Stefano’s heart pounds against the walls of his chest. He does not like the mention of his mother, and Erich knows this, too. He has probably taunted countless prisoners with the mention of family.
“I will tell you honestly. That I don’t know if that is true. I don’t know if Stefano is your real name and whether you fought originally on the side of Germany. That much I can’t tell since I no longer have access to intelligence. But I can tell you that the other things you said are a lie. You never heard of my sister, Claudine, who was kept locked in a cell of her own, away from other prisoners. When she tried to escape one day, push past the guards to reach her lover in another cell, she was taken away and gassed in a truck.” He says this coldly, faster, as if he must speak this way or break.
“I’m sorry about your sister.”
“It is what happens to traitors,” he says, but he has turned away to say this so that Stefano can’t see his face.
Stefano scans the room, the window, assessing the height from the ground. “I have told you everything. There is very little to tell. I was a language student before the war. When I get back to Italy, I hope to pick up where I left off.”
“I can’t let you go. You have been given orders to find me. Perhaps you gave the orders yourself.”
“I promise that you will never see me again. I will go away, and I don’t care what you did before. Just let me go . . .”
“Where did you get the photo of Monique?”
“From Rosalind’s house. I stole it.”
“That photo is not from Rosalind’s. She would know. That is a photo you have taken from elsewhere. And why did you give the photo to Georg?”
There is silence between them, gray eyes versus black. Stefano believes they are equally matched in cunning and physical strength. Though only one must win. Stefano can feel the small singular blade inside the bandage on his hand. It has taken him some time, but he has managed to hook the edge of it out with his fingernail, and now he has it between his fingers. It is a sharp-edged blade that he rubs between his fingers to better his grip. He can feel the thick slippery fluid on the tips of his fingers where he has cut himself lifting the razor. It will make it more difficult. He attempts to cut the rope one thread at a time. He must keep Erich talking.
“I gave it to him when he ran to the river hut. I thought it might make him happy. He kept mentioning her.”
“And why did you have it? Where did you get it?”
“I met Monique in Italy.”
1944–1945
Stefano and Fedor went to the mountains in the North to join forces with the partisans—some who had defected early from the Russian army when they were on the side of the Axis and other Italian members of the resistance. Fedor had plans to eventually seek out his brother-in-law, who was a general in the Russian army.
Stefano had asked among the resistance where Nina and Nicolo were taken, but no one held much hope that they were taken anywhere. They had nowhere to put babies in prison. It was unlikely they had lived. In Trieste, where she was probably taken, many were being killed on arrival.
The resistance was fierce. They freed people from a prison when they made a diversionary bomb. They helped some on the Germans’ wanted list escape through Switzerland and others to the Allies in the South, sending them with valuable information about the movements of the armies. They blew up army vehicles, they stole arms, they burned down an automobile factory, and they fired on an SS station in Asolo. They covered the North extensively.
The Germans were raging, and as a show of force, they burned down farms in retaliation and executed people who had nothing to do with the resistance. The SS were ruthless, which drove the partisans to work harder. Stefano had become deft at killing. He had choked and garroted to death soldiers manning checkpoints and others on duty. He had become ruthless without noticing. He was hardened to the sight of death. He did not expect to live out the war that was close to over. He would fill his last days with retribution.
It was during the stealing of firearms that he was shot in the back of the leg and another member was killed. Fedor had killed the SS member who shot Stefano and had carried his friend across his back. Fedor had many contacts, and Stefano was taken first to a house of one of the resistance members in Castelfranco, where he stayed under the floorboards for several hours, then was transported by car elsewhere to a location in Verona until they could find a safer location for his recuperation.
“There is a new member working with our group now,” said Fedor as he helped Stefano through the doorway. “I am told she knows you. She says she can help. She has helped other partisan groups also. She knows where you can stay, where no one will look.”
Teresa greeted them, making the sign of the cross. “My brother,” she said. Stefano heard these words, and they ate at him, stirred up emotions he did not want to feel, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
“We have to move him,” she said, “to somewhere safer. I know where he can be treated, where no one will look.”
Stefano’s sister tried to speak with her brother, but Stefano turned his head, closed his eyes, not from the pain, the nausea, or the amount of blood he had lost, but because he was not ready to forgive her. She knew this. She whispered that she was grateful they had found each other. She had believed he was dead. She went to the church sometime after he had left there, and a priest told her the story of Nina and their mother, and of Stefano’s survival. She prayed every day that he was safe, that Nina would be found. Because of her mistake, she made a decision then that she would work for the same cause. She wished every day it had been her and not Nina or Julietta.
As Teresa was leaving, he had glanced up and seen the tears in her eyes, the sincerity and pain. She was led away. No one had fully understood their complicated relationship, and no one dared ask. Stefano had a reputation for an explosive temper. Then strangers, mostly women, helped him climb into a trolley to wheel him along dark lanes, and Fedor and one of the women helped him up several flights of stairs. They left him on a couch in a room of a nice apartment with high ceilings and arched windows that went to the floor overlooking a marketplace filled with light. In the distance were olive trees stitched onto hills in seams. Fedor said he had to go get the doctor. That he would be back.
There was a smell of women’s floral-scented perfume, and there were photos of strangers, including a man in a Nazi uniform. Stefano tried to stand, but the pain in his leg made it impossible. She entered then, wearing only a nightgown. She had wavy brown hair, and eyes a dark blue, her skin pale, and a very small mole near her lip, on a face that was otherwise unblemished or adorned with makeup. She had been woken in the middle of the night, but she did not seem concerned about the disturbance.
She put her hand on his arm.
“I am Noelle,” she said, in a husky voice that he wasn’t expecting. Noelle was Monique’s code name in the resistance. “They tell me your name is Cosimo.”
Stefano had heard her name before; she was the one who passed on information, who had connections and money. He caught sight of another photo, a wedding, of Monique standing next to the man in a Nazi uniform, and her face staring out, not quite smiling but pensive, already planning, he thought at the time.
“That is you?”
“Yes.”
There was a soft knock at the door before he had time to question her further.
Fedor and another woman walked in.