Warburg in Rome (18 page)

The large open square before them was a mechanized scrum of olive-colored traffic, knotted around a multitiered fountain. Rome’s cascading water displays were resolutely festive, but to the newly arrived drivers of trucks, half-tracks, and jeeps, they seemed little more than roadblocks. The Yanks leaned on their horns—insistent, blaring, useless. Horses stood in their harnesses with mulish indifference.

Threading among the vehicles were the Eternal City’s newest survivors, and Warburg tracked them: a trio of giggling clerics tugging at their skirts, a cook in checkered pants and wooden clogs, a hammer-toting blacksmith in a leather apron, a pair of blatantly entitled drinkers. And the pigeons were back, signaling with a synchronized swoop that the danger of being snared, roasted, and eaten had passed. The city was dizzy with life that only days before, upon Warburg’s arrival, had been nowhere in evidence.

“Peter, thank you.” Warburg spoke loudly because of the traffic, but that same noise guaranteed that no one would overhear them. He waited for Mates to meet his gaze, but the colonel was eyeing a pair of young Italian women who, with linked arms, were walking past in step, a knowing stride. Finally Mates looked over, and Warburg said, “I appreciate it.”

“I’m glad it went well,” Mates replied. “One pass, Colonel Killian said. Apparently the bridge was timbers, not steel. The pilot reported that it crumbled back to both banks, like dominoes falling away from a center. Now let’s hope your gang gets to that camp in time to do some good. Jesus”—Mates squinted, shielding his eyes—“I hope it doesn’t rain.”

Once again Warburg wondered, What’s with this guy? He himself had been unable to get Marguerite out of his mind, her lame partner, Fossoli. That the camp’s prisoners had just been given a reprieve by some unnamed flyboy seemed the first specific triumph of his time in Rome. All else till now had been plans, groundwork, preparation. Finally the needle of fate had been nudged, perhaps a degree or two, away from death. Yet here was Mates, caring only about the weather.

Or was that counterfeit? The colonel’s exquisite detachment seemed studied. Warburg decided to match it. “How goes Civil Affairs?”

Mates smiled. “Very well, my good T-man. Very well indeed. We have a mostly constituted City Council now, and they are primed to give us a suitable mayor—Andrea Doria Pamphili.”

“A woman?”

Mates laughed. “Don’t be deceived by these Wop appellations. The man’s given name is Filippo, but forget that. He’s from an old patrician family. ‘Andrea Doria’ has the ring of Thomas Jefferson here.” Mates threw his hand toward the Pantheon. “Speaking of whom, did you know that’s the model for Monticello? You’ve been carrying that building in your pocket on the tail side of a nickel. Think of it: from Rome to Charlottesville. This city takes the cake.”

“And its new mayor?”

“The Pamphilis are descended from Virgil
and
Alexander VI, the Borgia Pope who sponsored Michelangelo. Our man is anti-Fascist to the core, started out the war in one of Mussolini’s concentration camps. The main thing, though—he’s no Red, and the unions won’t control him. He gives a good speech, but what he really cares about is getting the family princedom restored. He claims vast Doria estates between here and Genoa.”

“And vindicating the claim depends now on—?”

“Right. On the Allied powers. Me. We expect him to cooperate.” Mates grinned. “As I say, CAD affairs have been going very well indeed.”

“And tomorrow you get your star. You’re on the promotion list for brigadier general.”

“My, my, David, you impress me. How do you know that?”

Warburg offered his hand, and Mates took it. “Congratulations, General.” Warburg grinned as they shook, flaunting his inside knowledge. “Less than one percent of commissioned officers make it to BG.”

“Jesus, you Treasury men
are
accountants, aren’t you?”

In fact, Warburg had heard about Mates’s promotion from Sergeant Rossini, having already learned that in the Army, NCOs are the real source of inside dope.

At that moment a clap of thunder sounded, and the pace of pedestrian movement quickened in the piazza while engines gunned. Mates studied the sky, but Warburg finished his thought. “Point is, I’m delighted for you.”

“And for yourself?” Mates laughed. “Since you think you have me eating from the palm of your hand.”

“Isn’t that what you want me to think? And in return, I’m to keep you posted on Communist agitation among the refugees. It’s a box step we have going here.”

“Since you bring it up—”

“Communist agitation and Zionist plotting. Those are your two interests, no?”

“Why would I care about Zionists?”

“For your British friends.”

Mates did not answer.

“Or do they amount to the same thing?” Warburg said. “Reds and Hebes.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the tin ashtray.

“You’re a fool, David, to pretend the Brits aren’t right to worry over Palestine. It’s the sharp end of the wedge. If they lose Jerusalem, they lose the empire. But you’re also a fool if you picture any other destination for the Jews you’re helping
than
Palestine. There’s the rub, for the Brits at least. Your fantasy about sending them stateside on empty troopships is just that—fantasy.”

“Oh? Do you know what else is happening tomorrow, besides your promotion to brigadier general?” Warburg paused, but at that moment the darkened skies opened, thunder cracked again, and rain poured down. People in the piazza began to run. Mates and Warburg scurried away from the table and into the shelter of the nearby Pantheon portico. A crush of others followed, forcing the two Americans into the rotunda proper, the expansive open space under the largest freestanding dome in the world. In its center was a circular opening to the sky, and the downpour had found it. A beaded column of water was falling right into the heart of the shadowy cavern, splashing the stone floor in the center. Mates and Warburg took up dry positions near the wall, below one of numerous vacant niches. The classical statues in the place were long gone, although here and there stood Baroque figures of the Virgin Mary and her defeated husband.

“Damn,” Mates said, as he used his golden silk handkerchief to brush water from his jacket shoulders. “Good move, though. In here. Fantastic in the rain with that.” Mates indicated the hole in the ceiling. “I used to pick up girls in this place on rainy days when I was a teenager.”

“Teenager?”

“My old man ran the Roman office for a New York bank. Girls think it’s mystical, rain indoors. Never failed.” Mates himself seemed entranced, watching the water. “Tears from the very eye of God—the oculus. That’s the line I used.” His voice fell into a slightly self-mocking rhythm of recitation. “They built this temple as part of the divinity cult for Caesar Augustus, the emperor who took on the baby Jesus—both of them divine, imagine! Gods were cheap in those days.” Mates laughed. “I’m not much for gods myself.”

The Americans were in deep shadow now, and the damp air between them, as Warburg sensed it, was suddenly more clandestine than before.

“But David,” Mates said, “you were interrupted. ‘Be sure of it.’” With a flourish of his handkerchief, Mates grandly swept the space. “‘Give me the ocular proof.’”

“Othello to Iago,” Warburg said, laughing despite himself. “The ‘ocular proof’ was Desdemona’s handkerchief. No wonder the girls swooned for you.”

“But you were speaking of tomorrow. Of your Jews.”

No banter now. Warburg said, “President Roosevelt is holding a press conference at the White House. He will announce the opening of the Emergency Refugee Shelter at a decommissioned Army post named Fort Ontario, in Oswego, New York. It will be the first ‘free port’ in the United States, a center where displaced persons will be admitted without visas as guests of the United States. Their immigration status to be determined at a later date.”

“And you know this because . . . ?”

“I’m the one who found Fort Ontario, Peter, months ago. I wrote the statement the President will read. And now with my small garret crew I am compiling the names of the first of these guests—refugees from liberated Italy, at present housed in a dozen camps within an hour’s drive of Rome. The current count approaches two thousand souls.”

“And you are
selecting
from among them?”

Warburg heard the implication in the loaded verb: First the Nazis select them, now you do. “Priority to family groups,” Warburg said. “No one suffering from communicable diseases. People with useful professions and skills, because in Oswego they will be mainly self-sufficient. So yes. Selection. Bound for upstate New York as soon as a returning troopship is assigned and a convoy is set.”

“So—as soon as your ship comes in.”

“And with luck, and a little more help from you, a long line of other ‘guests’ will follow.” Warburg smiled—a genuine display of hope.

“But what
about
the Reds?” Mates asked. “I need to know who among these people decline the invitation to go to New York. The ones who prefer to stay in Italy, doing mischief.” Mates faced the center of the rotunda, where the streaming rain was letting up, the downpour now a steady drizzle. He put his silk square back into its pocket. “You’re compiling names. I need to know who the camp leaders are. They’re the ones I’m interested in.” Mates seemed to be looking around to see if they were being approached.

“You? Or the Brits?”

“I could care less about Zionists. If your refugee camps hold Jews, they hold Partisans, too. It’s the Communists I’m tracking. Wops. Agitators. I can’t have labor strikes here like they had in Naples.” Mates turned back to Warburg.

“My information,” Warburg said, “is that the Nazis pretty successfully weeded the Partisans out. There are labor leaders and anti-Fascists in the camps. And plain deserters. That doesn’t make them Reds. The Nazis killed the Reds.”

“Or drove them underground. I have to smoke them out. You need to tell me who refuses your invite to New York.”

Warburg shook his head. “For an intelligence chief, Peter, you’re pretty dumb. Most Italians who fled the fighting or the bombing have homes to return to. Why would they go to New York?
My
people are Jews who fled to Italy from elsewhere: Poland, Ukraine. Or, if they are Italians, they’re Jews who were driven out by their neighbors. My people have nowhere to go. You have no idea, Peter, how desperate the refugees are. OSS has no idea.”

“Let’s leave OSS out of this. Reds equal strikes, strikes equal civil unrest. Civil Affairs, get it? It’s CAD that has the interest.”

“I don’t care what initials you use.”

“Good. Because I want CAD interrogators teamed with your staff in the processing. I want the camp leaders identified and interviewed separately by my people. You soothe, we sort. My people will have the final say on who goes where.”

“The hell with that. These poor souls are entrusted to me, not the Army. Not you. You saw Clark’s orders. The final say stays with me.”

“But the interviews?”

Warburg was shaking his head, but at last he saw that he could be more than supplicant. “I’ll give you interviews in camps on one condition, speaking of ocular proof.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t OSS have a man in Bern?”

“Why are you asking me if you already know?”

“I need him to get to the Swedish embassy there. You heard what I laid out for Ambassador Sundberg here. I need your man to second the motion with the Swedes in Switzerland. Stockholm has yet to approve the nomination of Wallenberg as special envoy. They’re stalling. I need turns of the screw. U.S. Treasury has prepared charges against Sweden for neutrality violations, criminal charges. Your man in Bern gives them the way to get the charges dropped, makes clear what happens if they don’t cooperate. Jews. Tell your guy to say ‘Jews.’ Put it together with the word ‘Budapest.’ Tell him ‘Jews in Budapest’ is Swedish for ‘Open sesame!’”

Mates again turned away, taking in the crowd. The rain was no more than a trickle. He began, with studied casualness, “Beg your pardon, David, but isn’t Stockholm the State Department’s—”

“Peter, it’s Budapest I care about.” Warburg drew closer, grasping Mates’s arm. “Budapest, you hear me? I want Wallenberg appointed by Monday. That’s four days from now. Four days equals twenty thousand Jews in cattle cars.”

“You’re hurting my arm, David.”

When Warburg released Mates, the officer raised his arm to look at his watch. “Jesus, I’m late.” He squinted up at the oculus. “And the rain has stopped.”

“I need your help, Peter.”

“You should have Secretary Morgenthau call General Donovan.
He’s
the intelligence chief, not me. The OSS in Bern, if there is such an outfit, does not take orders from Civil Affairs in Rome. I can put in a word with an air courier I know, but that’s it.”

“What schedule is your courier on? What clock?”

Mates began to back away. “Think calendar, David, not clock. You’re dealing with the Army. Which is why I myself am late. Very late.” Mates saluted, turned on his heel, pushed through the shelter seekers, and left. Warburg followed him to the outer curb of the portico, watching. As Mates passed the café table, he threw a handful of lire notes down and plunged into the resuming chaos of the now glistening piazza.

Warburg knew that Mates was toying with him. “Air courier”—a hedged way of saying yes. “Calendar, not clock”—a way of saying no. Warburg was suddenly aware of his clenched fists, his fingernails cutting into the flesh of his palms. Lies and obfuscation came so naturally to Mates that he probably believed most of what he said. From Virgil to Andrea Doria. Girls in the temple of rain. Built by Caesar Augustus, the emperor divine. What bullshit.

Warburg knew that the Pantheon was built by Hadrian a century and a half
after
Augustus, a monument to transcendence, not vanity. And transcendence still defined the place. Warburg looked up at the oculus—the eye of God, why not? As for girls, his thoughts went again to Marguerite d’Erasmo. Where was she?

As if he would find her there, he faced the piazza and went up on his toes. She was, of course, nowhere to be seen, but Mates was. Warburg glimpsed the man rushing away. Marguerite was a confounding mystery, but so was this American—and he was the mystery at hand. Mates was late, but late for what? All right, Warburg thought, let’s find out. Warburg set off to follow him. The ocular proof.