Lombardelli agreed with Rick when Genevieve arrived at the hospital and explained everything to him. She stifled a yawn after he took her to his office to call Bari’s OSS headquarters for reinforcements. “Someone should be here soon,” Lombardelli said.
Genevieve nodded, hoping Rick was safe. “Do you suppose Ercolani was looking for you?”
Lombardelli twirled a pen in his fingers for a few seconds before answering. “I don’t suppose I’m off his list of people to eliminate.”
“You’d better have OSS send a bodyguard for you, then.”
The twirling stopped. “And one for you.”
“For me?”
“He saw you in the alley, and he knows someone your height met Giacomo. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for him to assume you’re the link between Giacomo and me.”
Genevieve sank into a nearby chair. “Won’t you arrest him?”
“It would be more useful if we could follow him for a while and arrest some of his friends along with him.”
Genevieve nodded. She’d met a German officer who’d thought along the same lines, only she’d been the one followed in the hope that she’d lead him to other Resistance members. “So for now, we’ll just keep an eye on him and try to discover what he’s up to?”
“Yes. But I want that airman out of it as soon as possible. And I want you to keep your distance. By morning, headquarters will have a large pool of anonymous faces organized to keep track of him, but they can only send one man tonight, so I’ll need your help till morning. I’ll think of something to explain your absence at work tomorrow. Truth be told, Dr. Bolliger thinks very highly of you. I doubt one missed shift will change that.”
A half hour later, an OSS man arrived in a jeep. Genevieve directed him to within a few blocks of Ercolani’s apartment, but they walked the last bit, wanting to arrive silently. The man gave his name as Black and said he’d been a police officer in Los Angeles before the war. Genevieve guessed he was in his midforties, but he was sleepy and uninterested in conversation.
Rick was still there when they arrived.
“Did you see anything?” she asked.
Rick shook his head. “Nothing. I walked around a bit, and it looks like none of those apartments have more than one door, so I’ll bet he’s still in there.”
“Thank you for your help, young man,” Black said. “Someone will debrief you tomorrow. In the meantime, make sure you don’t talk to anyone about any of this.”
Rick nodded, then grinned. “If anyone in my tent is sober enough to notice how late I am, I’ll say I walked a pretty brunette home and got distracted. They can draw their own conclusions from there. I guarantee they won’t guess I was tracking down Fascist spies.”
* * *
Genevieve had picked up a sweater at the hospital, but even with the extra layer, she spent most of the night shivering. Her dress had been made during the war, when scarcity of fabric dictated hemlines should be closer to the knees than the ankles. Nylon rationing meant she didn’t have any stockings, so her bare legs were covered in goose bumps.
Morning came, but replacements from OSS headquarters didn’t arise as early as Ercolani. He opened the door shortly after sunrise, leaving the apartment with a beautiful, fashionably dressed woman on his arm.
“I’ll follow them,” Black said. “Dr. Lombardelli says you pick locks?”
Genevieve nodded.
“See if you can find anything inside.”
Black sneaked away behind them. Ercolani and the woman paused outside a bakery half a block away, and a third man joined them. After they turned a corner, Genevieve walked to the apartment, testing the knob before removing some of her hairpins. She wondered when she had crossed the line from a simple courier to a full-flung counterintelligence agent. She’d never wanted to be a spy, yet each time Lombardelli asked her to help, she found herself unable to refuse. Maybe someday she’d tell him no, but she did want to help end the war. She wanted it to be over so badly. Not much longer now. We’re winning. It’s just a matter of time. And soon Ercolani will be under arrest, unable to harm anyone else.
Genevieve bent her hairpins to the correct angles, smiling at the irony that the man who’d taught her to pick locks was also the man who’d introduced her to the gospel. She caught her breath, concentrating on the lock and hoping Peter was still alive somewhere.
The apartment’s lock was a basic pin tumbler model, easy to pick. She entered and closed the door behind her. It was a cramped apartment: the front room merged into the dining room and kitchen, and the bedroom at the back of the apartment was small, as was the bathroom. She began her search in the bedroom. It contained two small closets. In Ercolani’s closet, the clothes hung neatly, all the shirts and all the hangers facing the same direction. She found the boxes at the bottom of the closet more interesting than the civilian clothing hanging above. The first contained dynamite, detonators, and grenades. The second contained 9 mm ammunition—which would fit a Walther P38 pistol or the Beretta 1938 machine pistol leaning against the inside corner of the closet. Who is he planning to assassinate now?
The other closet was stuffed with clothes, half of them falling off the hangers. A multitude of hats cluttered the shelf above the hanger rod, and the floor was covered with shoes, stockings, and other items of clothing. Genevieve had expected as much. Several dresses were strewn across an armchair in the corner of the bedroom, and the small bathroom counter was covered with perfume bottles and hairpins.
Genevieve glanced at the clock in the hallway. She’d been in the apartment five minutes already and wanted to leave quickly in case the couple returned. Black wouldn’t let Ercolani hurt her, but if she was discovered in the apartment, it would ruin the possibility of following Ercolani to his accomplices. She checked the remaining furniture in the bedroom and front room, hoping to find some hint of his plans, then searched the coat closet and the kitchen cabinets.
Were I in his position, where would I hide my plans? She spent another ten minutes searching for hiding spots behind picture frames, diaries hidden in the bookshelf, or compartments under floorboards. As she studied the floorboards under the table, she noticed the table’s unconventional design. The tabletop was a single, flat piece of wood resting on an almost normal frame. But on the bottom of the frame was a second piece of wood, covering the frame like the bottom of a box, and she recognized two pins on one side that seemed to have no purpose. She removed the pins, lifted the top of the table, and gasped.
* * *
Basileo made sure Mario still guarded the far end of the hallway. He walked to Belina, put his arms around her waist from behind, and kissed her neck. “Did you disable the telephone?”
“Mm.”
“That’s a yes?”
She turned around in his arms. “You know I’m not very articulate when you’re kissing me. But yes, I cut the lines.”
“Then I’ll go arm our little device.” He kissed her again, letting his lips linger on hers before he left to complete the final part of his plan.
* * *
Genevieve knew Lombardelli would be off duty, so she rushed directly to his apartment. She sighed with relief when he opened the door for her.
“Did you find something?”
“Maps with OSS headquarters circled and diagrams of the building’s interior,” Genevieve said. “I think he’s planning to destroy it.”
Lombardelli looked surprised, then sickened. He glanced at his watch. “Just before you arrived, I received a phone call. Someone found Black’s body midway between Ercolani’s apartment and headquarters. There’s a meeting scheduled to take place at HQ in fifteen minutes. All the top men will attend.”
“He’s going to destroy it today, during the meeting.”
Lombardelli nodded. He reached for the phone and asked to be put through to the building. He hung up in frustration. “The operator can’t put me through. Come on, we’ll drive.”
The next five minutes left Genevieve fearing for her life. She’d been in a high-speed chase before, but having Lombardelli behind the wheel of the ambulance he’d borrowed from the hospital bordered on suicide. She distracted herself by strapping on a shoulder harness with a pistol and hiding it under her sweater. Lombardelli slammed on the brakes near the building, and the vehicle skidded to a halt.
“I’ll go find the MPs,” he said.
Genevieve nodded. She already knew what she was going to do. On the diagram hidden under the tabletop in his apartment, Ercolani had marked exactly where he intended to plant his bomb. She jumped from the ambulance and ran.
The meeting had just begun. Were she in Ercolani’s place, she’d have the bomb go off in ten minutes—allowing any stragglers to join the meeting before they were all killed. But she wasn’t Ercolani. For all she knew, she might have only seconds.
The building itself was easy to enter. She remembered the layout from the diagrams and turned left down one long hallway, then right down another, nearly running into a military policeman patrolling the corridor. She apologized and was about to explain the situation when he spoke.
“What’s your hurry, miss? This area is off-limits.” His English was good, but he didn’t sound American. There were recent immigrants serving in the US Army, but she suspected the man in front of her wasn’t one of them. He looked a lot like the man who’d met Ercolani at the bakery that morning.
She hesitated for a moment, unsure of her next move. It would take several minutes to reach the bomb with an alternative route, and she guessed Ercolani or the woman would be guarding the other points of access.
Genevieve gazed beyond the guard to the empty hallway. “If it’s off-limits, who’s that?”
As the man turned to look behind him, she drew her pistol and slammed it into the back of his head, just below his helmet. He fell to the floor and didn’t move as she ran past him.
The bomb was exactly where the plans had shown it would be, hidden in a dark storage room with a wall that bordered the meeting room. She knelt next to it and examined the simple, deadly device—she’d made similar ones for use against the Germans. After removing the detonator and disassembling the sticks of dynamite, Genevieve sat back on her heels and said a small prayer of gratitude. There would be no massacre at the OSS meeting that morning.
She heard one footstep directly behind her and felt a muscular arm wrap around her neck and yank her to her feet.
Her assailant released her for a second and slammed her into the wall. “Who are you?” Ercolani growled. He pinned her against the wall, his forearm pressed into her throat, then removed her pistol from its holster and tossed it across the room. His forearm constricted all airflow, and she couldn’t breathe. She clawed at his hands, but he only pressed harder, lifting her so high her toes barely touched the floor and trapping both her wrists with his other hand. She tried to kick him, but he kicked her back, making the pressure on her neck even worse. Everything she tried failed—he was too strong, and he was going to strangle her.
“I suppose you’re the link between Lombardelli and that traitor Giacomo. I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to kill everyone in that meeting, and then I’m going to kill Lombardelli.”
Genevieve’s vision was fading when she heard a scream. At first she thought it was her imagination. She’d be screaming herself if she was capable of it, and the voice was feminine. Another cry followed and a gunshot.
Ercolani lost his focus, pulling a few inches away and looking the direction of the sound. “Belina?”
Genevieve gasped for air and slid to the floor. He reached after her, gripping her sweater, but she pulled away, losing a few buttons and scrambling across the floor to her handgun. She pointed it at him, holding it with both hands, praying he wouldn’t recognize what a bad state she was in. She was as likely to faint as to pull the trigger.
He glared at her, his hand inches from his P38 pistol. Another gunshot sounded. He glanced in the direction of the sound, then back at Genevieve before barreling past her. She kept her weapon aimed in his direction as he bolted down the hallway, but her vision was so blurry she saw two of him, so she didn’t pull the trigger.
When he was out of sight, she relaxed her arms, still gasping for breath. Her neck ached, and her hands shook. She was on the floor, fighting to stay conscious when a few MPs—real ones—found her a few minutes later. They helped her through several corridors, past the lifeless body of Ercolani’s beautiful associate, and through a scorched hallway. Dr. Lombardelli was speaking with several high-ranking officers, but he halted his conversation when he saw her.
He swore in Italian and examined her neck. She winced under his touch. “I thought you were going to wait in the ambulance.”
“Did you get him?” Genevieve asked. “He ran this direction.”
Lombardelli looked at one of the officers for an answer.
“We captured one man and killed the female accomplice.”
“Did you find the man I knocked unconscious? The one dressed as an MP?” Genevieve asked.
The muscles around the officer’s eyes scrunched together. “The man we captured was dressed as an MP. He was shooting at us, so my men shot back. He’s wounded, under arrest.”
“But what about Ercolani? The tall man with dark hair and a P38?”
The officer looked past her to a broken window. “I guess he got away.”