One guard protested, but Pino said, “General Leyers,” and the protest died.
He walked over to the closest man, ladled him out some water. He was so drawn down his cheekbones and jaw stood out, making his face look like a skull. But he cocked back his head, opened his mouth, and Pino poured the water straight down his throat. When he was finished, Pino moved to the next man, and the next.
Few of them looked at him at all. As Pino was dipping for water, the seventh man stared at the rocks at his feet and muttered curses in Italian, calling him vile names.
“I’m Italian, jackass,” Pino said. “Do you want the water or not?”
The man looked up. Pino saw how young he was. They could have been the same age, though he was twisted and aged beyond what Pino could fathom.
“You speak like a Milanese, but you wear a Nazi uniform,” he croaked.
“It’s complicated,” Pino said. “Drink the water.”
He drank a sip, and then gulped it down just as eagerly as the other seven had.
“Who are you?” Pino said when he’d finished. “Who are these others?”
The man looked at Pino as if he were studying a bug. “My name is Antonio,” he said. “And we’re slaves. Every last one of us.”
Chapter Sixteen
Slaves? Pino thought, feeling repulsion and pity at the same time.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “Are you Jewish?”
“There are some Jews here, but not me,” Antonio said. “I was with the resistance. Fought in Turin. The Nazis captured me, sentenced me to this instead of the firing squad. The others are Poles, Slavs, Russians, French, Belgians, Norwegians, and Danes. The letters sewn on their chests tell you where they’re from. In every country the Nazis invade and conquer, they take all able-bodied men and send them into slavery. They call it ‘forced labor,’ or some such bullshit, but it’s slavery any way you look at it. How do you think the Nazis built so many things so fast? All the coastal fortifications in France? And the big defenses down south? Hitler’s got a slave army, that’s how, just like the pharaohs did in Egypt, and—Jesus, son of Joseph, it’s Pharaoh’s slave master himself!”
Antonio whispered this last bit, looking in fear past Pino deeper into the tunnel. Pino turned. General Leyers was coming at them, staring at the water bucket and ladle in his hand. Leyers barked at the guards in German. One jumped to take back the water.
“You are my driver,” he said as he stomped past Pino. “You do not serve the laborers.”
“I’m sorry, mon général,” Pino said, hurrying after him. “They just looked thirsty, and no one was giving them water. That’s just . . . well, stupid.”
Leyers spun around in his tracks, got in Pino’s face. “What is stupid?”
“Keeping water from a working man makes him weak,” Pino stammered. “You want them to work faster, you give them more water and food.”
The general stood there, nose to nose with Pino, peering into his eyes as if trying to see into his soul. It took every bit of Pino’s spirit not to look away.
“We have policies about the laborers,” Leyers said curtly at last, “and food is hard to come by these days. But I’ll see what I can do about the water.”
Before Pino could blink, the general had turned and marched on. Pino’s knees felt wobbly as he followed Leyers out into the bright, hot summer day. When they reached the Daimler, the general asked for the notepad. He tore out the pages Pino had written on and put them in his briefcase.
“Lake Garda, Gargnano, north of Salò,” Leyers said, and started in again on the seemingly inexhaustible number of folders and reports that came out of his valise.
Pino had been to Salò once, but couldn’t remember how to get there, so he consulted a detailed map of northern Italy that the general had in the glove compartment. He found Gargnano about twenty kilometers north of Salò on the west shore of the lake, and plotted his route.
He fired up the staff car, and they went rumbling back across the pasture. The air was shimmering and hot when they reached Bergamo. They stopped at a Wehrmacht encampment for petrol, food, and water shortly after noon.
Leyers ate as he worked in the backseat and somehow managed not to get a scrap of food on him. Pino turned off the highway and headed north along the western shore of Lake Garda. There wasn’t even the hint of a breeze. The water had a mirror finish that seemed to reflect and magnify the Alps towering above the lake’s north end.
They passed through fields of golden flowers and by a church ten centuries old. He glanced in the mirror at the general and realized he hated Leyers. He was a Nazi slave driver. He wants Italy destroyed, and then rebuilt in Hitler’s image. He works for Hitler’s architect, for God’s sake.
Part of Pino wanted to find a secluded spot, get out, pull his gun, and kill the man. He would head for the hills, join one of the Garibaldi partisan units. The powerful General Leyers dead and gone. That would be something, wouldn’t it? That would change the war, wouldn’t it? At some level?
But Pino knew almost instantly in his gut that he was no assassin. He did not have the ability to kill a man, even a man like—
“Put up my flags before you reach Salò,” Leyers said from the backseat.
Pino pulled over and rehung the flags on the front fenders so they snapped and popped as they drove through Salò, and continued on. It was oppressively hot. The lake water looked so inviting, Pino wanted to pull over and dive in with his uniform and bandages on.
Leyers seemed unaffected by the temperature. He’d taken off his jacket, but did not loosen his tie. When they reached Gargnano, Leyers directed him away from the lake through a series of tight streets to a gated estate on a hill guarded by Fascist Black Shirt commandos carrying machine pistols. Taking one look at the Daimler and the red Nazi flags, they opened the gate.
A driveway curved around to a sprawling villa covered in vines and flowers. There were more Black Shirts there. One gestured for Pino to park. He did, got out, and opened the rear door. General Leyers climbed out, and the Fascist soldiers acted like they’d been stuck with a cattle prod, going ramrod straight and looking anywhere but at him.
“Stay with the car, mon général?” Pino said.
“No, you come with me,” he said. “I didn’t arrange for a translator, and this will be quickly done.”
Pino had no idea what Leyers was talking about, but he followed him past the Black Shirts to an archway. Stone steps climbed toward a villa with blooming garden beds on either side. They reached a colonnade along the front of the villa and walked down it toward a stone terrace.
General Leyers walked around the corner onto the terrace, came up short, cracked his heels together, and took off his hat before dropping his head in studied deference.
“Duce.”
Pino walked up behind the Nazi, wide-eyed in disbelief.