Page 121

Kappler met his eyes.

The last you saw me, you bastard, was as I walked up to my room alone.

While you stood in the lobby with both Maria and Lucia.

Did Jimmy Palasota report to you that Lucia shared my room?

Or is it you who has that suite watched?

“I slept well, if that is what you are asking.”

“Yes,” Müller said. “I’m sure that you did.”

Did Lucia say anything?

Of course she did!

Mata Hari and so damn many others have proven one cannot trust women in bed, that anyone could be a spy.

Nietzsche said it: “In revenge and love,

women are more barbaric than men.”

Still, Lucia did not attempt any “innocent” pillow talk—and even if she had, I do not speak Sicilian and she does not understand German.

He took a sip of his coffee and had a flashback of their night.

Spy or not, what a delight that girl is!

“Müller, can you tell me what information you have gathered concerning the American invasion?”

Müller made a face.

“There is not any information,” he said matter-of-factly, “because the invasion will not take place here.”

Kappler stared at him, wondering, Is that the alcohol talking? Or just plain arrogance?

Pantelleria, only a hundred kilometers away, actually is being bombed.

I suppose I cannot blame him. Until fire falls from the sky, it must be hard to believe that there’s a war going on.

Yet it is a fact that the Americans went into North Africa with enough forces to eventually rout the Afrika Korps. Our intelligence reports show that they captured more than a quarter-million of our troops.

And this shortly after Generalfeldmarschall von Paulus’s Sixth Army was embarrassingly surrendered at Stalingrad. What was that? Another million lost?

So it’s really no small wonder that there aren’t troops massing on this shitty little island.

Müller went on, his tone sarcastic: “It is my understanding that we soon will have the honor of the Panzer Division Hermann Göring—with two battalions and ninety-nine tanks—and the Fifteenth Panzergrenadier Division, with three grenadier infantry regiments and a sixty-tank battalion. And of course our superior Luftwaffe forces.” He paused, then added: “Forgive me, but I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“You will see it,” Kappler said automatically, hoping he sounded convincing. “They are beginning to arrive in Messina. We have been promised that by early July there will be one hundred and fifty thousand Italian troops, plus twenty thousand German troops and that many more to support the Luftwaffe.”

“Again, I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said, then drained his coffee cup. “As you may know, last night we were expecting the arrival of a Gigant. It never showed up. When I called out to the airfield this morning, all I got were runaround answers to my questions. The only thing I know for sure is the gottverdammt aircraft is not at the Palermo airfield. The aircraft was supposed to be transporting eighty-eights—packed with the big guns and ammo for our coastal defenses—and I’m betting that it was diverted, that it flew right over us and landed in, probably, Naples. Which is fine with me.”

Kappler looked at him silently.

“Let them fight the damn war there,” Müller explained. “I’m comfortable here.”

Kappler then said, “Did you not get the intelligence report? That there was the bombing of Pantelleria on May eighteenth?”