The Saboteurs Read online

  The two men glanced at the bodies on the gurneys.

  Rossi softly finished the thought: “…And they are not at all unwilling to do the unspeakable.”

  They stood there a long time before Rossi broke the silence.

  “What about Carlo? He would never stand for this.”

  A brilliant mathematician and a kind man, Dr. Carlo Modica was, like Napoli, in his seventies, and had served as the head of the University of Palermo for almost ten years. In his specialty as a metallurgist, Rossi had at times worked closely with him.

  Napoli put his hands on Rossi’s shoulders.

  “Carlo is the reason I felt you had to see this for yourself.”

  “You’re not telling me that he is permitting this?”

  Napoli stared him in the eyes.

  “What I am telling you, Arturo, is that Sturmbannführer Müller made it clear to Dr. Modica that his participation would be in his best interest. Müller said that it would send a good message to others if someone in such a prestigious position participated.”

  Rossi’s eyes grew larger.

  “With all due respect, I would like to hear Carlo tell me that personally.”

  Napoli dropped his hands to his sides.

  “He cannot,” he said softly, and his eyes moistened.

  “Why?”

  “Because Müller has put me in his place here.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Carlo was injecting the virus in a—” he paused, searching for the right word “—in a ‘patient’ when the ‘patient’ struggled. Carlo was pricked by the needle or scratched by the ‘patient’…that part is unclear…but the result is that he somehow infected himself….”

  “He has yellow fever?”

  Napoli shook his head.

  “Had yellow fever.”

  He nodded to the men on the gurneys.

  Rossi looked, then looked harder, and suddenly was sick to his stomach.

  He now recognized the grotesque body on the far right as that of the gentle mathematician.

  Dear Holy Mother, Rossi thought, and motioned with his hand in the sign of the cross.

  “None of us is safe,” Napoli whispered.

  [ TWO ]

  Woburn Square

  London, England

  2010 25 February 1943

  Major Richard M. Canidy, United States Army Air Corps, bounded unnoticed up the stone steps to the first-floor flat at 16 Woburn Mansions. Solidly built and good-looking, the twenty-five-year-old displayed such confidence in his quick stride that if any bystanders had seen him approach the massive wooden door of the flat they would have mistakenly believed that not only was he supposed to be there but that he may very well have owned the place.

  The flat instead was home to the beautiful Ann Chambers, with whom he had recently shared—and he hoped soon would again share—some very special times.

  No matter how much that idea appealed to him, however, right now it was not the reason for his haste to get to the flat—and inside.

  If I don’t get the door open in the next second, he thought, I’m going to piss my pants. My back teeth are floating….

  Canidy knew that the door had a solid-brass handle-and-lock set, the type with a thumb latch that, when left unlocked, a simple depressing of the latch caused the bolt to pull back from its place inside the doorjamb and the door could then be swung inward. And he knew that it was old and worn.

  If the lock isn’t busted, he thought, odds are good she’s left it unlocked again.

  In one fluid move, he found the handle in the dark with his right hand, pushed on the latch with his thumb, and leaned forward in anticipation of the door’s swinging inward.

  A split second after the electrical pulses traveled from his thumb to his brain, and the brain interpreted these pulses to mean that the latch did not depress and that the door was in fact locked, his brain received priority electrical pulses of information from his right shoulder—in the form of a sharp pain—that the brain then interpreted to mean the door had not swung inward…that it had not moved at all.

  Dammit!

  He winced and yanked at the door handle, pushing at the latch again and again, causing the lock set to rattle.

  The door remained locked, but the rattle told him that there was more than a little slop in the old mechanism.

  Hitting the solid door did his bladder absolutely no good, and he found himself doing a little anxious dance to try to hold back the inevitable.

  He quickly pulled out his pocketknife, opened the blade, and carefully slipped it in the crack between the door edge and the doorframe, just above where the bolt engaged the strike plate. As fast as he could, he worked the knife blade downward and then methodically back and forth, the blade little by little depressing the bolt against its spring until the bolt was clear of the doorjamb.

  And the door swung inward.

  He entered the flat and slammed the door shut behind him, the bolt clicking back in place.

  It was even darker inside the flat, but the absence of light only served to heighten Canidy’s sense of smell. And he could very much detect the sweet, delicate scent of a woman.

  He stumbled around in the dark till he found—actually, ran into—the lamp where he remembered it being and clicked it on.

  The flat, nicely furnished with ornate old furniture covered in well-worn fabrics and soft leather, opened onto a large main room, off of which were two smallish bedrooms, a single bath with a toilet and a shower, and a kitchen. There were dark hardwood floors throughout, as well as thick woolen rugs. A marble fireplace topped with a four-by-five-foot mirror graced the main living area.

  He made a beeline for the head.

  The leak surprised even him with its duration; he considered timing it with his wristwatch chronometer. He pledged never to pass another crapper without at least considering how full his bladder might be and the distance to the next crapper should he choose not to stop.

  When he had finally finished and went to wash his hands, he caught himself making a massive yawn. Now he did check his watch.

  Only eight-fifteen? Jesus, this has been a long day—didn’t think we’d ever get wheels-up out of Casablanca this morning—and she may not be here for some time. Wouldn’t want to miss what could be a long, passionate night….

  He walked to the couch, turning out the light as he passed the lamp.

  He yawned again, and shortly after he lay down and his head hit the tasseled pillow he was snoring.

  As Ann Chambers rounded the darkened street corner, she caught her right heel in a crack in the sidewalk that had been left uneven by the bombs of the Luftwaffe.

  “Shit,” she whispered in her soft Southern drawl.

  When the heel caught, it had stuck fast, and her foot had come completely out of the shoe, causing her to place her stocking-covered foot on the cold ground. She reached down and grasped the heel to pull it free of the sidewalk and found that it had almost completely separated from where it attached to the sole.

  The twenty-year-old blonde sighed. This was her second-to-last pair of really nice—and really comfortable—shoes, and she wasn’t sure how soon the replacements she had written home for would arrive. She did a lot of walking—everyone in London did a lot of walking—and for her, comfortable shoes rated high on the list of absolute necessities.

  So that she would not tear the small leather tag that barely connected the heel at the back, she put down her heavy, black leather briefcase and used both hands to carefully tug at the heel until it pulled free.

  Ann held up the shoe, trying to get a decent look at the damage in the dim light. She thought that there might be a small chance she could repair the shoe herself because she knew there was next to no chance of getting a cobbler, even if she could find one that hadn’t been blown out of business, to do so in a timely fashion.

  A nicely dressed middle-aged man approached and stopped.

  Great, she thought. Just what I need now….

  “C
an I be of any help, lass?”

  Ann, still kneeling, looked up at him.

  “Thank you, but no.”

  “You’re sure?”

  The only thing I need is protection from strangers who can’t take no for an answer.

  “Yes,” she snapped.

  She saw him make a face and immediately felt bad. Being frustrated about the broken shoe—not to mention going home to an empty flat—was not his fault.

  In a softened tone, she added, “I’m almost home. Thank you.”

  He turned smartly on his heel. “Very well.”

  As the man walked away, she stood up and looked again at the shoe and still couldn’t tell how badly it was damaged.

  She frowned, then—despite the fact that her right foot was close to numb from the cold—removed her other shoe, collected her briefcase, and padded all but barefoot in her now-torn hosiery the final block to her flat at 16 Woburn Mansions.

  As she went, she could not help but be saddened again by the ugly gaps in the buildings. German bombs had destroyed large sections of the city—the damage had been utterly indiscriminate—and there was more and more of the destruction almost every day.

  It was no different here at Woburn Square, where bombs had taken out ten of the twenty-four entrances and reduced what not very long ago had been a lush and meticulously kept park to nothing more than a burned fence and bare trees.

  Adding another insult, the once-manicured park was now pocked from where crews had dug dirt to fill sandbags and dug out small shelters, for those who could not reach a basement or subway shelter quickly enough when bombs began to fall.

  Sixteen Woburn Mansions had survived, but its windows now were boarded with plywood and its limestone façade scorched black from the fires that had raged up and down the street.

  Ann walked up the short flight of stone steps, dug into her briefcase, and came out with a key ring, then put one of the keys in the heavy brass lock of the massive wooden door and, when she heard the loud metallic clunk of the tumbler turning, depressed the lever above the handle with her thumb, leaned her shoulder into the door, and walked inside.

  She went to the lamp, clicked it on, and sighed. It was good to be home. Ann appreciated the fact that while her flat was not what one would describe as opulent, it was certainly comfortable—and superior to most flats in London, particularly the ones on Woburn Square that now were nothing but rubble.

  And most important, for now, it was hers alone.

  Sixteen Woburn Mansions had been assigned to the Chambers News Service, through its London bureau chief, by the Central London Housing Authority acting on a memorandum from CNS’s main office in Atlanta, duly relayed through the SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) billeting officer, that had stated that the flat was intended to house all five CNS female employees in London, names to be provided as soon as they were available and could be forwarded from Atlanta.

  And while the flat technically did indeed currently house all of the female employees of the Chambers News Service London bureau—in the person of one Miss Ann Chambers—what the bureau chief did not know was that it had been Miss Chambers who initiated the memorandum from the Atlanta office just after having obtained an assignment to the London office and just prior to her arrival in England, and that while it was theoretically possible there would be more female employees sent to serve in the London bureau, for the near term at the very least it was not at all likely.

  This caused Ann some genuine mixed feelings. She knew that she was bending the rules. She knew that people in London were packed in flats, and ones smaller than hers. But she also knew that she would give up the flat in a heartbeat when she was sure that it had finally served its purpose—helping her have a private place to land the love of her life—and she was determined that that was going to be soon…very soon.

  After that, she promised herself, she would make amends for this bit of selfishness.

  The bureau chief suspected, of course, that Ann had used the system to her advantage, but it made no sense to fight it.

  For one thing, Ann Chambers was the daughter of the owner of Chambers Publishing Company and the Chambers News Service—and, accordingly, was the London bureau chief’s boss’s boss.

  For another, she was a fully accredited correspondent, and a damned good one. She had real talent, wasn’t afraid of hard work, and consequently turned in solid feature articles that the news service sent out on the wires around the world. Her Profiles of Courage series about ordinary everyday citizens serving in extraordinary roles during wartime had become wildly successful.

  Why, then, would the bureau chief want to upset the apple cart over what, at least for the time being, was a technicality? As far as he knew, more female employees might be on the way; he certainly could use them.

  There was no question that Ann was more than earning her keep. Which was a good thing because there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the last thing that Brandon Chambers, chairman of the board of the Chambers Publishing Company, would have stood for was blind nepotism. He was a tough, no-nonsense businessman—some said a real sonofabitch, a reputation that Chambers wasted no effort to dispel or even dispute—who had built a world-class news service from the ground up and would not make a token hire of a family member unable to pull his or her own weight.

  Early on, Ann had shown that she had a way with words—much like her father—and so while it came as no real surprise to Brandon Chambers, he was nonetheless not happy when out of the blue she showed up at his Atlanta office and announced that she had dropped out of Bryn Mawr and said that if her father did not give back the part-time correspondent job that she had held off and on since high school, she was reasonably sure Gardner Cowles—who owned Look magazine and a lot else—could find something for her to do. And very likely make it a full-time position.

  Cowles was Brandon Chambers’s bitter competitor and just cutthroat enough to find great glee in providing Ann Chambers with a job at Look magazine, which was regularly beating the life out of Life.

  Thus, there was no changing his daughter’s mind. “I wonder where she got that lovely stubborn personality trait?” Mrs. Brandon Chambers had said with more than a little sarcasm when her husband phoned with the news of their daughter’s plan—and Ann went to work that day in the Atlanta home office as a full-time Chambers News Service correspondent.

  Now, some months later, she had had herself transferred to the London bureau.

  That, too, had triggered howls of protest from the corporate office of the chairman of the board—he never believed any woman should be a war correspondent, and certainly not someone of his own flesh and blood—but it quickly became another father-daughter battle lost by Brandon Chambers.

  Dick Canidy had been asleep twenty minutes when he snored so loudly that he woke himself up. It took him a moment to get his bearings, and as his brain told him where he was he heard a key being put in the front door, the lock turning, and the door opening.

  He started to jump up but stopped to admire the silhouette of the well-built young woman in the doorway. Ann closed and locked the door and carefully found her way across the flat in the dark.

  He laid his head back on the pillow. Her presence excited him. He could feel the beating of his heart beginning to build and a slight sweat forming on his hands. After a moment, he ever so slightly caught her scent…and smiled.

  He watched as she padded to the fireplace—Is she barefoot? he wondered—and dropped her shoes and leather bag to the floor—She is barefoot! Or at least in stockings. Ann groped around until she found the matches, then lit the candles at either end of the marble mantel. They started to glow brightly, the light filling more and more of the flat, and he lay in the shadows on the couch.

  Jesus Christ, if I say anything now it’s liable to scare her out of her skin!

  Then she started to take off her outer clothes.

  Now, this could get interesting….

  Ann put down the matc
hes on the mantel, then pulled off her overcoat and without turning tossed it over the back of the couch. She slipped her V-neck sweater over her head—uncovering a white blouse that fitted her form tightly—and was about to throw it on the couch, too, when she had a second thought.

  She put the armpit of the sweater to her nose, sniffed with more than a little apprehension, grunted Ugh—then threw it to the couch.

  When she next adjusted her skirt, pulling it up at the waistband and twisting it slightly, the wool caused her buttocks to itch and she found herself vigorously scratching her fanny with the fingernails of both hands.

  Those unfortunate events now handled, Ann arranged the candles to her satisfaction, then examined herself in the mirror and fixed her hair mussed by the sweater.

  Looking at herself, she could not help but think of Sara Spenser and the profile of her that she had spent the day writing.

  For most of the last week, Ann had followed the nineteen-year-old, spunky, petite brunette as she’d served with the Light Rescue Section of London’s Civil Defence.

  Under a 1914 tin hat, draped in baggy woolen men’s pants and heavy overcoat and clunking around in “Wellies”—men’s rubber Wellington boots—three sizes too big, Sara worked twenty-four-hour shifts, carefully but quickly digging through rubble to uncover victims whose homes or businesses had been bombed and then carrying them by canvas stretcher to the buses converted into ambulances that waited nearby.

  It had taken a couple of days—and one long, teary night over pints of stout at the Prince’s Bangers & Mash Pub—to get Sara to open up, really open up, but Ann had, and she learned that Sara was all that was left of her immediate Spenser family.