For God and Country. Mark Bowlin

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СКАЧАТЬ seemed younger to the captain than the calm, bookish killer that he knew. What the captain didn’t know was that Kulis was much younger—he had fraudulently enlisted at fifteen and had just turned seventeen during the Battle of Salerno.

      “Hello, Stefania Frattini!” Perkin waved from his wall.

      “Ciao, Perkin Berger!” She turned to Private Kulis and ordered, “Don’t cheat!” and then ran over to hug the tall Texan.

      “You’re looking as pretty as a peach today, Stefania. How are your mama and grandfather?

      “Good, good. How is Cugino Orso?” Stefania had met Sam once and she had thought that if she lived to be a hundred, she would never again meet a man so large.

      “Cousin Bear’s fine. Just this morning, I watched him eat a whole ham and two dozen eggs for breakfast.” He winced as soon as the words were out. The Frattinis didn’t have much to eat, and he wished he hadn’t made a joke about food.

      No harm was done. Her eyes widened slightly, “Really? No. You kid. You have the locket? Can I see the picture again?”

      The locket had been a present from Perkin’s Italian girlfriend, Gianina—an art restorer at the Neapolitan National Gallery. On the morning of her death in the terrorist bombing of the Naples Post Office, she had given Perkin a large rectangular locket. When he opened it, he saw a miniature depiction of Saint Michael subduing Satan. She had painted it onto a small ceramic tile and filed it to fit within the locket. Saint Michael, Gianina had told him, was the patron saint of soldiers and would protect Perkin. But the source of Stefania’s fascination was not just that Saint Michael was also a patron saint of San Pietro, nor the widely held belief among the ladies of the town that Perkin had been sent to San Pietro to do Saint Michael’s bidding—it was the face that was painted on Saint Michael’s muscular body. Gianina had crafted a remarkable depiction of Private Edwin Kulis, even down to his army-issued glasses.

      “That’s the man I plan to marry,” she said simply.

      Somewhat alarmed, Perkin muttered under his breath, “Be careful you don’t catch something.” Private Kulis had lost his virginity in an Italian brothel and had never looked back.

      “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

      “I said you’ll be quite a catch someday. Does he know?” Perkin grinned as he looked over at his soldier, who was practicing his skills at jacks.

      “Oh, no. I won’t tell him until I’m sixteen,” she said in a businesslike tone. “Mama won’t let me kiss a boy until then, and I can’t get married until I’m seventeen. The war will be over I’m sure, and then I can go to America.”

      “Don’t you think he’ll be a little old for you? By the time you’re old enough to date, he’ll be, I don’t know, in his mid-twenties.”

      “That doesn’t matter in Italia. Besides, he’s only a few years older than me. He’s maybe sixteen or seventeen at the most.”

      “No, Stefania. He’s twenty-two. Did he tell ya he’s a teenager?” Perkin’s alarm was beginning to mount again at the prospect that his rifleman was hustling a very young teenager.

      Stefania faced Perkin and rolled her eyes, her hands on her hips. “Capitano. We haven’t discussed these things other than agreeing to be pen pals. He knows nothing about nothing. But I can tell you as an Italian woman, I know how old he is!”

      “Is that a fact? I didn’t know that Italian women were so perspicacious.” He grinned again, relieved.

      Stefania wagged her finger at him, “You should not use words I don’t know. But if it means we are smart, we are. I tell many things just by looking at people.”

      “Really? What do you see in Eddie?” He nodded his head toward Private Kulis.

      “He’s small like me, and has good teeth, and he’s very, very smart. Like me.”

      “I don’t reckon you have to be the Oracle of Delphi to divine those things. What else do you see?”

      “I think he’s very calm, and he’s very comfortable in his skin. Nothing bothers him, he likes to be a soldier, and I think he will want to stay one when the war is finished. I’ll have to give that some thought, though, because I don’t know about being a soldier’s wife. One last thing . . . I think he looks up to you.”

      “That’s because I’m taller, honey, but thank you. What about Cousin Bear, what do you see there?”

      “That’s easy. His heart is bigger than he is. Who else?”

      “Why, me, of course.”

      “Oh, my friend . . . you are very hard to see, but you are funny, smart, and . . . allora . . . troubled, I think.”

      1020 Hours

      CINC Southwest Headquarters, Monte Soratte, Italy

      Major Grossmann was stunned. What the colonel was proposing was unthinkable, but he only had Bernardi’s word to go on. Mark Gerschoffer would not have turned sides, of that he was certain. Not unless it was true that he was Bernardi’s lover and she directed him to do so. Her influence on men was formidable.

      “Sir, do you have any evidence that Captain Gerschoffer did as you imply?” he asked of the colonel.

      “Evidence? No . . . what evidence do you think might apply?”

      “I don’t know, sir. Why do you think the situation is anything other than what I described in my report—that Captain Gerschoffer was killed after being captured?”

      The colonel smiled again, and Major Grossmann found himself wishing that the colonel would quit doing so. The senior Abwehr officer coughed harshly and then said, “Because I don’t trust you. I don’t trust your whore, and I don’t trust Gerschoffer. Or didn’t, perhaps I should say.” The colonel used his fingers to delineate his point. “Let’s see. We don’t have a body. We haven’t seen a corpse. There’s no collaborating intelligence from the American camp. Your whore is perfectly poised to defect to Switzerland, and, well, I’ve always wondered about your allegiance. It’s Occam’s razor. My hypothesis is simpler and more logical than your own, which is, to wit, that an American intelligence officer infiltrated a heavily fortified city and kidnapped one of our two German-American intelligence officers—a savage brute of a man—tortured him, and executed him. What do you say to that?”

      “I can’t express what I’d like to say, Colonel. Other than noting you’re wrong about Mark, and about me, I haven’t a goddamned thing to say.” Grossmann began to feel nauseous. This morning was going worse than he imagined it possibly could. What was next? Orders to the Eastern Front? An interrogation?

      The colonel shook his head and looked at his wrist-watch. “Ach, Major, you’re still stuck in your American uniform. You need to embrace your Aryan side for a moment and follow orders, which are to explain to your superior why he’s wrong. I’ll give you thirty seconds to convince me, or I’ll turn this situation over to the Gestapo for more, uh . . . well, let’s call it objective resolution. Go!”

      Grossmann glared as the colonel glanced again at his watch. “Don’t bother, Colonel. It won’t take that long. You didn’t question our allegiance when we provided the СКАЧАТЬ