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“Hear my confession,” Santino says.
Claudia is trembling, but her back is straight. “Then marry us,” she says.
WAFFEN-SS REGIMENTAL HEADQUARTERS
ROCCABARBENA
18 SEPTEMBER
“Sir?” Ski
Lounging on a pile of sandbags, Ernst Kunkel rolls his eyes. “Who knows? The Schoolmaster can talk the ears off a rabbit. He and Reinecke are probably playing chess, or some damned thing like that.”
“He’d better hurry. It’s a seven-hour drive. We’ll lose the light!”
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Meisinger, sir. Hans-Dieter.”
“What are you, seventeen?”
“Almost, sir.”
Christ, Kunkel thinks. Sixteen. He’s still got spots. “You open to some advice, Hans-Dieter Meisinger?” Kunkel shakes a cigarette out of a pack and offers one. “You don’t call sergeants sir, and you don’t tell a Gruppenführer to hurry.”
The boy lights up awkwardly, coughing on the first drag. He wants to look like he’s smoked before, but mostly he just holds the fag in his hand, trying not to burn his fingers. “My mother didn’t want me to enlist,” he says, as if he’s been waiting to tell somebody since he joined up. “I lied about my age. The Reich needs men, I told her, but really I–I wanted to learn to drive, you know?” The kid’s hands twitch. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“Rough?”
The boy takes a trembly pull on the cigarette, coughs, and looks away.
Ernst Kunkel has spent the war cleaning Erhardt von Thadden’s uniforms, pouring coffee, kissing up to the old man’s wife. Sure, you can get killed— air raids, pipe bombs, hit-and-run attacks, but what the hell? Sant’Andrea is soft duty in a nice climate. In Kunkel’s opinion, that’s worth a certain amount of diligent boot-licking, especially compared to fighting partisans.
It’s like chasing ghosts in a graveyard: they know the territory, and you see them only when they decide to show themselves. Over a hundred successful raids, and nearly a thousand Germans killed around here since April. Seven hundred wounded. Almost five hundred Fascist casualties. At least young Meisinger has the brains to worry. Von Thadden’s read the reports, but he seems to think this little jaunt will be an amusing mountain holiday.
Finally, they hear voices just inside Reinecke’s office. Von Thadden’s new adjutant, Karl Schmidt, leans over to open the door for the Gruppenführer, careful not to step in front of von Thadden as he does so. A cipher, Schmidt is. Dull as his name. Jawohl, Gruppenführer. As you wish, Gruppenführer. Right away, Gruppenführer. You’re a fucking genius, Gruppenführer. Reinecke recommended Schmidt as his own replacement for the job. “He has what it takes, Gruppenführer.” An agile tongue and a taste for shit, Kunkel thought.
When von Thadden appears, everyone in the vicinity braces to salute. At attention, Kunkel takes a sidelong look at him. Uniform perfectly pressed, already wrinkled. Boots polished, and scuffed. A small coffee stain just beneath his ribbons. Von Thadden thinks being sloppy is endearing. “— a pleasure to see your pla
Reinecke snaps his fingers at the driver. Young Meisinger salutes and rushes to open a door for von Thadden, then scurries around to the other side of the car. When both officers have settled into the backseat, Kunkel climbs in next to Meisinger, who starts the engine.
Reinecke comes to von Thadden’s side. “You won’t reconsider, Gruppenführer? Let me assign an escort.”
“Your concern is noted, Standartenführer, but I will rely on the isolated queen’s pawn.”
The officers exchange Heil Hitlers. Reinecke raps the fender with his knuckles. Meisinger looks to Kunkel before pulling away. “No escort?”
Kunkel shrugs and whispers, “That’s the way he likes it, kid. Drive.”
Roccabarbena is the closest thing to a city up here, but only barely big enough to qualify. Petrol for civilian use is long gone. There’s hardly any traffic. In less than fifteen minutes, they’re out of town and into the neck of the Valdottavo fu
Kunkel jerks his head toward riverbed stones barely covered with water, and pitches his voice so only Meisinger can hear. “Trout must be bumping their balls on the bottom.”
The kid manages a twitch, but the smile never really develops. His knuckles are bloodless on the steering wheel, his eyes darting left, center, right, and back again. “It’s crazy not to have an escort,” he mutters.
Kunkel agrees, but he also knows when to keep his mouth shut: all the time. Von Thadden’s probably convinced it’s more valorous to go alone, or some old-time crap like that.
The valley widens. Whenever there’s a good stretch of road, the kid speeds up, working the clutch and gearshift, the wheel and the brakes. Tanks and trucks have beaten the shit out of the pavement. Potholes. Ruts. Lick your lips, and the next jounce could take off half your tongue.
Kunkel watches the passing countryside, but there’s nothing much to see. Tree stumps and burnt farm buildings for two hundred meters on either side of the riverbed. It’s good bottomland, crops growing further out. Corn, tasseled off. Women bent over, harvesting something. Beans, maybe. Raggedy skirts riding up, scrawny legs showing. Nobody worth getting excited about, although the kid keeps gawping. Maybe he likes ’em ski
Meisinger makes a small whining noise and hauls hard on the wheel. The car careens left and jumps the road, nearly tipping over. For thirty meters, they smash along the shoulder, flattening low weeds and whippy saplings before lurching back onto the pavement.
Swearing nonstop, Kunkel climbs back into his seat. “Scheisskerl!” Schmidt shouts, helping von Thadden off the floor in the back. “What is the meaning of this?”
The kid doesn’t even slow down. “Land mine in the road. Sorry, sirs! Did you see that lady stand up and block her ears? She was expecting a bang. If you look back, you can see where the ground was disturbed, and then smoothed over.”
Still fuming, Schmidt twists in his seat to look behind them. “Yes,” he admits. “Yes, I see it, Gruppenführer. Good work, ah—?”
“Meisinger, sir,” Kunkel supplies, glancing at the kid with new respect.
“Meisinger!” von Thadden repeats heartily. “Very alert. There’ll be a commendation for your file!”
Made bold by praise, Meisinger raises his voice over the noise of a tortured suspension and the diesel engine. “Pardon me, sirs, but we really should turn back and get an escort. Motorcycles. A couple of armored cars. Partisans have attacked two convoys in the past twenty-four hours, and—”
“Do you play chess, Meisinger?”
“No, Gruppenführer, I never learned.”
“If you had,” Schmidt chimes in, “you’d see the potential of the isolated queen’s pawn, which prevails by not attracting attention to an attack.”
“Make a note, Schmidt,” von Thadden says. “Have those women questioned.”
An hour passes, and then another, with no additional excitement. The officers in the back spend the time going over some big report, but every time the car approaches a curve where you can’t see the road ahead, Meisinger tenses up.
It’s hard not to do the same, but hell, Kunkel thinks, you can’t stay scared forever. With the top down, the afternoon sunshine pours onto them like balm, and Kunkel starts to relax… His head jerks up when Meisinger pulls onto a gravel track.
“I need to refill the petrol tank, sirs. And sirs? Up this high, with night coming on, it’ll get cold soon. I can put the top up while you— if you’d like to—”