Nine brutal days later, the US Fifth Army drove the Nazis off the highlands at the Giogo Pass, and the British intensified their assault of the east end of the Gothic Line. The Allies rolled north in a pincer fashion, trying to surround the retreating German Tenth Army before it could re-form.
Pino and Leyers went to high ground near Torraccia, where they watched the town of Coriano and the heavy German defenses around it come under bombardment. More than seven hundred heavy shells were dropped on the town before ground forces attacked it. After two days of gruesome, hand-to-hand combat, Coriano fell.
In all, some fourteen thousand Allied soldiers and sixteen thousand Germans died in the area in a two-week span. Despite the heavy casualties, German Panzer and infantry divisions were able to retreat and re-form along a new battle line to the north and northwest. The rest of Leyers’s Gothic Line held. Even with the information Pino was providing, the Allied advance in Italy again slowed to a crawl due to loss of men and supplies to France and the western front.
Later in the month, machine workers in Milan went on strike. Some sabotaged their equipment as they left their factories. Tank production halted.
General Leyers spent days getting a tank assembly line restarted, only to hear in early October that Fiat’s Mirafiore factory was about to go on strike. They went straight to Mirafiore, an outlying district of Turin. Pino served as interpreter between the general and Fiat management in a room above the assembly line, which was running, but slowly. The tension in the room was thick.
“I need more lorries,” General Leyers said. “More armored cars, and more parts for machines in the field.”
Calabrese, the plant manager, was a fat, sweaty man in a business suit. But he was not afraid to stand up to Leyers.
“My people are not slaves, General,” Calabrese said. “They work for a living—they should be paid for a living.”
“They’ll be paid,” Leyers said. “You have my word.”
Calabrese smiled slowly, unconvincingly. “If it were only that simple.”
“Did I not help you with factory seventeen?” the general asked. “I had orders to take every piece of machinery there and ship it back to Germany.”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it? Factory seventeen was destroyed in an Allied attack.”
Leyers shook his head at Calabrese. “You know how this works. We scratch each other’s backs, we survive.”
“If you say so, General,” Calabrese said.
Leyers took a step closer to the Fiat manager, looked to Pino, and said, “Remind him that I have the power to force every man on that assembly line to enlist in the Organization Todt or risk deportation to Germany.”
Calabrese hardened and said, “Slavery, you mean?”
Pino hesitated, but translated.
“If necessary,” Leyers said. “It is your choice whether to leave this plant in your hands or in mine.”
“I need some assurance beyond yours that we’ll be paid.”
“Do you understand my title? My job? I decide the number of tanks to be built. I decide the number of panties to be sewn. I—”
“You work for Albert Speer,” the Fiat manager said. “You have his authority. Get him on the phone. Speer. If your boss can give me assurances, then we’ll see.”
“Speer? You think that weak ass is my boss?” the general said, looking insulted before asking to use the Fiat manager’s telephone. He was on it for several minutes, having several agitated arguments in German, before he bobbed his head, and said, “Jawohl, mein Führer.”
Pino’s attention shot to the general, as did the attention of every man in the room as Leyers continued to speak into the phone in German. About three minutes into the conversation, he yanked the earpiece away from his head.
The voice of Adolf Hitler in full rant came into the room.
Leyers looked at Pino, smiled coldly, and said, “Tell Signor Calabrese that the führer would like to give him his personal assurances of payment.”
Calabrese looked like he’d rather have grabbed an electrical wire than the phone, but he took it and held the earpiece a few centimeters from his head. Hitler kept on in full oratorical rage, sounding like he was being ripped apart from the insides, probably foaming at the mouth as it was happening. Sweat poured off the Fiat manager’s brow. His hands began to shake, and with them went his resolve.
He shoved the phone back at Leyers and said to Pino, “Tell him to tell Herr Hitler that we accept his assurances.”
“A wise choice,” Leyers said, and then returned to the phone, saying in a soothing voice, “Ja, mein Führer. Ja. Ja. Ja.”
A few moments later he hung up the phone.
Calabrese collapsed in his chair, his suit drenched with sweat. As he set the phone down, General Leyers looked at the manager and said, “Do you understand who I am now?”
The Fiat manager would not look at Leyers or reply. He barely managed a weak, submissive bob of his head.
“Very well, then,” the general said. “I expect production reports twice weekly.”
Leyers handed the valise to Pino, and they left.
It was nearly dark out, but still a nice warm temperature.
“Dolly’s,” the general said, climbing into the Daimler. “And no talking. I need to think.”
“Oui, mon général,” Pino said. “Do you want the top up or down?”
“Leave it down,” he said. “I like the fresh air.”
Pino retrieved the burlap headlamp shields and mounted them before firing up the Daimler and heading east toward Milan with two slits of light to show him the way. But within the hour, the moon rose huge and full in the eastern sky, throwing a mellow glow down on the landscape and making it easier for Pino to follow the route.
“That’s a blue moon,” Leyers said. “The first of two full moons in one month. Or is it the second one? I can never remember.”
It was the first time the general had spoken since leaving Turin.
“The moon looks yellow to me, mon général,” Pino said.
“The term doesn’t refer to the color, Vorarbeiter. Normally in a single season, in this case, autumn, there are three months and three full moons. But this year, tonight, right now, there’s a fourth moon in the three-month cycle, two in one month. Astronomers call it a ‘blue moon’ because it is such a rare occurrence.”
“Oui, mon général,” Pino said, driving a long, straight section of road and looking at the moon rising over the horizon like some omen.
When they came to a section of the road that was flanked on both sides by tall, well-spaced trees and fields beyond them, Pino was no longer thinking about the moon. He was thinking about Adolf Hitler. Had that actually been the führer on the phone? He’d sure sounded crazy enough to be Hitler. And that question Leyers had asked of the Fiat manager: Do you know who I am now?
Pino stole a glance at the silhouette of Leyers riding in the backseat and answered in his mind: I don’t know who you are, but I sure know who you work for now.