A Dark Song of Blood (37 page)

So Bora lay flat, grimly conserving energy. He let the nurses wash, shave, feed him, check his temperature, blood pressure, inject him, ask him if he wanted anything for the pain. Only to this he said no, because he wished to keep his head clear. He tried to sleep instead, and drifted in and out of strange images. Behind the door of the room was a calendar print of the she-wolf (a gas company used it as an advertising device), and with that before him he fell asleep.

In his dream, the Bronze Wolf came to crouch on the bed, but not as a watchdog: as an animal bent on keeping him from ever getting up, ever getting out. The price to be let go was, he knew, his right hand and he said, “I can’t, I can’t – what would I be able to do then?” Then it was Mrs Murphy who was sitting at his side, and she kissed him and was so good to him, he thought he could not possibly love anyone else. Dollmann walked in the dream next, in a bizarre white summer uniform, looking like a prim Navy commander. He asked Mrs Murphy to leave, and told him, “You can’t have her until you do what you must do,” and then he saw that both his hands were gone, and the she-wolf sat by the door with his medals in her mouth.

Pompilia Marasca returned on Monday afternoon, to a reception of anxious faces from doors and landings. She looked
no worse for her arrest, and even wore a pair of new stockings, with seams marking her strong calves. She walked to her door without paying attention to looks and comments. Only when one of the second-floor tenants asked her how it had gone, she looked up with the gathered brow of a martyr, a sign that she was ready to be interrogated on her ordeal. It turned out that she had been brought to the Mantellate female prison and kept there overnight, with all kinds of horrors going through her mind. She had been asked questions and then released.

“Have you seen the professor?” Signora Carmela asked from her door.

“Not since they divided men and women, and I was the only woman. They brought them to work.” Pompilia glanced at another inquirer, her cherry lips pursing. “Me? They wouldn’t make
me
work. I’m all nerves. They could tell that.”

“So,” a third questioner pitched in, “Where have you been since they let you out?”

She would not answer. “I need to rest.” She tossed her head in a motion of long-suffering determination and disappeared into her apartment. But to those who were persistent enough to find out, it appeared that – in a tucked-away little day hotel near the Termini Station – to the great satisfaction of her late captors, Pompilia had done some hard labor in her own way.

17 MAY 1944

When Bora left the hospital on Wednesday morning, Guidi sat by the entrance. He explained he’d called on Monday as per their agreement, and Captain Treib had told him to return today. Seeing Bora’s arm in a sling and without prosthesis, he said nothing and Bora volunteered nothing about his health.

“I’m glad you’re here, Guidi,” was his greeting, as though they hadn’t left one another a week earlier in the worst way
possible. “I managed to telephone Magda Reiner’s parents before being admitted.”

In the same tone, Guidi replied, “I assumed that’s what your message meant. Did you find out anything of use?”

A row of uncomfortable chairs lined the anteroom’s wall, and Bora used one of them to lay his briefcase flat and open it. “The little girl’s father was an American.”

“I don’t see how it helps us.”

“It doesn’t.” Bora took out a large book from the briefcase. “Courtesy of Colonel Dollmann. The man in question was an obstacle-race finalist. She named her daughter after him.”

“Well, that’s good. I still don’t see...”

After showing Guidi the title –
Die Olympischen Spiele, 1936
– Bora opened the book to the illustrated pages covering the 110-meters obstacle race. “Here. Please look. The gold medalist, and holder of the new world record, was Forrest Towns, USA, with 14.2 seconds. Another American, Pollard, won the bronze medal with 14.4 seconds. After the Canadian O’Connor, who came in sixth, was a third American, William Bader. Magda’s parents never knew his last name, as she kept mum about it; but the little girl was baptized Wilhelmina.”

“Well, Major – William is not a rare first name, is it?”

“No. And Willi, as mentioned in Magda’s letters, is a German endearment for Wilhelm or even Wilfred, not a nickname for William. I just thought it was
interesting.
Her parents told me the athlete was from St Louis, a city in Missouri.”

Guidi had so many worries – about Francesca, about the aftermath of Rau’s killing, about Caruso’s hatred for him – Bora’s eleventh-hour interest in Magda’s love life was infuriating to him. “So now we know who the child’s father is, Major,” he said under his breath. “Is this what you called me here for?”

“In days to come I hope to know more than that.” Quickly Bora replaced the book in his briefcase, and with it in hand preceded Guidi out of the hospital. “I also wanted you to do this for me.” He handed a scribbled list to the inspector. “We need to
get all the details possible on what was dumped in the garbage in Magda Reiner’s neighborhood on the night she died. Surely with the open market nearby, the garbage men go through the bins.”

Guidi put the list in his pocket without reading it. “I imagine you have no interest in hearing what
I
might have found out in the past few days.” In the sunny springtime air, he felt alive and rebellious, and just about as sick of Rome as he was sick of the war, Bora, the Germans and the Americans, too, who might be good at winning Olympic medals but didn’t seem capable of breaking through Nazi defenses.

Bora tossed the briefcase in the back of his Mercedes, waiting by the curb. “But I do. I am most curious, and frankly, without your standing up to Caruso, I might have been tempted to throw
Ras
Merlo to his compatriots. Please tell me, but not here. I abhor talking in the street.”

They drove in the Mercedes (the side window was still without glass) back to the city center. Bora felt a deep dislike for the encroachment of modern housing on the once suburban villas. Guidi kept his counsel until they reached Latour’s at Via Cola di Rienzo, since it was clear Bora craved coffee and would have it in the best place available. Facing the major over a steaming demitasse, and resolute not to inform him that Sutor had been inside at the time of the murder, he announced, “It wasn’t Magda who went shopping for clothes. The description fits Hannah Kund.”

Bora looked genuinely interested. “It may be because Hannah spoke Italian and Magda didn’t.”

“In any case, she certainly did not volunteer that piece of information when I spoke to her. Also, the neighbors noticed that Magda often stopped by the market bins on her way to work and dumped garbage from a paper bag. People notice these things, in times of scarcity, as she seemed to go through more cans than you’d expect one person to consume. And I am ahead of you as regards any evidence thrown out on the night of her death.”

“Excellent. Is there a blanket on your list?”

“A German army blanket, which a garbage collector took for himself – yes, it’s in my office now. The man reported finding in the same bin a stack of German military magazines, some of them ripped crosswise, apparently to make them into toilet paper – these, too, he brought home. I showed him a few recent issues I’d gotten my hands on, and as far as I can judge he recognized the headings of
Signal, Adler
and
Wehrmacht.
”

Here Guidi stared at Bora, who only said, “Well, at least they planned to send all branches of the service down the drain. What else?”

“A sealed bottle of mineral water, three unopened cans of meat, a can opener and a pair of fancy women’s underpants. The magazines are long gone, and also the bottle and the cans. Can opener and underpants are in my office with the blanket. All of it was stuffed in a pillowcase.”

Bora made no attempt to conceal his elation. “Well, that’s outstanding. What about the key chain?”

Guidi shook his head. “It was probably disposed of elsewhere, or taken along.”

“Well, it’s still good. But why did it take you so long to get this information?”

“The garbage collector assigned to Magda’s neighborhood had been ‘borrowed’ by your colleagues to clear rubble from the air raids until a week ago. He grudgingly gave up the loot, especially the underpants, which he’d made a present of to some girl.”

Bora had finished his coffee. He took out a cigarette pack and offered one to Guidi; after a moment of hesitation, he put the pack away without taking one for himself. “I’d be obliged to you if you had the material delivered to my office,” he said. “Much as I dislike the idea, the underwear will fall into my bailiwick, as I’ll have to confront Merlo and Sutor with it. We will be in touch by phone in the next few days.”

*

By evening Bora was at Mount Soratte. Hours earlier the field marshal had sent out orders to abandon Cassino. Early on Thursday he visited the troops at Valmontone, on the directly threatened Highway 6. He was weak and in severe pain, but the events were too enormous to dwell on it. On his return to headquarters he reported to Westphal, who looked exhausted, and left work at about eight – in time to join Colonel Dollmann for dinner and the long drive back to Soratte.

As they traveled along under the cover of night, the conversation circled around the desperate situation of the troops at Fondi, but it was mostly because neither one of them wanted to be the first to resume the conversation initiated at the hospital.

“Borromeo told me you managed to meet with him briefly yesterday,” Dollmann said when talk of endangered defenses was exhausted. “What is new?”

“With him, the riots around most every Vatican soup kitchen.”

“And with you?”

Bora had agreed to drive the first half of the trip over, and though he knew the road well, he kept absolute attention on the pavement unrolling before them from the dark. “I told him I think I know what happened to Cardinal Hohmann and Marina Fonseca.” Dollmann’s silence he expected, so he added, “For whatever it’s worth, I told him in confession.”

“Well, I’m not privy to the disburdening of your eternal soul. Where’s the suicide note? Hand it back.”

“That is in the care of His Holiness himself. As for my hypothesis, Colonel, you might as well hear it. If we both know, after the end of the war one of us can inform Gemma Fonseca.”

Dollmann groaned from the darkness where he sat. “This is most annoying. Why don’t you tell Guidi?”

“Because he’s had his troubles from certain quarters already. I dropped the subject with him when I realized where it was going. For now it’s nothing but a hypothesis, as I said, but a more plausible one than the Mayerling scenario prepared for us. What would you say, Colonel, if I told you that Baroness
Fonseca, having met the cardinal at a politically friendly home somewhere near the Pantheon between one and three p.m. on 7 April, had to return home to self-administer the second insulin dose of the day?”

“I’d say nothing.”

“Well, what if I added that the cardinal, having ample time to return to his residence and get ready for the four forty-five meeting with you, accompanied her there, as the lady sometimes grew unsteady just before her treatment?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You will if I add that persons unknown, concealed in Marina Fonseca’s city flat and armed with a Beretta removed from her all but inaccessible villa at Sant’Onofrio, and loaded for the occasion, surprised the couple as they entered.”

“You are being
fantastic,
” Dollmann commented.

“Am I? I daresay, Colonel Dollmann, that a sickly woman and an octogenarian make fairly easy prey. I submit to you that she was forced to compose the ‘suicide’ note, but that – even in her extremity of illness and terror – she had enough spirit to embed in it a message of distress by using her right hand to write it. And I don’t think it an abuse of your patience adding that they then injected Marina Fonseca with a massive dose of insulin, causing a nearly immediate collapse. They undressed her and placed her on the bed. With a frail old man like the cardinal, God knows; an insignificant but well-placed blow could bring him down. Afterwards, it was just a matter of securing her fingerprints on the handgun, arranging the distasteful scene, and staging the murder-suicide with the selfsame gun.”

“That’s even more fantastic, Bora.”

“Less fantastic than it is for an adulterous couple to leave front and bedroom door unlocked in wartime, or for a diabetic to use up at one sitting the doses expected to last her well past the holiday, and leave the empty vials but not the syringe for the police to find. And certainly less fantastic than the sudden
murderous craze of a long-standing member of the Tertiary Order.”

Bora added nothing else, and Dollmann was as silent as a grave for the following ten miles or so. Even then, he only said, “You have everything but the murderers.”

It was Bora’s turn to keep his counsel as the glum periphery sank further and further behind them. The lonely fork in the road by the olive groves of Fiano dimly came up before he spoke again.

“I told you, I have those, too. But – like the policeman whose office was rifled even as my room was – I am not so deluded as to go after them now.”

As for Sandro Guidi, he did not regret having given a thirty-day notice on his rent. Thanks to Danza he’d already secured new accommodations on Via Matilde di Canossa, off Via Tiburtina, where he’d soon move his few belongings. Truly, he was anxious to go.