Upon discharge on August 6, Pino was judged temporarily unfit for duty and told to go home for ten days to recuperate. As he rode in the back of a newspaper lorry that gave him a lift back to Milan on a humid, showery summer day, Pino felt nothing like the happy, purposeful man-child who’d left the Alps. He felt weak and disillusioned.
The Organization Todt uniform had its benefits, though. It got Pino waved through several checkpoints, and he was soon walking the streets of his beloved San Babila. He encountered and greeted several old friends of his parents, people he hadn’t seen in years. They stared at his uniform and the swastika on the armband and acted like they didn’t know him or want to.
Pino was closer to Albanese Luggage than he was to home, so he went there first. Walking down the sidewalk on Via Monte Napoleone, he noticed a Daimler-Benz G4 Offroader, a six-wheel-drive Nazi staff car, parked right in front of the leather store. The hood was up. The driver was under it, working on the engine in the rain.
A Nazi officer wearing a trench coat over his shoulders stepped out of the showroom and said something sharp in German. The driver jerked up and shook his head. The officer looked disgusted and went back inside the leather shop.
Always interested in cars, Pino paused and said, “What’s the problem?”
“What’s it to you?” the driver said.
“Nothing,” Pino said. “I just know a little about engines.”
“And I know next to nothing,” the driver admitted. “She won’t start today, and when she does, she backfires. The idle is horrible, and it bucks between gears.”
Pino thought about that and, mindful of his healing hand, looked around under the hood. The G4 had an eight-cylinder engine. He checked the spark plugs and wire heads, saw them gapped correctly. He checked the air filter, found it filthy, and cleaned it. The fuel filter was also clogged. Then he studied the carburetor and saw the screw heads glinting. Someone had recently made adjustments.
He got a screwdriver from the driver, and with his good hand, fiddled with several of the screws. “Try it.”
The driver got in, turned over the ignition. The engine caught, backfired, and blew a black cough of smoke.
“See?”
Pino nodded, thought of what Alberto Ascari might do, and tuned the carburetor a second time. Hearing the front door to his uncle’s shop open, he said, “Try again.”
This time the engine roared to life. Pino grinned, set the tools down, and shut the hood. When he did, he saw that same German officer standing on the sidewalk beside his uncle Albert and aunt Greta. He’d taken off his trench coat. Pino saw by his insignias that he was a major general.
Aunt Greta said something to the general in German. He spoke back.
“Pino,” his aunt said, “General Leyers would like a word with you.”
Pino swallowed, came around the front of the car, and saluted him with a halfhearted “Heil Hitler,” even as he realized that he and the general wore the same uniform and distinctive armband.
Aunt Greta said, “He wants to see your orders, Pino, and to know where you are positioned in the Organization Todt.”
“Modena,” Pino said, dug in his pocket, and showed the general his papers.
Leyers read them, and then spoke in German.
“He wants to know whether you can drive in your present condition,” Aunt Greta said.
Pino raised his chin, wiggled his fingers, and said, “Very well, sir.”
His aunt translated. The general spoke back. Aunt Greta responded.
Leyers looked at Pino and said, “Do you speak any German?”
“A little,” he said. “I understand more than I can speak.”
“Vous parlez fran?ais, Vorarbeiter?”
Pino said, “Oui, mon général. Très bien.” Yes, my general, very well.
“You are now my driver, then,” the general said. “This other one is an idiot who knows nothing about cars. You are sure you can drive with your hand like that?”
“Yes,” Pino said.
“Then report to Wehrmacht headquarters, the German House, tomorrow morning at oh six forty. You’ll find this car in the motor pool there. I will leave an address in the glove compartment. You will go to that address and pick me up. Do you understand?”
Pino bobbed his head. “Oui, mon général.”
General Leyers nodded stiffly and then climbed in the back of the staff car, saying something sharp. The driver gave Pino a filthy look, and the car rolled away from the curb.
“Come inside, Pino!” Uncle Albert cried. “My God! Get inside!”
“What did he say there to the driver?” Pino asked his aunt as they followed him.
Aunt Greta said, “He called him a jackass good only for latrine duty.”
His uncle shut the shop door, flipped the sign to “Closed,” and shook his fists in triumph. “Pino, do you realize what you’ve done?”
“No,” Pino said. “Not really.”
“That’s Major General Hans Leyers!” Uncle Albert said, sounding giddy.
Aunt Greta said, “His formal title is Generalbevollm?chtigter fur Reichsminister für Rüstung und Kriegsproduktion für Italien. It translates as ‘Plenipotentiary to the Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production in Italy.’”
Seeing Pino didn’t understand, she said, “‘Plenipotentiary’ means ‘full authority.’ It’s given to someone so high ranking that they have the full authority of a Reich Minister, free to do whatever is necessary for the sake of the Nazi war machine.”
Uncle Albert said, “After Field Marshal Kesselring, General Leyers is the most powerful German in Italy. He works with the full authority of Albert Speer, Hitler’s Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production, which puts him two steps from the führer! Whatever Leyers wants to happen, happens. Anything the Wehrmacht needs in Italy, Leyers gets it, or forces our factories to build it, or steals it from us. He makes all of the Nazis’ guns, cannons, ammunition, and bombs here. All the tanks. All the lorries.”
Pino’s uncle paused, staring off at something dawning, and then said, “My God, Pino, Leyers has to know the location of every tank trap, pillbox, land mine, and fortification between here and Rome. He built them, didn’t he? Of course he did. Don’t you see, Pino? You are the great general’s personal driver now. You’ll go where Leyers goes. See what he sees. Hear what he hears. You’ll be our spy inside the German High Command!”
Chapter Fifteen
His head still reeling from his sudden and dramatic change of fate, Pino rose early on August 8, 1944. He ironed his uniform and ate breakfast before his father was even out of bed. As he sipped coffee and ate toast, he remembered that Uncle Albert had decided that no one but he and Aunt Greta should know Pino’s covert role as driver for Major General Hans Leyers.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Uncle Albert said. “Not your father, mother, Mimo. Carletto. Anyone. Telling someone could lead to someone else knowing, and then a third someone else, and soon you’ll have the Gestapo at your door, taking you away for torture. Do you understand?”
“You’ve got to be careful,” Aunt Greta said. “Being a spy is beyond dangerous.”
“Just ask Tullio,” Uncle Albert said.