Was du redest ist Verrat!
He kept repeating the phrase silently as he opened the door for a very unhappy General Leyers, who looked ready to bite off a kitten’s head. Pino climbed into the front seat, feeling the rage coming off the German like waves.
“Mon général?”
“Gargnano,” Leyers said. “The insane asylum.”
Pino drove the car through the gates of Mussolini’s villa above Lake Garda, fearing what they might encounter. When General Leyers announced himself at the front door, one of Il Duce’s aides told him that it was not a good time.
“Of course it’s not a good time,” Leyers snapped. “That’s why I’m here. Take me to him, or I’ll have you shot.”
The aide became irate. “Under whose authority?”
“Adolf Hitler’s. I am here under the führer’s direct orders.”
The aide remained furious, but nodded. “Very well, if you’ll follow me.”
He led them to the library and opened the door slightly. Despite the dwindling day, there were no lights on yet in Mussolini’s library. The only light came in through the French doors. The pale beam cut diagonally through the room, revealing books strewn everywhere, and papers, and broken glass, and furniture busted and turned over.
In the aftermath of what had to have been a colossal tantrum, Il Duce sat behind his desk, elbows on top, brick jaw in his hands, staring straight down as if looking through the desktop at the ruins of his life. Claretta Petacci lounged in an easy chair in front of Mussolini, smoke lazing from a cigarette in one hand while the other clamped an empty wineglass to her bosom. To Pino, it looked like they could have been frozen in those positions for hours.
“Duce?” General Leyers said, moving deeper into the shambles of a room.
If Mussolini heard him he didn’t show it, just stared dully at the top of his desk while Leyers and Pino walked closer and closer. The dictator’s mistress heard them, though, and looked over her shoulder with a wan smile of relief.
“General Leyers,” Petacci slurred. “It’s been a trying day for poor Beno. I hope you’re not going to add to his troubles?”
The general said, “Duce and I need to have a frank talk.”
“About what?” Mussolini asked, head still down.
Closer now, Pino could see the puppet dictator was staring at a map of Italy.
“Duce?” Leyers began again.
Mussolini raised his head, glowered bizarrely at the general, and said, “We conquered Ethiopia, Leyers. And now the Allied swine have brought Negroes north into the land of Tuscany. Negroes rule the streets of Bologna and Rome, too! It is a thousand times better for me to die now than to live. Don’t you think?”
Leyers hesitated after Pino translated, and said, “Duce, I can’t begin to advise you on such things.”
Mussolini’s eyes wandered as if searching for something long lost, and then brightened as if enchanted by some new and shiny object.
“Is it true?” the puppet dictator asked. “Does dear Hitler have a secret superweapon up his sleeve? A missile, a rocket, a bomb like we’ve never seen before? I hear the führer is just waiting to use the superweapon when his enemies have drawn close enough to wipe them all out with a series of devastating strikes.”
Leyers hesitated again, then said, “There are rumors of a secret weapon, Duce.”
“Aha!” Mussolini said, springing to his feet with a finger held high. “I knew it! Didn’t I say so, Clara?”
“You did, Beno,” his mistress replied. She was pouring herself another drink.
Mussolini was as high now as he’d been low. He strode around the desk, full of excitement, almost gleeful.
“It’s like the V-2 rocket, isn’t it?” he said. “Only so much more powerful, capable of leveling an entire city, isn’t that right? Only you Germans have the scientific and engineering brainpower to do such a thing!”
Leyers said nothing for several moments, then nodded. “Thank you, Duce. I appreciate the compliment, but I was sent to ask what your plans are, should things worsen.”
That seemed to confuse Mussolini. “But there’s a great rocket bomb. How could things worsen in the long run if we have the great rocket bomb?”
“I believe in planning for contingencies,” Leyers said.
“Oh,” the dictator said, and his eyes started to drift.
Claretta Petacci said, “Valtellina, Beno.”
“That’s it,” Mussolini said, focused again. “If we are pushed, I have twenty thousand troops who will follow me to the Valtellina Valley north of here, right up against Switzerland. They will defend me and my fellow Fascists until Herr Hitler launches his rocket of maximum destruction!”
Mussolini was grinning, looking off and reveling in anticipation of that wondrous day.
General Leyers said nothing for several moments, and Pino glanced at him sidelong. Did Hitler have a superweapon? Was he going to use it on the Allies if they got close enough to Berlin? If Leyers knew one way or the other, he wasn’t showing it.
The general clicked his heels and bowed. “Thank you, Duce. That’s all we wished to know.”
“You’ll alert us, Leyers?” Mussolini said. “When Hitler is going to use his magnificent rocket bomb?”
“I’m sure you’ll be among the first to know,” General Leyers said, turning.
He stopped in front of the dictator’s mistress. “Will you, too, go to Valtellina?”
Claretta Petacci smiled as if she’d long ago accepted her fate. “I loved my Beno when times were good, General. I’ll love him even more when they’re bad.”
Later that day, before describing the visit to Mussolini, Pino repeated the few words he’d heard below the window at the villa in the hills east of Lake Garda.
“Was du redest ist Verrat.”
Aunt Greta sat upright on the couch. She’d been living at the apartment since Uncle Albert was taken, and helping Baka with the daily radio transmissions.
She said, “Are you sure it was Vietinghoff who said that?”
“No, I’m not sure, but the voice was angry, and right afterward, I saw the field marshal leave the villa very angry. What does it mean?”
“Was du redest ist Verrat,” she said. “‘What you suggest is treason.’”
“Treason?” Pino said.
His father sat forward. “You mean like a coup against Hitler?”
“I would have to assume so, if they were talking to Vietinghoff in that way,” Aunt Greta said. “And Wolff was there? And Leyers?”
“And others. But I never saw them. They arrived before we did, and left afterward.”
“They see the writing on the wall,” his father said. “They’re scheming to survive.”
“The Allies should know that,” Pino said. “And about Mussolini and the superweapon he thinks Hitler has.”
“What does Leyers think about this superweapon?” Aunt Greta said.