They were at the chancellery until dusk. General Wolff left. General Leyers and Cardinal Schuster discussed ways for the Germans and the resistance to trade prisoners.
It was only outside with the setting of the sun that Pino remembered again that he was charged with taking Leyers prisoner before midnight. He wished the partisans had given him specific instructions beyond an address where he was to take the general. Then again, they’d given him responsibility, a task, just like they’d given Mimo the task of sabotaging tanks. The details were his to work out.
But as he reached the staff car, Pino was still trying to decide how best to arrest the general, given that he always sat directly behind him in the backseat.
Opening the rear door to the Fiat, Pino saw Leyers’s valise there and cursed to himself. It had been there the entire time they’d been inside. He could have excused himself and spent time looking at the files in that valise, probably the ones Leyers had saved from the fires.
General Leyers climbed in without glancing his way and said, “The Hotel Regina.”
Pino thought about pulling his Walther and putting Leyers under arrest right then and there, but, unsure of himself, he shut the door and got behind the wheel. Due to all the German vehicles jamming the narrow streets, he had to take a convoluted route to Gestapo headquarters.
Near Piazza San Babila, he saw a German lorry filled with armed soldiers stopped at the exit to a parking garage a half-block away. Someone was standing in the street aiming a machine pistol at the windshield of the Nazi lorry. Pino was stunned when the gunman turned.
“Mimo,” he gasped, slamming on the brakes.
“Vorarbeiter?” General Leyers said.
Pino ignored him and climbed out. He was no more than one hundred meters from his brother, who was waving his gun at the Germans and shouting, “All you Nazi swine lay down your weapons, drop them out of the lorry, and then all of you, facedown on the sidewalk there.”
The next second seemed like an eternity.
When no Germans moved, Mimo touched off a burst of fire. Lead bullets pinged off the side of the parking garage. In the ringing silence that followed, the Germans in the back of the lorry began to throw down their guns.
“Vorarbeiter!” Leyers said, and Pino was surprised to find he’d gotten out of the car as well and was watching the scene over his shoulder. “Forget the Hotel Regina. Take me to Dolly’s instead. I just realized I left some important papers there, and I want to—”
Emboldened by Mimo and without a thought, Pino drew his pistol, spun around, and stuck it into Leyers’s gut. He enjoyed the look of shock in the general’s eye.
“What is this, Vorarbeiter?” Leyers said.
“Your arrest, mon général,” Pino said.
“Vorarbeiter Lella,” he said firmly. “You will remove that weapon, and we will forget this happened. You will drive me to Dolly’s. I will get my papers and—”
“I won’t drive you anywhere, slave master!”
The general took that like a slap to the face. His expression twisted with rage.
“How dare you address me like this! I could have you shot for treason!”
“I’ll take treason against you and Hitler any day,” Pino said, equally angry. “Turn around, and hands behind your head, mon général, or I will shoot you in the knees.”
Leyers sputtered but saw Pino was serious and did as he was told. Pino reached around and took the pistol Leyers carried when he was in business clothes. He pocketed it, waved the Walther, and said, “Get in.”
Leyers moved toward the rear, but Pino shoved him instead into the driver’s seat.
With his gun aimed at General Leyers’s head, Pino climbed into the backseat and shut the door. He put his forearm on the valise, as Leyers often did, and smiled, liking this role reversal, feeling like he’d earned it, that now, at last, there would be justice done.
He looked past Leyers through the windshield. His brother had twenty Nazi soldiers on their bellies, hands behind their heads. Mimo was unloading and stacking their weapons on the opposite sidewalk.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Vorarbeiter,” Leyers said. “I have money, lots of it.”
“German money?” Pino snorted. “It will be worthless, if it isn’t already. Turn the car around now, and as you have told me so often, don’t talk unless you’re spoken to.”
The general paused, but then started the car and did a three-point turn. When he did, Pino rolled down the back window, yelling, “I’ll see you at home, Mimo!”
His brother looked up in wonder, realized who was yelling at him, and threw his fist over his head.
“Uprising, Pino!” Mimo shouted. “Uprising!”
Pino felt chills go through him as Leyers drove them out of San Babila and toward the address Mimo had passed along from the partisan commanders. He had no idea why he was supposed to bring Leyers to that specific address, and he didn’t care. He was no longer in the shadows. He was no longer a spy. He was part of the rebellion now, and it made him feel righteous as he barked directions and turns at the general, who drove stoop shouldered.
Ten minutes into the ride, Leyers said, “I have more than German money.”
“I don’t care,” Pino said.
“I have gold. We can go and—”
Pino poked Leyers’s head with the pistol barrel. “I know you have gold. Gold you stole from Italy. Gold you murdered four of your slaves over, and I don’t want it.”
“Murdered?” Leyers said. “No, Vorarbeiter, that’s not—”
“I hope you face a firing squad for what you’ve done.”
General Leyers stiffened. “You can’t mean that.”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear another word.”
Leyers seemed resigned to his fate then, and drove sullenly through the city as Pino entertained a voice in his head that said, Don’t miss your chance. Exact some punishment. Have him pull over. Shoot him in the leg, at least. Let him go to his fate wounded and in agony. Isn’t that the way you’re supposed to enter hell?
The general rolled down his window at one point and put his head out as if to smell his last moments of freedom. But when they rolled up to the gate at the address on Via Broni, Leyers stared straight ahead.
A gunman wearing a red scarf came out the gate. Pino told him he’d been ordered to arrest the general and was there to turn him over.
“We’ve been waiting,” the guard said, and called for the gate to be opened.
Leyers drove into a compound and parked. He opened the door and tried to get out. Another partisan grabbed him, spun him around, and handcuffed him. The first gunman took the valise.
Leyers looked back at Pino with disgust but said nothing before he was dragged off through a door. It slammed shut behind him, and Pino realized he’d never told the general he was a spy.
“What happens to him?” Pino asked.
“He’ll go on trial, probably be hanged,” the guard with the valise said.
Pino felt acid in his throat as he said, “I want to testify against him.”
“I’m sure you’ll get your chance. Car keys?”