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[ONE]

Schutzstaffel Provisional Headquarters Messina, Sicily 0810 26 March 1943

“You’d very likely be shot for saying such a thing,” SS Standartenführer Julius Schrader said.

SS Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler—an athletic thirty-two-year-old, tall and trim, with a strong chin, intelligent blue eyes, and a full head of closely cropped light brown hair—did not trust his voice to reply. The lieutenant colonel stood stiffly and simply stared at the colonel, a pale-skinned portly thirty-five-year-old of medium height who kept his balding head cleanly shaven.

“Of all people, my friend, this you should understand,” Schrader added.

Taking care not to spill coffee from the fine porcelain china cup that he carried on its saucer, the Standartenführer rose slowly from his high-backed leather chair, then moved out from behind the polished marble-topped wooden desk that dominated the large office.

Kappler’s eyes followed Schrader as he walked across the floor, also highly polished stone, past oversize portraits of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels—the images of the Nazi Germany leader and his propaganda minister struck Kappler as more oafish than inspiring—and over to one of the half-dozen floor-to-ceiling windows with heavy burgundy-co

lored drapes pulled back to either side.

Sipping from his cup, Schrader looked out at the busy Port of Messina and, five kilometers distant across the Strait of Messina, to the toe of the boot that was mainland Italy. The morning sun painted the coast and rising hills in golden hues and turned the surface of the emerald green sea to shimmering silver.

Schrader sighed, then added pointedly but softly: “Or, perhaps worse, you would be sent to suffer a slow death in a concentration camp.”

Both men—Nazi officers in the Sicherheitsdienst, known as the SD, the intelligence arm of the Schutzstaffel, also called the SS—knew far more about that than they wished. Punishment for anything less than total commitment to der Führer and the success of his Third Reich was swift and brutal. And they both personally had witnessed incidents in which those merely suspected of being suspicious—civilians and soldiers alike—had been summarily shot or shipped off to spend their final days toiling in the death camps.

For those so sentenced, a bullet served as the far better option, even if self-administered…as it sometimes was.

Obersturmbannführer Kappler wanted to speak but found it hard to control his voice so that it did not waver.

Schrader surveyed the port. Cargo vessels flying the flags of Germany and Italy were moored at the long docks, loading and unloading, the cranes and ships creating long, defined shadows in the low angle of the sun.

At anchor inside the sickle-shaped harbor were warships—two aging destroyers and a heavy cruiser of the Regina Marina, the latter easily twenty years old—from the Third Division of the Italian navy.

Schrader thought, The ships look beautiful in the morning light, but the fact is, the merchant vessels have been weeks late getting here. Supply to all of our ports in Sicily—especially those in the south and far west—has been getting slower. Food, munitions, everything.

And the Regina Marina treats us like some kind of stepchild, providing only weak, aging vessels for our protection.

It is hard not to agree with my old friend…though I dare not say it.

Schrader, still looking out the window, stated in a matter-of-fact tone: “We go back very far, Oskar. I have always supported you. Yet I must strongly counsel you not to continue with such talk and will, even at great risk to myself for not reporting it, ignore that you ever said anything of the kind.”

He turned to glance at Kappler. He saw him looking off into the distance, slowly shaking his head in frustration if not defiance.

Kappler cleared his throat, swallowed—and found his voice.

“Juli,” he began softly but with determination, “I, of course, have always appreciated everything that you have done for me. And I certainly value your counsel. But…”

Schrader held up his hand, palm outward, in a gesture that said Stop.

“But nothing,” he said. “You will serve here as ordered, as will I, and we will honor the Führer and the Fatherland. Period.”

Kappler looked at his friend, who for the last year also had been his superior in the SS office in Messina. Their friendship dated back a dozen years, to when they had been teammates on the university polo team in Berlin. Schrader, then in far better shape, had held the key position of number four player while Kappler had been number three.

Then as now, Kappler knew Schrader expected him to follow his lead.

“But, Juli, I have heard from sources in Berlin that Hitler will not be able to defend Sicily adequately. With his focus on fronts of higher strategic value—France, Russia, others—he cannot afford to send the forces necessary to do so. And when that is realized by the Italian military—who some say would just as well fight against us, which is to say not fight any invasion—we’ll be left to defend this pathetic island alone. We’ll be overrun.”

He walked over to the window and stood beside Schrader.

“Take a closer look out there, Juli,” Kappler said, making a dramatic sweep with his arm. “What do you see? A tired old city—no, not even that—a tired old town that has been neglected by its own people. And what has Mussolini done for Messina? Same that he’s done for all of Sicily: nothing but promise after promise, all of them empty. Yet here the Sicilians sit, so close that they can almost reach out and touch the shore of Italy—and its riches.”

He paused, then pointed to the northwest, where the low masonry buildings at the edge of the city gave way to much-lesser structures—fashioned of really no more than rusted corrugated tin and other salvaged metal and wood scraps—near the foothills.

“And there,” Kappler went on, his tone of voice becoming stronger. “Those shanties. Do you think that any one of the tens of thousands in those miserable conditions have any reason to fight for Mussolini? No. Of course not. Nor does the average Sicilian feel loyalty to him. And certainly not the real leaders, the members of the Mafia—many of whom, you will recall, you and I helped Il Duce imprison. They feel exactly the opposite. They despise Mussolini.” He paused. “They despise us.”

Schrader made a humph sound and shrugged.