Scholl stood, leaving no money on the table, and walked toward the front desk. “Would you have matches?” he asked the pretty young clerk there, in German.
Without need of translation, she reached under the counter and handed him a thin box. Scholl nodded his thanks.
On his way to the door, squeezing the box of matches in one fist, Scholl couldn’t keep himself from risking a glance, filled with some longing, into the side room with the red-upholstered chairs, as if, even at this hour, he might see the pliant young women and trim, eager men. The room stood empty. He turned his eyes away, but a whisper of regret followed him: Would a bit of pleasure have been so damaging to the great cause? Would it have interfered with his duties in any way? Wouldn’t it have made the night more enjoyable, his hours of sleep more restful? And why was it that certain types of attraction were shameful and others not?
He shook his head to clear the thoughts, and stepped out into the day. A bit cooler this morning. Perfect. He’d be happy to contribute some warmth.
A minute’s delay, then Renzik pulled up to the entrance in, of all things, a flatbed truck with a machine gun mounted in back. Italian, it seemed. It would have to do. Scholl climbed into the cab’s passenger seat. “Do you know how to get to San Paolo Bel Sito?”
“I think so,” Renzik said, engine running, both hands on the wheel, his face turned so that he was looking squarely at Colonel Scholl. “That’s where they brought the—”
“I know very well what was brought there. Why else would I be going?”
“I don’t know, sir. Because of that and the . . . the incident from yesterday, sir.”
“Drive. The villa there. Whatever it’s called.”
“You know what happened there yesterday, sir.”
“Of course I know! I don’t have to sit with the radio every minute. Everything that happens in this city finds its way to my desk.”
The route out of Naples took them past the enormous burial grounds—Scholl wasn’t sure how to pronounce the name—and as they passed, he saw some kind of shabby funeral cortege, men, women, weeping children, dressed in rags, shuffling along in an uneven formation behind a casket carried on a horse-drawn cart with huge wheels. It looked like a scene from the fifteenth century. He spread the map on top of his thighs and did his best to identify the towns as they passed them: Monte Oliveto, Caravita, Romani, Passariello, Muli, Scisciano. Despite the time in Rieti and Rome, his Italian was still only passable, and he found the ugly names next to impossible to pronounce. What point was there in becoming fluent in the language? Let the Italians learn German.
He stared out the side window, wondering how the collection of the Jews was progressing and when he could write up a report for Himmler. A few unattractive stone houses stood along the roadside, the low hillsides behind them dotted with even lines of olive trees, the topography dry but pleasant enough in a Mediterranean way. What he thought of as “the body fever” was upon him again, a vibrating warmth that turned his thoughts, the way a rider turned a horse’s head and led it in a certain direction. By and large, the Italians were a good-looking race, he had to admit it. He recalled the night in Rieti that had led to his censure. The tangled limbs, the juices, kisses, and moans, the soft beginning, then the frenzy, the giving up of all control. Afterward, the calm. The touch. The sleep.
Most likely, one of the lovers had reported him—currying favor, perhaps, or avoiding punishment. The man, he’d thought at first. And then, the woman. And then both of them, a team of Italian betrayers, collecting secrets that could be used to pay for their lives or their freedom. Foolish of him to be involved, and yet the memory itself was altogether fine, a respite from the loneliness and from the terrible tension of war.
Before they reached the city of Nola, Renzik, who’d been absolutely silent during the hour-long ride, spoke up. “Montesano, the villa is called, sir. The valuable papers have been moved there. From the Archives in the center of—”
“You are telling me things I already know, Lieutenant.”
Renzik retreated into silence. Another few kilometers and Scholl saw a pond the size of a soccer pitch, surface untroubled. Beyond it, gates, a long driveway, and a square three-story villa with a columned entrance and a crenellated roof, as if it were a castle whose sharpshooter guards had once been stationed there, high up, to protect the prince from kidnappers.
“Strange place to bring documents,” he mused aloud.
Renzik hesitated, turning through the gates and up the driveway. “Because of the bombs . . . in the center.”
A tiresome companion, this Renzik. “And who killed our man here?”
“He hasn’t yet been caught, sir. A sniper. One shot.”
By the time they reached the columned entrance, Scholl could see that a civilian had come out to greet him. The man, middle-aged, short of stature, was wearing a worn black suit and dark necktie, knot loose, the top of his shirt unbuttoned. High forehead. Mustache. An intellectual.
Scholl climbed out of the truck and ignored the man’s greeting. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and let his eyes wander across the front of the building. He saw two of his soldiers just inside the door.
“I am Riccardo Filangieri, the archivist,” the man was saying. “We regret the death of your lieutenant. I can tell you his killer was not someone who works here. We have only—”
Scholl reached out and hit the man hard in the middle of his chest with two bent fingers. The archivist stumbled backward and nearly fell. Scholl walked past him into the tiled foyer, on each side of which stood crates of documents and books piled higher than his head. He took the box of matches from his right front pocket and twisted them this way and that between his second and third fingers.
The archivist had recovered, and followed him inside. “Colonel, please,” he heard the man say. Begging. “These are precious historical documents, some dating to the thirteenth century. Irreplaceable. Kindly—”
“My man also was irreplaceable,” Scholl growled, turning to stare at the archivist, who was almost a head shorter. He had his hands clasped together now, pleading, begging, shaking them this way and that, his mouth trembling. Over what? Old papers. Meanwhile, an actual officer of the Reich, sent here to ascertain the location of the documents, had been killed in cold blood. Scholl turned to his two soldiers, standing beside Renzik near the door. “Any of our men elsewhere in the building?”
They shook their heads in tandem.
Scholl walked over to the nearest pile of boxes. He used his combat knife to cut one box open, and with the pleading Filangieri beside him, going on and on, Scholl tugged free an ancient-looking leather-bound folder, tore out a handful of pages, and perused them.
“The Order of Malta documents,” Filangieri said. “Seven hundred years old.”
Scholl could make no sense of them. He crumpled the pages into a ball and pressed the ball partway back into the hole he’d cut, then opened the matches, took one out, and struck it.
“Please, we beg you,” the archivist said. One of the soldiers came over and, holding the man by both arms, pulled him backward toward the door.
Scholl struck the match and held it up in dramatic fashion, then reached out and touched it to the ball of paper. For a few seconds, he watched the flames catch and leap upward, watched them spread backward into another pile of boxes, and then to the front of the nearest box to the left. He let the match burn until it singed his fingertips, then tossed it into the fire. Filangieri seemed actually to be weeping now, or perhaps it was the smoke in his eyes. Scholl stood there until the air became thick with it, then turned on his heel and walked out. His men dragged the struggling Filangieri into the fresh air, where he stood wringing his hands and kept on with the pleading and weeping. When they could feel the heat from the fire, when the smoke started to billow out the front door and one open window beside it, Scholl turned to the man and said, “Go in now, if you like. Perhaps you can rescue something irreplaceable.”