Beneath a Scarlet Sky

A Black Shirt brushed past Pino as he called, “Bring them out.”


The guards split into two groups of four and moved to open doors set in the walls of the prison wings. Prisoners began to shuffle out. Pino moved, trying to see the men better. Some of them looked like they couldn’t handle another step. Those that looked fitter had beards and such long hair that he didn’t know if he’d recognize anyone he knew.

Then, from the left-hand door, a tall, imposing young man appeared in the yard. Pino recognized him as Barbareschi, the seminarian, aide to Cardinal Schuster and forger for the resistance. Barbareschi must have been caught and arrested again. Though other men shuffled into a loose formation, staring fearfully at the Black Shirt commandos, Barbareschi went defiantly to the front row.

“How many?” Colonel Rauff said.

“One forty-eight,” one of the guards yelled back.

“Two more,” Rauff said.

The last man out the right-hand door tossed his head to get the hair from his eyes. “Tullio!” Pino gasped softly.

Tullio Galimberti didn’t hear him. Over the sounds of the last men moving into place, no one did. Tullio trudged out of sight behind the lorry. The Black Shirt commander stepped forward. General Leyers confronted Colonel Rauff and the SS captain. Pino could see and hear them arguing. Rauff finally gestured with the riding crop at the Black Shirt and said something that shut Leyers down.

The Fascist commander pointed to his far left and shouted, “You there, start counting off in tens. Every tenth man step forward.”

After a moment’s pause, the man farthest left said, “One.”

“Two,” said the second.

It went on down the line until one of the weaker-looking men said, “Ten,” and stepped uncertainly forward.

“One,” said the eleventh man.

“Two,” said the twelfth.

A moment later, Barbareschi said, “Eight.”

The second tenth man stepped forward, and soon the third. They were joined by twelve more, all of them standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the assembled prisoners. The count still ongoing, Pino stood on his tiptoes, remembering some of the conversation General Leyers had had with Cardinal Schuster.

To his horror, he heard Tullio say, “Ten,” becoming the fifteenth man.

“You fifteen in the lorry,” a Black Shirt said. “The rest of you return to your cells.”

Pino didn’t know what to do, torn between wanting to go to General Leyers and to Tullio. But if he went to Leyers and admitted Tullio was his close friend, and Tullio was in San Vittore for spying for the resistance, wouldn’t he begin to suspect—?

“What are you doing in here, Vorarbeiter?” Leyers demanded.

Pino had been so mesmerized by the unfolding scene that he’d lost track of Leyers, who now stood beside him, glaring.

“I’m sorry, mon général,” Pino said. “I thought you might need a translator?”

“Go to the car, now,” Leyers said. “Bring it up after this lorry exits.”

Pino saluted, then ran out through the prison gates to the Daimler and climbed in. The lorry parked outside San Vittore began to roll. Pino started the staff car just as the first sun hit the prison’s upper walls and around the arch of the gate. In the shadows below, the lorry bearing Tullio and the other fourteen emerged and followed.

Pino drove up to the gate. The general didn’t bother waiting for him to open the door. He climbed into the back, his face twisted in barely controlled fury.

“Mon général?” Pino asked after they’d sat there a moment.

“The hell with it,” Leyers said. “Follow them, Vorarbeiter.”



The Daimler quickly caught up to the lorries as they lumbered through the city. Pino wanted to ask the general what was happening. He wanted to tell him about Tullio, but didn’t dare.

As he drove around the piazza in front of the Duomo, he glanced up at the highest spire on the cathedral, saw it embraced by the sun while the gargoyles on the lower flanks of the church remained in the deepest of dark shadows. The sight troubled him deeply.

“Mon général?” Pino said. “I know you said not to speak, but can you tell me what is going to happen to the men in that lorry?”

Leyers didn’t answer. Pino glanced in the mirror, feared a tongue-lashing, but found the general looking coldly at him.

Leyers said, “Your ancestors invented what’s going to happen.”

“Mon général?”

“The ancient Romans called it ‘decimation,’ Vorarbeiter. They used it throughout their empire. The problem with decimation is that the tactic never works for long.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Decimation functions psychologically,” Leyers explained. “It’s designed to quell the threat of revolt through abject fear. But historically, using brutality against civilians in reprisal breeds more hatred than obedience.”

Brutality? Pino thought. Reprisals? The violent acts Leyers warned the cardinal about? What were they going to do to Tullio and the others? Would telling General Leyers that Tullio was his close friend help or—?

In the streets parallel to them, he heard the blaring of loudspeakers. The man spoke in Italian, calling “all concerned citizens” to Piazzale Loreto.

Two companies of Black Shirt Fascists had cordoned off the rotary. But they waved the lorries and General Leyers’s car through. The lorries drove toward Beltramini’s Fresh Fruits and Vegetables, stopped just shy of it, backed up, and turned so the vehicles’ backs faced the blank common wall where several buildings joined.

“Drive on around the rotary,” Leyers said.

As Pino drove past the fruit stand, the awning still torn, he flashed on the bomb going off there. He was shocked to see Carletto coming out of the shop, staring at the lorries, and then starting to look his way.

Pino hit the accelerator and got quickly out of sight. Three-quarters of the way around the rotary, Leyers ordered Pino to pull into the Esso station, the one with the big iron girder system above the petrol pumps. An attendant came out nervously.

“Tell him to fill the tank and that we are going to park here,” Leyers said.

Pino told the man, who looked at the general’s flags and scurried away.

With the loudspeakers still calling, the people of Milan came at a trickle of a curious few at first, but then the flow of new arrivals built to a steady stream of pedestrians, coming into Piazzale Loreto from all directions.

Black Shirts put up wooden barriers from the fruit stand west thirty meters and to either side of the lorries heading north forty-five meters. As a result, there was a large open space around the lorries with a crowd building at the fences.

Pino soon figured there were a thousand people, maybe more. Halfway between the 150 meters that separated the Daimler from Tullio’s lorry, a second Nazi staff car appeared, pulled to the edge of the rotary, and stopped. From this distance and angle, Pino could not tell who was in the car. More people streamed into the piazza, so many that they soon blocked the view.

Mark Sullivan's books