Driven by northeast winds, temperatures in northern Italy dropped steadily through November 1944. British Field Marshal Alexander broadcast a plea to the ragtag Italian resistance forces known as GAPs to form into guerilla armies and to attack the Germans. Instead of bombs, leaflets fluttered from the skies onto the streets of Milan, urging citizens to join the fight. The pace of resistance assaults soared. The Nazis were being harassed at almost every turn.
In December, snow buried the Alps. Storm after storm squalled down out of the mountains, blanketed Milan, and fell south as far as Rome. Leyers and Pino began a frenzied series of tours of the defensive fortifications along the Gothic Line in the Apennine Mountains.
They found German soldiers huddling around fires in smoky cement machine gun nests, at cannon installations, and under makeshift canvas tarps. More blankets, OT officers told Leyers. More food. More heavy wool jackets and socks, too. As the bitterness of winter set in, every Nazi soldier on the heights was enduring extreme hardship.
General Leyers seemed genuinely moved by their plight, and he pushed himself and Pino harder to see to their needs. Leyers commandeered blankets from a mill in Genoa, and wool socks and jackets from factories in Milan and Turin. He emptied markets in all three cities, adding to the misery of the Italians.
By the middle of December, Leyers was determined to have more cattle seized, butchered, and delivered to his troops on Christmas Day, along with cases and cases of wine stolen from wineries all over Tuscany.
Early on the morning of Friday, December 22, 1944, Leyers ordered Pino once again to drive to the Monza train station. The general left the Fiat with his valise and told Pino to wait. It was broad daylight. Pino couldn’t follow Leyers for fear of being spotted. When the general returned, the valise looked heavier.
“The Swiss border crossing above Lugano,” Leyers said.
Pino drove, believing the valise now carried one if not two bars of gold, maybe more. When they reached the border, the general told Pino to wait. It was snowing hard when Leyers crossed into Switzerland and vanished into the storm. Eight bone-numbing hours later, Leyers returned and ordered Pino to drive back to Milan.
“You sure he took gold to Switzerland?” Uncle Albert said.
“What else would he have done in the train yard?” Pino asked. “Bury the bodies? After six weeks?”
“You’re right. I’m . . .”
“What’s the matter?” Pino asked.
“The Nazi radio hunters, they are getting good at their jobs, too good. They triangulate in on our broadcasts much faster. Baka has almost been caught twice in the past month. And you know the penalty.”
“What are you going to do?”
Aunt Greta stopped cleaning dishes in the sink, turned to look at her husband, who was studying his nephew. “Albert,” she said, “I think it’s unfair of you to even ask. The boy’s done enough. Let someone else try.”
“We’ve got no one else,” his uncle said.
“You haven’t even discussed this with Michele.”
“I was going to have Pino do it.”
“Do what?” Pino said, frustrated.
His uncle hesitated before saying, “The apartment below your parents’?”
“The Nazi VIP place?”
“Yes. Now, you’re going to think this is a strange idea.”
Aunt Greta said, “I thought it was nuts the first time you suggested it, Albert, and now, the more I think about it, it’s downright insane.”
“I think I’ll let Pino decide that.”
Pino yawned, then said, “I’m going home to sleep in two minutes whether you tell me what you want me to do or not.”
“There’s a Nazi shortwave in the apartment below your father’s place,” Uncle Albert said. “A cable runs out the window and up to a radio antenna mounted on the outer wall of your parents’ terrace.”
Pino remembered but remained confused, still not sure where this was going.
“So,” his uncle continued, “I think to myself that if the German radio hunters are looking for illegal radios broadcasting from illegal antennas, we might fool them by connecting our illegal radio to the Nazis’ legal antenna. You see? We splice into their cable, attach our radio, and send out our signal over a known German antenna. When the radio hunters converge, they’ll say, ‘It’s one of us.’ And walk away.”
“If they know no one is on the Nazi radio, couldn’t they come up to the terrace?”
“We’ll wait until they are done broadcasting, and then piggyback our signal right when they sign off.”
“What would happen if the radio was found in our apartment?” Pino asked.
“Not good.”
“Does Papa know what you’re thinking?”
“First I want you to tell Michele what you’re really doing in German uniform.”
Even though his parents had ordered him to join the Organization Todt, Pino had seen how his father reacted to his swastika armband, how he looked away, his lips curled with shame.
Though the chance to tell his father the truth cheered him, Pino said, “I thought the fewer people who knew, the better.”
“I did say that. But if Michele knows the kind of risks you are taking for the resistance, he will accept my plan.”
Pino thought about it all. “Let’s say Papa agrees. How are you going to get the radio up there? Past the lobby guards, I mean.”
Uncle Albert smiled. “That’s where you come in, my boy.”
That evening in the family apartment, Pino’s father stared at him.
“You’re really a spy?”
Pino nodded. “We couldn’t tell you, but now we have to.”
Michele shook his head, and then motioned Pino over and hugged him awkwardly.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Pino swallowed his emotions and said, “I know.”
Michele released his embrace and looked up at Pino with shining eyes. “You’re a brave man. Braver than I could ever be, and capable in ways I never would have guessed. I’m proud of you, Pino. I wanted you to know that, no matter what may happen to us before this war’s over.”
It meant the world to Pino, and he choked, “Papa—”
His father put his hand on Pino’s cheek when he couldn’t go on. “If you can get the radio past the sentries, I’ll keep it here. I want to do my part.”
“Thank you, Papa,” Pino said finally. “I’ll wait until after you’ve gone to see Mama and Cicci for Christmas. That way you can deny knowing anything about it.”
Michele’s face fell. “Your mother will be upset.”
“I can’t come, Papa. General Leyers needs me.”
“Can I tell Mimo about you if he gets in touch?”
“No.”
“But he thinks—”
“I know what he thinks, and I’ll just have to live with that until a better time,” Pino said. “When did you last hear from him?”
“Three months ago? He said he was going south to Piedmont for training. I tried to stop him, but there was no getting in your brother’s bullheaded way. He climbed out your window onto the ledge and got out. Six stories up. Who would do such a thing?”
Pino flashed on his younger self using a similar escape route and tried not to smile as he said, “Domenico Lella. The one and only. I miss him.”
Michele wiped his eyes. “God only knows what that boy’s gotten himself into.”
Late the next evening, after another long day in General Leyers’s car, Pino was sitting in Dolly’s kitchen eating Anna’s excellent risotto and staring off into space.