the table as leverage, she pushed herself back toward the drawer. The chair dragged a few inches across the floor, screeching horribly. It was heavier than she’d thought. And louder.

Richter came back from the bedroom with his pistol drawn. “Trying to escape? I doubt you’ll get far, not tied to that.” He returned his pistol to its holster, leaving the flap unclasped, and rested his hands on the table, leaning closer to make his point. “But, my dear wireless operator, you don’t have to
escape. You just have to cooperate. Why don’t you tell me where your codes are?”

Gracie didn’t trust her voice not to shake, so she looked away instead of answering.

Richter grunted in disapproval and went back to her bedroom. The noise from his search grew louder, and she guessed he was checking for loose floorboards. Trying to time her movements with each bang coming from the
other room, Gracie pushed herself farther from the table, then grabbed the
countertop to spin herself around and pull herself to the right drawer.

At last she could reach the matches. She’d gone through about half the transposition keys, so it was only half a handkerchief that she retrieved from her bra. She struck a match and pushed the silk into the flame, breathing a sigh of relief as the fabric caught fire.

“No!” Richter’s voice startled her, and she dropped the half-burned silk. Why couldn’t he have searched the bedroom for just a few more seconds?

Richter grabbed her by the arms and pulled her out of the way, tipping her chair into the table. Gracie grasped at the wood with her shackled hands but gripped the suitcase instead and couldn’t stop herself from tumbling. She put her hands out to catch herself and slowed her fall, but she still knocked her head on the floor as pieces of her radio crashed all around her. Her vision swirled, and a wave of nausea spread from her stomach up to her throat.

When her head cleared, she looked at Richter. He had saved most of her transposition keys and was studying them with a smile of satisfaction. She’d failed again.

Then she noticed the sheet she’d put partially into the sink earlier that afternoon with plans to wash it. She’d never gotten it wet, and the bottom edge, resting on the floor, was smoldering because she’d dropped the burning handkerchief onto it. As she watched, a small flame grew into a larger one, and soon the entire sheet was engulfed.

Richter turned and cursed. He ran past her and took a cushion from the sofa to smother the fire. As scary as it was, a raging fire would accomplish both her final goals: destroy her transposition keys and keep her from breaking under torture. When Richter ran back into the kitchen, Gracie
grabbed his ankle and yanked as he stepped past her. He lost his balance and fell on top of her.

Gracie’s receiver lay on the floor, within reach. She grabbed the five-pound box and tried to smash it into Richter’s face. He blocked her and gripped the receiver, ripping it from her hands. He glared at her, no longer the calm, reasonable officer who’d prevented Möller from kicking her.
Gracie gulped, knowing his survival instinct would show her no mercy.

He clenched her neck with his hands and slammed her head into the floor. She almost lost consciousness as the pain exploded in her head and went down through her spine. If he killed her, she wouldn’t have to worry about breaking under torture, but what if she could somehow escape? As Richter drove her head to the floor a second time, she reached for his pistol and jerked in desperation. She found the trigger as it slipped from his holster, and she squeezed.

Richter’s grip fell slack with the blast. She pushed him away and gasped for air. Her throat burned from Richter’s hand, her head throbbed, and a cloud of smoke was filling the apartment, obscuring her vision and making her eyes water. The fire had reached the kitchen cupboards. She retrieved her handkerchief from the floor, where Richter had dropped it, and wrapped it around one of the transmitter knobs before hurling both toward the flames.

With her keys destroyed, she turned her focus to survival. She tried to scoot along the floor but could move only an inch or two at a time.
Keep moving.
She had to fight for each breath and coughed constantly, each cough pulling at the ropes around her waist and making them cut deeper into her skin.

The smoke grew thicker. At the door, Gracie reached for the doorknob, but it was too high. She tugged at the rope around her waist, trying to twist the knot forward so she could untie it, but it wouldn’t move. Möller must have tied it to one of the rungs.
Maybe if I can get the handcuffs off.
She pushed herself back toward Richter. He was dead. Sorrow-induced tears joined the smoke-induced ones—she’d killed another man, but if she didn’t find the handcuff key, she knew she wouldn’t have long to feel guilty about it.

She searched Richter’s clothes, wrenching at his uniform so she could reach each pocket, then pulling herself around the corpse to try the other side. She found a set of keys, but none of them unlocked the handcuffs. She shoved them into her blouse pocket and searched Richter’s clothes again but came up empty-handed. He didn’t even have a knife. She assumed he’d left the handcuff key in the bedroom, but the bedroom door was on fire.

She coughed again, so hard it hurt, and every breath only made her weaker. She tried pulling herself to the front door again, but each try took more effort and earned her increasingly small advances. She felt dizzy, and it was getting difficult to string together a coherent thought. She told herself that it didn’t really matter if she died, but the light of flames
flickering through acrid smoke filled her with terror.

When Gracie had received news of Michael’s death, she’d come to the conclusion that the worst way to die was on a submarine, trapped at the bottom of the ocean, crushed by pressure from the sea, drowning in darkness. She’d been wrong. Burning to death was going to be worse.