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I may never hear my father’s voice again. . . .

He turned to look out his side window when he caught his throat tightening and felt his eyes glistening. He did not want the scharführer to see that.

“Everything all right, sir?” Otto Lieber said, glancing at him.

Kappler after a moment cleared his throat, then nodded.

“Just something in my eye,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Otto Lieber nodded, then quietly returned his attention to the road.

[FOUR]

SS-Obersturmbannführer Oskar Kappler reached down for his leather briefcase as he looked at the massive white masonry building that served as the SS’s Palermo field office. It had been built in the “four corners” city center—the Quattro Canti Quarter—by the Normans nine centuries earlier. It was four stories high. A dozen stone steps led up to the huge heavy ornate metal door of the main entrance.

Seeing the field office building brought back memories—none of them good—of the times that Kappler had been forced to come to Palermo.

I tried to get those Tabun howitzer munitions lost here, so no one could use them. But that bastard Müller found them—and could have killed us all when he decided that he had plans for them.

As the supervising officer of SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Müller—a high-strung twenty-eight-year-old major who had a violent temper that matched, if not surpassed, that of Adolf Hitler—Kappler was responsible for what Müller did. Or failed to do. And when Kappler wrote up the report detailing Müller’s intended use and then loss of the nerve gas, and in it demanded that the reckless Müller be demoted and reassigned, Julius Schrader had squashed it.

“I am going to do you a favor, my friend, and tell you that you really do not want this incident to go any further,” Schrader had counseled Kappler as he put the report in his desk drawer. “Remember, someone in Berlin reading this could suggest that blame lay with you for poor training and supervision of Müller. Give him another chance. Just keep a closer eye on him.”

Or that blame lay with Juli—and so he left the bastard in his job.

And that left me walking a damn tightrope with the bastard, because Müller knows I do not wield the authority over him that I should.

“Well,” Kappler said to Otto, “we got here in one piece. I don’t know about you, but first thing I need to do is relieve the pressure on my bladder.”

“Jawohl, Herr Obersturmbannführer!” Otto Lieber said, then quickly got out from behind the wheel.

Kappler watched as Lieber then bolted up the stone steps and went inside the building.

I guess he has to go worse than I do.

Kappler squeezed out of the car, swung the car door closed, and casually went up the steps. When he opened the huge metal door, there in the entryway stood Otto Lieber, gesturing to the left, toward a door.

“I’ve located the gentlemen’s facility, sir,” Lieber said. “It is through this door and to the right.”

You really are that wet behind the ears, aren’t you, Otto?

And you’re probably convinced that your service just now is as important to winning the war for the Fatherland as is being on the front lines and actually dodging bullets.

“Thank you, but I have been here,” he said drily. “If you want to be genuinely useful, see if you can find Sturmbannführer Müller now and let him know I’m here.”

“Jawohl, Herr Obersturmbannführer!”

Five minutes later, Kappler reappeared in the entryway and found Otto standing with a young man in uniform.

Oh, for Christ’s sake! Another one?

“Heil Hitler!” the young man barked as he stiffly held out his right arm in a Nazi salute. “Scharführer Günther Burger at your service, sir!”

SS-Scharführer Günther Burger was almost a mirror image of SS-Scharführer Otto Lieber. Kappler vaguely remembered seeing his name on the field office manning chart, very far down at the bottom.

Kappler looked at Otto, then back at his twin.

“I was expecting to see Sturmbannführer Müller,” Kappler said, ignoring the Nazi greeting.