Warburg in Rome (31 page)

Within minutes, Mates was dressed in khaki trousers and an olive-green T-shirt and was out into the night, running toward the Quirinal Palace. With no awareness of having snatched it from his bedside drawer, he was carrying his service pistol. When he reached the boulevard, he saw that, instead of toward the left, the explosion had occurred to the right. Not the Royal Palace. What then? Fuck. He was already breathing hard. Sirens were sounding, and the red glow of the low sky told him that the detonating fire had caught. He could feel its warm wind against his face. Ahead on the broad sidewalk, he saw a group of people silhouetted against the roaring flames of a burning building. What building? And whose bomb?

As he ran, he calculated, grinding through possibilities: the CLN, the Action Party, the PCI, the Green Flames. The power of the two detonations suggested serious military ordnance. The Garibaldi Brigade, resistance veterans. Palmiro Togliatti, Luigi Longo. Reds.

Drawing close, approaching as the first fire truck came screeching onto the scene, Mates realized where he was—the British embassy. Fuck. He stopped.

Flames were licking at the topmost cornices of the four-story structure. Half of the façade had crumbled into a pile, and room interiors were exposed, ornate furniture and frames on walls illuminated by the glowing fire. Just then a groan went up, trumping the low roar of combustion, and before he felt yet another force-blast on his face, he sensed the coming down-pressure. Sure enough,
pop . . . pop . . . pop
, the exposed second floor gave way and collapsed. Heat rolled out in a billowing puff of dust, debris, eye-stinging cinders. The British embassy. The gears of his mind were jammed. It made no sense.

“Jews,” the Englishman said. It was moments later. Mates had joined about a dozen bystanders, two of whom were Brits, quickly on the scene from their nearby quarters. A second fire truck had arrived, and the firemen were uncoiling hoses, deploying ladders. Three or four police vehicles had stormed onto the scene. Somehow the police had already erected sawhorse street barriers. The night was alive with the chaos: whistles, further sirens, the ferocious barking of an unseen dog.

“What did you say?” Mates asked.

“Bloody Jews,” the man repeated. “Has to be.”

“The Yids have an air force?” the other Englishman said, looking skyward as if he expected to see an Avro Lancaster with a white Star of David painted on the fuselage.

“You stupid arsehole,” his companion sneered. “That blast took out the wall, not the roof. It came from the street.”

From what Mates could see of the worst damage—the first floor cratered at the entrance—the man was right, though the fire had clearly picked up fuel inside the building and would reach the roof soon enough. Haganah, he thought, his inbred calculator clicking on again. Irgun. Palmach. Stern Gang. High-powered ordnance pilfered by the king’s own Jewish Brigade Group. But the underground Zionist war was being fought in Palestine, not here. British Mandate police stations were being bombed, tax offices, rail yards. Palestine, he thought again, not Rome. Mandate officials targeted, Cairo perhaps. An attack here made no sense.

Mates realized that one of the British bystanders was staring at his pistol, and only then did he see what they saw—a lout in his undershirt, nothing but dog tags on his chest. He pulled the shirt out from his belt, into which he then tucked the gun, and covered it with the shirt. “Who’s in charge?” he asked.

The Brit nearest him pointed to a black Rolls just then weaving through the sawhorses and being waved by Italian police into the chaotic circle. “That would be His Excellency.”

“The ambassador?” Mates asked. “But why isn’t he inside?”

“He doesn’t live there yet. Engineers are still posting girders in the residence wing. Construction. No one lives in the embassy yet, thank fuck. Not tonight.”

The second Englishman grimaced. “Cipher clerks?”

“Christ,” the other said.

Mates had met the ambassador at a glittering party in the Palazzo Venezia, and he approached him now as if he, Mates, were in uniform. Hand extended, he said, “Hello, Sir Noel. It’s General Mates. My quarters are nearby. I heard the bombs.”

The ambassador, dressed in shirtsleeves and open collar, was clearly startled by Mates, but his dazed expression suggested that he was startled by this entire disastrous affair. Before he could respond, his attention was snagged by a fire official, a hulking figure in black canvas overalls and helmet, who strode up, hammering away with a barrage of questions. Seeing the Brit’s confusion, Mates began to translate. “He needs to know where to look for people. What floor? How many are inside? Where are they?”

At first the ambassador seemed to understand Mates no more than the Italian, but then his face went bright with recognition and relief. “No one,” he declared. “No one is in there at this hour. The building is unoccupied at night.”

Mates translated. The fireman turned to head off, but Mates grabbed one of his belts. “
Aspetti!
”

And to Sir Noel he said, “What about cipher clerks?”

“No. No. Our code rooms moved. Division HQ, not here. Not yet.”

Mates released the fireman, who rushed away, happy to have no further need of these fools. The ambassador turned to his aide, a bright young major who had somehow managed the complete uniform—peaked hat, braided shoulder aiguillettes, swagger stick. Like a steam trap blowing, Sir Noel exploded at this underling: “Goddammit! I told London this was no place for the Cyprus operation! Goddammit, I told them. Cyprus should be managed from Athens, Istanbul, not here.”

The major muttered his “indeed so”s as the ambassador slumped, facing the inferno, watching the destruction of his dear-bought personal dominion. The Brits had no further use for the Yank in his undershirt.

Just then, across the street, Mates saw the familiar form of an open American jeep. Up, and with an arm draped over the windshield, the driver was Rossini. Mates went to him. Rossini wore a properly solemn expression, but he cut it with a self-satisfied toss of his head. “I thought you might need me, General.”

Mates hopped in. “Back to the Barberini,” he said. “I’ll get dressed. Then take me to Warburg. You know where he’s billeted?”

“Yes, Sir.”

At Warburg’s apartment, near the Piazza del Popolo, neither sound nor fury had carried over from the distant Quirinal Hill. The plaza was deserted, the night was still. It was not yet four a.m. From the curb, Rossini pointed to a window, saying, “Second floor, left.” Mates, now in a pressed khaki shirt with a star on each collar, took the stairs two at a time. Banging on the door, he wondered if he’d find Warburg in bed with a woman—a little night baseball, why not? Maybe that was the real reason he’d bailed out of the Barberini, which, in the end, had been fine with Mates. When he had just returned to that suite, reeking of smoke from the embassy fire, Veronica was gone, thank God. Night baseball? Sex with Veronica was like striking out the pitcher.

Warburg came to the door in his underwear. “Peter. What the hell?”

“Sorry, Warburg. But something’s happened. You’ll want to let me in.”

While Warburg dressed in the other room, Mates paced a small oval in the main digs. The place was minimally furnished. File cartons were stacked in four distinct columns. Scrawl-ridden graph paper was tacked to one wall, and taped to another was a map of Europe, stuck all over with colored pins. Papers littered both a field desk and a dinner table. The space had more the feel of a sales office than a living room. Not a place to entertain. So, no woman. Not a chance. Should have known.

Warburg reappeared in his gray flannels and a second-day white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up. He removed papers from a chair for Mates, then crossed toward the kitchenette. “I’ll put the coffeepot on.”

A few minutes later they were seated opposite each other, a cleared corner of the table between them. On the corner were their cups and an ashtray. As soon as Warburg had waved out the match they’d both lit from, Mates said, “Your friends bombed the British embassy tonight.”

Warburg was too surprised to react.

Mates continued, “A major detonation. Two blasts. Brought the front exterior wall down, four stories’ worth. Ignited a fire that’s roaring away right now. I’ve just come from there. The whole building will fall.”

“My friends?”

“Jews. Zionists. Palestine.”

“Here? In Rome? Impossible.”

“Shall we step outside? You can see the glow from the street. Shows all over the city.”

“How do you know—Jews? Zionists? What about—?”

“Anarchists? Revolutionaries? Reds? Syndicalists?” Mates forced a smile. “We’d still be talking Jews, right?”

Warburg did not respond, not a muscle.

Mates said, “The embassy was the organizing center for Cyprus internment camps.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? I just heard the Brit ambassador ranting about Athens or Istanbul being places to run Cyprus from, but Italy is where Jewish refugees still muster, no? Like a glacier from the Alps sliding south, plunking down in Rome if they can, awaiting their chance for the great
aliyah
. Isn’t that what you call it? And isn’t that your work now? Sneaking Jews onto tin cans bound for Jaffa?”

“Sneaking?”

“No insult, Warburg. You can hardly do it openly. Like planting a bomb. Secrecy of the essence, but the motive is obvious. Your Jews blew up the embassy because Clement Attlee just expanded the holding pens on Cyprus, and he put the embassy in charge.”

“My Jews?”

“Palestinians. Zionists. The groups the JDC is funding. Don’t play dumb with me.”

“It’s Attlee who’s dumb. He has made a big mistake. Europe is saying
Juden raus!
Okay. But
raus
to where? Attlee needs to get the message.”

“And that justifies an attack on civilians?”

“How many were killed?”

“By a miracle, maybe none. No one was in the embassy. Damn lucky.”

“Why lucky? Why miracle? Perhaps it was planning.”

“Fuck.”

“No, really. Whoever did this, they could have attacked at noon. They could have taken out a hundred people, two hundred. If they attacked in the middle of the night, it was deliberately
not
to kill.”

“Double fuck.”

“And if you’re right about the embassy as HQ for the Cyprus internments, then that matters, too. It was Cyprus being attacked, not Rome. British concentration camps, not an embassy.”

“Sure looked like an embassy. Face it, Warburg, your friends are ruthless killers. Obviously they’ve come through hell, but it’s brutalized them.”

Warburg reined in his feelings. “Why are you here?”

“Because you know these people—whether you know you do or not. And I need to know who they are.”

“This is not an American fight, General.”

“If the U.S. embassy was bombed, London would regard it as a British fight. Maybe if you wore the uniform you’d understand that.”

Warburg was not so stupid as to rise to that, but neither was he swift enough to grasp, quite, what Mates was up to.

Mates met Warburg’s rigid self-possession with a studied sangfroid. “If an embassy’s not immune, my friend, what is? A basic note of civilized behavior—not attacking embassies. I’d pull these bastards back if I were you. Or are they just out for blood at this point? Anybody’s blood.”

Warburg slammed his hand down on the table. The cups jumped. “What are you saying? Jews
want
blood?”

“I wasn’t—”

“No, blood is your point. We want Christian blood. Pure, High-Church English blood. For what? To mix in with our unleavened bread?”

“Warburg—”

“No! What are you saying, you with your ‘Fuck. Double fuck.’ With your anarchists, Reds, syndicalists—all Jews, right! Listen to yourself. You sound like Father Coughlin, and you’re not even Catholic.”

“Calm down, David.”

“You’re here for your next report on me, is that it? I know what you’ve been doing.”

“What?”

“‘OSS Reports—Station Rome.’ Cited by Washington in shutting me down. OSS said the WRB singled out Jews as if they were the only ones suffering. ‘The WRB singles out Jews.’ That was you.”

“Well, it’s true, for Christ’s sake! The Krauts mauled the whole fucking continent. What’s with the focus on Jews?”

“Jews were Hitler’s focus. Only then were they mine.” Warburg leaned toward Mates. “Look, General, if ‘OSS—Station Rome’ had a criticism to make about my approach, why didn’t you make it to me?”

Mates shrugged. Fuck it.

The general’s blithe indifference pushed Warburg to the line. He said, “I’ve watched you set your dogs on my DPs for a year, looking for Bolsheviks among those poor, desperate people. Looking for Stalin’s spies, labor organizers, Partisans—looking for goddamn Trotskyites. Why? Because my DPs are Jews. You set Rossini on me, turned the poor bastard into a snitch. I played along because I like the kid. But why turn Rossini? Because I’m a Jew!”

“You’re sure as hell acting like one now.”

“How does a Jew act?”

“Sniveling moneygrubbing shysters, parasites! Is that what you want me to say? Okay. Fine. I’ll ask you a question you hear at the officers’ club. Why did it fall to the U.S.
Treasury
to do something about Jews in Europe? Not the War Department. Not the State Department. The fucking
Treasury
. Don’t you find that amazing?”

Without thinking and in one motion, Warburg came to his feet, pivoted, cocked his arm, and threw a downward shovel hook, landing squarely on Mates’s right cheekbone. Mates fell from his chair, but he quickly got up and bulled into Warburg’s midsection, pushing him halfway across the room. Butting upward, he banged the crown of his head into Warburg’s chin. Mates was over fifty, but he’d trained. The two exchanged blows, punching and counterpunching. Warburg—younger, stronger, taller—would have had the advantage in any case, but he was attacking in Mates so much more than Mates, whose mistake then was to stay on his feet.

Warburg pushed him out into the corridor and, gripping him at each of his silver stars, pounded him backward down the stairs. Warburg felt it in his fists as Mates’s spine registered each jolt.