Warburg in Rome (41 page)

“If I could . . .” She was sobbing.

He put his finger gently to her lips. “I will wait for you. Do you hear me?”

She nodded and fell against him, clinging to him.

She was correct about not sleeping. And she was right about his walking her to the river. It was deep into the night, and the streets were deserted. Walking along, they held hands, as if they were young. When they came to the bridge that would take her across the Tiber, she stopped him. He wanted to continue with her, but she put her hand firmly on his chest. He nodded and said, “But remember, ‘Wheresoever you go . . .’”

She replied, “‘And your people will be my people.’” She kissed him good night. And he let her go.

Clutching his robes, Father Lehmann ran up to the third-floor apartment, desperate to find his mother, to see that she was all right. When he burst in on her, she was seated at her embroidery table, the floor-to-ceiling window open behind, the soft breeze wafting the gauzy curtain at her side. She was garbed, as usual in the morning, in her plain black silk kimono, formal wear in Japan, but for Lehmann’s mother, with its ample sleeves and loose fit, a lounging dress. That she began her days covered from neck to foot in black had become a joke between them, as if she, too, had given herself to the Church. As always, though, she was wearing typical Argentine footwear, rope and canvas espadrilles, and there was nothing nun-like in the long black braid of hair that curled on her shoulder like a pet, nor in the yellow dahlia pinned by her ear. At the sight of her agitated son, anxiety came instantly into her face. She was a woman ever on the lookout for unhappy news.

The news had come to Lehmann from the woman with whom, as he would now forever think of her, he had fallen from grace. Even in just having confronted the great deceiver, what had amazed him most was that, in some unplumbed depth, he was not surprised. If he had foolishly trusted her, he had never trusted the situation they created together. He’d known from the start that it would somehow end badly. How badly he never imagined.

He had arrived at their hotel room that morning exquisitely on edge with anticipation—he loved their early trysts. The tension of the previous days at the Casa dello Spirito Santo had jangled his nerves, and he was longing to unburden himself to her, ask her advice—but mostly to climb inside her, to fuck. She had been fully clothed, though, sitting at the round, scarred table, smoking a cigarette. She was wearing her blue uniform and the beret with its cross. On the table was a pack of cigarettes. One hand held her cigarette, the other was in her lap, hidden.

“Sit with me,
mein Bonbon
,” she said.

It took a moment for him to adjust; this was something new. Dressed. Normally whoever was first to arrive waited under the sheets. He took the second chair, opposite. “Even covered, you are beautiful. I had forgotten that.” He smiled, trusting that she would as well. But her expression did not change.

She leaned toward him. “I have been concerned for you,” she said. “It has been days. Why haven’t I seen you?”

“There has been trouble. The enemies of Croatia have shown themselves. There are Chetniks here in Rome, agents of the Bolsheviks. They are after Pavelic. So far they have been thwarted.”

“But Vukas has not returned to Spirito Santo. The SVC limousine returned, but he was not in it.”

Lehmann stared at her. “How do you know this?”

“I know it,” she said, the totality of her answer.

Lehmann could not think what to say. She was frightening him.

“My darling,” she said finally, “I want you to tell me where Vukas is.”

“How do you know his name?” There was fear in him, yes, but also urgency.

“I know it.” Once more, her abrupt, unprecedented authority. “Where is he?”

Instead of answering, Lehmann stood. He knew at once what this change in her meant. This week’s mystery at the Casa had been: Who is the traitor? He saw:
The traitor is me, myself!
Seized by the threat she posed, he lunged, to shake her, to choke her. The deceitful bitch.

But she stopped him by slapping the table,
bang!
With a swift movement she had brought her hidden hand up from her lap, and though the sharp noise had been of metal hitting wood, he saw that her hand was concealed inside a black drawstring bag. The bag was just large enough, he realized, to contain a weapon, a Beretta pistol around which her fingers would be closed. She could kill him on the spot. He all but collapsed, shrank back, stifled a whimper.

It was the reaction she knew would come. In so many ways he had exposed his perfect cowardice to her. “You will tell me where Vukas is, or you can be certain that the
Aussenweg
fraternity will learn that you have been their enemy. And you know what they will do.”

“My mother. They will harm my mother.”

“No. They will kill her. Where is Vukas?”

Lehmann did not hesitate. “In one of the other Croatian or Franciscan foundations, a monastery, a college, here in Rome.”

“Which one?”

“I do not know. Why would I know?”

“I believe you. But I want you to learn where he is. Tell the Croatians that you are under orders from the
Aussenweg
operators in Vienna—
Germans
who must know of Vukas, his condition, his whereabouts, where his authority stands with the Crusade. You explain: for the Germans to continue trusting the Croatian network after the debacle on Via Cassia, they must know. The Croatians will tell you. Write it down—where Vukas is! Leave the message for me in the donation box at the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. You will do this by dusk tonight. Do you understand?”

“Tonight, impossible. I must visit each foundation personally, to make the inquiry seem normal.”

Marguerite saw that. “Tomorrow night, then. The donation box at Santa Maria. Dusk.”

Across Lehmann’s face fell an expression of such pathetic helplessness that she almost pitied him. “Vukas is nothing to you,” she said. “He is important to me.”

“You are Chetnik.”

Without hesitating, Marguerite said, “Yes. I am Chetnik. Get me Vukas and I will spare you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I do not expect you to do this for me. Do it for your mother.”

Marguerite stood. Only now did she withdraw her hand from her bag. He shrank halfway back again, but then he saw that her hand held not the Beretta pistol he’d imagined but a small object, which she placed on the table. His gold lighter. She had no weapon.

Before she closed the door, she looked back. “Goodbye, Father.”

After a moment, Lehmann reached for the lighter, picked it up, traced the Christ symbol with his finger. From now on, this golden object would be a relic of his humiliation.

His mother, with her embroidery hook suspended in midair, was waiting for him to speak. He crossed the room and closed the tall windows beside her, as if for privacy. He spoke in Spanish. “Mother, you must instruct Maria to ready your bags. And her own. We are traveling tomorrow.” From his inside pocket he withdrew a pair of leather passport folders and placed them on her table. “One for you, one for Maria.”

She opened the top folder and found a passport stamped with a coat of arms—an eagle atop an open crown, flanked by columns, the Pillars of Hercules. She recognized the seal and the words beneath,
Estado Español
. “Spain?”

“Yes. It’s where we are going.”

“But our plans have always been for Mainz, to return home, our beautiful villa overlooking the Rhine.”

We can’t go to Mainz!
he wanted to scream.
Mainz is ruined for us! Germany is ruined for us!
Germans were now his enemy. Any number of Germans would slice his throat open for what he had done, his mortal sin.
I have betrayed the sacred trust, Mother. I have betrayed you
. The very thought of declaring himself to her was enough to make him nearly vomit. He covered his mouth.
Never, never must you know!

His mother flipped the passport open and saw a photo of herself, familiar if not particularly fetching. But the name on the page opposite—Carmela del Socorro. She looked up at her son. “What is this?”

“Mother, you know the situation. The time has come for us to move.”

“But the Holy See protects us. The Holy Father safeguards us. Archbishop Graz shields us.”

“No more. We are exposed here.”
The Holy Father now protects those who would kill us. Graz would hand us over
.

“Who is this Carmela—?”

“She is you, Mother!” Lehmann banged his hand on her table, knocking the embroidery hoop and its taut fabric to the floor. He had so raised his voice that the servant, Maria, appeared at the door. His mother burst into tears.

She put her hand out, and Maria was immediately there to supply a silk square, with which the Señora covered her face, yet amplifying her sobs instead of stifling them. Lehmann backed away from his mother, horrified. He had not caused her to cry since being a headstrong adolescent. One impulse was to get on his knees and plead for forgiveness, but another, the stronger—because rooted in terror, not guilt—was to move forward with the plan. He turned to the intimidated servant. “Maria, we are traveling tomorrow. You must prepare things. I will come back later. Mother—” Lehmann approached to kiss her, but she faced away, wailing.

Lehmann descended the villa’s wide staircase more rapidly than he’d come up. He dashed into the street, where his car and driver were waiting. He threw himself into the right rear seat. “
Vada! Vada!
” he said. For a terrible instant he thought that he, too, would break down in sobs, completing his humiliation, exposing him to the peasant contempt of the Italian chauffeur.

Lehmann looked at the back of the man’s head as he shifted gears, pulling the stately auto smoothly into the flow of traffic. How long did Lehmann stare—the considerable tilt of the chauffeur’s hat, the hair too short at his collar, the broader shoulders, the ears flat to the head instead of protruding—before realizing that the man was not his driver? Lehmann’s eyes went to the rearview mirror, where the man’s were waiting. “Good day, Father,” the man said in English, then smiled.

The clean, white American teeth. The trimmed mustache. The bright blue eyes.

“Good God,” Lehmann said, “General Mates.” The priest looked wildly around. “Here?” Coming up on the right was Santa Maria dell’Anima, the German church—Archbishop Graz!

“Relax, Father. No one will take notice. We chauffeurs are invisible. The windows are sealed. We could be in one of your confessional booths.” They whizzed by the church, yet Lehmann remained pressed back into the corner of his seat.

The car broke free of the congestion, turning onto the broad Via della Vetrina, heading north, gunning it, taking full advantage of the car’s legal immunity. Even at speed, the American’s eyes were as much on Lehmann, through the mirror, as on the road.

“Look at me.”

Lehmann met the eyes of his handler.

Mates said, “Your having it both ways is over. From now on you are taking orders only from me. What happened on the Via Cassia was too close. What if they had reached the Crusader meeting at Regina Angelorum? You think we snatched Pavelic out of the brig in Salzburg to lose him in Rome? Lose him to bumbling assassins? You think I’m risking the others we’ve lined up?”

“The others are Himmler’s men, of no interest to the assassins,” Lehmann explained. “The assassins on the Via Cassia were Chetniks. The Yugoslavs. They wanted Pavelic. They wanted Vukas. They care nothing for Germans. It was Tito’s Bolsheviks on the Via Cassia.”

“You are stupider than you look, Father. They were Jews.”

“Juden!”

“And the Jews know all about you, you dumb shit.” The general’s eyes bounced back and forth, from the traffic to Lehmann in the mirror. “They have the names of the Croatian sheep you are shepherding. They have the names of the
Aussenweg
bigshots you are expecting. They know the Road Out runs through the Vatican. They know about the gold. They know about Argentina. Our entire scheme is at risk. And all of this Jew knowledge has to have come through you. You’re the only one besides me with the whole picture.”

“Do they know about you?” Lehmann asked desperately. “If the Jews knew that Americans are partners in this, perhaps they would—”

“You think the Jews want to join me in saving Krauts we can use against Reds? Hell, Jews
are
Reds.” Mates downshifted to take a curve, like a Grand Prix racer. He had bombed up an incline, into the verdant isolation of Monteverde, a neglected hillside park. “As for your American partners, you dumb prick, my government is on record as wanting these bastards at the war crimes tribunal. You and I are
off
the record, Padre.
Capiche?
”

Lehmann thought back to the woman.
Yes
.
I am Chetnik
. Her being Jewish was impossible. He would have known. “You are wrong,” he dared to say.

Mates stared at him through the mirror. He said, “Jewish teams have already killed dozens of SS and Gestapo officers in Austria and Germany—in POW camps and in hideouts. They call themselves Nakam, which means revenge. An eye for an eye. Now they are in Rome, setting the trap for our crew. And you are their bait, you stupid asshole.”

Lehmann pressed himself back, back into the corner, finally facing the truth of what he had done. Sprawled on their tangled, damp sheets, he had thrilled his
Liebchen
with the saga of
Aussenweg
, his heroic role, the first real blow in the new war against the transcendent enemy. Not merely Germany’s enemy, although that, too—but God’s. Yet filled with the grandeur of his narration, the danger of his sacred mission, and the unmistakable admiration in her eyes—now he knew: he had missed the only thing that mattered. His convent girl, somehow, was a Jew. A Jew who fooled him. A Jew to whom he had revealed everything.

With one last rocking swing of the car, Mates pulled off the road into a gravelly parking area, the kind of place to which whores brought Giovannis in the old days. Mates slammed the gearshift into reverse and ran the car backward into the overhanging foliage, so that the feathery claws of an ancient olive tree clutched at Lehmann’s window. Mates shut the engine and faced backward, throwing his elbow. “Listen to me, Lehmann. I haven’t wasted a year’s coddling to have you go all weak in the knees at this point. We’re making this thing work. You get
your
people out. I get
my
people out. We’re just getting this thing up and running. I’d toss you aside in a flash, but I need you at the visa desk in Vatican City.”