The clouds lifted more, revealing the scree fields and the long wall of the Dolomites, the grandest of God’s cathedrals in Italy: limestone spire after limestone spire after limestone spire, eighteen of them soaring thousands of meters toward heaven and looking for all the world like an enormous crown of pale gray thorns.
General Leyers said, “Pull over there. I need to piss again, and I want to take a look.”
Pino felt it was all fated at that point because he’d been getting ready to use that excuse to stop himself. He pulled over by a narrow meadow in a large gap in the spruces that revealed the Dolomites in all their majesty.
It’s a fitting place to make Leyers confess and pay for his sins, Pino thought. Out in the wide open. No favors to call in. No way to hide in the shadows. Alone in God’s church.
Leyers unlocked the handcuff and got out Carletto’s side. He walked off into wet grass and alpine flowers. He stopped at the edge of the cliff there, gazing across the narrow valley and up at the Dolomites.
“Give me the gun,” Pino muttered to Carletto.
“Why?”
“Why do you think?”
Carletto got wide-eyed, but then smiled and handed him the Thompson. The machine gun felt oddly familiar in Pino’s hands. He’d never fired one, but he’d seen them in gangster movies, too. Just do what Major Knebel said. How hard can it be?
“Do it, Pino,” Carletto said. “He’s a Nazi monster. He deserves to die.”
Pino got out, held the Thompson one-handed and behind his legs. He need not have bothered hiding it. General Leyers had his back to Pino, his own legs spread as he pissed over the edge of the cliff and enjoyed the spectacular view.
He thinks he’s a man in charge, Pino thought coldly. He thinks he’s a man in control of his fate. Except he’s not in control anymore. I am.
Pino walked around the back of his uncle’s Fiat and took two steps into the meadow, slightly short of breath, feeling time slow as it had before he entered Castello Sforzesco. But he was fine now, as sure of what he was about to do as he’d been about the depths of Anna’s love. Pharaoh’s slave master was going to pay. Leyers was going to go down on his knees and beg for mercy, and Pino was going to show him none.
General Leyers zipped and took another scan of the stunning scenery. He shook his head in wonder, adjusted his jacket, and turned around to find Pino ten meters away, the Thompson glued to the side of his hip. The Nazi came up short and stiff.
“What is this, Vorarbeiter?” he said, fear seeping into his voice.
“Vengeance,” Pino said calmly, feeling weirdly out of his body. “Italians believe in it, mon général. Italians believe bloodshed is good for the wounded soul.”
Leyers’s eyes darted about. “You’re going to just shoot me down?”
“After what you did? After what I saw? You deserve to be shot down by a hundred guns, a thousand if there was any justice.”
The general held out both of his hands, palms to Pino. “Didn’t you hear your American major? I’m a hero.”
“You’re no hero.”
“And yet, they let me go. And yet, they sent me with you. The Americans.”
“Why?” Pino demanded. “What did you do for them? What favor did you call in? Who did you bribe with gold or information?”
Leyers looked conflicted. “I am not at liberty to tell you what I’ve done, but I can tell you I was valuable to the Allies. I remain valuable to the Allies.”
“You’re worthless!” Pino cried, the emotion bulging up the back of his throat again. “You care about no one but yourself, and you deserve to—”
“That’s not true!” the general shouted. “I care about you, Vorarbeiter. I care about Dolly. I care about your Anna.”
“Anna’s dead!” Pino screamed. “Dolly’s dead, too!”
General Leyers looked stunned as he took a step back. “No. That’s not true. They went to Innsbruck. I’m supposed to meet Dolly . . . tonight.”
“Dolly and Anna died in front of a firing squad three days ago. I saw it happen.”
Leyers was rocked by the blow. “No. I gave orders they were to be . . .”
“No car ever came for them,” Pino said. “They were still there waiting when a mob took them because Dolly was your whore.”
Pino calmly moved the Thompson’s safety to fire.
“But I gave the orders, Vorarbeiter,” Leyers said. “I swear to you I did!”
“But you didn’t make sure the orders were followed!” Pino shouted, throwing the machine gun to his shoulder. “You could have gone to Dolly’s and made sure they’d been moved. But you didn’t. You left them to die. Now I’m going to leave you to die.”
Leyers’s face screwed up in desperation, and he raised his hands as if to ward off the bullets. “Please, Pino, I wanted to go back to Dolly’s apartment. I wanted to check on them, don’t you remember?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do. I asked you to take me there to get some papers I’d left behind, but you arrested me instead. You turned me over to the resistance when I could have been making sure that Dolly and Anna had gotten out of Milan and reached Innsbruck.”
The general looked at him without remorse and added, “If there’s anyone directly responsible for Dolly and Anna’s death, Pino, it’s you.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Pino’s finger was on the trigger.
He’d been planning to shoot General Leyers from the hip, to spray bullets across his abdomen so he’d go down but not die. Leyers would have suffered like that, gut-shot, maybe for a good long while. And Pino had wanted to stand there and watch his every twitch of pain, to relish each moan and pleading.
“Shoot him, Pino!” Carletto yelled. “I don’t care what he’s saying to you. Shoot that Nazi pig!”
He did ask me to take him to Dolly’s that night, Pino thought. But I arrested him instead. I arrested him instead of . . .
Pino felt dizzy and sick to his stomach again. He heard the clown’s aria, and the rifles firing, and saw Anna falling once more.
I did this. I could have helped Anna. But I did everything I could to kill her.
Pino lost all strength then. He let go of the front grip of the machine gun. The Thompson hung at his side. He stared vacantly up at the vastness of God’s grand cathedral and altar of atonement, and wanted to go to bone and dust, to blow away on the wind.
“Shoot him, Pino!” Carletto cried. “What the hell are you doing? Shoot him!”
Pino couldn’t. He felt weaker than a dying old man.
General Leyers nodded curtly to Pino, said icily, “Finish your job, Vorarbeiter. Take me to the Brenner, and we end our war together.”
Pino blinked, unable to think, unable to act.
Leyers gave him a contemptuous look and barked at him, “Now, Pino!”
Pino dumbly followed the general back to the Fiat. He held the rear door open, closing it after Leyers had climbed in. He locked the safety on the Thompson, handed the weapon to Carletto, and got behind the wheel.
In the back, the general was handcuffing himself again to the suitcase.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Carletto said in disbelief.