The visitor was a tall, thin man with a long face, large ears, and a sallow complexion. His black hair was slicked back and a clipped mustache brushed a tight-lipped mouth. Mussolini mentally sorted through all of the desperate elements of the situation, looking for options. For the past two decades no one would have dared rebuke him like this. To be feared authority must be absolute, with no boundaries. So his first inclination was to tell this newcomer to get out, but the vacuum of uncertainty that surrounded him overcame his pride.
“Wait outside,” he said to Clara.
She hesitated and started to protest but he silenced her with a raise of his hand. She did not object any further and simply nodded, leaving the room.
The uniform closed the door behind her.
“Time is short,” the man said. “The Committee of National Liberation and the Volunteer Freedom Corps are coming for you.”
Both were trouble, the latter especially since it mainly comprised communists who had long wanted Italy for themselves.
“The decision has been made for you to be shot. I’ve managed to get ahead of their emissaries, but they are not far behind.”
“All thanks to your fellow Germans, who abandoned me.”
The man stuffed his right hand into his coat pocket and removed an object.
A ring.
He slipped it onto his left third finger and displayed the face, which contained five rows of letters etched into the dull, pewter surface.
Now he understood.
This was no ordinary visitor.
He’d dealt with two popes during his time as supreme leader, Pius XI and XII. One was more accommodating than the other, both irritating. Unfortunately, to govern Italy meant having the Catholic Church on your side, which was no small feat. But he’d managed to contain the church, forming an uneasy alliance, one that was also now coming to an end.
“I’m sure this ring is familiar to you,” the man said. “It is just like the one you stole from the man you had killed.”
More clarity arrived.
After founding a hospital on the frontier of Christendom dedicated to St. John the Baptist in 1070, a small group of Europeans became the Hospitaller Brothers of St. John’s of Jerusalem. Their current label, after over 850 years of evolution, was obscenely long.
Sovereign Military Hospitallers Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta.
Talk about vanity.
“I speak for His Most Eminent Highness, the prince and grand master himself,” the uniform said. “Who asks you once again to relinquish what you possess.”
“Are you actually a German officer?” he asked.
The man nodded. “But I was a knight of the order long before there was anything called the Third Reich.”
He smiled.
Finally, the shroud had dropped.
This man was nothing more than a spy, which explained why his enemies had allowed this envoy to come.
“You say people are on the way for me. To the partisans I matter not. To the Germans I’m an embarrassment. Only to the communists does my death have value. So tell me, what can you offer to deny them their pleasure?”
“Your tricks yesterday failed.”
He was sorry to hear that.
He’d first fled Milan to Como, following the narrow, winding road hugging the lakeshore, motoring through dozens of tiny villages hunched beside the still water. Cernobbio, Moltrasio, Tremezzo, Menaggio. Usually it was an easy half-day journey, but it had taken much longer. He’d expected five thousand Black Shirts to be waiting for him. His soldiers. But only twelve had shown. Then a German convoy of thirty-eight lorries and three hundred battle-hardened soldiers appeared, moving north for Austria, so he’d forced his way into the caravan hoping to make it to Chiavenna, where he planned to split off and head toward Switzerland.
But he’d never made it that far.
The bastard Germans sold him out in return for safe passage.
Thankfully, he’d brought along some insurance. Gold and jewels from the Italian treasury, along with stacks of currency and two satchels loaded with important papers, dossiers, and correspondence.
“The partisans have some of your gold,” the man said. “But most of it was tossed into the lake by the Germans. Your two briefcases, though, have vanished. Is what I want in one of them?”
“Why would I tell you that?”
“Because I can save your miserable life.”
He could not deny that he would like to live. But even more important, “And Clara?”
“I can save her, too.”
He stretched his arms behind his back and thrust out his jaw in a familiar and comfortable angle. He then paced the floor, the soles of his boots scuffing off the gritty stone. For the first time in a long while, strength surged through his bones.
“The illustrious order will never perish,” he said. “It is like virtue itself, like faith. Is that correct?”
“It is. The Comte de Marcellus gave an elegant speech in the French Chamber of Deputies.”
“As I recall he was trying to obtain the return of a large tract of land that the Crown had seized from the knights. He failed, but he did manage to obtain a decree of sovereignty. One that made the Hospitallers their own nation within France.”
“And we have not perished,” the man said.
“Much to my good fortune.” He glared at his visitor. “Get me away from these partisans and we can talk about the Nostra Trinità.”
The man shook his head. “Perhaps you haven’t gleaned the gravity of your situation. You’re a doomed man trying to flee for your life with every lire and ounce of gold you could steal.” He paused. “Unfortunately, that effort failed. They are coming to kill you. I’m your only hope. You have nothing to bargain with, besides giving me exactly what I want.”
“In those two satchels you mentioned, I have correspondence the British will not want public.”
The man shrugged. “That’s a problem for them.”
“Imagine what the knights might do with such incriminating information.”
“We have excellent relations with London. I only want the ring and the documents you stole.”
“The ring? It’s but a chunk of metal.”
The uniform held his hand up. “It’s much more than that to us.”
He shook his head. “You knights are nothing but pariahs. Thrown from Jerusalem, Cyprus, Rhodes, Russia, Malta, now you huddle in two palazzi in Rome clinging to a glory that has long since vanished.”
“Then we have something in common.”
He grinned. “That we do.”
Past the open window he heard the grind of another engine.
His visitor noticed, too.
“They’re here,” the man said.
A sudden resolve came over him, bolstered by the fact that Holy Roman Emperors, Napoleon, even Hitler himself had all been denied what he’d accomplished.
Defeating the pope.
This man being here was concrete proof of his victory.
“Ask Pius XII what it felt like to kneel before me,” he said.
“I doubt that happened.”
“Not literally. But figuratively, he knelt. He knew what I could do to his precious church. What I still can do.”
Which explained why the Vatican had never outwardly opposed his grab for power. Even after he’d attained total control, the church had continued to stay silent, never once using its massive influence to rally the Italian people into revolt. No king, queen, or emperor had ever been so fortunate.