“I have no idea, but it looks heavy,” Pino said, glancing in the rearview when they passed beneath a streetlight. General Leyers had moved the suitcase off his lap. It sat beside him, to his right. Leyers’s eyes were closed, and he could have been dreaming of Dolly or his wife, or children, or the slaves, or nothing at all.
In that single glance, something sharp and ice-cold forged in Pino’s heart. For the first time in his short, complicated life, he knew the feeling of ruthlessness, and the sweet anticipation of setting things right.
“I say he’s got some of those gold bars you saw locked in that case,” Carletto said, breaking him from his thoughts.
Pino said, “Or maybe he’s got files in that suitcase. Hundreds. Maybe more.”
“What kind of files?”
“The dangerous kind. The kind that give you a little power in powerless times.”
“What the heck does that mean?”
“Leverage. I’ll explain later. Where’s the next checkpoint?”
Carletto turned on the light, studied the map, and said, “Where we pick up the main road this side of Brescia.”
Pino pressed down on the accelerator, and they hurtled on through the night, reaching the second checkpoint at four in the morning. After a quick review of their papers, they were waved through again and warned to avoid Bolzano, where a battle was raging. The problem was they had to get past Bolzano to reach the Brenner Pass road.
“I’m telling you, he’s got gold in his suitcase,” Carletto said after they were under way again. He’d uncorked one of the wine bottles and was taking sips. “No way it’s just files. I mean, gold’s gold, right? Buy your way out of anything with gold.”
“When it comes down to it, I don’t care what’s in his suitcase.”
The highway ahead was pocked with bomb craters and diversions where the snowmelt from the previous winter had washed out culverts, so Pino couldn’t go as fast as he wanted. It was 4:45 a.m. before he took the turn toward Trento and Bolzano, heading north toward Austria. They drove along the east shore of Lake Garda, on the bank opposite Mussolini’s old villa, causing Pino to remember the anarchy in Piazzale Loreto. He glanced back at the general, who was dozing, and wondered how much Leyers knew, how much he cared, or whether he was just a man out for his skin.
Favors, Pino thought. That’s what he trades in. He told me so himself. That suitcase is full of favors.
He drove aggressively now. There were fewer vehicles on the road and less damage than there’d been on the main highway. Carletto’s eyes closed, and his chin slumped to his chest, the bottle and the machine gun between his legs.
Just north of Trento, around five fifteen, Pino saw lights ahead and started to slow. A shot rang out and smacked the side of the Fiat. Carletto startled awake even as Pino hit the accelerator hard and started weaving down the road as shots came at them from both sides, some hitting, others whistling by.
“Get your gun!” Pino shouted at Carletto. “Shoot back!”
Carletto fumbled with the machine gun.
“Who’s shooting at us?” General Leyers demanded. He was lying sideways across the suitcase.
“Doesn’t matter,” Pino said, and gained speed toward those lights. There was a barrier there, sawhorses, and a group of ragtag armed men. There was no order about them, and that made Pino’s decision.
“When I say so, shoot at them,” Pino said. “Safety off?”
Carletto got up on one knee, head and shoulders stuck out the window, the machine gun stock rammed against his shoulder.
Pino tapped the brakes when they were seventy meters out, as if he meant to stop. But at fifty meters, with the headlights blinding the men at the barrier, Pino hit the accelerator again and shouted, “Shoot!”
Carletto yanked the trigger, and the Thompson began spitting bullets that went high, low, and everywhere in between.
The gunmen scattered. Pino bore down on the barrier. Carletto had no control. He kept holding down on the trigger, and the machine gun kept firing wild. They smashed through the barrier. The Thompson was knocked from Carletto’s grip. It bounced off the road and vanished.
“Shit!” Carletto yelled. “Go back!”
“No,” Pino said, shutting off the lights and speeding on as guns cracked behind them.
“That’s my machine gun! Go back!”
“You shouldn’t have held the trigger so long,” Pino shouted. “Knebel said short bursts.”
“It almost tore my shoulder off,” Carletto said angrily. “God damn it! Where’s my wine?”
Pino handed him the bottle. Carletto pulled the cork with his teeth, took a drink, and cursed, and cursed again.
“It’s okay,” Pino said. “We’ve got my gun and two extra magazines.”
His friend looked at him. “You’d take the chance, Pino? Let me shoot again?”
“Just hold on this time. And touch the trigger. On/off. No yanking.”
Carletto grinned. “Can you believe that just happened?”
From the backseat, Leyers said, “I have often thought you were an amazing driver, Vorarbeiter. That time last fall when the plane was strafing us? In the Daimler? Your driving that night was why I requested that you take me to the border. It’s why you’re here. If anyone can get me to the Brenner, it’s you.”
Pino heard the words as if they were coming from a man he did not know and did not want to know. He loathed Leyers. He despised the fact that he’d convinced some fool in the US Army that he was a hero. Hans Leyers was not a hero. The man in the backseat was Pharaoh’s slave master, a war criminal, and he deserved to suffer for his actions.
“Thank you, mon général,” Pino said, and left it at that.
“Not at all, Vorarbeiter,” General Leyers said. “I have always believed in giving credit where credit is due.”
The sky started to lighten as they pushed on toward Bolzano. Pino believed it would be his last dawn. It came in rose fingers that fanned across a blue sky framed by snowcapped mountains rising beyond the last forty kilometers of war. Pino didn’t give the danger that lay ahead more than a passing thought. He was thinking about General Leyers, feeling the anticipation again, feeling the adrenaline trickle.
Pino reached over and tugged the wine bottle from between Carletto’s legs, which provoked a mild grumble of protest, for his friend had fallen asleep again.
He took a gulp of the wine, and then another. It has to be somewhere high, he thought. It has to be done in the grandest of God’s cathedrals.
Pino pulled over on the road’s shoulder.
“What’re you doing?” Carletto said, eyes still shut.
“Seeing if there’s a way around Bolzano,” Pino said. “Gimme the map.”
Carletto groaned, found the map, and handed it over.
Pino studied it, tried to commit to memory the major routes he might take to get north of Bolzano and onto the actual Brenner Pass road.
Leyers, meanwhile, used a key to unlock the handcuff from the suitcase and climbed out to take a piss.
“Let’s take off,” Carletto said. “We’ll split the gold.”
“I’ve got other plans,” Pino said, staring at the map.